An Errant Witch Page 14

  This was deja vu all over again, for hadn’t I been in a similar situation just last month with this same player?

  Then it hit me, the solution to my dilemma, the way to get myself off the hook. The coin was unimportant now, for I’d found my mother and she was here on the island. The weight of the past few months lifted off me suddenly with this realization. I didn’t need the coin to use as a medium for I had doubts that it would be any good to me, anyway. I could tell Johanna everything, and she would certainly help me heal from his touch.

  Hah! I’d been given a second chance, and I could make the right choice this time.

  ‘You know what, Willem?’ I said as I gathered my bag and thermos and prepared to make my way back down the hillside. I straightened my back and turned to his small figure. ‘You can do your worst, for you have no power over me. You are about to get your ass whupped so bad you won’t see it coming.’

  I laughed out loud with victory. But then so did he, and his laughter followed me down the hill and he called out after me.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t take action before you know the whole story, my sweet, or you might find yourself in a very precarious situation,’ he said. ‘But always remember, my offer is open.’

  The sorcerer’s voice held no fear, as if he knew something I did not, and that greatly unsettled me. More than that, it chilled me to my core and the thoughts raced round and round in my head as I hurried back down to the castle. What part of the puzzle was I missing? What could Willem possibly know that I didn’t?

  I would confess to Johanna about Willem. Either she would know he was part of my illusions, or she would hunt him down and take care of the problem herself, of that I had no doubt. I would tell all.

  Except the part about finding my mother here on Scarp. I couldn’t let on to Johanna that I knew about that.

  THE ATMOSPHERE inside the castle had darkened considerably even in the short time I’d been outside, and it wasn’t just the clouds covering the sun. There was a tension everywhere, I could almost taste it in the air.

  I found myself shivering as I walked up the grand staircase to her study. Was I going crazy? I shook my head. No, Willem existed, I’d just spoken with him. There was no way I could have imagined all the details; the sight of his creepy little white hands, even his use of the word ‘bothy’ – I’d never heard the term before, I couldn’t have made it up, could I?

  I drew a deep breath as I summoned up the nerve to knock on Johanna’s door. This would be nerve-wracking, for I was juggling with the facts.

  ‘Do not tell her that I know about the broch,’ I whispered to myself as I closed my eyes tight. ‘For then she’ll know I know about Mom, and God alone knows what will happen to us then.’

  ‘Enter.’

  Her eyebrows rose in surprise when she saw me on the threshold. She wore reading glasses connected around her neck by a golden chain.

  ‘Dara. Shouldn’t you be in class with Professor Durand? How can I help you?’

  I took another deep breath and walked in. Where to begin?

  ‘Sit down,’ she commanded, then looked at me across the wide expanse of her desk. ‘I’m glad you came here actually. I need to discuss something with you.’

  Of course. Durand would have complained to her about the previous day, when he’d accused me of drinking from that forbidden well.

  ‘The loose magic,’ I began.

  She nodded encouragingly.

  ‘It comes from this coin that...’ I had to cut myself off, for I’d almost told her it had been my mother’s. ‘It... it somehow soaked up magic from the island,’ I continued, gaining courage. ‘That’s where the loose magic must have come from. I didn’t drink from the magical Well like Professor Durand said.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s an odd thing, but yes, this would explain it. May I see this coin?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I said, thinking fast. Don’t mention the broch. ‘I hid it out by... on the moors.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it scared me!’ I was glad to be able to speak the truth finally. ‘It was glowing, and full of magic, and Fergie said it was tainted...’

  ‘And you didn’t want to be caught with it.’ She had a small smile on her face now, but that could have signified anything. It could have been the warmth of an elder remembering her own foolish days of youth, or it could have been the satisfaction of a cat finally cornering a mouse. ‘You’ll find that magic can be an unstable element; an innocent seeming object might have a fatal flaw in its design which attracts magic to pool in it. It can be a very dangerous thing in the wrong hands. May I ask, what is the history of this coin? How it came to be in your possession?’

  ‘I found it in an old store, a bargain basement magic shop, and I ... knew right away it held magic.’ I didn’t mention that I’d been attracted to it in the first place of the hint of my mother it had carried.

  ‘Ah, the curiosity of the young.’ She was silent for a moment.

  ‘Fergie thought it might be my medium?’

  ‘No,’ she replied quickly and emphatically. ‘I doubt that. Don’t be fooled by your attraction to it. In fact, you did well to leave it outside so it can’t cause disruptions within you. You’re still healing, and an object like this will not be good for this process.’

  I took another deep breath and steeled myself for the next bit.

  ‘About that. I’ve seen Willem.’

  ‘De Vriejz? Here, on the island?’ This made her sit up, but her expression was incredulous.

  I nodded. ‘Out there.’ I pointed at the window to the hills beyond. ‘Just then. I came right over to tell you.’

  ‘And where was he, precisely?’

  I explained to Johanna about having seen him before by the barn, and of how I’d run across him up on the hillside by the bothy.

  ‘Did you touch him?’

  ‘No, God no! Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘We could lift any smells of him off you, if you had,’ she said. ‘And would know for certain that this happened, that it wasn’t all just hallucinations from the damage in your mind.’

