An Obstinate Witch

by E M Graham

  But no. Those thoughts were madness, and I knew the steel reality that lurked behind the rosy false picture Willem painted. We would not be free to live happily ever after, me and my Mom, for I would live on the edges of society, always fleeing, never settling, always on the run from the Kin and their laws.

  13

  THE NEXT DAY WHEN I ARRIVED at the Venerable Nachtan’s chamber, we were alone, just me and the old witch in the large dusty chamber.

  ‘Sabarin has been called out of town,’ he informed me, looking down his long nose at me from his seat behind the oak table as if this inconvenience was my fault.

  I slumped onto my stool in disappointment, and truth be told I was more than a little annoyed, too. I’d held off on phoning Hugh late last night with the news of Willem’s reappearance, because I didn’t want to deal with the details and situation in which I’d found out. This morning in the light of a new day, however, I’d girded my loins and had been prepared to confess, because this was more important than me breaking the Kin’s silly rules about curfew.

  The sound of the Venerable Nachtan clearing his throat made me look up. He was watching me carefully. ‘Is there anything you wish to tell me?’

  Did he know about my visit to Auld Meg’s dungeon last night? My eyes darted over to the crystal sphere in its corner. It was covered now by a large square of black velvet.

  Nachtan didn’t miss that movement and his steely gaze bore into mine.

  ‘There is,’ I said, and I swallowed past a hard lump in my throat. ‘Something the Kin needs to know about.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  Okay, the ancient relic was aware of what had happened, but I pushed on. ‘Willem de Vriejs is in Edinburgh. I saw him.’

  His white and wiry eyebrows rose in surprise. It might be the first emotion I’d ever seen him express, apart of course, from his distaste at my presence. ‘Indeed?’

  ‘He was....’ I had no choice but to confess, at least to part of the story. ‘He followed me into a pub last night, down by the Cowgate. He... he wanted me to join him.’

  Nachtan looked at me levelly for a long moment. ‘And you refused?’

  ‘Yes!’ I burst out. ‘I’m not having anything to do with him, ever.’ I must have been pretty fervent and convincing because the old witch merely nodded.

  ‘Then we must do something about this,’ he said decisively. ‘It’s too bad you didn’t alert someone at the time,’ he couldn’t help but add.

  I told him everything I knew, except for the part of Willem getting into my head, and anything about his offer to get me to the Ice Kingdom for I was pretty sure that if Cromwell knew I wanted to do this, he would use it as an excuse to lock me up. Of course, I didn’t mention the visit to the Vaults, and if Nachtan knew about that, he didn’t say anything.

  He left the room to send on my report. When he returned, there was a new look in his eyes, almost respect when he looked at me.

  ‘Now for today’s plan. With Hugh called away on Kin business, I will take this opportunity to coach you in your sadly lacking knowledge of the Greek influence on the development of magic.’

  I groaned inside. It was going to be a morning of dusty old lectures. ‘Don’t you want me to help find Willem?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Nachtan assured me as he sat back in his chair. ‘Elder Cromwell’s forces are on that. You could not possibly add to their search. Now. Pythagorus and his contribution as the basis of all magic practiced by the Kin.’

  He loved the subject, I could tell by the spark in his eyes as he waxed on endlessly about it. However, this wasn’t getting me any closer to my goals.

  HUGH HAD BEEN CALLED AWAY FOR A LONG TIME.

  ‘At least a week,’ he said on the phone that evening.

  I lay on the bed in my little attic room with my legs dangling out over the side. ‘What’s going on?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, can’t give details,’ he said, his voice stilted with discomfort, then he changed the subject. ‘But how’re things in Edinburgh?’

  I told him the same bits I told Nachtan. Funny how no one had chastised me for breaking curfew. I was starting to get the impression that this rule wasn’t so important.

  ‘No, I agree with the Venerable Nachtan,’ he said. ‘It’s best you don’t get involved. The Uncommon Forces will be on Willem’s tail, and you don’t want to get within firing range of them.’

