Half Wild (11 page)

“I’m not fighting it. I can’t fight it. It takes over.”

“Then welcome it and learn from it. Don’t judge it. It must be very confusing for the poor animal. You want it because it’s like your father’s Gift, but you don’t want it for the same reason. You like the power. You hate the power. I feel sorry for the poor beast inside.”

“Say that when you’re faced with the beast outside.”

“All you do is tell me the bad stuff, the things you hate. Tell me the good bits.”

“There are no good bits.”

“Liar! I’m a witch, Nathan. I know what it’s like to have a Gift.”

I close my eyes and remember. I know I have to be honest with Gabriel, so I say, “It feels good. It feels good when the stuff, the animal adrenaline, whatever it is, surges through me. I’m afraid of it but still it feels amazing and powerful. And . . . all my senses are super alert, super aware. And I’m sort of watching him, the other me, and he’s . . . absorbed. That’s what it is to be him: to be totally absorbed in what he does, not thinking but being purely physical.”

I look over to Gabriel. “Do you think that’s what it is to be an animal?”

“I don’t know. That’s why you have this Gift, though, Nathan. Not because you’re an animal, not because you’ve no morals, but because you need to feel it. That’s how you are, how you exist best—by feeling things.”

“Oh.”

“You’re a true witch, Nathan. Don’t fight the animal. Experience him. That’s what he’s for.” He pauses and then says, “Can I ask—what animal do you become?”

I don’t even know that. I remember the fox’s eyes staring into mine last night and I tell him, “A hungry one.”

It’s the day of the new moon. Van says that when we’re ready Gabriel and I must drink the potion she provides before cutting the palms of our hands, which she will then bind together. We will stay like that until we find our way out of the labyrinth of Gabriel’s mind. There’s a catch, of course. “You both have to prepare your bodies. Gabriel, you must exercise gently and eat well. Nathan, you must spend the night before the ritual inside.”

“What?” I say. “Why?”

“It will heighten your senses and make the trance you enter all the more real. That’s why we waited until the new moon, so you could stay inside for the full night.”

“I don’t see why a shorter time with the fuller moon wouldn’t work then?” I say.

“The full moon will drive you mad, and Gabriel needs you conscious and reasonably sane. The new moon will be unpleasant, extremely unpleasant, but you’ll survive and be stronger at the end of it.” She opens her cigarette case and picks one out. “Of course I could be completely wrong; there’s always a first time. However, I believe that this is right for you. It’s an instinct. It’s my Gift, Nathan, and I trust it.”

I’m not sure about the whole idea but I have no other option. The last time I was inside overnight I was sixteen. I hadn’t received my Gift and it was bad. I don’t often think about it, and whenever I have, I’ve not been able to work it out. As much as part of my brain was saying, “This is stupid, you’re just inside, you’re fine,” my whole body was in agony and soon all I could think about were the noises and the fear and my screaming to get out.

I spend the day in the forest on my own, resting. The animal inside me seems to be resting too. I’ve not felt him stir since I spoke with Gabriel. I lie on the ground and watch the sky turn from pale blue in the morning to deep blue at midday and then briefly in the evening to violet before going gray. I’m hungry and thirsty; my stomach grumbles, which feels ridiculous given what I’ve got to go through. I’m sure I can do it. I want to, for Gabriel, to show him that I know he’s making a sacrifice for me and I’ll do what I can for him. It’s only one night inside.

It’s getting dark as I walk up to the main door of the castle. Van opens it immediately. She must have seen me coming across the lawn. I wonder if she’ll say anything but she doesn’t; she just leads the way through the entrance hall, down the corridor, wooden floors dark and echoing, to a door at the end. I follow her through the door and that’s when I stop.

There are stone steps down.

“The cellar,” Van says.

I wonder about the animal in me but he doesn’t stir. Van leads the way down into an empty room with a stone floor and brick walls and one faint light in the ceiling. It’s more cell than cellar.

“Nesbitt will be at the top of the stairs. The door will be locked but if it’s too hard for you he’ll let you out. He’ll check on you every hour.”

I don’t say anything. Already the room feels oppressive. I sit on the cold floor and watch Van climb the steps. Then the door shuts and I hear a key turn in the lock.

I know the animal isn’t going to appear. It’s too harsh here. He’s hiding. I’ve only been inside for a minute, two at most, and I feel sick and dizzy but that’s not so bad and this is for Gabriel. And for Annalise. I get up and walk to the far wall and back, and I do it again, but already that isn’t good. The room feels like it’s tipping up so I sit back down, and the walls are falling in on me. But I know they’re not. They are not! They’re walls and they’re upright. I’m OK. I’m feeling sick. And I have a stinking headache. It isn’t pleasant but I’m OK. I sit still and concentrate on my breathing and not being sick.

I hear the door open above me. An hour has gone by already.

“You OK?” Nesbitt shouts.

“Yeah. Fine,” I shout back, making my voice sound stronger than I feel.

