An Obstinate Witch

by E M Graham

  ‘Oh, well then, alright,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not in the daylight, y’idiot.’ He looked askance as if I knew nothing. He shoved the last bite of chocolate cake into his mouth and tossed his napkin to the breeze. ‘Besides, I want m’new boots first. Never trust a witch.’

  He sniffed loudly and added, ‘And you might not make it back from the dungeon.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said, sitting back down. I had no desire to find Willem anyway, not if it really was him. In fact, I’d prefer to live the rest of my life with not seeing him ever again. But I had to meet Auld Meg. ‘Fair enough. Let’s do it now. Where does one buy goblin boots?’

  His face fell at this, and he thought for a minute. ‘You said you haven’t got any silver or gold.’

  ‘Correct. No cash. Just a credit card and a bus pass.’

  ‘That’s no good.’ He looked up at me, and then down at my own Doc Martens. He sidled his foot next to mine.

  ‘You’re not getting my boots!’ I’d had to beg and plead for those last year from Aunt Edna, and they were just getting broken in now. ‘Forget that idea, it’s not happening.’

  ‘No, no,’ Trevor said in his most wheedling voice. ‘I don’t want yours, they stink of you. But we’re about the same size, so I think...’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘You can buy a pair to fit you with your magic card, and they will be for me.’

  He made perfect sense, that little green humanoid, and I couldn’t argue with his logic. So we traipsed down off the Royal Mile and along a wide avenue to a less ancient, although not so nice, part of town. The buildings were not so tall but still made from the same dark grey stone, and the shop windows fronted right onto the street. We passed fish and chip shops, a dingy looking mechanics’ garage, a curry take-out and finally, a thrift store belonging to some charity. He bounced up and down excitedly outside this shop, peering into the smutty window.

  ‘This is it! Oooh, I can feel them in there, waiting for me. Oh, come, quick, stop dawdling!’

  I had to push the door open, for apparently goblins were banned from entering human business places, but he raced inside ahead of me once the way was clear. On the back wall of the shop were racks of dusty used footwear, some of it not looking fit for anything, but he was like a kid in Willy Wonka’s candy store.

  I smiled over at the woman behind the counter, fairly confident she couldn’t see that I was accompanied by a goblin. Non-witches can’t, you see, as they’re totally not expecting to. Says a lot about people and the state of our minds in that we only see what we expect to see.

  There were no other customers inside.

  His hand was hovering over a pair of pink sparkly running shoes. The kind with satin bows and electric lights in the sole.

  ‘No, sorry,’ I muttered loud enough only for him. ‘Those are too small.’

  He looked at me indignantly. ‘No, they look perfect! You have rotten taste, look at the boring old boots you choose to wear, when you have this wide array open to you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Try it then. I can tell just by looking that they wouldn’t fit me.’

  He sat on the floor and peeled off his old boots. They were definitely on their last legs, for even as he removed them from his feet the leather on one side fell apart in his hands. Trevor opened the laces of the pretty sparkly pink shoe as wide as he could, and he squished and he squeezed, but it wasn’t going further than his elongated toes.

  ‘Didn’t you ever read Cinderella?’ I bent down and took it from him before his claws ripped through the thin canvas. ‘Try these.’

  I held out a pair of sensible yellow leather work boots in my size. They weren’t in bad condition really, just a little scuffed, and they had steel toes. Quite a bargain at the price.

  He shook his head and scowled like a toddler. ‘No, they’re ugly.’

  ‘You can’t wear sparkly shoes, the other goblins will laugh at you.’

  Trevor shook his head and resolutely ignored the heavy footwear in my hands, searching back on the shelves for something else. His eye settled on a handsome pair of red high heel lace-up boots, leftovers from the previous century if the layer of dust on them was anything to go by.

  Like a child again, he stared up at me, willing me to let him try them on.

  ‘Fine, go for it.’ I sighed as I passed them to him. They didn’t look like they would last any amount of time on the cobblestones and gutters of the Old Town. The leather was thin and rubbed, the shiny bits flaking off already.

