Half Bad (6 page)

“I want them back. Now!” Black Belt Boy advances on me and Joe.

I don’t get up but lift my feet in my scruffy boots, saying, “I haven’t got them.”

Joe sits up and bangs the heels of his old gray trainers on the wall, but doesn’t say anything. He blows a smoke ring and then a beautiful cigar-shaped missile of smoke that sails through the middle of the ring into the boy’s face.

I sit up and say, “We saw you practicing kung fu.”

“Karate.”

“Right . . . karate. You’re a black belt, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“If you can knock me down I’ll get you your shoes back.”

Joe laughs. “Oh yeah, a challenge.”

“But if I knock you down you let whoever’s got them keep them.”

Black Belt Boy doesn’t need to think about this for more than a second. He is a head taller than me and at least ten kilos heavier, and I guess he’s fairly sure I am no black belt. He gets straight into his fighting stance and says, “Come on then.”

I take the cigarette out of my mouth and reach across as if to pass it to Joe, but at the same time I raise my legs to put my feet on the edge of the wall and launch myself at the boy, jumping on to his shoulders with my knees. He is on the floor in a second and I manage to land on my feet.

I keep clear of him. He looks pretty mad.

I realize I have dropped my cigarette and move to pick it up but then, like in some kung fu movie, out of nowhere the karate teacher appears. This guy is short, probably in his fifties and not to be messed with. Unlike the kids in his class, he looks like he’s hit more than a few things that have hit him back.

However, he says to Black Belt Boy, “A deal’s a deal, Tom. He won. And you should have been faster.”

Joe sniggers.

Mr. Karate pulls Black Belt Boy to his feet and steers him away.

Casually as I can, I pick up my cigarette and drag on it.

Mr. Karate calls back to me, “Those things’ll kill you.”

Joe blows out a huge smoke ring, but it’s a strange shape because he can hardly stop grinning.

When the karate pair have disappeared, Joe asks, “You planning on living long enough to die of lung cancer?”

About a week after my expulsion Gran says that she is going to homeschool me. It sounds great. No school. No “conforming,” no “fitting in.”

She says, “It is school, but it’s at home.”

She gets Arran’s old books and pens and papers and we sit at the kitchen table. We work through some exercises, very slowly. I struggle to read the questions and Gran paces around the kitchen while I write out the alphabet for her. After she’s looked at what I’ve written, she puts all Arran’s books away.

In the afternoon we go for a walk in the woods, and we talk about the trees and plants and have a look at some lichen with a magnifying glass.

When Arran gets home Gran asks him to sit with me while I read. Arran is always patient, and I’m never ashamed when I’m with him, but it’s slow and exhausting. Gran stands and watches. Later she says, “Books will never work for you, Nathan. And I certainly haven’t the patience or ability to teach you to read. If you want to learn, Arran will have to try.”

“I’m not bothered.” Though I know Arran will insist I don’t give up.

“Fine by me. But you’ve got lots of other things to learn about.”

* * *

The next day Gran and I go on our first field trip to Wales. It is a two-hour journey by train. It’s cold and windy, though not actually raining. We walk in the hills, and I love seeing where the wild plants and animals live, how they grow, where they are at home.

On the first warm day in April we stay overnight, sleeping outside. I never want to sleep inside again. Gran teaches me about the stars and tells me how the moon’s cycle affects the plants that she collects.

Back at home, Gran teaches me about potions, but compared to her I’m clumsy and don’t have her intuition about how the plants will work together or counteract each other. Still, I learn the basics about how she makes her potions, how her touch and even her breath add magic to them. And I learn to make simple healing lotions for cuts, a paste that draws out poison, and a sleeping draught, but I know that I won’t ever make anything magical.

I have maps of Wales, and I get to know them well. I can read maps easily; they are pictures, and I can see the land in my head. I learn where all the rivers, valleys, and mountains are in relation to each other, the ways across them, the places I can find shelter or water, where I can swim, fish, and trap.

Soon I travel to Wales on my own, often spending two or three days away from home, sleeping outside and living off the land.

