‘I wanted to tell you, love,’ said Archie, ‘but your dad was stubborn. We got into quite the row, actually. Many times. Squashing something like that in you was only going to hurt you, make you feel strange compared to the other children. You were such a quick learner, Dottie. You learned to stuff away the magic so quickly.
‘I said to him, time and time again: Iwill find the money for that posh school in the city. I told him, we’ll get you the licence, do it proper. I never realised howmuch it cost, mind. Patrick was almost on the fence until that girl.’
‘Emily,’ said Dot.
‘Emily,’ repeated Archie. ‘Weren’t your fault, that. I know you always felt it was, and bloody Willard didn’t help, did he? The way he carried on . . .’ Archie shook his head. ‘But I knew something funny had happened to you that night. So, I went looking and after I found the ambergris, I realised you must have been affected some way by a spirit.’
The voice from the belly of the ocean, ethereal and echoing.
‘And whether it was a punishment or a present, I couldn’t say,’ said Archie. ‘It simply is what it is. Weren’t until I found the ambergris that I came to that conclusion. Oh, I tried you on so many things, do you remember?’
‘That, I doremember,’ said Dot.
‘I made so many of Louise’s potions, but it wasn’t until I found this old Eyreish remedy and I swapped the bezoar for the ambergris I’d found and, lo and behold, it helped. You told me you felt a little better. Proudest I’ve ever been, Dorothy. And ever since, I’ve tried to find the creature that ambergris belonged to. I think I spotted Them once.’
‘What did They look like?’ Dot asked, eager.
‘Huge,’ said Archie, awed. ‘Almost as big as the sea.’
Theodora’s eyes widened. She disappeared, and there came banging from above and then she was back holding a large, leather-bound grimoire.
‘What is that book?’ asked Dot.
‘A relic from another life,’ said Theodora, flicking through the pages. ‘Or at least, a copy of one. After you borrowedSpirits of the Bygone,Dorothy, I deepened my research on the Ancients. I had a foggy memory of reading about Them when I was a child.’
Dot looked at the old grimoire. A tattered thing from the time before the Prohibition.
‘Belchamber and I tracked this one to a Beleaustian carpet seller. Ha!’ Theodora came to the page on the Ancient Spirits. She held it up to Archie.
‘Did She look like this?’ asked the witch. Dot saw an illustration of a huge spirit, dark and wide, and almost indistinguishable from the ocean.
The old man fiddled in his pocket for his spectacles. He put them on and said at once, ‘That’s the one!’
‘How truly bizarre,’ said Theodora. ‘Perhaps you were touched by an Ancient Spirit, Dorothy?’
‘But,’ said Dot, ‘wouldn’t that kind of magic be much too powerful for a human to touch?’
‘That’s what makes it bizarre,’ said the witch. ‘If one of your pools of magic indeed belongs to an Ancient, what could have stopped that magic from using you up entirely?’
Dot’s eyes fell on the grandfather clock beside the mantle, the pendulum swinging back and forth, the motion perfectly balanced, left to right and back again. Was that not how she lived? Like the ocean waves, bobbing back and forth, constantly righting herself. Maybe her magic was the same – somehow bobbing and balancing in equilibrium.
Dot’s magic had always seemed a desolate thing. It was Emily screaming. It was Rupert’s mother’s voice turning into Willard’s. It was fear and cold sadness. Then she paused, remembering the day she’d blasted Lio across the courtyard. She hadn’t felt sad. She’d feltangry.And the result? Dot glanced now at the scales of her left arm. She counted the ones around her elbow, the purple-black one, the greeny one. In one sharp rush, Dot realised thatnoneof them were from that day.
‘Oh!’ yelled Dot, jumping off the sofa. ‘I – maybe I have something!’
‘What?’ asked Theodora, rising.
‘I – well – I was angry and I cast a spell at Lio in the courtyard—’
‘Really?’ asked Theodora. ‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter why,’ said Dot.
‘Almost knocked him out from what he told me,’ said Archie. ‘You should know better than that, Dot. No excuse for—’
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ said Dot, her eyes darting. ‘I know, but that’s not the point. The magic I used on Lio wasn’t normal for me. Normally, it’scold, like the South Pole, like the ocean whenEmily drowned, but this was different. When I was in the Lourdes, when I sent that spell at Rupert’s mother – it was always the same. Cold. Yet, when I cast that spell at Lio, the magicburned.It came from a different place. It came from anger, I think.’
Dot stared between her hands.
