6. The Watcher Knows
THE WATCHER KNOWS
FRANCESCA
T he lake waits for me, as it always does.
I’ve learned to no longer say that out loud; people take that the wrong way. Lots of concerned blinking, and a gentle request for me to ‘reframe my train of thought’. Gran asked me if I wanted to die. Uncle Hamish wouldn’t leave my side for three whole days. But it isn’t that deep. Not really.
I just mean the lake knows me, intimately so, probably because it remembers the sound of my lungs. Remembers the sound I made when it pulled my breath right from my throat, pocketing it the way dragons hoard their gold.
Why it changed its mind, I’ll never know. Could’ve been seconds or minutes later that it rammed the breath back into my lungs as though suddenly realising I was a faulty investment, and I came back choking on more than air, on a scream older than I am.
My fingers twitch with the panic belonging to others. I choke for strangers. I kneel and feel rage wearing a name that’s not mine. There’s grief within me for things I’ve never lived, and the only thing louder than it is the reticence of the six-year-old girl buried beneath it.
Because the lake slipped strangers into my lungs, and it listens each time I kneel here, fully aware that it owes me something. And I keep coming back, stupidly believing it might change its mind.
The thing is, I don’t know where my family went.
Thanks for absolutely nothing, Redford.
For witches to make such a silly mistake is insane to me, really. Nobody uses that term anymore. Witches . But you’d be a fool to think Duchess Adelina wasn’t one. She made her castle remember and hold its dead, binding her traitor and every heir after to the stone.
To be fair, at the time, Sheffolk didn’t have any established borders yet, so of course she cared only for Redford. Her little plot of history. She didn’t really plan for expansion, so there’s no insurance policy for dying off-site.
It’s kind of funny (or at least I tell myself it is) that I’m haunted by everybody except those I actually want.
The walls of the estate are bursting with spirits, and the lake-ghosts squat inside the cathedral of me.
But none of them are Lucy. None of them are my parents.
Their mistake for dying on the wrong patch of soil, I guess.
At least I got a good lesson out of it: my yearly reminder to drop dead within estate lines, lest I be cast into obscurity.
I doubt the lake remembers my family the way the cupboard in the undercroft remembers Tommy. Or how the cellar won’t completely let go of Great-Gran Priscilla. The water just sits there, so bloody smug, taunting me with the fact that it can’t even recall swallowing my life.
But I keep coming back because what if they are here?
What if they’re just quiet?
I come here in the mornings, when I can find the time.
It’s usually before the groundskeepers make their rounds, and Philip—my driver and part-time murderer, if Gran asks nicely —and I can sneak off in peace.
This particular morning, it was easier to leave the estate.
My grandparents were already gone, off to Lady Rosenthal’s orchard to discuss logistics for the Annual Red Reaping.
The event isn’t for another two months, but Gran likes to micromanage.
They’ll be back tomorrow, just in time to welcome our royal guest.
I hope he likes pomegranates; they’ll be returning with a million.
The hem of my dress drags through the mud as I inch closer before crouching.
Always this spot, hidden amongst the reeds.
Percy’s still asleep in the cottage and has been staying with me for the past few days.
She hasn’t gone home since the most recent fight with Aunt Edith.
I didn’t ask questions; I just made space for her in bed.
I peer out into the distance, close my eyes, and imagine that my parents are listening as I tell them this.
I say that Edmund’s gone off to visit some childhood friends in the city.
The fight did him in just as badly, but we all know his friends missed him while he was off in England.
And I know the thought of being missed makes him feel important.
He needs that, more than anything, at a time when his mother treats him like a pawn.
The conversation veers towards my grandmother.
“I don’t know what she wants from me,” I whisper into the stillness. “Gran, she asks so much yet so little at the same time. Tomorrow I’m meant to meet somebody I have no interest in meeting, and Gran... Well, I don’t really know what she wants. Who does? Maybe she thinks this will fix everything.”
The lake absorbs my words, and I imagine it’s trying to give me advice.
“Sometimes I wish I could go back to before . Before I knew that things crawled out of graves that Moira names. Before I knew what the Reaping really was and before I knew of the secret meetings in the antechamber. Can you believe Gran has a circle ?” I muffle a laugh into my shoulder.
