Hehe, this shouldn't be another 500 word thread, I think.
Anyway, here's a story I've started writing, to come in three parts. Ummm, it's very different to what I usually write. Well, I don't really write all that often, but it's certainly different to what I usually think of writing. It's even in the first person! I don't normally do that.
Well, anyway, here's that first part. Please, have a look. Leave a comment or critique, it would be much appreciated.
Stormgold
Prologue
! A young girl lay on her stomach on the rug in front of the hearth. Legs kicking the air, she put the finishing touches to her childish picture. Chalk strokes on black slate had built up a crude imitation of her manor’s front, thrust up from sharp and overlarge pastel green blades of grass. The sky was a uniform sea of blue, the sun a yellow circle - no, a ‘golden’ circle. Bobbing her head to some private tune, she added odd details - a sun ray here, a window pane there. She was seven years old, this girl. And as she stood up and lifted her slate with her, she thought to herself, yes, this was the artwork of a seven year old. She could be proud. And it was time to show it off.
! Nearby, on the table - the ‘study table’, it was called - her older sister sat with her Dada. They were poring over teaching books, learning about geography and history and science and all those other things she wasn’t yet allowed to know. For she was only seven, and Ellie was ten, and it made a world of difference. Ten year olds studied all the important things they had to know to be a proper girl. Seven year olds played by the fire.
! “How do you say this word, father?” Ellie asked, even as the little girl approached them.
“Antephor. You don’t know it, but you know it. Look here,” he said, pointing at the twisted, winding tube of glass suspended over the table, supplying them with light. “See, the light is glass on the outside just to give it shape. There’s a thin layer of metal on the inside - that metal is antephor - and it reacts with the Stormgold to produce light.” The little girl listened too. She remembered how she had asked her Dada how the lights had worked some years go. “They’re clever little things, aren’t they?” he had said with a smile. “You’ll learn all about it when you’re older.” And it was always like that - you had to wait until you were older. And that meant she was always second for everything. She got all her clothes when her sister outgrew them. She sat by the fire and drew with her chalks or tried to make music or played while her sister studied or learned to ride or whatever other things you got to do when you were older.
! “Look Dada,” she said, proffering her artwork.
Her father smiled genially. “It’s wonderful,” he said.
“Yes,” Ellie agreed. But her eyes hinted at her irritation. She wanted to talk to Dada about the lights and words and all the other things in the books. She didn’t want to be interrupted.
“I wonder what I should draw next,” said the little girl.
“Perhaps a person?” her Dada suggested.
“But people are hard,” she complained.
And, “All the more reason to try,” he said, as she knew he would. And so she went back to the hearth and dusted clean her slate and tried to draw her Dada and her sister at their books, tried not to make Ellie look evil, tried to forget how she was always second to her sister.
! That child was me, nearly eight years ago. It is but one of my more vividly unhappy memories from those scattered through my childhood, and perhaps it is not the best starting point for this tale, yet it gets the ink flowing; it helps me get black on white, at least. We had a teacher who always told us that every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. She was a good teacher, but I doubt she was a very good storyteller. When I try to look for the beginning of this tale of my own, I find myself as if fumbling in the dark for a candle that will only sputter and go out. For, truly, can I say my story began with my birth, as all the old hero stories do? For obviously I cannot remember my birth to tell of it. If I should seek the accounts of others, then surely I can reach further back, to the birth of my sister Elliana three years prior. Or perhaps the dice were thrown the moment my parents were married. Or, to turn the other way, perhaps I was shaped by that day I can scarcely remember, when our mother died. I do not think I can find a true beginning for this story, but I do recall a day late in the autumn of last year when, it seems to me, almost every little stream from that elusive beginning cascaded together.
Part I - Gathering
! There is a tradition around where I live that girls share their chambers with a maid until they reach the age of fifteen. Ostensibly, this is a mark of the transition between childhood and adulthood, but really it is little more than a dusty old anachronism. So I protested to my father on many an occasion - indeed, after I turned fourteen, my schooling finished and I was entrusted to an allowance to manage for myself, yet I was not trusted to keep my own chambers. I never quite won that argument though - my father accepted my rationale wholeheartedly, but insisted ‘tradition is important’. I still think I might have swayed him if not for the Woman’s influence. But, as I did not, I shared my chambers with my maid, Sherry, who lived on the other side of a paper screen, forever fussing over me and my room. On that day late in the autumn, I awoke to find her absent.
