The Return of the Witch (35 page)

And now the voices grew louder. They began to clamor for my attention, some of them even calling out my name. Or rather my
names.
I heard “Tegan” and “Clever Witch” and “Tegan Hedfan” and “Balik Kiis”. How could they know? Who were they, that they knew so many different versions of me? They knew about my time on the Welsh island when the old man had renamed me Tegan Who Flies. They knew about my coming out of the Siberian lake as Fish Girl. They knew of me there and in that place, with Taklit. But was it
they
or was it
me?
Was it all just in my head, my imagination, my overheated brain playing games with me? I put my hat back on and drank a few more sips of water, saving the last precious swallows. It was hours since I had eaten, and I felt light-headed. I had to get out of the sun. I moved over to the shade of a rock. There was just enough room to keep from the full glare of the sun's rays if I pressed my back against it, but as I did so two scorpions scuttled out of a crevice. I swore at them, staggering back out into the heat. I waited to see how many were hiding in the rock, but there seemed to be only those two. Gingerly, I flicked them away with my staff and then crouched back in the meager bit of shade, keeping a careful watch for any scorpions trying to return.

The voices grew louder, and then I recognized one of them as Taklit.

“To become a witch of the Sacred Sun you must believe, you must trust, you must submit.”

“Taklit? Taklit, where are you?”

“We are all in the Deserts of the Dead.”

“Thanks for the cheerful thought,” I muttered. I knew how she worked—she was testing me. No way was she going to give me any real help now. Whatever she had planned, whatever she had in store for me, I was on my own with it.

Suddenly I heard a rattling, scurrying sound, growing quickly louder. At first I couldn't work out where it was coming from or what I was hearing, but then I saw it. I saw them. Hundreds of them. Pale pink scorpions, just like the two I had evicted from the rock, their tails arched over their backs, pincers held high, pouring over the low dune in front of me, and all heading in my direction. Fast. I leapt to my feet, and turned to scramble up onto the rock, but the swarm moved with supernatural speed, and before I could go anywhere they were running over my boots. I jumped and stamped, trying to step out of the ceaseless flow of the things, but there were too many of them. I felt some start to run up my legs, some beneath my skirt. I whipped off my hat and beat at them, forgetting everything I had ever known about not provoking them into stinging. All I could think of was to get them off me. I thrashed so wildly that I dropped my hat, and it quickly disappeared beneath a sea of scorpions.

“No!” I yelled, as much at Taklit, and at myself, as at the creatures. “This is not real. These are not real. They can't be! Get away! Ugh!” I pounded at them with my stick, crushing one or two, which crunched in a way that felt very real indeed. So did the ones who had made it to my shirt and were running up my back. I was trapped against the rock. I could not beat them all off. Not that way. I stopped flailing at them and kept still, fighting the urge to scream and run. I steadied my breathing. I considered trying to fly, to rise up and escape from the vile things, but there were too many clinging to me now; they would simply come with me. And if they were real, if they could sting me, I knew my ability to fly would fail me. No, I had to think of something else. It took all my willpower to keep still, even as one enormous scorpion started to burrow through my hair. What else could I do? I called on the Goddess for protection, praying to her for her strength, for her courage. She might not be able to rid me of the things, but she could support me while I found a way. If there had been a well close by I would have jumped in it. Balik Kiis could have stayed underwater a lot longer than those poisonous arachnids.

I thought of what Taklit had said, what she had told me, what she had tried to teach me.

You must believe. You must trust. You must submit.

She was living proof of the magic of the Sacred Sun, but how could I trust it? She was born to it, a child of the desert. What was I doing there, with my pink peeling skin, my body beaten by the heat, my mind scorched by the sun? How could I be sure it would work for me? What if it didn't? At that moment I felt a searing pain in my left calf and I knew I'd been stung. I swiped the scorpion off with my stick, holding my breath against the pain, wondering how long I'd got before the venom worked into my system and made me badly ill. Now I really had no other option. Carefully, but with determination, and as calmly as I could, I stepped out of the shade of the rock and walked out onto the open sand. I stood beneath the full glare of the sun, with the scorpions still warming around me, still wriggling over me. I held out my arms. I could already feel the toxins from the sting spreading up my leg, traveling in my bloodstream, beginning to break down my body's defenses. If this didn't work, I was dead.