  However, they fit him. He wobbled a little as he stood up, but soon mastered the art of prancing in the heels. He refused to take them off so I brought the tag up to the woman behind the counter.

  The goblin really owed me now, and I intended to get the Kin’s money’s worth from him.

  ‘SO WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MEET Auld Meg, anyway?’ The goblin’s face was glum as we back walked along Leith Walk. He’d been very quiet, and was no longer prancing in his high heel boots. He was probably learning what all women have learnt for the past couple of centuries – just because the footwear looks fab, doesn’t mean you can actually do anything in it. ‘It’s not normal, wanting to come face to face with the wickedest witch to ever live. You know, I’d rather not...’

  I’d been thinking hard too, the whole while, but not about fashion. Thoughts of Hugh and his apparent betrayals – although, okay, I could see where he was coming from, but that didn’t make it easier to swallow. And thoughts of Fergie, how she was suddenly so much happier than I’d ever seen her. And thoughts of my mom, and how she was stuck in the Ice Kingdom, and I still couldn’t get to her.

  But foremost, of course, was Auld Meg and her secrets. She might be evil, as Trevor seemed to think, but we were the only witches to have this huge thing in common. We’d both touched the Crystal Charm Stone and lived to tell the tale. I could only hope I wasn’t to share her fate.

  ‘Wicked or not, she might be able to teach me something about interdimensional travel,’ I answered him, absently. ‘I need to get to the Ice Kingdom.’

  He stopped next to me and grabbed at my sweater. ‘The Ice Kingdom!’ he squawked. ‘You’re going there?’

  I’m trying to.’ I tried to brush his hands off me, but he wasn’t letting go. ‘Where ever it is.’

  ‘The Ice King is a terrible being,’ he said, shaking his head. I could almost smell the fear coming off him. ‘You don’t ever want to go there.’

  I stared at him, casting my mind back to the glimpses I’d had of the king, all hairy and roaring and covered with animal skins, sitting on his throne of antlers, and I nodded my head. ‘Yeah, I don’t want to. But I have to.’ I pushed the goblin away from me and starting walking again.

  He hopped up and down next to me, then bounced to catch up with my pacing. ‘He’s legendary amongst Goblinhood and others. He is more horrible than the worst trolls. He will.... he will eat you!’

  ‘Really? I don’t think so.’ I was sceptical with the confidence of one who’d lived all her life at the top of the food chain, and after all, Mom had been there for the better part of ten years without being made into a meal yet. I was pretty sure Trevor had listened to too many tall tales. ‘Well, if I don’t meet your Auld Meg, I’ll never get there, I’m afraid. Or at least, not in the next couple of years.’

  Trevor continued on by my side, his hands glumly stuck in his ragged pockets. ‘No one who ever goes there comes back,’ he said, his voice full of doom.

  I turned on him. ‘Why do you care what I do? I’m not asking you to accompany me. I just want you to lead me to this old witch so I can get information from her. Then your job is finished.’

  ‘I wish it was that easy,’ he mumbled. Trevor was quiet for a while, then after a quick glance to his left and his right, he gave a nod. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said bravely. ‘I’ll bring you to the witch. Tomorrow night at the stroke of midnight, meet me at St. Giles.’

  With that, he slip
ped into a narrow alley, leaving me to plod my own way back up the long road to Mrs. Mac’s house.

  9

  ‘WHY DOES THE VENERABLE NACHTAN hate me so much?’ This burst out of me as soon as we had left the castle grounds, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I kicked at a discarded popcorn carton and watched as it bounced down the hill a little, but that action wasn’t enough to relieve my frustration.

  Another day of the ancients’ snarky comments while Hugh earnestly tried to teach me all the things I would need to know in my future, like how to construct a shield against defence under fire, and how to disable another magic worker who had evil intents. The important, real, interesting stuff. But Nachtan would interrupt and start jawing on about how I knew nothing of the ancient Greeks, and how they had contributed to this bit of knowledge as if anyone really cared how it had come about, and then the thread of concentration would be broken and Hugh would have to begin all over again when the old guy finally shut up. If we could just be let alone to have our classes, we’d get so much further along, and faster.

