Time stretched out unbearably. If I breathed again I was sure the footsteps would come again. My chest burned. My head swam.
With a gasp I sucked in a breath.
Still, silence.
Was my mind playing tricks on me?
Then, softly, footsteps retreating down the corridor.
b
I woke sick and confused and with no memory of falling asleep. It was horribly cold, my blankets had slipped to the floor in the night and my feet were near blue. Patience worn threadbare, I dressed and stalked across the castle to the main door to her study.
I knocked. A dull sound muffled by a thick layer of dense wood.
Nothing happened.
I knocked again but no one answered, so I crouched down with difficulty to peer through the keyhole. All I could see was the thick curtain to keep the cold out. I pressed my ear to the door and heard nothing.
I rattled the handle. Locked.
If she wouldn’t talk to me, I would find answers another way.
I went to the other side of the castle, ankle sore and mood growing ever more sour. The door to the past stood before me, as plain and unremarkable as before. Weeks of isolation and a brush with death had worn away my fear of the Witch’s threats. I was already trapped in a living death, and I no longer cared much what happened to me if I was caught.
I went inside.
The study was different. I stood on the threshold, brows furrowed as I counted off all the little things that were wrong. For one, it was mid-afternoon, judging from the way the shadows fell, not the early morning it always had been. There was a fire in the grate, and there was a new scatter of books across the table under the window. The ledgers had all been folded shut and stacked to one side.
On the desk, the half-written letter was gone. Instead, there was a newspaper dated Tuesday last.
I fell back, almost laughing with the realisation. It wasn’t just a door toonespecific Tuesday – it was a door to always thelastTuesday.
I had come for answers, but had stumbled on something quite different.
I circled the room, taking in this new portrait of her life, looking for any sign that my arrival had changed things for her. What did I want to see? Proof I was right, and that she needed me? If that was the case, I was sorely disappointed. Things were moved round, a discarded scarf, an empty coffee cup, but nothing more.
I was looking at a taxidermy crow when the main door was flung open. In a heartbeat I dropped down behind the settle. The bravery I had felt before entering her room vanished. The door slammed and the floorboards creaked as she paced in front of the empty fire grate, black skirts trailing behind bare, dirt-encrusted feet.
Inching behind the barrier of furniture, I paused at a gap, feeling every inch the deer alert to the hunter.
Then I saw her.
The Witch from a week ago, in that loose Aesthetic dress, hair streaming free around her face. The Witch wasdistraught. She moved staccato from desk to doorway, unshed tears glittering in her eyes. A black-edged envelope was twisted in her hands. She stopped by the fireplace, and for a moment I thought she might throw the letter in and burn it – perhaps she thought it too – but instead she snatched up a piece of glassware from the mantle and smashed it into the grate. Then another, and another, as rage consumed her and she systematically destroyed everything in reach. She tore flowers, shattered china, flung the ticking clock to the ground so it crumpled, hands falling still.
I held my breath throughout the whole explosion, frozen in fear. I knew I should use this moment to flee. But I couldn’t. My need to know held me fixed. And all I could think was: she had bare feet, someone needed to clean up the glass shards before she stood on them.
With everything in ruins, she collapsed into a chair, chest heaving and hair stuck to her cheeks. I had never seen her cry before.
Slowly, she eased the letter open, and read. The paper was black rimmed like the envelope – black for mourning. Black for death. My heart ached for her. Last Tuesday she had learned someone had died, and it had hurt her this badly.
And I added to her pain now by intruding on something private.
I took my chance as she wept and slunk towards the door – and I almost made it. My weak ankle betrayed me and I knocked against a console table carrying a heavy vase of dried flowers. The vase rocked in an arch of momentum that sent it toppling to smash in a shower of china shards.
The Witch’s head snapped up.
I emerged from behind the table and her expression turned from shock to fury. She lunged, snarling, as I flung myself at the hidden door. Her face was mere centimetres from mine, I saw the betrayal and anger and shame – and then I slammed the door closed in her face.
