I had seen strange things but this –this –was impossible. Had my mind slipped so far from sanity? I opened it again, but the room was still there. Colours muted with early morning light, it was warmer than the corridor I stood in, a fire stoked at the other end of the study. I touched the side table within reach, sliding my fingertips over the polished grain of the wood.
It was real. Which meant it wasn’t impossible. The sign of a rational mind was to change one’s belief in what was possible when presented with evidence. Evolution was impossible until we saw evidence in fossils. It was impossible that the earth was more than the six thousand years as the Bible taught, until the study of rock told us otherwise.
I hesitated on the threshold.
The Witch said she would know if I pried. The back of my neck prickled. Was she watching me now?
I knew to go through this door would be to cross a line, but in that moment my fear of the Witch was eclipsed by my curiosity.
I stepped inside.
It was quiet. Softly, a clock ticked and somewhere outside the window trilled a finch. In this room it was early morning, the day just easing into motion. In the castle I’d left behind it was some time after lunch. I walked around the room once, finding details in the scrollwork or wallpaper I couldn’t have dreamed up. On the Witch’s desk was the scatter of papers I’d seen before; with the tip of a finger I lifted a few sheets of handwriting. There seemed to be two hands – one in Kurrent, the fluid hand I had been taught by my governess, the other in blackletter, a square and sharp-edged gothic script I had only seen in old Schwartzstein legal documents. Most of the desk was taken up by several stout ledgers all opened to pages tightly filled with columns of numbers and dates that struck me as odd. They bore no resemblance to my father’s account books. What could the Witch be recording so diligently?
There was an unfinished letter in the one clear space, dated Tuesday last. Curious. Had it been left unfinished so long? No... the pen that lay beside it was still charged with ink. That this room occupied a different pocket of time and space to the rest of the castle, I had already grasped. But I had not thought it might occupy an entirely differentday.
Before I could start reading, a voice came from beyond the main door. The Witch. She barked an order, I presumed at Wolf, then the doorknob turned.
I shot back across the room and pulled my door shut just as the Witch entered. For a breathless moment I stood on the other side, palm flat against the wood. Did she see me? Would she follow? I didn’t dare open the door again to check.
Nothing happened: I had escaped unnoticed.
But now everything had changed. I knew I was not losing my mind.
And I knew my sneering mistress truly was what everyone had accused her of being.
AWitch.
b
As my maddening, solitary days passed, I stopped avoiding the Witch. I was drawn to her like a drowning woman grasping at another body.
I was sinking, and I didn’t care if I dragged her down with me.
If I heard her down a corridor, I stood my ground and waited for her to pass, savouring her disdainful sneer or irritation. Even her rage failed to move me. I was a tree in a storm, lashed by wind and pelted with rain, but it only nourished.
The less I avoided her that following week, the more I noticed her. At a window watching me as I walked in the yard. In the shadows of the great hall as I made drawings of the ragged tapestries. Always watching me. For someone who had insisted so forcefully to detest my presence, she sought it out just as much as I.
I risked visiting her study through the secret door at least once a day, and each time it spilled me out into that same Tuesday morning, wet ink and dawning sunrise. I only stayed a moment or two to confirm it truly was what it seemed. A scientific experiment, repeating the same action under different circumstances to elucidate the forces at work. I had discovered something far beyond anything I might have expected, but I had no one to ask about it. No books to consult, no theories to assess. As in all things now, I was alone.
So instead I took to waiting outside the door to the Tower in which she was so often cloistered, to ambush her with suggestions to tidy the place up: send the tapestries in the great hall to be cleaned, fix the broken windows, sweep the blocked chimneys. She stormed past with a glare, or snarled at me to stop blocking her hallways like litter. This only encouraged me. I took to complimenting her hair, asking after her night’s sleep, tagging along behind her to ask about the history of the castle and the local geography and whatever else was at the top of my mind.
‘Did you know that the oldest spiral staircase still standing is in Trajan’s column in Rome?’ I said, following her down a set of steps. ‘It’s nearly two thousand years old but that the Old Testament possibly mentioned spiral staircases in the Temple of Solomon so they could be even three thousand years old as an architectural feature.’
She stared at me, haggard, deep bruises under her eyes from lack of sleep. ‘Why are you saying this? What is wrong with you?’
I smiled to hide the pang of hurt. ‘I think my family had the same question. If I knew how to be whatever it is you all want from me, I would, but I don’t.’
‘Try harder.’
I turned into her own personal demon, haunting her doggedly until she started peering round corners or pelting out of her study door to avoid me. I was so lonely even these fleeting encounters were better than nothing. And the fact that it bothered her so clearly, pleased me. I might not be wanted but at least she couldn’t overlook me.
A storm blew in by the end of the week, trapping me indoors. I paced outside the normal entrance to the Witch’s study, wondering if I had annoyed her so much she wouldn’t come out while I was there, when the door banged open and the Witch appeared. Or rather, a stack of books higher than her head appeared. The stack dipped to get under the lintel but not enough; the top tome was dislodged and a curse came from somewhere behind. I caught the book – an edition of Goethe’sThe Sorrows of Young Wertherso old the spine was brittle and loose – steadying her and placing it back on top. Her waist was hot under my hand. She emerged, hair tangled and falling in her eyes, cheeks hollow. I waited for her to snap at me for breathing too loudly.
Instead, reluctantly, she said, ‘Thank you.’
My face blazed hot immediately and I said a quick, ‘You’re welcome.’
She lingered, lips parted so I could see a flash of white teeth and red mouth, and looked at me as though she would say something more. Then she barged past me, stepping on my foot.
