CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Dot had enough strength to meander around the tea shop once more, collect her own breakfast and climb down the stairs without having to crawl, the summer had abandoned them and the autumn was rolling in.
Five months Dot had been in Alliaster. For all the southern gusts Dot had suffered in her life, all the swimming she had done in cold currents, the sudden drop in temperature took her by surprise.
She wrapped herself in blankets and often dozed on the sofa before the fire, listening to the gramophone.
All of it was an attempt at distraction.
Nightmares of the ocean roared back in.
What startled her the most about her newest transformation was the sensation in her fingertips.
Not just the cold, wet, alien feeling of her scales against the air, nor the itchy discomfort of the new growth halfway up her left forearm, but the gentle buzz of magic.
It was back. It was spotty and weak, but it was there.
It terrified her.
What if she reached for it by mistake and the affliction swallowed her entirely?
Theodora, who grew more exhausted by the day for no discernible reason, would often deliver a fresh batch of tonic and catch Dot deep in introspection.
‘What dark thoughts are going on under that curly mop?’ the witch had asked once, but Dot had merely shaken her head and picked back up the book she had borrowed, The Spirits of the Bygone, reading it all the way through to the end.
The tome taught her about the Ancients and Their heavenly forms, and how, under the hierarchy of spirits, They were the most powerful creatures to take corporeal form – for in a war of magic, the elder spirit would always overpower the younger.
She learned that the youngest of spirits were tiny things, barely visible to the human eye, who rose out of flower seeds or eyelashes or sea spray, and when seen at night were often indiscernible from stars.
The Ancients, however, were so huge and so old that they were impossible to miss; these were hidden in plain sight as a wide, forested mountain or a cold, warring sea.
One Sunday morning, Dot woke upon the living room sofa to see Lio reaching over her.
‘Oh,’ said Lio, jumping back. ‘Sorry. I left this on the side table, here. I was trying to be quiet.’
He held a book and Dot spied its title.
‘Memory charms? That’s Theodora’s, isn’t it?’
‘Rupert borrowed it for me,’ said Lio. ‘Be a love, and don’t tell her.’
He stood and when he looked at her face, his eyebrows knitted upward.
‘What is it?’ asked Dot.
‘You just—’ Lio paused and looked away. ‘You look so sickly.’
And you look lovely, thought Dot. She dropped her gaze and nodded and, before any further awkwardness could occur, Lio left her there alone.
Dot was back to working in the tea shop a week later, although for only a couple of hours at a time.
Ever since Theodora had given Dot the prognosis, the witch was largely unaccounted for, either locked away in her attic bedroom or out of the house entirely.
Thistlethwaite and the rest of the tea shop staff treated her quite normally, while those who knew – Lio, Rupert, Belchamber – cast worried looks her way whenever they thought she could not see.
They did not stop her, however, as she picked up plates and wiped down tables, her afflicted hand holding the tea towel.
She assured them, frequently, that she was fine.
Yet, she would often catch herself paused at odd junctures, staring at nothing in particular, as if the electricity that powered her body had extinguished itself.
Often, she caught herself watching the grandfather clocks that Lio had taken to winding: the one in the tea shop, the one in the living room, the one in the hallway beside the third-storey bathroom, the brass pendulums each swinging back and forth, constantly balancing, flowing in and out like the sea.
She spent each day pretending that she was not dying and that everything she had hitherto laboured for had not been for absolutely nothing.
In the same way, she had once forced herself to work at the Divers’ Café so that she would not burden her family, and had taken up the Bachelor’s degree to show her mother and father that her life had not been a waste.
Dot had a talent for shoving things down, for ignoring and squashing, but now all of the hurts and stuffed-away wants and hours she’d played pretend were bubbling within her, threatening to rise up and drown her.
Later, after the shop was shut and Dot woke up from a nap with a fierce need to do something useful, she climbed downstairs and began to mop the tea shop floor.
‘Want some help?’
Dot looked up. Rupert was already there with a second mop.
‘You don’t need to,’ said Dot. ‘I’m capable.’
‘I know,’ said the boy, ‘I want to.’
He dipped the mop in the bucket and squeezed out the water and started on the other side of the shop.
They worked for a long time in silence, the pair having barely spoken since the incident at the markets, although Dot often caught him staring at the new growth upon her arm, the look of guilt plain on his broad face.
‘Have you gone off magic?’ Rupert asked once they were done. He picked up the buckets and, in his clean socks, tiptoed across the drying floor to the sink where he poured out the water. He had set a kettle on the stove; it was beginning to bubble.
