Kissing the Witch (11 page)

I liked to consider this long story and how it led all the way to me, as a path winds to a mountaintop. It soothed me for a while; it made me feel that I was in the right place, the only place
to be.

But the worms of discontent had got into my veins somehow. I kept asking about the tower, no matter how they tried to fob me off. Then one evening after dinner I demanded that my father take me
beyond the bramble hedge and my parents stared at each other. There’s nothing out there you need to see, said my mother; it’s a cruel world full of evil men. Hush, said my father,
don’t frighten the child. He bent down and asked, Would you like a kitten instead?

It was black and white, the softest thing I’d ever laid hands on. It was my own, more precious than all my golden toys. I cosseted it and carried it everywhere for a week before it turned
and scratched me. My mother saw the mark on my wrist, and held out her hand for the kitten.

I waited all day for her to give it back. The scratch hardly hurt at all any more.

When that night at dinner I asked after my kitten, my parents looked at each other. It got lost, said my father. It wasn’t a kitten any more, said my mother; it was turning into a dirty
cat.

I found out from the maid that they’d given it to the manservant and told him to drown it in the well.

My parents lavished even more affection on me. My mother stroked my hair as she passed me in the corridors. Every time I came into the room, my father would open his arms and ask whether I had a
smile for Papa today.

It was then that I began to fill up with rage. I was like a cloud that, though its face stays white, is slowly collecting its load of thunder and rain.

One day I was trying to make out the pictures on an old wall-hanging in the west wing when it billowed, as if possessed. I leaped back. A maid emerged from behind it, carrying an empty cup and
plate. She looked startled to see me, but bobbed a curtsy and hurried away. From behind the hanging came a faraway sound that could have been laughter, or the caw of a crow. I was moving closer
when I heard the dull gong calling me to dinner.

Then next day I retraced my steps; the hanging pulled back to reveal a heavy wooden door, locked fast. I put my ear to it, but heard nothing.

What I did next showed a strange cunning for a girl who had never had anything to hide. I bided my time until there came a day when my parents were walking in the garden, pointing out the best
roses to each other. I took my mother’s keys from where they hung, slipped away to the west wing and waited in the shadows for what felt like an hour. Eventually the maid came out, bearing
what looked like a chamberpot, leaving the door unlocked behind her.

I took the stairs one by one, oddly frightened of what they might lead to. Round and round they spiralled; this had to be the tower. As I mounted I began to hear singing. The voice was faint and
slightly cracked, but of an indescribable sweetness. The singer used words I didn’t know, words like
hungry
,
ocean
,
grave
. I didn’t know what she meant, but her song made me
cry.

I forgot all my sorrow when I peeped into her room. There she sat, an old woman I had never seen before, her hands moving in and out of her song. Dirty white hair hung about her face like
ivy.

Only when the last note was breathed out did she look up. She didn’t speak, only watched me like a cat.

I cleared my throat. What is that thing that whirls so? I asked, for something to say.

Nothing but a spinning wheel, she answered with some amusement.

And that?

Have you never seen a distaff?

No, I told her.

How do you think thread gets spun, girl?

I don’t know.

What do you suppose your dress is made of?

I have never given the matter much thought, I said stiffly.

She held out the distaff. Wrap your hands around the length of that now, she said. And she howled with laughter as if at some joke I had missed.

I walked past her, to the window. The sill was thick with dust; light sparkled in a cobweb. From here I could see far beyond the bramble hedge. There was what looked like a river, and a few
lines of little houses, and in the distance, great purple things I thought must be mountains. I was so involved in identifying these things from pictures I’d seen that I didn’t notice
the old woman get up.

I can tell you’re curious, she said, stretching her arms above her head. She waved at the stool.

Clearly she had no idea who I was. I must not do any sort of work, I told her.

Why’s that then?

I am delicate, I explained with a hint of severity.

Delicate, my arse! she said. What do you mean by that?

I blinked at her. What is an arse?

This is, she said, stepping closer and giving me a light smack with her open hand.

I recoiled. My eyes bulged. I must go now, I told her.

What’s there to hurt you in a bit of work? the old woman asked.

I mustn’t, I told her urgently. My mother says, my father says . . .

Her face was merry no longer. She put one foot on her stool and leaned closer. Listen, girl, she said, they’ve tried to stop me teaching any of the things I know. Now they’re trying
to prevent you from learning all the things you don’t. But gifts can only be delayed.

I don’t know what you mean, I said hoarsely.

Look at those long spinster’s fingers! she exclaimed. You’re made for it. Take off those foolish gloves for a moment.

I examined my white hands through the mesh. But I might dirty them.

She made a rude sound with her lips. What do you know of dirt, little precious, swaddled up in gold since the day you were born? Oh yes, I’ve heard of you; the maid brings up what news
there is. You have everyone in this castle walking on tiptoe for you, don’t you?

After a moment I gave a small nod.

Not a baby is allowed to cry, she drove on, not an old man allowed to cough for fear you’d hear. All those with wrinkles or even a touch of a limp are kept out of your sight for fear
they’d sadden you. There cannot be dust anywhere, or a washing tub, or a single spider.

I was distracted by a faraway thudding. It seemed to come from the bottom of the stairs. Were they scouring the house for me?

Wake up, princess, snapped the old woman, clapping her hands in front of my nose.

A tear began to well up in my eye, but I held it back. None of what you say was of my choosing, I told her coldly. I was a child.

And now?