  We nattered on a bit after that, about nothing in particular. He assured me he missed him, and vice versa, and I complained about the VN’s boring old lectures about the stupid ancient Greeks, and how I didn’t see I could learn much from all this.

  Hugh merely laughed at that. ‘You’d be surprised what gems can be hidden in Nachtan’s teachings,’ he said. ‘And Pythagorus? That’s an odd choice for him. We spent four months on Eurypides alone before we even touched on the later Greeks. He must have a reason for it, and you might want to pay close attention.’

  When we‘d hung up, I lay back on the bed and sighed, kicking my feet. In a week’s time I would be that much closer to the full moon and its effects on my power, the powers I was hoping to use to get me to bridge the dimensions to the Ice Kingdom, yet I still hadn’t figured out a way to get there.

  And after last night’s brush with Willem, it was more important than ever. I’d pretended not to care what he said, but still his message rang home with me. Yes, it was quite possible that at any moment Cromwell could have me seized on a trumped up charge, and I’d lose my chances forever. On the other hand, I could go along with Auld Meg, but freeing that witch would turn me into just as much of an outlaw as if I’d actually taken Willem upon his offer. The only choices I had were bad choices, but I was determined never to go that route again. Despite my unsteady footing with the Kin, I had to at least try to behave according to their rules.

  I WAS EXPECTED TO STUDY with the old witch now with Hugh gone, as if there was no time to waste in getting my head stuffed full of knowledge about the origins of magic in the Western world. Why this was so important, I couldn’t quite comprehend.

  And all of this wasn’t getting me any closer to my goal of going to the Ice Kingdom to vanquish the King and free my mother. After all, it wasn’t as simple a matter as thumbing a lift on a fishing trawler that was headed to the ice fields, nor could I use my (considerable) skill at ‘flying’ my mind over the area to scout it out. I had to actually be present in the Ice Kingdom in order to effect change, and to do that, I had to move between dimensions. And I didn’t have a clue how to do that.

  Yes, I had gone there with my mind, I had seen my mom and spoke with her, and seen the Ice King himself in all his terrible glory. I’d seen her again, or a leftover flash in Willem’s presence. And I did try again, lying in my dormer room at night, yet nothing happened. I guess I needed the proximity of the Charm Stone to do that, or to hold her talisman which Johanna had confiscated.

  Yet, my destination wasn’t on the same physical plane as my human body, so none of my present knowledge could serve me in this quest. If I could only find a portal, any door into the Kingdom, I believed that my full-moon power would get me where I wanted to be, no problem.

  Hugh’s suggestion that Nachtan was trying to tell me something did cause me to pay more attention to his lectures, and this diligence paid off, for it was the Venerable Nachtan himself who gave me the first hint of how to get somewhere else. All week long he’d been jawing on about Pythagorus, who I’d always thought was a mathematician, but apparently that great ancient was one of the first witches to practice magic.

  ‘Excuse me.’ I had to interrupt his flow. ‘Pythagorus. Did you say he was able to be in two places at once?’

  Maybe that was the solution for me. If the Kingdom was not in the same physical dimension, then I could be in two places at once, correct?

  ‘This is the first documented instance of this, yes.’ Nachtan peered over his glasses. He looked almost pleased at my interrupti
on.

  ‘And it wasn’t simply astral projection? He was able to go there?’

  ‘According to his peers, yes, he interacted with them and physical objects at the same time, in different physical places,’ Nachtan replied, then gave a small smile, the sides of his face threatening to crack. ‘You seem taken with the idea.’

  ‘I find it fascinating.’ I wasn’t lying. ‘How exactly would you suggest he did this?’

  Nachtan gazed at the high round dome in thought, then shook his head. ‘He wrote about it, but we don’t know that this was the actual route he used to accomplish it,’ he said. ‘However, the action is certainly possible from a metaphysical stand point.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘One would need to draw on an external point of power, in order to split oneself into two, so to speak, and one must also have prior knowledge of the destination.’

  ‘Like knowing where the destination is?’

