The Return of the Witch (2 page)

“Oh! You continue to make these?” I picked up a dark blue bottle of lavender oil, removing the stopper to inhale the uplifting fumes. “This is very good. Very good indeed.”

“Should be,” said Tegan, fetching mugs for tea. “I used your recipe. And your plants from the garden.”

“But you made it. It is your creation, not mine.”

She clattered on with mugs and spoons, taking milk from the fridge and generally busying herself. After her initial excitement at seeing me, she now seemed subdued in my presence. It was as if in those first few moments her guard was down, and her genuine delight at my return was revealed. Now, however, she had reined in her emotions. The barriers were back up, and she would not let me so close again. Not yet, at least. I reminded myself how much she had been alone in her life. I ought not to expect instant forgiveness or an immediate connection. I had left her. I would have to earn her trust once more. What worried me was that we did not have the luxury of time in which to reforge our friendship. The danger was very near and very real, and I must prepare her for it.

Tegan took off her coat and hung it on the back of a chair. As she did so, there was a movement in the top pocket and, to my astonishment, a small white mouse wriggled out. He looked at me, whiskers twitching, bright ruby eyes holding me with a firm stare.

“Is that … is that the mouse I gave you?” I asked.

Tegan casually reached out a hand and the tiny creature hopped onto it, ran up her arm, and settled on her shoulder where it evidently felt most at home. “Yup, same one,” she said, pausing to give it a quick scratch behind its ear. “Still going strong, aren't you Aloysius?”

“But, that would make him, what … nearly eight years old? Rather an ancient age for a mouse.”

Tegan stopped what she was doing and leaned back against the Aga. She folded her arms and stared at me.

“When I met you, you were three hundred and eighty-four years old. You showed no signs of aging or dying the whole time we were together. You disappeared off in a puff of bloody smoke to what you told me was some sort of witchy heaven, and now you pop up here again, calm as ever, telling me how to sweep snow off the path, as if you've just been down to the shops for five minutes, and you have a problem with a mouse with an above-average lifespan?”

“Not a problem, no…”

“You're not the only one around here with any magic in you, you know. Aloysius was with me that night in Batchcombe Woods. The night it all kicked off. He was in the thick of that chaos, with spells and curses and fire … Something kept him alive then.” She turned to kiss the mouse. “It's kept him alive ever since, I guess.”

“I'm glad,” I told her. “I'm glad he's been with you.”

She put the tea things on the table and we sat down. As soon as she opened the biscuit tin Aloysius positioned himself next to her mug and neatly took crumbs of shortbread from her. I wanted to reach across the table and take her hand. Wanted to tell her how wonderful it was to be with her again. How much I'd missed her. How much I loved her. Perhaps I myself had spent too many long lonely years guarding my feelings, keeping myself shut away, turning from people instead of toward them. Or perhaps I simply knew Tegan was not yet ready to forgive me. Not yet ready to risk being hurt again. I warmed my hands around the mug of tea and took a piece of shortbread. It tasted wonderfully homemade and for a moment I was utterly taken up with the novel sensation of eating again. I had learned many things during my five years in the Summerlands. Things about the craft and about myself, not the least of which was how much I cared for being in the physical world, and how much I missed simple pleasures such as eating a biscuit.

“Now you have really surprised me, Tegan. This is delicious!”

She did not smile at my allusion to her youthful cooking failures this time. Instead she frowned.

“OK, snowy paths, lavender oil, now shortbread. Let's stop dancing around the elephant in the room, shall we? No one is supposed to leave the Summerlands. You and I both know you didn't come back to see if I'd learned to keep house.”

“No, you're right about that.”

“So, let's have it. I'm not a child anymore, you can't hide things from me because you think I won't like them. Why, Elizabeth? Why now, after all this time? Why are you here?”

“I needed to speak with you.”

“Ha! Do you know how many times I've needed to speak with
you
the past five years? No, course you don't; how could you? You weren't here. You left me.”

“Tegan, I'm sorry, I had no choice.”

“We always have a choice!” she snapped before regaining control of her temper. Aloysius, clearly sensitive to the abrupt change of mood in the room, scuttled into the pocket of her sweater. “Look, I've learned a lot since … since you went. I've traveled. I've studied the craft all over the world. I've sat at the feet of witches and shamans and I've listened. The things they taught me…” She looked at me levelly now. “I'm not the same person I was.”

“I can see that. I'm so proud of you.”

“And you know the biggest thing I learned? After all that wisdom, with all that studying, the single most important thing I got was this: The buck stops here,” she said, jabbing a finger at her chest. “We have to take responsibility for our own lives. Our own choices.”

She looked away again, but not before I had glimpsed the tears in her eyes.

“Tegan, I was always with you, as much as I could be … And I'm here now because I don't want you to be on your own. We will face this together.”

Her body tensed. I let my words sink in. Let her make the connection. Let her reach the only logical conclusion there was to be reached. Without looking up, she asked, “How did he do it? How did he get away?”

I had thought so carefully about how I would tell her, and yet still I faltered, and my words seemed inadequate.

“It could not have been anticipated,” I told her. “When I took Gideon to the Summerlands it required the combined magic strength of myself and several of my sister witches, but the transfer was successful. He was captured and kept secure. Or at least, we believed so.”

“What?”

“No one has ever been able to break free of their bonds and leave the Summerlands before. It is simply without precedent.”

“But Gideon managed to do it.”

“He cannot have acted alone. He must have had assistance from someone.”

“Who? Did one of the other witches help him?”

“No! No witch would do such a thing.”

“So who, then?”

“I don't know. None of us does. It is not the most important thing. What matters is that he was able to leave, to return to this time. To this place.”

“To this
village
?”

“To Batchcombe Woods.”