Now I am almost a woman, I went on, my voice spiralling, and if I had my way –

She let the sounds trail away before saying, Yes? If you had your way?

I didn’t know what to say. I sat down abruptly on her grimy stool. After a while I put my hand to the wheel; she showed me where. I set it in motion. There was a long moment of glorious
whirling, and then I felt the needle drive itself into my finger. I screamed like a baby.

The old woman leaned over me, cradling me, hushing me. Her hair was soft like wool. I sucked the drop of blood from my finger. I never knew it would taste so like silver.

Her voice was shaking. I thought she might cry, and stared up at her, but then I realized that she was rocking with laughter. I shoved her away. How dare you?

That always happens the first time, she said through her merriment. Every time.

You knew, I bawled.

Not at all. No one knows the future.

I reached out and kicked her spinning wheel into the corner. Badness was running through my veins like wine. I hate you, I shouted. You sit here, in your dust, your foul mess . . . I’ll
have you punished. I could have your head chopped from your shoulders.

But what a mess that would make, she murmured.

I stared at her. My eyes were swollen with water. My head felt as if it were about to break open like an egg.

The old woman gave me a most peculiar smile.

I heard feet pounding the stairs, and a call that sounded like my name. I turned to the door and pulled the bolt across. All of a sudden I felt quite awake.

I bent over for the spinning wheel and set it back in its place. I sat down on the stool and said, Please. Show me how.

When I had got the knack of it, I asked,

Who were you

before you came to live in this tower?

And she said, Will I tell you my own story?

It is a tale of a voice.

I
N THE DAYS
when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wished I hadn’t.

I’ll make no excuses; I was a grown woman when it happened to me. I’d already ripped out my first grey hair, and refused two neighbours’ sons who thought they could have me for
the asking. I’d learned every song my mother could teach me.

I was standing in the market the day I saw him. I stopped trying to sell my father’s bagful of fish. I stared at the stranger for hours, across baskets of salmon and the shifting backs of
cattle, but he never glanced my way. He stood at the side of his merchant father like an angel come down to earth. All the neighbours saw me watching, but what did that matter now?

His eyes were black like ink; mine blue as the sea. His hands were pale, gripping purse and quill; mine were scored red with fish-scales. His boots looked like they’d never touched the
ground; my toes were caulked with mud. He was as strange to me as satin to sackcloth, feathers to lead, a heron to a herring.

Up to that day I must have been happy. Happy enough, at least, never to wonder whether I was or not. My sisters didn’t use such language as we gossiped over our gutting knives and wiped
wisps of brown hair out of our eyes with the backs of our hands. My mother, when she took a heavy basket from my arms, never searched my face. My father’s eyes were cloudy as he flexed his
fingers by the fire. Smiling was for Sundays.

The morning after I saw this man in the marketplace I woke up sick to my stomach and decided I was in love. If I didn’t choose him, who was ten times better than any I’d ever set
eyes on, I’d never choose. If this wasn’t love, then it would never happen.

All the signs said it was. I was mulish and quarrelsome. I turned up my nose at cold porridge, and let my sisters finish the pickled cod. And the strangest thing: when I lay that evening at the
green edge of the crumbling cliff below our cottage, facing into the mist, I couldn’t sing a note. My throat seemed stopped up with the thought of him.

The man was everything I wasn’t, hadn’t, couldn’t. Grace was in his smooth boots, and sunlight ran along behind him. His collar gleamed like a halo; he made me think of
trumpets, and horses, and the flash of high gates. If I couldn’t have him, I’d have nothing.

Which was all too likely. He was gone back to the city, and no one I knew had ever been to the city. They said bad things happened there. But nothing bad could happen to a man like that; the
city would be a garden at his feet. Women would bloom at the sight of him. Even if I went there, what could I say, what could I do? What would draw his lips down to my salty skin?

So I went to the witch, as desperate girls do. Everyone knew where she lived, in a cave on the headland. I had never been there before; I had never needed anything they said she could give. The
fishermen told all sorts of stories about her: that her cave was lined with the bones of drowned sailors, with skeleton legs for a door, skeleton hands for bolts, and a full mouth of teeth for a
lock. They said that she fed sea snails from her own mouth, and was an octopus below the waist. One of them claimed to have seen her once, taking a bath in a little pool with her tentacles spilling
over the rocks. They claimed she could turn men to limp fish with a single glance of her watery eye. Anyone who climbed as high as the mouth of her cave would freeze there on the rock until the
witch hobbled down and magicked him into a gull to wheel and scream for eternity.

They said so many things about her, they couldn’t all be true. Girls in trouble were not put off by stories.

Still, my breath laboured in my chest as I climbed along the headland. My hands shook a little when I stopped outside the cave. She was there before I realized it: she had been standing in the
shadows. She was everything I half expected: a stoop, a stick, a wart on her nose, a whisker on her chin. Her white hair had a trace of red like old blood on sheep’s wool. Her nails curled
like roots. Her eyes were oysters in their shells, and her voice had the crackle of old nets.

And yet she surprised me. Is he worth it? she asked.

Worth what? The climb?

What climb? she said dismissively. I meant the price.

He’s worth any price, I said, steadying my breath.

Glad to hear it.

I studied her suspiciously. How did you know about him? I asked.

There’s always a him, she pointed out. A girl comes here for three reasons. To catch him, to quicken his blood, or to bring on her own.

He’s not a fish, to be caught, I said angrily.

So that’s it. The witch yawned, baring a few black teeth. Tell me now, what would you do for him?