Dot was too tired to lie. ‘I think I’m a bit scared of it now.’
‘Why?’ asked Rupert, preparing a tea pot and pouring in the hot water.
‘What if I cast a spell and I drop dead? What if I turn entirely into – what did Theodora say, a few months ago? A sea bass?’
The boy came to where she sat in the far armchair.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rupert. ‘Seems a shame to give up entirely.’
Silence elapsed. After a moment, he rose.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, pouring tea into two mugs.
‘Whatever for?’ asked Dot, watching the steam billow.
‘You’ve that thing on your arm because of me.’
‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’
‘I do.’
‘You don’t,’ said Dot. ‘I don’t know why I wasn’t warmer to you in the first place.
I have a little sister who’s exactly your age.
I would never treat her with as much disinterest as I treated you.
’ Rupert came back around the counter with two tea cups, and he handed one to her.
Again, it was chamomile and fennel, and she smiled.
Carefully, she asked, ‘Have you spoken to your mother?’
‘I don’t think I have one anymore,’ Rupert said, and he gazed into his cup as if inspecting the quality of the chamomile. ‘She sent a letter. Told me she never wanted to see me again.’
‘Oh,’ Dot said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Rupert.
They fell silent again and Dot blew on her tea and sipped it. A creak sounded and the pair looked up to see Lio crossing the tea shop floor. Dot felt the familiar warmth over her face and hoped to the heavens he would not notice it.
‘I was looking for you all over,’ said Lio to Rupert. ‘Game’s started.’
‘We had some work to finish,’ said Rupert.
‘Riveting stuff, I’m sure,’ said Lio. He looked between them and then sighed, pulling up a chair beside Dot. ‘What are we discussing?’
Lio looked at her. Quick, she thought, come up with something clever.
‘Actually,’ said Rupert, ‘I was about to ask Dot if she knew where Theodora had been disappearing off to recently.’
‘No clue,’ said Dot.
‘The staff keep complaining about their pay,’ said Rupert. ‘I mean, she’s late for everything, but it’s getting worse.’
Dot took a breath and forced herself to look at Lio.
‘Was she like that when you used to know her?’
Lio laughed. His face lit up as if recalling a moment both comical and a little horrifying. He opened his mouth to speak, but then halted.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Lio, ‘I’m not allowed to discuss it.’
‘Go on,’ said Rupert.
‘No,’ said Lio, ‘it’s the one condition of her letting me stay. I’ll not chance it.’
‘You can’t tease us with an expression like that and then not say it,’ cried Rupert. ‘You did that on purpose.’
Dot laughed weakly. Her fatigue compounded with each passing moment and so she shut her eyes and held onto her tea.
She listened to the sound of Lio and Rupert joking.
Every now and then, they asked her a question and made a point to include her and, although a distant part of her felt the engineered quality of their kindness, she told herself she didn’t mind.
She still felt with the two of them, in the low lamplight of the tea shop, the gentle warmth of belonging.
It was Rupert who finally made Dot contact her family.
‘I told Theodora this already,’ Dot had argued as she crushed whirligig beetles in the basement workshop.
‘Several times. I don’t want to speak to them.
It absolutely will not help, and I’m certain they’re angry at me.
They probably hate me. I left them in the middle of the night with only a letter to explain why I’d gone.
I might not be able to heal this,’ she waved her afflicted hand, ‘but I at least want an explanation for it before I go back.’
‘Dot, you’re dying.’
‘Exactly! So, how could they help? The one we need is Grandad.’
‘Your mother or father might know exactly where he is.’
‘If they did know,’ said Dot, ‘that would mean that Grandad had returned home. If he’d returned home, he would have responded to my telegram.’
‘Oh Saints,’ said Rupert, ‘Dot, you don’t know everything.’
That was when Theodora looked up from her cauldron.
‘Rupert is right,’ said the witch. ‘If it weren’t for Acanthi, we would have already teleported down there, but I’ll not lead them straight to your family. If we wish to save you, Dorothy, we’ve no other choice.’
‘We need to do something,’ said Rupert.
‘But we don’t even know if Grandad knows anything,’ said Dot with a frustrated sigh.
‘He knew enough to make that tonic,’ said Theodora.
‘What if your family have gotten word of an outpost he’s at?
’ asked Rupert. ‘What if they knew that he was going to be at a specific island, on a specific day? Theodora could dip in and out, bring him back to the city, and no one would be led anywhere. No link to Seafarthing. No one in danger. That would solve some problems, wouldn’t it? ’
Dot had no recourse for this. She said weakly, ‘I don’t want to speak with them.’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Rupert. ‘There’s a public phone on Collins Street. We can go right now.’
