‘ARGHHHHHHHHHH!’ Gwyneth screams. We all scream in response. ‘Twisted my ankle. Sorry, everyone.’
All I can hear is people murmuring ‘curse’. One girl starts crying and dashes out of the room.
‘What a darling, caring so much for my pain.’ Gwyneth hobbles to sit on the edge of the stage. The class babbles with excitement and shock. ‘Fear not, for I am fine, my merry band of vagabonds.’
More whispers. Everything is curse, curse, curse.
‘This is just stupid,’ I say, louder than I mean to. Everyone stares at me. ‘Everyone is just getting freaked out by the heat.’
‘You can, I suppose, blame our uneasiness on the heatwave, Wilde. You can blame our unsettled feelings on coincidence. But the accidents…’ Gwyneth rubs her ankle. ‘The effect it’s having on our minds – perhaps we should abandon the project, go back to class and let dead witches lie.’
Huge moan from the others. Someone spits a paper pellet at me, which is gross. They’re worried we’ll have to do work instead. I wish we could. The sun beats through the window. My heart hammers. I think I’m going to faint, but Susan steadies me.
‘No!’ Gwyneth bellows. ‘We shall not give in to her archaic sorcery. We shall go into battle and use theatre as our weapon! We must show everyone the story of this evil witch to expose her and stop the everlasting curse on Witch Point now!’ She bays a battle cry, as if she is commanding an evil spectre out of the room.
My world twirls, I stagger and I’m sent to sit alone in the shade like an outcast.
The others rehearse even more vigorously, afraid of being struck down too. I sit with my head between my knees until I’ve managed to stem my tears.
When I look up, faces of hate are around me. The mob are waving imaginary pitchforks and chanting ‘Hang her’ over and over. Their mouths are angry slashes and their words are filled with fire. I put my head back between my knees and press my ears shut.
Finally, the session is over. Gwyneth tells us the school will be sending out ticket sales details and we leave. A dark cloud hangs over us, filled with fear and spite.
The rest of the day goes by. We have taster sessions for what next year will be like at Witch Point High with teachers visiting us from the secondary school. Everyone is nervous about moving up, even if they are pretending they aren’t. An English teacher comes in to take us for a silent walk and we have to make a list of everything we notice with our senses. Then there is a P.E. taster where I watch from the sidelines because I still feel queasy and I don’t have any kit. Then there’s a too-short History taster where we research the Tower of London and all the beheadings there. When the teacher says that history is full of gory stuff and that, in Year Seven, we are going to be looking at Vlad the Impaler and his influence on the story of Dracula, I know we would get on if I went to Witch Point High. Which is a shame because I won’t be going.
Eventually, it’s home time and I can leave. I really like Dorcas, and some of the others in my class are nice too, but The Sleeks have been sly-eyeing me all day and I’m glad to escape.
It’s so hot. My breath catches in my throat. Some of the others went swimming together last weekend. A waterfall not far from here. Sgŵd-yr-Eira – The Falls of Snow. I felt a delicious cold shiver when I heard them talking about it, because that’s where the photo of my mum and me was taken. I realise it’s in the story of Winter, too: it’s where the seven rivers meet that are said to be the seven daughters, the waterfall where Winter is said to have trapped them. But the link between me and my mum is what calls to me. That’s where I want to go right now. Right this second.
When I swim in Mumbles or the Gower, it always helps my worries. I front crawl them away. I can do that at the waterfall. It sounds so cold. I can imagine myself standing beneath it. The thought gets me home.
‘Mae, I’m going swimming.’
There isn’t any answer. I can’t face the stairs. My swimming costume is at the top, but sweat trickles down my neck and soaks through the back of my shirt. I kick my shoes off, press the tiles with my feet and feel the cool of the house rise through me.
‘Mae?’ My voice echoes up the emptiness.
I need an ice-pop. It’s so hot I can’t think of anything but that waterfall and how I’m going to pack my forever bottle with ice cubes and rub them over my face on the way there.
As soon as I get a moment alone with the freezer, Mae dashes in from the conservatory.
‘Are you OK, Mae?’ She looks so worried.
‘They are all dying.’ Mae is close to tears. ‘All of them. The flowers. It’s the heat. We need to do something now.’
I can’t say I was going to go swimming. The flowers are Mae’s livelihood and love. Grabbing a tray of pots, I join her in the mad dash to get all her plants into the shady spot behind the house. It hardly gets the sun because it’s surrounded by trees. There’s a pond here. Something plops into it. I wouldn’t mind getting in myself. Mae knows her flowers well, so we must be helping them by putting them here.
As we rush back and forth, the direct sunlight drives through my head like a laser, but I press on. I need to be there for Mae.
Eventually all the plants are in the shade and watered. I help her to spray their leaves and enjoy the mist kissing my skin. We flop down on the grass in a comfortable silence.
‘Wilde. Are you happy here?’
The question comes from nowhere, so it takes me a minute to think how to answer. At this moment, I am very happy. Lying here on this sweet grass, surrounded by grateful flowers. I miss Dad but I’m due to speak to him again tomorrow and his work is very important. The stuff at school is difficult and most of the time I’m ragged from pretending to be normal but right now … ‘Yes, I am.’
‘I’m glad.’ She lifts a ladybird gently on to a fragile pink petal. ‘It’s where you belong.’
I look up at the sky, way above us. Beyond the yellow whispering leaves, it is crystal bright. ‘Can I sleep in the treehouse tonight?’
‘Of course.’
Sometimes things I think will be difficult are really very easy.
I drag a few bits up the ladder with me. Mae helps. We sweep the worst of the debris away and, though it is hot work, it is nice to be with her. We even sing a song, a Welsh folk song we both know about different-coloured goats, and then a rap only I know. Mae joins in like a beatbox and, though it’s out of time and we sound awful, it’s really fun. By the time we finish, Mae is satisfied that I can sleep on the roll-down mattress she’s found. I haven’t told her about the curses, and sleepwalking, and ending up on the roof. Witch Point, for all its bad luck, is a very safe area where everyone knows everyone else so she has no worries about my safety. I have so many worries rattling about inside my head, I’m a human maraca.
Mae goes down and I sit on the platform for a bit, watching all the animals wombling around. The flowers shine their best colours as night begins to fall and their scents get heady as they try to attract the last of the day’s insects. Hornets drone past as the sky bruises. The owls begin to call and I turn on my torch.