An Errant Witch

by E M Graham

  Brin the elf had returned it to me before I left. He’d spent Christmas with us at Richmond Cottage, in fact he now appeared to be a semi-permanent fixture in our family home, having won the heart of Aunt Edna while making himself useful painting the ceilings and doing other renovation jobs which made use of his height and long limbs. I wondered what he was up to, how he was adjusting to his new world, and how he would make a living when he had no social insurance number, no identity papers. He was a non-entity, but he still had to eat, and living with my family could not be a long-term plan. Once it had all came out that I’d allowed him to escape into the real time out of his home in Alt, I was surprised that the Witch Kin hadn’t forced him back. It had something to do with supernatural refugee status and the recent Rights of Being legislation. I could only hope they would follow through with their promises of assistance to him, so that he and my best friend Alice could be together forever.

  I’d spent hours searching the coin for clues over the endless Christmas week, that week of time when time stands still and you’re never really sure what day it is. It hadn’t told me anything, though, never again gave me a hint of Mom, not like the night Willem had torn the veil between Alt and real time and I’d felt her presence almost as if she’d been next to me.

  A Google search had not turned up anything about the letters embossed on both faces of it; they were similar to Nordic runes but not the same, and that’s as far as I got with it.

  I hadn’t wanted to take the medallion with me when I left to go to the Inquiry on the second of January, but Brin had insisted, going on and on about how hard won this had been and how I might find answers, and even if the worst came about I would still have it on me, and it might make me remember even if the Kin wiped my magical memory. I had to agree because he was so fervent he looked like he was getting ready to break out into a song about it all, and elf songs are the worst. At the time, I’d have agreed to almost anything to avoid that; now, I was feeling such homesickness that even an elf song would have been joy to my ears, because it would mean that I was home.

  AND THERE was Sandy, doing up his winter coat and donning his hat, preparing to go outside. What perfect timing.

  Even in this cool weather, his knees were bare beneath his kilt.

  ‘Hi.’ I skipped up next to him and started to do up my own jacket. I kept it on in the castle because the stone walls made everything so damp and cold. ‘Going out?’

  He whirled around to face me.

  ‘Dara,’ he said in a less than welcoming tone. ‘Yeah, I’m just heading out again to the barn.’

  We both looked out the door he had just opened. The mists of the early morning were dissipating under the weak northern sun, but still lay thick in the shadowy corners, blurring even the garden walls.

  ‘You probably don’t want to join me, it’s a messy business,’ he said firmly.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit of animal smell,’ I said as I went out the door ahead of him. ‘Besides, you probably could use someone else out there with you, it’s still a little misty out there. Don’t want you getting lost, right?’

  ‘I won’t get lost,’ he said, looking a little discomfited. ‘I’m just going to the barn, as I said. Really, I think you should stay back here.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ I assured him. I could probably hide the coin in the barn, surely there would be a hidden corner in that large building, in which case I wouldn’t even need to ask Sandy for assistance.

  Outside the door were two large tin pails. He hefted one in each hand, brushing aside my offer to help.

  ‘I’m fine, I don’t need you,’ he insisted as he set off through the garden.

  I followed him in silence till we reached the garden wall, then once we were shot of the castle I began to speak again. He had been so friendly to me last night, but right now his mood seemed sour.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked him tentatively.

  The barn was a distance from the castle proper, through a vegetable patch lying fallow for the season, past a root cellar dug deep into the peat. He paused and set down the pails, chafing his hands together. The handles of the buckets were little more than thin wire. I grabbed one with both hands, glad of my protective felted mittens which cushioned the sharpness, for the metal pail and its contents were heavy.

  He looked at me darkly but this time accepted my help, and we set off again through the thick wet air in the direction of the wooden raftered barn.

  ‘I shouldn’t take it out on you,’ he said finally. ‘You’re not part of them. They made me so angry.’

  ‘They’re a pretty rotten bunch, all told.’

