Chapter 18
18
Lenny did indeed lead Dora home, if that’s what it was. She was so confused and torn about what was happening to her that she couldn’t quite decide. They walked along quaint streets, and she noticed that some of the houses were decorated for Halloween with the craziest number of skeletons she’d ever seen. Many were almost as tall as the houses themselves. She paused outside a house that was lit up with pink and purple windows, gazing in awe. It was such a beautiful sight – there were so many pumpkins she couldn’t count them all. Despite everything that had happened, somehow, she felt at peace in Salem. Strange as all of this was, she thought she might be able to call it home. It felt like what she had been longing for back in London: her real home.
Lenny didn’t speak, as lost in her own thoughts as Dora was. They turned a corner onto a tree-lined street and Dora realised they were back at Sephy’s house. A loud squawk and flapping of wings above their heads made her look up in wonder as she watched Hades swoop over them and straight to an upstairs windowsill, the one he’d been perched on when they’d arrived earlier. Lenny tutted.
‘That bird is too nosy for his own good, he’s been following us since we left the house.’
‘He has, birds do that?’
‘Normal birds don’t, familiars have an annoying habit of it.’
Dora smiled up at him. She liked the thought of her crow following her, it was comforting. She wished she could remember him from her time before she arrived here. As Lenny pushed open the gate to the cottage she heard his high-pitched voice as he chattered to himself, ‘Dora’s home, Dora’s home.’
Lenny opened the front door and turned to her. ‘I will take you up to see Lucine and let the pair of you spend some time together. Try not to ask her too many questions, she is already tired.’
‘What’s wrong with her, Lenny?’
The warm light in the hall shone across her aunt’s glistening eyes, unshed tears pooling in the corners.
‘Cancer. Every single lifetime she gets it and dies before the rest of us. There is something else you should know too, Dora, seeing as how this has been a tell-it-how-it-is reunion. This curse means that you also die young. You always die before your thirty-fifth birthday.’
Dora’s mouth fell open. ‘I die? I’m thirty-three. How will I die… and why?’ Lenny shrugged. ‘I can’t begin to take all of this in, is there no way for you to cure my mother? There are all kinds of treatments and the ones over here are far more advanced than in the UK. And can’t you stop me from dying too? I’m far too young, I haven’t lived, Christ I don’t even have a boyfriend.’ Dora’s voice was getting higher with the panic that was rising inside of her.
Lenny held up her hand. ‘Dora, I’ve tried. Why do you think I trained in medicine? I’ve tried everything, over many lifetimes, to no avail. And that’s exactly why we kept you from Salem and from Lucine this time. We wanted to do something different – we’ve never, ever kept you away from your mother before. But we wondered if it might keep you safe.’ Dora looked downcast and Lenny reached over and stroked her face. She held Dora’s chin in her hand and Dora looked up at her. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work. We didn’t know what else to try.’
Dora felt Lenny’s desperation. Somehow, she did understand. She couldn’t remember all those other lifetimes, but she believed Lenny’s heart. She must have done it for Dora’s own good.
She thought of Lucine upstairs. She found it hard to be sad for someone she didn’t know, who had never been a part of her life, and the shock of her looming mortality didn’t help either. This woman hadn’t taken her to school, picked her up, watched her terrible school plays, attended her parents’ evenings, arranged birthday parties, taught her all her life skills. If anything, Dora was annoyed that her own mother had been willing to give her up so easily. If it had been the other way around Dora would have fought with everything she had to protect her child and keep her close. What kind of woman sent her kid to the opposite side of the world and never spoke to her ever again?
Her aunt sighed. ‘The kind of woman who knows that to keep her only child safe she must sacrifice all of that.’ Dora’s suspicion was confirmed. Lenny could read her mind. ‘You don’t think your mother missed you, grieved over her loss of you, wanted to hug and kiss you good night? Lucine isn’t a monster, she is a woman who gave up the one true thing she loved to keep her safe, and every lifetime it kills her that little bit more. Give her a chance. I know things are different this time and you’re struggling to remember but please be kind to her, that’s all I ask.’
Dora felt the heat rising up her cheeks. How many times had Lenny read her mind?
‘I don’t make a habit of it, for one thing it’s rude to go probing inside someone else’s thoughts and I have enough problems of my own without worrying about everyone and their dogs. But sometimes the loudest thoughts break through, and you, Dora, practically screamed those words at me. Now go, that damn bird will have already told her you’re on your way to see her.’
‘What are you going to do? Lenny, I don’t want to die.’
