A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3)

by Ruth Warburton

  But it was still night. Dawn was a few hours away. And until it came, I could pretend.

  I thought Seth was asleep, but then I felt his hand lift to his face and heard his shaking in-breath.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at him. His face was wet.

  ‘Seth,’ I whispered, ‘what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said huskily. ‘I’m – I’m happy.’

  ‘So am I.’ I swallowed away the lump in my throat and hugged him tighter.

  And then, I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it: I kissed him, kissed his chest through the thin, worn material of his shirt. I heard the soft gasp of his breath and waited for him to tell me to stop. But he didn’t. He said nothing, he only lay there, completely still, as if unable to move.

  My lips were so close – too close. I kissed him again, in the hollow beneath his ribs. Then again, where his T-shirt had ridden up, and the skin stretched taut over his hip-bone, bare to the night air.

  My hands pushed at his T-shirt, pushing it up and over his head, and then suddenly he was kissing me – his shaking hands pulling at my shirt, his lips hot against my skin, his breath shuddering against my shoulder.

  I pulled, blindly, clumsily, struggling out of my jeans with fingers that trembled too hard to work the buttons. My belt clattered as it fell and Seth made a sound like a groan.

  I reached for him in the dark – running my hands over the lean muscles of his shoulders, his chest, the dips and hollows of his back, and he put his arms around me fiercely, turning in a tangle of sheets, pulling me with him so that I was on top of him, then beneath him, locked together.

  ‘Anna …’ His voice shook. ‘Oh Anna.’ He kissed me and then made a muffled sound against my shoulder, something like, ‘Oh God!’

  He sat up, pulling himself out of my arms.

  ‘Wait – I can’t think with you … Stop, please, stop.’

  I heard his panting, trembling breath, coming fast in the darkness.

  ‘Seth …’ My breath was coming like sobs. ‘I was wrong. That night, on Valentine’s Day, when you asked …’ I broke off; I couldn’t say it, but he knew. He knew what I meant. That night, a night like this, he had asked if I believed that he loved me, and I’d been unable to answer. And he’d pushed me away and walked out of the house and out of my life. ‘If you knew how I’ve wanted to turn back time, give a different answer … Please, I want you – I want this.’

  ‘But maybe …’ His breath caught in his throat. ‘Maybe you were right.’

  ‘What?’

  It was like a slap. I sat up, pulling the sheets around me.

  ‘I don’t know any more.’ He ran his hands through his hair, his face agonized. ‘I thought this was love. But love shouldn’t feel like this, should it? It shouldn’t feel like you’re being ripped in two. It shouldn’t feel like someone yanking your heart out between your ribs. It shouldn’t hurt so much.’

  I was silent. Was he right? My love for Seth had been the still centre of my life for so long it was hard to imagine how I’d existed without it. But … I thought of the fish-hook inside me, ripping and pulling at my heart. I thought of Seth’s pain and mine. Perhaps this wasn’t love. Perhaps love shouldn’t hurt like this.

  If so, what was it? Obsession? Addiction? Magic?

  Seth spoke, his voice very low. ‘You know what’s the most fucked up thing of all?’

  ‘What?’ My voice cracked on the single word.

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care any more. I just want you, I need you. I don’t care why – I don’t care about the rights and wrongs. I can’t live without you. I don’t want to live without you.’

  ‘I need you too.’ It was the only thing I could think of to say.

  He made a choking sound and then his arms found mine and his lips found mine and we were crushed together, clutching each other so hard that I whimpered. I lay back on the bed, pulling him with me.

  And then, for a while, there were no words.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I slept well and so deeply that when I woke it was with a sense of having slept for a week, or maybe a month. My limbs were stiff and sore and the ringfinger of my hand hurt.

  I lifted it up and saw the scar, bone white. I twisted it from side to side, looking at the shallow dent in the pale sunshine. Would it heal, like the others?

  The sunlight reminded me: however long I’d slept, it was morning now. And morning meant …

  A sick feeling dropped down on me like a sudden weight. It was like re-entering a bad dream.

