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‘But – I can’t swim down through the damn lake! I can’t—’ Merry threw the manuscript to the floor. Every other night now, the answer to that last question was ‘yes’. There was no point in crying about it. But she was just so very tired.
Merry barely noticed when they arrived at the little car park in the woods that evening. Leo turned off the engine and twisted round in his seat to look at her.
‘You were very quiet during dinner. Try to talk a bit more. Mum’s going to get suspicious, given it’s normally impossible to get you to shut up.’
‘She’s already suspicious. You saw the way she was watching me.’
‘I guess it’s not surprising; you look terrible.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
Leo drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘School OK?’
Merry shrugged. Not really. Currently I have no social life, no time to study and I’m probably about to get dumped from all my sports teams.
But she just said: ‘Same as usual.’
‘Right … Well, is there anything you do want to talk about, while we’re on our own?’
‘What, other than the fact I’m turning out to be the most rubbish witch in history, and Gwydion is probably going to catch me and – and turn me into a pumpkin, or something?’
‘Wrong fairy tale. But yeah – anything other than that?’
Merry considered. There was something else on her mind: Jack. Even when she wasn’t having nightmares about him, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him. It was disturbing. And wrong, surely: to start looking forwards to spending time with somebody you were supposed to kill. Definitely wrong to be dreaming about kissing him.
‘Well?’ Leo nudged her.
Better to say nothing, maybe. But there was so much she was keeping hidden at the moment. And this was Leo she was talking to …
‘Do you think Jack’s hot?’
Leo’s eyebrows shot up, but he pursed his lips, musing. ‘Course. If you like that whole tall, blond, ripped, murderous thing. I definitely fancy him. I mean, who wouldn’t?’
Merry laughed. ‘I suppose. You’re obviously going to think he looks good, because you’re tall, blond and ripped yourself. Not quite as tall or blond, and definitely not—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. But Merry—’ the smile faded from Leo’s eyes, ‘—you what know Jack is, what he is capable of. Or at least, what that thing that takes over his body is capable of. You’re not falling for him, are you?’ He looked so serious.
Merry shook her head as she opened the car door. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Leo. Let’s get this over with, shall we?’
A little while later they were sitting with Jack near the edge of the lake, huddled close to the small portable heater Leo had started bringing with him. Gradually, some of the missing fragments of Jack’s memory seemed to be returning. He told them about the impenetrable hedge of black holly that had grown around the tower, and how the witch sisters had used it in the spell to cause enchanted sleep.
‘I remember them now. They were all beautiful. Carys, the eldest, was tall, with hair the colour of primroses. Nia, the middle sister, was pale and dark. There was something … unusual about her.’ He described them exactly as Merry had last seen them, standing with Meredith in their fire-lit cottage, asking – commanding? – her to deal with Gwydion. She took a deep breath, trying to control the sudden swirl of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. How was it possible for her to have been talked to by people who’d been dead for almost fifteen hundred years?
‘What about Meredith? Did she seem really powerful? Did you know she was a witch as soon as you met her?’
Jack shrugged and plucked a daisy out of the grass. Its petals were closed up against the night. ‘None of the sisters were as I imagined witches to be.’
In the darkness, she tried to make out Jack’s expression. He obviously didn’t want to talk about Meredith. Maybe he hated her. After all, she hadn’t freed him from Gwydion, and she hadn’t killed him; she’d just left him buried alive under the lake for fifteen hundred years. I can kind of understand it, if he hates her. I’m not exactly a big fan either.
‘I’m sorry. You must’ve been really lonely.’
All at once, Jack covered his face with his hands.
‘Jack—’ Merry started to scramble to her feet, thinking only of what Jack was suffering; of whether he was OK. But Leo grabbed her arm and pulled her back down, frowning and shaking his head. Merry muttered under her breath, but she didn’t disobey.
‘We will find a way to stop Gwydion,’ Leo said gently. ‘Meredith must have believed he could be defeated. And at least while we’re here the King of Hearts isn’t hurting anyone else.’
‘That’s right.’ Merry cast around for reasons to be cheerful. ‘And hopefully, that means Gwydion isn’t getting any stronger, that he’s no closer to escaping from the lake.’ She looked at Jack for confirmation, but he shook his head.
‘I do not know. The wizard still struggles to shake off the effects of the black holly, but he sleeps less than he did.’
‘Oh. Well …’ But Merry couldn’t think of any other comforting suggestions to make; she just didn’t know enough, that was the trouble. She didn’t know how much of Gwydion’s strength was drawn from the King of Hearts. And she didn’t know why the King of Hearts was – so far – sticking his sword into people but not cutting out their hearts.
Maybe he just hadn’t got his mojo back before we got in the way …
Merry shuddered a little and shook the thought away.
‘So, you really were completely alone until the witches showed up?’
‘Not exactly.’ Jack looked at her strangely for a moment. ‘There was a … a kitchen maid. She came in the autumn after I’d been captured. Gwydion made her cook for us, and she would come to sweep the floor and lay fresh rushes. We became friends. I – I liked her. A lot.’