‘Drink vodka. Sephy and I have been working on a plan.’ Lenny began muttering to herself. ‘Maybe see if I can conjure up a finders’ spell so you will remember where you hid that damn book back in 1692. I honestly thought that by keeping you in London it wouldn’t get to this, that Corwin wouldn’t find you. I should have known he would never give up that easily. Do you remember the book?’
Dora shrugged and Lenny turned and walked straight down to the kitchen, leaving Dora standing there staring after her, head spinning and stomach churning. She pushed the thought of her own predicament to the back of her mind; she would deal with that later.
She looked up the stairs and began to slowly climb them, her feet hesitant to get to the top. Before she knew it she was on the landing, walking towards the door she’d seen her aunts come out of earlier. Her heart was thumping so loud in her chest and there was a lump inside her throat. Suddenly she wasn’t angry, she was afraid. What if Lucine didn’t like her or was horrible to her, she wouldn’t know what to do.
Before she could knock, a voice that sounded just like Sephy’s called out, ‘Come in.’
Dora pursed her lips, blowing out the breath she’d been holding as she turned the handle and opened the door. This room was bigger than hers, it was huge, and in the middle of it was a massive bed, with a frail-looking woman who was the double of Lenny sitting propped up on a mountain of pillows. She smiled at Dora and opened her arms wide and every thought that had been rushing around inside her mind stopped and she saw them as little paper tickets twirling around in the wind that suddenly dropped and all of the papers fell to the floor at the same time. She was aware of Hades sitting inside the window watching the two women and, before she knew it, she was sitting on the bed with Lucine’s frail arms wrapped tightly around her. Tenderly pulling the woman close, Dora inhaled deeply. She smelled of jasmine and vanilla, but there was the scent of decay and illness lingering underneath the sweetness and she knew then that whatever her reason for sending her away, Dora would not question it too harshly. She wanted to make the most of the time that Lucine had left and get to know her. She felt the soft sobs against her chest and rubbed her back gently. She looked up to see fear in her mother’s eyes, and with a trembling voice Lucine whispered. ‘I’m so sorry to tell you this, but my life is in danger, and now so is yours. ’
Dora stared at Lucine, fear making it hard to breathe, unable to speak as Lucine took a deep breath then continued to talk as if she hadn’t just scared the life out of her.
‘I’ve waited so long to see you, Dora, and you look beautiful. You turned into quite the stunning young lady.’
Dora glanced up at the wall opposite them to try and calm herself down ignoring Lucine’s ominous words, it was covered in picture frames. In every picture was a photograph of Dora, from when she was a baby, and her toddler years, through to her teenage years where she was a full-on Goth, to recent photos of her with her black hair now chopped into a shoulder-length bob with a fringe, the delicate ring she wore through her nose and the tattoos on her arms. Not quite shedding her love of all things dark and punky. She pulled away from Lucine who was blotting her tears with the corner of a cotton handkerchief.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Dora started. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but this has all come as a bit of a shock.’
‘Yes, I can imagine it has. One moment there is just you and Lenny against the world, then she brings you here to introduce you to a whole new one with a talking pet crow, a curse on all of our lives and a failing mother you knew nothing about.’
Dora opened her mouth and Lucine gently touched her arm.
‘I am not some cold-hearted monster. I need you to know that I did what I had to in order to attempt to break the curse. If I had my time again and my strength then I wouldn’t have done that, you have no idea how much it pained me to say goodbye to you. A mother will give up everything for her child, even the child themselves if it means they get to be safe and live a happy life. I could not and would not let you stay here and endanger yourself, Dora. I love you far more than life itself and that will never change. We should have fought Corwin on home ground, but we didn’t, we ran and hid, scared of what he could do to us, but no more. Sephy has a plan, something about binding him which I think is nuts, but we have to give it a go to keep our future selves safe if not ourselves in this lifetime.’
Dora stared into her mother’s emerald-green eyes, mesmerised by the beauty of them. The colour was so pure, with the tiniest fleck of yellow running through each iris. They reminded her of cats’ eyes, and they sparkled in the candlelight.
‘Why is he hunting us all, what did we ever do to him?’
‘I know that he lusted after Lenny back in the day and she wasn’t interested in him. She was quite the talk of those petty villagers, with her striking green eyes, wild black hair and a figure to die for underneath all those meddlesome petticoats, and he followed her around like a besotted puppy dog. She doesn’t talk about it, but I think that maybe because we were young and na?ve – after all, that was our very first lifetime – she probably teased him a little, might have even broken his heart when she went out with his friend Jonas instead of him. Talk about not being able to accept rejection. I think Corwin also knew about the book your father left with me, he heard the rumours and knew it could change everything. He is the true monster. He turned on the women of the village and rounded them up, calling them witches, knowing fine well they were to be tortured and hanged for nothing more than being the object of a group of teenage girls’ hysteria. He saved us English girls until last. I often wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been so obsessed with Lenny. Would it have changed all our lives and saved many others?’
