CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dot and Archie hugged on the step until Theodora pulled the two of them inside and out of the cold.
‘You must be Theodora,’ said Archie to the witch, and he shook her hand. ‘Lio here has been ever so helpful to me, and he’s explained your predicament.’ Archie leaned in and whispered, ‘Lad’s being awfully hard on himself. You’ll be good to him, won’t you? Weren’t his fault he was tricked again.’
Lio stood on the street, his hands in his pockets, shivering.
‘Why are your clothes wet?’ asked Dot. She did not meet his gaze.
‘I cast portals to just about every trawler in the South Sea.’ His voice was apologetic, and she could feel his eyes boring into her.
‘I think he’s caught his death,’ said Archie. ‘Slipped off several of the trawlers and fell right into the ocean.’
Lio coughed pathetically into his handkerchief.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Theodora, casting a spell that dried and warmed his clothes at once. ‘Get in the house, Lio.’
The witch led Dot and Archie up to the kitchen.
Along the way, the old man’s eyes darted hither and thither, catching on the picture frames and glass lampshades and spell books stacked beside the staircase.
Dot watched him as he experienced the strange dichotomy that happens when one enters the home of a person they are extremely familiar with, but which is altogether unfamiliar to them.
His face lit up once again with wonderment as he came into the living room and saw Belchamber resting in the armchair beside the window. Archie chose for himself the seat by the fire – Dot’s favourite.
‘Hello there,’ said Archie to the spirit, ‘I’m Dot’s grandad.’
‘So you are,’ said Belchamber sleepily.
‘I hear you’ve been poorly.’
Theodora led Dot into the kitchen.
‘I can leave you two alone if you’d like?’ whispered the witch. ‘Take Belchamber upstairs?’
‘I’d rather you stay.’
And so, Theodora brewed them all tea (and a strong black coffee for herself) and they spoke long into the night.
At one point, they spotted Rupert wandering past the living room and into the kitchen; a little while later, he trotted back out and down the stairs once more, his arms full of bread and ham and things for him to eat with Lio.
Dot explained it all until her throat was sore.
She leaned lethargically against the armchair and Archie took up her afflicted hand and kissed it.
‘Still beautiful,’ he said.
‘Grandad,’ Dot groaned.
‘Don’t you Grandad me, Dorothy Louise,’ said the old man. ‘You’ve had a bloody tough go of it and all the while I was out in the South Sea like a fool. All along, you needed me here.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Dot.
‘It is,’ said Archie. ‘Who else did you have? Willard was never easy on you and Celia’s always wrapped up in her reading and your mum and dad, well, I won’t talk ill of my family, you know that, but there’ve certainly been things I wouldn’t have done. I should have helped you, love.’
‘Do they all hate me?’ asked Dot. ‘For running away?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ said Archie, although he didn’t meet Dot’s eyes for a moment.
‘Your father was cross, I’ll admit. Your mother turned a bit sour.
She is a quiet drinker, your mum. Your brother was the noisiest about it.
I think they all blamed me, if I’m honest. I said to them a week or two after, “Patrick, Martha, Willard – I did the same. My Louise and I took a boat from Eyre to Calléum when I was barely twenty. Sometimes, we need to go somewhere new.” They’ll come around when you see them. ’
Dot wiped her eyes. She was not so sure.
‘Does it hurt?’ asked Archie, nodding to her scales.
‘Only when they grow in,’ said Dot.
‘And this terrible timer,’ he said, glancing between Dot and Theodora. ‘The one that has been placed on your life. Are we quite certain?’
Theodora nodded. ‘The affliction, it seems, has been in Dorothy’s system since that night in the ocean when she was fourteen, but did not manifest until she came to Alliaster.
Her life wanes as the afflictive magic grows.
We know from the daemon Salamander that the ambergris that you have been collecting, Archie, comes from a spirit.
’ The old man nodded. ‘Yet, we are no closer to understanding how Dot actually came by the affliction in the first place.’
‘Oh,’ said Archie. ‘That’s quite simple, love. That same spirit gave her the affliction.’
Theodora and Dot stared at the old man.
‘What do you mean “that same spirit”?’ demanded Dot.
‘What do you mean “gave it to her”?’ cried Theodora.
The old man glanced between them and rubbed his forehead. ‘Perhaps I should have told you the moment I walked in through the door.’
‘Perhaps, Grandad!’
‘Well, I wanted to know how you’d been—’
‘Tell us all of it,’ said Theodora. Belchamber stirred beside her. ‘From the beginning. Has Dot always had the proclivity for magic or did it come after that night in the ocean?’
