A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3)

by Ruth Warburton

  At last lunch was ready and Seth came below to eat it. He wolfed it down, keeping one eye watchfully on the window.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked at last.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He wiped his mouth and ducked his head to look out of the porthole again. ‘This just – it all feels wrong. We should have seen something.’

  ‘Land, you mean?’

  ‘No, not necessarily land, but just something. This is a shipping lane – there should be boats, ferries, something.’

  ‘They closed the ferries I think, last night, because of the weather,’ I said. Seth shook his head.

  ‘Makes no difference. There’d be people stranded in the wrong place, keen to get home. They’d be on the sea by now.’ He looked over at the compass and his face was suddenly fierce with frustration. ‘You don’t think … Could you make it, you know, work again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘I could try, but …’

  ‘Or even better, the GPS system?’

  ‘I’m really not sure. I don’t know how they work. I’m not very good with stuff like that …’ I trailed off, remembering how I hadn’t been able to fix my phone when it was waterlogged.

  ‘Will you try?’ Seth pushed his plate aside and looked out of the window at the rolling grey sea and then at the thermometer on the window, which was dropping steadily along with the barometer.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  After he went back up on deck, I took the compass down off the shelf and stared at it. I had no idea how they worked; I knew that the needle was magnetized and pointed to magnetic north, but the physics behind the actual magnetism was a mystery. It was something to do with electrons, I thought – or was it protons? Either way, I was pretty sure I’d have even less success with the GPS system. It was a flashy-looking thing with a blue backlit display, on a console with the radio. The display showed numbers all right, but according to Seth they were completely meaningless. I had nowhere to begin with that – but the compass …

  I held it in my hand and began tentatively probing it with my magic. There was definitely some kind of magic tangled up with its workings, I could feel that, but I couldn’t see how or why. In the end I shut my eyes and opened my mind up cautiously. In the shadowy magical realm the room was dim, but the compass glowed with a white light, something like witchlight. It was enchanted – I could see it, feel it, clearly now. But with magic so pure, so elemental, I didn’t even know how to begin disentangling it. It wasn’t a spell, or a charm, or anything that could be explained or written down or solved. It throbbed with need. My need, but also Seth’s. Our need to be together. The need to find each other.

  Somehow, through me, through my power, the compass had become that simple, burning desire. There was no way of mending it, any more than you could ‘mend’ an ordinary compass to tell the time. It was what it was. To change it would be to destroy it. And destroying it wouldn’t bring us any closer to finding out where we were.

  With a sigh, I pushed the compass away and went up on deck to find Seth. He was standing at the tiller, staring out to sea. It was cold, very cold, and I shivered as I shut the hatch behind me.

  ‘Seth …’ I said and he turned.

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘No. I can’t fix it. I don’t think it can be fixed.’

  ‘Shit.’ He sank on to a bench and put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy trying that map thing again?’ There was no mockery in his face now. In silence we went back down into the galley and in silence I watched as he spread the charts again. I picked up the keys and began to swing them, just as before.

  This time the pull was almost unbearable; I tried for a second revolution but the keys wouldn’t leave the spot they’d chosen and, when I opened my eyes, they were suspended at an unnatural angle, defying gravity.

  I let go of the string and they fell to the map with an abrupt, dull chink, like a ball-bearing hitting a magnet.

  Seth began shaking his head almost immediately.

  ‘No. No, no, no.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This is not possible.’

  ‘What?’ I begged. His face was pale.

  ‘They seem to think we’re in the Laptev Sea now. Which means we’ve travelled – what … ?’ He looked at his charts and made a rapid calculation. ‘Something like four hundred miles in about two hours.’

  ‘Seth, I could be wrong. I don’t know much about cartomancy. I could be completely wrong.’

  But neither of us thought so any more. I could see that from the look on Seth’s face as he stared at the charts and then out at the huge, featureless sea, with nothing between us and the horizon apart from the vast grey waves. I thought of all the times I’d spied on him in the water, the tiny boat scudding in the enormous, lonely waste of the ocean.

