Chapter Thirty-Three The Witch
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Witch
It’s the anniversary of her death again. If you’re ready to pull your head out of your arse I’ll be laying flowers outside her favorite pub tonight. And then I’ll be drinking in it. Come and meet me this time.
Source: Letter from Edmund Tallisker to Matthias Goring
She dried her sleep clothes with bursts of whispered magic. She singed her skin a little, but that was a fair price to pay—besides, she wasn’t getting naked in the middle of London just to make sure she could dry cloth without catching her skin.
She’d stolen Margaret’s incarnate tome in the process of fleeing.
It was soaked beyond repair, but she dried it as best as she could—puffs of magicked heat from her fingertips, her breath.
Once she’d done that, she had nothing left to give.
Exhausted, she fell asleep by a bank for a snatched few hours, before she dragged herself to her feet with the rising sun, and set off, the book tucked under her arm.
She wasn’t leaving London. Her mind was full. The archivists were hurting incarnates. They were using books to do it. Pinning tales, freezing them in shape, forcing them to stay unchanging.
And somewhere in the city was the knight. The Witch needed to get her back.
She was glad she’d had the sense to put on shoes before sneaking out of her room and combusting her life.
But she had nothing else of any use, and precious little magic left swimming in her blood.
But she wove what she could, drawing on the mirrors around her—the wavering shapes in the glass on storefronts, the shimmering puddles of water from fallen rain.
Do not see me, her magic whispered, and eyes slid away from her, uninterested.
She passed into a coffeehouse, where people were talking, reading papers.
She stole a woman’s coat from where it was draped over the back of a chair.
She felt vaguely guilty, when she fished into the pockets and found a little purse of coins.
But only vaguely. Her hunger and thirst were stronger, and the coat was blissfully warm.
Everywhere she went, she saw the Queen’s soldiers: knights and guards, coppers in their blues, striding the streets. Was this normal for London? She wasn’t convinced. Some old knowledge, seething at the back of her skull, insisted that it wasn’t.
There were symbols, she realized, scattered across the landscape: flags of blue in shop windows, tucked discreetly into corners.
On one of the walls she passed was a painting hastily daubed on the wall: a sword and a pale crown, the Queen’s rose pennant torn in two below it.
Words. He lives and lives again. He rules. Eternal!
London was preparing for the arrival of the Eternal Prince. The Queen could not change that.
She headed, with a crowd of laughing people, toward Drury Lane. The air was full of threat. She wanted to be where life was.
The West End glittered with lights and life.
She should have run somewhere free of people, but this wasn’t a city where anyone would look too long at anyone else.
It left the Witch plenty of room to do all the looking she wanted, unnoticed by any of the milling people who passed her by.
She felt, as she walked, as if she’d been starved of this kind of light and noise: as if once she’d known it all, and loved it, and had been locked away from it for years.
She passed the great theaters, until she found one that was smaller, its gilt lettering peeling, the people milling at its front dressed not in finery but in glittery, joyous garb. Some were smoking, laughing. Others were just chatting, hands in pockets, as folk drifted in and out of the doors.
A ticket tout was selling tickets to a show. She touched the coins in her pocket and thought of being sensible—conserving her money, surviving, finding the knight, moving forward.
But she looked at the theater, some old instinct rearing up in her again.
She’d known this place once. Watched shows here; drunk sweet wine, in standing stalls, watching shows with a friend at her side.
Who’d been there? She reached for the memory, then let it go. Seeing it would mean seeing everything.
Instead, she walked up to the tout and gave over all her money for a ticket.
The interior of the theater was warmly inviting: plush seats for the wealthy, wooden for those doing so-so, and standing space for the rest. She stood, her stolen coat clutched tight around her, surrounded by the smell of rain-damp wool and cologne from other bodies.
Chandeliers glimmered softly up high. They dimmed. The stage lights grew brighter.
The performers walked onto the stage. It began.
As she watched, she realized it was a performance of incarnate tales. She was entranced, as performers danced and sang and acted their way through tales; as the lights changed, and violins played. Someone sang a popular aria from Hecate’s Daughters, witch after witch parading under the lights.
The next tale began. Her breath caught in her throat when a figure in armor walked on stage, and another in a sweeping gown of lavender. Mirrors were lowered from the rafters.
It was her own tale.
She felt as if she barely blinked, watching them move through the stages of the tale: the enthrallment, the fall into love. Their deaths. Silk handkerchiefs, bloodred and threaded with red stones, flowered between them, symbolizing the killing, the blood, the end.
The Eternal Prince arrived on stage as the curtain closed, in a polished fake crown, a bloody sword in his hands. He held it high, and the crowd roared with love and bloodlust alike.
The curtain dropped and the Witch stared shakily at the velvet curtains.
She’d recognized the face of the person playing the witch.
The performance was over. She slipped into the back.
The theater was not as grand here. She supposed this was a space for the workers, not the audience; this was where illusions were crafted. There were costumes scattered, as multitudinous as tales: sequined, velvet, silk, ruffles, and taffeta. It was beautiful.
“You’ve got a fan sneaking in, Lady Juliet,” a bored voice said. She startled, and saw a stagehand in the corner, drinking a cup of tea. They nodded. “Go over to her,” they said. “She’s in a good mood. She’ll sign something if you ask her.”
There was a figure seated at a dressing table, dressed in a glorious lavender gown. She turned toward the Witch, elegant and straight-backed in her chair. Her eyes widened.
