It seemed cruel in the face of Bill’s death, but of course life went on. Dehumidifiers hummed in the harbour cottages, soaked belongings were stacked up outside houses for removal, loss adjusters patrolled the town, and delivery lorries arrived daily with new sofas, carpets and appliances. Some families – Caroline’s and Prue’s among them – had moved out to relatives, but further up the hill others were back in their homes already. The shops had signs in the window saying: Damp, But Still Trading!
As the elderly fisherman down by the quay pointed out to all passers-by, it was not the first time Winter had been flooded, no, not by a long chalk.
‘We’ve scrubbed these here cottages down before, and we’ll scrub ’em again,’ he said sagely. ‘Aye, we’ll scrub ’em again. T’would take more than a pint o’ seawater to drown Winter.’
It was Emmaline who indignantly asked how much scrubbing he was doing.
‘My daughter’ll see to it,’ he said imperturbably.
Impossible though it seemed, things were starting to get back to normal.
One thing was decidedly not normal though. It was Friday night and I was going out on a date.
The whole thing was just excruciating, and to make matters worse Seth had been so mysterious that I had no idea where we were going or what was going on. I’d asked him what to wear and he’d said vaguely, ‘Oh, something nice.’
I’d spent the day sorting through filthy, sodden books in the school library and, despite showering, I still felt grubby as I riffled through my wardrobe, resolving, not for the first time, that I really had to get back up to London soon, if only to get something new to wear. I’d grown to love Winter in many ways, but I doubted I’d ever be resigned to shopping at Winter-Wear – Ladies’ and Gents’ Outfitters of Quality.
At last I found something I was reasonably happy with and dragged a comb through my unruly hair. Then I glanced at the clock and realized I’d better get going, Seth would be here any minute.
Dad gave a little clap as I walked downstairs. ‘You look extremely nice, my dear. I haven’t seen you look so dressed up in a long time. Where did you say you were going?’
‘Out,’ I muttered, rebelliously.
‘With?’ Dad prodded. I sighed. I wanted to roll my eyes and tell him to get lost, but I realized it wasn’t totally unreasonable to want to know where your only daughter was off to at nine p.m. on a Friday night.
‘Seth.’
A slow smile spread across Dad’s face. I wanted to kick him. ‘Really?’ he drawled.
‘Yes.’
‘Well I never. So would this be what they called in my young day a date, then, my dear?’
‘Mmph,’ I muttered.
‘Sorry?’
‘Yes! Yes it’s a damn date. We’re going out. Happy?’
‘Yes.’ Dad’s broad beam said it all. Something in his proud grin made me smile, sheepishly.
‘So, do I look all right?’ I asked. He put a hand out and touched my hair.
‘You look more than all right, my dear. In fact you look like your …’ He stopped, and although he was still smiling, I saw there were tears in his eyes. My heart began to thud.
‘Who, Dad? Who do I look like?’
His lips pursed, though whether in an effort to speak, or to keep silent, I didn’t know. He only shook his head. I took his hand pleadingly.
‘Dad, please. Please tell me. I look like Mum, don’t I?’
He shut his eyes and a tear traced his cheek.
‘Dad? Why don’t you ever talk about her?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered at last. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. I want to tell you. I will tell you. One day. Just … I can’t. Give me a bit more time. Please?’
The door knocker rang out suddenly in the quiet house and we both jumped. Dad wiped his eyes and coughed, and I went to answer it.
‘Hi.’ Seth stood on the doorstep. I groaned.
‘Seth – how could you?’
‘What?’
‘You’re wearing a suit! Why didn’t you tell me?’
He looked, quite honestly, breathtaking. The suit was completely plain, black with a stark white shirt, but it made Seth look anything but. The snowy-white shirt made his tan look all the deeper, and the severe, beautifully cut lines of the jacket somehow only served to emphasize the lean strength of the muscles underneath. It could have made him look like a fisherman dressed up as a stockbroker. Instead it made him look like a panther in evening dress.
