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And that was the end of the conversation, more or less. Merry couldn’t help feeling depressed afterwards: Gran just hadn’t seemed that excited about her plan. Maybe she didn’t think it would ever work. And what had she meant by ‘not encouraged’? It was almost like she was starting to agree with Flo’s mum …
Somebody nudged her in the ankle.
Merry looked up. ‘Ruby! What are you doing here?’
Ruby narrowed her eyes. ‘I could ask you the same question. I thought you had English this period. And you never come to the library.’
‘I do now. I needed a book for history.’ She tapped a book lying next to her on the floor, and hoped Ruby wouldn’t notice it was actually a collection of spells, bound in old leather with gilded runes on the front cover.
‘Yeah, right.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘I don’t get what’s happening, Merry. You’re missing classes. You’re about to be kicked off the athletics team, which used to be like, your life.’ She paused and examined her fingernails. ‘You never seem to want to hang out any more.’
‘That’s not true. It’s just—’
Ruby carried on talking, ignoring Merry’s protest. ‘And have you looked at yourself in a mirror lately? You’re a mess. You look like you’re on drugs, or something—’ She broke off and crouched down next to Merry. ‘You’re not on drugs, are you?’
‘No! Course not.’
‘Well … I don’t know what you’ve got going on with this Jack bloke, but he sounds like bad news to me. I thought we were best mates. But I’m not going to keep covering for you if you don’t start acting more … normal.’
Merry had found herself an unsuitable boyfriend: that’s what Ruby had assumed. When Merry asked if she could use her as an excuse to get out of the house, Ruby thought that Merry was hooking up with someone she needed to keep hidden from her mother. Merry had gone along with it; there was no way she was going to attempt to explain to Ruby what was really going on.
But Gran needed help distracting Mum from Merry’s frequent absences, so Merry needed Ruby to keep covering for her.
‘OK, look – I promise you I am not in an abusive relationship.’ Strictly true. ‘Jack’s older than me, that’s all.’ Also true. ‘And all the other stuff – I’m just really stressed about the exams, and what I’m going to do after school.’ Ruby didn’t look that convinced. ‘Honestly, I’m going to sort myself out, but I just need to get through the next few weeks. Jack’s leaving soon, and I won’t see him again.’ And that was true too: if the manuscript was right, either Jack would be dead at the end of all this, or she would be.
Ruby was still watching her, her eyes full of doubt.
Merry pressed her knuckles hard against her breastbone, pushing the panic and fear and anger back under the surface, praying that Ruby would believe her. ‘Hey, I’m not doing anything at lunch. Why don’t we go to the cafe in the park? See if that fit waiter’s working this week?’
Ruby smiled slightly, but shook her head. ‘Can’t. I said I’d go into town with Ciara. She wants me to look at shoes with her.’ She stood up. ‘Maybe next week, yeah?’
‘Sure.’
Merry watched her go. She’s really angry with me. Or she’s just going off me. Not surprising, since I’ve stopped… She dropped her head into her hands. I guess she’s finally realising that, deep down, I’m not a very nice person …
She’d lost Alex, now she was losing Ruby. Soon, her brother would be the only friend she had left.
Leo was leaning forwards, explaining. It was Sunday evening, three days after Merry had blown up the portable heater. But Leo had gone straight out and bought a new one: they were nearly halfway through March now, but the evenings were no warmer. Colder, if anything: the ground beneath them frozen solid.
‘So that’s when I first thought, yeah, I’d really like to be a doctor.’
Merry laughed, despite the now-constant sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, the anxiety that lay like chainmail across her shoulders.
‘All because you stole my toy doctor’s kit and kept pretending I was dying of the Black Death?’
Jack – who’d looked pretty blank during most of Leo’s explanation – reached forwards to take a biscuit from the packet Merry had brought with her, revealing a fresh red welt across his forearm.
Leo sighed.
‘I guess it doesn’t seem so funny when you’ve seen real bloodshed …’
Jack dropped the biscuit and sat back, tugging the sleeves of his tunic down.
