Ravensborough

by Christine Murray

  ‘What is her problem?’ I asked Gethan angrily, using my trowel with more force than necessary.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking genuinely confused. ‘She’s usually a lot friendlier than that.’

  ‘Maybe to you and Aradia, but not to me. For some reason she’s decided that I’m not worth her time or effort.’

  I was still scraping hard with my trowel, when all of a sudden I felt a metallic clink. I moved some more soil away. Something shiny flashed brightly among the dull earth.

  ‘Gethan, I think... I think I’ve found something’, I said slowly.

  Gethan looked over and scraped at a little with the narrow part of his trowel. The gleam of silver got bigger. ‘Keep digging,’ he said as he stood up. ‘I’ll go and get Nick.’

  Squawks could be heard everywhere. As I looked up I saw that the trees were black with ravens clustered on all the branches. I continued scraping away at the soil, freeing up the edges of the object. It looked like a box of some kind. Nick ran over and climbed down into the trench. I offered him the trowel but, to my surprise, he shook his head. He hunkered down beside me and gently coached me on how to free the item without disrupting the other soil layers. I felt clumsy as I tried to free the object, and a couple of times my hand slipped, the clang of my trowel banging against the metal of the object. Students from the other trenches gathered around to see what I’d found.

  It was a box, square and about the size of my hand, made completely from hammered silver. There seemed to be an inscription on the top, but it was too dirty to read. I tried to push some of the soil away with my finger to get a better look.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Nick interjected quickly. ‘Your hands produce a type of oil, and it could harm the artefact if it gets onto it.’

  The words were said nicely, but I still blushed, annoyed at myself for the mistake. Finally I freed the box from the ground, and I picked it up. Mud clung to its sides, and it had a heavy dense weight. Eager to see what was inside, I gingerly opened the lid, which moved back easily on its hinge. Before I could see what was in it though, Nick intervened. ‘Don’t open it here. We don’t want to get soil inside it.’

  I closed the lid, annoyed at myself for messing up yet again.

  ‘It’s ok, you didn’t know. It’s a training dig, and you’re here to learn.’ He took the box from my hands. ‘And you’re doing really well. I think you have the potential to be a fine archaeologist, if you want to be.’

  He brought the box over to the finds table that had been set up at the far end of the field. As Nick handed the box over to the students at the table to clean up properly, I felt a weird sensation in the pit of my stomach. A feeling of belonging pulsed through me, and I wanted to go over to the finds table and take it back. But that was ridiculous. The box didn’t belong to me, it was an artefact. Liv was examining it now, and a dark feeling moved through me. How dare she examine it, judge it like she’d judged me a few minutes ago? I shook, myself shocked at the strength of my feelings. What was happening to me?

  I was just getting worked up because it was my first find. I really needed to get a grip.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The restaurant that I went to with Gethan that evening was an Italian pizzeria situated squarely in the middle of the neutral area. I got the impression that was why Gethan had chosen it. I’d gone home to get changed before getting the bus into town to meet him. I was just too dirty to go anywhere without a nice shower. When you’re digging, soil gets everywhere. And I mean everywhere.

  I was surprised when I got to the restaurant to see that Aradia wasn’t there. Gethan hadn’t mentioned her when we’d agreed to meet up, but I’d just assumed that she would be coming with us. They were fairly inseparable.

  ‘Where’s Aradia?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s not coming. It’s just me. Are you disappointed?’ he asked with a grin.

  His smile made me feel weak at the knees. This almost felt like a date – at the very least, I was full of first date nerves. Which was completely ridiculous, for so many reasons.

  ‘No, it’s nice this way,’ I answered lightly. ‘The only time I’ve really talked to you on your own is when I’m kneeling in a trench, and then the leg cramps are kind of distracting.’

  We had met up to talk, to try to get to the bottom of what Aradia maintained was a misunderstanding. I knew I should tackle him on it, but I didn’t know how to start. I decided to wait until after we’d got our meal to ask him about it, after all he might say something that would mean I’d have to leave, and it had been a long time since lunch. I was hungry, and there was no way I was leaving before I’d eaten.