! I stood before my tall mirror that hung on the wall, assessing myself. The top button on my blouse no longer quite closed, its puffy cuffs fell a little too short of my wrists. It was another hand-me-down from my sister. I resolved - again - that I would get a new one the next time I was in town, to join the dark green (nearly black) skirt, the thick belt and the big brown boots I wore. I blinked at my reflection and smiled. I was proud of my eyes, bright green and so much better than my sister’s olives. ‘Ghost’s eyes’ the old priest had named them once. I had taken a perverse sort of pride in that, but it was only some years later that I had learned he’d meant that I had my mother’s eyes. That had made me all the more proud.
! I didn’t really need a maid, and it showed on days like this, where she had been carried off at the crack of dawn by other duties. I had gone through all my morning rituals, the prayers and the washing and dressing all drilled into me by years of habit. I had drawn my hair into my usual dark ringlets ‘to contrast ‘gainst your white white face’ as Sherry always said. I had splashed on a little of that rose scent my sister had made for me herself, gifted to me on by birthday. And now I slipped on that one piece of jewellery I owned, a gift from my wandering uncle. To most it might look a simple bangle of steel, but I knew that it was really pure antephor. Standing out against the surface were letters, the words Winter Girl. The Woman had tutted with disapproval when she’d opened my gift (she was intrusive like that). “You’re both born in spring, aren’t you?” she asked of me and my sister. But I knew it was the name of a song by the Luga Troupe, my favourite song. It was a very nice gift.
! When I had dared to leave the warmth of the covers, I had looked out of the window. A few stubborn leaves clung to the branches of the poplars lining the carriageway, and folk were hurrying about below, doing this and that. More folk than usual. Now, I hunted for the first servant I might find between my room and breakfast to interrogate. I suspected we had guests coming.
! So I halted my skipping and humming when I found old Al the gofer fetching some bedding. He confirmed my suspicions. “The Master got word last night,” he said. “The Governor’s coming to visit, it seems, and damn soon. He’s got all sortsa friends coming ahead of him. Sir Kirran of Arrow’s set to arrive before lunch!” I agreed readily with his grumbling that it ‘ain’t right’, and wondered to myself about our guests. Sir Kirran was a business partner of my father’s, the best I knew, and he came from the north, near the capital. I’d never met him though.
! “Sir Kirran’s one of our business partners, isn’t he?” I said conversationally at breakfast. My father, sister and I were sat around the small table, eating bread and eggs and bacon with tea. The Woman was late, as usual. My father was wearing a modern suit with a rather flamboyant tie, my sister a long dark dress and her earrings. She never wore her earrings. It had occurred to me that what was happening today was more significant than just the arrival of some guest.
“Yes. I haven’t seen him since I last went north. God, that was years ago, wasn’t it?”
“He’s more than that,” Ellie told me. “He owns a fifth of the estate.” She knew things like that. Even as my father let her experiment away in her shed (‘workshop’), she had been helping him run the business for several years. Unlike me, she was actually useful.
“Our estate?” I said. “But, it’s our estate.”
“His father gave this family a lot of money in exchange for that stake, when money was in short supply.” This came in a deep voice from the Woman, late to breakfast as usual, for she had spent an age on her extravagantly bundled hair, her perfect dress, her painted face. For my father and sister, it was something special. For her, it was her everyday appearance. My father’s wife, I thought.
“Mother,” I said. Back when our father had married her, Ellie and I had been thick as thieves in defying her. But then my sister had grown up, as she had to. She was the heir, the figurer, the machinist, the genius. Well, I had given up on open defiance too. But I hadn’t changed, not really. I stabbed into my egg as the conversation flowed around me.
! The nearest town to our estate was Applehirst, a chaos of narrow cobbled alleys snaking between tall wooden buildings with taller smokestacks. A few main streets ran this way and that, with all the important shops and things, but the real heart of the town was the lakefront, where the fishermen’s little vessels bobbed alongside the heavier trading boats. Piers thrust out into the lapping Lake Darley, and they thronged with folk in the morning fish markets and in the evening, when the sun set far away at the west end of the lake, and all the water seemed to come alive with flame. In summer, great parties were held, troupes came in to sing and there were mock fights and dancing and the townsfolk would sell their apple jams and apple tarts and apple everything. But now it was nearly winter, and the famous apple trees that stood on every other corner were all bare skeletons. The sun was getting low and the occasional breeze made it just about cold enough for coats. I was strolling down the High Street, taking in the more ordinary sights of town. Here a baker was hawking the last of his day’s bread, there a cat pounced for a bird a little too late, and a gangly, hungry looking boy stared out at me from one of many narrow alleys - had I seen him before? And then it was all lost to me as a carriage clattered past me in an awful hurry. I had been seeking Sir Kirran for some time now.
