CHAPTER EIGHT #3
With each portal, Dot caught momentary fragments of brick walls, motor cars or library shelves.
Upon the fourth landing, Lio pulled her along a footpath filled with passers-by who stared at their sopping legs and Dot’s sock-clad feet.
They were on Grand Boulevard. She dodged cigarette butts and broken glass.
Lio led her into a theatre against the current of exiting patrons.
‘Mr Lashkari, why are we doing this? Can’t we take one portal, very far away?’
‘Magic leaves a scent,’ said Lio. When Dot stared at him, he groaned and continued, ‘We must confuse them.’
‘So, why don’t we take the tram?’ said Dot. ‘That will take us far and quickly.’
‘Catherine Weyer’s talent is seeing the future. If we evade those women without magic, Cate might spot somewhere we will end up. The only way to throw them off us properly is to give them too many alternatives.’
They climbed up the stairs of the theatre and to the top of the gallery. This time, Lio took out his chalk. He hatched a rune against the scarlet wall and, as he did so, Dot watched him with the hazy numbness of unreality.
‘I have a train to catch,’ she said.
‘Not if you like your limbs,’ said Lio. ‘Acanthi use blood magic, you know. What spells do you think Moira could concoct with your teeth, your heart or your hands?’
They stepped again into the darkness. Again and again they jumped through portals. Dot stumbled on the pavement.
‘Mr Lashkari, I can’t keep going.’
‘Are you asking me to carry you?’ asked Lio, incredulous.
‘No,’ said Dot, and with great effort, she forced herself onward.
They disappeared and reappeared, catching glimpses of the fossil room at the Nature and History Museum, the alleyway behind Saint Penelope’s Cathedral, the bathroom of a pasta restaurant on Mieunetti Road.
At last, she collapsed beside a tram stop.
Lio prodded her. Dot’s eyes peeped open.
‘I do mean it,’ said Dot, laying her head against the cobbles. Her limbs had in them the heaviness of anvils. ‘I can’t keep running.’
‘You must,’ said Lio. ‘We—’
His voice caught. There they were. The three witches stood on the street opposite.
‘How?’ hissed Lio, and he seized Dot’s arm.
But the moment Lio connected with the magic and tugged Dot into the portal, something felt wrong. They plummeted through the darkness and fell out into thick, reeking water.
Dot screamed. The old woman with the jars was on top of her.
She was all elbows and kneecaps and she pushed Dot’s head under.
Dot splashed and flailed. A sharpness bit at her shoulder.
There came a flash of light and a terrible force, and Dot was swept along the river.
Her hat and bag were gone. Her tired limbs dragged her down.
Dot caught a glimpse of the lights of the bridge above and the Tower of étienne.
Another bang came from somewhere far away.
Then, the sound of screaming.
With that, Dot’s mind was transported.
She was no longer in the river beside the Tower of étienne, but in the ocean, and the howling belonged not to Lio nor the witches of Acanthi, but to a girl called Emily.
Dot could see her now. Mousey blonde. Fourteen.
Emily bobbed like a buoy caught in a thunderstorm.
It was night-time and the waves crashed upon them.
Emily’s eyes, so blue, so pretty and placid, were wide and wild as she drowned.
The girl gurgled, water flowing into her lungs.
Another wave. Another. Emily was drowning.
Dot clawed for her and clasped at her hand and then the sea tore them apart.
Truly, she was in the River Lourdes, floundering, gulping at the air, tugged down by her skirt and old blouse, and Emily’s screams were Lio’s, and the spot where Dot’s fingers had clasped the drowning girl’s hand now stung with terrible pain.
Another bang – Lio’s magic, or the witches’, Dot did not know.
Another scream.
Emily was swept away.
Ice prickled along her veins.
I’m sorry.
The waves. The night. The anglerfish, with its dead little light.
Mum, I think she drowned.
The shame of it hollowed Dot, consumed her, flooded her, and that icy pain surged now from where Dot’s hand had last reached for the girl.
Lio’s scream came again, and it was too much, and Dot flapped her hands away.
In that instant a force of magic coursed from her left hand, through the river and smacked the witches of Acanthi right out of the water.
Dot’s vision dulled. She stopped fighting the water. She sank, at last, to the murky mud of the riverbed. She would have drowned were it not for the warm tendrils of magic that came from somewhere above and wrapped gently around her waist, pulling her back up and out of the water.
Dimly, Dot noticed cold air on her skin.
Vaguely, the horrible stinging in her left palm and fingers.
She landed upon hard ground.
A pair of hands were on her then, pushing back her hair, checking her heartbeat.
She was rolled over and those hands hit upon her back until Dot spewed forth a torrent of river water.
At last her eyes opened. She turned and saw a young woman with raven-black hair and, from her right ear, three golden daggers glinting in the moonlight.
‘Suppose I’d better help Lio as well, then.’