INTERLUDE #2
The summer came again and the girl was often out of the tent, exploring the forest at odd hours; listless, lonely.
She found, by mistake, Opal and the boy in the lilypond.
Their lilypond. They were entangled in each other, moaning, and the girl froze as she spotted them, Opal’s dress soaked through.
Opal saw her. The boy did not. Opal looked into the girl’s eyes and she tipped her chin and smiled and kept on at it, writhing against him.
For the first time, the girl saw the truth of Opal’s cruelty.
That was the smile of a person who knew.
The girl flew from them, realising in one terrible swoop that since the age of eleven, she had belonged to Opal, but Opal had never belonged to her.
For the first time, she felt rage.
She went to Mistress Moira.
She told a lie.
And the moment she did it, she knew she had committed a crime unforgivable, but Moira had taken a portal straight away and the girl knew her mistake could not be undone.
What had she wanted? A child’s reprimand for Opal’s abandonment of her?
She did not know how far it would be taken, could not believe the violence that followed.
Opal wants to leave the coven.
She’s going to take a boat to Arranfol.
She plans to marry him and, once she does, she won’t come back.
Lies, all of it.
She had to find Cate. If the girl did not admit to the deception, Opal and Lio would be strung up like rabbits. Instead, it would be her. How could she have flown into such a passionate rage? Once again, she was a little girl holding a knife in the moonlight. Another home ruined by her hand.
The girl wandered much of the forest but could not find the coven leaders.
Not Cate, nor Moira, nor Agytha. She came unto her tent; Opal was not there.
She came to the boy’s, and there were the two of them, asleep in his bed.
The bread knife was next to Opal. She had borrowed it, as she often did, to skin rabbits.
Opal, the girl had whispered. Wake up. I’ve done something terrible.
The boy had been the one to wake. He hissed for her to be quiet. He pulled the quilt over his sleeping love and stumbled out of the tent, dragging the girl with him. Whatever is the matter?
I told a lie, the girl said at once. You have to go. You have to hide.
And that was when the guillotine fell.
For Catherine Weyer stepped out of her portal and into the tent.
I Saw you! I Saw the knife. Saw it wet with blood. I know that she will die at your hand. How dare you take my child from me!
The girl seized the arm of the boy, and she sent him through a portal.
Do not come back. She won’t let you live.
She did not know where she sent him. The boy was gone, but Catherine Weyer, frenzied, threads falling from her pockets, did not notice, did not hear the pop of magic.
She saw only the body beneath the covers, dark hair, breathing peacefully.
I’ve Seen what you will do to her!
The witch seized the bread knife from the floor where Opal had left it and brought it down, and in her shock and fury and rage, the witch stabbed the wrong body.
The girl screamed. She watched as Cate seized her daughter, rolled her.
His tent. We’re in his tent. Where is he?
The knife – I Saw this knife. In my threads.
The blood – oh, it’s me? Am I the one . .
.? My daughter – you cannot die. It was meant to be him .
. . I meant to spare you from him . . . Cate crazed, babbling, turned and saw the girl.
You. You warned Moira. You warned Moira, and then I had the vision and – why are you here?
D-did you do this? Where is he – why – oh—
Opal wheezed, her eyes wide with the same terror as the rabbits’. Blood soaked the linen. Opal’s breathing stopped; her mother, clutching the punctured body, began to scream.
The girl flew.
She sprinted, barefoot, through the camp and out into the open forest. The sharp edges of twigs cut her feet.
She knew only the rhythmic thudding of her thighs as she ran to the lilypond.
Her own breathing clotted, sucked between sobs.
She halted in the water, toes in the mud, and for a second considered drowning herself in it.
The girl saw the gleam of her worn reflection in that cold darkness. Warped slightly by the water, she saw her horrified features. How empty she looked; how broken and hollow.
She did not deserve the mercy of death.
She drew a rune in the ripples, and vanished.
The girl fled to another country and another, scrubbed the blood from her clothes like Opal had taught her, slept beneath laurel oaks, stole apricots and bread, and leaped ever on, jumping hither and thither across the continent.
She rested for mere moments before pulling herself up and casting again.
Weeks passed. She kept on and on until at last she collapsed, once again in her home country, beside a train station in a town called Gent.
She raised her hand to cast another rune, but the magic did not come.
Someone tossed her a coin and she pulled herself up to the ticket booth.
One please. Yes, that’s where I’m going.
The girl fell into a seat and laid her head against the window.
The train pulled out of the station, and the glass thrummed, and soon the fields gave way to olive trees and groves of apples.
She was in a compartment by herself. She wore clothes stolen from the seat of a sleeping woman with a white terrier.
The girl took her old clothes, still stained of blood, and let them fly like uncaged birds, one by one, out of the window.
She slept most of the journey, her head throbbing, her neck aching, and woke when a gentle hand tapped at her knee. A spirit sat across from her.
We’ve arrived, he said in a melodic voice, in Alliaster.
He was a rust-coloured fellow with small arms and thick eyebrows that pleasantly framed his simple face. His mouth was turned up in a smile. The girl nodded. She made to stand, but gravity and malnutrition struck her back down.
Not to pry, said the spirit, but you seem like you could use some assistance. May I walk you onto the platform? Would you like some food?
She let the spirit take her hand.
My name, he said, is Belchamber.