CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Theodora and Lio dug the grave together, taking turns with a rusted shovel borrowed from Stephen’s shed, while Dot sat with her back against the wooden fence, wrapped again in blankets. The window to the cottage was open; they could hear the radio. So many had drowned in Alliaster.
Stephen went to work. Apparently, it was a Thursday.
The group carried the body out at noon and gathered around the grave.
Rupert had been wrapped in two sheets: one blue with stripes, one pale yellow.
He was lowered gently onto the bed of earth.
Did he not deserve a coffin? Did he not deserve a priest and a headstone?
They had argued over it. Should they cremate him?
Should they tell his parents first? At last, Theodora had simply decided to put him here by her mother, so that neither of them would be alone.
Belchamber hummed a forlorn melody as Theodora took the first handful of soil and sprinkled it over the body.
It fell like raindrops against the bedsheets, landing on his belly, collecting at his arms. The witch said something too low for Dot’s ears to catch.
Then came Lio who tossed down another handful of soil.
Dot reached for the cold earth and scattered it at the boy’s feet.
The bedsheet clung to his face beneath. She could not look at it.
Belchamber and Archie came next, each sprinkling handfuls of dirt. At last, Theodora raised the rest of the soil with her magic, levitating it over the grave. At this, Lio opened his mouth. He stepped forward. Dot knew what he wanted to say.
Stop. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe we should check his heart.
But they were not wrong. The boy was three days dead.
Theodora lowered the soil softly down like a blanket tucking him into bed.
‘. . . reports out of Alliaster indicate that rising oceanic levels within the city are in fact the work of missing Minister for Sorcerie and Magic, Bianca De León! To those just tuning in, listeners, we regret to inform you that our great capital is almost entirely underwater. The opposition Minister for Sorcerie and Magic, the spirit Marcidus, has in the last few moments sent in a telegram to the broadcast. His statement is as follows: “Water levels now reach the height of the lowest viewing deck of the Tower of étienne. This is clearly the work of De León. In her failure to stop the amendment to Article Thirteen of the Prohibition on Magic, she is throwing the tantrum of a child and endangering Alliastrans in their thousands. Thank goodness the daemon Salamander is at hand to deliver relief packages to those most affected.” The daemon Salamander, of course, has no magic of his own, but we are receiving word here at the Calléan Broadcasting Corporation that Salamander has personally sent staff to fortify the doors and windows of the city, magicking in oxygen and essential supplies. The death toll has risen to over four thousand . . .’
Not for the first time, Dot washed her hair one-handed.
Her curls reached her shoulders now, and she scrubbed them as she sat in the tin bathtub, careful to keep the bandages of her right hand clean.
She had already spent too many moments staring at the stump, the whole right side of her body aching.
Where in Alliaster was her finger? It made her wonder how many rogue parts of herself were out in the world.
She thought of all the nail clippings and baby teeth and haircuts, memoirs of past selves, shelved in the places they sent the rubbish.
How many other pieces of herself had she grown to cast away as if they were nothing?
She put on trousers and a jumper that had once belonged to Theodora’s mother. She drank black tea at the kitchen table beside Archie and, all the while, she waited again for the cold of the Ancient Spirit’s magic to return. It never did. Whatever Opal had been doing, it was over.
Afternoon came, and still Theodora would not leave the grave.
Dot made the witch a cup of black coffee and on her way out of the cottage, she paused in the makeshift library.
She placed the mug on the shelf as she read the titles.
There was an encyclopaedia of many volumes, several novels, works of philosophy and botany and technology.
Stephen, it seemed, was like Theodora in his myriad interests.
But Dot found at last, stuffed in the corner of the bottom shelf, a leather-bound tome. She reached for it. Its paper was mushroom-coloured and she recognised it at once as the fatal grimoire of magic that Theodora had used to summon Cate.
Dot opened it and flicked through. There was old blood on the pages. Spells for memory loss, the Nine Herbs Charm, Sympathetic magic, the hierarchy of spirits – Dot paused.
She recalled now her conversations with Belchamber and the book she had borrowed from Theodora’s office. The Spirits of the Bygone, what had it said?
A spirit’s elder could overpower them in magic.
Her heart began to race.
Perhaps, they did not need hundreds of spirits to break Theodora’s contract. Perhaps they only needed one.
Then, Dot recalled a conversation from her very first day in the tea shop.
