The Memory of Snow

by Kirsty Ferry

  ‘It’s not her,’ said Meggie. ‘Let it go. Marcus has come to you asking for forgiveness…’

  ‘Marcus?’ asked Liv. ‘So that’s his altar..?’

  ‘What?’ snarled Aemelia, turning on Liv. ‘That man tells me stories he expects me to believe, then you tell me that you know about the altar. That temple is an insult to Christianity.’

  ‘No!’ cried Liv. ‘It wasn’t like that!’

  ‘Silence!’ ordered Aemelia. ‘You know nothing.’

  ‘Aemelia,’ said Meggie, a warning in her voice. She was stronger now that Hay was contained. ‘It is thanks to this girl that Marcus has found you. She was meant to come here, as we were, to help us; and you have accepted my beliefs, so why can’t you do the same with Marcus? You did before. He hasn’t changed. He’s been trapped here alone. We at least had each other. Take her hand. If we can somehow close the circle, we can stop this. We can send...him...back and we can help Marcus...’

  Aemelia stared at Liv and dropped her hand slightly. She frowned, looking through Liv at something only she could see. Finally satisfied, she raised her chin and touched her fingertips tentatively to Liv’s arm. She did not feel ready to touch her hand just yet, but she spoke softly.

  ‘My Olivia betrayed me. She led me straight into that other man’s trap. I cannot move away from that. Your name... it holds many memories for me.’ The thought confused her. It took enough away from her concentration to break whatever control she had over Hay. He took his chance, feeling the release as his bindings broke. With a great roar he reared up.

  ‘You are all witches!’ he screamed. Meggie cried out, and sent one more burst of energy towards Liv. It flickered and fizzed between their fingertips. The energy flashed around the girls, encircling them like a haze of fireflies, but not before Hay managed to burst through the centre of the group, a black ball of energy breaking them up. The girls were forced apart and Liv felt a burning in her palm where she still held the small bone-handled knife.

  Then it was as if something possessed her. She knew what she had to do. She raised her arm and shouted as she drove the blade into the black mass that was Hay. The black mass fractured apart with a horrible hissing sound and an animal-like howl rent the air. Liv felt herself being lifted off her feet by the force and the world splintered about her. She tumbled backwards towards the Well; but instead of landing in the shallow, boggy water, she gasped as a curtain of ice closed over her head and she fell down and down, the water filling her nose and her mouth, rushing into her ears and drowning out all of her senses.

  2010

  ‘Liv! Liv!’

  The voice seemed to come from very far away. Liv could feel herself being shunted around, bobbing about like a cork in the ocean. She wasn’t cold. She hadn’t felt cold the whole time she’d been in the snowstorm. Odd that. But she was wet. She was wet now and her head was hurting and all she could see was a procession of images and figures imprinted on her minds’ eye. Images of Meggie and Aemelia, and Marcus and Charles Hay. Images of the Mithraic temple and Coventina’s Well. Emotions pressed into her consciousness. Betrayal. Loss. And lies. Huge lies. Why did everybody lie?

  ‘Liv. Get up.’ Then some swearing. ‘Can I not just leave you for ten sodding minutes without you doing something stupid?’

  More shaking. And more wetness. Liv began to cough and splutter as she choked on something. She felt a hand grasping her shoulder and her eyes flew open. Ryan. Ryan with half a bottle of water in his hand. Evidently, she was wearing the other half. Hence the wetness.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Ryan. ‘I leave you in the temple, and I find you out here.’ He gestured around him, more droplets of water splashing about. Liv was sprawled flat on her back in the field near the Well. Her belongings were scattered around her, the lace on her boots untied. She sat up painfully. She ached in places she didn’t know she could ache. Her head was pounding and her mouth was dry. The only bit of her above the neck that was dry, she thought ironically. He must have been pouring it onto her to wake her up. She indicated that she wanted the water, and snatched it from him as he offered it to her. She took a huge swig from the bottle, staring around her, blinking in the afternoon sunlight until she felt she could speak again without croaking

  ‘Where’s the snow?’ Liv asked eventually. ‘Where’s it all gone?’

  ‘What?’ asked Ryan. ‘What snow? It’s been hot and sunny all afternoon. I’ve been having a wander up there.’ He nodded towards the car park. ‘I had a cuppa, and walked along the Wall a bit, while I was waiting for you.’ He shrugged. ‘You know I don’t like standing still. I’d rather be doing something.’