The door shuts.

I sit there another minute or two and tell myself I’m fine, I’m fine, and then I retch and I’m sick on the floor and my stomach is in a knot and all the muscles in my body cramp up. I feel the walls coming down on me but I know, absolutely know, they can’t be. Walls don’t do that. They don’t. I’m hot and sweat blossoms out of me and I retch again and again and my stomach is agony and nothing more comes out when I retch but my stomach keeps doing it and I’m curled up in a tight ball.

Then Nesbitt is standing over me. Another hour must have gone by. And I look for him again but he’s gone.

I’m shivering now, my body cold. And I’m retching again. There’s not much to come up but my stomach seems to be determined to turn itself inside out. I’m still lying curled up at the bottom of the steps. And that’s where I stay. I can’t move. Can’t stand. I can’t even crawl. But I can cope with it. I can do it.

That’s when the scraping noise starts. It’s quiet at first but builds up until it fills my head and then suddenly stops. Silence. And I wait, listening for it; I know it’ll start again. While it’s quiet I tell myself it’s not real: I’m in a cellar; there’s nothing here to make a noise.
It’s not real.
But then my head is filled with a scraping sound like nails down a blackboard and I wedge my head against the steps and shout. Shouting helps. And cursing. If I shout loud enough I can drown out the scraping noise. Then it goes silent again. And I can breathe and I wait for the scraping and it starts again . . .

Nesbitt is here. He’s patting my shoulder and I look up at him and then he’s not there and I’m not sure if he ever was. The scraping has stopped. It’s quiet and all I can see is the floor, which is changing from gray stone to red. Dark red. And everywhere I look I see red. Red all around me so that I feel it’s choking me. And I’m screaming at the red and choking and clawing at my throat to breathe.

Then I feel hands round me. Holding my arms down. And Gabriel’s voice, quiet in my ear, telling me, “It’s nearly over. Nearly over.”

And my cramps are easing and the banging and scraping have gone. And my stomach retches one last time and the red veil lifts and I see the stone floor and Gabriel’s shoulder. And I want to cry with relief, with joy at the freedom, at being able to see again. I say, “It’s dawn.”

Gabriel moves off me and helps me to sit up.

“If that’s the gradual, less intense method . . .” And I’m going to make a joke but I can’t because I do feel different. I feel intensely aware of everything. Every movement of my body. The dampness of the air. The floor, the grains of loose dirt on my fingertips. And
colors,
even in this poor light—the grays of the room and the black and brown of Gabriel’s hair. I look into his eyes and see that they’re fain as they’ve always been but I see something else too. “I can see something in your eyes. I’ve never noticed it before. Hardly there. Twists of gold but far back and distant. Things witches have.”

Gabriel smiles. “Let’s go outside.”

He helps me up and as soon as I step outside I heal and the intensity is beyond anything I’ve felt before. The air feels and tastes so incredible that I’m almost drunk on breathing. I sit on the grass and the animal in me flares up and fills me with adrenaline again but nothing more, just the joy of being free.

Van and Nesbitt approach. Van puts a tray on the ground between Gabriel and me. On it is a long strip of wide, fine leather; a bowl containing the potion; two small cups made of stone; and one other thing—a wooden stake, about thirty centimeters long, which tapers at both ends to sharp points and widens to be as thick as a pencil in the middle.

I don’t know what the stake is for. Van hasn’t mentioned this. I thought we were going to cut our palms and hold the cuts together but I see no knife and I have a bad feeling that this is where the stake comes in.

Van picks up the potion and dribbles it into the two stone cups. She holds them out to us. “Drink.”

We watch each other and together lift the cups and drink. It tastes disgusting and gritty, like drinking mud.

I move my arm to put the cup down and already the tray looks wrong, like it’s too far away and my hand can’t reach it. Nesbitt takes the cup from me.

Van has lifted the wooden spike. She’s holding it lightly between us. “Nathan, hold the palm of your right hand against the spike. Gabriel, your left hand. Focus on the stake.” And I do as she asks and that helps: it’s the only thing that isn’t moving in and out of focus. Then Van says, “Push your hands together.”

And I smile because it seems like a weirdly good idea and I push and see the wooden spike come through the back of my hand. I wait for pain but all I feel is warmth and elation at seeing the blood drip off the pointed end. My hand feels hot in its center and then Gabriel’s hand grasps mine, our fingers overlapping, blood running down our wrists.

Van binds our two hands together with the leather strip. She says, “Don’t heal. I will twist the stake and rethread it at dusk and dawn until Gabriel is back with us.”

I feel like I’m floating out of my body. I watch Gabriel and I lower our arms so that our staked hands rest between us on the ground. The tray has gone.

I have an urge to touch the stake, so I stretch my left hand out to it. My fingertips touch the end that appears out of Gabriel’s hand. I wrap my fingers round it and as I do I feel my body sinking and in an instant I’m panicking. Mud rises up from the ground, bubbling around me, and there is no ground and all I see is mud and all I feel is Gabriel’s hand in my right hand.