“Oh, well, that's at least, what … ten miles away? We're all right here then, aren't we!” She was blustering to hide her own fear. I wanted to reassure her, to tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, but she was right; she was no longer a child, and she deserved to know the truth.

“He would have to return to the point from where he was taken. That much we do know.”

“So where is he now?”

“We don't know. Not exactly. My sister witches and I, we have searched as best we are able, but he has cloaked his whereabouts.”

Tegan gave a dry laugh. “Well, I think I can help you out with that. Just hang around here long enough and he's bound to show up.” She shook her head slowly. “Which is why you are here. You know he'll come after me. You expect him to. So, have you come to save me, or to catch him? Which is it?”

“They are one and the same thing. Except that, to be perfectly honest with you, catching him is not an option. Not this time. This time we must not leave him with the opportunity to return and do more harm. This time we must finish him.”

“I seem to remember that was what we failed to do the first time we faced him.”

“Things are different now. You are different now, Tegan. Your own gift, you've worked so hard. Together…”

Tegan got to her feet and strode over to the sink where she made a show of rinsing her tea mug. The set of her shoulders, her brisk movements, her poorly hidden tears, all told of her very real fear. And she was right to be afraid, and that thought caused within me a choking sadness. I stood up and went to her.

“I'm sorry, Tegan. If there had been another way, anything, to spare you having to face him again … I am sorry, truly I am.” I placed my hand lightly on her arm.

She hesitated. “So you'll stay?” she asked at last. “You'll stay and help me?”

“I promise.”

She touched my hand with her fingers, a tentative but meaningful contact. The instant her skin met mine I experienced the unmistakable tingle of magic. Tegan's magic. The strength of it took my breath away. Over the years I had been in the presence of many witches, but even with such a brief connection I could tell that what I was feeling, what Tegan held inside her, was something quite extraordinary. Such unexpected power, such an alteration in what was fundamental to the witch that Tegan had become, left me shaken.

If she noticed my shock Tegan chose not to show it.

“I've got to feed the chickens,” she said, looking up at me with a brave smile. “Want to come and see them?”

 

2

Although the memory of those first days back at Willow Cottage with Tegan is something I will always cherish, it was tainted by the shadow of Gideon. We were ever on our guard, alert to signs of danger, waiting for what we knew in our hearts must come. We were so very happy to be reunited and yet we were not at peace to enjoy that rediscovered closeness. Though cold, the weather was pleasant, bright and clear, with the occasional fresh fall of snow. Most fell at night, so that each morning we would wake to a pristine landscape, the village picture-postcard pretty, the countryside gleaming and unsullied. Together, Tegan and I set about protecting ourselves and our little home as best we could. We also made certain not to venture far alone, so that I accompanied Tegan on her weekly trip to Pasbury Market. I was cheered to find that when she was in residence at the cottage she continued to keep a stall at the market as I had done, selling her oils and candles and such like. A witch has to make a living, after all. If circumstances had been different I would have enjoyed revisiting the little town where I had spent so many market days myself. As it was, I found myself forever looking over my shoulder, searching the shoppers for a glimpse of the face that would make my blood chill. As people came and went, purchasing things from the stall, I was impressed by Tegan's ability to carry on, to remain so implacable. As she sold her produce, I wondered now how the young woman with the cheating husband was faring without the potion I supplied her with to bring him to heel all those years ago. Or the elderly couple who sought relief from their aching joints and bones. Or the nervous youth whose acne I had successfully banished. I had spent several lifetimes working as a healer—herbalist, nurse, doctor, physician of one manner or another—and it was something I greatly missed.

As I went about the town, or back in the village, I began to be recognized. On the whole, people were only mildly interested by my reappearance. They no doubt assumed I had simply come back to my own cottage, which Tegan had been minding for me in my absence. Throughout my abnormally long existence I had become adept at parrying awkward questions and at maintaining a distance from the society in which I lived. It had not always been easy, but it was necessary. Immortality has its price, and the greater part of that is isolation. Indeed, it was only Tegan, I believe, who had ever truly breeched the barriers I had placed about myself and ended the gnawing loneliness I had become accustomed to enduring for centuries.

Later that same day, after smudging the house and hanging more herbs over the doorways and windows to ward off unwanted spirits or visitors of other kinds, Tegan and I shared a bottle of elderberry wine in the kitchen and I asked her to tell me something of what she had been doing, of where she had been, of what she had learned, since last we were together.

“At first, after you went, I didn't know what to do,” she admitted.

“That was to be expected. After everything you had been through. You were shaken.”

“I was grieving,” she corrected me. Her wounded look pierced my heart. Seeing this, she sought to soften her words. “But I knew I was safe. I … I understood what you had done, and why you had done it. That you were protecting me.” She paused to sip her wine before continuing. Aloysius hopped onto her knee and sat washing his whiskers. “I tried to figure out what you would have wanted me to do. I had this house. That meant so much. A place of my own. But what was I supposed to do with it? I couldn't just sit here. To start with, I kept up your stall. When people asked where you were I just told them you were away visiting relatives. I made enough money to get by, just about.”

“Did your mother object to you living here?”

Tegan shook her head. “She was ready for me to leave home. We both were. So, after a while I realized I needed more stock. I had to make stuff. You would have laughed, if you could have seen what a dog's breakfast I made of things to begin with!” She looked at me again. “Could you? Could you see me?”

“To view loved ones from the Summerlands is not an easy task, and it is seen as a great privilege to be allowed to try. I did my best to connect with you when I knew you would be celebrating a solstice or an equinox, perhaps.”

“I knew it! I knew you were there, sometimes. I could feel you, right close to me. But, I couldn't reach you, not properly, not then.”

“You had come such a long way in such a short time, Tegan, but that level of communication is hard even for experienced witches.”