Thistle Witch, page 1
part #1 of Anaïs Blue Series
PRAISE FOR THISTLE WITCH
Original, wonderfully written and at turns light and dark. I loved it!
BESTSELLING AUTHOR LARA BLUNTE
I don’t often laugh out loud when reading books, but I did with this one! A fun, modern-day story about a teenage witch trapped in a five-year-old’s body that will appeal to people of all ages.
AUTHOR HELEN PRYKE
Fabulous. I just loved Anais Blue and her adventures! It's the kind of feel-good story (even with some dark moments) that you need every so often. Hoping there will be more about her soon!
REVIEWER M. FINDLAY
THISTLE WITCH
ANAÏS BLUE
BOOK ONE
P J WHITTLESEA
Copyright © P J Whittlesea 2022, 2016
This edition was originally published with the title Complicated Blue: The Extraordinary Adventures of the Good Witch Anaïs Blue Volume One with ISBN 978-94-92523-02-0 (eBook)
P J Whittlesea has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Published by Tyet Books, Amsterdam
Cover Design by Miblart
Edited by Philip Newey and Ella Holgate
CONTENTS
1. Blue
2. Witches
3. A Babe Out of Arms
4. The Nanny
5. Grounded
6. The Witches Handbook
7. A New Name
8. Cooking Up a Spell
9. The Apotheek
10. Hats and Berets
11. Shopping
12. The Dead
13. A Shade with a Purpose
14. The People Puzzle
15. Purple Rain
16. Taking the Dead Home
17. A House Guest
18. Preventing the Tempest
19. A Visitor
20. Changing a Name
21. Consequences
22. A Death in the Family
23. A New Kind of Darkness
24. A Shade with Attitude
25. The Big House
26. A Glimpse
27. Caput Mortuum
28. The High Court
29. The Cleaners
30. Organising a Meeting
31. Fireworks
32. A Voyeur
33. A Man and His Dog
34. Hiding
35. Sleep
36. Whispers
37. The Inquisitor
38. New Year’s Day
39. Outside
40. Cat and Mouse
41. On the Run
42. Broomsticks
43. Transportation
44. On the High Seas
45. The Crossing
46. Land Ho
47. A Saviour in Stilettos
48. Not Alone
49. A Place for the Night
50. Messages
51. A Winter’s Morning
52. Run
53. Car Trouble
54. On Target
55. Captured
56. An Intervention
57. Delivering the Message
58. Farewell
59. A Word
60. A Good Spell
61. Sunrise
Discovering Magic
Other Books in the Series
Also by P J Whittlesea
About the Author
For Kyro
The road to En-dor is easy to tread
For Mother or yearning Wife.
There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead
As they were even in life.
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor.
EXCERPT FROM ‘EN-DOR’, RUDYARD KIPLING, 1865–1936
BLUE
Anaïs Blue hated her name.
Not the first part. She thought the name Anaïs was kind of cool. It had something mysterious about it. It was different. It was foreign. It made her feel important. It was very close to its more common counterpart, the name Anna, but unusual enough to be special. She was secretly proud to carry the name Anaïs and completely content with being its bearer. It was the name Blue that she had a problem with.
Firstly, she hated the colour itself. She didn’t think it was beautiful. She couldn’t stand the sight of it and, worst of all, it was everywhere. When she looked up, it was there; when she looked through glass, everything was tinted with it; when she went to the beach, it was as far as she could see. She hated it because it was inescapable. Blue was too ordinary, too common, and she liked things to be different. She preferred the colour purple.
Anaïs would have painted the sky purple. Which it incidentally was, on occasions. However, occasionally wasn’t enough. It had to be all the time. It had to be permanent. Everything blue should be replaced with purple. She would have truckloads of it dumped into the ocean. She would have skywriters spray the heavens with it. She would have blue barred from the planet. She was even willing to live with an excess of green to get it done. And green was her second-most-hated colour. But if she had to make a choice, she would live in a world that was entirely green rather than in this blue-green one.
Her greatest frustration was that she did have the power to change things.
She was a witch.
Anaïs was capable of the most amazing things. She could change people into animals and vice versa. Or, at least, give them the impression it was happening. She could make huge objects disappear. Once she had taken the Empire State Building and put it smack-bang in the middle of London. People had been surprised, until her caretaker had made her put it back and flush the memories of those who had seen it. But the one thing she wanted above all others eluded her. It was an enormous disappointment to her that she didn’t have the power to change colour.