He shrugged. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think of it.’
‘Do I have time to go and change?’
‘Why? You look amazing. Anyway, the answer’s no, you don’t.’
Despairingly I looked down at the little dress I had on, which had seemed perfectly adequate up until Seth’s arrival, and then I realized that nothing in my wardrobe was going to match up to Seth’s severe perfection, so this would probably do as well as anything else.
‘OK, whatever. Bye, Dad.’
Dad came into the hallway, his smile back in place. Seth’s appearance always seemed to put him into a sickeningly good mood.
‘Hello, Seth. Good to see you.’
‘Hi, Tom.’ Seth grinned back. The fact that they were already on first-name terms still hadn’t stopped annoying me. ‘See you later.’
‘Drop in any time, Seth. We’re always pleased to see you around.’
Grrr. Yes, he was pleased I was going out with Seth. I got it. Now could he please stop acting like my personal matchmaker? Surely dads were supposed to hate their daughter’s boyfriends?
‘Where are we going?’ I asked as we climbed into the replacement for Seth’s truck, a much quieter but equally battered Mini.
‘Wait and see,’ was all he said. We drove down the cliff road, past the shattered remains of the castle and I averted my eyes – I still hadn’t got used to the sight of the devastation yet, perhaps I never would. Then down the hill towards the harbour. Waiting at the quay was Seth’s little boat – or was it his after all?
I looked uncertainly as Seth stopped the car. It looked like Seth’s boat – but it was hung all around with lights, tiny twinkling fairy lights that glittered and sparkled in the calm reflection of the waters. Where normally there was a rough plank for a seat, now there lay a snowy cloth. And in the footwell was a basket.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Picnic,’ Seth said. He turned off the engine and we got out. ‘Better leave your shoes,’ he added, smiling at my heels. I kicked them into the back of the car and he leaped lightly into the boat and then held up his arms for me. I hesitated.
‘What is it?’ Seth asked.
‘It’s just …’ I knew I was being irrational but I couldn’t help it. ‘Seth, the last time I was in a boat with you, I ran up such a storm we nearly died.’ That was true but, too, I was thinking about the Ealdwitan’s flood – those strange, deep-sea creatures that lurked in the deep ocean, about my terrifying dive through the fathoms to release Seth from a watery grave in his truck, about Seth fighting for his life on his desperate race to the Spit.
Seth gazed up at me steadily. He looked as if he knew what I was thinking, and after all, he’d come even closer to death than I had, but his face was quite calm, no trace of fear at all.
‘I understand. If you don’t want to, we’ll do something else, it doesn’t matter. But it’s a completely calm night – we won’t even be able to sail. I’ll have to row us, it’s so calm. I’ve triple-checked the forecast. But most of all, I know the sea. I’ve been in it, on it, around it every day of my life since I was a tiny kid. I love the sea, and I know you’ve seen its terrifying side, but I want to show you how lovely it can be.’
I hesitated a moment more, then jumped – and the movement sent a thousand glittering sparkles across the bay as Seth caught me surely and set me on the stern.
‘Shouldn’t I wear a life jacket?’ I asked as Seth picked up the oars. Seth smiled.
‘Well, if you like. But I’ve seen you dive to fifty feet without
oxygen. So if you don’t want to, I think you’ll be OK. Plus, I’m here to pull you out.’
We sat in silence while Seth rowed us slowly out of the harbour and on to the night sea. It was nearly the longest day and, although the sun had set some time ago, the sky was still infused with a wash of lemon towards the west. Above the horizon the shades deepened, through aquamarine, turquoise, azure, to a glorious midnight blue. Stars began pricking out as Seth rowed.
At last, far out across the bay, he stopped and set the oars to drip. We drifted with the current, watching the lights of Winter, very small across the bay, and the lighthouse making its lazy searchlight-sweep every few minutes. Everything, every glittering light, every cottage and house, even the moon, was reflected in the clear waters of the bay, and the waves rocked us gently with an almost imperceptible swell.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ I whispered.
