The Witch was the closest thing I had ever known to love. To a true home. True family. If I walked away I would be the one cursing myself to loneliness. She was as frightened as I was, and unless one of us did something to break the spell we would let our own fear keep us apart. Alone.
The journey home took too long and yet was over too soon. I hadn’t thought what to say, how to explain myself to her. How to make herunderstand. I reached the top of the switchback road, and slipped from my side saddle.
I collared Wolf by the sink.
‘Where is she?’
Wolf regarded me with a coolly arched brow. ‘I thought perhaps you had fled, my lady.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Her study, I believe.’
I went to the second floor, acutely aware of how sweaty and bedraggled I must be; the door to her study cracked against the wall as I flung it open. The Witch startled, dropped an ink pot, black liquid seeping over the newspapers. I rounded the back of the desk so we were face to face, half a metre apart. Me: panting, mud-stained, leaves in my hair and my boots tracking dirt across the rugs. Her: tense, white-knuckle grip on the back of her chair, in a loose, Aesthetic dress poorly dyed so the greens of the original silk show through.
‘Why are you –’
I tangled my hand in the fabric of her dress, pulled her to me and pressed our mouths together to swallow the end of her sentence in a kiss.
Oh.
This was how I would make her understand.
It lasted a confused, painful second, my chapped lips against her soft ones, the small parting of her mouth and the hint of something more – then I let go, giddy and afraid.
The Witch stared in shock, hand to her mouth. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because I wanted to.’
‘You want to kiss me?’
For a moment, the horrified thought crossed my mind that I had misread her feelings towards me. ‘Yes. Don’t you want to kiss me?’
The Witch, breathless, her voice almost a whisper, said, ‘Yes.’
So I kissed her again. Softly this time, one hand cupping her face, the other cradling her waist to draw her close. I was suddenly too aware of both our bodies: our lips, our noses brushing, the shape of her chin, her arms at her side, hands hesitantly coming to rest on my shoulders, the shape of her under the sack of a dress she wore.
In that moment it was as simple as kissing her, and my Witch kissing me back.
When we finally broke apart, pink-cheeked and tangled hair, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had never kissed anyone before, and I hoped I had done it right.
Then she looked down at my muddy, sweaty clothes, wrinkled her nose and said, ‘You smell like badger piss. Take a bath.’
Servants were summoned and the huge wooden bathtub was set before the fire, and pails of water heated. I had just enough nerve to ask the Witch whether she wanted to watch me bathe this time too; she smirked at me in a way that made me shiver in anticipation for something I didn’t fully understand, then went into her bedroom and shut the door.
I let the maid brush the burrs and thorns from my hair and wash it with rosewater. The shock of the wheel, the fight, my almost-escape, and this revelation of what truly lay between us. It was too much to think of all at once, so I thought of none of it; only yawned and sunk back into the steaming water.
Wolf brought up a meal – I lost track of which one we were eating – and we devoured it sat on the rug in front of the fire, the Witch in black and me in a nightdress and damp hair braided back and tied with a ribbon. There was honey and comb, thick slices of white bread, preserved beetroot, pickled walnuts, tranches of headcheese and tiny salty pickles, a salad of new potatoes and onion and capers, salted cabbage, sorrel leaves dressing wilted spinach, and a rhubarb crumble set to keep warm by the grate. A vast pot of nettle tea enough for four people was hung over the fire, and the Witch got up and down to pour me endless servings in a tiny porcelain cup painted gold and pink with tiny flowers blossoming around the rim.
We didn’t speak of what had happened in the Tower. Nor did I raise the skeleton buried in my garden. I had climbed the Tower wanting answers about the past companions, my own future with the Witch, but I had found out far more than I had been ready for. So I held my tongue for now; I was in no rush to spoil this moment. There would be hardship in my future, and loss, and difficult decisions, that I was sure of, but right now I wanted to enjoy the fantasy of what could be.
The fire grew low, and the Witch ended sprawled out in front of it like a cat, her head in my lap. Tentatively, I stroked her hair, feeling the glossy, cool strands slip between my fingers. Her face looked different from this angle, her mouth a little softer, nose a little sharper; I could see a freckle behind her ear, and the corner of her eye where her lashes were stuck together by a little crust of sleep. She was so beautiful in the firelight, full red lips and pebble black eyes, like a siren, like a succubus. A tamed beast resting in my lap, claws sheathed.
For now.
She stared deeply into the fire, silent for a long time.
I was happy, but it came to me with unease that perhaps she was not.
