Shamanka (9 page)

T
hey arrive at a wrought-iron shelter situated on a platform which is sinking into the earth. It's an old waiting room; it hasn't been used by the public since 1942. The clock stands still at three minutes past three.

Ruth bundles Sam inside and steers her into a wicker chair. Sam stares wide-eyed and clammy as the witch lights an oil lamp. The illuminated room is clean and neat and smells of drying herbs. A few coals glow in the grate. Ruth gives them a prod with a poker. “Why so weak and wan, dear? Is it lack of food? Or was it something I said?”

Sam is hungry and tired, but that's not the reason for her sudden collapse; she's afraid that the woman who jumped from the burning warehouse was Kitty Bastet – the one person who knew where her father might be. Did he die in the fire? She can't bring herself to ask. Ruth places a pot on the embers.

“I will heat up this soup and, by and by, you will unburden yourself to me, Sam Khaan.”

The soup fills the waiting room with an intense, musky perfume; it's just plain old field mushrooms. Nothing odd, nothing hallucinogenic, but something is loosening Sam's tongue.

“I met a man called Bart Hayfue today. He had a friend who lived in the warehouse.”

The witch stirs the soup and waits for Sam to continue.

“I came here to find her. She might be the woman in the wharf. Where is she now?”

“Who knows, dear? I brought her back here and nursed her. Physically, she improved – but mentally? Even if you found her, I'm not sure she'd make much sense. She used to sit for hours, pencil in hand, like a poet waiting for inspiration, but it never came. She never wrote a word or spoke, but I tell you this; she wasn't mute.”

“How do you know?”

“She babbled in her sleep.”

Perhaps it wasn't Kitty. Perhaps she was just a stranger who'd lost her mind. But what if the babbling was Ancient Egyptian? Hadn't Kitty believed she was the reincarnation of an Egyptian priestess? And when this woman had sat at her blank page, was she trying to communicate with the witch or the spirits?

Ruth removes the pan from the fire and pours the soup into a bowl. It's so hot Sam scalds her mouth, so she pauses, spoon in hand.

“Memories can come back though. Maybe she can remember everything now, Ruth.”

“But she isn't here to ask, is she? The last time I saw her, it was three minutes past three in the morning. I went to find her a coot's egg for breakfast; when I came back, she was gone.”

“No note, nothing?”

“Well … there was
something
.” Ruth squirrels around in a drawer and puts something in Sam's palm. It's a gold cat charm. “She left this under my pillow. By way of a thank you, I suppose. Funny, she remembers her manners but forgets her own name.”

“It's Kitty Bastet,” announces Sam. The babbling, the automatic writing, the worshipping of cats; she can be no other.

The witch raises her eyebrows. “Bastet, you say? It sounds like a stage name. Was she an actress?”

“An artist. She carved things out of wood. If only I knew where she was, she might be able to help me find my father. I
have
to find him. He's the only family I have.”

“Oh? Don't you even have a grandfather?”

There's an uncomfortable pause. Sam hadn't mentioned Yafer Tabuh because she's still not sure if he really exists. She's seen him in her dreams and heard him when she chanted the resurrection chant, but what if that means she just hears voices in her head like mad Kitty?

“I'm not sure if he's dead or alive. Either way … oh, he's on the other side of the world.”

Ruth lets it pass. “Why bother to find your father? You've managed without him for all these years.”

“Yes, but only because Lola looked after me so well.” Sam explains about Lola: how she was like a mother to her and how she's in a laboratory somewhere, lost and alone. “If I could find my father, he might be able to help me rescue her.” She braces herself. “You don't think he was trapped in the warehouse fire, do you?”

Ruth stares at the ceiling, ignoring her gaze. Sam is sure she's hiding something.

“You know, don't you! He's
dead
, isn't he? That's why he never came for me!”

The witch flaps her hands in nervous agitation. “You mustn't jump to conclusions! I did see someone leaving the burning warehouse, but it was a lady. She ran out and slammed the door. I thought she'd gone to raise the alarm.”

This wasn't the same woman that Ruth had discovered half-drowned. The one running away was blonde. So, there were
two
women in the warehouse.

“But no man?”

“Not that I saw. But as I got closer to the building, I thought I heard a baby cry. It might have been a cat, but I couldn't see for the smoke.”

Ruth had run to nearest phone box but when she got there, it had been vandalized. It was Sunday, none of the shops were open but, finally, she'd found a café and persuaded the owner to call the fire brigade. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived there was nothing left to save; everything had turned to ashes.

“All they found was a silver rattle.”

The rattle might have belonged to a baby who had grown up and moved out years before there was a fire. Or maybe there was no baby. Maybe Ruth
had
heard a cat.

“Maybe, dear.”

The witch's expression changes subtly – for a second, she averts her gaze like someone who's said too much. Most of us would have missed this little nuance, but not Sam.

“
Why
don't you think it was a cat, Ruth?”

The soup works both ways. The witch, who has kept this secret for so long, finally spills.

“I met someone who recognized the rattle. Sometime after the fire, I found a young man standing in the dark, just as I found you. I didn't approach him. I just busied myself with my basket. Such a handsome man, so elegant, so—”

“So what did he say? I'd have said something if a witch was hovering.”

Ruth purses her lips. “I wasn't
hovering
, I was being patient. Mindful of his privacy. It's a gift, is patience!” She snatches Sam's bowl and disappears into the kitchen to wash it up. Finally, she returns.