The first time I’m away by myself I lie on the ground. Lying on a Welsh mountain is special. I try to work it out: I am happy when I’m with Arran, just being with him, watching his slow and peaceful nature. That’s a special thing. And I’m happy with Annalise, really happy, looking at how beautiful she is and forgetting who I am for the time she’s with me. That’s pretty special too. But lying on a Welsh mountain is different. Better. That’s the real me. The real me and the real mountain, alive and breathing as one.

My twelfth birthday and another assessment comes round. I hate them, but I control myself, make myself put up with one day of the Council, the Councilors, the weighing and measuring, so that I can be free again. At the end of this assessment they question Gran about my education, though it is fairly obvious that they know I have been expelled from school. Gran tells them little and doesn’t mention the field trips. The assessment seems to go okay. My Designation Code is still
Not ascertained
.

A week later another notification arrives. We are sitting round the kitchen table and Gran reads it out.

“Notification of the Resolution of the Council of White Witches of England, Scotland, and Wales.

“In order to ensure the safety of all White Witches it was agreed that any and all movements of Half Codes (W 0.5/B 0.5) away from their recorded place of residence must be approved by the Council before journeys are undertaken. Any Half Code found in a place that has not been approved will have all movements restricted.”

“This is too much. He’s going to end up under house arrest,” Deborah says.

“Do you think they know that Nathan is going to Wales?” Arran looks worried.

“I don’t know. But, yes, we have to assume that they do. I thought they allowed it because . . .” Gran’s voice tails off to silence.

I know the rest of her thoughts. The Council may be using me to lure Marcus in, to tempt him to see me, and if he does appear they will swoop in and kill him . . . kill us. But now they seem to want to restrict me.

Deborah has obviously been thinking of Marcus too. She says, “It might be something to do with the family that Marcus attacked up in the northeast.”

We all look at her.

“You haven’t heard? They were all killed.”

“How do you know this?” Gran asks.

“I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground. We all have to, don’t we? For Nathan’s sake . . . and our own, for that matter.”

“How exactly have you kept your ear to the ground?” Arran asks.

Deborah hesitates but then holds her chin up and says, “I’ve made friends with Niall.”

Arran shakes his head.

“I just hang on his every word and tell him how handsome and clever he is and . . . he tells me things.”

Arran leans toward Deborah to warn her, I think, but before he can say anything she insists, “I’ve done nothing wrong. I talk to him and listen to him. What’s wrong with that?”

“And when he says bad things about Nathan? What do you say then?”

Deborah looks at me. “I never agree.”

“Do you disagree?” Arran is as close to sneering as he can get.

“Arran! I think it’s a great idea,” I interrupt. “The Council uses spies all the time, Gran says. It’s okay to use their own tactics against them. Besides, Deborah’s right, she’s not doing anything wrong.”

“She’s not doing anything right.”

I go to Deborah, kiss her shoulder, and say, “Thank you, Deborah.”

She hugs me.

“So, Deborah, what did you find out?” Gran asks.

Deborah takes a breath. “Niall said that Marcus killed a family last week, a man, woman, and their teenage son. Niall’s father had been called to an emergency Council meeting about it.”

“I can’t believe he told you all this.” Arran is shaking his head again.

“Niall loves bragging about his family. He must have told me ten times that Kieran is training to be a Hunter and coming out on top all the time in the trials they have—unless Jessica is beating him, of course. Apparently Kieran is desperate to be sent on this investigation as his first assignment.”

“Who were the family?” Gran asks.

“Niall said they were called Grey. She was a Hunter and he did something for the Council. Do you know them?”

Gran says, “I’ve heard the name.”

“Niall said that the Greys were custodians of something called the Fairborn, and the Fairborn was what Marcus was after. I don’t know what the Fairborn is; I’m not even sure Niall knows. When I asked him, I think he realized that he’d said too much, and he’s hardly said a word to me since.”

I don’t say anything. For whatever reason, my father has just killed three more people, including a boy only a few years older than me. Was this a misunderstanding? He was trying to explain to them that he wasn’t really evil, he didn’t want to hurt them . . . He just wanted the Fairborn. Maybe he needed the Fairborn, whatever it is, but they wouldn’t give it to him, they wouldn’t listen . . . They attacked him and he was defending himself and . . .

