by Katie M John
The curse of being an Oracle Child had meant she’d had a hideous childhood. Unable to control her visions or have any understanding that few others saw the world in the way she did, she had been bullied without mercy by both the other children at school and the authorities. The school (and then social services) had pushed her from psychiatrist to psychiatrist, causing her to withdraw further and further into herself until finally, they threatened her with placement in a special residential unit. It had been about this time their mother had fallen ill with a mysterious disease, which killed her within six months. Their mother died the day after Violet’s twenty-first birthday and a week before Rose’s eighteenth. It had been a dark time for Bramble Cottage but at least the older sisters had been old enough to become guardian to their younger sister. They had withdrawn her from school and finished her education at home, safe from the concern of the school and the taunts of her peers.
Prim had always been happiest in the garden. There was no need for her to know algebra or learn the rules of hockey, so she learned biology and horticulture. She studied ancient medicines of the East, and Astrology. Fox had always known Prim was incredibly clever in a way few people are, but she wasn’t easy to talk to and she wasn’t entirely sure how their conversation was going to pan out. Prim had been known to have a complete flip-out when asked about certain things, and even now, her visions were unpredictable and sometimes volatile.
As to be expected, Fox found Prim in the garden. She was tending the herb beds, cutting back the dead woods. The sound of Fox’s greeting startled her and she nearly dropped her pruning shears. It was hard for Fox to imagine there were only six years between them. It wasn’t that Prim wasn’t youthful, she had the kind of looks that would still be youthful when she was in her fifties, but everything else about her shouted 1940s spinster; what with her mustard-coloured wool tights, brown brogues, and Fair-Isle tank top. Her light blond hair sparkled in the weak wintery sun and the cold had blushed her cheeks. Her fine hair had escaped its chignon and was now hanging in wispy tendrils around her face.
“Fox!” she exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise.” Her smile of greeting flickered into concern. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, I was just…” She stopped, knowing her excuse of, “just passing” was hardly going to work. Bramble Cottage was too far off the beaten path. She changed tack. “Mum wanted to know if you had any thyme?”
Prim looked at her suspiciously. It was clear Fox had no idea about herbalism otherwise she’d have known that thyme wasn’t harvested this late into the season. Wren would have known that.
“You’re lying,” Prim said matter of fact. There was no judgment in her statement but it still made Fox feel bad. Prim turned away from her and started snipping quite furiously at a lavender bush.
“Sorry, Prim. I guess I forgot how… straightforward you are. I was hoping to sort of swing my purpose for visiting into conversation somehow but…”
“I’m not sure how you would have managed that. Your visions coming in are hardly casual conversation.”
“You know about them!”
Prim waved the shears in front of her in a manner that could have been seen as threatening if it had been a stranger. “Of course I know about them.”
“I guess you saw them coming!” Fox said, attempting to lighten the mood with bit of in-house Witch humour. It fell flat.
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you think to warn me?”
“Warn you? What a strange choice of words. They are your gift!” she said with heavy sarcasm.
“It’s not one I want!”
A strange contorted sound came from Prim’s mouth and it took a moment for Fox to realise Prim was actually laughing. In all the years they’d known each other, Fox had rarely heard her laugh.
“You don’t get a choice!” her laughed words had a bitter edge to them. “It’s not like you can just wish them away; goodness knows, I’ve tried.” She returned to her lavender. “You are already beginning to understand the responsibility that comes with them, aren’t you?”
The question was more of a statement. Fox mused on what it must have been like to have always known what the future held. No wonder people thought Prim was a little bit crazy.
“I don’t understand them,” Fox said, “I can’t work out if what I am seeing is past, present, or future. I don’t understand how something in the future can form so substantially and be so real, so it must be past, but if it’s the past then...”
Prim turned to her and raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed by the existentialist nature of her question. “You need to start undoing all you understand about time.”
Fox sighed and leaned back against the wooden rose arch. She’d never been scientifically minded, especially not when it came to physics. Too much of it was invisible; intangible, like most mathematics. She suspected she was about to be subjected to a lengthy and confusing lecture on quantum physics that would leave her none the wiser. Prim found the abstract notion of time so straightforward that she was able to continue multi-tasking.
“The way we measure out time is purely a clumsy way of organising something that doesn’t really want to be organised. Man likes to keep things structured, under control. He devised measurements in order to establish the “passing” of time, as if time were on a single straight line out into infinity. He called them centuries, decades, days, minutes, seconds, and so on, and he put them on a nice, sensible line, which was helped by the clockwork motions of the orbiting planets. But time doesn’t really work like that. Time doesn’t pass or move, it just is!”
Fox shook her head. She was only holding onto her understanding of all of this by a thread and the thread was rapidly fraying. “What do you mean by time is?”
“I mean,” Prim continued, “it isn’t a machine. Time isn’t a clock. If it helps, think of it as being more of a living, pulsing energy source. Imagine a giant, universe-sized jellyfish, with all her tentacles reaching out into space. They ebb, they flow, they connect, they part. Sometimes they extend or retract. This is what time looks like.”
