‘Because she didn’t know. There were witches who held the knowledge but it was lost over time. Whoever spoke the words hardly mattered compared to the message itself.’
The moss that had woven itself between my fingers fell away, leaving me fully healed and full of new questions.
‘Please, you have to tell me everything you can,’ I begged. I wanted the truth. I would not leave room for doubt. ‘How do you know? When did it happen? How can you be sure it’s me?’
She gazed over at Bell House, her once emerald eyes cool and distant. ‘There was no one moment, no mystical event. Allmy life, I bore knowledge I could not explain and never once sought it out. This is a different gift to your visions, Emily, this knowing. It doesn’t come wrapped in fancy language or trapped in a crystal ball. It’s closer to a feeling, like being tired or hungry or thirsty. One moment you aren’t, the next, you are. The knowledge simply is and there is no disputing it.’
Like my love for Wyn. I didn’t ask for it, couldn’t explain it, but I was beyond certain. Of my feelings, at least.
‘So, it’s like intuition, a gut instinct,’ I said, searching myself for any new awareness. Nothing. Just more confusion than ever.
‘One that leaves no room for doubt,’ the ghost replied. ‘The things I knew took me to the places I needed to be, showed me the people I needed to help. I had to leave my family when I was fourteen years old, I had to travel across England to meet my husband in Wales. I knew he would love me truly, that I would love him in return, and we would travel to the new world together but he would not survive the voyage.’
‘Did you tell him he wouldn’t make it?’
‘No.’ A flicker of sadness passed over her serene visage. ‘It couldn’t be helped and knowing in advance wouldn’t have lessened his pain, only increased his suffering.’
I tried to imagine the burden of knowing the person you loved, the person who loved you, was going to die. Somehow, it felt much worse than wondering whether or not you might end the entire world. My hands were shaking now and the wounds healed by the Spanish moss threatened to open once more.
‘I thought I would understand the blessing better after my Becoming,’ I told her as another layer of uncertainty draped itself around my shoulders, ‘but every day there’s something else, something new to deal with. Catherine said my connection to the blessing would be stronger and I’d understandeverything, but the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know a thing.’
‘Some would say that is the definition of wisdom: admitting what you do not know.’
‘Wow,’ I gasped. ‘I must be so wise.’
Two men walking a corgi passed by without so much as glancing in our direction but the dog’s head turned sharply towards us and gave a short, sharp bark. I pulled back, holding my breath, but my companion merely watched then held out her hand when the dog came forward with an inquisitive sniff.
‘Oh, Millicent,’ one of the men said, letting go of his partner to tug on the leash with both hands. ‘Why did we spend all that money on obedience training if you’re going to bark at nothing?’
‘The men can’t see us,’ I said in a whisper, my back pressed against the tree.
‘They don’t want to see us,’ Emma Catherine replied. ‘We don’t want to be seen. The blessing obliges us all.’
‘And the dog?’
‘Who wouldn’t want to be seen by a dog?’
Millicent growled happily as a ghostly hand passed over her fur, then barked once more and raced away, running after her owners with her tongue hanging out.
‘There are so many things I need to know,’ I said. ‘If I ask you direct questions, will you give me straight answers?’
She inclined her head in agreement. ‘I will speak to the things I can, but please know that it does more harm than good, expecting quick and easy answers.’
‘Well, I’m pretty used to getting them instantly,’ I said, instinctively reaching for my phone but it wasn’t in my pocket. No, it was still drying out in a bag of rice in the kitchen.
My ancestor tilted her head towards the moon, hertranslucent profile etched in pale and milky light. ‘Answers, yes, but not the truth. One is more easily obtained than the other.’
I studied her face as she moonbathed, the fine, delicate features I saw softened in my own reflection, echoed in Catherine and Ashley and even my father. Where to start? What to ask? I had a million questions and I knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t, answer them all.
‘Why me?’ I said eventually, settling on the one thing I truly couldn’t make sense of. ‘Why is this happening to me and not any of the witches before or after?’
‘Why not?’
OK, perhaps not the best place to start.
‘Why is one person a talented artist and another good with numbers?’ Emma Catherine said, oblivious or indifferent to my frustration. ‘One person is a natural leader, another a born caregiver, the next a problem solver. No one asks for the gifts they are born with, all have a choice as to whether or not they will honour them.’
‘But I don’t have a choice,’ I pointed out. ‘This is happening to me whether I like it or not.’