‘Nearly twenty centuries I have lived, and never have I met a creature so terribly precious . . .’
Dot just about shrieked. She took up the mug of coffee and rushed through the house, slipping as she climbed into Stephen’s gumboots. She opened the door. Dot found the witch outside in the mud.
‘Theodora?’
‘I asked you not to call me that.’
Dot painfully set the mug down on the grass beside the witch.
‘I brought this and I have something to tell you. Thistlethwaite! She’s two thousand years old. She can help us! We don’t need hundreds of different spirits, we just need her.’
‘Go inside,’ said Theodora. ‘You need rest.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘Stop, Dot.’
Dot startled at this. ‘You didn’t call me Dorothy.’
‘Dot is what you wanted to be called. That’s your name, isn’t it?’
‘Theodora—’
‘My name is Tessa,’ said the witch, and Dot realised now how different she looked, crouched against the wet ground of her childhood.
Her hair was limp. She wore a frumpy beige jumper and had removed the golden daggers from her ears.
‘I wanted too much, Dot, and look what’s happened. I deserve what’s coming for me.’
Theodora stood and wiped her eyes. Dot reached for her, but the witch walked briskly into the willows, leaving Dot staring after her, the mug of coffee still in the grass. Dot picked it up and brushed off the mud.
As she returned to the porch, Lio called out to her.
Dot felt that familiar tug at her stomach. She was so tired and so sore, but in spite of all her complex feelings, she still liked the sound of him saying her name.
In his hands, Lio held a sprig of lavender. His clothes were also borrowed, old and ill-fitting. With those dark, melancholy eyes, he looked at her a moment too long.
‘Dot,’ said Lio, ‘I was terrible to you.’
‘No,’ said Dot, realising how differently he watched her now. ‘You don’t need to—’
‘I do.’ Lio took the mug from her and set it against the windowsill, and then took up her afflicted hand in his.
His grip was firm, yet cold. ‘I am so sorry. I was chasing after a boyhood fantasy of a woman who did not exist. You were there the entire time. You were good to me. There was nothing wrong with you. You were simply yourself.’
Lio brought Dot’s hand to his mouth and he kissed it.
And Dot, for all her many months of imagining conversations with him, memorising the number of sugars in his tea or how many steps he skipped as he climbed the stairs, now saw Lio truly as he was: a desperate and hollow young man, even more insecure than herself.
He was handsome, of course. He stood elegantly, even now in his borrowed clothes and half-healed pneumonia.
But in an instant, all of him turned suddenly, shockingly plain, and Dot’s attraction to him extinguished.
Dot gently pulled her hand away. She covered her face and let out a laugh.
‘Dot,’ said Lio, ‘I – have I said something funny?’
‘Heavens you have,’ said Dot. ‘Why now, Lio? Now, when Rupert is freshly buried and your first love is back in Alliaster with my finger, of all things?’
‘I suppose I see the truth of it all now,’ said Lio, stepping forward.
‘I suppose you are simply grieving,’ said Dot, and she sighed heavily. ‘You were terrible to me, Lio, but I have since heeded your advice.’
‘My advice?’ he asked.
‘To no longer chase after people who don’t love me.’
‘Dot,’ said Lio, ‘I should never have said – I meant my words just now.’
‘That I was good to you?’ laughed Dot. ‘How complimentary.’
Lio smiled in an embarrassed sort of way. ‘I shouldn’t have said any of this to you, should I?’
‘I miss Rupert as well,’ said Dot, taking back the mug of coffee from the sill.
‘But we will have a lifetime to miss him. Theodora needs help and there is a mess in Alliaster that’s ours to clean up.
My whole body hurts, Lio. I am tired, but whatever patience or placidity I had is gone.
We are going to Alliaster. We have to break Theodora’s contract, and I think I have a way.
Lio, have you heard of the hierarchy of spirits? ’
‘. . . We are now receiving word from the opposition party that the daemon Salamander has proposed to assist in further clean-up efforts to the city if Article Thirteen is altered! An amendment would allow Salamander’s own daemotion to be absolved, listeners.
Still no word from our allies abroad. It seems all radio waves and telephone communication outside the country have been cut off by this strange assault on the capital.
The motivations of the disgraced Minister De León are presently unclear.
Still, we wait on word from Grand Magician Valiente, who is abroad.
Meanwhile, the Royal Institute’s own licensed Magicians are working around the clock to—’