Chapter 41
NOW
Violet reached the Brocolitia car park and, clutching the dagger still wrapped in her handkerchief, she made her way across to Coventina’s Well.
For the third time that day, she reminded herself.
And for the third time that day, she found herself peering into the water. Really, people would think she was crazy if they knew she was doing this. It was almost like an obsession. Something was driving her to do this, and she knew the answers to why all lay in that sacred pool.
She was pretty convinced she’d seen more than just Meg in there, more than just Charles. She would swear, if she had to, that she had also seen Coventina.
Carefully, she made her way towards the edge of the Well, using those very handy walking poles to give her purchase, and then she knelt down in the snow and unwrapped the dagger. Her heart was pounding and she was aware of that energy building again. It seemed magnified, somehow.
‘Did you want me to bring the dagger here?’ Violet asked. She laid it down in between her and the Well. Then she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, trying to manifest – something.
It just seemed as if she needed to feel the place, to understand what she was supposed to do.
As she connected with whatever spirits inhabited that place and consciously slowed down her breathing, words found their way into her mind from a language she didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce.
But she felt them and thought them, and then there was the sensation of power surging around her, tingling at her fingertips, wrapping herself up in churning energy—
Violet opened her eyes, panicking. What the hell was she actually doing?
It was all well and good kneeling here pretending to be in touch with nature, but she was an academic at the end of the day. Practical and thorough and always looking for a balanced argument. Here, at Coventina’s Well, there seemed to be no logic to what was happening.
Violet shifted position, half-intending to stand up and walk away and try to gather her thoughts a bit more, but instead, she managed to knock the dagger with her knee.
It began to slither down the snowy slope, closing the foot or so of distance between her knees and the silvery edge of the sacred pool, heading inexorably to the Well.
Instinctively, Violet reached out to save it from slipping in to the water and disappearing before she knew what the hell she was meant to be doing here, and she leant closer still to the Well.
The shapes began to form and swirl on the surface again, and the woman with the storm-washed eyes appeared.
She was reaching up, her fingertips stretching towards Violet, who was aware of the dagger getting colder and colder, a thin layer of ice crystals forming on the blade even as she watched.
Her fingertips were frozen and it was all she could do to keep hold of it – the handle of the dagger was so cold, it burned.
Then another face appeared in the Well behind Violet’s shoulder, obscured by the ripples that travelled across the surface: a man’s face.
She gasped, seeing the dark hair and the angry expression on his face. ‘Jake!’ Had he come down here after all, knowing that she was roaming around this deserted wilderness – just like Meggie had?
But she understood the draw of the place now, the reason that Meggie had lived as she did. The fact she had worshipped the goddess Coventina at this Well and had found her own sort of peace there. It was just utterly tragic that she had met her death there as well, and in such a dreadful way.
Violet took a deep breath as she turned around to justify why she was kneeling in the snow beside a boggy puddle with a dagger in her hands.
But there was nobody behind her. No footsteps in the snow beyond her own; just silence and a blank canvas of snow wherever she looked.
She spun back to look at the pool, and the figure came into focus more as the ripples flattened out.
Then she realised; she had just seen this man, sleeping on Meggie’s bed.
That same face that now simmered with anger was drawn and haggard, his hair loose and uncombed, begging Meggie to be with him as he slept.
‘Emory…!’
And she couldn’t take her eyes off him.