‘Oh, no, she’s always had it,’ said Archie, and Dot gawked at him. ‘Her dad did his best to stamp it out of her, mind. Punished her something frightful whenever she cast a spell.’
‘Whenever I what?’
‘You wouldn’t remember love,’ said her grandad. His arms were folded over his belly, his short legs propped up on the foot stool. ‘You were so little when it weakened.’
‘Surely I would remember casting spells,’ said Dot.
‘Do you also remember learning to walk, love?’ Archie gave her a wise look.
‘And besides, your illness took a frightful toll on your memories. The last time I recall you casting a spell, you were perhaps three years old. There was an anglerfish washed up on the beach, and you were dreadful upset about it.’
‘I do remember the anglerfish,’ said Dot, softly.
‘You magicked it back in the water,’ said Archie. ‘But you started crying and you thought your dad would be awful cross with you. You were so confused, poor little thing. After that, I only ever saw you cast spells in your sleep, and only very rarely. You remember the cat, don’t you? Benjamin?’
‘What did I do to Benjamin?’
‘Oh, nothing terrible,’ chuckled Archie.
‘You had such a big heart, though I doubt Benjamin thought so. One night, I was on my way to the loo and I see the cat come whizzing through the air and into your room, and then there you were cuddling it. Poor Benjamin was struggling for his life, you had such a death grip on him.’
‘That cat hated me,’ said Dot.
‘I wonder why,’ said Theodora.
Archie patted Dot’s hand. ‘I’m sorry for the shock, love.
Patrick and Martha knew how I felt about the Prohibition, and they had me swear to never talk to you about magic.
After what happened with your grandmother, I understood it.
It wasn’t the influenza, Dot, like your dad told you. My Louise was a Magician.’
Dot’s hands flew to her mouth.
‘She tried to bespell a tablecloth and it went terribly wrong,’ said Archie.
‘Whole dining room exploded. I ran in, but it was much too late. Worst day I ever lived.’ He looked down at his hands for a moment, his fingers short with bitten nails.
‘But you were in your mum’s tummy then and I know Louise would have loved you.
Anyway, your dad said he’d never let me see you again if I told you any of it or if I encouraged you.
You were always asking questions – about the tonic, about my trips to the sea.
I made up that nonsense about the South Sea cuttlefish. ’
‘So, they are extinct?’ asked Dot in a hush.
‘I wanted to tell you, love,’ said Archie, ‘but your dad was stubborn.
We got into quite the row, actually. Many times.
Squashing something like that in you was only going to hurt you, make you feel strange compared to the other children.
You were such a quick learner, Dottie. You learned to stuff away the magic so quickly.
‘I said to him, time and time again: I will find the money for that posh school in the city. I told him, we’ll get you the licence, do it proper. I never realised how much it cost, mind. Patrick was almost on the fence until that girl.’
‘Emily,’ said Dot.
‘Emily,’ repeated Archie. ‘Weren’t your fault, that.
I know you always felt it was, and bloody Willard didn’t help, did he?
The way he carried on . . .’ Archie shook his head.
‘But I knew something funny had happened to you that night. So, I went looking and after I found the ambergris, I realised you must have been affected some way by a spirit.’
The voice from the belly of the ocean, ethereal and echoing.
‘And whether it was a punishment or a present, I couldn’t say,’ said Archie. ‘It simply is what it is. Weren’t until I found the ambergris that I came to that conclusion. Oh, I tried you on so many things, do you remember?’
‘That, I do remember,’ said Dot.
‘I made so many of Louise’s potions, but it wasn’t until I found this old Eyreish remedy and I swapped the bezoar for the ambergris I’d found and, lo and behold, it helped.
You told me you felt a little better. Proudest I’ve ever been, Dorothy.
And ever since, I’ve tried to find the creature that ambergris belonged to. I think I spotted Them once.’
‘What did They look like?’ Dot asked, eager.
‘Huge,’ said Archie, awed. ‘Almost as big as the sea.’
Theodora’s eyes widened. She disappeared, and there came banging from above and then she was back holding a large, leather-bound grimoire.
‘What is that book?’ asked Dot.
‘A relic from another life,’ said Theodora, flicking through the pages. ‘Or at least, a copy of one. After you borrowed Spirits of the Bygone, Dorothy, I deepened my research on the Ancients. I had a foggy memory of reading about Them when I was a child.’
Dot looked at the old grimoire. A tattered thing from the time before the Prohibition.
‘Belchamber and I tracked this one to a Beleaustian carpet seller. Ha!’ Theodora came to the page on the Ancient Spirits. She held it up to Archie.
