The world winked out.
b
My vomit splattered the boards with acid and bile.
I threw up again, then sat back on my heels, wiping my mouth on my sleeve, eyes shut against the brightness. It had been drawing close to evening when I had reached the Tower’s summit, but now the room was flooded with morning light. How long had I been gone?
The Witch was silent.
I knew she was there. I had seen her drop me back in our time and turn to mend whatever damage I had done to the wheel.
‘What was that?’ I asked
‘The past,’ she said blankly. ‘My past.’
‘And the wheel?’
‘Time runs through the wheel like yarn being spun. It is my responsibility to keep spinning it, and to spin it smoothly. You saw what could happen if I do not.’
I was waiting for the axe to fall. I had betrayed her in the most awful way I knew how. If I loved her, I had to face the consequences. I saw no other way of salvaging what had grown between us.
I opened my eyes, and I understood why she hadn’t launched into an attack.
She had finished with the wheel, and was now curled under the window, arms wrapped around her legs and face buried in her knees as she cried. I crawled over to her on my hands and knees.
‘I’m sorry.’ I touched her shoulder, but she didn’t react, so I left my hand there, unsure what she needed from me. ‘I know I made a mistake.’
That got her attention.
Her head snapped up and she trained those crystalline eyes on me.
‘That was not amistake. Amistakeis using salt instead of sugar in a cake or arriving for dinner at the wrong hour. Did you trip and fall through a locked door into the one place Iforbadeyou from entering?’ she scoffed. ‘That wasn’t a mistake. What you did wasbetrayal. I trusted you, but you don’t trust me.’
‘Perhaps I don’t know how to trust you. I want to but I’m terrified.’
I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted to be with the Witch, and that want was too much to face. I saw myself so clearly: it was easier not to trust her, to do what I knew would pull us apart, than take the risk of loving her with no assurance of love in return.
‘I terrify you?’ she asked. A moment of hurt, then her expression soured. ‘You are correct, you should not trust me. Perhaps you are not as stupid as you look.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I was scared about my future and there are so many things you won’t tell me.’
‘So you would steal what I would not willingly give?’
‘If we are to trust each other, there can be no more secrets. Your stepmother cursed you to spin alone, that much I understood. I’m so sorry that happened to you.’
‘I don’t need your comfort.’
‘But I want to give it to you. I love you and it hurts me to see you be treated like that and it hurts me to think of you alone here for so long.’
The Witch looked at me blankly, her voice flat. ‘You don’t love me. You love an idea of me, Mina. You love the person you’ve built in your head. You can’t loveme. You don’tknowme.’
I went hot and said without thinking, ‘Ifyoulovedmeyou wouldn’t have kept me in the dark!’
Her lip curled in a sneer. ‘Who said I love you?’ But there was no venom in her voice.
I closed my eyes, gathering myself, then I said, ‘Let me know you.’
My voice was barely above a whisper. I felt on the cusp of something I had denied for so long, and yet here it was all the same, insistent to be seen. The two of us were a hair’s breadth apart, and it would only take the smallest gesture for me to cross it. To kiss her.