  ‘I thought you’d gone home,’ confessed Liv. ‘I didn’t think you’d hung around.’ Ryan shot her an odd look.

  ‘Why would I go home? What- just because you told me to go?’ he laughed and shook his head. ‘Have I ever listened to you before? You were getting narky. So I thought I’d leave you to it. I know how much you like these rotten old places.’ Ryan shivered and looked around. ‘I still don’t like it that much. I didn’t want to come back down, to be honest. Then you disappeared.’ He sat down beside her. ‘Truth be told, Liv. I was a bit worried about you.’ He looked into her eyes, searching for something. ‘You were getting really freaky. When I saw you over here, I could hear you shouting something about knives. I thought you were going to stab me.’ He looked down. ‘I was really worried, actually. You kind of went for me. But it was a pen you had in your hand. Look.’ He showed her his forearm. The day’s sun had tanned his skin to a pinky-brown and tiny hairs shone golden across it. It did something funny to Liv’s stomach. Then he turned his arm over and showed her a long streak of black ink stretching from the inside of his wrist to his elbow. The nib of the pen had made a tiny puncture wound in his flesh and the edges of the scratch were red and sore-looking. It was raised up and still painful to the touch. Ryan was grateful that the gash hadn’t gouged out a deep channel up his arm– the black mark was very near the pale blue veins. Liv gasped and took hold of his arm, staring at it.

  ‘I did that?’ she asked, horrified. ‘Just now?’ She looked up at him, embarrassed and contrite. ‘Oh, Ryan! I’m so, so sorry. God, I could have really hurt you.’

  ‘Well it did sting a bit,’ smiled Ryan. He was lying. It had hurt him really badly. It didn’t feel like a pen. It had felt like a real blade, dragging through his skin. It had taken him a few moments to realise it wasn’t a knife blade and there wasn’t any blood gushing down his arm. Nevertheless, when it had happened, he had yelped and pushed Liv roughly away from him. That’s how she had gotten tangled up in her shoelaces and fallen down. He was worried that she’d banged her head. It was instinct that made him douse her with water to try and wake her up properly. He had read somewhere that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker. But what did you do when she was yelling stuff at you that didn’t make sense and shouting something that sounded like, ‘Hey! Hey! You can’t stay here!’ Liv didn’t come with a manual. He didn’t always know the right thing to do with her. But he thought that, in general, he was pretty clued up on what made her tick and what chived her off. Chocolate. Chocolate was usually pretty good. That was why he’d decided to visit the man with the coffee cart in the car park, before he went back down to the temple. If he came to her bearing chocolate, it usually put her in a better mood. He’d been out of luck; the man didn’t have any chocolate. But he’d got a packet of biscuits for her instead and hoped they would do the trick. That’s when he saw her acting like a loon and decided to go and stop it. And then she attacked him. She’d been totally out of it though. Perhaps she had desperately needed a sugar fix after all.

  ‘Um, I got you some biscuits?’ he tried, rustling around in his back pocket. He shifted position slightly and brought them out. He handed them to her, flushing as he saw the state of the packet and hoping she wouldn’t notice.

  ‘You’ve sat on them,’ said Liv, taking them from him. ‘They’re all crumbly.’

  �
��Sorry,’ he muttered.

  ‘’S OK,’ Liv muttered back. She made a pretence of studying the biscuits just so he couldn’t see her face properly. This day was too weird. Had she dreamt it all then? Fallen asleep while she was writing her notes about the temple and wandered in a daze over to the Well? And here was Ryan being as sweet and as stupid and as thoughtful as ever; and she’d physically attacked him. The guilt made her feel terrible. Her heart twisted as she thought of Marcus and remembered feeling his guilt at harming Aemelia. Worse than that. Marcus had killed Aemelia, hadn’t he? That’s the impression she got anyway. Was that what had kept him here? The guilt?

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Liv said, finding it difficult to say the words. ‘It was a mistake. You know that, don’t you? I wouldn’t have done it intentionally...’ She clamped her lips together. There were those words again – it was a mistake. Would people always be paying for their mistakes? And why did they hurt people they cared about?

