The heavy head swings. The bottom lip curls and the long nostrils crinkle and turn up.
‘Sure,’ I tell it. ‘Sure, you’d take on cars if you could. But the world doesn’t play fair for creatures like you. Or me.’
The sun is beginning its descending arc again, though still warm and throbbing, when the wood thins. Light filters deeper until space opens up ahead and I step out onto a forestry access track. The path is mostly green, but deep brown ruts show where vehicles have passed.
Am I imagining it, or is that single, narrower groove the impress of a motorbike?
The moose has lingered at the edge of the woodland. Its bony plate of sprouting antlers looks very like branches, its hairy nose like the bolus of a trunk, its dangling dewlap, hanging moss. I glance up and down the track, realising Ihave to do this last part alone, but unsure in which direction to head. When I look back, it’s already gone.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper, and press my hand to the warm, humid earth. Something pulses there – my magic – and I sense it flowing away from me up the track. There’s a brief, bright glitter that could be my power or could be merely sunlight through grass. With a last look back at the woods, I shoulder my pack and walk.
Up ahead, the track ends at a low, padlocked beam, the sort of barrier found at the end of maintenance trails in forestry plantations and national parks everywhere. Beyond it, dense woodland resumes. I swing my leg over and keep walking, picking a path between the trees and somehow – actually, I’ve a theory how – avoiding even a single scrape from a twig. After a few minutes, wards ripple over my skin, as welcome as warm rain on a day when the sky is tense with low cloud, then the wood is gone and the track continues beneath my feet. Off to the right is a parking lot filled with vehicles. Up ahead, the track is skinned over with lower, gnarlier, more spacious trees than the crowding woodland. A fresh, tart scent is carried to me on the air. An orchard of unripe apples.
Three figures step out, shading their eyes to peer at me. A tall Black woman in dungarees with rolled shirtsleeves. A slight young woman, barely older than me, with hair twisted in a scarf and bangles up her long tan arms. An elderly White guy with a mane of snowy hair like Hollywood’s idea of a magician. All three are smiling.
‘I’m Tavi,’ says the tall witch, coming forward to greet me. She offers to take my pack. Nods with a look of understanding when my hand tightens reflexively around it. ‘I look after security here. You’re very welcome.’
‘You knew I was coming?’
She nods at the old dude. ‘Eugene’s the ward-witch. You litup for him about a day ago. You can give your pass-token to Yara. She re-enchants them.’
‘Token?’
There’s a sudden, tense silence. ‘You don’t have a token?’ says the girl with the bangles – Yara – her outstretched hand curling up like a plant that didn’t get the water it needed. She and Tavi both look to the old ward-witch, who shrugs. ‘She has permission,’ he says.
‘From who?’ Yara asks sharply, her smile long gone.
‘Did someone send you?’ Tavi asks, more kindly. ‘Invite you? They would have given you something …’
Despite her tone, I bristle. It’s this shit again, witches being suspicious of witches. And I know – oh, how Iknow– it’s society that forces this on us. But I’m so sick of it.
‘Lachlan Frey,’ I say.
‘Anyone could say that,’ Yara objects. ‘The boss isn’t exactly shy of sticking his head above the parapet – especially now.’
‘Knowing a name wouldn’t get her through the wards,’ Eugene objects.
He gave me his blood, I’m about to snap.He gave me my DNA. My black hair and blue eyes. Half my magic. That’s what led me here, to him.But Tavi’s eyes have softened with sympathy, and I know what she’s going to say next.
‘You’re her, aren’t you? The girl from Sanctuary. Harper Fenn.’
When I nod, she gestures behind her. ‘Redhaven is always open to you, Harper Fenn.’ She fixes Yara with a stern look. ‘I’m sure Frey will clarify the rest.’
When we break through the orchard to see a large, unremarkable clapboard farmhouse, plainly extended many times through the years, white-walled and black-shuttered, I’m confused by a brief sense of wrongness.That’s not right,I want to say, as I see the enclosed porch that runs down one long side of the property, rather than an open veranda on all sides. As I see only two storeys, not three. As I take in the sprawling L-shape rather than a single high, square house.This isn’t it.
Which is when I realise I’m thinking of the farmhouse from my dream, my vision from the beach-fire. And I understand what I should have known all along – that was Redhaven, the original one, and this is Redhaven reborn, rebuilt by my father for the selfsame cause. A place where witches can be free.
I commanded my magic to seek its source, and it brought me here, to my brilliant, dangerous father’s secret resistance base. I clench my fist in an air punch.Yes!
‘So where is he?’ I ask, slightly peeved my dad hasn’t already hurried down those porch steps and swung me around with a cry of,How’s my girl!Has he not told the folk here that he’s Harper Fenn’s father? Wouldn’t he want to brag just a little about me – how I faced down a baying mob in Sanctuary? ‘Where’s Lachlan?’
Yara clicks her tongue as if I’m being presumptuous.
‘He’s not been here for more than a week,’ Tavi says. ‘And we’ve no idea when he’ll be back. But I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you, Harper. Let me show you to a room. We sleep dorm-style, but you’ll soon get used to it. Feel free to have a nap or a shower, if you need one, or I can show you around. We all eat together at seven.’
The other occupants of Redhaven are more like Tavi than Yara, thank goodness. And when I reappear downstairs washed, clothes changed, but still carrying my backpack, none of them ask why or what’s in it. It’s clear they don’t know my true relationship to Lachlan, and maybe because of that, there are rooms in the farmhouse I’m not shown;doors which close as Tavi leads me past. Beneath one flickers the cool, spasmodic winking of computer servers. Around another I glimpse what appears to be a pantry-sized library, whose marble shelves hold magical books of every flavour and variety. The weight of Starcross presses reassuringly between my shoulder blades, and when I lie down to sleep beneath an honest-to-goodness patchwork quilt, the grimoire is under my pillow as it has been ever since Mom gave it to me.
Only as I’m on the verge of drifting off does a stray thought wisp through my mind. If my dad’s been away for more than a week, why did my magic lead me here, rather than to wherever he is?
