Then came the wait. I sat in one chair, watching the butter soften and the fresh rolls cool. What if she did not come? We had shaken on our new agreement, but that did not mean she could not change her mind. Perhaps she had spent the night brooding on my selfish intrusion and would call the arrangement off; perhaps she was still angry and wanted to punish me. Or perhaps she was so unused to the idea of breakfasting with someone, she had simply forgotten.
I was playing out scenarios in my mind for how to casually remind her, when the Witch emerged. Chivvied along by Wolf, she was even more chaotically dressed than usual in a petticoat, an ornate stomacher from a sixteenth century dress and over it a too-big frock coat with frayed cuffs that hung halfway down her palms. Without a word, she climbed into the empty chair, one leg drawn up to her chest, the other folded across the seat, and eased the mass of her tangled hair out of her face, blinking owlishly at the spread of food before her.
‘Coffee,’ she growled.
I pointed to the coffee pot. She looked back at me expectantly.
‘You have to pour it into a cup,’ I explained.
Glancing heavenward in exasperation, she gave in, and sloshed steaming hot coffee into a cup that she downed and immediately refilled.
I had made a joke and she hadn’t bitten my head off. Promising.
I took a roll onto my plate, tore it in half and began to apply butter, watching the Witch out of the corner of my eye. I was determined to act naturally, but somehow I was more anxious this morning than I had been when we were fighting. At least then I’d known where I stood; now I had set foot in a new country where I did not speak the language or know the customs, but I was determined to make it my home.
‘Are you planning to have any bread with that butter?’
‘What?’ I startled and looked down at the roll in my hand that was now plastered with a solid inch of melting butter that dripped onto the tablecloth. ‘Oh.’
I scraped off a layer and spread it on the other half of the roll. The Witch had slowed her coffee intake and was now looking fractionally less like a walking corpse. Her plate was still empty, and I watched her prod the different cuts of meat, the boiled eggs, salamis, slabs of cheese and bowls of winter fruit with curiosity.
‘So what does one do at... breakfast? What is it for?’
I laughed. ‘Haven’t you had breakfast before?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘I am aware of the concept.’
‘We eat something together. Prepare ourselves for the day. Wake up.’
The Witch took an apple and began to slice it neatly into eighths. ‘The last time I ate breakfast, peasants still took a flagon of fermented oats into the fields while they worked.’
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but she pointedly arched a brow and I closed it.
No prying, I had promised.
Afterwards, we parted, and true to my word I paid no attention to the Witch in her Tower until evening came, when I gathered up my books and the rock sample I was currently studying and carried them over to the Witch’s study. It seemed like she had been waiting for me. The desk had been meticulously cleared of any trace of personal identity, all letters disappeared into the drawers, ledgers stacked innocently on a shelf, and not even an open book to give me any suggestion as to what was on her mind.
Very well.
I gave her a smile, turned my back and flopped down in front of the crackling fire to spread my books and samples and tools around me. My heart raced and I could feel her eyes following me, but resolutely I ignored her and began to flip through a text on igneous rock formation.
That first evening we didn’t say a word. I studied my books and took absolutely nothing in, and repeated the exercise the next night and the next night, and the night after that. The Witch sat at her own books, quill in hand. She was careful to only keep one ledger or piece of correspondence on her desk at a time so she could guard it. All I could catch were ranks of figures scratching down columns, copied from a small notebook. Did it have something to do with all the time she spent locked in the Tower? I had the impression of something being measured, monitored. I wanted to ask her what it was she worked at, but my promise not to pry was fresh in my mind. It was a strange echo of evenings spent with my stepmother and stepsisters with our needlework and piano; a different vein of tension ran through these nights. Instead of slipping into the background, I felt all too visible.
At the end of the first week, a shadow fell across the page as I read. The Witch had come out from behind her desk and was hovering behind me, squinting at the typeface.
‘Are you really reading about rocks?’ she asked.
‘I am,’ I said without looking up.
A moment passed. ‘Whatfor?’
I closed the book. ‘Because it’s interesting.’
She looked at me in blank incomprehension. ‘It’s rock.’
She seemed at war with herself, torn between her curiosity and her stubborn desire to deny me any value.
Curiosity won out. She folded herself onto the rug and picked up the piece of basalt I had been examining earlier with my magnifying glass, turning it over, running her thumb over the coarse grain.
