The Witch in the Lake (18 page)

Merilee was mouthing something at him, laughing—'hide and seek!'—was
that
what she was saying? And she was running away, beckoning for him to follow, racing towards the rocks at the southern edge. He watched her go, hair flying in the wind, and he'd never felt so far away from her. She couldn't hear the voice like he did. She was playing, laughing! The moan was only for him now, seeking him out, punishing him. She could only hear the wind ripping at the trees.

He began to run after her. He couldn't bear to be alone with the voice. But as he ran the moaning moved with him, there, just under his heartbeat.

When he reached the rocky cliffs, Merilee had disappeared.

He scrambled over the rocks, calling her name. Then he tripped on a sharp stone and fell heavily, skinning his knee. He crouched there for a while, sucking the blood from his graze, watching the great cliffs throw their shadows over the water.

He looked out across the lake. The water was melting into the sky. Dusk was already blurring outlines, greying edges. The rocky promontory that jutted out at the end of the southern cliffs was hardly visible. It could have been a freakish wave rolling back towards the cliff.

‘Merilee, Meri
lee!
' Leo began to run blindly, stabbing his feet on the stones. Oh, where was she? And then, far off, he heard a piercing voice, Merilee's, and he picked his way over the rocks towards it, hanging onto the sound as if it were a rope that would save him from drowning.

She was standing under an overhanging rock, deep in the shadows. But as he drew near, he saw her emerge, her face lit by a flickering light, and behind her there was a tunnel of utter darkness.

She showed him the oil lamp she'd found. ‘It was in here—oh, Leo, come and look, it's a cave, all made up like a sitting room! Someone must have lived here once.'

Leading him inside, she put the lamp down on the ground. ‘See,' Merilee sounded excited, ‘this old tinderbox was dry. It was left carefully on the ledge here. And look, these are silk cushions, rotting a bit with the damp floor, but you can still sit on them.'

Leo took the lamp. The voice had quietened. It seemed muffled by the air in the cave, which was thicker, warm and salty. Leo sniffed. He could smell candle grease and incense. On the ledge there were two cups and a jar beside a neatly folded stack of blankets.

It was all just as he'd imagined. Everything was as his father had described. He held the lamp up to the rock wall above. He looked at it very hard for a long time. And the wall began to move.

The minerals in the limestone were separating, sparkling singly like far flung stars. He could see the form and shape of each, and the rock face behind became a swirling galaxy of light. Leo put the lamp down. He didn't need it any more. In the stone he saw the flames of ancient fires, and figures dancing through them. He could see back in time, back to when the first creatures were evolving. The stone showed him horned animals and tiny hopping insects, men hunting, sleeping. The light was so bright that he scrunched up his eyes for a moment, but a golden glow still seeped through his lids.

‘Leo, bring the lamp over here.' Merilee was peering at the wall opposite.

Leo was listening to the quiet. In the glowing spaces that filled his mind, the moan had become just a whisper.

‘Quickly, Leo, come
on!
There's something drawn on the rock.'

On the eastern wall, the lamp showed a painting of a woman's face. It was a very worn fresco, eaten away by time and moisture, and yet the face looked so familiar . . .

‘Francesca!' cried Leo. But even as he spoke he saw the strong line of the chin, the black mark on the cheek.

‘No, her grandmother, Caterina,' Merilee said quietly. She brought the lamp down to the words written at the bottom.

‘For my beautiful Caterina,' they read together. ‘Eternal love,
amore per sempre
, Illuminato.' But the last words were crossed through with a heavy line, and next to them, in huge thick letters was ‘Die, you witch!'

Leo took the lamp from Merilee. He was trembling, making the lamp jiggle. He stared at the words leaping out at him from the wall. Words his father had never wanted him to see.

‘The sins of my forefathers,' he whispered.

‘Leo, what is it?'

‘Nothing.' Leo brushed a hand across his eyes.

Merilee took the lamp from him and put it on the ledge. ‘Something to do with light,' she murmured to herself. Then she turned suddenly and faced Leo. ‘Your great grandfather, Manton's father, what was his name?'

‘Illuminato,' murmured Leo, still staring at the words.

