Saturday, October 23^rd

Morning

Half an hour earlier than the alarm shall be sounded for the primary time in a long time—drawing 4 frantic previous girls and a ge­riatric crow from all corners of the sprawling manor—Ursula is awoken by insistent knocking, like big knuckles rapping in opposition to glass. It’s an ominous signal, to make sure. The primary of many.

Making an attempt to rid herself of the sticky cobwebs of sleep, Ursula throws again the covers, groaning as her joints loudly voice their displeasure. She’s slept within the buff, as is her ordinary behavior, and as she pads throughout the room, she’s extra bare than the day she was born (being, as she is, a kind of uncommon infants who got here into the world totally encased in a caul).

Upon reaching the window, the reason for the ruckus is im­mediately apparent to Ursula; one of many Angel Oak’s sturdy branches is thumping in opposition to her third-floor window. Sturdy winds whip by the tree, making it shimmy and shake, giving the impression that it’s espousing the previous adage to bop like nobody’s watching, a top quality that relatively needs to be admired in a tree. Both that, or it’s trembling uncontrollably with concern.

The forest, encroaching on the backyard’s boundary, seems to be disquieted. It hangs its head low, bowing to a grasp who’s ordered it to bend the knee. Because the charcoal sky churns, not a fowl to be seen, the timber within the wooden whisper incessantly. Whether or not they’re secrets and techniques or warnings, Ursula can’t inform, which solely unsettles her additional.

That infernal billboard that the town just lately erected throughout from the manor property—with its aggressive gigantic let­tering shouting, ‘Critchley Hackle Mega Advanced Coming Quickly!’—snaps within the wind, issuing small cracks of thunder. A storm is on its method, that a lot is evident. You don’t have to have Ivy’s specific powers to know as a lot.

Turning her again on the ominous view, Ursula heads for the calendar to mark off one other principally sleepless night time. It appears inconceivable that after so a lot of them—night time upon night time, strung up after one another seemingly endlessly—solely two stay till Ruby’s return, upon which Ursula will dis­cowl her destiny.

Both Ruby is aware of or she doesn’t.

And if she does know, there’s the prospect that she’ll need nothing extra to do with Ursula. The thought makes her breath hitch, the accompanying stab of ache virtually an excessive amount of to bear. One of the best she will hope for beneath the circumstances is that Ruby will forgive her, releasing Ursula from the invis­ible jail her guilt has sentenced her to.

Too preoccupied with ideas of Ruby to recollect to don her gown, Ursula takes a seat at her mahogany escritoire. She lights a cone of mugwort and candy laurel incense, watch­ing because the tendril of smoke unfurls, inscribing itself upon the air. Inhaling the candy scent, she picks up a purple silk pouch and unties it, spilling the contents onto her palm.

The tarot playing cards are all frayed across the edges, worn down from numerous hours spent jostling by Ursula’s arms. Regardless of their shabbiness, they crackle with electrical energy, sparks flying as she shuffles them. After chopping the deck in three, Ursula begins laying the playing cards down, one after the opposite, on high of the heptagram she carved into the writing desk’s sur­face virtually eighty years in the past.

The primary card, positioned within the heart, is The Tower. Unfortu­nate souls tumble from the highest of a fortress that’s been struck by lightning, flames engulfing it. Ursula experiences a jolt of alarm on the sight of it for The Tower has to indicate the manor; and something threatening their house, threatens all of them.

The second card, positioned above the primary on the one o’clock place, can solely signify Tabitha. It’s the Ten of Swords, depicting an individual mendacity face down with ten swords buried of their again. The final time Ursula noticed the cardboard, she’d made a psychological be aware to make an appointment together with her acupunctur­ist, however now, following so quickly after The Tower, it makes her shift nervously.

The third, fourth and fifth playing cards, positioned on the three o’clock, four-thirty and 6 o’clock positions, depict an individual (who have to be Queenie) struggling beneath too heavy a load; a coronary heart pierced by swords (signifying Ursula); and a horned beast towering above a person and lady who’re shackled collectively (obvi­ously Jezebel). Ursula whimpers to see so many dreaded playing cards clustered collectively.

Transferring quicker now, she lays out the sixth, seventh and eighth playing cards on the seven-thirty, 9 and eleven o’ clock po­sitions. Ursula gasps as she research the person crying in his mattress, 9 swords hovering above him (which may solely denote Ur­sula’s guilt because it pertains to Ruby); the armored skeleton on horseback (representing the city of Critchley Hackle); and the 2 bedraggled souls trudging barefoot by the snow (positively Ivy). Taking in all eight sinister playing cards makes Ursula tremble very similar to the Angel Oak.

Primarily based on the unfold, Ursula completely ought to sound the alarm instantly, however she’s made errors up to now—lapses in judgment that resulted in horrible penalties—and so she needs to be one hundred percent sure first.

She shuffles the playing cards once more, laying them down extra de­liberately this time, solely to see the very same surprising for­mation, the upcoming risk much more vivid than earlier than. It couldn’t be any clearer if the Goddess herself had despatched a hom­ing pigeon with a memo bearing the message: Calamity is on its method! It’s knocking on the window, simply ready to be let in!

And but, Ursula nonetheless doesn’t sound the alarm, as a result of that’s what doubt does; it slips by the chinks in our defenses, eroding all sense of self till the one voice that ought to mat­ter turns into the one which we don’t acknowledge anymore, the one we belief the least.

On account of this estrangement from herself, Ursula has de­veloped one thing of a compulsion, needing to triple examine the indicators earlier than she calls consideration to them, and so she stands and grabs her wand. She makes her method down the hallway previous Ruby’s and Jezebel’s bedrooms at a little bit of a clip earlier than descending the west wing stairs.

It’s simply earlier than she reaches Ivy’s glass conservatory that Ur­sula breaks out right into a panicked run.

Excerpted from The Witches of Moonshyne Manor @ 2022 by Bianca Marais, used with permission by MIRA Books.