“Simran?” Her voice shook. “Is that you?”
Simran. That name again. It settled like a leaf on the still waters of her heart, her memory.
The Witch stepped forward. “It’s me,” she whispered.
“You can’t be any older than when you left,” said Lady Juliet. “And that was… oh, hell. When I was young, and my back didn’t hurt. A damnably long time, that.” Her gaze searched the Witch’s face.
“I…” The Witch tried to find her voice.
Juliet’s gaze softened.
“I can tell you’re not entirely yourself. Parts of you are missing, aren’t they?”
“I call myself the Witch,” she said. “More than—the other name.”
“I’m also called Oliver, when I’m not dolled up,” said Lady Juliet.
“My father had terrible taste in names. Makes me sound like an urchin. But you call me what you prefer,” she said gently, touching her fingertips fleetingly to the Witch’s cheek, as if she just wanted to check if she was alive and here and real.
“And I’ll call you what you prefer. How about that? ”
The Witch’s heart twisted.
“Simran is fine,” she said.
“You’re lucky that healing is the business of cunning folk. Blessings too. I could help you.” A careful look. “If you want me to, of course. You can talk to me.”
The Witch shook her head. After what she experienced at the archives, she didn’t want anyone placing magic on her, no matter how good it was.
“Your Hari’s been looking for you,” said Lady Juliet. “He’s been looking for a damnably long time. He doesn’t come to London much any longer, but we still write to each other. Sometimes I visit him.”
Hari. The name was a silver penny. She held the shining weight of it.
“Where’s Lydia?” the Witch asked, as the name came to her tongue.
“Gone, I’m afraid, darling,” said Juliet. Her gaze was tender, sorrowful.
The Witch looked away. Her eyes felt wet.
“Let me get you a tissue.”
“Sorry,” said the Witch. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“If you’re looking for safety, you can stay here,” said Lady Juliet. “Or come home with me. I have friends who’d look after you.”
“I’ll be followed eventually,” the Witch said thickly. She wiped her face.
She’d met her knight. Now she was far from the archives—now she was nearly embracing herself, that viperous voice that lived inside her—she could feel the pull of her knight, somewhere distantly across the city.
“I could do with some help,” she admitted.
She took advantage of Lady Juliet’s kindness to use the dressing room showers and wash the vile Thames off her.
She took the gift of some of her boy clothes to wear: a shirt and trousers, too large for her but not by much.
She rolled up the trousers, and tightened both pieces of clothing with the application of a belt.
When she was done—dry and clean, more alive than she’d felt in perhaps a lifetime—she stood in the dressing room, and thought of the play. The knight and witch on stage swooning into one another, jeweled blood rising between them.
She felt a tug in her own chest. The knight was near. The knight was calling to her.
“Do you need anything else?” Oliver asked gently. She knew he wanted her to reach out to the Hari he’d spoken about. But the Witch wasn’t ready. Not yet.
“I’m going somewhere safe,” she said. “Honestly, don’t worry about me.”
She felt the knight coming to her. She climbed to the roof of the theater, where she could see the city laid out around her, beneath her, a studded blanket of lights.
Minutes later, the knight followed. The Witch heard her footsteps and turned to look at her—her dark hair, her achingly familiar face.
They moved toward one another, the lamplight shining below them, the black sky cradling them together on that rooftop.
“Lady Witch,” the knight said after a moment of hesitation. Her mouth had begun shaping another name before she’d chosen the right words. Her face was bruised. She was so lovely, so handsome still, that the Witch’s heart was somersaulting in her chest. “You’re here.”
“You escaped the fae,” said the Witch. She walked forward, her heart both light and full of a grief so vast it felt like it could carry her away.
“I did,” said the knight. Her gaze was searching. “Lady Witch,” she said again. “Do you know me?”
“Not as well as I could,” said the Witch. She took a step closer, finding her strength. “To find my way back to myself, I want something from you,” whispered the Witch. “I need something from you.”
“Anything,” said the knight.
“A kiss,” she said.
The knight looked at her. They were so close to one another.
“Give me your hand,” the knight said.
She held a hand out to the knight, who took it, and lowered her head gracefully. The knight kissed the back of her hand, a light brush of her mouth against skin.
It sent shivers like feathers through the Witch’s blood.
“Did that bring you back to yourself?” the knight asked.
“No,” said the Witch. “Not yet.”
It was a selfish impulse. But she didn’t deny it. She crossed the space between them. She placed her fingertips between their mouths. A barrier of skin, the knight’s lips soft beneath her fingers, her breath a shocked, hot gasp. The Witch kissed her fingers, close, close.
The Witch drew back.
“That wasn’t enough,” said the knight.
“How do you know?” the Witch said, breathless laughter finding its way into her voice, her heart. “A kiss can be a kind of magic, after all. Maybe that’s all I nee—”
She couldn’t finish. The knight reeled her in and kissed her again, a sweet brush of their mouths. The kiss deepened, the lush meeting of tongues, the soft heat of shared breath.
“Vina,” she said, as their mouths parted.
“Lady Witch,” Vina replied.
She exhaled, a long, slow thing. She’d thought it would be painful or momentous, to let her old self in. But she found, instead, it was peaceful. Joyous. It wasn’t the kiss that brought her back. But the bravery of wanting it—that was enough.
“I told you not to call me that,” she said, breathless, a smile threatening at her mouth. “Call me Simran. That’s who I am.”