An Enigmatic Witch Read online

  The dragonfly brooch, the one that had appeared out of nowhere one day. I smiled as I fingered the delicate gold wings and the bumps of the jewels in their settings. It was probably worth a lot of money, but more important to me, it was a present from Margaret Forsythe.

  ‘A gift from a friend,’ I told her. I wore it almost every day, touching it like a talisman, a reminder of the one witch in the world who, like me, carried the effects of the Crystal Charm Stone.

  Margaret was my hero. I wanted to be like her. She moved through the world carefree and powerful, unmindful of society’s and the Kin’s strictures, and she’d promised that she would teach me everything she knew. I fully intended to take her up on her offer, later, after I’d established myself with the Kin. I had so many plans for my life then, and believed there would be time for everything in my shiny bright future.

  We dropped Alice and Brin off in front of a funny little crooked two and a half story townhouse on a tiny lane off Casey Street. The dwelling had seen better days, many years ago perhaps. It slumped a little to the left like a drunk meandering home, and what was left of its vinyl siding was faded and dirty. The original clapboard was visible in spots where the siding had fallen off, the dark green marine paint of fifty years ago curled and peeling, and the top story had a definite sag between the two dormer windows.

  ‘This is Brin’s house,’ Alice said proudly as she got out of the SUV. ‘He’s renting it. It’s a little tired on the exterior, but really cozy inside. You need to come see it, later.’

  Last Christmas, the elf had been a refugee from Alt with an uncertain future here, but now he had somehow found the means and credit rating to rent a whole house for himself? I looked over to him where he stood outside Dad’s vehicle, the obvious question in my eyes, but he avoided me.

  ‘Thanks, Mr. de Teilhard,’ he said cheerily enough. ‘See you soon, Dara.’

  Yet he still didn’t look at me, just glanced over in my direction, not quite meeting my eyes.

  What was happening here? Before I’d left town, Brin had been a happy-go-lucky elf, ecstatic to be freed of the terrors of Alt, an open soul without the means to be devious. This inability to be false and calculating had been the reason the other elves had shunned him, and why he looked to escape. Everything was going well for him. Dad had even paved the way for his new citizenship and gotten him employment, perhaps he did all that as a favor to me. But right now my friend was hiding something, and he wasn’t schooled in the ways of deceit. Not like me.

  I would hound him this evening, make him tell me whatever was going on in his life. It couldn’t be that serious, not with Brin, for he was the gentlest, most unharmful creature I’d ever known.

  When we arrived back to Richmond Cottage, Mom’s family mansion on the hill, I could hardly believe my eyes at the changes which had occurred to the outside. Someone was spending a whack of cash to restore the old girl up to her former glory with fresh paint, and all the rotten clapboards and window frames had been replaced. The shrubberies were trimmed and the lawns mowed. The driveway had a layer of fresh asphalt, gleaming blackly in the morning sun.

  ‘Do you love it?’ Mom asked as she hugged me from behind.

  I took her hands and nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s fantastic,’ I said as I turned to her. ‘You’ve done all this since you got back?’

  She stepped aside a little to include Dad. I hadn’t realized he’d gotten out of the vehicle too. I shot daggers at him with my eyes, trying to get him to take the hint that he could go now, get back into his luxury vehicle and drive away back to his wife Cate and his estate and his rotten kids, my half-siblings.

  ‘This is Jon’s project,’ she said, beaming up at him. She took his hand, making us a circle with only the one broken link between me and my father. ‘He’s living with us now.’

  2

  We stared at each other in the warmth of the morning sun, me and Dad, across the divide of the years. Oh no, this was not happening. In my mind, he’d been half responsible for having her exiled to the Ice Kingdom in the first place. If not directly, then at least the evil Cate had certainly a hand in it and thus he was also guilty by default.

  This was supposed to be my home coming, my precious time of rest and relaxation to spend with Mom. I could not, would not have him around. But before I could even summon up the words to express my anger, he spoke out.

  ‘I told you Marian, it’s too soon.’ His tone was gentle. ‘You two need to reconnect, and it’s better if I’m not around.’ He turned to go.