Dora was listening to her mother enraptured, her jaw slack, her eyes wide as she imagined their lives back then.
‘When was this?’ she asked but she already knew fine well when it was. She’d studied the Salem Witch Trials back in college and had written an essay on them, having no idea of her own family connection to them. But she needed to hear this from the woman sitting in front of her. Her head was spinning, there was so much information to take in and try to make sense of.
‘It began in the bleak, cold winter months of 1692. Corwin had become bitter, more distant, but by February he had given up his heart, his mortal feelings, and had turned into a hunter. Oh, he’d always been a hunter, but this was different. He no longer preyed on wild animals, it was innocent women, and his fire was lit by those girls who were more than happy to point the fingers and call women and some men out as being witches. His first victim was Bridget Bishop, she was sixty and no more a witch than she was a white rabbit. Poor Bridget’s only crime was being a little outspoken and dressing rather flamboyantly for those miserable bastards. As more and more accusations were made and more women were rounded up, we begged Lenny to go and speak to him, but he was too far gone and too embroiled in his good fight to take any notice of her. Poor Lenny, we were the last women he came for. We didn’t know back then the extent of the evil that lived inside of his sick and twisted mind until he had his men take us all from the captain’s house on the edge of the common to the foul, damp jail while he went after you.’
Lucine closed her eyes, her entire body jerked as she shuddered. A rush of fear filled Dora’s heart that she was making her already terminally ill mother relive the most terrible time of her life.
‘It’s okay, I’m sorry, you don’t have to say any more.’
Lucine squeezed her eyes shut then opened them.
‘Thank you. You are far more beautiful than I remember, Dora. It was a dreadful time. Ambrose heard them talking in the meeting house and he came to save you. The pair of you ran into the forest and you took the book with you, hiding it but no one knows where.’
‘Why can’t I remember any of this?’
‘Some things are best forgotten, sweet child; it will come back to you, we need you to try and remember now that you know, it was the worst of times. You reached the place you hid the book before they set off on their witch hunt with the hounds and an angry mob of Puritan idiots who didn’t have a single brain between them, led by Corwin. Ambrose risked his own life to save yours and for that I am eternally grateful. They took old Giles Corey and as they pressed his wretched soul to death, he cursed them all, but especially George Corwin who I was told smiled at every single stone and rock used to crush the man, and so set in motion this passage of time that spans centuries of our lifelong births and deaths.’
Dora felt confused. There was so much information to take in. But the name Ambrose caught her in her heart and this time at the mention of it she felt a warmth spread across her chest. She also felt overwhelmed and tired. Lenny must have felt her pain from somewhere in the house because there was a gentle knock on the door as Lenny pushed it open. She stopped Lucine mid-conversation.
‘Come, Dora, that’s quite enough for one evening.’
Dora stood up, then turned and kissed Lucine on her cheek.
‘I’m glad I’m home.’
Lucine closed her eyes, a beautiful smile on her lips. ‘Me too, sweetheart, me too.’
Dora followed Lenny out of her mum’s bedroom, her mind a conflicted confusion of swirling thoughts threatening to make her head explode from the inside out.
Lenny lifted a hand. ‘I know, this is difficult. Too many questions and so little time. The curse of the English women is that there is never enough time to figure all of this out before tragedy strikes.’
‘I just don’t know how or where to even begin to make sense of it,’ said Dora.
She felt as if the weight of the world was pressing down on her shoulders and had an overwhelming urge to throw herself onto her bed and hope that she would wake up in the morning to find this was all a strange and unusual dream. She yawned loudly and Lenny pointed to her guest room.
‘Perhaps you should sleep now, your system is still full of the anti-homesickness tea that Sephy overdosed you on earlier. You will feel better in the morning, I promise, then we can make a start on trying to figure out this mess and how to bring you back to yourself.’
She nodded. Her body ached for the soft mattress and cool cotton sheets to soothe her skin, which felt as if it was burning.
‘Good night, Lenny, and thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For everything, for taking care of me when you didn’t have to and then bringing me home where I belong.’
Lenny reached out and patted Dora’s arm. ‘You’re welcome, good night.’
Dora slipped into the room that was now hers, closing the door softly behind her. She felt as if the bed was calling her and she tugged off her boots and collapsed onto it, not even bothering to undress. Before she could even say good night to Hades, who was now sitting on her window ledge, she felt her eyes closing and wondered if he would stay there all night watching her or whether he would go to Lucine. Hades preened himself while watching Dora and gently cawed, ‘Dora’s home, Dora’s home.’