A Witch In Winter (12 page)

I felt uncomfortable. This was too hokey, like a cheap pier-end fortuneteller without the scarf and bangles. But no one else seemed to find the action strange at all. I looked around the group.

‘So are you all … ?’ I stopped, not sure how to put it. They understood. Simon just nodded, but Abe closed his hand into a fist, then blew into his fingers as they unfurled. As he did, a handful of snow gusted out from between his fingers. The snowflakes fluttered towards me on his breath and one perfect crystal landed on the smooth table top. Before I could blink it had melted.

A shiver ran through me. It was the first piece of magic – real magic – that I had seen. The first thing that couldn’t be dismissed as freaky coincidence, bad luck, or just plain weird. As Abe wiped his hand on his jeans and grinned, I knew; I’d crossed some invisible line. There was no going back now.

‘Show-off!’ Emmaline muttered under her breath.

‘It’s generally,’ Sienna said sternly, ‘considered unethical to expend power unnecessarily or affect the world more than we need to.’ She raised her eyebrows reprovingly and Abe touched his forelock in a mockingly deferential way.

‘As always, I’m happy to stand corrected by my dear sister-in-law. So, are we going to jabber all night at the poor girl, or actually let her see some magic?’

‘More than that,’ Maya said, with a touch of grimness to her voice. ‘She’s going to
do
some magic. If I’m right about Anna then she’ll be doing most of the work.’

While Maya, Sienna, Simon and Abe cleared the decks for action, I took Emmaline aside.

‘Emmaline, what do they expect of me? I Specght don’t know what to do!’

‘Don’t worry.’ Her habitually acidic tone was softened slightly. ‘Ma knows that. She’ll lead you. You just have to trust her.’

‘Emmaline,’ Maya called from the other side of the room, ‘could you open the windows?’

Emmaline threw them wide and Maya looked at each of the others in turn.

‘Well, are we ready?’

They nodded and moved to form a circle in the centre of the room. I nodded myself, but couldn’t stop my doubts creeping into my face.

‘Anna.’ Maya drew me into the circle beside her and looked at me, her dark eyes liquid and unreadable. ‘I can’t really explain how this will work so will you trust me and lend me your strength when I ask?’

I had no idea what she meant but I nodded again. I did trust Maya. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I did.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and closed her eyes. The others followed suit – so I shut mine too.

For what seemed like a long time there was nothing. I felt like a fool standing there in Maya’s kitchen with my hands dangling by my side, the clock ticking loudly over the cooker. I still couldn’t shake a suspicion that I’d open my eyes and find them all holding their sides, cackling with laughter, unable to believe the gullibility of the girl from London. Certainly two weeks ago I’d have snorted, shouldered my rucksack and left the room after the first ten seconds.

But I’d seen too much to be completely sceptical. So I stood, shifting from one foot to the other and feeling more than faintly ridiculous, and waited, and waited.

After a while I became aware of a pressure, like a stress headache, a pushing, grinding sort of feeling at the base of my neck, in my temples and jaw. I put a hand up to massage the feeling and Maya took my other. She spoke very quietly. ‘Anna, relax and let me in.’

It felt so, so wrong to open up my mind to a complete stranger, lower all my defences. But I closed my eyes tighter, consciously forcing the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders to relax. Suddenly there was a humming, a thrumming, a whirling buzz – and the magic flooded in.

I staggered with the force of it; it was like a river rushing through my mind, a whirlpool threatening to sweep me into its vortex. A feeling of huge power welled inside me – I felt the presence of the others, glowing with their own light: Sienna’s golden aura, Emmaline’s garnet red, Abe’s dark brilliance, like onyx, each pulling me into the current of their will. For a minute I hung back, unsure. Then I let myself sweep into the flood, seeing how the others shaped and channelled it, forcing it into the paths of their choosing.

