He said, ‘Get out.’
Theodora let his words settle on her for a moment only. She nodded. She drew herself up to her full height and looked down on him and saw the bitter, unloving creature he was. She saw the ugly, angry set of his mouth, the hard eyes, the nasty countenance.
Theodora’s childhood happinesses were phantoms now – her mother’s cauliflower soup, the watercolours, the willows, the set of grandparents she had loved dearly whose surname she still had – but they wereherphantoms, and no bitterness nor malice from this man would rob her of them. She looked about the home that she had loved as a child; she looked down at the man she had loved as a child.
At last, she bid them all goodbye.
Theodora Blythe walked out of the cottage overlooking the valley of willows, her midnight blue coat around her shoulders, her hair finger-waved, as it always was, by magic. She left the caged mundane and stepped out into the morning sun.
CHAPTERFORTY
Belchamber was unable to cast a portal, both because he was restricted from assisting or harming the mortal populace of their country with magic, and because he was simply too exhausted. Thus, it was decided that he and Archie would take a train back to Seafarthing.
‘Belchamber may spend the rest of his existence healing from what that magic did to him,’ said Theodora when Archie protested. ‘One more touch from Salamander, and Belchamber could expire entirely. That Opal’s curse was hidden is no small thing. I need you to look after him, Archie. Take him safely to Seafarthing.’
The old man with no magic of his own, at length, agreed.
Now, at the station, Archie turned to his granddaughter.
‘I just got you back, Dottie. You can’t expect me to leave you now.’
‘I need you to be safe, Grandad,’ said Dot, sitting on the station bench.
‘I will look after Dorothy,’ said Theodora.
‘Who will look afteryou, love?’ asked the old man in the faded accent of his homeland. He patted her on the shoulder. ‘You deserve so much more than that man up in that house gave you.’
Theodora nodded and looked away, and then Archie shook Lio’s hand and at last he came to Dot. He sat down beside her on the bench, wearing that same red coat that he had worn the day theyfound the anglerfish. Dot put her arms around him and wondered fleetingly how many more times she would get to hug her grandad. There was a number, and with each embrace, it grew fewer. This man was her very childhood – his turns of phrase, and white hair, and terrible recipes, and aquiline nose that looked just like hers. Would this be the last time she smelled menthol and mothballs and the sea?
‘I should have never gotten on that trawler,’ said Archie into her hair.
‘It doesn’t matter, Grandad,’ said Dot. ‘After this I’ll come home. Maybe we can look for the Ancient Spirit together. I promise you, I will come back.’
Archie hugged her tighter. ‘That’s my girl.’
Archie and Belchamber boarded the train, using tickets forged by Theodora from the spare sweet wrappers in Archie’s coat pockets. The little spirit opened up the window and leaned out. Belchamber waved to Lio, who stood by the sign coughing into his handkerchief, and then to Dot. Then, finally, to Theodora, he said, ‘Be safe, Eggs.’
Theodora patted his hand.
The train pulled out of the station and was quickly swallowed up by the willows. Once it was gone, Theodora sat beside Dot on the bench, unstoppered a large bottle of tonic and handed it to her. An elderly lady across the platform stared curiously at Dot’s hands. For a moment Dot was reminded of the customers in the tea shop, and she felt the hollow pinch of grief – she had spent so much time with Rupert there.
‘This is far more concentrated than it really should be,’ said Theodora of the tonic. ‘Your liver won’t thank you for it.’ Dot drank it down and felt the liquid scorch her throat. As the tonic coursed through her, the fatigue lightened. Theodora tugged a jar of salve out of her coat pocket and reapplied it to the stumpof Dot’s middle finger. ‘If the neighbour’s herb garden had been better stocked, we could have accelerated your healing more. But the amputation looks, perhaps, three weeks in, wouldn’t you say?’
Dot looked at it. The skin was smooth, but every now and then it itched with phantom pains, and a strange buzzing tickled at the stump, irritating her to no end.
‘I won’t lie to you,’ the witch went on, checking her own bandages, ‘this portal will not be a comfortable one.’
‘It can’t be worse than last time,’ said Dot, rising from the bench. Her legs wobbled.
‘You were in shock. And before I cauterised your finger, I shoved a tincture of laudanum down your throat. We were, all of us, quite focused on Rupert.’
‘Should we really leave him here?’ asked Lio, staring up at the roofs poking through the willows. Somewhere behind one of them, the boy was buried.
‘He’s safe,’ said Theodora. ‘Which is more than I can say for the three of us. Come on. First stop, Ollianne Shrine. Once we’re there, we must move quickly.’
Lio cast the portal and they stepped into the whirling darkness and as they did, Dot felt the magic rip up through her amputated finger and down through her afflicted arm. She screamed, buckling as they fell, and Theodora and Lio clutched at her and dragged her through the tunnel of wind and out onto the steady, stone grounds of the Ollianne Shrine, high on the western ridge overlooking the city.
The place reeked of the ocean.