  Instead, we talked about the dig so far and how I was finding it. Gethan had been on a training dig prior to this, and he kept me entertained with anecdotes. For the first time since I’d met him the nerves I usually felt around him melted away. Conversation flowed, and for once I didn’t trip over my words when I was speaking to him.

  His face was so animated, and we were having such a good time. But I couldn’t forget that I was here for a reason.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I began. ‘You know...for running off and not giving you a chance to explain what was going on.’

  ‘It’s ok,’ he said, his face closing down and becoming serious again. ‘You had your reasons.’

  ‘Yeah, I did. So let’s not forget the entire reason we’re here. Why do you have the same tattoo as the gang I saw the other day?’

  ‘It’s a mark, not a tattoo,’ he clarified, still looking serious. ‘And to be honest, there were many reasons why I asked you to dinner. That was only a minor one.’

  He gave me a meaningful look across the table. Did he think that this was a date? Surely not, he knew that I had a boyfriend. Maybe he was trying to distract me from the real issue.

  Well, that wasn’t going to work.

  ‘Seriously, though.’ I said as the waitress took our empty plates away. ‘You said that you were linked to those people by birth. How so?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to know?’

  I rolled my eyes. I was getting fed up of all the melodrama. ‘It can’t be worse than killing an innocent,’ I said firmly. ‘So just get on with it.’

  Gethan frowned. ‘Well, we don’t know for a fact that this guy was an innocent.’

  Was he for real? ‘Oh come on!’ I protested loudly. ‘You’re saying that these guys might have been justified in stab-’

  ‘No, of course I’m not saying that,’ Gethan interrupted me hastily. ‘Nothing ever excuses murder. All I’m saying is that you don’t know the back story here.’

  He was right, but hearing him stick up even partially for a group of murderers didn’t sit easily with me.

  He looked at me with a serious expression on his face. ‘I’ll explain the whole connection if you like, if you promise not to run away on me again. Or laugh at me.’

  ‘Laugh at you?’ I scoffed. ‘You’re going around with a face like a funeral director. Why on earth would I laugh? You know, I thought this was something that would have me cowering in fear.’

  ‘Well it should do,’ he replied, still with the same serious face. ‘It would make any sensible person wary.’

  ‘So you don’t think that I’m a sensible person?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think that you’ll believe me,’ he said. ‘And even if you do, you’ll have some weird version in your head and you won’t take me seriously.’

  ‘Ok, I promise. I won’t laugh, and I will take you seriously. ’

  ‘I’m an elf.’

  I spluttered into my drink. He could not be serious. Elves were little things that danced around in green tights helping Santa. They were not five foot ten, gorgeous guys like the one sitting across from me.

  I put down my fork. ‘Ok Gethan, very funny. Let’s make fun of the new girl, I get it. Now can you please tell me what’s up with you?’

  He leaned back in his chair. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

 
The seconds passed. He had to be joking. But I wasn’t so sure that he was.

  ‘You don’t have pointy ears’, I said, playing for time.

  ‘No, and I don’t wear a pointy hat or where only red and green clothes. But that still doesn’t change anything. Aradia doesn’t wear a black hat or go around on a broomstick, yet you have no problem believing she’s a Pagan Wiccan. A witch. So why is it such a stretch to believe that I’m an elf? My parents are from Elfame.’

  Elfame...the name rang a bell. It was somewhere in the south of the country, but I didn’t know much more about it than that.

  Gethan sighed heavily stood up and placed some money on the table, enough to cover both my meal and his. ‘It’s a lot to take in. We’ll talk again tomorrow, ok?’ With that he walked out the door.

  I quickly shrugged on my coat and hurried after him. The night was frosty and my breath hung in the air like a fog as I struggled to catch up with him.

  ‘Hey’. I grabbed his arm, slowing him down. He turned around and looked at me with a jaded expression that I’d seen come over his face before. It was the kind of look he wore when people like Declan didn’t want to have anything to do with him. So far it had always been directed at other people, never at me. His hands were shoved in his coat pockets and his forehead was crinkled in a frown. He looked distant and unfriendly. Not like the Gethan I knew.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry for laughing,’ I said. ‘I’ve only lived here a few weeks, remember? A lot of this is still new to me. You promised that you’d tell me everything earlier, why not just explain it all to me now?’

  He sighed. A myriad of emotions passed over his face. ‘Are you sure you want me to tell you all this?’

  Did he not know how much I wanted that? ‘Yes’, I said softly. ‘I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  We walked over to an old bench in one of the city’s squares. A decrepit fountain stood in the middle. The faucet had long since ceased to work, and its old paint was peeling off. The fountain was surrounded by a few wrought iron benches. The square was completely deserted, apart from one couple around our age who were glued together on one of the benches opposite us. I wished that they weren’t there. Their clinch only served to heighten the sexual tension between me and Gethan. Well, from my point of view anyway.

  We sat down on the bench furthest from them. We sat there in silence for a while. Just as I was beginning to worry that Gethan had turned into a statue, he began to speak.

  ‘People think of certain things when they hear someone's an 'elf', but it originally just meant a person from the region of Elfame, in the southwest of Avalonia. My mother comes from there.

  ‘The people of Elfame are closely allied with the witches. Their way of life is similar, but the way they practice their magic is different. It’s a different type of magic. Witches can perform some magical feats that we can’t do. On the flip side, I can do certain things that Aradia, even if she mastered her powers completely, could never accomplish.’

  ‘But elves practice good magic, right?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what makes my case different. There are two types of elves, Light Elves and Dark Elves. Light Elves practice good magic, positive magic. They teach their children that it’s dangerous to use magic for selfish purposes. Dark Elves, on the other hand, have no qualms about it. They have a greater arsenal of magic weapons at their disposal, and they use magic to try to get what they want. That’s their philosophy, that their powers were given to them for a reason and that trying to rein them in is ‘unnatural’.

  ‘Light Elves disapprove of Dark Elves, and vice versa,’ he continued. ‘The two groups tend to stay apart – we don’t mix.’

  ‘Ok, I get that,’ I said slowly. ‘But how does your tat- mark – fit in with all this?’

  ‘I’m getting to that part. My mother was one of the most powerful Light Elves in Elfame. She had powers that were so great that elves came from all around to seek advice and witness her power. She was a threat to all dark elves, and they decided that she must be brought down, I suppose. She was seduced by a Dark Elf, though she didn’t know that was what he was at the time. He used a glamour spell to trick her. By the time she found out what he really was she was pregnant with me.’

  ‘How did she find out?’

  ‘Because I’m half Dark Elf, she saw through the spell as soon as I was conceived. The problem was that she knew there was no way the Light community would accept a child with ‘bad blood’. So she came to Ravensborough with me. She was afraid the Dark Elves would steal me away, and there’s a lot of protective magic around Ravensborough. She figured that we’d both be safe here.’

  ‘So you came here where you were accepted’, I surmised. ‘Makes sense.’

  Gethan let out a laugh that held no trace of humour. ‘Oh, come on Scarlett. It can’t have escaped your notice that I’m not overly liked around here.’

  There was nothing I could say to that. He was right. Even Pagans seemed wary of him and gave him a wide berth. Just like Declan had today.

  ‘I unnerve people, because I have both sets of magic and both sets of instincts. People don’t know how I’m going to act,’ he continued. ‘Plus, you know the iron and silver bracelets that most Pagans wear to ward off the dark powers? They repel me too. The pentagram is a sign to ward off evil beings. Many Pagans put it on their doors to prevent bad influences from crossing the threshold. I can’t enter those houses – the dark magic holds me back.

  ‘The mark on the arm of the attackers wasn’t a tattoo, it was a birthmark,’ he continued, his voice earnest and pleading. ‘That’s why I have one, because I’m part Dark elf. Many Rationalists believe that it’s a gang mark, but it’s not. You have to believe me; I would never ever get involved with anything like what you witnessed the other night.’

  I struggled to get my head around what he was saying.

  He reached a hand out and picked up my wrist. He held it tightly and I hoped that he couldn’t feel my heart rate speed up at his touch.

  ‘You really should get a protection bracelet you know,’ as he flipped my wrist over. ‘It weakens the forces of darkness, stops bad magic from touching you. It protects you from the dangerous people that are out there.’

  ‘It would protect me from your magic then?’

  ‘Only the dark stuff.’

  ‘So, I need protecting from you?’ I asked.

  Gethan leaned back and smirked. ‘I would have thought that was fairly obvious.’ He picked up my wrist and kissed my pulse point. ‘And,’ he looked deep into my eyes, ‘it might put your boyfriend’s mind at rest.’

  My breath caught at the meaning behind his words. We moved closer together and I was sure his lips were going to touch mine. The dilemmas rushed through my mind. Thoughts of Sam and my attraction to Gethan fought for supremacy. All of a sudden he dropped my arm and pulled away from me.

  ‘Either way’, he said, ‘You should get some sort of protection. There’s more dangerous things than me out there. I’ll walk you to the train station.’

  Stunned by the dramatic change in mood, I just nodded mutely.

  We walked to the train station in silence. My mind struggled to come to terms with everything that had happened in the past couple of hours. I understood now why Aradia and Gethan were so close. They were both oddities in the world because of their parents, Neither one thing or another. And how did I feel about the closeness we’d experienced? If Gethan hadn’t pulled away from me, would I have kissed him? Would I have betrayed Sam?

  The train station we went to was the last neutral station before the Starling-Bird Bridge and the Rationalist suburbs. As we got closer I noticed the large amount of policeman that patrolled the boundaries. Buildings were criss-crossed with Pagan and Rationalist graffiti, all professing hatred for the other group. Outside the train station there were two groups of young men being restrained by policemen, the veins in their necks bulging as they shouted obscenities at each other. There was a smash of glass
and screeching. Gethan linked my arm and dragged me quickly towards the entrance. He looked over at my strained face, but said nothing. I felt a surge of relief to be inside the station away from the men outside.

  ‘Thanks for walking me over here,’ I said to him as we bought our tickets from the machine in the main concourse.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘You’re better off walking to one of the more central stations if you’re on your own. There’s more tension at the border lines.’

  We walked to platform seven where the train to Chesterfield would stop. I still felt nervous after what I’d witnessed outside, but I was reassured by Gethan’s presence beside me. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

  I looked up at the board, there was another seven minutes until my train arrived.

  ‘You should go and catch your train,’ I said reluctantly. The trains were getting less and less frequent and I knew he had further to go than I did once he got onto his train. Nonetheless, I didn’t relish the idea of staying here on my own.

  ‘Nah, it’s ok,’ sitting down beside me. ‘I’ll stay with you until your train arrives.’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ I muttered, secretly relieved. We stood close together, in comfortable silence. The minutes until my train arrived ticked slowly downwards on the clock. I willed them to slow down. Eventually the noise of the train approaching could be heard. Beside me I heard Gethan take a big breath.

  ‘Look Scarlett, I think you’re great. So please don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said with a serious face. ‘But you really need to think about whether being friends with me and Aradia is going to do you more harm than good. You saw that fight back there. Rationalists and Pagans just don’t mix here.’

  ‘But this isn’t my country. I’m not a Pagan or a Rationalist. I don’t need to pick sides,’ I protested.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said Gethan. ‘You live in a Rationalist area, with Rationalist friends and go to a Rationalist school. Your side has already been picked for you, just like the rest of us. Your life will be easier if you just stick to it.’