‘Oh. Did she like you too?’
‘I believe she looked upon me with favour.’
Merry felt herself straighten up and pull away from Jack a little. Seriously? I’m jealous of a dead Anglo-Saxon maidservant? She forced herself to smile. ‘I’m glad you had someone to talk to. What was she like?’
‘Both fair and fearless. When the wizard – when he tortured me, whether for sport, or because I tried to resist him, she would come afterwards and take care of me, even though she knew he would hurt her if he caught her. I remember one day …’
And Merry was no longer sitting in the dark by the lake. She was in a small room, faint light coming from a deep-cut window high up in one wall, and next to her was –
– Jack, lying on the floor of his cell, barely breathing, his skin torn and discoloured with bruises. So pale, she’d feared he was dead when she first knelt on the rushes next to him. But he was frowning now, flinching as she washed the blood away from the welts on his back and arms. When she was finished, he opened his eyes a little and murmured her name.
‘Oh, my poor Jack, what has he done to you?’ She lifted his head and pressed a cup to his lips. ‘Drink a little, then I will look to your wounds.’
‘No – don’t …’
‘Please, Jack, try the medicine.’
Jack swallowed a little of the liquid. She dipped one finger into a pot of sweetly-scented cream and gently smoothed it across a graze on his cheekbone. He caught hold of her hand.
‘Don’t help me. I should suffer. I deserve to suffer. I nearly killed – I nearly—’
‘Shh, don’t talk now. Rest, and I will put poultices on the rest of these cuts. Then we will talk …’
Merry blinked and coughed as a gust of cold air blew across the lake. Leo was shining his torch in her face.
‘Leo, what the—’ She squinted, pushing the torch away.
‘Why didn’t you answer me? Are you OK?’
‘I don’t know, I—’ She stopped.
Was she now daydreaming about Jack, too? It had been so vivid: the sensation of his bare skin beneath her fingertips …
She felt her face grow hot.
‘Merry?’ Leo shook her gently by the shoulder. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I’m just tired, that’s all.’ She’d pretend nothing had happened. Act normal. ‘Um, Jack, do you remember—’ But there was no time for more questions. Jack had gone, the King of Hearts had taken his place, and Merry had to say the words that would send him back into the lake …
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Standing in front of the sink, doing the washing-up, Merry yawned. She couldn’t help it. Since her meeting with the coven just over a week ago she’d spent four evenings at the lake. The three free evenings she’d spent at Gran’s, having several hours of ‘remedial witchcraft’ lessons. A few of the spells were going OK: she could now produce a globe of witch fire fairly reliably. Most were not: she’d failed to perform any kind of healing spell to Gran’s satisfaction, and her shielding charm consistently collapsed less than two minutes into an attack. The manuscript was still telling her to follow Jack under the lake, and so far she was still ignoring it.
But she was – slowly – forming some sort of a plan.
The idea of boiling the lake away seemed too insane to contemplate, regardless of what she’d managed to (inexplicably) do at Mrs Knox’s house. But maybe she did have some special, unexpected skill with water. And maybe there was some other way she could use that skill to get past the barrier of the lake.
The house was empty – no one else around to get hurt if things went wrong – so Merry took the last pan out of the sink and stared down at the water.
Supposing I just … push the water out of the way?
She concentrated, trying – as Gran had told her – to focus on what she wanted to achieve.
Nothing happened.
She tried harder, gripping the edge of the sink, glaring at the water until the muscles around her eyes and her jaw started to ache.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the water in the centre of the sink started to dip.
The dip became a hollow, which became a deep conical depression, the displaced water spreading up the sides of the sink. Her fingernails began to tingle, just like when she’d conjured up the killer plant, but now the sensation spread up through her hands and her arms, crawling across her skin. She could almost touch the plug without getting her fingers wet – almost –
The water collapsed back on itself, spraying Merry and the whole sink area with soapy suds.
‘Damn it.’ She grabbed a tea towel and started drying herself off.
If this is going to work, I’m going to have to get a lot better at it. Really fast.
Sure, she was stopping the King of Hearts from attacking people. But despite that, Jack was now emerging from the lake so frequently that she had to assume the wizard was still, somehow, getting stronger. The manuscript didn’t seem to know. Gwydion escaping the lake, Gwydion confronting her when she still had nothing which to fight him – no puppet hearts, no real magical skill – these were the fears that increasingly haunted her dreams.
She shivered and switched the kitchen lights on. Mum wouldn’t be home this evening – luckily, her workaholic tendencies had got the better of her maternal concern again, and she was staying in London overnight for a conference – but Leo would be back soon. Then once more they would probably have to traipse over to the lake. She yawned again. At least she’d get to see Jack.
* * *
The manuscript had sent them out at sunset, this time – the first time, apart from in her dreams, that Merry had seen Jack in anything approaching daylight. She was sitting under an umbrella with her folder balanced on her knees, supposedly revising Henry VII’s foreign policy, but actually just staring at Jack’s face. At rest, the frown lines between Jack’s eyes disappeared. He looked peaceful, and young: Merry realised with a shock that he couldn’t be much older than Leo, even though he had already been through so much. She stretched out her fingers, planning to brush away a smudge of dirt from Jack’s cheekbone, when he opened his eyes and smiled at her. Merry snatched her hand back. ‘Oh. You’re awake.’
