Red Witch by Anna McKerrow

Author:Anna McKerrow [McKerrow, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

The moment is all we have and the one thing we cannot keep.

From Tenets and Sayings of the Greenworld

The weeks pass in a strangely pleasant fugue, as if my mind is filled with the fragrant smoke the witches use back home to help them gain visions. Not thinking too hard about anything, my usual analytical instinct is lulled by luxury, by my feelings for Bran. For once, I choose Beauty.

When he’s home, we eat and drink and kiss in the caves of the White Spring, the magic soaking into everything we do: the curvature of his muscles by candlelight, the flashes of red and gold in the burgundy wine, the poetry of our voices as they murmur together in the night. But by day I am alone to explore and discover. It’s late May and the days are bright, and the steady heartbeat of fertility thrums through the earth under my feet. I often walk to Wearyall Hill, another large sloping hill facing the Tor; it sits behind a gatehouse to which Bran gives me a rusty key.

“And lo, the treasures of the city were hers.” He bows and smiles when he gives it to me. “But the Queen must be careful to take her faithful knight Pete with her for protection, should she roam too far into the barren wastes.” I ignore that advice. Pete doesn’t want to come with me any more than I want him there, I can tell, and I don’t want his stubborn utterances and defensive, disinterested body language anywhere near me if I’m trying to meditate or make magic. I can look after myself.

From the windy top of Wearyall I look across the valley, back at the Tor, like a mirror. Alone with the sheep and the sacred thorn tree I think about Bran. Already I feel lost without him, like a divining rod quivering for water. And he’s away a lot, sometimes with strange explanations or no explanation at all. I wake up on two different occasions in the night, in his bed, to find him gone; when he slides back into bed later I whisper ‘Where were you?’, but he refuses to answer. Nowhere. Go back to sleep. But he smells different – of chemicals, a charred smell, and I re-enter my dreams with unease.

Sometimes the girls visit me. Today, Catie, cross-legged on a thick red cushion, flips through the pages of a pre- Greenworld paperback from the shelf, a rainbow and a pentagram on its cover.

‘I still can’t believe there was so much witchcraft before Separation. I mean, people were doing it everywhere, according to this. The girls and me have got a few old books – there’re some you can get from specialist suppliers, if you know what you’re looking for – but there’s not many. And the stuff we’ve got’s a bit obscure.’

‘We’ve got as many books as Mum could save, but there must have been so many more. All lost,’ I say, thinking of the books and papers in the Archive, and all the others we don’t have.

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