A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) (38 page)

It poured into the huge cavity at the centre of his chest, welling up out of the wound, bathing him in a glowing whiteness that flooded out across the sand.

And then … it was gone. And I had nothing.

‘Anna, come away.’ Emmaline pulled gently at my arm, her face worried. ‘It’s nearly dawn …’

‘I can’t leave him,’ I said.

‘Anna …’ Emmaline let her voice trail away. She didn’t need to say the rest. I knew.

I’d been so stupid – so pathetically stupid and hopeful. How could that gaping split in his chest possibly heal?

I lay down on the sand beside him and turned his face towards me. His neck was stiff, as if he was resisting, but I knew it was only rigor mortis setting in.

‘Anna …’ Em sounded really worried now. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yes,’ I said tiredly. ‘Yes, I know. Can you give me a minute?’

‘All right.’ She rubbed beneath her glasses, at the sore place where they pinched her nose, then straightened. ‘Abe!’ she called. ‘I’m going to try to swim out to the boat, like S …’ she faltered. ‘Like we talked about.’

‘All right.’ Abe stood stiffly from where he was slumped against a rock, his head in his hands. ‘Can I do anything?’

‘Hold my glasses,’ Em said, with an attempt at a laugh. Abe didn’t smile back. He just nodded and they began to crunch towards the water, leaving me and Seth alone.

Seth’s eyes stared into mine, grey and calm and full of love, and suddenly I couldn’t bear it any more, I couldn’t bear his unfaltering, unchanging, steadfast gaze. I reached out and put my two fingers on his lids, closing them. Then I let the tears come, running down my face and into the sand. They were silent. I didn’t sob, or shake. Just my eyes – welling, and welling, and welling unstoppably.

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Em’s voice was hard with fear and exhaustion. She was shaking with cold. ‘Anna, be reasonable. How are you going to get him to the boat?’

‘I’m not leaving him,’ I said, for the tenth time.

Abe said nothing. He just sat, crouched against a rock, his head in his hands.

‘Christ!’ Em cried. She clenched her fists, as if biting back something she didn’t want to say, and turned to look across the cliffs again. I knew what she was looking for. Followers. Witches from the mine. We had to get out of here – and fast. But…

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. My voice cracked. ‘I can’t leave him. I can’t.’

‘He’s dead.’ Abe’s voice was hard. He rose to his feet, his face dark with sudden anger. ‘Don’t you get it? He’s dead. It’s hard – God, I know how hard it is. But he’s bloody dead!’

‘I know!’ I screamed at him. The words echoed back at me from the cliffs, mocking me. The tears spilled down my cheeks. I swiped furiously at my eyes. ‘But I can’t leave him. I can’t. Please, Abe – I have to do this. I can’t leave him to rot in this place. Help me get him to the boat.
Please
.’

Abe put a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes wearily. He looked close to dropping. I didn’t know if he could get
himself
to the boat, let alone Seth’s body. But at last he nodded.

‘All right.’

‘Abe …’ Em started and I knew what she was going to say. The impossibility of it – three knackered people, all wounded, with barely a spark of magic between us. How could we wrestle a cold, stiffening body through the icy waves and up the side of the boat? But then she stopped. ‘OK,’ was all she said. ‘OK.’

I don’t know how long it took. A long time. It felt like hours of cold struggle in the buffeting waves, while our fingers slipped and the boat crashed against our shoulders and skulls and knuckles, and Seth’s heavy body slipped from our grip and slithered and refused to leave the water. But at last we were all shivering like drowned rats in the galley, dripping salt water on to the boards as we tried to work out what to do next.

‘Where … ?’ Em looked at Seth’s body and then at Abe.

‘On deck?’ Abe asked. ‘We could lash him down in case of storms.’

‘No,’ I said stubbornly. ‘In the bedroom.’

‘Anna …’ Emmaline bit her lip. She looked close to losing it. ‘I know you don’t want to believe this but he’s going to … to start to smell.’

‘Then Abe has to keep the room cold …’ My voice cracked.

‘I can’t,’ Abe said desperately. ‘For God’s sake, none of us know how to steer this boat – do you know how to sail?’

I shook my head, feeling the stupid, welling tears spill down my cheeks again. Not really. Not without Seth telling me which rope to pull and when to go about.