Believe. Trust. Submit.

Weren't those the same things the old man on the island had told me? Believe in the magic. Believe in yourself. And the same things that Ulvi had told me? Trust the power of the magic. Trust your own power, too. And now Taklit was telling me to humble myself; to submit.

I opened my eyes. I could not look at the blinding sun, so I set my gaze upon the shimmering horizon, watching it dance through the waves of heat that rose from the baking sands. I slowed my own heartbeat, in part to slow the progress of the poison through my system, but also to make my whole being receptive to whatever there was to receive from that fearsome, powerful place. I summoned my own magic, to stave off the effects of the sting, and to send out a prayer to the Sacred Sun.

“Help a lowly witch, follower of Taklit the Blessed, Greatest Witch Living. I am a seeker of magic, a keeper of the faiths of the Goddess and the Shamans, hedgewitch, student, now child of the Desserts of the Dead. Please, shield me from harm. Grant me your favor. Hear my voice. Fill me with your fierce magic.”

The voices that had begun as whispers were a cacophony now, all chattering and yelling to the staccato accompaniment of the scuttling scorpions. It was altogether a terrible noise. My eyes were so sore and yet I seemed unable to shut them, so that all I could see was a whiteness, as if they could no longer make sense of anything. My thoughts were being warped by the heat, my body was succumbing to the venom. I would not be able to stand for much longer. It was strange to realize, with a sort of fatalistic detachment, that I might well die there, hundreds of miles from anyone, sent into a delirium by the sting, and finished off by the punishing effects of the sun. Was this the quest that would kill me? After all my travels, after all I had seen and learned and experienced? It was then I remembered something else Taklit had said, back when I had first met her and she had agreed to teach me.

Clever Witch must listen and must watch until her ears are stopped up with what she hears, and her eyes are burned by the sights she has seen.

I began to sway. Waves of pain and nausea threatened to topple me and send me crashing to the ground, into the seething mass of scorpions that surrounded me. I had the sensation that I was falling backward, tipping, tumbling. But the thud into the ground never came. I did not land with a sickening crunch on all those repulsive things that waited for me. I did not slip into the beckoning blackness of the toxins in my blood. Instead I seemed to float, suspended.

I felt a tremendous heat surge through my body, and I knew it wasn't the poison of the sting. This was something different; a supernatural heat. It became so intense I thought it would finish me. Just as I was on the point of blacking out I heard a whooshing sound, and then smelled burning. The scuttling and scratching of the scorpions stopped, replaced by crackling and popping. I forced myself to focus, and saw that the ground above which I was suspended was a mass of flames. The scorpions were burning! The heat from the magical fire rose upward, the flames licking me, and yet I did not burn. I wasn't so much as singed by the fire.

And then it stopped. Suddenly. In a heartbeat. The agony in my leg went away. The blank whiteness of my vision softened until, at last, I could see faint colors again and blurred shapes. And as I studied them, those shapes became clearer. At first they were triangles and circles and flowing patterns of light, but then they grew more solid. I noticed I was standing again, firmly on the ground this time. And the scorpions were gone, and in their place were flowers. Thousands and thousands of flowers. I looked out over the desert and the sand was transformed into an endless garden of the most beautiful blooms, all different colors, all vibrant and healthy, their petals fluttering in the gentlest of cooling breezes. I found I had my staff in my hand again, and it had new engravings. At the bottom were scorpions, up to about halfway, where they changed to flowers which climbed up and then at the top of the staff were twisted flames. I took a deep breath and felt completely well again. I lifted my skirt to examine my leg and found no mark, no evidence of a sting at all.