Her number one goal was to find the incantation or potion with which to do that. She had tried all the avenues open to her. She had done extensive research and experimented with various concoctions. She had attempted to make contact with those who were more experienced. All to no avail.
She had only found one way to do it. Perception of colour could be changed on an individual basis. So, in order to achieve her goal, she would have to personally cast a spell on every living thing on the planet. Casting the spell was not the problem; that was easy. In fact, it was one of the most basic spells. Even the most inexperienced novice could cast the spell to make someone see something in a different colour. Casting it en masse was beyond her capabilities. The best she had achieved was at a Rolling Stones concert. Fifty thousand people was a special achievement. But it was a long way off her ultimate goal. It was also a hollow victory, as most of the audience were already seeing purple anyway.
The problem was that she couldn’t do it physically. Nor could she make it permanent. She couldn’t get rid of one colour and replace it with another. This was especially the case with purple, as it depended entirely on the colour blue for its own existence. So she had shifted her focus to something within her realm of influence. She'd decided to change her surname.
She thought this was doable. It was what had made her dislike the colour blue so excessively in the first place. She really wanted to be Anaïs Purple. She secretly hoped that if she started with her name then perhaps everything else would fall into place.
There was one problem, which she would soon discover: witches have a special relationship with their names. Put simply, it’s complicated.
WITCHES
A word of warning: forget everything you think you know about witches. And know this: not all witches are created equal.
I’m no witch but I know enough to consider myself a bit of an expert. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you any of this anyway. So, you should consider yourself in a fortunate position. Not everyone has the opportunity to be party to this kind of information. I’ll try to keep it short, but we have a lot to cover.
Some of what I have to say will probably seem unimportant or insignificant. I can’t be the judge of that. I feel it necessary to impart all I know. I have no idea how long my memory will last and need to pass it on before it gets lost. Maybe you can do something with what I’m about to tell you. At any rate, I feel the pressure of time and don’t know how long we will have together.
So let’s get started.
Witches provide a connection between the living and the dead. The dead are a notoriously uncommunicative bunch. At the dawn of time it was decided that witches should shoulder the responsibility nobody else wanted. Somebody had to take care of the dead. Straws were drawn and witches ended up with the short one. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.
Some of them are better at it than others. No two witches are alike. Each has their own special skill. Your run-of-the-mill human is no different. We each have our own special gift. The purpose of life is to work out what that is. Unfortunately, some of us never find it. Witches suffer from the same problem. They have one advantage: they know from birth they have a skill. They don’t always know what to do with it, but this gives them a head start over the rest of us. Unless they are very lucky, humans only work this out much later in life. Some of us never find our true calling. It’s not our fault; it’s just the way modern society is structured.
Generally, we humans are brought up to believe that we have to learn something. It doesn’t matter what that is. Anything will do. We have to go out and study, or train, or learn a trade. We’re driven to do this because we need to get a job. Somewhere in our exponential growth as a modern society, we have forgotten we should be doing what we’re good at. Before we even begin we should start by working out what that is. Most of us don’t. We just do whatever drops in our lap. We invest huge amounts of time and energy preoccupying ourselves with something we’re not suited to. We then either stick it out until the end of our days, or fate steps in and we are forced to change. At which point, we usually try the next best thing that comes along. If we’re lucky we chance upon our special skill. If not, we’re doomed to a living purgatory until we work out our particular talent. That’s another reason we have witches. Someone has to help us find our one, true purpose.
At some point in history the powers that be decided witches were not a good idea. They made witches the enemy and convinced us they were bad. This was incredibly stupid. It complicated an already complex situation. It made no sense to cut the only physical thread between the here and the there. As usual, fear got in the way. Fear of the unknown has caused more misunderstandings, invasions, wars and outright slaughter than anything else. If any power on earth reigns supreme, it is fear. It prevents us from uncovering our special skill.