Gran says, “I’ll write to the Council and request permission for you to travel to Wales.”

“What?” I’d not really been paying attention.

“The notification says you’ll need approval to travel. I’ll write to the Council and get permission.”

“No. I don’t want them to know where I go. I don’t want their permission.”

“You intend to go without me informing them?”

“Please, Gran. Just ask for permission for me to go to the local woods and the shops and stuff like that. Stuff that I don’t really care about.”

“But Nathan, it says”—Gran looks at the parchment— “‘Any Half Code found in a place that has not been approved will have all movements restricted.’”

“I know what it says. And I know what I want to do.”

“You’re twelve, Nathan. You don’t understand that they—”

“Gran, I understand. I understand it all.”

* * *

Later that night, when I am getting undressed, Arran has a go at talking to me. I guess Gran has asked him to try. He says I should “rethink,” “perhaps ask permission to go to one place in Wales,” and some other stuff like that. Adult stuff. Gran’s stuff.

I just say, “Can I have permission to go to the bathroom, please?”

He doesn’t say anything, so I throw my jeans on the floor, get on my knees, and say, “Can I have permission to go to the bathroom? Please?”

He doesn’t say anything but drops to his knees with me and hugs me. We stay like that. Him hugging me and me still stiff with anger at him, wanting to hurt him too.

After a long time I hug him back, just a little.

The Council grants me permission to go to places within a few miles of our home, including not much more than some local shops and our woods. A year goes by and then another. My thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays are the only blots on the landscape, but I get through the assessments and still have the
Not ascertained
Designation Code. Gran continues to teach me about potions and plants. And I continue to go to Wales on my own. I learn how to survive outdoors in the winter, how to read the weather, and how to cope with the rain. I never stay away from home for more than three days, and I am always careful to move around discreetly. I leave and return by different routes, always on the lookout for potential spies sent to watch me.

My thoughts are often of my father, but my plans to join him remain vague. My thoughts are also more and more of Annalise. I have never stopped thinking of her, her hair, her skin, and her smile, but after my fourteenth birthday these thoughts become more persistent. I want to look at her again for real, and my plans to see her rapidly become less vague.

I’m not stupid enough to go near her house or school, but between them is Edge Hill, the place where we had said we would meet one day.

I go there.

The hill is shaped like an upturned bowl, flat on top with steep sides and a path round the base. On its south side is an outcrop, from the top of which is a view out across the plain, a green expanse of farmland broken up by a network of hedge-lined country roads and spotted with a few houses. The hill is wooded, and the trees are straight and tall and widely spaced. The outcrop is coarse sandstone cut by deep horizontal and vertical clefts. At the cliff’s base is a flat patch of bare earth. It is brick-red and sandy and dusts my shoes as I walk across it.

Climbing the outcrop is simple, as the handholds and footholds are large and open. When I sit at the top on a flat slab of the sandstone I can’t see the path at the bottom for the slope of the hill but I can hear the voices of occasional dog-walkers and the shouts and calls of a few children making their slow way home after school. If anyone other than Annalise were to approach the outcrop, I’d have plenty of time to disappear up and over the hill.

I wait every school day on the outcrop. I once think that I hear her voice talking to one of her brothers, so I climb over the hill and make my way home.

It’s late autumn when the shine of Annalise’s blonde hair appears over the curve of the slope.

I concentrate on making my legs swing casually over the edge of the outcrop.

Annalise doesn’t look up until she is over the steepest part of the hill. She slows when she sees me and looks around but carries on walking until she is almost directly below me. She looks up, smiles, and blushes.

I have waited so long to see her and I know what I want to say, but everything that I have thought of opening with seems wrong. I realize my legs have stopped swinging, and I concentrate on them again. My breathing has gone funny too.

Annalise climbs up the rock face. She does even this elegantly and in a few seconds is sitting next to me, swinging her legs in unison with mine.

After a minute I manage to speak. “You’ll have to inform the Council that you’ve had contact with me.”

Her legs stop swinging.

I remind her, “According to the Resolution of the Council of White Witches any contact between Half Codes and White Whets is to be reported to the Council by all concerned.”

Annalise’s legs start to swing again. “I haven’t had contact.”

