An Ignorant Witch

by E M Graham

  At first I could see no one close that was giving me special attention. Only cars going by, late-season tourists from the big cruise ship thronging along the sidewalks heading for their buses, a couple of business men in suits leaving their cars in the lot across from me. They wouldn’t be bothering with me in my hoody and Mom’s old jean jacket. I was invisible to them.

  But over there, sitting on the low concrete wall by the Eastern Edge Gallery. There he was, shades covering his eyes as he lounged with his legs stuck out and facing right towards me. He was long and lean, clad in jeans and a scuffed leather coat and a white t-shirt as if he was James Dean or something.

  What the frig you looking at, A-hole? I thought in my mind.

  I saw that. He answered me, I swear he answered me, even though his lips didn’t move.

  With that, he unfolded himself and stood up and began to saunter across the road as if he didn’t have a care in the world. All the time his eyes were trained on me. Cars slowed down for him. In fact, it was as if time itself slowed down for him. He reached me and stood too close, looking down at me.

  “I saw that,” he said again, but this time aloud. I could tell by his accent he wasn’t from here.

  “What?” I shrugged one shoulder and turned to leave.

  “I saw you shift into Alt.”

  “You nuts or something, buddy? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I sounded way more calm than I was feeling. Only witches and supernaturals could see the Alt, and if he was a witch, then that meant he was a compatriot of my father’s, perhaps a friend of Sasha’s. And that meant Dad was going to be plenty pissed at me when word got round to him, which it would. I could see my pseudo trust fund evaporating before my eyes, and that was actually the least of my worries.

  It wasn’t just my dad’s embarrassment about me that kept me quiet about my half-blood status. Throughout the centuries, the Witch Kin has always felt uneasy about the presence of half-bloods in the general population. I don’t know why they would feel threatened but, well, for example you remember hearing about the witch hunts? Salem and all that?

  They weren’t actually searching out the witches. The Witch Kin were, and have always been, the ruling classes, and you didn’t see any of them getting burnt at the stake. The Royals and the aristocracy thrived during that period. No, the infamous witch hunts actually started as a scourge of the half-bloods, a movement that got out of control when the Normals took up the torch. A lot of blood was shed back then.

  Admittedly, things seem a lot more civilized these days, but it’s just not a good idea to advertise your half-blood status. There’s still a hell of a lot of prejudice around these parts.

  “What are you? Who are you?” He moved to block my exit and placed his hand on my jean jacket shoulder. This guy was going to be trouble.

  “Let me go or I’ll scream,” I warned him, shaking him off.

  “No you won’t,” he said, with all the assurance of a formally trained witch, the knowledge of centuries of entitlement behind him. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just curious.”

  He held his hands up in the air to show he meant no harm.

  “Who I am is none of your business.” I stood and faced him off, wishing I was a mite taller than my five foot six against his six feet plus and broad shoulders to boot. “I don’t have any dealings with your sort.”

  “Hey, I’m just new in town,” he said, taking a step back at the vehemence I threw at him. “Don’t lump me with all the others up the hill.” He jerked his head in the loose direction of the east end.

  He paused and looked me over again.

  “I get it,” he said quietly.

  “Get what?” I really, really wanted to turn tail and run away from him as far and as fast as I could before he caused my whole world to crash down around me, but something made me stay.

  He removed the shades to reveal green eyes so shot with gold they seemed to glow.

  “I’m a half-blood too.”

  Now I was good and floored. He was a half-blood and was admitting it to a total stranger? Christ, he was braver than me, that’s for sure. Unless it was some kind of ruse.

  I grabbed his arm and forced him to walk along the waterfront with me, away from any prying ears or eyes.

  “Are you nuts?” I repeated myself, this time in a whisper. “Don’t go shouting it from the rooftops or you won’t last long in this town.”

  A fellow half-blood. I’d never met one before, at least, not one who admitted it freely.

  I waited until we were sitting at the Harborside Park down by the waterfront, hidden from view by the rose bushes and other greenery. The park was otherwise empty.

  “This isn’t the sixteen hundreds, you know. We have nothing to hide, or to be ashamed of,” he said. He seemed amused.

  Now I could place his accent. He was from the other side of the pond, and by pond I mean North Atlantic Ocean. Ireland, or Scotland. That was a distinct burr in his ‘r’s.

  “No trouble to tell you’re not from here,” I said as I rolled my eyes at his innocence.

  “I think we started off on the wrong foot. Let’s have a do-over,” he suggested, then stuck his hand out. “Hi, I’m Hugh Sabiston, and I’m a half-blood witch.”

  He still had that note of amusement in his eyes. Those mesmerizing green gold eyes.

  I shrugged and took his hand.

  “I’m Dara,” I said.

  “No last name?”

  “None that you’d recognize,” I said. “The part of my name that wasn’t given to me is de Teilhard.”

  “Ah.” He nodded without saying more, simply looked out through the narrows to the ocean beyond.

  “Are you really a mixed blood?” I had to know. He held himself too well, had too much confidence in his voice and his walk. Hugh acted more like a witch, a fully trained witch who had taken his rightful place in society. But that couldn’t be, not if he was a half-blood as he claimed.