  ‘Much more than that. One must know the destination. One must have breathed the air, had some emotional attachment of a kind, that is what I mean by truly knowing. One must be carrying a part of the destination within oneself, in order for one to arrive there. Pythagorus was very familiar with his destination – it was his childhood home, by all accounts.’

  Well, I’d never been to the Ice Kingdom, except my mind had. And my mother was there. Was that emotional attachment enough? And surely the external point of power – I would reach that with the full moon. I didn’t need to be in the vicinity of the Crystal Charm Stone to draw on its power, not like the last time, for its power was already within me, waiting to be drawn out with the tides and the moon.

  ‘And if,’ I cut in before Nachtan had a chance to begin clearing his throat again. ‘If, hypothetically speaking that is, one had the emotional connection, and the power, what more would one need to do to be physically in two places at once?’

  ‘Well.’ He leaned against the oak table which took up so much space in the room, and he rubbed his nose. ‘I’ve never had that question before. Let me think.’

  He began to mutter to himself while pacing the room. I sat quietly, my excitement growing. Could it be this easy?

  The Venerable Nachtan gave an exclamation, then pulled a book out off one of the many shelves. ‘Of course! This,’ he said. ‘This may be just what we’re looking for.’

  He beamed at me. ‘Yes, here it is,’ he nodded, his finger pointing to the open page. ‘Parakinesi gia ti metafora!’

  I jumped up and ran to examine the book, but my hopes were soon dashed. ‘It’s... I can’t read this. It’s Greek again, isn’t it?’

  Yes, success of a sort, although it would be hard won, but I figured I could easily google the translation for the particular text I needed. I had a whole two weeks till the moon was full again. I would be seeing my mother pretty soon, I knew it. I could feel it in my bones.

  ‘It’s been many years...’ He gazed at the book with something approaching fondness, but then my words must have registered. ‘Can’t read the Greek,’ he muttered under his breath. He frowned and shook his head and drew in a breath as if about to say something else, but shut his mouth quickly and fixed me with his beady glare.

  I stayed silent, for anything I said would probably give him reason to abuse me again.

  After what seemed a long time, he spoke again, slowly. ‘When I was a young man, with the idealism that goes hand in hand with youth, I once had a fancy to translate the greatest works of magical knowledge to make them accessible.’

  He tapped his fingers on the table in front of him as he looked off into the distance of that long-gone time. ‘I didn’t finish it, for it was a foolhardy venture,’ he continued. ‘However, I did manage to translate up to Pythagoras into the vernacular. I still have this manuscript somewhere.’ The glimmer of a small light was growing in his eye.

  I hated to disappoint him, but I had to confess. ‘I can’t read Latin either.’

  This caused a withering look from him. ‘You are the most ignorant of creatures, are you not? The vernacular means the common language. In simple words, I translated these works into English. A waste of time, obviously, but my excuse was that I was young and infatuated.’

  He immediately and loudly cleared his throat to stem any comments I might have the nerve to make after this confession of vulnerability, but I wasn’t going to say a word to dissuade him from giving me his work. In fact, I held my breath, not wanting to say or do anything that might interrupt this train of thought.

  He glanced over to the wall of his study, and I could have sworn his eyes alit on the large covered orb for a fraction of a second. He harrumphed again, then walked to the most untidy of the book cases. ‘It must still be here somewhere.’

  It took a bit of rummaging, but he eventually found what he sought. It was a hard covered journal, the outer aspects bound in thick, marbleized cardboard. It only took him a moment to blow the first layer of dust off, then he wiped it down with the sleeve of his black robe. He stood for a moment, regarding it. ‘Ah, the follies of youth.’

  He handed it to me. ‘Take it, for any good it might do you. Now be off for the day, I have much work to complete.’

  I almost grabbed the book from his hand, I was so excited to finally, hopefully, have a solution to my problem that didn’t involve me becoming Public Enemy Number One to the Kin. Gathering my things, I gave a backward glance as I was leaving the room to see the Venerable Nachtan standing over the crystal orb. His back was turned to me, but I could see his hand gently tapping the black velvet of its cover as if he was pondering a decision.

