11. A MASTERY OVER LIMINAL SPACES
A mastery over liminal spaces
The welcome banquet, which had turned into a victory celebration, was held out in the town square.
The space was dominated by a large, brand-new statue of a generic man in armour, sword held aloft – one of the paladins from the story, no doubt.
Isobelle was not a fan of it – he reminds me of my father when he’s displeased with me, she’d said.
And Gwen had to agree that the statue’s noble countenance had a coldness that fell short of inspiring.
The square was fully decked out for a party.
Boards had been balanced precariously on top of barrels and carts, laden with food, and the entire town had gathered there.
At first, folks seemed rather stiff and ill at ease; no doubt, Lord Bingleton had commanded their presence.
But as the ale flowed and platters of food continued to arrive, the atmosphere loosened up.
By the time a group of musicians with more enthusiasm than skill began to play, the whole affair had relaxed into a delightful party.
A young man in brightly dyed clothes that proclaimed his profession as a crier strolled through the square, shouting over the music the headlines of the day.
He’d begun with ‘Lady Dragonslayer Bests Monster in Jaw-Dropping Battle!’ By now, that news had spread, and he’d graduated to shouting things like, ‘Yes, the Lady Dragonslayer Does Like Our Punch!’ and ‘She Seems to Be Quite Nice Once You Get to Know Her!’
Gwen stood by the statue, trying to ignore the crier, nursing said cup of punch and watching Isobelle and Hilde doing their level best to turn the square into a dance floor.
Jane stood with Sylvie at a large wooden sign not far from the statue, which bore a map of the town, its shops and large-printed text by the square declaring ‘THOU ART HERE’.
Jane gazed at it thoughtfully, murmuring, ‘But how does it know where we are?’
Sylvie shot her an incredulous look, made a strangled noise in her throat, and moved away.
Orson sulked in the shadows at the edge of the torchlight, and Sylvie came to a halt nearby, arms crossed over her chest, a faint frown on her face as she studied the much-changed darling of Darkhaven knighthood.
Orson had offered to help Gwen fight the sea monster when she and Isobelle had made their plans the previous night.
In hindsight, she ought to have accepted his assistance – but in the moment, she’d felt only the dim echo of her helpless anger when he’d exposed her at the Darkhaven tournament months before.
‘I’ve no need of anything from you,’ Gwen had snapped as she brushed past him.
The worst part was that he hadn’t even snapped back, and now he sat glumly at the fringes of the party looking like a puppy abandoned by the side of the road.
Nor did Gwen feel any better knowing Sylvie was with him.
She was hard to read, that one – she was as likely to harangue Orson for his part in Gwen’s arrest in Darkhaven as she was to cheer him up.
More likely she simply sought out his company because he had no interest in her, unlike most men – Orson, who didn’t feel that way about anyone, was not about to look at Sylvie like her late, unlamented husband had.
Maybe if Gwen had simply let Sir Orson help her, the fight would’ve gone differently. Maybe she wouldn’t have looked into the monster’s eye, maybe she wouldn’t have been seized by that strange, unbearable surge of terror. She wouldn’t have lost her sword. Or her courage.
The terror had made no sense, coming from nowhere.
Gwen was as much unsettled by the feeling of bewilderment as by the fear itself.
How could she be so baffled by the workings of her own heart?
Even now, an uneasiness coiled deep inside her that threatened to burst into outright panic at any moment.
Isobelle was convinced the town was under a curse, some sort of spell – was that what she was feeling? Gwen had never quite made up her mind about magic to begin with, and it seemed impossible for it to be so objectively real and tangible that it could affect a whole town.
Or move a sword in mid-air?
‘Gwen, dance with me!’ Isobelle appeared at her side, sliding her arm through Gwen’s and leaning against her.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes gleamed, and all thoughts of that strange sight fled.
Isobelle must have seen some sign of distress, for her face grew more sombre and she scanned Gwen’s countenance.
‘Is something wrong? Are you thinking about your beautiful sword?’
Gwen’s heart ached, dully, but she pushed that away. ‘Sort of,’ she replied, pausing to choose her words carefully. ‘Did you notice anything strange about that?’
‘Only how absolutely brilliant it was,’ Isobelle replied with a little smile. ‘I never would’ve thought of throwing the sword like that.’
Gwen led Isobelle a little way from the statue and the dancing, which was now in full swing. She halted by one of the shops, closed for the party, whose windows displayed all manner of clothing embroidered with various emblems and scenes from the town’s history.
‘I didn’t throw the sword,’ Gwen told her. ‘I let it go.’ When Isobelle’s brow furrowed, Gwen hurried on, unwilling to go into why she dropped it. ‘I watched it fall, and … Isobelle, it moved. In mid-air.’
Isobelle’s eyes widened a little. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was over the ship’s deck when I dropped the sword. But somehow it fell straight into the creature’s mouth. It moved by itself.’
Isobelle studied her as Gwen’s heart pounded. She braced herself for Isobelle to ask the obvious question: why on earth would you let go of your sword in such a moment?
But instead, Isobelle gave a little nod. ‘Hang on a second.’
She drew away from Gwen and turned, scanning the crowd. She spotted who she was looking for, and gestured hurriedly.
‘We need your experience as a hedge witch,’ Isobelle said by way of greeting, as Tabitha approached. ‘Gwen saw something during the sea monster fight that we can’t explain.’