  ‘I know,’ said Ryan. He sounded surprised. ‘No need to apologise, Liv. You’ve done worse than draw on me with a pen before: joke!’ he said, holding his hands up as Liv snapped her head up to face him, her eyes flashing. Then just as quickly, her anger died down and she gave a small sigh.

  ‘It’s OK. I probably have,’ she said. ‘And you’re sure it wasn’t snowing?’ Her eyes searched his and he could tell she wanted him to confirm it for some reason.

  ‘I’m pretty sure,’ he said carefully. ‘It wasn’t snowing when I was at the coffee van. And it wasn’t snowing when I went for a wander. But then, it might be a kind of sub-climate down here. You know, like how the Gulf Stream makes bits of Northern Scotland really warm. Maybe we’ve got a sub-Gulf Stream. A Roman Gulf Stream; that makes it snow in the valley down here.’ He looked around him at the still, warm afternoon. ‘It’s a definite possibility.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Liv said, unwrapping the biscuits. ‘You’re trying to make me feel better.’ She offered him the pack and he took a collection of broken pieces of biscuit out of it, laying them together like a jigsaw puzzle on his knee, making sure he hadn’t been short-changed. When he was satisfied he had a whole biscuit, he began to eat it a piece at a time.

  ‘You saw that man in the temple, didn’t you?’ asked Liv after a few moments. ‘You said he’d been standing next to me.’

  Ryan faltered in his munching.

  ‘Yes. I thought I saw someone next to you,’ he said carefully.

  Liv nodded.

  ‘I think I know who he is. Or was,’ she said.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ asked Ryan. The biscuit was suddenly tasteless and he laid it down.

  ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ started Liv, ‘but I think it was Marcus. You know. The guy who had the altar made?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked Ryan. He laughed weakly and a pathetic attempt at humour escaped him. ‘Did he tell you?’ It was an even more pathetic attempt to cover up his nervousness; part of him didn’t even want to hear Liv’s answer.

  ‘No,’ said Liv slowly. Ryan relaxed. Then Liv spoke again. ‘Meggie told me.’

  ‘Liv! You are. You’re mad as a box of frogs!’ cried Ryan. ‘That’s just a legend. Meggie never existed. She’s someone they made up, some old hag they thought was a witch...’

  ‘Don’t call her a hag!’ cried Liv. To Ryan’s horror, Liv burst into tears. ‘She’s not a hag. She’s just a girl. Just a teenage girl, like me. Like Alice. And like Aemelia...’ Then she began to shake uncontrollably. ‘She wasn’t a witch. And I couldn’t save her and I couldn’t help her and they would have taken me as well...And I saw her. I saw it happen in the temple. And it was horrible and nobody remembers her anymore. And nobody cared for her. And nobody believed her. And that man did all sorts of horrible things to her.’

  Ryan stared at Liv, not knowing what to do. He’d never seen her dissolve like this before. She’d had tantrums and strops; but never proper crying. Never proper tears and stuff. He didn’t like it. He stroked her shoulder awkwardly and this brought on a fresh onslaught of tears. Liv turned her body towards his and buried her head in his chest, grateful for the hard warmth of it, the living, beating heart that was buried beneath it.

  ‘Oh Ryan. It’s horrible. And I’ve been so horrible to you. I tried to stab you and it wasn’t you, it was Charles Hay. And Marcus and Aemelia. They’ve got so much to sort out. She wouldn’t listen to him, and it was all a mistake. And it was snowing at the Well and I saw them all. And I’m part of it, Ryan. I made it happen today. Meggie said so. And I want to come back to my life and to have you and everyone, but I don’t want to leave her here on her own...’ She gulped, choking back sobs, rubbing her wet face against his t-shirt. Ryan raised his arm and it hovered over her back for a moment. Then he lowered it and curled it around her shoulders, pulling her close to him, closing his eyes and smelling her hair and wondering if this was what it would be like for them, if they ever managed to get it together properly.

  ‘Um. I think maybe you were dreaming?’ said Ryan, patting her ineffectually. ‘Why don’t you have your biscuit?’ He cursed himself as soon as he said it. That wasn’t the time to be encouraging her to eat biscuits. It was the time to pull her in a little closer and try to find her mouth with his and kiss her until she felt better.

  Ryan had nothing to lose. He decided to do just that. He eased away from Liv a little and took her face in his hands.