  ‘Wait just a moment, Mister,’ Mom said, her hands on her hips and feet firmly planted on the ground. She glared at both of us in turn. ‘You’re not going anywhere, Jon. And Dara, this is your father, in case you don’t remember. We are a family unit, and now that he’s finally summoned the guts up to leave that wife of his, he lives here, with me and you. It’s my house, and my rules.’

  He left Cate? What was this? The arranged Kin marriages never, never publicly broke down. To do so would be to admit weakness to the outside world, that they were capable of making mistakes, and that wasn’t the Kin way at all.

  Before I could demand details, he walked over to Mom and laid his hands softly on her shoulders, caressing the cotton of her short sleeved sweater. They made a beautiful couple, no, a handsome couple, and it cut my heart to see how they fit together. ‘I’m going into the office for a few hours, you two need some time to yourselves.’ He turned to his SUV, then looked at me. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘What’s going on, Mom?’ I demanded of her before his vehicle had even left the driveway. ‘Why? How could you? Do you even know...’

  ‘What do you know of anything?’ She cut me off. We stared off, equally matched in height and looks, the only difference between us were the years and our life experiences.

  ‘He was responsible for you being taken to the Ice Kingdom, I know that,’ I finally spit at her.

  I had her there. She gaped at me like I’d slapped her in the face. ‘What utter nonsense.’ She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. ‘Sweetheart, you know nothing about that... that whole thing.’

  ‘So why don’t you tell me?’ I was not going to let this go. ‘I have a right to know what happened, who did it, and why. Mom, I’m working for the Kin now. I can get back at them, get revenge for you.’

  And whupping Cate’s ass would be a great and very satisfying start.

  ‘I’m powerful now, Mom,’ I said, as if she hadn’t heard the news. ‘I’m going places. I can...’

  She held her hand up. ‘Yes, Missy, I’ve heard all about what you got up to in Scarp and Edinburgh,’ she said, then her face melted and she slowly shook her head. ‘You are so your father’s daughter. My little idealist, my dreamer.’ She took me in her arms and almost smothered me with the strength of her hug.

  ‘I can’t tell you the whole ins and outs of what happened,’ she murmured into my hair. ‘I simply can’t, not yet. Come with me, let’s just have a day for us, in peace, no quarreling. Trust me that you will hear the story. Sometime soon.’

  I had to let it go, for now anyway. But there was still the matter of Jon to be discussed, and no way was I going to let that drop.

  I waited till she had the tea steeping in the pot and everything set out for a late breakfast. Croissants and my favorite bagel sandwiches, and we were drinking from the fancy china teacups that used to belong to my great-grandmother – it was as if Martha Stewart had taken over the house. I’d forgotten how Mom loved the fancy little touches, and I smiled despite myself. In the ten years that it had just been me and Edna here, we’d been a lot less formal. Tea had been made in the mug with the bag left in, the bread sat in its plastic bag on the cutting board next to the peanut butter, and every flat surface had been taken over by clutter.

  Today, the kitchen shone in the early morning light, the fridge handle gleamed and even the old farm sink was spotless with no sign of the two-year old blue dye stains I’d grown used to.

 
‘Freshly squeezed orange juice?’ She brandished the glass jug as the smell of sunshine and childhood permeated the room.

  ‘That would be nice. Really nice.’ I hadn’t realized just how starving I was. I ate in silence for the first few minutes, the only sounds were the birds chirruping around the feeder outside the open window. She looked at me the whole while, a smile on her face as if she was bursting with pride at the woman I’d become. It was a good feeling to sit in that gaze.

  ‘So,’ I said after I’d swallowed the last of the orange juice in my glass and let her top up my tea from the pot. ‘Jon. What gives?’

  ‘We’d always dreamed of this,’ she said after a pause. ‘Then, things... happened.’ She brushed her hair from her face.

  ‘But leaving his marriage? I thought Witch Kin marriages were forever.’

  She nodded and sighed, and folded her hands together on the tabletop. ‘Yes. I know, right? Unthinkable for the Kin. But times have changed, and now Cate’s kids are just about grown, and I’d returned, so we thought – why live our lives according to someone else’s rules? Why not be happy?’