“A jellyfish?” Fox asked cynically.
“Yes.”
“And the visions, are they really in the future?”
Prim sighed with a mild frustration. Fox’s use of the word “future” told her Fox was struggling to understand there wasn’t such a thing. She returned to her overly pruned lavender. “Because you are a Witch, you have the ability to see all ways, and all times.”
“And can non-witches get the gift?”
“Yes, sort of. The easiest way to define their gift would be to call them psychic. They can connect with the past, pick up on trace memories and energies, and from those, a vision forms, but they can’t see forward in quite the same way; all they can do is predict.”
Fox feared that if Prim kept snipping at that poor lavender any more then there would be nothing left. Fox adjusted the question, “Can I stop what I’ve seen?”
Prim snapped her full attention onto Fox. She’d paled and her previous confidence slipped. “W… why would you need to?” she stammered.
Fox didn’t want to give Prim too many details; her reactions were quickly becoming unstable, but she needed to press Prim for more information. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I’d seen someone die from an accident, is there anything to stop me from stopping it?”
Prim flustered and stood up. She started to head to the cottage. Fox’s question had unsettled Prim a lot and instinct told her she had asked a taboo.
“Yes!” she called over her shoulder. “Everything should stop you. You can’t go meddling with fate. It’s not my… I mean your place. Fate Changing belongs to the darkness, to the Dark Arts. You must trust in the ways of the Goddess.” Prim was literally running towards the door. “You have to go now, I’m terribly busy. It was lovely to see you!”
“But what if …” Fox called after her.
“There are no buts. And it doesn’t matter how much we love them – we ca
n’t save them!” The slamming of the cottage door punctuated her statement and cut short any hope of more conversation.
Realisation hit Fox so hard it winded her. She stopped in her tracks, staring after the closed door ahead of her. Prim’s seen one of our loved ones die! the internal gasped. Why haven’t you seen that?
“Who?” Fox called out to the closed door. “Who have you seen die, Prim?”
Silence replied.
Fox took a few deep breaths and swallowed down the anger at Prim’s weird and unhelpful behaviour. Maybe she is mad as a box of frogs after all, the internal suggested. Fox had come here hoping for some sensible, straightforward answers but instead, all she’d ended up with was the answer that time was a jellyfish and somebody they loved was going to die.
“Bloody hell, Prim!” Fox fumed.
She marched back to the car full of rage. Let’s hope Will isn’t annoying – for his sake! the internal quipped.
Fox threw open the car door and fell into the seat. “Well, that was a bloody waste of time!”
“Want to talk about it?” Will asked sweetly.
“Not really!”
“Apple pie at Sara’s make it any better?”
Fox nodded and then shook her head. “No, it will get back to mum that I’m bunking. I can do without that hassle.”
“Want to go somewhere else?”
Fox turned to Will and smiled. It felt good to have him here with her. Sitting beside him, everything in her bat-shit-crazy life felt a little more sane. Will put the car into gear and threw his arm around the back of her seat in order to reverse up the lane. It felt strangely intimate and despite Fox’s anger and frustrations, she felt herself smile.
Fox bent double and let out a cry of anguish at the sensory assault of the vision. Will slammed on the brakes. He placed his hand on her back and waited for her fit to pass. Fox still had not got used to the feeling of violence a vision brought with it. It was as if an invisible giant picked her up in the palm of his hand and tossed her through space. The sensation was painfully physical; to the point Fox feared her heart might burst out of her chest.
She was back at the barn but this time, it was daylight and the whole place looked far less sinister. In fact, it almost looked charming. There was a sense she was seeing something far back in time. There wasn’t anything specific she could put her finger on to help orientate her but everything looked more… simple, more pure. The colours of the paintwork, the lack of mechanical machinery, the basic willow fencing where now there was electric wire. Chickens pottered around, and the fields were full of golden corn. In her vision, Fox was standing tall, inhaling the golden light of summer. Then something caught her eye. It was a small wooden doll, handmade with love and dressed in thin white cotton, including a strip of white cotton across the doll’s face, forming a blindfold. Strange, the internal mused. As Fox held the doll, two little red dots started to form on the blindfold, creating little bloodied eyes. Fox dropped the doll in horror and stepped back from it. Across the dress, small bloody fingerprints emerged as if the doll had been clasped by a child’s bloodied hand. Fox started to scream and the screams pulled her out of her vision into the warmth and safety of Will’s car. He was holding her firmly, bundled up in his arms as if protecting her from wild elements. Fox was sobbing, consumed by an overwhelming and confusing grief.
“It’s happened before,” Fox sobbed.
“What has?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know – something bad. Something connected to that place.”
“What place?”
She shook her head again. When she was there she had the strongest feeling the place was familiar to her, but she didn’t have a definite memory of having ever been there.
“We’ve got to do something about these visions, Foxy. You can’t go on like this. They’ll send you mad.”
