‘And what exactly is it about this rock that is interesting to you?’
I searched for the words. Usually it was my family asking me tostoptalking about geology.
‘Because it’s all of history folded up into something you can hold in the palm of your hand. This rock could be older than almost anything else on the planet.’ I took it from her hand and turned it over to show her the pockmarked texture on the back. ‘These formed in magma then cooled so quickly the bubbles froze at once. The eruption that created this could have happened thousands of years ago, or even more, but we can touch these bubbles and for an instant, travel in time.’ I stroked my thumb over the rippled, honeycomb formation, then handed it back to the Witch. ‘It’s like magic.’
She examined it in silence, a troubled expression marring her face. I was growing used to the way her brows puckered together in deep thought or concern, the downward tug at the edges of her mouth when she was about to snap at me, or the faint lines at her eyes that only appeared when she was trying not to smile.
‘The rock is time,’ she said. ‘And time has value to you.’
‘It makes me feel better to remember that time is so much bigger and older than I am. I am not alone because I am a part of it.’ I thought of my mother, who lived only in memory. Who would never join my future. ‘Our histories are still with us, if only in this way.’
She was watching me again, that intense, glittering gaze that had skewered me in place in our forest shelter. Heat rose to my cheeks. The Witch leaned forward, her skirts rustling and I felt the brush of her arm against mine. For a heated second, I thought she was going to touch me.
But then she gently placed the basalt back in place and drew away, leaving me suddenly colder despite the glowing fire.
‘Some things,’ she said, ‘are better left in the past.’
b
Despite her insistence that my interest in geology was peculiar, the Witch continued to humour me, and over time asked about each of my samples as I brought them to her study. I took over a sideboard for myself, evicting spiders and mouldering documents to create a store for my rocks and equipment. Most nights she stayed behind her desk or in a large wingback armchair half in shadow, curled up with her knees to her chest, reading or writing or simply staring out of the dark window. Though her days were still mostly occupied with her work in the Tower – and whatever it was that generated an unending stream of numbers for her to enter in the ledgers – I began to find her more often around the castle, always at a distance, but now she seemed unbothered about sharing space with me.
I was making drawings of the rotting tapestries in the great hall one day when she came up behind me so quietly I half jumped out of my skin.
‘Don’t startle me.’ I had carved a jagged black line across my drawing, ruining it.
‘You should pay more attention,’ she snapped, then caught herself, and said in more measured tones, ‘I have something for you.’ From a pocket she pulled a piece of rock, about the size of my fist and pale butter yellow, scored deeply on one side. ‘You like rocks.’
She held out the piece of sandstone expectantly. I took it from her and examined it. It looked like a piece of masonry; the scored side had been exposed to the elements for years, rain and snow wearing down the crumbling surface into the pattern I now saw.
I looked up to thank her – but she had already gone.
I put the rock gently into my bag to take back to my room.
When I was ten, before my mother died, I had rescued a puppy from the kennels, a runt, scabby and bony and snapping at anyone who came near. My father had been furious. But what angered him brought my mother back to life. By those days she was a living ghost, drifting between bed and armchair by the window in her nightgown. When I brought the dog to her, she was present in the room for the first time in months. I wondered later if she felt it a kindred spirit, something discarded and damaged. I wondered if that was how she thought about herself.
With patience, she showed me how to leave the dog in peace to adjust to its new home, to move with soft confidence. The dog had not known kindness, she explained, guiding me to the welts on its back and the glassy fear in its eyes, and it would not know how to recognise it at first. So I must be patient. I must be trustworthy and consistent.
Slowly the dog had let me come close enough to treat its injuries and even pet its head. A year on and it was a happy, healthy thing that bounded around the house scratching the parquet floor and sleeping at the end of my bed every night. When my mother died, my father told me it had gone missing during her funeral, but he usually said whatever was most convenient for him. My stepmother, when she arrived a few months later, was terribly allergic to dogs and I lay awake at night, turning these events over in my mind.
But the lesson still stood: change was possible. It just took patience. Care. Love.
Far easier to offer that to the Witch, than to think why I might need it myself.
b
The footsteps outside my door left me in peace for a week after our bargain was struck. I began to think of them as some passing madness, a manifestation of my loneliness and regret for coming to the castle that had been banished by my new-found connection with the Witch.
I was wrong.
I woke in confusion one night, when the cloud cover was absolute and the wolves came low and howling. Something had roused me but I could not remember what.
The bed was freezing. I felt around with my foot for the fire-warmed brick Wolf had placed beneath the covers but found nothing. Only a cold, hostile expanse. I tucked my legs up into a ball and opened my eyes.
The storm lamp had gone out.
My breath clouded like milk in the air, like I was drowning in the cold.
The floorboards creaked.