  I kept my lips firmly shut as thoughts and feelings ran amok through me, and my face was blank of emotion, just like Hugh had taught me. But how about me? I longed to ask. What’s my place in this new order?

  She smiled, taking my silence for acceptance. ‘We can be a family again, a real family, like we always should have been.’ She spread her arms all around. ‘And the house, Jon is doing it all up for us, bit by bit. It’s going to be restored to the grandeur it should have.’

  And why couldn’t he have done this over the past ten years, for me? I swallowed the words, not allowing them to escape my lips.

  ‘Dad...’ I began. How to start? I hated to burst her Happy-Families bubble, but it just wasn’t going to happen. ‘Dad and I don’t get along real well.’

  How could I begin to tell her the hurts I’d suffered at his words and treatment of me over the years?

  She nodded. ‘He told me all about the difficult times during your adolescence,’ she said. ‘But...’

  ‘My adolescence?’ I cut her off. ‘It wasn’t me. It was him and Sasha and Cate and they were all so horrible to me!’ I slammed my hands down on the table, causing the fine china cups to rattle in their saucers. ‘Do you know the hell I went through for the past ten years? The poverty we suffered?’

  At this, her mouth drew into a thin line, and she sat back in her chair. ‘Jon supported this household the whole time, despite Cate’s insistence that he cut you off. He loves you Dara Martin, you may not realize this, but he loves you like you are a part of his very soul.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it!’ I was shouting now, I couldn’t hold back any longer. ‘How could you? You’re just listening to him and his side of the story, he’s got you so blinded that you can’t see anything. And how can you let him move in here? This is my house too, not his. He doesn’t belong here!’

  She got up from the table and stiffly gathered the china to hand wash in the sink, her actions speaking the words she didn’t have to say.

  I sat with my head in my hands, feeling like absolute shit with the sinking feeling I’d just ruined my homecoming, the special time for me and Mom, and I wished with all my heart I could unsay those words, stuff those emotions deep inside me. Some Kin worker I would make. Ensign Martin couldn’t even get past the ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ rule that was requisite for a witch, the one that said strength was measured in unemotionality. I could almost cry, but I felt utterly spent.

  Then her hands were on my shoulders, rubbing them softly. ‘Come with me, sweetie,’ she whispered. ‘I want to show you the garden.’

  She led me through the house, into the parlor with the high French windows. They were no longer nailed shut against the elements, and the shutters were wide open. The summer sun streamed through the spotless, polished glass of the doors.

  ‘We’re doing the courtyard garden up for you,’ she said. ‘It was always your favorite spot.’ She stood back to watch my reaction.

  Now the tears came streaming down my cheeks. The tall cedar hedge which shielded the space from wind and onlookers had been neatly trimmed, and the new growth was already glowing greenly. This must have been one of the first jobs she’d tackled on her return. About half of the courtyard was free from weeds, showing the beautiful paving as I remembered it, no yellow dandelions or grass, just the creeping lemon thyme between the flat blue, red and green slates.

  And the fish fountain – oh, my sweet fish fountain! The green verdigris had almost all been scrubbed off him, and he glowed bright copper in the sunlight, the water cascading like a shower of diamonds from his mouth. We stood in the open doorway, me in her arms. Despite all the care the rest of the house required to bring it back to glory – the dusting and polishing and plastering and painting, she’d begun in my garden. She’d done this for me, knowing I would return, even if just for a visit.

  I turned and hugged Mom, relaxing, feeling the love flow between us, and I knew, for her, I had to swallow my pride and shut up about Jon. His presence made her happy, and he was going to be a fixture in our house. I had my own life now, I’d flown the nest and I was now the visitor in her home.

  But that didn’t mean I had to like it. Or him.

  The one positive aspect of this whole situation was that Cate must be pissing mad by now, and that was consolation of a kind.

  We hung out for the rest of the day just the two of us, she was cooking and baking the whole time while I drank endless cups of tea and helped myself to whatever came out of the oven. I missed Edna in this hang-out, it used to be the three of us around the kitchen table. Mom went into a further explanation of how Mark had taken early retirement from the RCMP, and the writer-in-residence program had opened up in the south of France, and it had been such perfect timing for them they couldn’t say no.