I was so astonished, so overwhelmed by the scale of the magic that was taking place around me, that it was awhile before I became aware of a terrible thirst. I needed water. I found my water bottle and was about to gulp down the last of its contents, but it wasn't nearly enough. I needed more water, much more. Clever Witch might finish what was left and then look for more. A witch who had the power of the Sacred Sun could do better than that.

“So, what will you do?”

Taklit's voice made me jump so violently I dropped the water bottle. She was standing right behind me, though naturally I had neither heard nor seen her get there. She was looking at me in a way I had not seen before. She looked pleased, yes, happy that I had passed a test that she had put me up for. But there was something else. I saw surprise. I saw that she was impressed. More than that. In fact, she seemed amazed.

I looked at my bottle as the last drops of water were soaked up by the thirsty sand. I needed more than a bottle full. I needed a well. I stared hard at those disappearing droplets. I believed. I trusted. I submitted. I had been saved. Now I would see if I had been truly blessed, as Taklit had once been.

The air around us fizzed and crackled with energy. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up, and I felt tiny shocks pulse through my fingertips. The ground beneath my feet began to tremble, and then to shake. I could smell something scorching, though it was impossible to tell what. Mercifully, it wasn't me! I staggered backward and then, instinctively, raised my staff before bringing it down hard onto the sand. The desert opened. A jagged crack ran from my feet to the discarded bottle, where it dived deep into the sand. With a great rumble a hole appeared, tiny at first, then growing to three strides wide. Lightning cracked around us, dancing off the rocks, and a whirlwind picked up above the hole. It bore down into it, as if tunnelling deeper and deeper into the earth, until it had disappeared completely. There was a moment of silence, an in breath, and then a geyser of water shot up high above our heads, sending an ice-cold shower down upon us. Taklit and I both laughed like madwomen, splashing about in the pools of water that quickly formed. She took me by the shoulders and spoke to me then, water cascading down her face, blurring her features.

“A witch who has her own well is a child of the desert forever!” she told me.

“Maybe I'm not Stupid Witch anymore?”

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “Now you are Tegan the Blessed.”

I was glad, then, that water from the magic well was still pouring down my face, so that she couldn't see my tears of joy. “But Taklit the Blessed is still the Greatest Witch Living,” I said.

“Of course,” she agreed, “for now. And remember, treat the magic of the Sacred Sun with the reverence and respect it deserves. It is a powerful thing, and ill used it will burn you up to a crisp like that!” She snapped her fingers. “Do not run before you have properly learned to walk in the way of a true witch, Tegan the Blessed, or you will not live long enough to see me dead.” She smiled at that, a rare and beautiful thing. “And when that day comes, when Taklit the Blessed, Greatest Witch Living lives no longer, then that title will be yours.”

 

24

By the time we had Nipper properly treated and in a bed upstairs, darkness had fallen. I was in torment. Finding Aloysius felt as if we had found part of Tegan. My first instinct was to rush to the stables, to question the child's friends, or anyone who knew him, to search the area. But the boy had drifted in and out of consciousness, his injuries threatening to drag him down into a darkness from which he might not emerge. How could I abandon him? What would my mother have done? He slept fitfully, muttering, and whimpering, and nothing I could do appeared to help. I sat at his bedside, mopping his brow with a damp cloth as countless mothers and nurses and nursemaids had done before me, perhaps in that very house. Erasmus came to see how he was faring. He pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed, and we sat watching the frail boy between us fight his dangerous battle.

“He looks feverish,” Erasmus said quietly.

“I'm afraid his wounds were caked in the filth of the tunnels—coal dust, general dirt and grime, and Goddess knows what from that underground world. He has an infection of the blood.”

“Will he survive it?” The question was not unreasonable, but I was surprised at how forcefully the thought that the boy might die struck me.

“I don't know. I have done everything I can. I have cleaned the wounds, set the bones as best I am able, though really he needs a more practiced surgeon than me. I have used what magic I can that might help, but…”

“But nature will still have her way.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I work against the very construction of our bodies.”