I’m a child in a red cloak, plucked from a fencepost just when I imagined myself free. Though I feel a child’s fear, my thoughts are my own, steady, adult, imagining what it might be like to be weightless and untethered from life in the tiny village, from a mother who lost her temper too often at my insistent questions, from a mostly inattentive father. Parents who’d had me too late, when they thought their parenting days done, that their attention might only be divided between their own interests and grandchildren who could be handed back. This, I think, is why the parents were so strangely guilty – not because of a greater love for this youngest child, but for whatever irritation her existence caused them. An afterthought, an annoyance, a child with demands that felt like too much when they’d thought to have quieter days.
Will they admit it to themselves? Unlikely. Perhaps it would feel too much like taking blame and few are willing to do sucha thing. Most prefer to blame others, punish them even though such action never results in relief, only makes something dark and foul grow in the soul.
I shake myself awake and go sit in the window bay, watch the rose garden beneath the quarter moon, everything a little silvery-dark. My hands ache, the knuckles cracking as I clench and release. The rosebushes sway like dancers; they’re never without blossoms, not through any great magic, or rather effort, of mine; from my inadvertent losses, yes. The moon’s briefly obscured by the shape of an owl flying by. I think of other nights of my life when I’ve sat somewhere watching this same moon, in all her moods and phases. Even as a child, I’d climb to the roof of our ramshackle home (a single room, divided only by the functions we assigned to it, the privies communal things at the end of the alley) because if I sat there long enough she’d pass overhead and I could see her even in that city of high towers and almost buried harbour-side slums, we so far down by the river, the buildings built up the slopes and into the cliffs, climbing like vines. Beneath the moon, I could forget. Beneath the moon I felt the flow of a power that I didn’t know truly or understand, then.
I think of my mother favouring my sister; anything pretty that fell into our deprived lives was given to Esther, nothing for me, no spare brightness or colour. I wonder, if she’d paid me some attention, my mother, would I have wandered off that night to be lost in the streets of that great city where I began? (Where, even now, a new power rises.) Running, truly, to find the moon on a dark night because it was overcast and I wanted so much to see her, so I ran, trying to find her, to catch her andbathe in her light because it was the closest thing to a gift I ever knew. Got myself lost.
Lost and then found by a woman who was seeking a child such as I, with a black hole for a heart and magic lurking in her veins. I think of all the glorious – bright, pretty, colourful – things that came fromherhand and made it easy for me to stay. Elevated. More than an apprentice, not quite a daughter, to the court witch, the high sorceress who taught me more than I’d ever likely have learned in the ghetto, the slums, that rookery of my birth. More than I’d ever have learned at my mother’s knee except that I was less loved. I’d have been married off – not for any care about my future but for the coin I’d bring in from a bride price. I was lucky, I suppose, that she hadn’t already sold me for worse.
But the high sorceress, tall and stately in her black and red robes with her silver hair braided and wound like a crown on her head, with her eyes so ebon and her lips so crimson in a snow-pale face? She taught me no fear – no empathy either. No conscience. I had to grow that for myself and it’s still a stunted thing.
***
The flames change on command.
First a single bright flare in the centre of her palm. Next, separating to run along each finger and the thumb, to dance at the tips, then back again. Rhea’s been here for weeks now and her control has increased with practice. At first, she whined about the rote nature of the training, but I think a sense of achievement has settled into her, something she’s not had before – and the activity provides a break from gently turningthe sapling twice a day. I suspect her greatest achievement to date was to be beautiful. This power, though? It’s hers, she’s in control of it, it will not dim with age. If it becomes greater, that’s to her credit. Beauty can only decay.
‘Good,’ I say from the bench (the cat sits not too close and I don’t deign to reach out). ‘Now, the target.’
The target is a large wooden rectangle in the middle of the courtyard, soaked with water to minimise the chance of a blaze, although the witch-fire can burn through many, many things and we’re careful to keep our distance from the trough of simmering excrement and sapling soup. Rhea doesn’t question or complain, merely takes aim and shoots a constant stream of fire at the circle carved in the centre. There’s smoke and steam but for the moment the dampening works.
‘You’re learning very quickly. And you had no training before?’ She’s such a quick study it’s hard to believe.
‘None. Only my mother telling me to hide what I was.’
‘That’s the song of many mothers. They think they’re protecting us.’ Of course my own mother said and did no such thing; the abilities I manifested weren’t easily seen and it took the high sorceress’s coaxing to bring them out.
‘I know she was afraid.’ Rhea shrugs. ‘Rightly so apparently.’
‘Now, stutter it.’ The flames become intermittent, a perfectly timed rhythm of on and off.
I find myself nodding. ‘Well done, Rhea. Very well done. That’s it for the day.’
She smiles, pleased with herself, proud. Then she frowns. ‘But what will I do with it, Mehrab? This power, what’s it for?’
This gives me hope; so many don’t question it. If they do,their answer is ‘Forme.’ And they spend their lives pursuing gain based in that puissance, in making sure no one else ever gets a chance. Using the power to dominate. I wish I’d thought to ask that question when I was young.
‘The main thing is to know that you can defend yourself and anyone you choose to love. We’re too vulnerable as women. We can’t rely on men to protect us – and as witches? So few are willing to step forward to help us. You simply need to be able to protect yourself and to know that you can.’ I pause. ‘I think that fear leaves when you’re certain you can look after yourself. Or at least it diminishes to a level that’s manageable – that doesn’t overwhelm you, that can act as an early warning. Most folk die because of fear; it paralyses them, stops them from fighting. They fear themselves dead and then become so because they lose their grip on being alive.’ I shake my head. ‘Don’t let panic get a foothold.’
‘You’re very calm,’ she says.
‘Hard-won.’
She nods slowly, stares out into the trees, measuringly. ‘No more offerings.’
‘No,’ I say.
‘Not since the burning.’
‘No.’
‘Do you think it’s gone away? Whatever it was?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything, haven’t sensed anything. Perhaps it’s given up or made a strategic withdrawal to regroup. Still got your charm?’ Rhea pats a pocket to show the little pouch of herbs is there as well as the sprigs of sage and rosemary in our hems. ‘Stay alert. Come along. Dinner time.’
***
‘How old is the forest, do you think?’
