I cut around to the back of the house, through an alleyway between back gardens. It’s the way Cray must have come, there’s still an upside-down bucket by the back fence where he climbed over. Scared that at any moment my Mum might look out the window and open the door to shout at me, I run up the garden and use the pile of turf stacked by the shed to climb onto its roof. From there I hoist myself up and tap on my bedroom window. When Cray opens it I slide in over the sill, breathless and scared. I’ve never liked heights.
“Michaela? What happened?”
I sit down on my bed, not caring about the dirt on my clothes from climbing up to my bedroom. Taking a shaky breath I look up at him.
“I turned a girl at school into a snake.”
Cray stares at me, then snorts.
“It’s not funny,” I snap, “people saw me do it, she could have got lost or the school could have had her taken away and killed. Her parents would have never seen her again.”
Cray sits down next to me, “I didn’t think about that. I’m sorry.”
“I could have really hurt them, just for calling me names, pushing me around. One of the guys grabbed my boob and now he’s lost a chunk of his memory...I don’t even know how much.”
“You did what you had to, to get away. Sounds like it was getting out of control.”
“I’m out of control and they’ve probably already phoned my Mum.”
“The phone did ring a while ago,” Cray says anxiously.
“Crap...well, that’s that then. Might as well pack.” I get up and haul out the pink bag I’d packed the night I left home. Cray takes it from me and dumps it on the bed.
“You don’t have to-”
“I do! Don’t you get it,” I hiss. “A couple of bullies called me names and roughed me up and I could have killed them all. If I’d used a little more energy they would be dead. Chloe would be lost somewhere, stuck as a snake. Can you imagine the shit storm that’s going to hit when I go downstairs? I don’t know what I’ll do if they start on me, and it’ll only get worse when they make me go back to school.”
“We can find a way to control it,” Cray says, hands up, trying to calm me.
My bedside lamp pops like a glass balloon. Both of us jump.
“What’s the point in me staying if I can never tell my parents the truth? What’s going to happen to you? You’re going to live in that wardrobe until I leave for Uni? Then what? There’s no way to win, no way for me to stay here – and I think I’ve known that since I got back. Waywood fucked everything up, I can’t be here.”
Cray looks sad but not surprised and I know then that he’s been thinking the same since he arrived. There’s no way for me to take back my old life, it’s as out of reach as Cray’s former existence with his parents. It’s not just what I’ve seen and done, it’s that I’ve got a terrifying amount of power in me and if I can’t contain it, what hope does a semi-detached in Bath have?
“We have to leave,” I say, hearing the wobble in my voice, “today, now.”
“You’re not going to say goodbye?”
“I don’t know!” I sniff and tears roll down my face. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave them...I can’t stay.”
My bedroom curtains crumble like old paper. I try to keep the energy from leaping out of me, but it just makes it worse. I can feel my hair standing up all over my body, my fingers burn with heat and cold.
Cray wraps his arms around me and I hang on, shaking.
“Maybe we can get this under control, then you can come back?” Cray offers, stroking my back. “It won’t have to be forever.”
I only cry harder. Ever since they kicked me out things have changed, even now we’re not the same family we were. It’s all been ruined. I can never be the same girl as before, not now that I know how they can treat me, not now that I’ve had to survive without them. If I do this, leave again, there will be no coming back.
Cray lets me muffle my sobs in his shoulder. I don’t want to look up, or ever leave the little space the two of us share at the end of my bed, in my room. As soon as I sit up straight I’ll have to make a decision.
Unfortunately, one of things I’ve learnt the hard way is that things never last forever, and rarely as long as we need them to.
I sit up and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.
Epilogue
It seems like centuries since Cray and I stepped off of the bus and walked to Waywood house. This time, as I drop from the sweat scented interior of the bus onto the pavement, it’s daylight and the air smells like the sea. We’ve left the woods behind, leaving Bath behind too.
Cray stands next to me as the bus roars off, looking down at the weather beaten town below us.
“Now that, looks like a horror film,” he says, lighting his first cigarette since we boarded the bus back in Birmingham, after the long coach journey from Bristol. We’ve been on the road for over twelve hours, with various pit stops and changes and now we’re standing next to a bench and a brick wall, within sight of a Scottish village by the sea.
I haven’t spoken since we left my parents’, sneaking out of my bedroom window like I was going to a party on the sly. How could I face my Mum and tell her I was leaving? How could I explain it to her? Even if she’d believed me there was no way for her to help. I wasn’t going to be the unexploded bomb under their roof.
I look to my side, and find Cray watching me, concern written all over his face.
“It’ll get better.”
“No, it won’t,” I say quietly, looking at the wide grey sea, “but it can’t get worse.”
He takes my hand and we walk down the one lane road that bypasses the village completely. I try to ignore the fact that I can feel the sea, the energy in it. I can count the people living down in the village and from the windswept graveyard on the hill I can hear the prickling, static sound of the ancient bones in the ground crumbling, leaving their energy for the soil.
With that energy, or even with the power I already contain, I could make the sea rise, swamping the houses and blotting out the little lives there. I could ruin the village and turn it into a sand bar. Or, I could cloak us, hide Cray and I from the world, until we’re ready to take on our next scheming shade.
On the way here, to the destination I let myself be guided to on the shifting, digital departure board, I’ve made a decision. Not using my power is clearly not the answer to my problems. There’s no way to deny it now, I’m a witch right down to my bones. I have power that refuses to go unused for long. The only thing that I can do with it is harness it. I will take the power that I gained by accident and I will use it to find anyone else like me, or like Cray; witches and normal people targeted by shades. Maybe I can even help anyone struggling like I was – alone and cold in the night, with no one to take care of them.
“You’re sure there’s anything down here?” Cray asks as we pick our way through a wide belt of tangled scrub. There are bare trees stretching high above us, their sap sleepy and cool. I catch sight of some mistletoe, a perfect circle of it hanging from a branch just ahead.
“I’m sure.”
We break out of the woods and into a little clearing, where only tall weeds bar the way. Ahead of us is a rusted ferris wheel, a scattering of little huts and amusements with peeling signs. A metal fence sags around it.
“Here?” Cray asks. He hasn’t asked about our destination since I led him to the coach at the station. I know he trusts me, as much as I trust him. He’s still giving me everything he can, even without his magic.
“Here,” I say, “plenty of space, privacy, and enough things to use my power on that it shouldn’t get bottled up.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he says, and starts walking towards the nearest wooden shack, which has ‘Candy Floss!’ painted on it in faded pink, outlined in gold. I catch up with him and he takes my hand.
For a second I can feel something other than the woods, the sea and the coppery, chemical sweetness of the carnival. It’s only fo
r a second, but I know it’ll be back.
Ceridwen knows where to find me.
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