‘So how are we going to get home,’ Abe spelled it out, ‘unless I force the wind to do it? I can’t do both, I’m barely keeping it together here.’

‘Then I’ll keep the window open. It’s cold.’

‘Where will we all sleep?’ Emmaline said despairingly.

‘There’s another berth under the cockpit. You can have that.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll stay with Seth.’ I wiped my cheeks with my arm.
Stop crying
, I begged my eyes.
Please, stop crying
.

‘With the window open?’ Em exclaimed incredulously. ‘Are you nuts? You’ll freeze!’

‘Will you help me get him into the bedroom?’ I asked fiercely.

They said nothing. Then Abe moved to take Seth’s shoulders. As he lifted, Seth’s heavy lifeless body slipped from his fingers, his head thudding against the floor like a stone. Abe’s face twisted.

‘How could you?’ The words were wrung out of him, full of bitterness. ‘You could have been anything, done anything. How could you throw it away like that?’

‘She didn’t throw it away,’ Emmaline cut in angrily. ‘She
gave
it away. It was her choice, Abe. Hers.’

But Abe just looked at me, his face stiff with grief. Then he shook his head and lifted Seth’s shoulders again. His eyes were full of tears.

Together we manoeuvred the body along the narrow gangway between the bunks. As we passed the table I saw the big brass binnacle compass. Its needle was swinging wide – back to magnetic north, where it belonged.

Somehow that small thing, a needle returning to its true home, undid me. It was proof – proof that Seth was gone and my magic was no more. I felt a great pain in my heart, as if Marcus’ knife had gone deep, as deep as he’d intended.

In a way, Marcus really had cut out my heart, just as he’d promised. I almost wished he had. At least that pain would have stopped, in the end.

I
t was quiet in the little bedroom, and cold. I could hear Emmaline and Abe pacing in the galley, talking in low whispers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying – I didn’t try. I knew what it would be. Worry about the boat. About whether Abe, in his shattered, exhausted state, could control the weather enough to get us home. About me – about whether I’d lost my reason along with everything else.

The cool wind blew through the porthole and I shivered and moved as close to Seth as I possibly could, turning his stiff, cold body so that his arm flopped over my waist and his cheek rested on the pillow.

Like that, you could almost believe he was just asleep. The gaping wound in his chest was pressed closed, the drench of gore hidden in the shadows between us. His eyes were closed and his lips still curved in that half-smile. If I wanted, I could almost pretend …

I shut my eyes, pressed my forehead to his lips.

‘Oh Seth,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut, the hot tears cooling as they traced across my skin. I wanted so much to believe …

‘Anna, don’t cry.’

His voice in my head was so real –
so
real. A whimper of pain came from my lips.

I pressed my eyes shut, so hard that lights and darkness exploded inside my skull, a blaze of pain in the blackness.

‘I love you,’ I whispered. I felt the tears roll across my nose and down my cheek. But there was no answer. There never would be an answer, in spite of all I’d given up.

Abe’s words in the galley came back to me, making me ache inside, thinking of everything that I’d poured into that hole in Seth’s chest. The soaring sensation of flying through the air, with nothing to hold me up but my own willpower. The intoxicating feeling that anything, anything was possible. The chance of being something more, something … remarkable.

But I thought I knew what he’d really meant. Him. I’d given up Abe.

And it was true. But more than that, I’d given up my mother. The chance of ever knowing the truth, of ever seeing her again. Ever since I’d grasped the meaning of the riddle I’d hoped. Hoped that even if my mother
were
dead, it might not be the end. Because with a power that could conquer death …

For a moment it had flared inside me: a tiny spark of possibility, even if I never had the courage to ignite it. And now it was gone. And for what? Seth’s body lay in my arms, still and cold. I’d given it all up – for nothing.

I lay, with my eyes closed, listening to the sound of the waves, feeling the emptiness inside my heart, and Seth’s body, pressed against mine, becoming faintly warm with borrowed heat from my skin.

I couldn’t stay like this for long. He’d have to stay cold, if I were going to get his body back to Winter. But I didn’t want to move.

Up on deck I could hear Emmaline and Abe moving around, wrestling with the sails. I knew I should get up, go and help them.

I opened my eyes.

Seth’s cool, cloud-grey eyes gazed into mine.

