13. WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE THE WORLD TO BE? #2
Tabitha chuckled. ‘Sometimes that’s all it is.
But there’s a core of truth and power in magic.
Just because an experience takes place in your head doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
If you know, if you are certain, that you will do a thing, then the odds shift dramatically in favour of you being able to do it.
If the world you believe in is a world in which a thing must happen, will happen, then, most likely, it will.
Witches are simply those who know this to be true, and have the tools to make it so. ’
‘So …’ Isobelle mused. ‘Magic is really just hope?’
‘That depends.’ Tabitha looked across at her, hazel eyes unreadable. ‘What do you believe the world to be?’
‘Well, I’ve kissed Gwen more than once since we arrived and she’s no better, so I’m not sure the archetypal approach will help. We’re going to have to take a more logical approach in the meantime.’
Tabitha laughed softly and got to her feet, offering Isobelle a hand up. ‘In that case, we need to learn all we can about this place. Maybe we’ll find out who’s doing this.’
‘You’re absolutely right.’ This time, when Isobelle went hunting for her smile, she found it not very far away.
She had an ally – Tabitha believed her. And she knew what to do.
‘I’m going to go find Gwen, and we’re going to track down Lord Bingleton and make him tell us what’s real, and what’s his own silly story, once and for all. ’
She found Gwen at the town smithy, where she’d drawn quite a crowd, and no wonder.
Gwen was forging a sword.
She was up to the hammering bit, and honestly, it was extremely gratifying to watch.
She lifted the hammer thing, and then it arced down through the air, striking the sword with a spray of sparks.
Her face was a mask of soot-smudged concentration.
Perspiration beaded her brow, and she used her forearm to brush her hair back, before starting again.
A single droplet of sweat gathered at her clavicle, then slid with tantalising slowness down into the shadowed cleavage at the neckline of her tunic.
‘My word,’ murmured the woman next to Isobelle, who could only agree. Gwen’s words from the night before came back to her. We could light the fire in your room.
Gwen, she thought, my fire is lit.
She squeezed through the crowd of bodies, and took a place sitting on the ground at the front, near some of the other young people. The heat was more intense here, but Isobelle wasn’t entirely sure whether the source was internal or external.
‘Where’s the town smith?’ she whispered to her neighbour, a woman gazing at Gwen with frank admiration.
‘Working the bellows, m’lady,’ she replied without taking her eyes off the scene before them. ‘He stopped offering her advice a couple of hours ago.’
Isobelle fanned herself and settled in to enjoy the view.
Perhaps half an hour later – disappointingly soon – Gwen and the smith exchanged glances, and at her nod, they both stepped back to take a break.
Isobelle popped up to her feet, hurrying over to her knight champion before anyone else could claim her.
‘Oh, be careful,’ Gwen said by way of greeting when Isobelle raised her arms. ‘I’m all sweaty and I smell like cinders.’
So Isobelle, keeping her smile bright, clasped her hands behind her back to demonstrate her compliance.
She wished she’d had enough brain function in the last half-hour to contemplate an opener to this conversation.
Lacking other options, she simply jumped in.
‘I’m glad to see you making a new sword,’ she offered. ‘I’m still sorry about the old one.’
Gwen shrugged. ‘That’s what they’re for. Sometimes they break. Sometimes you lose them. Sometimes you drop them into the ocean while fighting a betentacled sea monster.’
‘But it was your sword,’ Isobelle protested. Behind them, the crowd was starting to disperse, and the smith had diplomatically removed himself in search of a drink. ‘All the time you’ve spent engraving it – those beautiful designs …’
‘And now it’s gone,’ Gwen replied, turning her back to retrieve the half-finished sword from the anvil and plunge it into a waiting basin of water with a searing hiss and a billow of steam.
More than ever, Isobelle was certain something was wrong. Gwen had a complicated relationship with her own feelings, to be sure, but she’d never tried to shut Isobelle out this way.
‘Gwen!’ Risking the sweat and the cinder-scentedness, Isobelle reached for her arm, squeezing it gently. ‘You made that sword with your own hands. You made it when you were only dreaming of becoming a knight. When you were the only person who even knew about your dream.’
Gwen huffed a breath of faint irritation. ‘Isobelle, stop. It’s just a sword. I don’t care, okay? Not everything has to be a big deal.’ She moved out from under Isobelle’s hand, busying herself storing the tools she’d borrowed off the local blacksmith.
No one else would notice that her movements were a little too jerky, that her voice was a little too tense. But Isobelle did.
A strange, unfamiliar feeling of helplessness curled its fingers around Isobelle’s heart – she swatted the feeling away and straightened. Isobelle refused to be helpless. In fact, refusing to be helpless was what had led her to Gwen in the first place.
The first priority was protecting Gwen from whoever was casting this curse upon her. Once that was dealt with, she’d sort the rest out.
‘Are you going to work on the new sword anymore today?’ Isobelle asked brightly. ‘If not, it’s time we paid Lord Bingleton a visit and get some truth out of him, instead of this tangle of fairytales and rumour.’
Gwen turned to eye her curiously, and then nodded, not bothering to hide her relief that Isobelle was letting the issue of her old sword drop.
Isobelle paused, then wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe after a bath.’