by E M Graham
‘How’d you do that?’ I breathed.
I blinked and in a flash she returned to her original self, threw her head back and cackled at me.
‘I’ll no’ waste my energy on the likes of you,’ she said. ‘But I think I made my point clear.’
She lit up another cigarette, the flame of her lighter steady even in the whipping wind, and blew a stream of smoke in my direction, staring at me the whole while. ‘It takes one to know one, eh?’ she added.
I nodded, suddenly humbled.
‘So what’s your business here, then?’ she asked again. ‘Why are you coming to Stornoway?’
I drew myself up again in a belated attempt to regain my dignity. Witch she might be, but I was going to a place of higher learning, a special place only for Kin. The effect was spoiled by a gust of rain spattering down the back of my neck as the ferry changed direction, finally heading out to the open sea.
‘Eh, let’s go in out of this,’ she called, making her way to the doorway. I didn’t see what she did with her cigarette butt this time.
She told me her name was Fergie as she led me down a set of stairs and into a lounge at the front of the ferry, whose entire wall was glass with a view of the heavy seas we were crossing. She sat at the end of a row of comfy seats and glared at the young boy in the next chair till he rose with a sigh and moved further on down the row. Happier, she patted the now empty seat.
‘Get yourself settled in, then,’ she said. ‘We might as well be friendly, for we’ve another hour to go before we reach the island. If you’re getting a coffee, I’ll have one as well. I take it black, and make it a large.’
My mind was buzzing again, and not just from sugar, for I didn’t know what to make of her. This young woman was a witch like no other I’d met; she was common, with none of the attitude possessed by every Witch Kin kid I grew up with. She spoke her mind and cut to the quick, and I thought that once I got past the prickles and barbed wire I might like her.
By the time I came back with fresh coffees, my new companion was deep into an animated conversation on her phone. As the ferry cut through the storm on its way to the Outer Hebrides, I sized her up from the corner of my eye. She was the first witch I’d ever met who wasn’t an obvious member of the aristocratic Kin, besides myself of course. She could put on the glitz, yes, but that’s all it was, just a coating of shimmer that was only surface deep. It didn’t give her the innate bearing, the inborn haughtiness, the absolute conviction of superiority that was legacy of the aristocratic Kin. Her accent remained gutter Scots; her enunciation was reminiscent of the hapless heroes in the movie Train Spotting.
‘What? No!’ I saw her slide her eyes over to me as she gave me a quick once over, then she turned away and began to whisper into her phone with her other hand over it. The conversation lasted a long time and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was the topic of her hushed discussion, though I told myself that was ridiculous.
By the time she finished the call, our next destination was in sight.
‘Come on, let’s get ready to get off,’ she said with a nod towards the luggage racks. As we stood in line to disembark, she asked me outright for a third time what my plans were, coming to the Island of Lewis and Harris, way up north to the Outer Hebrides. I didn’t like the challenging glint in her eye.
‘I’m going to... a special place,’ I told her, not bringing up the name for she’d probably never heard of the institution. I knew the Kin were brilliant at keeping things under wrap. ‘It’s a select school, I guess you’d call it.’
‘A select school, is it? And where might this be?’ I knew she was outright mocking me now.
I shifted my weight uncomfortably and hoisted the knapsack more securely onto my back. She’d practically ignored me once I’d bought her a coffee and now this treatment. I felt the need to put her in her place.
‘A place called Scarp,’ I said airily.
She cackled and threw her head back again.
‘Scarp, is it? That’s your special school?’ There was scorn and bitterness in her voice. She looked at me, her arms crossed in front of her and a scowl on her face. ‘Ye must think you’re rather grand, then, going to Scarp.’
‘I’m pretty lucky, believe me.’ It sure beat out the alternative.
‘Funny, ye don’t seem like one of the Kin.’
‘I’m not,’ I replied quickly, on the defensive. ‘I am so definitely not one of them.’