The shining, swelling torrent streamed out throug Sed /p>

The magic ebbed and surged around us with terrifying, exhilarating force while Maya worked, knit, renewed, tirelessly, patiently. I tried to add my will to hers, feeling the power flowing out of me like blood draining from my arteries and flowing into the dark shredded wound.

And incredibly it was working; the threads were shining brighter and brighter, the black gash was closing, knitting. An invisible spider was repairing the ruptured web, coaxing it back into a semblance of its former beauty. It would never be the same, even I could see that. The scar would always be there. But Maya was closing the wound, and I could feel her using my strength to do it, the strangest sense of something unravelling out of me.

I don’t know how long we stood, but suddenly the pulling, tugging ceased with a gust of release. I staggered backwards on shuddery legs, my eyes opening to a dark kitchen full of twilight shades. In front of me, Emmaline was rubbing her eyes dazedly. She sank to her knees and Abe bent over, his hands on his thighs, like a runner catching his breath after a fierce race. Only Maya was still standing straight, but her face was worn and drained. Still, she was smiling.

‘Well done,’ she said, the husky thread of her voice loud in the silent room. ‘Well done, everyone. Now, I think we deserve something to eat.’

Two hours later, we’d stuffed ourselves with jacket potatoes running with butter, slatherings of cream cheese and handfuls of peppery rocket snatched from the dusky garden. The kitchen was full of candlelight, raucous laughter, and banter. I lay with my head on the sofa arm, enjoying the flow of conversation without trying to keep up. I was exhausted, my eyelids so heavy I felt like sleeping where I sat.

‘You look shattered, Anna,’ Maya said sympathetically as she took my plate. ‘I keep forgetting that this is all new to you.’

‘Did I – did we do OK?’ I asked, stifling a yawn.

‘Yes, you did more than OK.’

‘But,’ I felt like a broken record, but I had to know, ‘what about Seth?’

They all looked at each other around the table, exchanging glances I couldn’t read. Maya took my hand.

‘I’m sorry, Anna, we don’t know what’s going on there. We can’t find out what’s still binding Seth. Simon has one theory although I’m not convinced …’ She trailed off and Simon took over.

‘You obviously have tremendous latent power, Anna, and Sr, t="0"as we were saying earlier, magic is largely a matter of exerting will, not of formal spells. It’s possible that you’ve removed the actual enchantment but that your subconscious will is still having an effect on Seth.’

‘You mean …’ My tired mind struggled to disentangle this. ‘I don’t really
want
him to go back to normal?’

‘Effectively, yes. It’s just a theory,’ he hurried on, as he saw me looking affronted. ‘I’m not saying you’re doing this deliberately. Just that if there is a small part of your mind that still wants his – his regard, then that might be enough to keep him bound.’

‘So what can I do?’

‘Hmm. Not a lot really. Well, there is one thing I can think of – but it’s not really a good idea.’

‘I don’t care!’ I said desperately. ‘I’ll do
anything
to release him. Tell me, please.’

‘Well … most people have quite effective inner protection against magical influence. It’s usually quite hard to persuade them to act utterly against their inclination. So my idea was kind of based on that – but it’s not actually practical. It’s much too dangerous.’

‘God, you’re coyer than a bride on her wedding night,’ Abe said. ‘Just spit it out, whatever it is. You can’t tease Anna with a solution and then get all mincy.’

‘Tell him,’ Simon said bluntly. ‘Tell Seth what you did.’

‘What?’ Maya dropped the plate she was holding with a crash. ‘That’s a dreadful idea! It’s far,
far
too dangerous. There’s a massive risk of antagonizing the Ealdwitan. And it might not work anyway.’

‘I agree!’ Emmaline said hotly. ‘It’s all very well for you, Simon, but we have to live here. The Ealdwitan would go
apeshit
if they found out. And what if word leaked back to the Malleus?’

‘Well, obviously Anna wouldn’t say anything about anyone else. The main risk would be to her. But I agree it’s a pretty terrible idea – I was only theorizing really.’