‘Well, he must have been in love with my great grandmother. Oh, Leo, it's quite romantic really.'

Leo turned away in disgust. ‘What kind of love was that, to write those words underneath?' He kicked away the cushion at his feet.

Merilee glanced back at the wall. ‘I don't think he wrote that bit, Leo. See, the letters are all heavy and thick, and they're leaning backwards. It's quite a different style altogether.'

She doesn't
want
to think he wrote that bit, thought Leo. Neither do I, Leo whispered to himself.
Neither do I
. But dread was hardening like ice in his stomach.

Merilee was still puzzling. ‘He must have been a very passionate man. I wonder why they didn't marry. I know my great grandmother died when her children were still quite young. At least, everyone presumed she was dead, because she disappeared. There was an outbreak of plague in the village, Mamma told us, and lots of people fled. But why,' Merilee said more slowly, ‘didn't she take the children?'

She stopped suddenly and Leo glanced at her. He saw her eyes widen as she stared at the ground. His eyes followed hers. There, at his feet, in the clean pale space where the cushion had been, lay a gold necklace. It was broken at the clasp, but a single pearl was still attached to it.

Sweat broke out on Leo's forehead. The voice was returning, thudding in his ears.

‘Laura's necklace!' said Merilee.

She bent to pick it up. It lay cradled in her hand. Merilee's fingers curled over it, making a fist. ‘My sister has been here, Leo.' She stared at him, searching his face.

Leo turned and began to hobble towards the entry. The pain in his head was too much. Suddenly Merilee pulled him back, her hand over his mouth.

‘Someone's outside,' she hissed in his ear. ‘Don't make a sound.'

She dragged him against the wall, into the shadows. ‘What if it's Beatrice? Oh,
dio
, where shall we go? We're trapped!' Her lips were white and trembling, all the playfulness gone.

Leo swung round and faced the dark opening at the back of the cave.

‘Oh, Leo, not in there, we don't know where it leads.'

He picked up the lamp. ‘I think I have to find out.'

Merilee put her hand into his.

But Leo slid away. ‘I don't know if I can keep you safe, Merilee.'

‘Just
run
,' she cried, as a gull screamed from the rocks outside, and Leo, holding up the lamp, lunged into the darkness with Merilee right behind him.

They raced through the narrow tunnel, the lamp sputtering, making just a small glow in front of their feet. The dark was so thick, and the air so musty, that it was like being sealed into a grave.

‘We must be nearly right through,' panted Leo, not slowing down. His lungs hurt. No crack of light showed behind them or in front.

‘What if there's no way out?' breathed Merilee. ‘We can't go back.'

They scurried along the winding path so black that Merilee couldn't see her hand in front of her. Blindly she sped after Leo, grasping tightly to his tunic. He pulled her through gaps where they both had to turn sideways and inch their way along.

Leo heard a squeaking and a scurrying as a rat ran over their feet.

Merilee screamed, but Leo called back to her. ‘That's a water rat—I think we may be near the exit.'

As they turned a corner, so sharp and narrow that Leo nearly ran face first into the wall, he saw a twinkle of light far off ahead of them.

‘There!' he cried and they ran faster, feeling cooler air on their faces, hearing the wind gusting now through the widening space.

They burst out of the cave like stones hurtling from a sling. But they stopped dead. Surrounded by water, they were standing at the edge of a slim finger of land that reached right out into the middle of the lake.

‘The promontory,' whispered Leo. ‘We've run the whole stretch of it underground.' Only a few inches from their feet the rocky surface dropped straight into the lake.

‘Step back, Merilee.' Leo loosened her hold on his hand. ‘Get away from the edge—quick!'

The full moon shivered over the water. It threw down nets of silver, catching little waves cresting in the wind.

Leo was waiting. He listened to the voice roaring up at him from the lake. He heard it riding the moonlight, whining on the wind. Inside he was completely still, silent in the eye of his hurricane.

Merilee scrambled over the rocks. She crouched a small distance away, her eyes fixed on Leo. The water tossed around him. Far away on the pebbly shore she saw waves frothing white in the moonlight.

‘Stay where you are!' Leo called to Merilee. ‘Don't move.'