Tabitha had a half-eaten roasted apple on a stick in one hand, and her cheeks had flushed a pretty shade of terracotta with the energy of the party. At Isobelle’s greeting, Tabitha blinked at her. ‘I’m no hedge witch,’ she replied.
Isobelle frowned at her. ‘But …’
Tabitha raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s a term a lot of witches use when setting out their shingle in a town, because it sounds unthreatening and people don’t know what it means.
But a true hedge witch has a mastery over liminal spaces and altered states of consciousness and the veil between worlds and all sorts of stuff I can’t do. ’
Gwen cast a sidelong glance at Isobelle, knowing that the other girl was replaying her encounters with the kindly middle-aged lady at the Darkhaven market who sold bramble bracelets and love charms. Isobelle rallied in record time, though, giving herself a shake and starting over.
‘Your experience as a witch in general, then,’ she said. ‘Gwen says she saw her sword move by itself in mid-air. That’s magic, isn’t it?’
Tabitha’s gaze slid towards Gwen’s and lingered.
Gwen had said nothing of their midnight meeting to Isobelle, and she knew Tabitha was recalling the nightmares Gwen had confessed to her.
‘I did sense something,’ Tabitha murmured.
‘I was too far away here on shore to see, but during the fight, I did feel a … a shift, a surge of power, perhaps.’
‘So it was magic?’ Isobelle exclaimed. ‘And it wasn’t you?’
Tabitha shook her head. ‘And there are no witches here in town, according to Lord Bingleton. I was asking him, tactfully, about that just now. So unless one of your friends is secretly a witch, then there’s some unknown power at work here.’
Gwen thought about the paralysis that had seized her and made her drop her sword. But no, she thought, why would someone scare me into dropping the sword only to move it back on target?
They talked for a while longer, trying to make sense of what Gwen saw and what Tabitha felt, but there was no explanation to be gleaned from their limited pool of evidence. When Tabitha had once more drifted off to rejoin the party, Isobelle sighed and slipped her hand into Gwen’s.
‘So we’re back to “something weird is going on here”,’ Isobelle mused.
Gwen sighed and tipped her head back a little, her gaze coming to rest on the horizon.
The old tower was little more than a finger of black jutting up against the indigo of dusk, but her eyes found it immediately.
‘Do you think there could be any truth to what Bingleton said about the sorceress having had a lover who’s still up there? ’
Isobelle huffed a breath. ‘I mean, if a bunch of paladins with pitchforks came and hurt you, I’d probably stick around for revenge.’
Gwen snickered and leaned back against the wall of the shop, squeezing Isobelle’s hand. The firelight from the torches encircling the square shone like burnished copper in her hair and made her eyes dance. Gwen found herself scanning the other girl’s features, one by one, unable to look away.
‘There’s something about you in the firelight,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose it reminds me of the night of the dragon bonfire.’
Isobelle gave a dreamy sigh. ‘I wish you could have seen yourself in that dress Olivia made for you. You looked like … like magic personified. Do you remember when we went to your house and had to change into plainer clothes, up in your room?’
‘Remember it?’ Gwen replied, feeling heat rising to her cheeks.
‘Isobelle, I revisit that moment at least once a day.’ The laces of Isobelle’s dress loosening under her fingers, the quickening of her breath, the look in her blue eyes as she glanced over her shoulder, full of unspoken longing, lips flushed and parted …
Isobelle’s fingers slid up Gwen’s wrist, drawing her back to the present.
Her eyes were fixed on Gwen’s, and Gwen felt a strange, thumping convulsion in her chest as she realised Isobelle was wearing the same look on her face now as she had that night.
Gwen raised a hand and touched Isobelle’s cheek, feeling the heat of her skin, watching in wonder as its rosy colour intensified under her fingertips.
Isobelle took a single small step, leaning into Gwen a little, chin lifted that tiny bit required to look into Gwen’s face. ‘Should we …’
But there she paused. Isobelle hesitating about anything was always cause for a double-take, but Gwen’s eyes were riveted to her face, and she saw the sharpening of intention in Isobelle’s eyes before she spoke again. ‘Maybe slip away from the party early? We could light the fire in your room.’
Isobelle’s voice was even, but there was a tension beneath it, and a tremor in her lip. Her fingers slid down the tendon in Gwen’s neck, down to the edge of the fabric of her dress, allowing the edge of one fingernail to slide beneath it with a little tug.
Gwen’s mouth went dry and she tried to swallow.
Yes, she thought, God, yes. Right now, please.
But she found she could not speak. Abruptly, without warning, those same icy fingers of fear that had seized her on the boat curled around the sparks leaping in her belly and squeezed, extinguishing them.
Cold swept through her, a cold she desperately didn’t want Isobelle, with her endless desire to help and solve all her problems, to see.
For how could she explain her fear without explaining all her fears?
Gwen cleared her throat and reached up for Isobelle’s hand, holding it in hers.
‘Let’s go dance first,’ she heard herself say. Her own voice seemed dim, as if she was hearing it from across a vast distance. ‘You did go to all that effort to get the dancing going.’
Isobelle laughed and squeezed her hand. But her gaze was shadowed as she turned to lead Gwen back into the square, an unspoken question, asking what was wrong.
Gwen was wondering the same damned thing. Something had been wrong ever since they arrived, and as Isobelle pulled her onto the dance floor, a single question kept reverberating in her head.
What is wrong with me?