  He shook his head. ‘But they’ll see. I’ll show them, and we’ll be all the harder on them, the bastards.’

  An odd answer, and I was going to question him further when at last the barn hove into view, but I saw we weren’t alone. A figure lingered by the entrance, one dressed in a robe, brown this time, unlike Johanna’s black one, with its hood up against the damp.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I shifted the pail into one hand and pointed with my free one.

  The person must have heard my voice, for sound carried easily through the moisture-laden air and the figure looked up sharply before slinking away around the side of the barn.

  Yet our eyes had made brief contact through the mist, and my heart dropped to my boots for the second time that day. I recognized the set of the head, the pale eyes boring out from beneath the hood, and I thought I saw a terrible, thin smile. If this was right, then I had reason to feel afraid, very afraid.

  Willem the failed sorcerer, last seen disappearing into the veil of Alt on a wooden steamship in the midst of a snow storm an ocean away, was now here on Scarp, the holy island of the Witch Kin.

  I DROPPED the pail, wanting dearly to chase after him and tackle him down and beat him within an inch of his life but I found my feet refusing to follow instructions. ‘That’s... that’s...’ I sputtered.

  ‘That’s the shepherd,’ Sandy said dismissively. ‘You’ll have to excuse him, he’s a hermit and really doesn’t like people much, he says they give him headaches.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Sandy? He looked... he looked familiar.’ I swallowed my next words, for if it really had been Willem then as sure as shooting, I was the one who had attracted him to the island. Sandy was so upset about the mockery he’d experienced last night at the hands of the others, that perhaps he wasn’t concentrating, and was seeing only who he expected to see.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve never met him before,’ Sandy said, and then went on to scold me. ‘But I wish you’d listened to me and stayed in the castle. Do you see now why I didn’t want you to come? You’ve probably scared him off and I won’t see him for days again, and I really need to ask him about a ewe who might be in for an early lambing.’

  ‘I need to speak with him.’ I could hear the determination in my own voice.

  ‘Not going to happen, never.’ Was it my imagination, or was my friend sounding a little apprehensive?

  ‘Can’t he make an exception for once? I’m pretty harmless.’ If I’d been wrong and it wasn’t Willem, then no harm done. I could dismiss the sighting as a visual hallucination, and know that it was just a side effect of my healing.

  If, on the other hand, it really was Willem, then it would be good to know what I was up against.

  ‘No,’ Sandy said with a shakiness that hadn’t been present before, laced with an edge of panic. ‘You need to leave him alone, do you hear me? He’s a hermit, he hates people, and he won’t forgive me if I bring you to him!’

  ‘Okay, okay, calm down,’ I said, then crossed my fingers. ‘I won’t go bothering your hermit.’

  As if. I was going to find that shepherd if I had to rake the entire island with a fine tooth comb.

  I STILL had an hour before we met for our first class, so I left Sandy to his animal chores and set off up the hillside in the only logical direction the shepherd might have tak
en.

  The mist was burning off quickly, and it was becoming a beautiful clear day; the wind was chilly but fresh on my cheeks, and hiking the mountain felt good on my body still recovering from the travel and tension of yesterday. From here, I could see over the water to Lewis, to the sandy road and concrete slip which had been shrouded in fog the previous day, and then all along the coast with its white sand beaches and the purple hills rising to the northeast. Far off clouds hurried across the sky, but they were white and not threatening to lower.

  Then I saw a strange thing in the landscape, and it took me a second before I recognized the misplaced landmark. Below me on my hilly perch lay on a flat parcel of land with a large concrete square spread out on the ground, painted white around its perimeter with a large white X in the middle.

  A helicopter landing pad. An unexpected thing to see in the medievelish world of Scarp, but at least now I’d solved the puzzle of how Johanna had reached the island before us the previous day, and had managed not to be worn out through the stress of public transportation and that bumpy long ride through the mountains of the Island of Lewis and Harris.