‘Simon.’ For the first time since I’d seen her Maya looked truly pissed off. ‘I suggest you think about your theories a bit more before you air them in future.’ She turned to me and spoke seriously. ‘Anna, listen to me, I
absolutely
veto this, do you understand? You’re not to do this – the Ealdwitan would be furious. I’m sorry poor Seth is still entranced but on the scale of things it’s not a big deal – you’ve undoubtedly removed the formal spell or we would have been able to see it, and any residual effect will wear off in time. Just ignore him. It will sort itself eventually – you’ll all be off to uni in a year or two anyway.’

They argued back and forth but I heard little of the debate after that. The phrase ‘a year or two’ was ringing in my ears. A
year
o S
anger two? How could I condemn Seth to a year or more of enslavement?

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
 year or two.
A year or two?

I was still obsessing over this idea in History the next day. It seemed so wrong that, after the amazing events of last night, life could still go on in the same mundane way, that school still had to be attended, homework completed. But the sight of Emmaline stumping down the hill on her way to lessons brought me back to reality. Witch or no witch, Emmaline still apparently needed A-levels, so presumably I did too.

I didn’t sit near Seth in History – I had a desk over the far side of the classroom – but he watched me across the room as Mr Brereton ticked off the register, his eyes worried as he took in my scarred forehead and battered face. My heart twisted and I had to look away. I hadn’t seen him since the accident and the sight of his concerned face brought the whole hideous mess rushing back. It was all very well for Maya to say ignore him. How could I ignore him when I’d forcibly shackled his heart to mine?

I was so lost in my thoughts that I barely heard the lesson, and jumped when Mr Brereton waved a basket full of scraps of paper under my nose.

‘Anna Winterson, have you heard a word I’ve been saying?’

‘Er, yes. No. I – I’m sorry, I was a bit distracted.’

The class snickered and Mr Brereton sighed with exaggerated patience.

‘I was inviting you to pick a collaborator for the coming class project. And, as I have
already explained
, this time it will be randomly assigned by lot due to
some
people’s—’ He stared sternly round the class. ‘
Some
people’s misapprehension that a collaboration apparently means one person’s work adorned with two people’s names.’

‘Oh. Thank you.’ I reached forward and took a slip.

‘Name please?’ Mr Brereton said crisply.

I unfolded the slip.

‘Seth Waters,’ I read aloud.

Across the classroom I saw Seth’s worried face break into a smile.

Crap.

‘So it’s got to be a five-thousand word, collaborative project on an aspect of local history.’ Seth bounded up beside me as we joined the flood of others making their way outside for first break. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Not really,’ I said dully. Oh arse. How cou Vnvitinld I blank Seth if we were forced to do a project together?

I’d spent the rest of the lesson racing through increasingly impractical ideas for getting out of the project. My first thought had been to simply go to Mr Brereton and be reassigned, but what reason could I give? It seemed unlikely he would agree to my rather pathetic plea to swap because, er, well, just because really.

I don’t know what was going across my face, but Seth suddenly stopped, pulling me into an alcove out of the flow of students.

‘Look, Anna, I can see you’re pissed at being paired with me—’

‘I’m not pissed!’ I interrupted wretchedly. ‘Seth, please, that’s not it at all, truly – it’s just …’

For a minute I thought he was going to just stand there, watching me tie myself into knots, but then he closed his eyes wearily and put up a hand to rub his temple.

‘Hey, it’s fine. I was out of line – I know that. And I’m sorry, I really am. But I don’t know what else to say – we’ve got to do this project together somehow. How about you do your best to forget last week, and I do my best not to sexually harass you again. Deal?’

He held his strong, brown hand out towards me.

I wanted to put my head in my hands. I wanted to cry. I wanted to grab him and scream, ‘You weren’t sexually harassing me you idiot – I
wanted
you to kiss me –
I’m
the one who should be grovelling here.’