Merry didn’t comment. She and Leo had guessed at what was happening: that Gwydion was punishing Jack for his failure to do whatever it was he was supposed to be doing, whether that was cut people’s hearts out or just stick his sword into them. But Jack wouldn’t talk about it, let alone allow Leo to use modern medicine to help him … She blinked hard. Pity wouldn’t help Jack. ‘And what about you, Jack?’ she asked. ‘What did you want to do with your life? I mean, before Gwydion?’
Jack’s shoulders relaxed again. ‘I did not want to be a carpenter like my father, for all I loved helping him fell the trees and shape the wood. It all seems so distant now, almost like – like somebody else’s life, that I heard of in a story. I had great plans, of course. I wanted to leave the village, to see the world.’ He sighed and smiled briefly. ‘That was before I found out I was the son of the king. I only spent one day as an aetheling, and during the first part of that day, at least, my wishes were mainly to do with not falling off my horse.’
‘I’m sure you would’ve been a really good king, Jack,’ Leo offered.
‘I am less certain. However, it is kind of you to say so.’ He shook his head, as though shaking away memories. ‘And what of you, Merry? What do you wish your life to be?’
Merry had a sudden vision of her – still uncompleted – careers questionnaire.
‘Really, I have no clue. I guess you’ve always been much more focused than me, haven’t you?’ She looked over at her brother, who shrugged. ‘But—’
Leo’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, drew in his breath sharply and jabbed his fingers at the phone to unlock it. Watching his face by the glow of the screen, Merry thought he was about to be sick.
‘Oh, no …’
‘Leo? What’s happened?’
Silence for a moment. And then –
‘It’s a text from Mum.’ Grabbing his bag, Leo started trying to drag the picnic blanket out from underneath Merry, tipping her back on to her elbows. ‘Get up! We have to go.’
‘But – but we can’t both leave! I mean, what about—’ Merry waved a hand at Jack. ‘He’ll come back, and if we’re not here—’
‘God – I guess—’ Leo groaned and squatted back down on the blanket next to her. ‘Mum bumped into Ruby’s mum at the train station. She’s found out you’re not with Ruby, at least not this evening. Now she’s on her way to The Swan.’
‘The Swan?’
Leo threw his hands in the air.
‘The pub, Merry – the place I’m supposed to be working this evening? I told her I was covering for Dan.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘Exactly.’ They both turned to look at Jack, who sat looking down at his feet. ‘Er – OK – you stay here with Jack. If I leave now I might just make it before she does. If you can find anything out from Ruby – like how much damage has been done – text me.’ Leo stood up again and fished the car keys out of his pocket. ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can. You going to be alright?’
‘I’ll be fine, just go.’ Merry pulled her phone out of her bag and messaged Ruby.
What’s happened? How much does mum know?
She waited a couple of minutes.
R u there?
Please, what’s happening?
Still nothing. Merry swore and threw the phone down on to the blanket, trying to think: what would Ruby tell her mum? Was she going to drop her in it, after their conversation on Friday?
Oh, damn …
‘Merry?’
She had almost forgotten Jack was there.
‘Sorry, Jack. A bit of a crisis. Our mum’s not supposed to know about any of this. She definitely would not approve.’
‘I wish – I wish I was able to help you.’
‘Don’t worry. Leo will sort it out somehow.’
She stared back towards the trees, willing Leo to get to the pub in time, willing him to come up with a plan.
‘Um … what were we talking about? Before?’
‘You were going to tell me your plans for the future. What you want your life to be.’
Merry let out a shout of laughter. She couldn’t help it: it was all so – ridiculous.
‘Not this.’ She waved her hands around, indicating the lake, the darkness, the whole insane situation. ‘I don’t want this.’
‘I understand. It would have been better if Meredith and her sisters had killed me.’ Jack drew out the long, angular knife he wore at his waist and stabbed it into the ground next to him. ‘Better still if I had never been born.’
‘Don’t say that, Jack. I don’t mean—’ Merry bit her lip, unsure of what exactly she did mean. ‘It’s not just this – this nightmare that we’re going through now, anyway. Even before that, my life was going nowhere. I barely scraped through my last set of exams. And now …’ She glanced at Jack. ‘You don’t really understand most of what I’m saying, do you?’