  I continued on and wandered further than I meant to in my search for the shepherd/ Willem, following a sheep path across the hillside, and I didn’t notice I’d turned a couple of corners until, looking back along my path, I realized the castle was out of sight. Here, there was no sign of human habitation, past or present; I’d almost forgotten about finding anyone by now or returning in time for class, because the heathery scented air had a headiness here in the freedom of these hills and, filled with an inexplicable rush of joy, I continued my meandering way across a stream and on again to the rise of the next slope.

  And then I saw something even stranger before me, in the middle of this wild country, a straight sided tower reaching high up into the sky above. It was huge, a man-made structure, built of stones pieced together on a perfectly slanted rise to the heavens, and I could tell by the golden lichen spreading up the north face of it that it was ancient. No windows pierced the sides, I couldn’t guess at the purpose of this monument standing on its own little rise away from the mountains which defined the island.

  I couldn’t not go to it; like a beacon it called me and I forced my way through heather and gorse and loose scree underfoot, ignoring the scratches on my hands from the brambles surrounding the base of the structure like a fairy tale princess’s home.

  Once there, I laid my hand on the warm stone, feeling the living rock pulse beneath my touch and I rested my cheek against its solid roughness, breathing in deeply of the dry stone smell. I became rejuvenated, empowered, feeling the energy running in my body along ancient paths determined long ago in my genetic witch heritage.

  I felt at home for the first time in my life, enervated and renewed with every cell in my body crying out ‘At last!’

  I don’t know how I stayed like, totally lost in this unexpected homecoming. I was outside time itself, there on that rocky and brambled hillside, until I dimly became aware of the heat coming from the pocket of my jeans where I’d stuffed the coin and curious, I took it out.

  It glowed even in the bright sunlight, the metal sparkling as if it was lit within, and the runic characters were clearer than they’d ever been. More than three dimensional, they were moving and vibrating and morphing before my eyes, as if urgently trying to give me a message. But still I couldn’t understand their meaning.

  Then right beside me, so close I could almost feel their breath on my neck, someone spoke my name.

  Dara?

  That voice transported me back to hot lazy summer days in our walled garden, a frosty lemonade in hand and Mom prancing, fooling, whirling in Great-Aunt Sadie’s flowered dress six sizes too big; and to marshmallows melting in the red mugs full of hot chocolate before the fireplace, and us wrapped in home-made quilts, yet even in the dead of winter she brought sunshine, always sunshine in that voice.

  ‘Mom?’

  Dara! My darling, my dear one. That’s you finally! How I’ve missed you.

  I whipped around but couldn’t see her, not behind the bushes, not on the scree, not by the stone tower.

  ‘Mom, is this you? Where are you? Oh my God, you’re alive! I knew you were, oh God, I’ve missed you too, you don’t know how much, for all these years.’ I was babbling, yes.

  Has it been a long time then? Her voice was sad. Time passes differently here, I think.

  My hand reached out to the rock wall before me, the warm stone unyielding; windowless, doorless, no way in or out.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked again. ‘Are you in there? In the tower?’

  Tower? I could hear the confusion in her voice. I’m here in the ice, it’s so cold, Dara, I need your help.

  I stared up at the immensity of the wall before, then again I began to walk all around it. Surely I’d missed the opening.

  ‘I can’t get in Mom,’ I said. ‘How did you get there, why are you inside the tower?’

  Dara, it’s not what you think. Get Jon to help. Call Jon, he’ll know what to do.

  Jonathon de Teilhard. Dad. The man who gave me my genetic magic but not his name; my heart hardened at the very thought of him. He’d driven me to the airport two nights ago, not out of affection but to ensure I got on the plane to the judgement awaiting me in Inverness. No words of love to soothe my fears though he must have known how scared I was feeling, leaving home for the first time with the ordeal looming ahead, no comforting hug as I left to go through Security. Just that hardness in his eye, and a final admonition to do whatever was requested of me and tell the truth and accept the consequences. He didn’t tell me outright not to embarrass him further, but he didn’t need to. Dysfunctional families each have their own unspoken language, the secret meanings behind the words, meanings forged in skirmishes and arguments and strife and anger till the communication has been winnowed down to a glance, a sniff, a shake of the head. The words no longer need to be said out loud for each player to express his lines.

