Mike Shevdon - Strangeness and Charm

"Every day the Warders renew these boundaries." Blackbird said quietly. "Every day they reassert their magic over this ground. What you're sensing is the repeated warding of this place, layer upon layer, until it's so thick that it can no longer be broken, simply endured. It's one of the things I don't like about being here. It's smothering."

"Why didn't I sense it before?"

"Here at the edge it's easier to detect. You can feel the density of it change as it fades out towards the edges. Within the grounds of the house it's pervasive. It invades every space and seeps into every crack. There is nowhere not steeped in it. Like background noise that never ceases, after a while you don't notice it. I do though. It's like a constant niggle at the edge of my senses, a lingering doubt that things aren't as they should be."

"You could have said something."

"It doesn't seem to bother you, and as you pointed out it's all very convenient having everyone on call, with all the facilities to hand."

"But I get to go out and leave for a while. I get some relief from it," I said.

"Indeed."

"Couldn't you set up your own warding, just in our rooms? You could exclude the Warder's magic and have a little island of peace."

"A bubble inside a bubble? Somewhat unstable, don't you think? I'm not sure that would even be possible. Besides I can't see Garvin allowing any area over which he has no control anywhere near the courts. He is responsible for security when all's said and done."

"I'm sorry. I didn't realise."

"It presents us with an opportunity, though. I want you to establish your own warding, right here at the edge of the courts where it's weaker. You will need to push their warding back to establish your own."

"How?"

"Do you remember when we were sitting outside the Church of St Clement's Dane in London and I was showing you how to establish your glamour?"

"I guess. I could feel the way your magic concealed us, as it spread across the area around the statue."

"Think of extending threads of magic outward, like a spider spinning a web. Push it out a little, connect it together, then push it out a little more. Keep extending the boundary."

"That's not how a spider builds a web," I pointed out.

"I know that. I'm just drawing an analogy. Think instead then of how wasps build a nest. They start small and then build onto it in spirals, shoring it up as you go."

"I don't even know what it is I'm shoring up."

"It's like territory, like putting your stamp on it, as if you were claiming it."

I tried to imagine myself claiming the area around the fence. Nothing happened. "It's not working."

"OK, forget that. Come down here and lie down." She hopped off the fence and smoothed her skirts before sitting on the grass.

I stepped down and sat down with her and then lay back onto the grass so that my head was near to where she was sitting.

"Look up in the tree and allow your eyes to defocus — better still close them, not tightly, but so that the sunlight filters through your eyelids. Imagine the tree is still there."

"It is still there."

She tweaked my nose.

"Ow!"

"Shut up and listen. The tree is above you, extending its branches out into the air, leaning up into the sunlight. Let your magic extend around your body, let it relax into the earth, so that it seeps into the soil, down among the roots and worms. Let it follow the roots of the tree, in your mind, in your imagination, up through the trunk, out along the branches, onto the twigs."

"It feels light and warm."

"Follow the light out along the twigs into the leaves. Feel the sunlight in the leaves, feeding the tree, bathe in the sunlight at the tips of the leaves."

"This is really very restful. You're not going to be offended if I fall asleep are you?"

She ignored me. "Leave a sense of yourself, a presence there at the leaves, but now float from the leaves into the air, following the shifting breeze, drifting with the wind."

"Is this how a seed feels when it falls? Oh, hang on, there's something here. It feels like a fungus or a fuzzy mould."

"You've reached the edge of the warding. Send a root of your own into it. Explore it with your senses" she suggested.

"It tastes sour, not like the tree."

"It's very old, layer upon layer. But like all layers it has weaknesses. Explore the cracks. Push your way into it. Find the fault lines and wheedle your way into them."

I could feel the weight of the warding ahead of me. Somehow it left the taste of decay in my mouth, along with the smell of the forest floor and something beneath that — a bitter sourness that crept onto the tongue, making my mouth flood with saliva.

"What do you think you're doing?"

It was Fionh's voice and I opened my eyes, squinting up against the light. She was standing next to the fence we had been sitting on. I blinked, glancing at Blackbird.

"I asked you what you thought you were doing," she repeated.

"Blackbird was showing me how wardings work," I explained.

Fionh raised an eyebrow at Blackbird.

"It seemed a good way of demonstrating how a place can be warded over time," she said.

"You know better than to interfere with the wardings of the courts," said Fionh. "And getting Niall to do it in your place will not help you."

"I don't think I know what you mean," said Blackbird.

"I think you do." She looked down at me. "Don't do that again. There are things in the wardings which you do not want to encounter. They're there for a reason, and not to be meddled with."

"Sorry, I had no idea it was so sensitive," I said.

"No. You didn't. But she did." She looked from me to Blackbird. "You're supposed to be teaching him."

"Oh, I think that lesson was an excellent demonstration, Fionh. Thank you for your assistance."

Fionh's mouth hardened, but she turned and walked away with whatever was on her tongue unsaid.

Alex was beginning to think she had come to the wrong place. The estate looked abandoned — surely no one lived here? Cracked windows looked down on her, and rubble had been heaped into random piles.

Had she remembered correctly? Some of her memories of her imprisonment were distorted by drugs and the regime she had been put through. She knew not to trust her sense of time, but there were other things. At times her dreams and reality seemed to merge and she wasn't sure she could differentiate between one and another.

The memories that stuck, though, were ones of other inmates. Meetings like that were brief, and often at least one of them would be spaced out on something. She'd been taken by surprise the first time, lying on a trolley and doped up with muscle relaxant. A face had appeared in her vision.

"I'm Donna," she said. "I like movies and romantic stories. Quick, tell me about yourself, something, anything!" She had shaken Alex's shoulders.

"I'm Lexie." Slurring her words, she sounded drunk, but she didn't feel drunk. "Where are we?"

"It doesn't matter. Tell me something about yourself, something normal, something you'd tell a friend."

"There's the cool guy at school," she slurred. "He's called Jamie… he's got a really nice arse."

"That's good Lexie. Now we're friends. They can't break you if you're with friends. We're all in this together. Find someone else. Do the same with them. We can beat them together."

The door opened and a woman entered. "What are you doing?"

"She was mumbling something. I think she was trying to talk to me," said Donna.

"Don't worry about her, Donna. Come along. It's time for your assessment."

Lexie watched as Donna was led away, but the memory stayed.

She'd done the same with others, forming connections, however brief. She could remember all of them, every name, every face.