The Ward Witch by Sarah Painter

Author:Sarah Painter [Painter, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Siskin Press Ltd

Chapter Seventeen

Esme put the bedding into the machine and cleaned Luke’s room, throwing the window wide open to change the air. The storm had passed and the sky was a blameless blue. The causeway would open that afternoon and the coroner would arrive from the mainland to collect Alvis.

Esme knew she ought to be relieved to have her home to herself again, the quiet winter season stretching out in all its glorious emptiness, but she wasn’t as pleased as she expected. Dutifully, she went into her studio and worked on a piece for a couple of hours. It was one of those unsatisfying sessions in which she spent most of her time redoing a mistake she had made at the beginning, and her mind never quite sunk into the flow state of creation. There was part of her still listening for sounds in the house. Part of her expecting Luke to walk in and offer her a cup of tea.

Downstairs, brewing chamomile tea, she conceded that Alvis was probably on her mind, too. She had been very old. Definitely the age when people said ‘she’s had a good innings’. But this was Unholy Island and Alvis was a long-term resident. The rules here were different and Esme had learned that you couldn’t make assumptions. According to Tobias, who had been here the longest of them all, Alvis had taken over the bookshop in the sixties and hadn’t been a young woman at the time. But that didn’t mean it had been ‘her time’ to go.

Jetsam was sitting on the table watching her with his green eyes. ‘Tobias said we should stay away,’ she told him.

A slow blink.

Esme put down her mug and pushed back from the table. Her boots were by the back door and her supplies were packed into her daysack, ready for the next full moon. She added a joyless cereal bar from the cupboard, the remains of the supplies she kept in for guests who wanted a ‘grab and go’ breakfast, and slipped out of the door into a crisp day. The November sun was still low in the sky despite it being late morning, and gulls were wheeling overhead.

The path down to Coire Bay was lined with bramble bushes and greeny-blue knotgrass. The last of the autumn fruit dotted the hedgerow, but the storm had stripped the honeysuckle of its final blooms. The spit of rocks at the far end of the curved bay was called New Moon Hollow. At least, that was what Esme called it. The name had come to her when she had first cast the wards.

She had been so scared that first time. The air had been mild, a summer’s full moon lighting the path to the rocks and the sea shushing over the sand like a soothing lullaby. She had been in a trance, still dazed from weeks of barely sleeping and the fear of fleeing her old life. It was as if the sky and the sea and the land had known she needed calm and safety and had been as accommodating as possible to welcome her.

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