Jack took Merry’s hand, turned it over and began tracing patterns on her palm with the tip of one finger. That was new, she reflected, as her blood tingled just under her skin; their fingers had brushed against each other many times, Jack had once swept a stray strand of hair away from her face, but – apart from the night he broke into her room – he had never touched her so openly before.
‘I understand you are frightened. You have no hope for the future. I have little hope or desire to survive what is to come. But you are a good person, Merry. God willing, you will survive, and you will find your path.’
Merry could feel the calluses on Jack’s hands, the legacy of years of manual work. He was such an odd mixture of child and adult. Jack could barely read and write, but Merry knew he had far more practical skills than Leo. And he seemed so … transparent. Most people, Merry thought, really needed to come with a label, the sort they put on toys and cigarettes. Ones like: ‘Warning: borrows money and never pays it back, may seriously damage your bank account.’ Or: ‘Only after one thing: not suitable for under-sixteens, beware of small parts’. But Jack seemed to be completely straightforward; there was no act, no angle.
She made a decision: she would tell him the truth.
‘I’m not. I’m not a good person, Jack. Not really. You know I told you I don’t do much magic, that I haven’t been properly trained?’ Jack nodded. ‘Well, the training bit is true.’ Merry picked up a nearby pebble and threw it into the lake. ‘But for some reason, that doesn’t seem to have mattered. Not long after I passed the test Gran gave me, I found there was some stuff I just seemed to know how to do. I’ve no idea why. But I’ve not – I’ve not used it to help people. I’ve just helped myself.’
‘There is no shame in wishing to make a better life for yourself.’
‘But I don’t mean working hard to get a better job, or something like that. I’m popular at school – well, not so much recently, but I was – and I liked being that way. Sometimes, I used magic to … nudge people’s reaction to me in the right direction.’ Merry lay back on the blanket and looked up at the stars. This would be easier if she couldn’t see Jack’s face. ‘Apart from Leo, I’ve only had two really close friends in my life: Ruby, and a boy called Alex. And I’ve used magic to control both of them.’
‘What did you do?’ Jack’s voice wasn’t shocked, or critical – yet. It would be once she told him.
Merry took a deep breath.
‘I’ve kept Ruby to myself. Any time she seemed to be getting too friendly with another girl, I used magic to stop it. I don’t know if you know much about girls, but sometimes we can get a bit … cliquey. Bitchy.’ She remembered her encounter with Esther Perkins a few weeks back. ‘Some people in town talk about our family, spread nasty rumours about the witchcraft. No one knows anything for sure, the coven are too careful, but … I didn’t want to end up being the one on the outside. I didn’t want Ruby to end up liking someone else better than me. And I always thought she would, if I didn’t use magic to stop her.’
Merry paused, squinting up at the distant glimmer of the Milky Way, and wondered why she felt that way. Not that it mattered. Because she was right: she’d lifted her spells, and Ruby was already drifting away. ‘I haven’t done Ruby any permanent damage, I hope, but I’ve … messed with her head. Alex—’
She swallowed. She didn’t want to say any more, not really, but the words seemed to be burning their way out of her, unstoppable as a lava flow. ‘Alex, he said he was in love with me. I definitely wasn’t in love with him, but I did love him following me around and – and worshipping me. So I kept him dangling, and every time another girl showed interest in him I used magic to drive her away, and every time he began to like another girl I used magic to make her laugh at him. To make her treat him like he was some kind of – pathetic loser.’ Merry dug her nails into her palms as hard as she could. ‘Well, let’s just say that I got a bit carried away. I couldn’t control what I was doing. The spells I cast were too dark, they had too many side effects that I hadn’t anticipated. Alex started to hallucinate. He became … paranoid, I guess. He decided that everyone hated him. Even his family. I did my best to reverse the damage I’d done, to undo the spells, but it was too late. So one night, he jumped off a bridge. He almost drowned. I went in after him, managed to pull him to safety, but it was all my fault he was in there in the first place.’
The words dried up. Merry rubbed her eyes, forcing back the tears. She had no right to cry. Really, if Jack managed to kill her one of these nights, it would be no more than she deserved.