‘Then why would you be going to Scarp?’ She eyed me carefully as she let that dart sink in, then she barked with laughter. ‘Don’t worry, I know who you are! You’re that half-blood errant witch that’s got everyone all atwitter! This is going to be a fun term, I’m sure.’
I could only stare at her in shock. Among the last words Hugh had said to me were to keep a low profile, and it looked like I’d already failed him there.
How could word had spread so fast? It seemed like days ago, but the Inquiry had only finished its business four hours prior. Yet, here on this ferry slowly backing into the dock on a small island in the northern reaches of the country, it was already common knowledge.
Fergie saw the dawning in my eyes as I tried to take in her words, and a smile slowly spread across her freckled cheeks. A more evil grin I’d never seen.
‘You might as well get off your high horse, for you’re no better than me. In fact, from what I hear, you haven’t even got basic training in magic. Correct me if I’m wrong.’
I tried to ignore her as I waited in line behind her while we waited to disembark; that cheap tart still cackled every time she caught my eye, so I furiously stared at the iron stairs below my feet.
Ever since last December I’d had such high hopes of leaving my past behind me; yes, even through all my dread of the Inquiry’s outcome, hope had always burned that this could finally be my chance to be something other than the despised bastard half-blood witch.
Fate had a funny way of granting wishes sometimes. Here I was just as I had dreamed, about to land on Hugh’s home island, yet still I was carrying around my reputation like a steamer trunk on my back. And the only person I knew here was Fergie, this low-class gutter witch, and it looked like we were going to the same place.
She paused before we entered the ferry terminal proper, and turned to me. I was surprised to see her mocking smile had warmed to almost kindness, almost as if she knew what thoughts were weighing me down, and she spoke in a low voice so as not to be overheard.
‘You’re going to have a tough time on Scarp,’ she said, her level gray eyes meeting mine in frankness. ‘There’s no doubt about it. I don’t for the life of me know why they’re sending you there when you’re so unprepared, and the competition is going to be something fierce.
‘It’s every witch for herself there, on Scarp, because the stakes are high. We’ll be pitted against the cream of the Kin kids. You know, the ones who went to private schools and have had everything handed to them on a silver platter their whole lives, and who don’t think the likes of us have any right to be there. The only advice I can give you is, try not to get yourself killed.’
Chapter 3
LIKE THE SMALL TOWN we’d left behind on the mainland, the buildings in Stornoway were again mostly cold stone and brick, all painted white, so different to the friendlier colorful wooden houses of my home. But we didn’t linger there long.
A battered black Land Rover waited outside the ferry terminal, the driver leaning against it with a sign which merely said ‘Scarp’. Fergie claimed the passenger seat in the front, leaving me to hunker down in the back, and she carried on with the man as if they were old friends, lapsing into another language, probably Gaelic, and leaving me with little to do as I bounced around on my hard bench except stare out the window at the relentless mist which coated this new island, and ponder her last words to me.
Try not to get yourself killed.
Always good advice by any estimation, but the words sent a chill through
me that the Land Rover’s ancient heating system would never warm. When Hugh had appeared disconcerted at the news I was to be sent to Scarp, I’d misread his concern for snobbery, yet he too had also mentioned a competition. I’d been too wrapped up in the whole ‘best and brightest’ thing at the time to really pay attention. Cate’s words I could dismiss as just another attempt to scare me and keep me in my place, but now that Fergie had brought it up, I couldn’t ignore it anymore, and was seriously wondering what the elder Johanna had really sentenced me to.
The passing scenery told me nothing. We’d left behind the orderly rows of streets in the town and were headed into the heart of the countryside, with barrens and big hills and small bodies of water. Through the blanket of fog I caught occasional glimpses of a castle, quite a few ruined stone houses, even a standing circle of stones, and of course the sea was never too far away.