His eyes didn't stray from the water. He knew it would be soon. Just a heartbeat away. The moon beamed down on the greasy surface of the lake, bright as day. But the light was cold and steely with no warmth in it, only menace.

And now he saw where the water was swirling, spiralling like oil sucked into a vortex. There, right near his feet, down where the ripples were growing bigger, the lake was opening. Moonlight swept across a pit of blackness, a nothingness so terrible it sucked the air from his lungs.

And a howling filled the air, as if the voice of the wind and the moonlight and the dark emptiness below all condensed into this one sound. Leo screamed as the voice ripped open the silence inside him. He heard his cry mingle with the sound and his legs trembled against the swirling pull of the pit. The emptiness sucked at his toes, wrenched at his hair, his eyes. He crouched down, clinging onto the rock until the skin bled against the sharp little shells and his knuckles whitened.

Then the water fell back as the witch rose up, out of the dark.

At first she was only a shadow against the night. Huge as a giant, tall as the mast of a ship, she towered above him. No moonlight picked at the surface of her. She was darkness knitted together, a thousand nights sewed into a blackness without stars.

Leo felt the air clot around his face as he was drawn near. The darkness of her was blinding, irresistible. Leo's eyes stung and watered. His nails tore against the rock. ‘Don't listen to her!' he remembered his father crying. But the witch called to him. Her darkness would cover him. It offered everything and nothing, no light nor shade, no pain. As he looked he knew what it would be like to die, or never be born.

His hands let go of the rock. He stood up. He reached out, as if his arms were not his own. His fingertips met something colder than ice. All feeling began to seep away, so that his torn nails, the bleeding skin of his hands no longer existed for him. The numbness spread up into his shoulders, his neck. He could no longer turn his head or look away. And then he saw that the dark of her was brightening where he'd touched her, and the moonlight played over her valleys and hills, picking her out from the night.

And as he looked an enormous grief rose up in him. It was a wave in his belly like hunger, hunger for something he could never have nor change. Her face in the moonlight was beautiful—so dear and familiar, like the face of Francesca, his mother of comfort, and as she smiled at him the light shivered as it did over the water, making the smile different. There was something behind it now, a teasing, an anger and he was looking instead at the woman painted on the wall of the cave. Caterina.

A terrible wailing filled his ears. The sound twisted the guts in his belly till he didn't know if the cry came from inside him or out. Leo watched, just as Illuminato must have done so long ago when he caused the lovely face in front of him to transform.

Leo reached out to stop it—he tried to see behind the dark.

Illuminato!

The cry seemed to come from the bottom of the lake. It boomed all around him, rippling the water, deafening him. The head of her reared up, a tongue lashing out of the mouth. It forked like lightning, lapping at his lips, his chin, his eyes. Her tongue was a piece of darkness and wherever she licked his skin, the pain drifted away.

Numbness stole into his heart and he no longer cared that he'd lost the power of his vision, that the twin signs he'd been born with were no match for the magic of his ancestor.

‘Yes,' he whispered as the dark drifted in. He could just fall, melt into a universe that existed before time.

‘Leo, come back!'

Merilee's voice slapped at the back of his neck.

Leo flinched awake.

He was looking into the hollows of the witch's eyes. Something flickered against the dark. And he knew, then, that he had to go in there.

He wouldn't go blindly. He'd move in while he held himself still. He'd watch the witch's dreams while he stayed awake.

But he longed to fall blind, into her darkness.

‘Leo!'

Merilee's breath was warm in his ear. She was pulling at his belt.

‘Go back!' he cried, swinging round and pushing her away. ‘I can't protect you here!' He watched her pick herself up and scurry up to the rocks. As he turned back to the lake, a tendril of fog floated into his mind, dulling the small glow of his power.

Leo ground his teeth. He couldn't afford to think about Merilee. He stared hard into the pits of the witch's eyes, and tried to remember himself as he was in the forest. He remembered how he'd seen into the heart of things, easy as breathing. How time had dissolved, like wine in water. He remembered the cave, and the dance of the animals. And slowly, the golden truth of the cave filtered into his mind, and he held the glow still, guiding it just as he'd done with the lamp, while he gazed into the tunnels behind the witch's eyes.