  ‘But you know, you don’t have to have your biscuit,’ he said quietly. ‘I can think of something else that might help.’ He searched her face with his eyes, hoping to see some sort of assent in her gaze. She held his eyes for a moment, not quite understanding. Then she realised. She smiled at him and raised her own hands to her face, covering his. She slid her hands down his arms, gently pulling him towards her. She could feel the tiny, prickly hairs now, the hard biceps under his tee-shirt; the rough edges of the scratch on his forearm.

  ‘I’m sorry about your arm,’ she said. ‘Really.’

  ‘Sssh,’ whispered Ryan. ‘It’s OK. It didn’t hurt. Much.’ Despite herself, Liv giggled and slid her arms up to his shoulders. Their faces were practically touching and Liv closed her eyes. There was no thought that this was ‘only Ryan’, like she had felt in the past. It felt right; right that they should be together now at this sacred place, right that she should be so close to touching his lips.

  ‘She is an Enchantrix! She is a charmer!’

  The words rose up out of the earth around them and echoed around the valley. They sprang apart as if a gun had fired.

  ‘Liv!’ cried Ryan. ‘Did you hear that? What’s happening?’ They scrambled to their feet, some sixth sense warning them to run. Ryan reached out to grab Liv’s hand and then he let out a scream of such agony and shock, that Liv began to scream as well. Something tore out of the remains of Coventina’s Well, encircling the boy and lifting him off his feet. A black cloud surrounded him and Liv could see him through the mist, thrashing about, trying to right himself.

  ‘Ryan!’ Liv yelled. The black mist thickened and swirled, wrapping Ryan up in its grasp. ‘Put him down! Stop it!’ The black mist hung for a second as if it was mocking her, then it became thicker, squeezing itself around Ryan like a boa constrictor. Liv could hear Ryan coughing and choking, she saw his eyes wide and terrified. Then the mist pulled away from him, and spat him out onto the ground. He lay in a crumpled heap and Liv ran towards him. The black fog whooshed away from him and gusted past her, knocking her on to the ground.

  ‘Ryan!’ she gasped, dragging herself to her feet. She ran over to him, and threw herself down beside him. ‘Ryan – can you hear me?’ she cried, touching his face and stroking his hair. There was no response. ‘Ryan!’ She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. Ryan’s eyes rolled back in his head and Liv screamed and another sound joined it; a horrible laughter which faded into the distance. Liv spun around, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was with them in the valley.

  ‘Stay away from me, Witch,’ gr
owled a voice. Liv jumped to her feet.

  ‘Who is this?’ she sobbed, looking around her wildly. More laughter. Then she heard Ryan groan and roll over onto his side. ‘Ryan! Are you all right?’

  Ryan curled his body into the foetal position and began murmuring something incomprehensible. Liv dropped down to the ground and bent over him, straining to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Stay away from me,’ he mumbled. ‘Stay away from me. Witch. Enchantrix. Charmer.’

  Ryan ! No! What are you saying...?’ began Liv. Then Ryan uncoiled like a spring. He thrust his hand out and grabbed Liv, winding his fingers through the dark hair and pulling her roughly down towards him. She screamed and tried to yank herself free, but he had her trapped. His fingers brushed her cheek and she shuddered; they felt clammy and damp against her skin, her hair felt as if it was being torn out at the roots.

  The awful laughter bubbled up again around her, and she realised it was coming from Ryan. He was strong. He held her fast so she was trapped there on her knees. His breath rasped against her neck and she began to panic. This wasn’t Ryan. He would never do anything like this to her. The answer came to her in a flash, just like the images Meggie had shown her.

  ‘Hay!’ she choked out. ‘Leave me alone!’ She twisted her head around painfully, and she caught sight of Ryan through the tangle of her hair. His eyes were pure black; there was no definition between the pupil and the iris and Liv knew that it wasn’t Ryan who was staring back at her.

  Ryan laughed again, shaking his head.

  ‘Why would I leave you alone?’ he hissed. ‘I never left any of them, even when they begged me to stop. You’re mine now.’

  ‘Ryan! No! You don’t know what you’re doing...’ Liv felt her hair pull as Ryan balled his hand, grasping it into a fist. Then he shoved her over onto the grass. Liv fell awkwardly and cried out in pain. ‘Please, no!’ She sobbed. I’m not who you think I am,’ she tried desperately. Ryan laughed again, a harsh, grating sound.