  And now I was there.

  ‘I should go back on deck,’ Seth said. He stood, his face very bleak and reached for his sou’wester. Ice spattered on the porthole and suddenly I was calm.

  ‘Seth, stay below.’

  He shook his head, tried to speak, but I put out my hand to stop him.

  ‘Listen, I think we’re being pulled. I think I’m being pulled – reeled in, taken somewhere. I don’t know where. But I don’t think it matters if you steer this boat or not. I think we’ll end up at the same place.’

  ‘I’m not going to let you get pulled into some trap! We’ll fight! Surely if I sail the opposite way …’

  ‘But which way is the opposite way?’

  Seth’s gaze followed mine towards the window and we both stared out at the unending grey. There was no clue to where the danger lay. His shoulders seemed to slump.

  ‘If I don’t steer we could die.’

  ‘I think …’ I couldn’t finish. But he knew. He bowed his head.

  Then he held out his hand.

  Perhaps we should have gone on deck, tried to turn the boat around, fought to the end.

  But we didn’t. I led him the other way, down the galley to the room with the bed. It felt like we had only a few hours left. If so, I didn’t want to spend them fighting.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It was late when Seth stirred in my arms.

  ‘What?’ I said softly.

  ‘Can’t you feel? The sea’s changed. We’re near land.’

  We pushed back the covers, shivering at the bite of the cold air, and began to get dressed. My jeans were dry now and I pulled them on, along with my top and one of Seth’s sweaters beneath my coat. Seth had on a thick cable-knit jumper under his sou’wester. It made him look huge, like a giant in yellow oilskins. I shivered as he limped down the galley towards the hatch; in silhouette he looked eerily like Bran.

  On deck we stood staring across the sea. It was very late, but still not yet dark in spite of the thick clouds that blanketed the sky. Tiny flecks of snow fell from the greyness, disappearing into the sea. A few landed on Seth’s dark curls, melting slowly into liquid diamonds.

  ‘Look.’ Seth pointed out towards the horizon. At first I couldn’t see anything, but after I strained my eyes into the dim, shifting light, I thought I could see a new darkness between sea and sky. ‘Land,’ Seth said. He looked at me, his face uncertain. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, whoever’s bringing you here, “reeling you in”, do you think they’re a friend or not?’

  ‘I … I don’t know,’ I said. Possibilities flickered through my head, hope and dread fighting in my imagination: Marcus; the mad Russian witch on the bridge; my mother …

  ‘What I’m saying is, I can try to turn the boat around. Do you want me to?’

  ‘They’ll just come after us.’ I felt fury and frustration boil up inside me and, most of all, fear for Seth. ‘I’m so, so sorry. You should never have been mixed up in this. Listen –’ I gripped the front of his sou’wester with fierce, numb hands ‘– I have to see this through to the end, but maybe you can get away.’

 
; ‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.

  ‘As long as I’m in this boat they’ll carry on pursuing us. But if I can get ashore, maybe you can make a run for it.’

  ‘What?’ His face was frank disbelief now. ‘And leave you alone to face – that?’

  ‘You have to. Please. If you’re involved, it’ll only make it harder. If I can hold on to just one thing – the idea that you might be OK—’

  ‘Anna, you’re crazy. Either that or you think I’m a total shit.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I cried. ‘I don’t. You were never meant to be involved in this. I dragged you in with that stupid spell; please, cut yourself free. Please. For me.’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  ‘We could both be going to our deaths! Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted. His hands gripped my shoulders. ‘Yes, I understand – of course I understand. But you need to understand – how could I live with myself if I sailed away now, not knowing what happened to you? I tried to leave you once and it nearly killed me.’

  ‘But it didn’t kill you – did it? No one ever died from a broken heart. You cut yourself free once, Seth – you can do it again.’