This is why we need witches. We all need them. Unfortunately, we no longer live in a world which accepts them. We have shot ourselves in our own proverbial feet. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Witches are not blessed with a positive image. They are regarded as old and decrepit, feeding on small children. They have a high-pitched cackle and run around turning people into frogs. And then there’s the obsession with pointed hats. We are locked into a medieval viewpoint on witches and wizards. This was when the seed for the modern idea of magic was sown. The practitioners in the Middle Ages were generally clergy in apprenticeship, who dabbled in all things spiritual. Their experimentation with summoning demons and such has left us with a warped view of how witchcraft is practised. This has encouraged all kinds of wildly imaginative takes on the subject of necromancy.
The purveyors of fiction have also not been gracious to the witching community. Put simply, the overall view of witches is not good. They are hated, feared and considered evil. From a witch’s viewpoint this is disappointing—but also a blessing. It makes for a very good cover-up. To practise any form of supernatural endeavour, you require a certain amount of freedom. Having a good disguise or being able to distract people from reality is advantageous. If you can do this on a large scale without putting in too much effort, even better. Bad press is not necessarily negative. In fact, there’s no such thing as bad press. It needs to be manageable but, under certain circumstances, it is preferable.
For the witching population, bad press has been fortuitous. It frees them up for the work they do best without the fear of prying eyes. It is a form of protection.
Before I forget, it might help to take notes. I wish I’d done the same myself when I had the opportunity. Then perhaps I could recall more than I presently do. I have the feeling that just by retelling what I know, the facts will come to light. So please be patient and together we will get to the bottom of this.
Now read carefully and pay attention.
A BABE OUT OF ARMS
Even for a witch, Anaïs Blue was small.
Most witches grow at a more protracted rate than their human counterparts. This is because witches live for a very long time. Living three times the normal human lifespan—or even longer, which is the case with most witches—requires a very slow metabolism. The growth cycle of a witch is more akin to that of a tortoise or a koi. The physical world has its own set of rules, and if you want to live in it you need to abide by these rules. One of the most basic laws of the universe is deterioration. Everything rots. Everything eventually wastes away to nothing. There is no way around this law. Every living thing must abide by it, except perhaps hydra. But nobody really understands them anyway. Apart from them, everything in the physical world will fail the test of time.
Witches are not immortal, they are preternatural. On the outside they age at a barely perceptible rate. Cognitively, socially, and emotionally they mature at a normal human rate.
Anaïs was a pup on the exterior. She was beyond toilet training, certainly, and all that inconvenient bodily-function stuff. She could feed herself if she wanted to. It wasn’t her highest priority and, more often than not, she forgot to eat if she wasn’t reminded. Some people enjoy eating. Finding or making the best-tasting food is akin to the search for the holy grail, and every mealtime is a special occasion. Others eat out of necessity. For them, eating is a chore. If there was some other way of pumping energy-enriching vitality into their body without all the preparation and chewing, that would be fantastic. Anaïs belonged to the latter group. She had better things to do with her time than eating.
Putting her disinterest in food aside, Anaïs's biggest problem was her size. Physically she resembled a five-year-old. This was intensely irritating. She just wanted to grow up. Really grow up. Hiding behind her toddler facade was a young woman. She looked five years old, but she was actually seventeen.
The outside world saw someone who had just learnt the basics. They saw a small child who could walk and talk and do little else of great importance. She had the same problem as most five-year-olds: nobody takes them seriously. Small children usually do themselves a disservice. Nobody wants to hear incessant chatter about how you just discovered the difference between a feather and leaf. There is also an irritating preoccupation with sticks, water and sand.
Anaïs was beyond all this. Sticks and such were no longer playthings. She was more than capable of holding a lucid conversation, which she invariably did with anyone who cared to listen. But nobody expected her to say anything of value. People rarely heard her opinions on world affairs or her comments on the strength of the American dollar. They switched off the moment she opened her mouth.
This was not without its benefits. Living in the body of a five-year-old had a lot of positives. In some ways it was the perfect disguise if you knew how to use your status in the world. As a witch it was an especially favourable position. For Anaïs, it was the most advantageous time of her life.
As adults tend to ignore strange behaviour in young children, she could do practically whatever she wanted. Grown-ups don’t pay close attention to what a child is doing. Generally, if a child is happily occupied it will be left alone. If a child is accompanied by an adult, it will be completely ignored. Adults are willing to let children do anything as long as they know it has been okayed by a parent or guardian.