And so off they went up Wren Court.
‘Did you see the look on Lio’s face?’ asked Rupert, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘Like a dog being left behind.’
‘He’s cooped up,’ said Dot. ‘I’d be sad too.’
‘He’s not sad,’ said Theodora, ‘he’s exploiting us. He’s living in my house for free while I’m so overworked I feel like I might drop dead at any moment.’
‘You don’t even pay him,’ said Rupert.
‘Which I think is illegal, honestly,’ said Dot.
‘Look at the two of you,’ said Theodora, wrapping her coat more firmly around herself. ‘Did you plan this attack? Why is it so bloody freezing out here? It’s the start of autumn, not the middle of winter for Saints’ sake. Regardless, I need Lio out of my house. He’s getting twitchier.’
They came up to the public telephone box, which was located beside the Collins Street police station. Black baubles once again dogged Dot’s vision, and she took hold of a nearby fence to stop herself from fainting. Rupert pulled open the door.
‘Coppers?’ Rupert asked, and Theodora handed him her purse.
‘You have to be careful,’ said Dot, concentrating very specifically on her shoes and not on the feeling of faintness.
‘They only recently had the phone put in and my mother was tricked by a man selling striped paint, so if it’s her who picks up, she’ll be distrusting.
You’re a colleague of my Grandad, and you have to be vague. I don’t want her guessing this is me.’
‘You think his friends call him “Archie”?’ asked Rupert.
‘What else would they call him?’ asked Dot. ‘He’s only Archibald on his birth certificate.’
‘This’ll fall apart if he has some other nickname you don’t know about. Arch. Regie. Ray, you know.’
‘Just dial the number, Rupert,’ said Theodora, glaring at the telephone.
‘I hope it’s Celia who picks up,’ said the boy.
‘Oh, that’s why you volunteered,’ said Dot, groaning. ‘I should never have told you about Celia.’
Theodora placed one finger to Rupert’s throat. A gentle flash of light came, and the scent of magic rose around them. Rupert coughed, and they heard his voice transposed into that of an old man, seventy instead of not yet seventeen.
‘I dare say, I sound rather dapper,’ said Rupert.
The corners of Theodora’s mouth twitched.
Rupert stuck his finger in the dial and turned it, and as he did Dot crouched, her back supported against the wooden box, looking down the street of gnarled, autumnal oak trees.
Theodora stood with her hands on her hips, ignoring the telephone as if it were an old friend who had betrayed her.
A newspaper blew before them and Dot spotted a title and byline.
SERIAL MURDERS ON THE RISE. FIVE FOUND DEAD IN ALLIASTER.
Dot was about to reach for the paper when Rupert exclaimed: ‘Hello! I’m calling to speak to Archie Walcott.
Is he available? No? Oh, Celia is it?’ He flushed red.
‘Well, ah, l-lovely to make your verbal acquaintance, my dear. Oh – has he not returned? Do you know where he might soon be? No. No. I see. Are – are you quite sure? Well, he gave me this telephone number. No, I do know him. What do you mean, Celia? Everyone knows how to use a telephone, including Archie, I am sure. My, you’re an inquisitive young lady – No?
I know of no one by the name of Dorothy—’
Theodora took the phone from him and hung it up. She clicked her fingers, and Rupert’s voice was his own again.
‘She sounds pretty,’ he sighed.
‘What about Grandad?’ asked Dot as Theodora helped her up.
‘Out on the trawler,’ said Rupert. ‘Celia said that he sent them a letter a couple of months ago, telling them he’d be gone until perhaps the end of winter.’
The witch put her face in her hands.
Dot looked at her, suddenly remembering the overheard conversation in the kitchen. There is one other creature you could ask, Belchamber had said.
‘Theodora,’ said Dot, carefully. ‘I am sorry that I overheard you and Belchamber speaking that time, but didn’t he say that you knew another who could help?’
The witch glared up at the sky for one long moment.
Then, she groaned loudly.
‘I suppose there is truly nothing for it then,’ said Theodora.
‘I’ve contacted every scholar I know. I’ve scoured the university library.
I’ve enquired with the spirits of the Ollianne Shrine.
There is no one else, I fear, who may possess even the vaguest understanding of what is going on with your magic.
’ Theodora put her hands on her hips. Bitterly, she said, ‘Fine. We’ll go to Hemmington’s. ’
‘No,’ said Rupert, horrified. ‘Surely not to him?’
‘To whom?’ asked Dot.
Theodora’s eyes darkened.
‘The daemon, Salamander.’