“Meeting under our noses for years, helping her hold the line. Is it selfish to wish I could forget the line existed? Wish I could unsee all the responsibilities and go back to being the girl haunted by spirits, not the woman who one day has to bind them?—”
Crunch .
I pause, my eyes flying open as I turn slightly.
The sound of a reed snapping, the same sound I’ve memorised after years of taking this path.
But there’s nothing. No wind. No sound. I stare for a moment longer, wondering if Philip trailed me, but he never does.
The tree line stares back at me like individual sentries, and I narrow my gaze, searching for any movement amongst the trunks.
Can’t be huskins. Gran warded this lake after the incident; I watched her slice her palm and pour blood into the water so those cursed spirits can never find sanctuary here.
Not Tommy either; the smell of somebody’s dead laundry should already be in the air.
There’s nothing.
A shudder crawls down my spine, and I fully lower myself to the ground until my legs are folded beneath me. My hand digs into the wet earth, dirt slipping under my fingers, but I don’t care. I’ve never touched the water here, not in fifteen years. But the mud is enough.
In a silly, juvenile sort of way, it feels like I can touch them. Reach them. If their spirits are trapped within the lake, surely the bank holds part of them too.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
My knuckles hit something cold. Hard. I glance down, seeing the edge of something gold peeking through the brown.
My heart does an odd little jump. I pull and untangle a chain like a golden centipede.
There’s something in my throat. Dread. Panic.
Intrigue. I tell myself that someone dropped their belongings during their last visit, but no one comes here anymore.
Not since the accident.
And I know this chain. I’ve played with it before. It’s still stuck, so I pull once more, and out comes an oval locket. I imagine the flower-shaped filigree before I even see it. Because I’ve traced it before. Every night before bed, as Mum read us stories, Lucy’s arms wrapped around me.
I can barely see through the tears. They’re not born of grief nor elation at the discovery, but rather something else I don’t yet have a word for.
My thumb rubs over the surface of the locket.
It seems so much smaller now, though my brain reminds me I’ve grown.
My hands are bigger than before. It’s a simple fact, but it only emphasises how little we both were.
Babies .
The memories of my sister screech to a halt, and through the haze comes a cold truth.
My blood freezes. Lucy wore this that day on the boat.
It was never recovered. Her bloated, blue body returned to us, but the lake kept her locket.
This locket. In her grief, Gran commanded people to look for it for weeks.
It was hers as a child and then Lucy’s, and now somehow it’s in my hands.
Wind whistles through the air, lifting my hair on the sudden breeze, and I look up.
The trees are watching, and the water is rippling.
My shoulders tremble as another gust of wind whips across the expanse, and the reeds sway violently, catching me in the corner of my eye.
I wince and fall back, still clutching the locket.
The reeds are reaching for me, folding over my body as though trying to cage me. These thoughts are irrational yet still not irrational enough to stop me from getting up. Mud slips beneath me, trying to keep me down, but then I’m standing, heart easing slightly once I’m taller than the reeds again.
The locket is cold in my grasp, and I lift it towards the sun. Despite my mental arsenal of excuses, I’m unable to ignore the reality. This is Lucy’s locket. Nevertheless, I continue to lie to myself. Say that it can’t be. The locket was lost. So I fumble to open the clasp, fingers shaking.
The relief is short-lived. There’s no photograph inside, no childhood portrait of Lucy and me grinning.
That should be enough to justify lying to myself.
There’s no picture. This can’t be it. But the locket isn’t empty.
No, there’s a small, folded piece of paper inside.
Not faded. Bone-white. Freshly torn from a recently purchased notebook. My ears are ringing.
Paranoid, I scan my surroundings, expecting to see some civilian watching me. Some stupid lad who happened to have found this locket and knew what it was. Somebody who wanted to play a cruel joke on the quiet little duchess.
There’s nobody, I repeat in my head, over and over. My hands shake violently, and the reeds are swaying again, and my heart clenches so tightly that I’m certain my lips are blue. There’s no air, no sound, no sun, no nothing except for this locket.