I wake, drowsy, fuggy, my body aching. I blink my eyes open. It’s daytime, light and sunny, and the sky above me is a perfect deep blue. I look around and recognize the roof terrace of the apartment in Geneva. Gabriel is with me, holding my hand just like he did when we were about to go through the cut to meet Mercury. Gabriel is on his haunches and he’s looking away, his hair hanging forward, sunglasses on. His left hand is clasping my right.

And somehow I know I have to find the cut, that this is the way out. The way to find Gabriel’s real self. I’m crouched in the corner of the terrace, my back to the sloping tiled roof. The cut is above the drainpipe. I’ve seen Gabriel use it, been with him when he slid his hand through it. Now I’ve got to find it and keep hold of him and see where the cut takes us.

I’m confident I can do it. I know where the cut is. I raise my left hand and slide it into the space above the drainpipe.

Nothing happens.

But perhaps I missed. A little higher, I think. Still nothing happens. So it must be to the left a tad. No! Then to the right. No, again. Then lower. Maybe I’m doing it too fast, being too impatient.

I say to Gabriel, “Where’s the cut?”

He doesn’t reply and I turn to him, annoyed. He knows where it is—he should help me.

But as I turn to him I see what he’s looking at. There’s someone standing on the ridge of the roof. A woman. Tall, slim, dressed in black, a Hunter. And as I look at her more Hunters appear and stand watching us. And my left hand is now frantically searching for the cut. And I say to Gabriel, “Where is it? Where is it?”

And I can feel his hand gripping my hand but he says nothing and I’m shouting at him to tell me where it is. And all the time I’m trying to find the cut and the Hunters are coming toward us.

There must be twenty of them now; more are climbing through the window onto the terrace. And still I’m desperately searching and I’m shouting at Gabriel to help me. “Where is it? Where?”

But he doesn’t answer. The Hunters are all around us. Standing over us. They each hold a truncheon, like the one Clay used on me the first time he met me. He beat me unconscious with it. A Hunter raises hers and swipes it through the air onto Gabriel’s shoulder, and I feel the blow reverberate up my arm. Another Hunter swings her truncheon hard into the side of Gabriel’s face. Blood and teeth spray out but again all I feel is a shock wave up my arm. Yet another Hunter steps forward and I try to move to protect Gabriel—but I’m stuck in place, and all I can do is watch as they form a black wall round Gabriel and take it in turns to step forward and attack him. No one has hit me. Nothing has hurt me. And I know I should find the cut; if I could find it we could still escape. But my left hand won’t even move now—I’m paralyzed.

Then Soul climbs out of the window onto the terrace. He smiles at me. He says, “I’ve always liked you, Nathan. Thank you for bringing this Black Witch to me.”

And he moves to the side and I see that Mr. Wallend is with him. He has a pair of shiny chrome clippers in his hand. He says, “It really won’t hurt at all.”

He snaps shut the clippers and I laugh because it really doesn’t hurt. My little finger is cut off and resting in the palm of his hand. He puts it into a bottle, stops the top with a fat cork, and holds it up and smiles at me. The bottle fills with green smoke. And I too seem to be surrounded by a green mist.

I’m choking in it. I can’t breathe and I have to gasp for air and I hear Mr. Wallend say, “Shoot the Black Witch. Shoot him and you’ll be able to breathe again.”

And I feel a gun in my left hand and I’m choking and in the mist all I see is a gray outline of Gabriel and I know I’ll die. I can’t breathe. I need to breathe. I know I’ve only got seconds.

Wallend says, “Shoot him. Shoot him.”

“No!”

And Wallend takes the gun from me and points it at Gabriel’s head, pulls the trigger, and the green smoke engulfs me.

a a a

* * *

My eyes open and Gabriel is gripping my hand and staring at me and I know he has had the same vision as me. I shake my head at him. “It’s not real.”

But, before Gabriel replies, the pain in my hand takes over. Van is turning the stake. My hand before was warm and numb but now it is hot and throbbing. I realize it’s dusk. A whole day has gone by but it seemed like minutes.

Van says, “More potion. Then I rethread the stake.”

She holds another small cup out to us. Gabriel’s eyes are on mine. I want to tell him that I will make sure we live. I won’t let us die. I want the drink now. I want to feel dizzy and out of it so I swallow it down in one gulp and shudder at the bitter taste and then let the cup drop from my hand. Gabriel has drunk his too.

“I’ll find the way next time,” I tell him.

He nods.

Van says, “Now I’ll draw this out and put a new stake in.”

And I’m surprised by how drawing the stake out is not painful at all but feels good, a relief. My hand is hot and sore. Van holds up a newly prepared stake and puts the sharp point against the wound in my hand. She pushes it through and the pain is excruciatingly intense and I gasp and—