  Hugh sighed in agreement and quickly squeezed my hand before letting it go again. ‘He doesn’t hate you,’ he began.

  ‘No?’ I cut in. ‘Then why does he act like he does? He contradicts every single thing I say, his automatic answer is ‘No, that’s not correct’. He makes me feel like I’m one foot high, and the way he’s always staring at me like I’m some sort of nasty bug he found in his dish, and he doesn’t let me out of his sight, even when he’s ignoring me, as if he thinks I’m going to steal his pen or something.’

  He stopped to look at me, registering my frustration and gave a short nod as if he’d made a decision on action.

  ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Come on. I’m going to answer your questions.’ He turned left down Ramsay Lane towards Mrs. Mac’s house. I scurried to keep up with him, his long legs were covering the distance quickly.

  But he didn’t take another left into the alley where I was staying, we kept on going down Mound Place towards the New Town. I’d never been down this way before. Over the iron railing, I could see the spread of green lawns and trees that was the Prince’s Street Gardens and further along on the other side of the road the majestic building of the National Gallery.

  ‘Where’re you taking me?’ I asked when we stopped to watch a train come out through the tunnel beneath the grand buildings.

  ‘My flat,’ he said in a low voice as he placed his arm around me in a quick hug. ‘That’s the one place we can talk and I know we won’t be overheard.’

  We went on in silence, side by side, our arms not even touching, yet I could feel the heat of his body like an aura. What with all the excitement of coming to Edinburgh, and the things that happened to me so far, I’d never even wondered where Hugh lived, his home base, where he spent his time when he wasn’t with me or on Kin business.

  We walked for quite a ways through the streets of grand Georgian homes and ended up cutting through a park, he told me it was the Queen Street Gardens (Edinburgh wasn’t very imaginative when it came to naming parks) , until we finally stood outside yet another elegant tall building on Abercrombie Place. It was a terrace of houses, all built at the same time and of the same stone, each with tall Georgian windows and grand front entrances. He led me down stone steps into a tiny terrace.

  ‘You live in a basement apartment?’ I was somehow expecting something much more luxurious for Hugh’s abode, something grander or at least a little cooler.

  ‘No, I live in the garden flat,’ he chided me with a smile as he unlocked the black painted door.

  ‘It’s below ground,’ I said to him. ‘It’s still a basement apartment, no matter how you try to pretty up the name.’

  All the bottom floor apartments that I’d seen back home were cramped spaces, architectural afterthoughts created with the express purpose of helping to pay inflated mortgages. They inevitably had low ceilings and little natural light, so I was shocked to walk into the very opposite of that. The ceilings were high and light and the whole center hallway had an expansive, airy feel. Large windows made the rooms on either side feel like we weren’t in a basement at all, and through the window of the room on my left and above the iron railing on the street level, I could see the greenery of the trees from the park across the road.

  Yet the flat was sparsely furnished, holding just the basic furniture needed for living, a single sofa in the living room with a modestly sized TV, a bed and nightstand in the bedroom. There were no carpets on the blonde wood floors, no artwork on the walls, and no clutter to speak of, nothing that made it a home.

  The kitchen, while it held large stainless steel appliances, had a dusty unused air about it. There weren’t even crumbs around the red toaster on the counter, the only object in the place with a bit of colour.

  ‘Cook much?’

  He shrugged with a small grin. ‘Nah, who has time for that?’ He passed by the outside door which led to a tiny green space in the back, then gave a small thump to a spot on the wainscoting. Before I could ask him what he was doing, a portion of the wall swung away to reveal a darkened doorway.

  Hugh looked at me and indicated his head. I approached the darkness, and saw an iron staircase spiralling down.

  It wasn’t the steepness of the steps that made me shiver as I paused in the doorway, it was the aura of magic I could feel like a buffering wall. I stroked it with a single finger, it gave a little but sprung back with the firmness and buoyancy of a wall of water.