“He asked about the fire. How it had happened. He'd been in Scotland at a wedding. He'd come to collect his baby from someone in the warehouse. They'd promised to look after her until he came back. He had no idea everything had gone up in smoke.”

Ruth had been right; there had been a baby in the warehouse and the man's eyes had filled with unspeakable anguish as he forced himself to ask, “Did anyone survive?” When he heard that a blonde woman was spotted running from the scene, his eyes flashed and he said, “If only
she'd
been in the box instead!”

It may seem like a mad thing to say, but it wasn't, as you'll discover. When he learnt about the other woman – the dark one – he'd smiled hopefully and asked. “The lady you rescued from the wharf – is she all right?”

The witch couldn't say; the woman had lost her memory and disappeared without trace. If she
had
tried to rescue the baby, there was no sign of it; there was no little body in the wharf. Was there any chance that the blonde woman had the baby in her arms?

No, all that remained was the silver rattle. The man had asked to see it. He insisted, in case it didn't belong to his baby. Sadly, he recognized it immediately, held it to his chest and roared like a wounded animal.

“His heart was broken,” sighs Ruth Abafey. “More soup, dear?”

Sam shakes her head. She's trying to make sense of the facts. If the woman who jumped into the wharf from the burning warehouse was Kitty and she'd been looking after the man's baby, that man had to be her father. Sam leaps out of her chair.

“
I
was the baby in the fire, wasn't I?”

Ruth hides a knowing smile behind her hand. Sam doesn't need to see it; she knows she's right.

“But how did I survive?”

“More soup!” insists the witch.

Here is why John Tabuh never came back for Sam; I am the Masked Magician and it falls upon me to tell you that, having spoken to the witch, he truly believed that his baby daughter was dead. He didn't believe it at first though. Like everyone who's lost someone they love, he hoped it had all been a dreadful mistake and that, by some miracle, she'd been saved.

John watched the top flat in St Peter's Square for nights on end, listening for baby cries but he heard none. He saw no one. No one answered the door. The front windows were boarded up and he assumed, quite understandably, that its wicked tenant, Candy Khaan, had moved out – but it was just an illusion. She was there all along, in a drunken stupor. Sam was there too, her pitiful cries muffled in the knicker drawer.

He couldn't go to the authorities to see if anyone had signed Sam's death certificate; her birth had never been registered. There was no paper trail to say she'd ever existed. He couldn't go to the police because he had a dark secret: he'd entered the country on a stolen passport. He was wanted for murder.

John Tabuh was probably innocent. Probably? Usually a man can be sure if he's murdered someone, but not in this case. The manner of the victim's death was most bizarre; he couldn't help wondering if it had been caused by the Old Magic and panicked on two counts:

1. Was his father infinitely more powerful than he'd given him credit for?

2. Had he murdered the man himself and, unable to live with the guilt, grossly exaggerated his father's power in order to shift the blame?

Judge for yourself when you have more evidence. For now, the facts are that under very trying circumstances, John Tabuh exhausted every means of finding baby Sam alive and returned to the witch in a state of unbearable grief.

“If only they'd found her body,” he cried. “My father might have brought her back to life.”

He'd told the witch about the alleged resurrection of Lola and asked if she thought it could have happened in reality. Did she know any magic strong enough to wake the dead? Could he buy such a spell from her? He was sceptical, he said, but he'd been told to ask questions.

Sam's brain is whirring. It strikes her that not only has she followed her father's footsteps onto the Piccadilly Line and through Covent Garden, but also into Ruth Abafey's waiting room. Has she been sent on a quest too?

It's beginning to look that way. She only left home to find Lola and the Dark Prince but it seems Fate has other plans – or is it Fate? The witch must be reading her mind because she suddenly claps her hands, declares that Fate is a fickle thing and tries to change the subject.

Sam's not having it. “I know Fate is fickle but can it be
deliberately
altered?”

The witch is evasive. “It can be – if you're good with a needle.”

“I wish you'd give me a straight answer instead of resorting to riddles,” groans Sam.

Ruth Abafey wags a finger at her. “You won't get the right answers unless you ask the right questions. That's where your father went wrong.”

Sam has three questions she'd like answers to:

1. Who rescued her from the fire?

2. How did she end up living with Aunt Candy?

3. Where is Kitty now?

But these questions are not the Big Three. They're not the ones the witch doctor told his son to ask; the ones that would reveal the truth about resurrection. Having nothing to lose, she questions Ruth. “What is magic? What is illusion? What is real?” she asks.

Here is the witch's reply:

“I know many antidotes to poison, but I have never brought anyone – man, woman or beast – back from the dead. Resurrection is against the laws of nature. Witches work with nature, we never go against it. Although magic can achieve wonderful things, it cannot create miracles. Witches do not have the power of life over death.”

But do witch doctors? Sam mentions the dead butterfly, the resurrection chant. She recites it softly to herself. Ruth Abafey closes the window hastily. “It was the draught, not your incantation.”

Sam smiles; the witch protests too much. “So, Ruth, you know of no spell that can bring a person back to life?”

“Spells are cast to focus the human mind. It is the mind that is powerful; therein lies the magic, my dear.”

Note that she doesn't say it's
impossible
to bring someone back from the dead – just that it goes against the moral code of witches. And while she says that magic cannot create miracles, she doesn't deny they may occur. Unfortunately, that's not how John Tabuh interpreted it. When Ruth refused to give him a resurrection spell, he thought three things:

1. She has the spell but is too mean to give it to me.

2. She doesn't trust me with it because I'm as useless as my father thinks I am.

3. There is no such spell, resurrection is impossible and my father is a liar.