“I think it’s already too late!”
Will squeezed her reassuringly and then Fox felt the lightest of kisses land on her head.
5
“Where do you want to go?” Will asked as he pulled the car out onto the main road.
Fox was staring out the window, preoccupied by the images of her visions. Her mind refused to focus. “I don’t mind.”
They travelled on in silence until they got to the junction and Will declared he was starving hungry and he could murder a burger.
“I’m vegetarian,” Fox replied, still not really engaging with their day plans.
“Oh, perhaps Macky Ds isn’t such a good idea then!” he said, laughing. He fell quiet, thinking of where he could take a vegetable-eater. “I guess it’s Pizza then!”
“That would be good.”
They drove back through Heargton village and to the small market town of Lewit. There were only two reasons to visit the run down town; one was for bank and the other was for Tony’s Pizza shop. Tony’s wood-oven meant he made the best pizzas in the whole of the county. He refused to do delivery, so his little, dark-wood restaurant was always packed. It hadn’t changed since the day he had opened its doors back in the late seventies. The tables were dressed in red and white gingham table cloths and red, drippy candles were stuffed into rattan wrapped Chianti bottles. The restaurant was dominated by an oversized bar, at which several locals sat drinking draft continental beer. The back mirror plate was covered in postcards. Tony’s was hardly chic but it had its own charms. The Meadowsweet girls had spent many childhood birthday meals within its walls.
Will ordered the house special, in a clear attempt to consume the most amount of meat possible, and Fox went for the spinach and goat’s cheese; her personal favourite. It wasn’t until after they’d ordered and suddenly found themselves sitting opposite each other in a restaurant, “having lunch”, that Fox realised how much like a date it was all turning out. Maybe Will had the same thought because he flushed and looked slightly awkward.
Twice in one week, Foxy! This is getting serious, the internal teased.
Fox found something of interest on the far wall and attempted a convincing impression of being relaxed. It didn’t work. Fortunately, just before the whole situation became unbearable, Tony delivered the pizzas with a flourish. Just when Fox thought she was safe and things were turning out pleasant, Will plucked up the courage to ask her the question she’d been dreading.
“Will you tell me what you’ve seen in your…” he cleared his throat and lowered his voice as if the next word was something almost dirty, “…visions?”
Fox stopped chewing. The food turned unpalatable. You could easily lie, the internal offered. Fox was a useless liar and she knew she’d tie herself in knots. She looked at him, wishing she could truly know what he was thinking. He seemed to like her for who she was, but it was clear her whole way of life was far out of his comfort zone. Anyway, why did he want to like her? What was he hoping to get out of their friendship? She was hardly his girlfriend type; she couldn’t see herself draped on his arm like Sophie had been, or Caitlin before her, or… Do you want to be?’The internal’s question floored her. It wasn’t she hadn’t thought about what it might be like to let him kiss her, or to hold his hand or… Her head was already short-circuiting all over the place and the last thing she really needed was to flood it with loony-love hormones.
Tell him! the internal directed. What have you got to lose?
If laughing at your inner conscience didn’t lead to the general impression you were a complete fruitcake, she would have laughed. All the time Fox ran through these rambling thoughts, Will waited patiently. His blue-green eyes watched her intensely. He was opening himself up to her in a way she knew he did with few other people. It was beginning to feel like a responsibility.
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I already think that,” he said, flashing a wry smile.
She breathed in deeply, put down her knife and fork, and plunged her hands between her thighs in a brace position.
“Okay.” She closed her eyes and thought back to the visions
. “There are definitely two different visions, maybe three, but they’re all kind of the same. They’re all connected. In two of them, I’m standing in a field and there is a barn to my right. In front of me is a cornfield that leads onto woods. They are both in the same place but I think the time is different.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, not really, but it just feels different. The one that is now, in our times, is at dusk. There is a horrible feeling all around me, like a dark energy.” Fox opened her eyes and took a glimpse at Will to see how he was doing. He looked calm and interested. Most of all, he didn’t look like he thought she was raving mad – yet.
“I know something terrible is happening in the barn. Something so violent and awful it roots me to the spot. Then, somehow, I’m looking through a gap in the wooden siding and I can see…” Fox pauses and gulps. She knows this is the bit that will throw Will into a tailspin. “I see… I see Martha.”
“Oh my God! Is she hurt?” he asks urgently. “Is he hurting her?”
Fox nods. “Yes, she’s hurt.”
“What has he done to her?”
The image of the bloodied bandage across Martha’s eyes and the painting of blood on her chin flashes hard in Fox’s memory.
“It’s not a he,” she says, hoping to distract him from his question.
“A woman? Do you see who it is?”
“No.” The lie shoots out of Fox’s mouth before she can stop it.
“So how do you…”
“I just do!”
Will physically backed away from her answer, knowing he’d been too pushy. Fox took a sip of her water and decided to change focus. She told him the other vision was mainly made of sounds and light, where the air was full of mens’ voices calling out across the fields.
