Katharine Corr - The Witch’s Blood

Finn had picked up a pebble from the floor of the cave and was turning it over and over between his fingers. ‘Do you think this is what it was like for Cillian? This …’ His fingers brushed the centre of his chest. ‘This constant ache of longing for something you can’t have?’

There was fear in Finn’s eyes. She moved to sit next to him, taking his hand in hers. ‘No. Cillian never had any power. It must have been hard for him, growing up in a Kin House family, surrounded by people like us, but I don’t think he would have felt how you do now. His power wasn’t ripped from him. He couldn’t have missed it in the same way.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Finn’s mouth turned down and he bowed his head, and Merry thought about how badly he must miss his brother, how heavily the guilt and grief must be weighing on him. She slipped one arm round his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. He sighed into her hair, hugging her back tightly. ‘Talk to me,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me everything about you that I don’t already know.’

‘Everything? It’s mostly pretty boring. Apart from the bits where every now and then some magic-wielding nutter is trying to kill me, and you know about that stuff.’

‘I don’t care. I need a distraction.’

So, Merry talked. She described her early childhood with Leo, their dad leaving them, their mum growing more and more distant. She told Finn about Gran testing her at twelve years old to see if she could be a witch, how excited she’d been to start training, and how painfully disappointed she’d felt when Mum had forbidden it. She talked about how Leo had struggled with coming out. About school and netball and fencing and how she used to dream about being an Olympic athlete. She even told him about Alex, the boy at school who had fallen in love with her, and how she’d messed him up by casting spells on him that she had no idea how to reverse.

‘… and when I pulled him out of the river I got the credit for saving him, but I was the reason he was in there in the first place.’ Merry sighed. ‘He’s never forgiven me. Or I don’t think he has: he hasn’t spoken to me for ages. And I don’t blame him. Some things just aren’t forgivable.’

They were lying shoulder to shoulder on the blanket. Merry glanced sideways, wondering how Finn was reacting to what she’d just said. Would he think it was terrible, what she’d done to Alex? Or would he not care, because Alex was just a pleb, and he’d been taught to think that plebs weren’t that important, anyway?

But Finn was asleep, his mouth open a little, breathing softly.

Probably just as well.

Turning to lie on her side, Merry studied his face for a bit, noticing the length of his eyelashes, the sprinkle of pale freckles across the bridge of his nose, the shadowing of coppery stubble along his jawline. Her eyelids began to grow heavy again, and this time she didn’t resist the lure of sleep.

It was dark outside when Merry woke. Finn was still asleep next to her, but she was too cold and stiff to lie there any longer. Her throat was sore as well – all the talking, and the smoke from the fire, probably. Wincing at the ache in her shoulders, she pushed herself to her feet and summoned a ball of witch fire into life in her fingers. Finn muttered in his sleep, frowning. Merry pulled the bit of blanket she’d been lying on across his body and stumbled towards the spring at the back of the cave.

The bubbling water was ice-cold, but she still gulped it down as fast as she could, floating the globe of witch fire next to her head so she could use both hands. When she paused, she noticed the small wooden bowl that she’d used the previous night to see Leo – it was still sitting on the rock next to the spring. She picked it up, hesitating. Jack had told her not to use magic, but would it really matter if she did just the one spell? The longing to see her brother again was so strong it made her chest ache. Quickly, she plunged the bowl into the small pool beneath the spring, scooping up the water and leaning over it. In the violet glow of the witch fire she could see her reflection. The colours were wrong, though: her hair, slipping out of the ponytail, looked dark brown, not auburn. Her eyes looked green instead of hazel.

She didn’t look like herself at all.

Merry saw her reflection’s eyes widen with realisation.

I look like my ancestor. Like Meredith.

She stared at herself for a bit longer. And then, setting the bowl down, she ran to her bag and pulled everything out until she reached the seven-sided wooden trinket box stashed away at the bottom.

Sitting back on her heels, the box in her hands, Merry traced one finger over the intricate design carved into the box’s lid. Interlocking figures of eight, inlaid with flint, rippled along the edges, interspersed with Celtic knots at each corner. And at the centre, a flint disc etched with the crescent moon. Six months or so had passed since the night she and Leo found the box in the attic – six months of her time, at least. It felt like longer.

Inside the box were the key, the braid of hair and the manuscript. She left the key and the braid where they were. The hair was Queen Edith’s, and the key … Merry wasn’t exactly sure of its provenance, but since it was the key to Gwydion’s tower it was unlikely that Meredith had made it. The manuscript, however …

She flipped through the pages. They were still blank, as they had been ever since Gwydion died. Meredith had made the manuscript fifteen hundred years ago as a way of guiding whichever of her descendants ended up having to deal with Gwydion. And it had worked, sort of. The manuscript had ‘woken up’ when Jack and Gwydion woke up from their enchanted sleep under the lake. It had answered Merry’s questions about Jack and advised her what to do, although often in annoyingly vague terms.

Perhaps she’d be able to wake it up again.

Merry thought back to the blood magic she’d performed – with Finn’s help – a few weeks ago. Because she and Gran were linked by blood, she’d been able to use blood magic to reveal the location of the cave where Ronan had left Gran to die. She and Meredith were linked by blood too. Doubly linked, in fact: by ordinary genetics, and because of the oath. The oath that Meredith had sworn, which meant that a part of her had continued through each of her descendants, allowing Meredith herself to be present at Gwydion’s final defeat.

So much in magic seemed to come down to blood.

Of course, blood magic was dangerous. Merry smiled briefly as she remembered Leo’s childhood obsession with Star Wars . In her world, it was blood magic that led to the dark side: it could so easily be used for black spells, to control or hurt or kill. That’s what Gwydion had used it for. And every use of blood magic drew the evil energies of the shadow realm towards the spell caster, like pins to a magnet, looking for a crack in the caster’s defences, looking for a way in. But Merry hadn’t suffered any side effects from using it. Nothing demonic had possessed her. No fallen angels had shown up at the foot of her bed to drag her into the darkness.

At least, not yet.

And my intentions are good. Surely that must count for something?

She would just have to hope so. Fishing Gran’s obsidian knife out of the side pocket of the bag, Merry held her right hand out above the manuscript and pressed the point of the blade into the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger. Her blood began to drip on to the manuscript, soaking into the parchment. She started to sing, combining bits from various spells: the hydromancy she used to see Leo, the charm for finding lost things, a memory spell. Making it up as she went along; it seemed to be what she was best at.