I can now feel each thud of my heart; each beat seems like it is going to break open my chest.

“Besides I have a terrible memory. My mum’s always on at me about forgetting things. I’ll try to remember to tell her about seeing you but I’ve got a feeling it’ll slip my mind.”

“I’m glad I’m forgettable,” I mumble as I watch her school shoes, covered in red dust, swing into and out of view.

“I’ve never forgotten you. I remember all the drawings you did, all the times you looked at me across the classroom.”

I almost fall off the escarpment.
All the times?

“How many times did I look across the classroom then?”

“Twice on the first day.”

“Twice?” I know it was once. I can feel her eyes on me, but I continue to watch her shoes.

“You looked so . . . miserable.”

Great.

“And sort of in pain.”

I blurt out a laugh. “Yeah well, that’s probably fairly accurate.” It all seems like a long time ago.

“Ten times on the second day,” she says.

It was once, and now I know she is teasing me.

“But only twice on the third day, which was the day I sat next to you in art and even then you didn’t look at me but kept on looking at that sparrow.”

“It was a blackbird, and I was drawing it.”

“After that I thought we’d got over your shyness, but you still haven’t looked at me now.” She stops swinging her feet and holds them up, knocks her shoes together and lets them fall.

“I’m not shy, and I have looked at you.”

“This bit of me, I mean.”

I can tell she is pointing at her face, but I am still staring at the space where her feet have been swinging. I turn and swallow. She is as beautiful as ever. White chocolate hair and clear honey skin, slightly tanned and slightly flushed. She isn’t smiling, though.

“Do you know how amazing your eyes are?” she asks.

No.

She nudges me with her shoulder. “Don’t be so glum when I’m saying nice things to you.”

She leans closer, peering into my eyes and I look into hers, watching the silver glints tumble in the blue, some moving fast, some slow, some looking as if they’re moving toward me.

Annalise blinks and leans back, saying, “Maybe not so shy.” She pushes off the escarpment and lands softly on the ground below. It’s a long drop.

I follow her down, and as I land she runs off like a gazelle and we chase around the hillside for too short a time before she says she has to go.

Alone, I lie back on the slab of sandstone and relive it all. And I try to work out what to say to her the next time. A compliment, like she has given me about my eyes: “Your eyes are like the sky in the morning,” “Your skin looks like velvet,” “I love the sunshine on your hair.” They all sound so pathetic, and I know that I could never say them.

* * *

We meet a week later, and it’s Annalise’s turn to look glum and stare at her shoes.

I guess the problem. “Do they say lots of bad things about me?”

She doesn’t answer straightaway, possibly counting all the things.

“They say you’re a Black Witch.”

“I’d be killed if that was true.”

“Well, they say that you are more like your father than your mother.”

And that’s when it hits me how dangerous this is. “You should go. You shouldn’t see me.”

She catches me out, turning to look me straight in the eyes, saying, “I don’t care what they say. I don’t even care about your father. I care about you.”

I don’t know what to say. What can you say to that? But I do what I have wanted to do forever, and take her hand and kiss it.

* * *

From then on we meet every week and sit on the outcrop and talk. I tell her about my life, but only in part, the bits about Gran, Arran, and Deborah. I never tell her about Wales and the trips I make there, even though I want to. But I’m afraid. And I hate that. Hate that I can’t be honest because of my sick, horrible fear that the less she knows, the safer it will be for her.

She tells me about her life. Her father and brothers sound like male versions of Jessica, while her mother is an unusually powerless White Witch. Annalise’s life sounds miserable, and it makes my home life seem free and relaxed. She has never heard of assessments and doesn’t believe me until I describe the blond Council member who sits on the left of the Council leader. Annalise says that sounds like Soul O’Brien, her uncle.

I ask her one question that has always intrigued me. How many Half Codes are there? She doesn’t know but will try to find out from her father, who works for the Council.

The following week she says his answer was, “Just the one.”

* * *

Another time she asks, “Has Deborah found her Gift yet?”

“No. She’s struggling. She’s too logical.”