  ‘Don’t ask me again,’ he said, his voice fierce. ‘Do you understand? And don’t you dare tell me what it was like for me to leave you. You don’t know what it was like. You have no idea.’

  ‘You left me!’ I cried. ‘Do you think that didn’t hurt?’

  We stood for a moment, staring at each other in the biting wind. Then his face crumpled and I hugged him, hard enough to crush him, it felt like, my fingernails digging into the tough rubber of his sou’wester.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped, his voice hoarse. He pulled back and his fingers swept the wet, salt-draggled hair from my face. His eyes were filled with tears. ‘Why are we fighting?’

  ‘I don’t want you to die for me. Please turn back. You might have a chance.’

  ‘There’s no chance.’ Seth swept an arm out, gesturing to the vast grey waste of sea. ‘Look. I can’t sail back – it would take weeks, months, even with a working compass. Anyway, how would you get to shore without me? I’ve got no dinghy, you know.’

  ‘I could swim.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ He looked at me in disbelief. ‘You’d die!’

  ‘I wouldn’t die. That’s what this is all about.’ I closed my eyes, suddenly weary of the futility of it all. Of running, of waiting, of hiding. If my mother hadn’t succeeded in keeping my secret, how could I? ‘As long as I have witchcraft, I can’t die. That’s what my mother knew. That’s what she was trying to hide. That’s what the Ealdwitan knew – or at least some of them did.’

  ‘You can’t die?’ Seth’s face was blank with shock. ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said tiredly. ‘I can age – clearly. And I can be very badly hurt, to the point of death. So maybe I’ll just carry on, horribly old, horribly crippled, until whatever spring feeds my witchcraft runs dry.’

  ‘And the people who’re bringing you here – is that what they want?’

  ‘I guess so. But I don’t know. I don’t know anything for sure.’

  Seth only stared at me, his face white. And then there was a grinding, shushing crunch, and the boat ran gently on to a shingle beach.

  Seth and I both turned, still in each other’s arms, and looked at the beach. My heart was beating like a drum and I felt Seth’s hand press over it, feeling my panic.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he whispered. But we both knew it was a lie.

  In front of us was a black, shingle beach, studded with enormous rocks like teeth, and beyond that, tall black cliffs towering into the cloud. It was astonishingly beautiful – and the most barren place I had ever seen.

  Seth lowered himself from the prow of the boat on to the black sand and then held out his arms. It looked horribly far from the deck to the beach and I stood for a moment, faltering on the deck.

  ‘All this – and you’re frightened to jump a few feet?’ he said.

  I clenched my teeth.

  ‘I’m not frightened.’

  Then I jumped. Seth steadied me on the sand and we looked around us.

  ‘What now?’ Seth asked. But before I could answer, a strange, hoarse cry rang out from further up the beach and we both whipped round, ready to face whatever was coming.

  There was no one there. The beach stretched away, disappearing into the mist, empty of everything apart from rocks and breaking waves.

  The sound came again – a low, resonant growl.

  ‘What is it?’ I whispered. ‘Where’s it coming from?’

  Seth saw before I did and his laughter made an incongruous sound, echoing off the black cliffs.

  ‘It’s a walrus!’

  He pointed and I saw it too, heaving itself off the rocks into the sea with that hoarse barking cry.

  ‘A walrus!’ I breathed.

  We watched as first one, then another and another flopped into the water.

  ‘They are beautiful, are they not?’ A voice came from behind us, husky and cracked as if long unused. Seth and I wheeled round, the shingle hissing beneath our feet, and there, framed against the cliffs, was a woman.

  Her hair was pitch-black and long, braided and coiled all over her head in intricate patterns, and her skin was very white – almost an eerie white. Bone-white, as if she hadn’t seen sunlight in many years.

  But she stood now, in the cloud-dimmed light, and she smiled. Her lips were almost as pale as her face, but her gums beneath were red and her eyes were red-rimmed too.