  ‘What is this?’ I murmured, sticking my finger in more and feeling it gently repulsed like a magnetic force. ‘How’d you do it?’

  ‘Please, enter into my cave,’ he said, bowing slightly. He grinned with pride and snapped his fingers.

  The buffering wall disappeared from my touch and lights appeared in the room below. Once we were at the bottom, he gave yet another click and the doorway closed back over, the wall neatly in place.

  ‘This is the only place we can talk where I know we won’t be overheard,’ he said. This cellar room, like the apartment above us, was all white walls and light coloured wooden floors. There were no windows down here though, but discreet lighting in the ceiling lit the space, showing a haphazardly furnished room. Two large armchairs faced each other, they looked like leftovers from World War II, the nubbly red jacquard all faded to pink. Several generations of cats may have used these chairs as scratching posts in the last century. A wooden table that looked like it had never been varnished or painted stood against one wall, a plain empty surface. Battered filing cabinets stood in a corner, and by them a large bookcase, half filled with papers and books and various clutter. A small apartment sized fridge was the only modern item down here.

  ‘Beer?’ Hugh asked as he reached in and drew out two bottles. He expertly twisted off the caps before handing me one.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, still speechless at this surprising room deep underground, so much like an iron-lined bunker in its intention. This was a fortress, I could feel the magical spells of protection thrumming just beyond my consciousness, but the question I had to ask was Why?

  WE SAT IN FACING EACH OTHER in the armchairs, which I discovered were much more comfortable than they looked.

  ‘Why, indeed,’ Hugh said after he took a good long swallow of his beer. ‘I’m not sure where to start.’

  ‘Who are you hiding from?’

  ‘Not hiding from, as much as choosing to have privacy from,’ he corrected me.

  ‘The Kin?’ I couldn’t believe it, for Hugh was an integral part of the ruling Kin. ‘This whole set up is really necessary to be private from the Kin?’

  ‘Yes, it is. There’s a faction of them,’ he admitted, his green eyes frank. ‘I told you Cromwell runs the Uncommon Forces. He’s the military, the policing arm of the Kin. He’s also, as you’ve found out, the head of the Covenanters, the branch of the witches who still follow the traditional lines of thinking.’

  ‘And the Covenanters
were the ones responsible for the witch hunts and burnings, centuries ago,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they attempted to scourge the land of all the Halflings who had magic in their veins. They wanted to purify the blood lines.’

  His face was twisted in disgust. I’d never seen him be so open with his inner thoughts before.

  ‘And they still do,’ I suggested.

  He nodded. ‘Fortunately the witch hunts were outlawed.’

  ‘You’re a half-blood, like me,’ I said slowly. ‘What I’ve never understood is, why is your half-blood status so accepted in the Kin? Remember when we first met, down by the harbour back home. How is it that you were able to rise in the Kin?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said, shrugging it off. ‘My family are the Earls of Brannoch. We’re aristocracy, reaching back many centuries. Cromwell and his crowd have no choice but to admit us into the Kin.’

  ‘You’re related to royalty?’ This was a new one on me – he’d never even hinted it before.

  ‘Not particularly recently, we’re not,’ he replied in an off-hand manner, then he took another swig of beer. ‘Not to the present incumbents, the Windsors, at any rate. But I actually rank higher than Cromwell, who is only a Baron.’

  ‘Wait, rank higher? Does that mean...’

  He grinned at me in a very unaristocratic manner. ‘Yes, when dear old Dad pops it, I’ll be the next Earl.’

  ‘Oh.’ I sat back in the armchair. I really hadn’t seen that one coming.

  ‘It’s nothing, not like we’re uber-rich or anything,’ he continued as if to reassure me.

  ‘Just... plain old rich, and titled.’

  ‘Depends on your perspective, but I guess you’re right.’ He nodded, then picked up the thread of his story again. ‘So Cromwell uses his privileged position to pretty much well do as he likes. He usually stays within the lines of acceptable behavior, but I can’t trust him not to have spies everywhere. Hence, this charming little private den.’