  ‘It really happened. He was as real as you and me, and not five feet away from me.’

  She tilted her head sympathetically. ‘It may indeed have felt that way,’ she began.

  ‘Seriously,’ I insisted, for I knew where she was going with that tone of voice. I was sitting on the edge of my seat now. I had to make her believe me. ‘I’m not making this up! You need to go out and force him to leave the island. He hates the Kin, he’s planning something against you all.’

  Johanna shook her head. ‘I’m not saying you made it all up,’ she said in the kind of voice reserved for calming feral cats and lunatics, all soothing and non-scary, non-threatening. ‘But that’s the nature of hallucinations, the reason people are deceived by them. These illusions seem so real. I know it can be frightening, you might think you’ve lost control of your mind. But that’s not the case.’

  She wasn’t listening to me.

  ‘He’s out there, Johanna,’ I blazed. ‘You need to catch him before he does whatever it is he’s going to do. You can’t trust him.’

  Johanna held up her hand palm facing me in a distinct order for me to shut my mouth.

  ‘Dara, Willem can’t be on the island,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s impossible. He could never get past the barriers on the strait.’

  I remembered the first day when Fergie and I arrived. Moving over the water, the air had been thick with magic, pressing down on me, and I understood then that the ferryman had brought us through the magical gate erected by the Kin, one intended to stop any unwelcome visitors.

  ‘To ease your mind, I propose to do a cleansing spell,’ she continued. ‘With your permission. I will need to enter your mind, and this will help a lot towards the healing.’

  ‘You can get rid of him from my mind?’ I whispered.

  She nodded.

  ‘P
lease,’ I said. ‘Please do this.’

  I sat tight with my eyes shut, and I felt her moving around the desk towards me. I didn’t open my eyes to see if she used a medium, and I didn’t hear her chanting a spell; perhaps a witch of her calibre had no use for these tools. I could feel a feather-light touch though in my mind though, just a whispering trill as she skimmed along the surface. I waited for her to go deeper, like Willem had done, deep into the depths of my mind to that little corner of me that he had claimed for himself.

  ‘There,’ she said, and I then felt the absence of her cool touch inside my head.

  ‘That’s it?’ I opened my eyes, puzzled. ‘That’s all you’re doing?’

  ‘It’s quite a simple procedure, and I think you’re healing nicely,’ she told me, her blue eyes shining at her own success. ‘I found no trace of him inside you. And that tells me that I made the right decision in sending you here.’

  I probed inside my head, and although he was absent right then, I could still feel the rawness of Willem’s scar. How could she have missed it? She hadn’t gone deep enough inside my psyche to see it, that’s how. She perhaps didn’t realize the depths of his damage. But how to broach this with her?

  ‘If... if it turns out that I’m not totally healed, at some point I mean,’ I said, hesitating as I chose the words. ‘Could you do this again?’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be no need for that, Dara. If my touch hasn’t given you the final healing you need, then, Great Goddess, I don’t think there’s any hope for you!’

  She was laughing at the idea of her own infallibility; Johanna was, after all, the Grand Master of the Kin, Keeper of Scarp. If she failed, then, I was indeed a hopeless case, and had no business being here on the island.

  ‘Do you feel better now?’ She was asking me this in all seriousness.

  I nodded, but my stomach felt like it had sunk into my boots. ‘Yeah, I mean yes. Thank you.’ I had to lie, for there was no way I would allow myself to be removed from the island, not now I had found my mother. A prisoner of the Kin, and perhaps of Johanna herself.

  ‘About that coin,’ she called after me as I turned to go. ‘Best leave it where it is for now. We’ll retrieve it once the summer comes.’

  Chapter 13

  A NICE LITTLE SHOW, my dear, and I think she fell for it! Willlem was amused. Oh, you are too precious. A woman after my own heart.

  ‘Go away.’ I gritted my teeth as I made my slow way down the grand staircase. ‘I am nothing like you.’

  The Kin are false. The tone of his whispers had changed. You know this, they have no love for you. You are merely Johanna’s pawn in this deadly game.

  ‘Stop it!’ I halted my feet on the last step, the better to concentrate on getting this sorcerer out of my head. My fingers were massaging my temples as if that would help take the pain away. ‘Just go! You have no business here. They may do wrong, but at least they’re better than you! I didn’t lie for you, but for my own sake. Just get out of my head!’

  A stifled gasp, a swish of fabric against stone. I looked up to see Pauline huddled against the corridor leading to the old part of the castle; her face was aghast. She turned and ran down the hallway, her heavy feet thudding gracelessly on the flagstones.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done,’ I muttered. ‘She’ll know something’s not right and she’ll let everyone know. If you’ve screwed up my chances here, I’ll kill you Willem.’

  I LEFT the coin where it was for now and worked extra hard after that in our sessions, trying to absorb as much knowledge as I could because I had a feeling I would need tools at my disposal during the times ahead. Despite what Sandy said, I knew my mother was being held in that tower, for we’d spoken, hadn’t we? I had to assume she was safe enough there until I could find the secret entrance; once I found the way in, I also knew I had to somehow discover how to get past the barriers the Kin had erected. Because if my mother was being held in the tower by magical means, well, it would take magic to get her out.