Back when I’d hoped to be coming to the Island of Lewis and Harris, I’d done my homework of course. I’d found the island on Google Earth, examined the mountains and the grasslands and tiny villages all dotted along the northern part of the coast where Hugh’s family lived. And the beaches, there were terrific white sand beaches everywhere, as if a Caribbean paradise had been unmoored by the Gulf Stream and carried an ocean away to the outermost limits of Scotland.
I’d never heard of Scarp though, and had no idea what was in store. I searched the word on my phone and all I could find was a small mention of it along the western shore of the island we were presently travelling through. The satellite view showed nothing but a blur, as if a bank of fog hovered over it, deliberately hiding it from the all-seeing cameras of Google Earth.
After a couple of hours, we descended from high hills and set off down a single-lane track, still surrounded by thick mist. Sheep ruled supreme here, with dozens and dozens of them roaming freely. They owned the road too, or at least they thought they did, and in the lowering afternoon light the driver had to slow down from his frenetic pace more than once in order to avoid an accident.
It was about this time that I noted my fingers were tingling and my gut was churning as if a swarm of butterflies had taken roost there, an unmistakable sign of magic loose in the air somewhere. It began almost imperceptibly, but as the mist thickened to fog, so too did the magic in the atmosphere become more solid. We passed through the courtyard of a stately home, then by the stables, all in the middle of nowhere and we saw no people at all, just the endless ovine population, with a few highland cows thrown into the mix. But the magic all around us was growing ever stronger, that indefinable color in the air, almost a yellow smell I could taste, like the sulphurous atmosphere of a mill town.
Finally the driver pulled to a stop on the side of the road and we alit. To my left was a wide shore of white sand, a beach which stretched on without end into the fog.
‘This is as far as I go,’ he said in English for my benefit, and he nodded his head up to our right, away from the sea. ‘Tak’ the road to the other shore. I’ve told Miss Fergianna the way.’
He hefted out our bags and got back in the Land Rover. Within seconds he was gone, turned back the way we’d come, leaving us alone in that deserted spot.
Down below us was the empty beach, and to my right only sand dunes topped with high grass, with a small lane cut through them. Nothing else was visible through the grayness. The land was silent except for the whispering wash of the waves; no birds sang, no motors hummed.
My companion looked at my bags with contempt and sniffed loudly.
‘You do know, whitever ye have in there, I’ve got to say it smells really bad.’
I had managed to smuggle the coin past Hugh, I knew he’d caught a whiff of the tainted magic on it as he hefted the bag into the luggage bay in Inverness, but in the rush of catching the bus, I’d thought I’d gotten away with it.
‘My clothes are clean,’ I replied shortly, although my eyes slid down to my purple flowered carry-on to check there was no evidence of the coin shining through.
‘No, I mean the magic, in that bag there,’ she replied as she nudged it with the toe of her scruffy black Doc Martens.
I stayed quiet while we both contemplated it.
‘Is it your medium?’
‘My what?’
‘Your medium, your... familiar. What you use for casting spells.’
‘No,’ I said blankly. I’d never heard of such a thing. And Hugh had said that witches had no use for spells, for they could use the power of the minds.
‘Then you probably don’t want to bring it onto the island,’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘Whatever it is, there’s something wrong with it. She won’t like it.’
I bit my bottom lip, not quite sure what was going on and what I should do about it.
‘Ye can toss it, declare it or hide it,’ Fergie told me in a kinder voice.
‘Will they give it back to me? I mean, when I’ve finished here?’
She shook her head. ‘Not a chance. It’s gone forever if she gets her claws on it.’
‘No.’ The word was out of my mouth before I’d even thought about it. This coin was the only link to my mother, tainted magic or not, and it was too hard won from the sorcerer. No way I was going to risk losing it.
‘Then I’m guessing you don’t want to throw it away either.’
I looked all around me at the sand dunes and mist. ‘Can I hide it here? Collect it afterwards, if I ever get away?’ I meant, if I survived whatever awaited me at our destination.