  He didn’t answer my question, not straight out. Instead, he started to tell me about where he came from and his family.

  A little island in the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. There were many like him there; in fact, everyone in his early school years had some sort of mixed blood in them. There was a whole island of them.

  “And none of them full-blood? No one policing who marries whom, in order to keep the lines pure?” I was shocked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he started to say, then saw the expression on my face. “Oh, right. It’s still that old-fashioned here, isn’t it?”

  Now it was my turn to nod and be silent.

  “But I don’t understand,” he said. “If they don’t acknowledge their bastard offspring, where were you taught?”

  “Through the regular school system, like most people,” I answered. “My father’s other children, they’re the ones who got to go to finishing schools, not me.”

  “No, I mean the craft, who taught you the craft?”

  “What craft is that? Dad said he’d pay my way through university, and I plan to be there for the rest of my life. I don’t intend to learn a trade.”

  “I’m not talking about plumbing, you nit! Witch craft, where did you pick up that?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t know any witchery,” I denied, then said in a rush exactly as Dad had made me swear to it. “I’m not a witch and I don’t know any witch craft.”

  Hugh had replaced his shades as we were talking, but now he removed them again to search in my eyes. He looked long and hard before he spoke.

  “I saw you shift into Alt,” he said.

  Hadn’t we already had this conversation?

  “Yes and you saw me shift out again pretty damn fast once I’d realized what I’d done,” I pointed out to him. “I almost got a dunking in the harbor. One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.”

  “Exactly.”

  I waited for him to explain what he meant, but it seemed he was waiting for me.

  “I agree, it was stupid,” I
said, getting exasperated. “I usually keep a tight grip on the Alt stuff, or I might get lost in it. I was just... a little emotional at the time, and forgot.”

  “And my question was – where did you learn to do this?”

  “No one taught me anything! It’s against their rules.”

  He stood up abruptly, taking me with him. “I’m starving. Let me buy you lunch, preferably someplace quiet, because we need to talk.”

  5

  I LED HIM STRAIGHT UP THE HILL to my favorite go-to pizza place, and up to the booth section which was empty. This way we could both sit with our backs to the walls without fear that anyone would overhear us.

  Hugh made me go all the way through my short life story, about Mom and Dad, and Mom’s disappearance. About how Edna continued to bring me up in their old family home and refused to admit that Mom was dead. About my experience as a half-blood witch and how Edna had made me swear not to tell anyone, not to show anyone my powers. I didn’t mention about me telling Alice, because I couldn’t risk getting Edna in shit with Dad. We only paused when the waiter was nearby. Hugh was firing questions at me rapidly as he dragged the whole story out of me, and this brought us right to the last bite of his pizza.

  Finally he sat back, staring at the last dregs of beer in his pint.

  “Why? Why all this interest?” I was finally able to ask a question myself.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” he answered finally, shaking his head. “But I’ll try. In my primary school, on the island, you realize we were taught both curriculums simultaneously.”

  I raised an eyebrow in query.

  “The regular school system, as you put it, and the craft,” he replied impatiently. “We all had magic blood, so it was considered the most efficient use of time.”

  “You mean, they teach witch craft to little kids? Like, it’s not something extra after they graduate?” This was the first I’d ever heard of such a thing.

  “Yes,” he said with a dark look. “Your ... siblings, your father’s other children, they’ve all received this education, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.” I thought for a moment. “Is that why they’re such smug jerks?”

  He chuckled. “Possibly. Anyway. Alt shifting is a course in itself, usually given only to the more gifted students. One has to go through rigorous training before Alt is even considered, as it’s thought to be too hazardous without the right preparation beforehand.”

  He looked at me for my reaction.

  I had to give him something. “Wow.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you?”

  “Nah, not really.”

  “You claim to never have received formal education, yet I saw you – I saw you! – flip back and forth to Alt like a gymnast.”

  “You think I did it wrong?”

  He puffed out his cheeks and blew a sigh. “No! You did it perfectly! Except for the part of not knowing where you were before you flipped, which would have earned you a fail for not performing your prior due diligence check, I might add.”

  “So this means...”

  “This means, my dear Dara, that you are an extraordinarily gifted witch.”

  “But I’m just a half-blood.”

  “That makes no difference at all, despite what they tell you.”

  “But the line is diluted in me.” I continued to argue for my limitations yet he was having none of it.

  “It’s the magic in the blood that counts, not the genes.”

  “Well. Imagine that.” I thought a bit further, then came to a conclusion. It was all too much for my head to handle. I rose to go. “Doesn’t make much difference, as far as I can see. I’m still a half-blood in the eyes of everyone who matters, so I’ll never be allowed to be educated in witch craft. I’m better off if I just continue what I’m doing, and stay under the radar so that the Inquisition doesn’t sniff me out.”

  “Fine,” he said, his eyes narrowed at me. “Spoken like a true Normal. You keep doing what you’re doing, then, and just pray you don’t accidentally switch over into a dragon’s den when you’re out hiking someday. You just keep on hiding that light until someone else happens upon you, someone with far less good intent than me.”