  And I was nowhere near ready for that yet. I couldn’t even work through a medium yet.

  Willem haunted me throughout the next few days; I could always feel him right there in the back of my mind, ready to pass commentary. I blocked him of course, but it seemed like he had wormed himself in me so deeply I couldn’t totally remove his presence. I was constantly aware of that sneering laugh echoing in the silence like a ghostly sound track.

  The times I wasn’t working on my spells and magic and trying to force life into that lifeless wand, I was in the library searching through ancient books, looking for a way to clean Willem out of my head. I was open to any suggestions, short of a lobotomy; though sometimes even that sounded good if it would just get rid of the echo of that laugh. I found nothing though. Absolutely nothing that could help.

  I suffered through Durand’s sessions, forcing myself to keep on top of everything he demanded. It was a challenge because unlike Rasmussen, Durand felt that we should already be completely familiar with the basics of Mind and that his job was to lead us further into the depths of this study. I had a lot of catch-up to do; fortunately I’d always been a quick study. And I had to admit, despite the level of complexity at which I was expected to perform, Pure Mind magic was a much more forgiving study than Physical Magic. Durand only wanted to see the end results, not the process, so I was allowed much more creative freedom in how I got there.

  Unfortunately, this meant he could claim any future failure on my part was not his fault.

  I usually kept my head down and the nose to the grindstone in his sessions; not just because I was making up for lost years of study, but also because the class tended to get chatty under his direction.

  I might have thrown in my lot with the Kin against Willem, but that didn’t mean I wanted anything else to do with them. Just listening to the conversations between them was bad enough – these witches took arrogance to a whole other level. But they also insisted on drawing me into them; or at least making me the subject of their jeering and tricks.

  And the more I tried to ignore them, the more attention they wanted to pay to me. Pauline in particular seemed intrigued by me after hearing me talking on the staircase. She knew something was up, and it burned her to have that curiosity unsatisfied.

  Durand didn’t even try to stop the nonsense. When I finally was able to force water to flow up the gradient, using only Mind, sure as shooting someone would be sending a stream of it right into my eye, much to the amusement of the class.

  Sandy and Fergie, of course, didn’t participate in this ill treatment of me. Sandy was quite open about his disdain toward the Kin, and if they gave me too hard a time was willing to speak out and tell them off.

  Fergie, not so much, but in a strange way I couldn’t blame her for she was dealing with her own demons. She would give me grimaces and eye-rolls behind their backs, but we were both well aware that if I hadn’t been there, she might have been the butt of their bullying. Her background was almost as much removed from the typical Kin upbringing as my own.

  But all the time, I was becoming more and more resentful of the Kin and all they represented. And Johanna, for being unable to tell her that Willem had not left my head and she hadn’t cured anything.

  The other four Kin continued to ramp up their efforts to bully and dishearten me. I don’t know why they felt the need to make me their scapegoat, surely I was already the lowest of the low, but perhaps picking on me shored up their own insecurities somehow. If anything, they were displaying the teamwork that Johanna had advised, just not for the Competition. They were a little more discrete when Sandy and Fergie were around, but I couldn’t hide behind my friends all the time.

  Things came to head one day in the Common Room. I had poked my nose in hoping to find Fergie, when I overheard Win going about Normals and half-bloods and how their only purpose was to serve the Kin. She was boasting to Oliver, who had been complaining that his family was not being given the proper respect t
hese days on his family estate.

  ‘In my grand-parents’ homeland, at least the Normals know their place. They respect that we are their overlords, and they give us proper obeisance,’ she said. ‘You English have been too lax, allowed too much of this democracy nonsense. You should have nipped it in the bud when it began.’

  I couldn’t stand it. I’d seen too much of how the Normals stuck in the Alt back home were treated; they were kept behind the veil in misery with no chance of breaking through, at the mercy of the supernaturals who fed on them, and all because of the Kin who kept the veil solidly in place.

  ‘You mean they’re your slaves, Win?’ I broke into their conversation from the doorway.

  Her lip curled up. ‘They know what is good for them,’ she said. ‘Normals need guidance, they are not our equals.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Pauline spoke up in rare agreement with Win. ‘Normals can’t possibly hope to compete without cheating.’

  ‘Yes,’ Timothy drawled as he lazily turned in his chair to look at me. ‘What’s this we hear? You’ve brought help with you in some way, eh?’

  ‘She was talking with someone,’ Pauline added spitefully. ‘And that person wasn’t here.’

  All four of them were staring at me now.

  ‘We don’t allow cheaters,’ Oliver whispered in a low menacing voice. ‘Cheaters get what is coming to them in the end.’

  ‘And there’s all sorts of accidents that could happen,’ Win said.

  ‘If one were caught cheating,’ Timothy added as his smooth face grew calculating and sinister.

  I fled, without even closing the door behind me. Dear God. They had to be worried that I was somehow planning to win the Competition; they thought that I brought someone in to help me. The level of their paranoia astounded me. If they only knew the truth what really was at stake for me.