  ‘Dad is thousands of miles away, Mom,’ I said to the stone wall. ‘I don’t think he’d help even if he was here.’

  Give it up, Dara! The two of you are so much the same, you can’t see it! She was almost laughing through the tears in her voice. You two are going to have to work together for a change. I can’t reach him from here, don’t you understand? I need both of you.

  ‘I’ll find a way in, Mom, I’ll get you,’ I insisted. I searched again the entirety of the stone tower for a break in its surface, something, anything, but it was too solid.

  Perhaps I could climb to the top? I stepped back and looked way, way up to where the sun was just cresting behind the very top of the structure, and I shaded my eyes to peer closely. There might be hidden footholds. So happy was I to hear my mother’s voice for the first time in years, so desperate to scrabble my way inside, that I didn’t wonder why I could hear her if she was locked inside a solid stone tower.

  I rapped a few times to find a hollow spot, perhaps a hidden doorway, but all I got was sore knuckles. ‘Help me with this Mom,’ I cried. ‘Help me get to you!’

  It’s no use, Dara. You can’t reach me where you are. The portal is closing, they’re coming back. Get Jon, he’ll know...

  ‘Mom?’

  And her voice was gone, just like that. I raced around the base again, searching high and low, and then I knew it was no good. Had her captors silenced her? What portal was she talking about?

  I slumped against the stone wall, the tears spilling out and raining down my face unchecked, overcome by that terrible deep feeling of loss, of losing my mother all over again. I let my body slide down until I sat on the hard ground beneath it, staying in close contact with the wall and unable to tear myself away from it.

  After the flow of grief had passed I came back to myself slowly, and with this return I realized the unlikelihood of what I believed had happened.

  Mom locked in a stone tower on Scarp, and I just hap
pen to be sent here? No, maybe in fiction, but not in real life, such a thing was not believable.

  Yet I had long suspected Cate of having a hand in my mother’s disappearance and she’d made a point of telling me what a good friend Johanna was. And Johanna ruled this island. It was not such a foolish leap in thought as it might seem.

  Was I the next to be caught in Cate’s web? The next one to be trapped in the tower. It hardly seemed feasible, but if it had happened to Mom...

  I took a deep breath and sat up, forcing my mind to work in a logical fashion. I had happened upon this stone tower in the middle of nowhere, and I’d immediately felt comforted, at home, as if I’d reached the center of my own universe after living all my life on the edges of it. I’d heard her voice like she were standing right next to me and we conversed; it wasn’t a memory or an echo, it was her and she was here.

  My glance fell to the medallion still clutched in my hand and my fingers opened slowly. It glowed and sparkled in the sun, the magic unfettered on this island, but the runes were quiet now. Mom had somehow imprinted herself on this item all those years ago, yet how? She was Normal, supposedly, with no magic in her genes.

  Perhaps the coin’s magnified power had allowed the solidity of the stone to evaporate so that me and she could speak, the soundwaves travelling effortlessly on some supernatural band width?

  I scrabbled to my feet again and searched, but there was still no way into the tower that I could see. I leaned against it for a long moment, the warmth of the late morning quickly ebbing out of the stone. I would return here, but I was going to need assistance.

  This was as good a hiding place as any, here at the base of this landmark. There no signs that people frequented the place, no paths worn through the brambles at its base save that which I myself had cut through. Mom’s medallion would be safe here.

  I scrabbled in the dirt by the bottom of the stone structure till I found a crevice and slid the coin into it, mounding pebbles from the scree over it so I would easily find this hiding place again. I definitely couldn’t risk having it found and confiscated now, not for all the world.