evil spirits on the road or to thieves who lie in wait for the traveller.
But the seeds are not easily gathered. It must be done just before the midnight hour on Midsummer's Eve. The gatherer must place a cloth of white linen or a pewter dish beneath the frond. It is dangerous to touch the frond at this hour with his bare hand, so he must bend it with a forked hazel twig so that the seed shall fall upon the cloth or dish. But bracken is well guarded by spirits and demons who do not desire that mortals should gain such power. They will torment the gatherer as he tries to collect the seed, pinching and striking him, and appearing in such a terrible aspect that some mortals have died of fright. And many return home to find the seed they gathered in the cloth has vanished.
The Mandrake's Herbal
The Cat
Gytha wandered back towards the bothy, her wicker basket full of nettles, wild onions and sorrel. Two fat trout lay nestled under the cool of the leaves. She had coaxed those from the stream with nothing but her fingers for a hook and her cunning as the bait. She could have caught more, but she knew that if you took more than you needed for that day, the river would not let you take from her again. In the same way, she was careful always to eat from the tail to the head lest she make the fish turn away from her, and careful to collect up every tiny bone and return them to the stream, so that the fish might be reborn. That was the way of it. Learn the laws of the forest, marsh and stream, learn the ways of the beast, fowl and fish, and food would always come to you.
Gytha scuffed her bare feet in the warm, crumbling leaf litter, and breathed in the hot summer breeze, fragranced with the rich fruit of decaying leaves and the bitter tang of the white-headed cow parsley. Beech, oak and elm stretched out their long limbs above her as she paddled through the drops of green light filtering through the sun-soaked canopy.
She would be sorry to leave this forest when the time came to move, but they would have to leave soon anyway. They would need to find warmer shelter and build up food stores before winter. For she knew from experience how quickly the warm, sultry days could turn to rain and killing cold. Still, perhaps they would be back in their own cottage before then. Madron seemed sure that before the year was dead, Yadua would have finished her work. Gytha wasn't convinced. She had been born into the waiting. It was the only state she had ever known, and she couldn't imagine what would replace it.
Madron was sitting outside the bothy where Gytha had left her, nestled comfortably among the gnarled roots of an ancient oak, like a tattered old crow on its nest. Her twisted hands were turning the heap of yellowed bones in her lap, but her sightless eyes were already turned in Gytha's direction as her daughter emerged from the trees.
'Yadua has been fed,' she announced triumphantly as Gytha came into the clearing. She licked her wrinkled lips, as if she herself had tasted the red milk.
'And?' Gytha asked. She did not doubt the truth of what the old woman said for a moment. There was and always had been a bond, stronger than mother and child, between Yadua and Madron. Even now, when the mandrake was miles away, Madron could always tell when it stirred to life, perhaps because of the way she had acquired it. But Gytha could tell by the excitement in the old woman's voice that this time there was something more.
Madron pronounced her words slowly, as if she didn't want to part with them too soon. 'I scattered the bones and when the spirits led me to pluck one, I found a butterfly had settled on it and would not be dislodged.'
'A butterfly ... on a dry bone? That means there's been a death.'
The old woman nodded in satisfaction.
Gytha laid her basket down and hurried forward. She knelt in front of her mother, staring at the bones in the old woman's lap.
'Which . . . which bone was it, can you remember?'
The old woman snorted. 'I'm blind, not doting. I know my bones.'
She folded her lips tight and turned her face away. Gytha knew that expression of old: