What I did next, I did purely on instinct. I had no thought for anything except Seth.
I dived.
I fell, perhaps a hundred feet. I had barely time to notice the air tearing in my throat and ripping at my clothes and hair, before I hit the oregn="jussurface of the sea with a smack that sent my head ringing. The salt water forced its way into every pore of my skin with excruciating pressure, stinging my nose and eyes, and the momentum of my fall thrust me deep, deep into the sea, down into the murky storm-torn depths at the foot of the cliff. It was so cold I thought I’d die from the chill alone, but then I saw Seth’s truck, upended on the seabed, shaken by the waves that reached even to these depths.
I fell the last few feet in slow motion, all the air long since crushed from my lungs, only my witchcraft keeping me alive now.
Seth was in the truck, slumped over the steering wheel just a few yards away in the murk. Grabbing a rock from the seabed I flung it at the windscreen, but it was like throwing in treacle, and my strength, in this depth of water, was piteous. The rock fell yards short, drifting softly to the seabed with a little flurry of murk. Wearily I half waded, half crawled to the cab and tried again, pounding at the glass on the driver’s side window again and again. Inside I could see Seth, terrifyingly motionless, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.
At last – at last there was a crack. After that the pressure of the water did the work. A web of splinters swiftly spread across the pane, then, with a roar, the water entered, buffeting Seth sideways with its force. It didn’t take long – first Seth’s legs were wet, then his chest, and finally his head was submerged, the blood drifting away in the sluggish water like red smoke. I watched in an agony of impatience and as soon as the cab was pretty much full I yanked at the door latch with numb and trembling hands. It opened and I crawled into the rocking, unstable cab, tearing at Seth’s seatbelt catch.
It seemed like forever, but at last the belt came free and I ripped and heaved and tore Seth out of his seat, his head lolling. A silver stream of precious air bubbled from his mouth and nose, spelling out the fact that his life was slipping away with every passing second.
Now I only needed to get us both to the surface, but with little air in Seth’s lungs, and none in mine, we were both dead weights with no buoyancy to help me as I struck for the surface. I could barely support my own weight, let alone Seth’s twelve stone alongside me. Tiredness and chill were striking into my bones. I would have sobbed, but I had no oxygen to make a sound, and the tears just mingled with the salt of the sea. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. We were both going to die here, in the cold of the sea, just another car accident, another black statistic of young people too young to drive, but not too young to die.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It would be rest at least. I wouldn’t have to go on, fighting my way through the cold murk. My muscles tore with a fiery pain and my poor heart beat, oxygenless, with panicked bird-like flutters. My eyes stung and my lungs choked against the salt water. Wouldn’t it be easier just to give up? Seth and I could rest here, together.
I hugged Seth to me, threading my hands in his dark curls, running my fingertips over his closed lids, bruised and dark, and the contours of his throat. His beautiful face was blue, blood drifting in scarlet feathers from his mouth. It looked like this would be my last memory. A cold embrace, from the boy I’d loved – and had killed. His last memory wolas"0">uld be of my betrayal – of my leaping from the truck, letting it drop. He would never know the truth, because I’d never be able to explain. He’d always think I’d run away when he needed me most.
No! The searing agony of that thought tore through me, bringing heat to my numb, frozen limbs. Damn the Ealdwitan. I would not let us die here. Seth had saved me, twice. It was my turn to save him.
I struck out, fighting for the surface, fighting for Seth’s life.
Pain, pain in my chest, someone beating on it with a hammer, crushing me. Plastic at my mouth, light in my eyes. More pounding pain. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.
‘The boy’s breathing by himself. I think he’ll make it, but looks to me like the girl’s a goner,’ I heard through a haze.
‘Well that’s for them to call at the hospital. Let’s get her intubated and we can start getting them up that cliff.’
Who were these people? What were they talking about? I tried to speak but there was something hard in my mouth and my lungs felt like they were clagged with some gross, sticky substance. The effort was too much. I let the darkness close over my head.
Sounds: a roaring in my ears, and the scream of a siren, very close, incredibly loud. The insistent beeping of medical machines, and – most heart-breaking – the sound of tearing, heaving sobs from someone very near.
‘Calm down, Seth. Calm down.’ A male voice, calm, official, comforting.
But the sobs continued.
Bumping, rattling, the screech of trolley wheels and a bang as the footrest hit a swinging door. A flurry of medical stats shouted to and fro.
‘CPR commenced at the scene by a passerby … intubated at ten thirty-eight … ten rounds of adrenaline and warm saline by IV … asystole throughout …’
I heard the other trolley rattle away down the corridor, and then a far off cry,
‘Anna, no! No! I won’t leave her! No!’ The sound receded …
Needles, tubes, pushing, shouting – everything hurt. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted everything to stop. And then I heard, ‘Sorry everyone, I’m going to have to call this one. Is everyone agreed? OK, stop resuscitation, time of death is…’
At last there was silence.
I lay, compl">Iwidetely at peace, feeling the warmth of the lights on my cold skin. Someone had pulled a sheet over my face, and the harsh, starched fabric rasped at my cheeks and nose. It was wonderful simply to lie still, not to fight any more, in this quiet corner of the hospital. I felt so tired, more tired than I had ever felt in my life before. I could have slept forever.
But there was the memory of those dreadful, tearing sobs … I had to get up. Seth. I couldn’t leave him in some far corner of the hospital. I had to go and find him.
My hand shook with exhaustion, but I reached up and pulled the sheet from my face. Then, tilting my head to one side, I vomited and choked all the phlegm, foam and seawater out of my lungs. There was an astonishing amount. It flooded the lino, a tide of gross pinkish foam.
Ripping air back into my lungs hurt far worse than drowning. Every inch was raw and scoured with salt, and the air cut like knives. I sat up, choking and sobbing and gasping. A monitor at my side flickered into life and began a slow pip, pip, in time with my reluctant pulse.
There was a scream.
‘The girl! She’s – she’s – she’s—’
My quiet corner was no longer quiet. Curtains were ripped back, feet came running, panicked shouts echoed down the corridor, hands pushed me back on to the trolley.
‘Christ, who called this? Why didn’t someone check her?’
‘We did! Dr Mahmood – the paramedics …’
‘Blankets! Get me a drip, quick! Where’s her chart?’
‘What’s her name? Quick, quick! What’s her name?’
‘Hell, where’s the chart?’
‘Somebody find the damn chart!’
‘Here it is … Anna – Anna Winterson.’
‘Anna, Anna, listen to me, you’re OK. You’re going to be OK.’
But I knew that already.
For what seemed like hours it was all tests and drips and cannulas and muttered, indignant conferences in corners about who’d missed what, who’d failed to check what, which protocols had been adhered to, or not.
But eventually the panic and shock subsided and – rather reluctantly, or so it seemed – the doctors were forced to admit that I was here, alive, with astonishingly few side effects from my long immersion.
‘I want to see Seth,’ I said, when they eventually unhookedualmedics … me from the monitor. A man in a white
coat shook his head.
‘I’m sorry; he’s under sedation.’
Oh my poor Seth.
‘I have to see him,’ I said. ‘I can get hysterical if you like, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to let me see him now?’
There was a hurried conference and eventually a female doctor said, ‘You can see him, of course, Anna. But just for a few minutes. Don’t be alarmed when you see him – he’s fine. It’s just the effect of the sedative they gave him to calm him down.’
They wouldn’t let me walk, so I was wheeled in a wheelchair down endless corridors, the doctor pushing and a nurse following with my drip bag on a little stand. Doors opened and closed, more doors, a keypad, then a long ward full of cubicles.
‘Here he is,’ said the doctor, drawing aside a curtain. I got out of the wheelchair, ignoring the nurse’s protests, and knelt beside the bed.
His face was very pale, and he lay like a child who’d cried himself to sleep, with one hand under his cheek.
Traces of tears were still visible on his face.
The doctor spoke in a whisper.
‘He was very distressed. Your condition initially looked much more serious and …’ She trailed off. I suppose there’s no easy way to say, We told him you were dead.
I touched his cheek, very gently, and he stirred.
‘Seth,’ I said softly, ‘Seth, it’s OK, I’m here. I’m alive and well. It’s all OK.’
He didn’t wake, but he moved under the covers to face me, and his expression softened, relaxed. When I took his free hand, still bruised with the marks of the IV drip inserted into the back, his fingers closed reflexively on mine – his grip, even in sleep, surprisingly strong.
‘Please can’t I stay?’ I said pleadingly to the doctor. She looked sympathetic but shook her head.
‘I’m very sorry, Anna, but this is a male ward. Also the effect of the sedative won’t wear off for several hours. But we’ll come and get you as soon as he wakes up.’
‘Do you promise?’ I said fiercely. ‘Even if it’s the middle of the night? Even if I’m asleep?’
‘I promise,’ she said, and nodded.
A couple of hours later I was woken from deep sleep, by the same doctor shaking my shoulder gently.
I toiv>
‘Anna, Anna,’ she was saying insistently. I opened my eyes painfully and blinked, and she whispered, ‘I’m so sorry to wake you up, but your friend is awake and asking for you. Also your dad’s on his way. We finally managed to get hold of his phone.’
I struggled up and out of bed, ignoring the swooning dizziness in my head, and pulled the cannula painfully out of the back of my hand. The drip bag was empty anyway.
The doctor persuaded me into a wheelchair again and we set off, infuriatingly slowly, with pauses at every security door for her to fumble for her key fob, and a maddening wait at the lift.
Corridors, more security, then at last Seth’s ward, Seth’s cubicle, with the curtains open, and Seth sitting up in bed, wild-eyed and furious.
‘I don’t care.’ I heard forcefully down the corridor. ‘I’m going to see her. I’ll sign whatever you want, just get this bloody thing out of my arm.’
‘Seth!’ I called. I shoved the brake on the wheelchair and levered myself out, hobbling down the corridor as fast as my weak legs could go.
The doctor’s protests came as if from a long way off, her words a senseless jumble. All I could hear was Seth’s cry of ‘Anna!’ as he struggled off the sheets and limped out of bed, into my arms.
‘Oh Seth, oh Seth!’
A tangle of bruised limbs and IV tubing, and our rushing, sobbing words tumbling over each other:
‘They told me—’ ‘I thought—’ ‘I knew that you’d never—’ ‘You saved my life—’ ‘I’ll never leave you again …’
Sometime later, as we sat, curled together on Seth’s bed: ‘Nice dress, Anna.’
‘What do you mean?’ I looked down at the hospital gown and then behind at my naked back.
‘Shut up!’
Later still:
‘Anna …’
‘Mmm?’
‘How did you do it? My van – it must have been in fifty feet of water. The doctors all assumed you must’ve been in the truck when it fell, but I know what really happened. I didn’t say anything but …’
I sighed. There didn’t seem much point in pretending any more – not now.
‘You know, Seth. You know what I am.’
my naked "0em" width="1em" align="justify">‘What? A witch?’ He spoke the words with shocking loudness and I winced. ‘Sorry.’ He lowered his voice. ‘But are you really?’
‘You saw what I did.’
‘I half thought … The apple tree – I mean, I began to think I must have dreamed it, or had some kind of posttraumatic stress episode.’
‘Well, you didn’t dream it,’ I said shortly. ‘I am a …’ It was extraordinarily hard to say the word, and suddenly I understood Maya and Emmaline’s reluctance to use it. I took a deep breath. ‘I am a witch. That’s why I’m not a safe person for you to know.’
‘And that’s why you ran off, right before the accident?’
I nodded. My heart hurt.
‘Seth, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?’
‘Forgive you?’ He shook his head, and for a minute I went cold all over; so this was it … But then he carried on, his voice slow, full of incredulity. ‘Forgive you? Shouldn’t you be asking how I can ever repay you? Anna, you saved me. You gave your life for me.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said shortly, trying to hide the tears rising inside me. He shook his head violently.
‘I saw what happened on the beach. You were dead. Your heart had stopped – your lungs were completely saturated. You don’t come back from that.’
‘But I came back,’ I said.
‘But you came back,’ he said softly. I nodded, and a tear escaped, running hot down my cheek.
‘Seth, I don’t know what to do. There are people out there – people who want to hurt everyone I care about. They’re trying to persuade me to do something – and unless I do it, everyone I love is in danger. It’s better if you just forget me, don’t see me. I can’t bear for them to hurt you because of me.’
‘If I disappear, will you forget me?’ he asked quietly.
‘No!’ My shocked response burst from me before I had time to think what it meant. Suddenly I saw. How could I have been so stupid?
‘Then what’s the point?’ Seth spelled it out. ‘It doesn’t matter where I am – whether we’re together or apart. As long as you care about me, I’ll be a target. Can you make your feelings disappear too?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I wish I could.’
‘If you’d go out with me I’d have a witch for a girlfriend,’ he said, his voice teasing. ‘What could be safer than thasaf
I looked up to see him smiling at me.
‘Seth, please, I’m serious. These are scary, scary people. I don’t know how to protect you.’
‘We’ll think of a way. It’ll all be fine, as long as we’re together.’
In that short moment everything changed, shifted, reassembled in a new pattern. It was true. Seth wasn’t better off without me. Keeping away would do nothing to save him from the Ealdwitan – he was in danger wherever he was; in fact I could protect him much better by his side. The realization brought me elation – and despair. I had the perfect excuse to be with him at last – but it might cost him his life.
I don’t know what I would have said next, because there was a rustle at the edge of the cubicle and a disembodied voice said: ‘Knock, knock – I’ve got Mum and Dad here.’
We sprang apart and our parents came through the curtains, their faces wearing twin masks of anxiety – changing to a sort of cross jubilation as they saw us both alive and well.
‘Oh, Seth!’ Elaine grabbed Seth and hugged him furiously. ‘Never, never do that to me again. When I got that call …’
‘Anna, thank God you’re OK – thank God you’re both OK.’ Dad crushed me to his chest. ‘What on earth happened? The hospital made it sound like a near-death experience. You had a car accident, is that right?’
‘It was my fault,’ Seth said, at the exact same time as I said, ‘It wasn’t his fault.’ We shot each other a look, and I suddenly wished we’d had time to get our stories straight. The only thing we’d agreed on, and that fairly hurriedly, was not to tell my dad, if at all possible, the true severity of what had happened to me. I didn’t think the phrase ‘pronounced dead on arrival’ would be exactly music to his ears, and I hoped the hospital wouldn’t be in a hurry to bring it up either.
‘Please, ladies first,’ Seth said at last, and waved his hand.
‘Well,’ I started, ‘we, er, we were driving to school, and Seth needed to stop the truck for a sec, so he parked on the edge of the road, where it comes quite close to the cliff, and the brakes failed. Seth kept his head and tried everything – the handbrake as well as the foot brake, and then he tried to get it into gear, but the truck had too much momentum.’
‘How could the brakes fail? You only had it serviced last month!’ Elaine exclaimed. Seth shrugged.
‘I know, but it’s old, isn’t it? Anyway there wasn’t time to get out. It fell off the cliff, into the sea.’
Both Elaine and my dad flinched visibly at this so I hurried in.
‘But we 00"and wwere fine – both fine. We just swallowed a lot of water and got rather cold.’
‘Anna was amazing,’ Seth said proudly. ‘I hit my head on the steering wheel so I was pretty useless, but she got me out and dragged us both on to the rocks.’
‘And then a passer-by found us and called the ambulance,’ I finished brightly, trying to make it sound like your average stroll in the country.
Dad blenched and I wondered if I was going to be allowed near the sea or a moving vehicle ever again. Thank goodness he hadn’t heard the full unexpurgated version.
‘Well,’ Elaine said, almost as shaken, ‘all I can say is, it’s a miracle you’re both alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Seth solemnly. ‘Quite magical in fact.’ I resisted the urge to kick him, hard.
A Witch In Winter Page 17