‘I know.’ Seth smiled. He opened the basket and the sight and smell made my mouth water: dressed crab, crayfish, crusty rolls, strawberries and cream. I could have eaten the whole lot that minute. But it was for something else that Seth was searching. He dug in the basket and came up with a bottle of wine and two glasses. Then he laughed. ‘Damn, I thought I’d packed so carefully! I’ve forgotten the corkscrew.’ He examined the bottle for a moment and then shrugged, ‘Oh well, I’ll have to cork it.’ He pulled off the foil and pressed. There was a short, silent struggle, then wine spurted up his sleeve. He licked it off and then poured two glasses, the cork bobbing in the bottle.
‘Well, Anna.’ He held one out to me. ‘Here’s to us. And love.’
‘To us,’ I echoed, and we touched glasses.
To us, I thought. It had a nice sound. No, better, it had a wonderful sound. A magical sound. I set my glass carefully on the plank and leaned across towards Seth. Then I kisse. T witd him.
I didn’t think about the Ealdwitan, or Bran, or my mother, or any of the troubles that might lie ahead. I just kissed him, letting my fingers wander through his hair, under his shirt, up his forearms, so that he shivered and tightened his grip. I kissed him the way I’d been wanting to, ever since we’d met; until my blood seemed to turn to molten gold and the whole world shifted and rocked and rearranged.
‘Whoa! Steady, steady.’ Seth pulled back, laughing, and set his hand to the tiller to right the rocking boat. I laughed too, looking at the waves that had suddenly sprung up around us, stirred up by the force of my desire. As my heart calmed, so did the waves, and the little boat slowly steadied.
Seth let go of the tiller, put his arm around me and we lay back against the stern, side by side in the deepening night. I rested my cheek on his shoulder, and a happiness so deep it was almost terrifying began to unfurl inside me, as the moon set and the stars came out over the sea.
Behind us, as the boat drifted, the starlight shimmered off a beautiful iridescent trail. A trace of petrol from the boat’s motor floated on the sea, making broken rainbows of our lazy wake. It was a thing of beauty, a little piece of magic out of nowhere. From just oil and water.
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AN INTERVIEW WITH RUTH WARBURTON
How did you come to write A Witch in Winter?
I’ve always written stories; the first one I can remember writing was when I was about seven and it was about … witches! Surprise, surprise. I can’t recall the title but I do remember it was about a factory caretaker called Cardy. He’s sweeping up the factory one night after dark when he’s surprised by a mother and daughter appearing on one of the walkways high above the factory floor. Strange things start to happen and he realises that it’s Hallowe’en … It was all told from the point of view of the sixty-year-old Cardy, which in retrospect was a bit of a strange choice for a seven-year-old, but I remember my teacher liked it.
I wrote lots more stories after that, and they got longer and longer, but it took me a long time to come back to witches as a subject. One day I was listening to a programme on the radio about romance in literature, and one of the interviewees said that the challenge is finding original reasons to keep the hero and heroine apart – because there’s no story if tr="#00ce="serifhey just fall into each other’s arms and live happily ever after on the first page. I listened to it, thinking that for me, the most compelling reason not to fall into someone’s arms is because you don’t know if they really like you or not. And suddenly the idea for A Witch in Winter came into my head – a girl who enchants the boy of her dreams to fall for her, but then has to live with the fact that she’ll never know for sure whether he truly loves her.
Can you tell us a bit more about the spells in the book – how did you research them?
A lot of them are based on real beliefs, for example the idea of putting a broom across the door to stop an evil-doer from entering is found in lots of cultures. And the piece that Liz reads aloud about a wife putting blood in her husband’s wine is actually an old voodoo spell (although in voodoo tradition you add the blood to his coffee).