  That action made me almost certain that he’d watched us in Auld Meg’s dungeon that night. He didn’t ever bring it up though, and that made me a little nervous for I would have preferred a confrontation, a bollocksing, anything but the silence. I remembered Hugh’s caution that the Kin were giving me enough rope with which to hang myself.

  But now I didn’t have to mess with Auld Meg or even Willem. I had the means to get to the Ice Kingdom. I couldn’t wait for the weeks to pass till the full moon.

  THE TIME WENT QUICKLY ENOUGH, to my surprise. True, the Venerable Nachtan still lectured every day about the terminally boring ancient Greeks, but he left me to my own devices more and more, content to leave me with assigned readings while he did his own thing. There was no word on Willem or if Cromwell’s forces had caught him. I hoped they had.

  Hugh remained out of the country, or where ever he was that he couldn’t tell me. We spoke regularly on the phone usually after Mrs. Mac’s supper hour. I had little to tell him in the way of my life, and he couldn’t speak of what he was presently doing, but we found things to talk about nevertheless, just idle chit chat and teasing, or telling back stories of our lives. I’d forgiven him his thoughtlessness and apparent misogyny about Auld Meg and her lot. Having met her, I wasn’t sure I disagreed with the Kin for opting for the choice they’d made. Of course, it might just have been the years of injustice and stewing in the dungeon that made her so crooked.

  I did spend an inordinate amount of time studying Nachtan's journal. True, it was in English, however it was all handwritten, and not done neatly. I had to read through ink blotches and places where he’d scratched out a thought and re-written in a tiny amendment in the margins. He may have thought he was writing in the vernacular, but it seemed more like a direct translation to me, for the word order was all weird and I had to really concentrate to get the gist of a sentence. I finally gave up the beginning, and went straight to the Pythagorean concepts to see what he wrote about travel.

  And it was there, the spell I looked for. The spell to be in two places at once. I was now on my way, so close I could almost taste it. I just had to wait for the full moon.

  14

  I HADN’T SEEN THE GOBLIN since that night we went to Auld Meg’s and I hadn’t missed him either, so when he showed up on my tail again I was inclined to ignore him. But he was having none of it, he stayed
glommed to my side like an old piece of gum stuck to a shoe.

  It was the day of the full moon, and I still hadn’t found the perfect place to enact the spell. Nachtan had told me not to bother coming in that Saturday morning, so rather than hang around Mrs. Mac’s house and get in Patsy’s way, I wandered the town.

  Since Hugh had gone, I‘d been lonely with no one for company but Mrs. Mac and Patsy and the Venerable Nachtan. I’d never taken Hugh up on his suggestion to go out and try to make friends at a pub night or anything – that wasn’t me. I’m more of a loner, but I was feeling the absence of companionship.

  My power had been building for the past few days, I could feel it thrumming in my veins, and I welcomed that absolute sense of well-being that I remembered from the previous month. I was relieved too, for Willem had hinted it might not be reliable. But it was, and I was there and I was loving it.

  Practical magic, that was the thing. I’d studied the hell out of the spell I’d found in Nachtan’s translated book. I knew the words backwards and inside out. I’d even studied the original Greek pronunciation, just in case that made a difference, though it shouldn’t. Intention was everything in magic, right?

  I wandered over to Mound Place, along the route Hugh and I had taken to get to his flat. The sky was a brilliant blue with not a cloud in the sky, a warm spring day with little breeze. From this vantage point, I could see the emerging new green of the many trees in the Prince’s Street Garden below and beyond. Beautiful, yes, but full of houses and buildings and people. I turned back to the Royal Mile. I needed to find the perfect spot in which to perform the spell and it had to be that night. Preferably somewhere away from people, not too built up on, somewhere...

  ‘You still owe me a red scarf.’

  He was trip-tripping alongside me, his red boots a little worse for wear.