Silence greeted that question.
‘Do ye not feel all the loose magic in the air here?’ she asked finally. ‘You can leave it here, but the beathach creaghe will only snatch it up. They don’t usually come this far from the water, but even a tainted morsel like that will attract them like vultures to a body three days dead.’
‘I can’t lose it,’ I told her. ‘Look, it was my mother’s.... And it’s the only link I have to her, it’s the only thing that makes me think she’s not dead, like everyone thinks.’
My vision was blurring with unshed tears, and I blinked hard to hold them back.
She shifted her weight uneasily. ‘Oh, shit, you’re crying.’
With those words, the exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours caught up with me and the tap turned on. I stood there and sniffed as the tears let loose.
‘Look,’ she said, glancing around as if to ensure we were alone in the mist. ’Put a hiding spell on it, I won’t tell on you.’
‘I don’t...’ I began, then forced myself to speak through the despair. ‘I don’t know how to do spells.’
We stared at each other, then she broke the gaze and stared again at the purple carryon at our feet.
‘Dammit,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll do it, if you promise me you’ll not tell. We’re not supposed to use any extra magic over there on Scarp, and if we’re found out I’m in deep shite and will get thrown off the island. In order for me to help you, I need to trust you.’
‘You can do that?’ I breathed as I wiped my nose with my sleeve. ‘Hide it?’
‘It’s a simple enough spell. But... you’ve got to be really careful, because it’ll have my magic prints all over it.’
‘I swear,’ I told her fervently. ‘If you can do this for me, I’ll... I’ll owe you big time, and I promise I won’t let anyone find it. You don’t know what this means to me.’
She clucked as if already having second thoughts. ‘Well, hand it over then.’
‘Do I need to give it to you?’
‘I’ll need to know what kind of spell to put on it, then, won’t I? And I can’t know that until I hold it.’ Her voice was growing more impatient.
‘I thought witches didn’t use spells,’ I said as I bent down to open my bag on the sandy road, working quickly before she changed her mind. I dug deep inside till my fingers closed over my medallion. It was pulsing in my hand, glowing like it had in Alt last month, probably because of all the untethered mag
ic all around us.
‘Indeed?’
‘So I’ve been told...’ I mumbled. That’s what Hugh had said, not that I had any personal experience myself.
‘Well you’ve been told wrong,’ she said with an air of superiority as she reached out her hand. ‘I’m a witch and I use spells all the time. It’s far easier than that mind magic the Kin is always on about. Now then, we’ve got to get a move-on, the ferryman’ll not be waiting for us.’
I felt humbled by my complete lack of knowledge, and put the coin in her waiting hand.
‘Oh, my, then!’ It lay in the flat of her palm, and her eyes widened as she examined it. ‘That’s no’ good.’
‘What? Why do you say that?’
She ignored me as she reached in her pocket and took out a piece of blue fabric, the size and shape of a handkerchief. It must have been pure silk, for the vibrant color glowed in the pale grayness all around us.
Fergie wrapped the coin with the fabric, then brushed two fingers of her right hand lightly over the small glowing bundle.
‘Nach fhaic duine seo, na leig le duine faireachdainn seo,’ she chanted softly.
She quickly unwrapped it and without touching the coin again, passed it back into my hand. The glimmer of the metal flickered on and off like an electric lamp right before the power is lost in a storm, then all of a sudden it became lifeless, just an ordinary, slightly tarnished piece of metal in my hand.
‘Alright then,’ she said, once the last flicker of life had gone from the object. ‘That’s good for a day or so, enough to get you on to the island. You’ll have to think of something else when it wears off. You’ll not want her getting a whiff of this, mind. You’d be kicked off the island and sent back to where you came from before you know it.’
I cradled the last remnant of my mother in my hand, no magic colors or tingle emanating from it now. ‘That’s amazing, it’s like it was never magical at all now. I need you to teach me how you did that.’