  Hugh stood to go too, after first laying a few twenties on top of the bill. Before he strode out the door, though, he turned and flicked a card on to the table.

  “In case you change your mind, I’ll be in town for a while yet.”

  And then he was gone.

  Shit. I should have asked him what to do about Nan Hoskins. He probably could have helped, but it was too late now. Now the only thing I had was that stupid spell from Zeta, and I knew already that was worthless.

  MARK CAME BY FOR SUPPER again that night. He was a nice guy, and I liked him even though he was a cop. A good looking man for an old guy in his fifties, I suppose, but he was perfect for Edna. Mark had a pretty heavy workload with his job and didn’t have a lot of free time, which meant that he wasn’t always hanging around my aunt and getting in her way. Edna was free to be her weird little hermit-slash-writer self most of the week, lost in the characters of the various novels she had on the go at any one time, and he would come by on the odd day to take her out into the world and keep her in touch with reality.

  He didn’t need her, and she liked that. So that made it strange that he was with her two days in a row. However, I fully intended to make use of him, to pick his brains over the lasagna to see if he could help me on the Benjy front. We didn’t bring up what he had been discussing that morning.

  “So,” I began, giving him time to start shovelling the hot cheese and noodles into his mouth. “If someone went missing, what should you do?”

  He swallowed and looked up at me. “You’d file a missing persons report, of course. With the RNC, if it’s a person from St. John’s. Why, what’s on the go? One of your friends?”

  “Nah,” I said. “Well, my friend’s brother, actually. He was last seen heading off up the hill to pick berries a couple of weeks ago, and no one’s seen him since.”

  “A couple of weeks? They can’t be too worried about him, then, if they haven’t taken any action yet. How old is this brother?”

  “In his early twenties. They did go up the Southside Hills to look for him, and didn’t see any sign of him, so they just figure he went off on a party somewhere.”

  “Does this brother make a habit of that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He does. It’s just... he hasn’t been in contact with Alice yet, so she’s worried.”

  “Who we talking about?”

  “Benjy Hoskins.”

  “Oh, well, that one,” Mark said, dismissing any concerns at the mention of the name and tucking back into the lasagna. “Good riddance, I’d say.”

  “Mark! That’s her friend’s brother you’re talking about,” Edna said as she drifted back into the conversation for a moment. You never could tell with my aunt. Sometimes she looked so spaced out, you were sure she was stuck in whatever fantasy land she’d been writing about that day, but then she’d surprise you and show she had been there all along.

  “Benjamin Hoskins is more trouble than he’s worth,” he stated as he pointed at me with his fork. “And he doesn’t even live in my jurisdiction. He’s usually the RNC’s problem, although we’ve had dealings with him too.”

  “He’s okay,” I muttered. I remembered having a crush on Benjy when I was thirteen. He was cool and cute and actually gave me the time of day even though I was just his little sister’s friend. I still had a soft spot for the guy, I admit, despite his lawless ways.

  Or maybe because of his badness. Who knows?

  “Oh, yeah?” Mark said, warming up to his topic. “Tell that to the little old couple out in Maddox Cove his crew terrorized for the sake of one hundred measly dollars. Tell them ‘he’s okay’. Tell it to the parents of the kids he’s hooked on meth. Tell it to...”

  “Alright, already,” I said. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Mark�
��s a good guy, like I said, but he still thinks I’m fifteen years old and that he has to act like a father to me on the occasions when he sees me.

  Truth be told, I don’t actually mind him getting on like that, because it’s sort of comforting in a weird way. Not that I would ever tell him that.

  “Stay away from Benjy and his crowd,” he said. “I don’t ever want to see your name coming across my desk.”

  “Oh go on, Mark,” I said, a smile on my face now. “You’d love to bail me out. Think of the scolding you could give me.”

  “Don’t tease him, Dara. Act like an adult.”

  “But seriously, Mark, normally Benjy would contact Alice eventually. Despite their differences, they’re pretty close.”

  He looked up at me again, his eyes watchful, the cop in him sensing something was up. “What are your feelings in the matter? Do you think something bad has happened to him?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, there’s something wrong, but I don’t know what.” I couldn’t explain more than that. Couldn’t say anything about Nan Hoskins coming back from the dead – if she had ever left, that is.

  “Well, wait and see,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. But tell you what, I’ll make inquiries next time I’m at work.”

  “I appreciate that, Mark. Thanks.” But I had a cold feeling that whatever had happened with Benjy was going to be under the radar of the RCMP.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, ALICE appeared at my house still all flushed with being on the ocean the day before, and with something like excitement in her voice.

  “How was the walrus?”

  “Oh, just fantastic,” she said, and she proceeded to give me all kinds of technical details about the length of his tusks and the color of his hide. I only listened with half an ear, as I usually did when she went into her science mode.

  “But even better – I got a text from Benjy!”

  “That’s huge and wonderful news!” I squealed and gave her a hug. Thank God for that. If the idiot had gotten himself killed, my friend would have been lost.

  She was so excited she didn’t even bother shaking me off. “Want to see it? He says he’s having the time of his life with some new friends he met up with, and he asked me to come join him, says they all want to meet me.”