‘Did She look like this?’ asked the witch. Dot saw an illustration of a huge spirit, dark and wide, and almost indistinguishable from the ocean.
The old man fiddled in his pocket for his spectacles. He put them on and said at once, ‘That’s the one!’
‘How truly bizarre,’ said Theodora. ‘Perhaps you were touched by an Ancient Spirit, Dorothy?’
‘But,’ said Dot, ‘wouldn’t that kind of magic be much too powerful for a human to touch?’
‘That’s what makes it bizarre,’ said the witch. ‘If one of your pools of magic indeed belongs to an Ancient, what could have stopped that magic from using you up entirely?’
Dot’s eyes fell on the grandfather clock beside the mantle, the pendulum swinging back and forth, the motion perfectly balanced, left to right and back again.
Was that not how she lived? Like the ocean waves, bobbing back and forth, constantly righting herself.
Maybe her magic was the same – somehow bobbing and balancing in equilibrium.
Dot’s magic had always seemed a desolate thing.
It was Emily screaming. It was Rupert’s mother’s voice turning into Willard’s.
It was fear and cold sadness. Then she paused, remembering the day she’d blasted Lio across the courtyard.
She hadn’t felt sad. She’d felt angry. And the result?
Dot glanced now at the scales of her left arm.
She counted the ones around her elbow, the purple-black one, the greeny one.
In one sharp rush, Dot realised that none of them were from that day.
‘Oh!’ yelled Dot, jumping off the sofa. ‘I – maybe I have something!’
‘What?’ asked Theodora, rising.
‘I – well – I was angry and I cast a spell at Lio in the courtyard—’
‘Really?’ asked Theodora. ‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter why,’ said Dot.
‘Almost knocked him out from what he told me,’ said Archie. ‘You should know better than that, Dot. No excuse for—’
‘I shouldn’t have done it,’ said Dot, her eyes darting.
‘I know, but that’s not the point. The magic I used on Lio wasn’t normal for me.
Normally, it’s cold, like the South Pole, like the ocean when Emily drowned, but this was different.
When I was in the Lourdes, when I sent that spell at Rupert’s mother – it was always the same.
Cold. Yet, when I cast that spell at Lio, the magic burned.
It came from a different place. It came from anger, I think. ’
Dot stared between her hands.
‘The spell I cast at Lio wasn’t the afflictive magic,’ said Dot. ‘It was mine.’
Dot looked about the room, searching for something to bespell. As if reading her apprentice’s thoughts, Theodora seized a cushion and tossed it to her. The witch found some chalk beside the bookcase and handed it over. Dot scribbled right onto the cushion the rune for repel.
‘Good,’ said Theodora, glancing at it. ‘Perfect line work.’
Dot held out the cushion. She closed her eyes and dug deep within herself for every stifled moment of anger she’d ever felt.
You should be grateful.
You foul, little bitch.
Grow up, Dot!
And when the pool of hot, surging magic ignited within her belly, Dot dove into it. She pictured the rune for repel. Three starbursts, a long triangle, several intricate marks to the left. The symbol for ‘out’. The symbol for ‘quick’.
Within herself, she sank into the fury that had belonged to her all her life but which had been buried or shunned or shamed or silenced or laughed at.
Emily, drowning. ‘Stop wallowing!’ Collapsing against the pier.
‘You’re fine!’ She could not crawl out of bed.
‘You’re indulging it, darling.’ She cried in the orientation lecture.
‘You’re too sensitive.’ She couldn’t meet the eyes of the young, male history tutor.
‘What a strange young woman.’ For the first time, she felt angry for herself.
A burst of magic shot out through her right hand.
Dot opened her eyes. The cushion was on the floor, at the feet of the statue of the maiden.
‘Yes!’ shouted Theodora. She reached for Dot’s temple, her fingers connecting and pulsating with warmth. Theodora paused for a moment. Then she let out a gasp of relief.
‘Your human magic has grown,’ said Theodora, her eyes glittering. ‘It was fractional. Perhaps, only the barest glimmer, but do you understand, Dorothy, what this indicates?’
‘That I can cast spells,’ said Dot.
‘Not just that,’ said Theodora, glancing between Dot and Archie.
‘This means you can offset the afflictive magic. There is no “healing” your illness, but as far as your trajectory goes, this is the best thing we could have hoped for. Oh heavens. I told you that you would be dead before your twenty-fourth birthday.’
Theodora reached for Dot’s hands, both skin and scales, her eyes sparkling.
‘I was wrong.’