  ‘So how is Mark filling his days in France, of all places? I suppose he can speak the lingo, the RCMP are all bilingual these days.’ I paused and let the smell of brownies baking fill my nostrils. There was never a more homely and comforting aroma than the glorious combination of chocolate, brown sugar and vanilla, steaming fresh from the oven.

  ‘He’s discovered a love of cooking, so he’s taking some kind of Cordon Bleu course.’

  I smiled to think of big Mark in an apron and chef’s hat. It would suit him.

  The long afternoon morphed into the evening. The smell of macaroni and cheese now filled the kitchen, the extra layer of shredded cheddar on top getting all crispy and brown just as we loved it. The chat was idle now, the catch up of funny stories of what had gone on in my life, well, things I could laugh about now that the danger was past.

  ‘Jane has three babies of her own,’ Mom echoed with a smile. ‘Little Jane who used to walk you to school.’ She shook her head in wonder.

  ‘She started having youngsters early,’ I said. Mom could even make salad taste good, she added all sorts of things that weren’t vegetables, like goat cheese and cranberries. I swallowed the last mouthful down. ‘But she continued on at high school after she had the first.’

  ‘And a changeling? You really think the fae got the baby and switched her out?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell. The kid gave me the stink-eye whenever it saw me after that, so yeah, I think so. Babies usually like me.’

  Dad didn’t reappear that whole time, allowing me to pretend that he hadn’t moved in, hadn’t usurped my place in the household. I finally shoved myself away from the table and prepared to make my way to go down and catch up with Alice. We were going to meet by the river, walk a bit along the trail, or maybe in the other direction down to the lighthouse at Fort Amherst right at the mouth of the harbor. Didn’t matter much where we went as long as we generally just hung out, like in the old days. And I really needed the exercise.

  She was waiting for me on the footbridge with a big smile on her face at my approach. She didn’t let me hug her this time,
but that was just Alice.

  ‘So what’s been happening over the past months?’ I asked as we turned to walk down Southside Road, heading east.

  We talked back and forth. She told me about the Master’s program she was accepted into come the fall, and I gave her an edited version of the happenings in my life. I say edited because although Alice had come a long way from when she had denied that the whole super natural and magic thing existed, she still had a hard time acknowledging that it was real.

  Even though her boyfriend was an elf. Even though she had a strain of elf blood in her. And even though the ghost of her dead nan saved the day last year, showing us the path through her secret berry patch.

  But I didn’t push it.

  ‘And how about Brin? He seems to be doing well, he seemed pretty happy this morning.’ I didn’t touch on the strange tenseness I’d felt emanating from him.

  ‘Yeah, he’s thriving,’ she laughed, and flicked her long colorless hair from her face. Once I’d realized that she was part elf, it wasn’t hard to see it – tall and slim, smart as a whip, and she had the general look of elfness in her hair and ears. ‘I know you and your dad don’t get along, but I have to say, Jon has done so much for Brin. He is such a nice guy!’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I guess, if you say so.’ I kicked a pebble out of my path, then noticed that we were outside the entrance to the Dwarf Hall now. The heavy oak door was firmly closed and there no signs of life in the vicinity, for we weren’t in Alt, but I picked up my pace and hurried Alice along too. Just in case. I’d annoyed the dwarves last fall, and that species liked to hold on to their grudges long past the sell-by date.

  Once we were safely past the caves and almost at the breakwater, I resumed the conversation about Brin. ‘So he’s working at Dad’s company, has his own house – what else is he doing with himself?’

  She smiled again, fondly. ‘You’d never guess in a million years. He’s turning political.’

  I laughed, because it was hard to picture my elf friend getting involved with the mainstream parties, either Liberal or Conservative. ‘He must be a socialist, is he?’ I surprised myself with a yawn, and only then realized what a long day it had been, getting up so early on the other side of the ocean and following the dawn home. What with that and eating all day, I was ready to sleep right where I was. I had to get home to my bed real soon.