“Niall is frustrated too. He’s desperate to be able to become invisible, like Kieran and my uncle, but I don’t think it’s him at all. He didn’t want Mum to perform the Giving ceremony; he said he’d have more chance of getting invisibility from Dad. But I don’t think it would make any difference. Kieran drank Mum’s blood, not Dad’s. I think the Gift relates to the person: it’s in you from birth and the magic of the Giving allows it to come out. Niall’s just too open to have invisibility.”

“Yes, I think it works like that too. Jessica can disguise herself. She’s always been a natural at lying. Her Gift suits her down to the ground. But she drank Gran’s blood and there’s no one on Gran’s side of the family with that Gift.”

“I think I’ll have potions.”

“My Gran has potions. She’s clever but instinctive as well. I think that’s why she’s good with them. You’re like her. She has a strong Gift.”

“I don’t think my Gift will be very strong. I think I’ll be like my mum.”

Annalise is not often wrong, but she’s way off the mark with this. I pick her hand up and kiss it. “No, you’ll have a strong Gift.”

Annalise blushes a little. “I wonder about you. Sometimes you seem wild and mad and I think you’ll have the same Gift as your father. But then other times you’re so gentle and I’m not so sure . . . maybe you’ll be like your mother. It won’t be potions, though.”

* * *

We continue to meet once a week during the school term through winter, spring, and early summer. We are careful to meet only for a short time, and we vary the days. We don’t meet in the holidays.

I’m stroking Annalise’s hair, watching how it falls from my fingers. And she studies the palm of my hand and smoothes her fingertips across my skin. She says she can tell my fortune by reading the lines.

She says, “You will be a powerful witch.”

“Yeah? How powerful?”

“Exceptional.” She smoothes my hand again. “Yes, it’s quite clear. I can see it in this line here. You will have an unusual Gift. Few have it. You will be able to turn into animals.”

“Sounds good.” And I’m holding her hair back and watching it fall.

“Only insects, though.”

“Insects?” I let go of her hair.

“You will only be able to become insects. You will make an especially good dung beetle.”

I snicker.

She carries on smoothing out my palm. “You will fall deeply in love with someone.”

“Human or dung beetle?”

“Human. And that person will love you forever, even when you’re a dung beetle.”

“And what’s this person like?”

“That I can’t see . . . there’s a patch of mud on that bit.”

And I stroke her cheek with the back of my fingers. She stays still, letting me touch her. My fingers move over her cheeks and round her mouth, over her chin and down her neck and then back up again to her cheek up to her forehead, slowly down the center of her nose over the tip and down to her lips, where my finger stays. And she kisses it once. And she kisses it again. And I reach forward and only dare take my finger away when my lips replace it.

And we are pressed together, my lips, my arms, chest, hips, my body desperate to get closer to her.

I can’t bear to take my mouth from her skin.

It feels like just a few minutes but it is getting late, getting dark, when we finally manage to part.

As we say good-bye she takes my hand and kisses the side of my index finger, her lips and tongue and teeth on my skin.

* * *

We have arranged to meet in a week’s time. The next day seems to take forever to pass. The day after that is worse. I don’t know what to do with myself; all I can do is wait. I am physically aching to see her. My guts are in turmoil.

Finally, the day of our meeting crawls into the light and then takes a year to drag itself to the afternoon.

I wait on the sandstone slab, lying on my back, looking at the sky and listening for Annalise’s footsteps. I am straining at each sound, and when I hear her scrambling up the slope I roll on to my side and sit up. Her blonde head appears over the curve of the hill and I spring down from the outcrop, landing in a crouch with bent legs, the fingertips of my left hand on the ground and my right hand out to the side, showing off a little. I straighten up and step forward.

But something is badly wrong.

Annalise’s face is distorted . . . terrified.

I hesitate. Do I go to her? Do I run? What?

I look around.

It has to be her brothers, but I can’t see them or hear them. It can’t be the Council . . . can it?

I step forward. And then the figure of a man appears, standing next to Annalise. He has been there all the time, his hand on Annalise’s shoulder, steering her up the slope and holding her still. But he had been invisible.

Kieran.

Annalise’s eldest brother is tall like the rest of the family, but he has huge shoulders, and rather than white hair his is red-blond, thinner and cut close to his scalp. His eyes don’t leave me as he bends forward slightly and says something I can’t hear in Annalise’s ear.