‘And?’
‘Would you give me a night to – to pack?’ I had almost saidto say goodbye.
My father had remained silent through the binding, standing stiffly with one hand on the back of his chair as if for support. He did not look at me once. If he could not be a good father to me, I felt spiteful pleasure at least to know he was ashamed of being a poor one.
‘Very well.’
She swept from the room, pausing only in the doorway to turn back to us, beautiful and terrible. I thought of her dirty feet tracking up the carpets and across the marble, a wild animal loose in our midst.
‘We leave at first light tomorrow. I will not wait.’
A shiver passed through me as I realised what I had done.
She was no woman, but a Witch. And I had bound myself into her service.
V
Outside the dining room I found a decanter of claret and tucked it under my arm along with a glass, having abandoned my father to nurse his shame alone. I needed air, quiet to order my hectic thoughts. Climbing up to the roof, I found an old moon waning into its last quarter; from below came the clinking of silverware in the dining room, then after a while, the lilt of voices spreading out to the bedrooms.
It was cold at night in November and I regretted only wrapping a shawl around my shoulders. My view spanned the formal gardens, the lake on one side, then on the other, the city. The summer flowers had long since faded, and now the frost had killed all but the hardiest of the bright pinks and greens and oranges of the autumn-blooming chrysanthemums and dahlias. Soon snow would swallow the last of the leaves that painted Blumwald in gold and red, and my home would become a charcoal sketch of white and grey.
I would not see it happen.
This was the last night wrapped in its protective wall, its mosaic of roofs and streets and squares all in brown and yellow. My mother’s city. The home of her bones. Cupped around us, the mountains towered silent and black in outline against the starred sky. Somewhere in the dark was the Witch’s castle. I wondered if that was how she saw us, a boil of stone and thatch and tile rupturing the ever-spreading green of her forest.
I downed my glass and poured the next.
Would there be anything familiar in the Witch’s world? Would the same flowers bloom there? The same birds call? I had thrown everything I had away in a moment of despair and spite. I had thrown away my life.
Somehow, that was the thought that brought just what I had done into focus.
My stomach heaved. I made it to the gutter just in time to bring the wine back up, acrid and dark. Shaking, I sunk back on my heels.
I would live the rest of my life with a monster.
Or perhaps I wouldn’t live to see the moon wax full.
The sour smell of vomit filled my nostrils and my teeth felt tacky and coarse. I thought I might be sick again.
I was terrified, but I would not back down.
I was going somewhere no one in Blumwald dared go. I alone would know what it was to be the Witch’s companion.
My family might think little of me, but none of them would ever do what I was about to.
Unsteady with drink, I went back to my room to pack. I would not sleep that night.
A team of maids were already at work, folding away my clothes and stowing my dressing table contents into boxes. In a nest of tissue paper, my geological samples were buried like bulbs in winter.
Was I this easy to evict?
With help I stripped off the heather evening gown while directing the final stages: my winter clothes, layers of warm underthings, thick woollen socks, flannel petticoats, tweed skirts and a large, coarse mariner’s jumper my father had brought back for me from a trip to Denmark, all stuffed together in a trunk. I left behind all the pretty dresses and flimsy evening things; I needed sturdy, hardwearing clothes. I had to be prepared.
In a carpetbag I packed a change of clothes for the journey, my notebook and roll of pencils. I wanted something of my mother’s, but I was at a loss for what to bring. The night was creeping on. I had little time to linger.
I took a fragile book from the shelf: a slim volume of stories for children that had been hers as a girl. She had never read to me from it; that had been beyond the amount of mothering she had been willing to give. But I had liked to turn the pages and imagine myself as her, making the shape of the words with my lips as she had done, conjuring the same images in both our minds.
I folded it up in silk, secured it with a length of twine and stowed it with my books. Then, in a moment of impulse, I added her drop spindle and the ragged length of fleece I had yet to spin into yarn.