‘Eala, Merry.’
Leo handed Jack another umbrella and started rummaging in his backpack. D’you want something to eat?’
‘Yes, if it please you.’
‘Here. I brought some of our mother’s so-called chocolate cake.’
Jack peered into the plastic food container. ‘What is so-called chocolate cake?’
‘Well, it’s got beetroot in it, and virtually no sugar.’ Leo pulled a face. ‘But I’ve poured half a bottle of syrup over it so it should still taste OK. Plus, I’m not entirely sure how your body would handle exposure to some of the preservatives and food colouring they use nowadays …’ He went off into a long, involved, pre-med school student rant about the food industry. Merry – who had heard it all before – pulled the hood of her coat over her head and got up to stretch her legs.
She wandered down to the edge of the lake. It didn’t look quite so forbidding at dusk, even though there was no glimmer of sunset through the thick rain clouds. She tried to remember when she had last seen a sunset, and eventually gave up. But there was a way to make it a little lighter. Quietly singing the words Gran had taught her, Merry conjured a flickering ball of witch fire. Her own personal supernova, it blazed into life on her left palm; stuck there, strangely heavy, as she turned her hand back and forth. The shifting surface warmed her skin without burning it, and when she held the ball close to her ear it crackled like a distant log fire. The violet flames cast strange, twisted shadows across the water; the rain, still pelting down, was falling, through the flames, not extinguishing them, but slicing them into tiny fragments of light. Merry frowned. Not thinking about what she was doing, she imagined an invisible shield around the witch fire, something to protect her little bit of magic from the unnatural winter that Gwydion’s dark sorcery was spreading.
There was that prickling feeling again, starting in her nails. And, in the circle of space immediately above her globe of light, the rain stopped falling.
I’ve done it, I’ve done something against Gwydion. It’s only small, but –
The mutterings of Flo’s mother came back to her. Not natural, she’d said; not what a true witch would do. Merry knew what spells were supposed to be: ancient words, in different languages, learnt by heart and passed down from generation to generation. Doing magic as she had just done it, by thought only, without words or ritual … What if it was wrong? Bad?
She snatched her hand back. The witch fire was extinguished, and the rain carried on falling, as if there had never been any interruption in its journey into the lake.
I shouldn’t be messing around anyway – we’re running out of time. First thing tomorrow I’m going to tell Gran about what I did earlier, with the water. See if she can teach me a spell I can use to do the same thing. A proper witch’s spell.
Merry turned away from the lake and walked back to where Jack and Leo were still sitting under umbrellas next to the heater. They seemed to be talking about family. Merry caught the end of Leo’s sentence:
‘… even when she’s actually at home. But, you know, she’s still our mum. What about your parents?’
‘If you mean my blood mother, I only saw her once. I never met my father. But my parents, the people who raised me, were good people. They worked so hard to make sure that I was prepared for my future life, even though it would mean I had to leave them …’ There was a faint catch in Jack’s voice, and he trailed off.
Merry didn’t know what to say. She had never had to face the death of even one person she loved. Jack had lost everyone: his real parents, his foster-parents, the girl in the village that Gwydion had killed, the kitchen maid who had befriended him … Sitting down next to him she hesitated for a moment – realised that the deepening twilight would at least prevent Jack from seeing her blush – then reached out and slipped her fingers into his, squeezing his hand hard. Jack glanced up at her, his lips parted in mild surprise. Merry’s heartbeat accelerated.
The portable heater burst into flames.
All three of them scrambled away from the blaze. Luckily, the rain put the fire out quickly.
Merry noticed Leo staring at her. She opened her mouth to say: It wasn’t my fault, or if it was, at least there was no killer plant this time …
But something in his expression stopped her. She knew he would end up lecturing her when they got home: about staying focused on the mission, and how she was supposed to be trying to kill Jack, not date him. But, as she sat down and took Jack’s hand again, she decided she didn’t care.
The school library, it turned out, was a pretty good place to take a nap. There was one dusty, remote corner of the Classics section where it was possible to rest quite comfortably between the end of the bookcase and a small window, with virtually zero likelihood of being disturbed. After the previous evening’s drama, Merry had needed to catch up on some sleep; now she was sitting, eyes still closed, thinking about the phone call she’d had with Gran that morning.
Merry had explained about the stuff she seemed to be able to do with water – in addition to making it boil really quickly – and her plan for moving the lake water out of the way. When she’d mentioned stopping the rain, Gran had been … somewhat concerned.
‘And you’re not using any words as part of this spell? Nothing verbal at all?’
‘No. I’m just thinking about what I want. Really hard. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? It’s not … bad, is it? Dangerous?’
‘Oh, no. Not dangerous.’ There had been a pause on the other end of the phone line. ‘Just not encouraged. But don’t worry about that now. If it’s working for you, stick with it.’
‘OK.’