  Morning meant facing reality.

  It meant putting on my wet, snow-stained clothes and shouldering my pack. It meant leaving. It meant leaving Seth.

  I turned to look at him. He was lying stretched out on his front, his legs sprawled across the bed, one arm flung protectively across my waist. His face, turned to one side, was perfectly peaceful, but I could see the effects of the last few weeks and months. He was no longer the beautiful boy I’d fallen for when I first came to Winter. Instead his face was sharp with pain and lean, the bones too close beneath the skin. There were violet shadows beneath his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept properly for a long, long time. And by the door of the boat was that crutch, like a reminder of what awaited him when he opened his eyes. My heart faltered.

  I must have moved, for he shifted his arm very slightly, yawned, and then opened his eyes.

  For a moment I thought he’d forgotten the night before, or was angry, or full of self-disgust.

  But then his face split into his wide, incredible smile – the smile that never failed to make my heart lift and twist and beat a little faster. And even with his battered face and scarred hands, he was still Seth – my Seth – and the knowledge still filled me with the same joy.

  ‘I love you,’ I said softly.

  He reached out and touched my face, as if hardly able to believe I was here, real.

  ‘I half thought I’d dreamed all this. Last night –’ he stroked my hair back from my face ‘– I’ve dreamed about it so often, but I always woke up alone. I thought I’d wake up and find you gone.’

  It was too close to the truth and I flinched. A shadow crossed his face.

  ‘What? Can’t you stay?’

  I opened my mouth – and then he shook his head, turning away.

  ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’d rather pretend for a bit longer.’

  ‘OK,’ I said huskily. I stroked my hand down his ribs, feeling the too-sharp furrows beneath my hand, and then down his side, to rest over his hip-bone, where the pain was curled, waiting to ambush him when he stood.

  ‘I could heal this,’ I said, with a certainty I’d never felt before. A certainty in myself, in my magic.

  But Seth shook his head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because you don’t trust me?’ It hurt, though I couldn’t blame him.

  ‘I trust you,’ he said slowly, as if trying to explain something he didn’t fully understand himself. ‘But I – I don’t trust witchcraft. Not any more. And this pain, it’s part of me. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Tears pricked at my eyes. ‘I don’t. I want you to be well again, whole.’

  ‘I am whole, when I’m with you.’

  He kissed me gently on the lips, and then harder, and I felt the desire welling up inside me. I let my arms go round him, then I lay back and the tiny room seemed to shiver and rock with the force of his longing and mine, like some kind of alchemical reaction that made the world fracture along fault lines too fine to see in everyday existence. I felt it move – physically shivering so that a cup on a shelf rocked and fell.

  Seth felt it too. He stopped, with his body poised over mine, half listening, half feeling the movement.

  Then, abruptly, he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, out into the galley, and picked up his jeans from the night before.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I ask
ed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Something doesn’t feel right. I’m going to check the mooring.’

  He pulled on his jeans and then stood. As his bad leg hit the floor he gave a sharp intake of breath that made my heart clench. I watched as he limped his way down the little galley.

  He was halfway down the room when there was a sudden swell and he staggered, cracking his hand on a locker. He wrung his hand, swearing, and I jumped out of the bed.

  ‘Your hand! Is it OK?’

  ‘Sod my hand.’ His face was really worried now. ‘That was far too rough for a harbour wave.’

  He opened the hatch and stuck his head out. And then he swore. Again. For a long time.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’

  He didn’t answer. He just stood, staring in disbelief at something I couldn’t see. I grabbed a sheet from the bed and, winding it round myself, I shoved my way into the narrow space beside him in the doorway.

  There was nothing there.

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the grey sky and the grey sea. No harbour. No city. No boats.

  Somehow – impossibly – we’d come loose in the night and drifted out to sea. As we watched, another huge wave came rolling across from the horizon and under our hull, and the little boat lifted and slapped down, shaking the kettle on the stove.