‘What happened to this boy?’
‘His parents took him away from school. I did talk to him, try to explain, but … it didn’t go so well. That was about seven months ago now; I haven’t had any contact with him since. And I tried to stop using magic, I really did. That’s why my last exams went so badly; I’d used magic before, to help me remember stuff. I’ve forgotten how to study without it. Then, recently, I couldn’t make any spells work, and the power just started discharging from my fingertips, destroying things – I even injured Leo a few weeks back, I—’ She stopped, took a couple of long, slow breaths. ‘It’s a bit better, since I started training with Gran. But I’m scared, Jack. Never mind what I have to do: I’m more scared of what I might become.’
There was silence, for a while. Eventually Merry couldn’t bear it any longer. She sat up; Jack, sitting next to her, was frowning down at the ground.
‘Please, say something. Tell me how wicked I am. Tell me I’m going to end up in hell. You won’t be saying anything I haven’t already said to myself.’
‘How can I say such things to you, Merry? How can I judge you, knowing what I am? What I have done?’ He pulled his dagger back out of the grass and ran one finger gently along the edge. His hands were trembling. ‘Do you know how many people I have killed?’
‘But that’s not the same. You can’t help what you’ve done.’
Jack shook his head.
‘Someone … someone clever once told me something about magic. She said there’s more than one kind of magic in this world. There’s wild magic and tamed magic. There’s magic of the elements: of root and stone, of river and wind. There’s the magic of light: of sun or moon or star, of fire or candle. And then there is the dark magic, that of the shadow realm. But apart from that last, magic in itself isn’t good or bad. It is only made so by the person using it.’ He moved closer to her, and there was such warmth and understanding and certainty in his eyes that she had to look away. It was almost as if he knew her – knew what was deep down inside of her – better than she did herself. ‘You’re brave, Merry, and strong. And I know that you will always choose to do the right thing, in the end. You do not desire to hurt people. That is the difference between you and a monster like Gwydion.’ He sighed. ‘That is the difference, I hope, between Gwydion and me.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe Gwydion started off just like me.’ Merry giggled. ‘Maybe that’s my future: “Don’t worry about my careers assessment, Miss Riley. I’m going to take a degree course in black magic and get a job as a murderous psychopath!”’ She laughed again; she didn’t seem to be able to stop. ‘Maybe I can open a posh shop selling poisonous herbs, and – and manacles, and cursed swords—’
‘Merry! Stop this!’
Jack was shaking her, holding her by her shoulders, and Merry realised her face was wet with tears.
‘But what if I can’t stop it, Jack? What if—’
And then she stopped, because Jack’s arms were around her, and his mouth was pressed against hers.
The shock of his touch blew all other thoughts out of her mind. The way he had touched her in her dreams – she realised now what a pale imitation of reality her imagination had come up with. She responded to him automatically, lips returning the force of his kiss, hands twisting into his long hair, body curving backwards until they fell together on to the blanket. Until her fingers, drifting down on to his shoulder, found the golden wolf’s-head brooch. She remembered, and pulled away. ‘Jack, wait—’
He stared down at her, breathing hard, his brown eyes almost black in the darkness. ‘I’m sorry. I should not have—’ He sat up. ‘I ask your forgiveness, Merry. I wished only to help you, as you have helped me, but then—’
Merry sat up too, and touched his cheek lightly with her fingertips.
‘It’s OK, Jack. I’m not angry.’
‘You are too good. But I cannot … given what I am, and that …’ he trailed off, his face flushed.
He was shy. And he was trying to protect her. Merry watched him for a moment, her heart thudding in her chest. They hardly knew each other, and Jack wasn’t exactly someone she could take home to meet her mum. Oh, and she was pretty sure she was supposed to be figuring out how to kill him, and he had already tried to kill her.
But since they might both be dead soon, did any of that really matter?
She put her arms round his neck and drew him back down on to the blanket. As he returned her embrace, the rain started falling once more. Merry waved her hand, and within the space that they were lying, the rain stopped.
Jack kissed her again, and time seemed to stop too.
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