The reducing spell is based on an old Hebrew spell for banishing spirits and demons. You take the demon’s name and reduce it, letter by letter, until the demon is vanquished.
So there are a lot of seeds from folk traditions and different witch-craft practices, but I adapted them to suit my purposes, and nnone of the spells that Anna performs are real.
The incantations look like they’re written in a foreign language – are they?
Sort of, yes. They’re mostly written in Anglo-Saxon (also known as Old English – the English of Beowulf, the Dream of the Rood and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles). This is the language that was spoken in England before about 1000 AD. Later it mingled with Norse, French and other languages to become first Middle English (the English of Chaucer and Malory) and finally Modern English (which is Shakespeare’s English, and also our own).
I studied Anglo-Saxon as part of my English degree and found it really hard! It’s basically a completely foreign language and almost impossible to read without a dictionary and a grammar guide, although some of the words sound like their modern equivalents when you read them aloud. For example ‘sc’ is usually pronounced ‘sh’ so the Old English word ‘Sceadu’ is pronounced quite similarly to what it means in Modern English; ‘shadow’.
Lots of the words in the spells are borrowed from Anglo-Saxon poetry, particularly Beowulf which is beautiful and full of evocative words and phrases: the sea is a ‘hronráde’ which means ‘whale-road’ for example. Several of the phrases used to describe and summon the storm demon are taken from Beowulf, including the word ‘Hwat!’ which introduces the spell. This is a word used in Anglo-Saxon poetry to begin a poem, and means something like ‘hey!’ or ‘listen!’. Seamus Heaney gives it as ‘So’ in his trandition of Beowulf. It’s completely inauthentic to use it for a spell, but I loved the idea of a poet casting a spell upon his listeners, summoning them to be entranced, like Anna summons the demon.
Is Winter a real town?wn?v h
No, but it was inspired by several real places. The seaside setting comes from holidays in Cornwall, Devon and Brittany, but the town of Winter itself was influenced by Lewes, where I grew up. Lewes isn’t exactly like Winter – it’s bigger for one thing, and it’s about five or six miles inland – but it does have a lot of similarities. It has a very long history, including an Iron-Age fort on Mount Caburn above the town, and a spooky ruined castle almost a thousand years old, which partly inspired Winter Castle (although Lewes Castle is in the middle of the town, not overlooking the sea). Lewes was also heavily flooded in the year 2000 while I was still living at home. My dad’s house, which overlooks the river, was flooded almost a metre deep and some of those experiences found their way into A Witch in Winter.
Who is your favourite character?
Oh this is really hard! I’m not su
re I can pick one – I do have a really soft spot for Emmaline. Partly because she has the same faults as me – I can be equally sarcastic and impatient – and partly because she’s all about the sisterhood. I love an unapologetically strong woman who stands up for her friends.
But I also love Anna – she tries so hard to do the right thing, even when it’s painful. And she’s courageous, even when she’s full of self-doubt, which is the highest form of courage really.
And of course I heart Seth – for loving Anna in the truest way – not wanting to change or limit her, or make her less than she can be, and for not being fazed by the prospect of a girlfriend who could kick his ass several times over, if she wanted to. I could never write a book where only the guys get to have cool powers and do fun things, and the girls just sit around and get saved – in A Witch in Winter Anna is the one with the cool powers, and she and Seth both save each other in different ways.
Actually I really like all the girls in the book – even Caroline, who gets a pretty raw deal in my opinion.
Is there going to be a sequel?
Yes – A Witch in Love. Stay tuned …
Can readers contact you with their own questions?
Yes! Absolutely, I love to hear from readers. You can find me online at www.ruthwarburton.com, or if you prefer pen and paper, you can write to me c/o Hodder Publishers, Hodder Children’s Publicity Dept (their address is at the front of the book). Please come and say hi!
www.hodderchildrens.co.uk
www.hodderchildrens.co.uk
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Witch In Winter Page 23