  ‘This is not possible,’ I said, trying to suppress the edge of hysteria in my voice. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘You’re telling me! I don’t understand it. I tied that mooring myself – I know there’s no way those knots could have come undone. Did someone cut us loose, as a joke?’

  ‘But why? Who’d do that?’

  ‘Anna …’ Seth stopped, and I could see the doubt in his face. ‘It … it wasn’t you, was it? By mistake?’

  ‘No!’ Anger bubbled up inside me, but I couldn’t completely blame him for his suspicions. ‘Honestly, Seth, it’s not like that any more. I’ve got it under control. It’s months since I’ve done any magic by mistake.’

  ‘But the compass …’

  ‘That’s different – I gave that to you months and months ago. I must have done something to it then, without meaning to. But I promise you, I didn’t do this. I’d know if I had.’

  ‘OK …’ he said. He didn’t sound completely convinced, but there was nothing I could argue with. Anyway, our situation now was more important.

  ‘What can we do?’ I asked. ‘Are we going to crash?’ I couldn’t remember what the proper boat word was. ‘Will we find our way back?’

  ‘We should be all right, I think,’ Seth said, but he looked worried. ‘We’re in the Gulf of Finland – it isn’t huge as seas go. It’s not like being adrift in the Atlantic. We can’t go for that long without seeing some kind of landmark and then we’ll have a rough idea of where we are. As long as we don’t drift too close to the shore in a fog, we’ll be OK.’ He looked at the sky. It was clear and cold, but I remembered the weather in St Petersburg and how fast the snow had blown in from nowhere. There was nothing to say that tonight there wouldn’t be snow, or mist, or even a hurricane.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ he said again. He rubbed his hand over his face, his palms rasping against the stubble. ‘I just don’t get how we could drift out to sea like this – past all those boats, past the harbour arm – and all without feeling a thing! I swear when we woke in the night, we were still tied up. How could we get so far in a few hours?’

  ‘Well …’ A blush rose up my cheeks and I felt ridiculous. It was stupid to be embarrassed about this with Seth. ‘We weren’t really paying much attention to outside, were we?’ The truth was that a tornado could have lifted the boat up like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz and I wouldn’t have known any better last night.

  ‘N-no …’ Seth said. He cracked a reluctant half-smile. ‘It could be worse, I suppose. Adrift on a boat with you, with no clothes on. I can think of worse situations.’

  ‘Oh really?’ I attempted some mock outrage to hide my fears. ‘You can just think of a worse situation? How flattering.’

  Seth smiled properly then and he put his arm around me, kissing the top of my head. I leaned into him, thinking how screwed up this was. That we’d found each other like this, that the bleakest night of my life had also been the best, that the fear running through me now was mixed with such an impossible, irrepressible joy.

  There was one silver lining at least: Emmaline and Abe would have a bloody hard time finding me here.

  The thought gave me an idea.

  ‘Seth, do you have a map?’

  He looked at me like I’d lost the plot and then nodded.

  ‘Er, yes. They tend to be quite useful in sailing, you know. But it’s not much use without GPS, or even a compass. Without that, I can’t take a proper bearing.’

  ‘Can I see it? The map, I mean. I want to try something.’

  Seth led me back into the cabin and I sat while he spread the table with charts. I didn’t really understand them – some of the coastlines looked vaguely familiar, but the charts were covered with lines and shapes I didn’t recognize at all. I guessed they must be currents, or depth readings, or shipping lanes.

  Then I looked around.

  ‘I need something like a chain or a bootlace, with a heavy object at the end.’

  ‘How heavy?’ Seth asked.

  ‘Not very heavy – like a ring.’ The thought made me look down at my finger again and I sighed. I’d loved the seaglass ring. But I couldn’t regret it – it had saved Seth’s life.

  ‘Um …’ Seth was searching round the cabin and at last he came up with a piece of string. He tied a keyring to the end of it. ‘How’s this?’

