I step through the waterfall and hover. I’m not surprised to fly. It’s as natural as the beating of my heart.
I hold Jemima high above the water.
They are all watching me now. These children, who think they can bully me, dangle in the air. The drowning pool is below me. I see shapes in it. The seven sisters dancing. Winter emerging.
As she rises, everything becomes cold. The surface clouds into ice. The waterfall freezes into claws. Ice spreads out to the trees, making them white. Beautiful, sharp, glistening, fierce, bright white.
The birds shake the children like rag dolls. I can order them to release their puppets. Drop them and smash them all to smithereens.
Winter moves towards me. She is dressed in rags. Younger than I thought. About my age. I’m getting revenge for both of us. And for my mum.
The sky has turned black. Pictures move in the ice of the waterfall, dark, evil.
I am taking revenge for all of us.
Dorcas screams. ‘No, Wilde. No.’
I get ready to tell the birds to smash their prey, but Winter smiles at me. I feel a shiver run through my body. I look into her face. I look at Jemima’s face. Scared to death.
This is a crossroads. I can make a choice. I can kill everyone here and let witches hide forever, if there are any others out there. Or I can try to make these people understand. How it feels to be an outsider. What it feels like to be thought of as evil before you’ve even opened your mouth.
Enough of this. Winter was a good witch who turned bad because of the town’s actions. I need everyone to hear her story. I won’t turn bad because of pressure. I have choices. I can stop this. I land and set Jemima free. ‘Enough.’
Winter disappears. The sky clears and the heat of the day returns. The ice melts and falls as water again from the waterfall. The surface of the pool cracks and the faces disappear. The children are let down gently by the birds, who swoop and sing.
Holly, Dorcas, Susan, Jemima and Lewis sit on the ground in shock.
I breathe in this beautiful place. I’m so sick of hiding. I’m not going to do it anymore. I am never going to hide again.
‘I am a witch,’ I shout to the hills and to them. ‘I AM A WITCH.’
18
I yank down the colourful pictures and pull the feathers from the window of the treehouse. Kick the walls. Stamp on the cushions. Sink into a corner and bawl. I’m going to escape to the other side of the world today somehow. I was never meant to come here. It was always going to go wrong. That’s why Dad always tried to stop me coming here. That’s why Mae wouldn’t tell me anything more about Mum. The magic is too strong for me to hide it when I’m here.
One of Dorcas’s paintings has landed by my feet. I uncrumple it and then cry some more. I should have been stronger and kept my weirdness inside. It’s all over now. I’ve ruined everything.
‘Wilde.’
‘What do you want?’ I must have been crying too much to hear Dorcas arrive.
She doesn’t say anything. She stays in the doorway, then takes a step towards me, and immediately a step back.
‘Oh dear, poor Dorcas. Afraid of me again, are you?’
The agony makes my words sharp. I squeeze myself further back into the corner. If anyone is afraid here, it’s me.
Dorcas takes a tentative step inside and then another. Then she kneels down so she’s on my level. The space between us has grown into a gulf and this time I can’t fill it with kind words.
‘Wilde. I…’ She licks her lips nervously. ‘I’ve never… We’ve never seen anything like that before. How is it even possible?’
I have an idea. My only hope. ‘It was a trick. I’ve joined the magic circle. I’ve been practising and it was just a trick.’
The expression on Dorcas’s face stops me. There’s no point in pretending. I’m done with it.
‘It wasn’t a trick. I’m a witch.’
Dorcas doesn’t run.
‘I am but I don’t want to be. I want to be normal like everyone else, but I’m a witch. Always have been. Always will be.’
She doesn’t respond.
‘My mother was a witch. Her mother was a witch before her. The witch called Winter was one of my ancestors. That’s why strange things have been happening since I’ve been here. Weird stuff follows me around. Birds, yes. But there have been more here than anywhere else. I think it’s because I am close to where my family came from. I think Winter has been trying to talk to me somehow. The story about her, it’s not what happened. My mother has been trying to communicate with me, too, I think.’
I smooth out Dorcas’s painting and prop it up against the wall while I muster the energy to continue.
‘The flying is a new thing to me. I didn’t lie to you about that. I just didn’t believe it. Also seeing things in mirrors, glass, water. It’s called scrying. That’s never happened to me before either. That was my mother’s gift.’
Dorcas is dumbfounded. I’m not surprised. I would be too. I go to speak again but she holds up her hand and I wait, listening to the sounds of summer outside and the hard, low thud of my heart.
‘Firstly, that’s the most you’ve spoken in one go ever.’ Her voice is shaky.
‘I’m trying to be more like you.’ It’s a poor effort at a joke, and Dorcas stops me again.
‘Secondly, I don’t understand. Witches don’t exist, do they? Really? I mean people were accused of witchcraft, but it wasn’t real?’
‘It is real. I’ve had to hide it all my life. I lost my temper. I just couldn’t keep it in anymore.’
‘So if you lose your temper again?’
‘I’ve always managed to control it. The birds. I got them to put you all down, didn’t I?’ This is difficult. I can feel the anger starting to gather and the birds coming towards us. I will them away hard and push my feelings back down deep.
‘I don’t know, Wilde. The others are pretty scared. None of them want to come anywhere near you.’
That stings so sharply I can’t swallow.
‘What if you can’t control it? When you’re angry again.’
‘I can.’ I shift uncomfortably.
‘But what if you can’t?’
There is an endless silence while I realise how hopeless this all is.
‘Are there more of you? Witches?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never met any.’ The crack in my voice stops me for a second. ‘I don’t know. I’ve always been hiding. Perhaps, if there are others, they are doing the same.’ I swallow hard again. ‘Or perhaps I am the only one.’
Dorcas looks out of the window when I say that. She was my first real, proper friend.
‘I’m lonely, Dorcas.’ Those three words fill the world. ‘I’m all alone.’
She stands. I do the same. I search her face for clues.
‘I’m going to go now.’