‘Seth … ?’ I put up a hand to touch his face, cool beneath my fingers. ‘
Seth?
’

God, how I wanted to believe. The emptiness roared and screamed inside me.

And then he smiled.

My heart gave a great thump – and seemed to stop.

I scrambled to my knees, dragging him upright by his bloodstained shirt, my hands touching his face, running over the naked skin of his shoulders and chest; trying to look for the wound beneath the clotted blood; frantically searching his body for a sign, a sign that he was real.

‘Am I going mad?’ I found I was sobbing. ‘Seth?’

‘You’re not going mad!’ He took my hands in his, trapping my desperate movements. ‘I’m real – stop with the strip-search. Why all the panic?’

‘You
died
!’ I put my forehead against his, my tears running down his face, mingling with the blood and the sweat. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘What?’ His face was blank with shock. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘You
died
,’ I wept. ‘Marcus stabbed you in the heart. You bled out all over the sand. Don’t you remember?’

Seth sat, his face pale.

‘I don’t remember,’ he said blankly. Then he looked down at his chest. The skin was black and streaked with blood from his ribs down to his belly, the dark hair above his belt matted and crusted.

He touched it, his fingers turning sticky and red.

‘Christ, what happened? The last thing I remember …’ He rubbed his hand over his face, leaving a stripe of blood and then stopped. ‘This is so weird. I remember the caves … I remember walking through the forest … I remember …’

He put his hand to his side and then to his chest, to his heart. He stopped, abruptly, frozen.

‘What?’ I was suddenly frightened by his expression. His face blazed.

‘I can’t feel it any more, it’s gone.’

I stared at him, my face blank with shock.

‘It’s
gone.
There’s just – nothing …’

Gone.

It was gone.

I felt suddenly cold – incredibly cold – and the hollow space inside me that my magic had once filled felt like a roaring barren emptiness.

‘What did you do?’ He moved towards me, grabbing me by the shoulders. ‘Anna, where’s your magic?’

It was gone.

I tried to say, ‘You’re free,’ I tried to feel glad. But I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t feel anything apart from the tearing emptiness that seemed to be spreading out from my heart.

Seth caught me, holding me in his arms, his grip frantic and painful.

‘What did you do?’ he cried, his voice fierce. ‘Where’s the jar – your magic? What did you
do
?’

‘I gave it …’ I swallowed. My hands were shaking with tiredness. I felt if Seth relaxed his fierce grip on my shoulders I might fall. ‘I gave it – to you.’

‘No.’ His face was sick, blank. He began to shake his head. ‘No. No! How could you? How?’

‘How? I poured it into …’ I felt sick. ‘Into the hole. In your chest.’

‘That’s not what I meant! I meant, how could you
do
that? How could you sacrifice your magic for me?’

‘It wasn’t a sacrifice.’ My throat felt raw with tears. ‘It was selfish. I didn’t want you to die.’

‘But your magic!’ He put his head in his hands, his face agonized. ‘What have you done? Oh my God, what have you done?’

‘I’m glad,’ I tried to say. I swallowed against the pain. It felt like a thorn in my throat, choking me, making it almost impossible to speak. ‘I’m glad. Glad you’re free.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re free,’ I said again. And then I couldn’t stop it – the tears came, welling up, hot and angry and full of pain.

I knew this was wrong – Seth was alive, nothing else mattered. And hadn’t I always
wanted
to know for sure? Hadn’t I always
wanted
him to be free, if his love wasn’t real?

I’d still hoped. I’d always hoped. Hoped that one of my attempts had broken the spell. Hoped that it was real.

But his words:
I can’t feel it any more
 … 
It’s gone
 … 
There’s just – nothing
 …

I
should
be glad. But I couldn’t feel anything apart from despair, as I realized that it had all been a lie. It wasn’t just the knowledge that Seth didn’t love me. It was the knowledge that
none
of it had been true. The times he’d said he loved me weren’t true. Our first date wasn’t true. The kisses weren’t true. The night we’d spent together in this boat, in this
bed
 …

I couldn’t go any further. I turned away and a huge sob ripped from my throat.

‘Anna …’ He touched my shoulder. ‘Sweetheart …’

‘Don’t call me that!’ I cried. How could he say that? The word he’d always used, back when he thought he loved me, back when I hoped it was true. It felt like a violation – proof that it had all been nothing but words, lies, illusions.