  ‘It’s a bit big, but it’ll do.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It’s a form of divination. It’s called cartomancy. I’ve never tried it before but I’ve seen Maya do it. Now shh, I need to concentrate if this is going to work.’

  I stood up, over the spread-out charts, and held out the piece of string with the keys on the end. Then I shut my eyes and began to swing the makeshift pendulum in slow circles above the map, waiting for the pull.

  ‘Séce,’ I whispered, as the pendulum swung round and round in ever widening circles. ‘Séce … Séce … Séce …’

  The tug came unexpectedly on the fourth and widest circle, far to the right. I let the pendulum complete another revolution and then felt it again, in just the same place, stronger than before. One last slow circle and the tug this time was a yank. The keys pulled from my grasp and chinked on to the map and I opened my eyes.

  ‘Did it work?’

  Seth looked down at the chart and then began to laugh.

  ‘No, I can safely say it didn’t.’

  ‘Why not? It felt like it did. Are you sure?’

  ‘The keys seem to think we’re in the Kara Sea.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  ‘Somewhere north of Siberia.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked. Seth laughed again, slightly incredulously this time.

  ‘Anna, tell me you didn’t do Geography at GCSE? Have you got any idea where Siberia is?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said, slightly annoyed. ‘It’s in Russia. So are we. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Russia is the size of a continent. And St Petersburg is on the far western side, tucked into a long crevice under Finland and Sweden. Whereas Siberia is on the far eastern side. Look.’

  He showed me with his finger, tracing the route the boat would have had to have drifted: along the Gulf of Finland, past Finland, Poland, Germany, north round Norway and over the top of Sweden, and then all the way along the immensely long coast of Russia, miles, and miles, and miles disappearing beneath his finger as it traced the route. Even I could see it was impossible. It was something like the equivalent to drifting from the UK to America and back. Twice. In a single night.

  ‘There’s absolutely no way we can have gone more than thirty or forty miles,’ Set
h said. ‘And even that’s unlikely given the wind.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was good – right? ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Well given your magical map thing didn’t work so well –’ Seth was suppressing a smile ‘– I guess we wait. I’ll get the sails up and you can make us a cup of tea.’

  ‘Can I get dressed first?’ I asked meekly.

  ‘As captain of this boat, if I said no, would you obey my order?’

  ‘No. And I might have to give you two fingers as well.’

  Another smile twitched Seth’s mouth.

  ‘Well, since you’d probably whip my arse if I tried to flog you for mutiny, I’d better say yes then.’

  My clothes were still wet from the night before so I helped myself to some of Seth’s. The shirts were OK – baggy but wearable – but he laughed out loud when I came on deck in his jeans. The waistband didn’t meet around my hips so I’d threaded some string through the belt loops into a makeshift belt and the legs were so long I’d had to roll them into fat sausages around my ankles.

  ‘Nice! Very nice.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ I said and handed him a cup of tea. He kissed my cheek and then my lips.

  ‘I meant it. You look –’ he took a swallow of tea, his eyes smoke-dark over the rim of the cup ‘– I don’t know. There’s something about seeing a girl in your own clothes. It’s – very sexy.’

  ‘Don’t get used to it,’ I said grumpily, though a part of me melted inside at his words and the look in his eyes. ‘As soon as my jeans are dry I’m putting them back on.’

  ‘There’s always an alternative,’ he teased. I raised an eyebrow and he looked back at the bed with a shrug. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t mind … ?’

  ‘Drink your tea!’ I said scoldingly. And he did, suppressing a smile and turning to watch the horizon.

  For the next few hours we sailed slowly on. I watched Seth guiding the boat and occasionally pulled a rope or checked the barometer if he asked me to. The compass was still pointing to me, resolutely following me as I padded about the boat in my bare feet.

  By late morning the wind was cold and there was sleet in the air. Seth was in his sou’wester and I was huddled below making lunch, sticking my head out of the hatch only occasionally to ask how to work the stove or where to find a knife.