Ruth Warburton - Witch Hunt

‘Maybe,’ was all she said. They walked in silence until at last Rosa asked, ‘Where are we going, Luke?’

‘I don’t know. Far away from here. We need a horse. Unless we can get enough money for a train ticket.’

‘No,’ she said with certainty. ‘Not a train. When they find out I’ve gone they’ll ask at the train stations, and if the ticket office remember us, they’ll know exactly where we went, and when we get there we’ll be sitting ducks without any transport. No, a horse is better. With a horse, we could be anywhere.’

‘Well then, we need a horse. And the only horse I can think of . . .’

‘Brimstone.’ Her face was pale. ‘Or the carriage horses. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? Oh God, Luke, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can go back there. What if they see me? What if Sebastian—’

‘I’ll go. You can wait in the park.’

‘No – if the servants see you . . . they know you’ve been turned off. Oh God.’ She put her hands to her face and he saw the ruby give a flash of fire.

‘Cover that up!’ Luke said urgently, and Rosa gave an exclamation of frustration and thrust her hand inside her shawl. ‘Look,’ he said more quietly, ‘we’ll wait until dark, then go round by the mews. No one will hear us.’

‘But they’ve engaged another groom already, and he’s sleeping above the stable. Mama was spending money like water on the promise of my marriage to Sebastian. No, I must go. I can make myself invisible if the worst comes to it.’

‘But will that work against a witch?’

She flinched, and he said, ‘What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?’

‘It’s that word,’ she said quietly. ‘W-witch. It’s not . . . not polite.’

‘What do you call yourselves then?’

‘Nothing. What do you call yourselves? Normal. We call your kind “outwith”, do you know that?’

‘No.’ He felt again as if he’d fallen down a rabbit hole. ‘At least – I think I heard Sebastian call me that, once. I thought it was an insult.’

‘It’s not insulting,’ she said slowly. ‘Although he might have meant it that way. It’s just . . . the word we use to describe someone without magic. But to answer your question, it’s complicated. Another, well, someone like me – we can see through a spell an outwith might not be able to penetrate. But we would have to try. We would have to notice that the spell was there in order to break through it. I suppose it’s a bit like being a confidence trickster. Maybe you’re more likely to see through a deception because you know how it’s worked, but that doesn’t make you infallible, it doesn’t mean you’ll never be duped yourself.’

‘So – you’re less likely to get caught, but it’s not impossible?’

‘Yes.’

‘But if they catch you . . .’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was bleak. ‘I don’t think Sebastian will let me go. I know what he did at the factory. I could give evidence against him. And my mother and brother will be bankrupt without this marriage. I think they would force me into it, or try to.’

‘No one can force you to marry!’ Luke burst out angrily. ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages, Rosa!’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Rosa said. Her face was tight, her lips pressed together. When she spoke again her words were clipped. ‘I’ve had no choices, no freedom, Luke. Not ever. It’s not like I can earn a living – I have nothing but what Alexis and my mother give me – whether that’s food, or clothes, or freedom.’

‘But no one can make you say, “I do”!’

‘Oh really?’ She looked at him, her small pale face full of a weary kind of anger. Luke shook his head, ready to argue his point, but found his head was no longer shaking but nodding. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop, to shout at her for playing with his mind like this, and he found his unwilling lips forming words that were not his own.

‘ I . . . do . . .’ It came out like a strangled gasp, through lips that were stiff and teeth clenched together, but they were unmistakably words. Then, abruptly, she loosed the spell.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was cheap and cruel. But you see what I mean.’

He shuddered, but still his mind refused to accept it.

‘But you’re a witch! You could fight them – fight the spell.’

‘I have magic, yes.’ Rosa pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘But I’m not particularly strong.’

‘You’re stronger than Alexis.’ He said it with certainty, remembering Rosa’s dazzling blaze of fire, compared to Alexis’s weak green haze.

‘Yes.’ There was no boasting in Rosa’s voice, just a statement of fact. ‘But there’s Mama too – I cannot fight them if they work together against me. This marriage is vital to them both. For her it’s her fortune, but for him it’s something more – it’s his future, it’s power and influence. And in any case, none of that would matter if Sebastian took their side. I was never able to best him, even as a girl, and he’s only got stronger.’ She shuddered again, suddenly, convulsively. ‘Since his father died – I don’t understand it, Luke. No one should have power like he does. It’s like a hurricane.’

Luke thought back to the black swirling cloud of hate that he had seen in the warehouse, before Sebastian jumped. Yes. He could see how no one could fight that. The thought of drowning in that darkness . . .

‘We must be quick,’ he said stubbornly. ‘And careful. That’s all. And once we have a horse we can be out of London in a few hours.’

‘But what about money? Even if we could get this ring off, would we be able to sell it? Wouldn’t they think we’d stolen it? I don’t exactly look like the kind of woman who wears a ruby ring any more.’

Luke bit his lip. It was true. And worse – it would draw attention to them. Even if they found someone shady enough to give them money for the ring, it wouldn’t be a fair price, and it would more than likely set Sebastian on their trail.

‘Can’t you magic some up?’ he asked crossly, hating to ask. But she shook her head. ‘Why not? Not now, I mean, I know you’re tired, but later . . .’

‘It’s not that simple,’ she said again. Her face looked pinched and tired. ‘Look, there’s two ways of creating something like money. Either you do it for real – change the real, base nature of the elements – and that’s very difficult magic: alchemy, it’s called. You need to be very strong and very practised and it can go horribly wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ Luke echoed. ‘How?’

‘Think of Midas,’ Rosa said shortly. ‘Once you start changing things, it’s not always easy to know when to stop, how to stop.’

‘And the other way?’

‘Illusory magic. You don’t really change boot buttons to sovereigns, you just make the shopkeeper think it’s a sovereign in his hand. But that’s dangerous in its own way too.’

‘How?’

‘Because the illusion can only hold as long as the spell holds – as long as I concentrate on keeping it up. So I can make you think I have a bacon roll in my hand . . .’

He blinked, and suddenly there was a bacon roll on her outstretched palm. He reached out for it, but it felt wrong in his grip – thin, insubstantial – and when he sniffed it, it didn’t smell of bacon, but like the memory of bacon – an ersatz nondescript savouriness. It was like food in a dream. As he watched, Rosa exhaled and the roll dissolved into nothing, leaving him grasping at air.

‘It’s dangerous because it’s very obvious,’ she said regretfully. ‘If we walk away and the innkeeper finds he’s holding dried leaves instead of banknotes, how long do you think before he comes after us? And how long until the story spreads – back to Sebastian, or back to your kind?’