Sally Green - Half Bad

Then they tell me to put my clothes on, and I do that.

And they take me through the door and point at the bench in the corridor. And I sit back down and don’t look at Gran’s face.

The door opposite the bench is paneled dark oak and is eventually opened by a man. He’s huge, a guard. He points at me and then at the room behind him. When Gran starts to get up he says, “Not you.”

The assessment room is long and high, with bare stone walls and arched windows above head height along each side. The ceiling is arched too. The furniture is wooden. A huge oak table reaches across almost the full width of the room, keeping the three Council members to their far side. They sit on large, carved wooden chairs like ancient royalty.

The woman in the center is old, thin, gray-haired, and gray-skinned, as if all the blood has been drained out of her. The woman to the right is middle-aged and plump and has deep black skin and her hair pulled tight off her face. The man to the left is a bit younger and slim and has thick, white-blond hair. They are all wearing white robes made of roughly woven material, which has a strange sheen when the sunlight catches it.

There is a guard standing to my left, and the one who opened the door is behind me.

The woman in the middle says, “I am the Council Leader. We are going to ask you some simple questions.”

But she doesn’t ask them; the other woman asks the questions.

The other woman is slow and methodical. She has a list, which she works down. Some of the questions are easy—“What is your name?”—and some more difficult—“Do you know the herbs that draw out poison from a wound?”

I think about each question, and each one I decide not to answer. I am methodical too.

After the woman stops her questions the Council Leader has a go herself. She asks different questions, questions about my father, like, “Has your father ever tried to contact you?” and “Do you know where your father is?” She even tries, “Do you consider your father to be a great witch?” and “Do you love your father?”

I know the answers to her questions, but I don’t tell her what they are.

After that they put their heads together and mutter for a bit. The blond-haired man tells the guard to bring Gran in. The Council Leader beckons her forward, as if she is reeling Gran in with her thin, pasty hand.

Gran stands beside me. We haven’t eaten or drunk anything since early that morning, so perhaps that is why she looks so drained. She looks as old as the Council Leader now.

The Council Leader tells her, “We’ve made our assessment.”

The woman has been writing on a piece of parchment and now she pushes it across the table, saying, “Please sign to confirm that you agree with it.”

Gran moves to the table, picks up the piece of paper, and comes back to stand by my side. She reads the assessment out for me to hear. I like that about Gran.

“ Subject:

Nathan Byrn

Birth Code:

W 0.5/B 0.5

Sex:

Male

Age at Assessment:

8 years

Gift (if over Age 17):

Not applicable

General Intelligence:

Not ascertained

Special Abilities:

Not ascertained

Healing Ability:

Not ascertained

Languages:

Not ascertained

Special Comments:

The Subject was uncooperative

Designation Code:

Not ascertained”

I am grinning for the first time that day.

Gran walks back to the table, picks up the fountain pen of the female Councilor, and signs the form with a flourish.

The Council Leader speaks again. “As you are the boy’s guardian, Mrs. Ashworth, it is your responsibility to ensure he cooperates in the assessment.”

Gran looks up.

“Come back tomorrow, and we will repeat the assessment.”

I could go all year down the Not ascertained route, but the next day Gran says that I should answer some questions, though never the ones about my father. So I answer some questions.

They amend the form to show my General Intelligence as Low, and Languages as English. Special Comments says Uncooperative and Does not appear to be able to read. My Designated Code is still Not ascertained, though. Gran is pleased.

It’s Jessica’s seventeenth birthday. Mid-morning and Jessica is even more full of herself than normal. She can’t keep still. Can’t wait to get her three gifts and become a true adult witch. Gran is going to perform the Giving ceremony at midday, so in the meantime we have to put up with Jessica pacing around the kitchen and picking things up and putting them down.

She picks up a knife, wanders about with it, and then stops beside me, saying, “I wonder what will happen on Nathan’s birthday.”

She feels the point of the blade. “If he has to go to an assessment he might not be able to have a Giving.”

She’s winding me up. I just have to ignore her. I will get three gifts. Every witch gets three gifts.

Gran says, “Nathan will receive three gifts on his birthday. That is the way it is for all witches. And that is the way it will be for Nathan.”

“I mean, it’s bad enough for a White whet if something goes wrong and they don’t get three gifts.”

“Nothing will go wrong, Jessica.” Gran turns to look at her, saying, “I’ll give Nathan three gifts, just as I’ll give them to you and Deborah and Arran.”

Arran comes to sit by me. He puts his hand on my arm and says quietly just to me, “I can’t wait for your Giving. You come to mine and I’ll come to yours.”

“Kieran told me about a whet in York who didn’t get three gifts,” says Jessica. “He married a fain in the end and now works in a bank.”

“What’s this boy called?” Deborah asks.

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not a witch now and never will be.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of such a boy,” Gran says.

“It’s true. Kieran told me,” Jessica says. “Kieran said that it’s different for Black Witches, though. They don’t just lose their abilities. If Blacks don’t get three gifts they die.”

Jessica puts the point of the knife into the table in front of me and holds it there, balanced on its tip, by her index finger. “They don’t die straightaway. They get sick, maybe last a year or two if they’re lucky, but they can’t heal and they just get weaker and sicker and sicker and weaker and then”—she lets the knife fall—“one less Black Witch.”

I should close my eyes.

Arran gently wraps his fingers around the handle of the knife and moves it away, asking, “Do they really die, Gran?”

“I don’t know any Black Witches, Arran, so I can’t say. But Nathan is half White and he will get three gifts on his birthday. And Jessica, you can stop this talk of Black Witches.”

Jessica leans close to Arran and mutters, “It would be interesting to see what happens, though. I’d guess that he’d die like a Black Witch.”

And I have to get out of there. I go upstairs. I don’t break anything, just kick the wall a few times.

Surprisingly, Jessica hasn’t chosen to have a big ceremonial Giving but a small and private one. Unsurprisingly, she has chosen to go so small and so private that although Deborah and Arran are invited, I am not. I heard Gran trying to persuade Jessica to invite me a few nights earlier, but it didn’t work, and I don’t want to go anyway. I have no friends to play with, so I’m left alone at home while Gran, Jessica, Deborah, and a glum Arran trudge to the woods.