  She spoke again, saying something in Russian and then smiled wider, showing her red mouth, and said, ‘Welcome,’ in a Russian accent. ‘Ah-na.’ She said my name slowly, making two words of it, letting her tongue dwell caressingly on each.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said, my voice a whisper above the sound of the waves on the beach. I swallowed and tried again, louder. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Tatiana.’ She turned and nodded courteously at Seth. ‘And you must be the man, Seth. You are welcome too, though you will be the first – how is it? Cuzestranec,’ she said slowly. ‘One not of our kind.’

  ‘Outwith,’ I said uneasily.

  ‘Yes. You will be the first outwith to enter our kingdom. Come. Will you take bread and salt with us?’

  I looked at Seth and he shrugged. Did we have a choice?

  The woman turned without waiting for an answer and began to clamber up the cliff, moving at inhuman speed between the sharp black splinters of rock.

  I took Seth’s hand and we followed.

  We walked, following the witch across rocks, and then into forest. Her feet were bare, but she didn’t seem to feel the stones, or the pine needles, or the cold.

  For the first few miles Seth and I kept up, but as the distance wore on we both began to struggle. Seth was limping badly, his face tight with pain. He’d forgotten his crutch and, at last, when we passed a long-fallen branch in the forest, he stopped.

  ‘I can’t keep walking on this leg,’ he said shortly, his words clipped with the pain and the effort of speaking. ‘I shouldn’t have left my crutch on the boat. Hey, wait!’ he yelled into the forest after the witch’s disappearing shadow.

  The witch stopped. She didn’t return, but I could see her shadowy form far up among the trees, watching us. Seth pulled a penknife out of his pocket and began stripping away the leaves and twigs from the branch. At the top it divided into a fork and he whittled it out to make a curve. When he tried it, it fitted under his armpit. He made a face.

  ‘Not very comfortable, but it’s better than nothing.’

  ‘Come,’ the witch called urgently. ‘It grows dark.’

  I looked up, through the tall slender pines, stretching to the sky. It was hard to tell beneath their shadow – only a dim grey light filtered between the needles, the sky almost completely obscured by an intricate pattern of branches that disappeared into the cloud. But it had grown darker since we entered the
forest and, as the witch began to walk again, I heard the far-off howl of a wolf, and felt Seth shudder beside me. I squeezed his free hand.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I whispered. Seth said nothing; he gave a sharp nod. But I knew from his face and from the shortness of his breath that he was in pain.

  On we walked. The ground seemed to be rising and soon we were in thick cloud, hardly able to see the shape of the witch in front of us. She’d become just a dark wisp, shifting from tree to tree. Beside me Seth stumbled, grabbing at my arm to save himself. He made an involuntary sound of pain as he recovered his balance and my heart wrenched.

  ‘Please,’ I said urgently, ‘let me try to heal it.’

  He shook his head, a single movement, no words.

  ‘Then can I at least help with the pain? I could do that—’

  But he cut me off:

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come!’ the witch shouted impatiently. At the sound of her voice the wolves howled again, the sound echoing mournfully through the cloud-wreathed trees. There were more of them now – different notes baying in harsh symphony with each other.

  ‘Come on.’ Seth gritted his teeth and began to walk again. ‘I don’t want to end up as wolf meat.’

  The hours wore on and the forest grew darker, and darker, until at last it was full dark. It was colder too. The shrouding cloud did not lift, but now it was more like an ice mist and our breath made white ghosts in front of us, dispersing into the frozen fog. There was frost on the ground and my feet slipped on icy branches. But the witch ahead of us never broke stride, though she turned occasionally, exhorting us to ‘Come!’ over her shoulder in a voice that crackled with urgency.

  I found myself wondering bitterly why they could pull us all this way in Seth’s boat and yet these last few miles had to be so hard. Beside me I could hear Seth’s breath, hear each hoarse involuntary whimper as he set his foot to the ground and the pain stabbed again and again.