Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Gillian told me that witches killed my parents,” I said. “Can you deny it? Tell me the truth about what happened in Nigeria.”

Satu remained silent. It was as good as a confession.

“Just as I thought,” I said bitterly.

A tiny motion of her wrist threw me onto my back, feet in the air, before invisible hands dragged me across the slick surface of the freezing courtyard and into a cavernous space with tall windows and only a portion of roof remaining.

My back was battered from its trip across the stones of the castle’s old hall. Worse yet, my struggles against Satu’s magic were inexperienced and futile. Ysabeau was right. My weakness—my ignorance of who I was and how to defend myself—had landed me in serious trouble.

“Once again you refuse to listen to reason. I don’t want to hurt you, Diana, but I will if it’s the only way to make you see the seriousness of this situation. You must give up Matthew Clairmont and show us what you did to call the manuscript.”

“I will never give up my husband, nor will I help any of you claim Ashmole 782. It doesn’t belong to us.”

This remark earned me the sensation of my head splitting in two as a bloodcurdling shriek tore through the air. A cacophony of horrifying sounds followed. They were so painful I sank to my knees, and covered my head with my arms.

Satu’s eyes narrowed to slits, and I found myself on my backside on the cold stone. “Us? You dare to think of yourself as a witch when you’ve come straight from the bed of a vampire?”

“I am a witch,” I replied sharply, surprised at how much her dismissal stung.

“You’re a disgrace, just like Stephen,” Satu hissed. “Stubborn, argumentative, independent. And so full of secrets.”

“That’s right, Satu, I’m just like my father. He wouldn’t have told you anything. I’m not going to either.”

“Yes you will. The only way vampires can discover a witch’s secrets is drop by drop.” To show what she meant, Satu flicked her fingers in the direction of my right forearm. Another witch’s hand had flicked at a long-ago cut on my knee, but that gesture had closed my wound better than any Band-Aid. This one sliced an invisible knife through my skin. Blood began to trickle from the gash. Satu watched the flow of blood, mesmerized.

My hand covered the cut, putting pressure on the wound. It was surprisingly painful, and my anxiety began to climb.

No, said a familiar, fierce voice. You must not give in to the pain. I struggled to bring myself under control.

“As a witch, I have other ways to uncover what you’re hiding. I’m going to open you up, Diana, and locate every secret you possess,” Satu promised. “We’ll see how stubborn you are then.”

All the blood left my head, making me dizzy. The familiar voice caught my attention, whispering my name. Who do we keep our secrets from, Diana?

Everybody, I answered, silently and automatically, as if the question were routine. Another set of far sturdier doors banged shut behind the inadequate barriers that had been all I’d ever needed to keep a curious witch out of my head.

Satu smiled, her eyes sparkling as she detected my new defenses. “There’s one secret uncovered already. Let’s see what else you have, besides the ability to protect your mind.”

The witch muttered, and my body spun around and then flattened against the floor, facedown. The impact knocked the wind out of me. A circle of fire licked up from the cold stones, the flames green and noxious.

Something white-hot seared my back. It curved from shoulder to shoulder like a shooting star, descended to the small of my back, then curved again before climbing once again to where it had started. Satu’s magic held me fast, making it impossible to wriggle away. The pain was unspeakable, but before the welcoming blackness could take me, she held off. When the darkness receded, the pain began again.

It was then that I realized with a sickening lurch of my stomach that she was opening me up, just as she’d promised. She was drawing a magical circle—onto me.

You must be very, very brave.

Through the haze of pain I followed the snaking tree roots covering the floor of the hall in the direction of the familiar voice. My mother was sitting under an apple tree just outside the line of green fire.

“Mama!” I cried weakly, reaching out for her. But Satu’s magic held.

My mother’s eyes—darker than I remembered, but so like my own in shape—were tenacious. She put one ghostly finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. The last of my energy was expended in a nod that acknowledged her presence. My last coherent thought was of Matthew.

After that, there was nothing but pain and fear, along with a dull desire to close my eyes and go to sleep forever.

It must have been many hours before Satu tossed me across the room in frustration. My back burned from her spell, and she’d reopened my injured forearm again and again. At some point she suspended me upside down by my ankle to weaken my resistance and taunted me about my inability to fly away and escape. Despite these efforts, Satu was no closer to understanding my magic than when she started.

She roared with anger, the low heels of her boots clicking against the stones as she paced and plotted fresh assaults. I lifted myself onto my elbow to better anticipate her next move.

Hold on. Be brave. My mother was still under the apple tree, her face shining with tears. It brought back echoes of Ysabeau telling Marthe that I had more courage than she had thought, and Matthew whispering “My brave girl” into my ear. I mustered the energy to smile, not wanting my mother to cry. My smile only made Satu more furious.

“Why won’t you use your power to protect yourself? I know it’s inside you!” she bellowed. Satu drew her arms together over her chest, then thrust them out with a string of words. My body rolled into a ball around a jagged pain in my abdomen. The sensation reminded me of my father’s eviscerated body, the guts pulled out and lying next to him.

That’s what’s next. I was oddly relieved to know.

Satu’s next words flung me across the floor of the ruined hall. My hands reached futilely past my head to try to stop the momentum as I skidded across the uneven stones and bumpy tree roots. My fingers flexed once as if they might reach across the Auvergne and connect to Matthew.

My mother’s body had looked like this, resting inside a magic circle in Nigeria. I exhaled sharply and cried out.

Diana, you must listen to me. You will feel all alone. My mother was talking to me, and with the sound I became a child again, sitting on a swing hanging from the apple tree in the back yard of our house in Cambridge on a long-ago August afternoon. There was the smell of cut grass, fresh and green, and my mother’s scent of lilies of the valley. Can you be brave while you’re alone? Can you do that for me?

There were no soft August breezes against my skin now. Instead rough stone scraped my cheek when I nodded in reply.

Satu flipped me over, and the pointy stones cut into my back.

“We don’t want to do this, sister,” she said with regret. “But we must. You will understand, once Clairmont is forgotten, and forgive me for this.”

Not bloody likely, I thought. If he doesn’t kill you, I’ ll haunt you for the rest of your life once I’m gone.

With a few whispered words Satu lifted me from the floor and propelled me with carefully directed gusts of wind out of the hall and down a flight of curving stairs that wound into the depths of the castle. She moved me through the castle’s ancient dungeons. Something rustled behind me, and I craned my neck to see what it was.

Ghosts—dozens of ghosts—were filing behind us in a spectral funeral procession, their faces sad and afraid. For all Satu’s powers, she seemed unable to see the dead everywhere around us, just as she had been unable to see my mother.