! All the household had lined up in front of the manor, the three-storey U shape made by the protruding North and South wings mirrored in the gravelly carriageway before us. A carriage was crunching its way towards us, dark and ornate, patterned in gold. The black horses leading it, wearing their feathered caps and driven by a dull looking, broad-faced man, brought with them their animal smell and the snorts and heavy breathing of labour. With few tasks to do in the bustle of preparation, I had escaped from underfoot and spent my time being excited. I have always found it amazing how the very anticipation could steal away more of your time than the event itself. I had spent time imagining what Sir Kirran would look like, what he would be like. He was a business partner of father’s, so surely he would be about father’s age, and smart and proper. He was from the north, so no doubt he would be dark too. I had imagined and doodled a dozen different men - a stumpy, fat toad of a man in a grim suit was pencilled next to an austere fellow with a distant look in his eyes. Or perhaps he was gaunt and fading. Or perhaps …
! When the carriage came to a stop, I got my answer. As one of ours - young Gill - opened the door, a figure slid gracefully out, like an uncoiling cobra. He gave his coat over to Gill with an accented ‘Thank you’. I feel silly to write it, but my breath was taken away. He was far younger than I had thought, and tall, with a long face, a straight and thin nose, thin lips baring back to reveal perfect teeth. A white shirt and red waistcoat clung tightly to his slender body, the cuffs flaring out in the modern style. Gold and silver bangles decorated his wrists. My eyes darted down. Tight jerkin flaring at the calf to tuck into elegant riding boots. My eyes darted up. Jet black hair speckled with the occasional grey, seemingly arranged to be slightly imperfect in the most perfect way. And eyes, those eyes, shaped like almonds, coloured like honey.
! “Kirran!” said my father.
“It’s been too long,” said his wife.
“It has. Mr Ealy, Kelly, you both look well,” he greeted them in turn. Such a pleasant voice.
He turned to me. I fumbled for words. I didn’t find them. Say something! I urged myself.
“These are my daughters.” My father to the rescue. “Elliana and Leah.” Could I not even manage a simple greeting?
“Charmed,” was all he said. I saw a small smile and a look of amusement in his eyes. What did that mean? That he understood what had happened, that it was alright? Or perhaps he was mocking me? Or perhaps, most unpleasantly, it was nothing to do with me. Perhaps I was utterly beneath his notice.
! It took me the hour that followed to understand, to gather together my riled up thoughts. I came to one simple realisation: Sir Kirran was beautiful. It was the first time I had realised that a man could actually be beautiful. Handsome? Yes. Appealing? Yes. But this was completely different. I resolved to do better, that I could gain his attention. And in part, I was successful. Through lunch, the adults had spoken of the past and of people I had never met or never even heard of. Matters of the estate had been brought up - on that new bit of woodland we were planning to buy, our experiment that year with the barley crop and so on. But briefly, the conversation turned to the daughters, and so, in part, to me. Sir Kirran’s attention made me at once excited and nervous. He had seemed genuinely interested in my musical exploits - particularly that I could play the organ. He had even said he would like to hear me play! And even the Woman’s usual disapproval that it was just ‘a little hobby’ could not chill the warmth that gave me. But I didn’t get to talk to him, not really. And so I sought to redeem myself.
! Sir Kirran had some acquaintances from around the lake who were in Applehirst today and he had been keen to meet them. My father said we could all make a trip to town, then, and do some shopping, for there was much needed to prepare for the onslaught of guests to follow. Sir Kirran had donned his feathered tricorn and long coat and insisted he must rush ahead in his own carriage, but pledged to return with us. And so after a two hour ride of anticipation, I had begun my hunt for him. I had already been measured at the tailor’s and ordered a new blouse for myself for the first time.
! I found him, at last, standing with a group of well-dressed young men, who I guessed were his friends. They were at an intersection with another of Applehirt’s main streets, outside a rather expensive looking jeweller’s. They were talking too quietly for me to hear, but occasional bursts of laughter bubbled over to me. Sir Kirran had his back to me, and as I approached, I felt my heart quicken its pace. I told it to behave. It didn’t.
! “Who’s this then?” said one of the young men, as if that were a greeting. I felt a dozen eyes turn on me, distantly blue and grey and green.
“Oh my, collar undone, no bow, mud on her skirt … She’s the picture of the east coast, eh?” another said.
“So provincial,” said a third. I felt as if my stomach fell to the cobblestones. Westenders. My father said they all owned fancy boats, ate swans and viewed the whole world as their birthright. And of course they would make me look a fool. Maybe because I am a fool, I thought. And then Sir Kirran turned and saw me. I saw his eyebrows raise a fraction.
! “Ah, my friends, this young lady is my host, come to collect me at last. And so, I must be off. My regards.” He put his hat on as he said this, and then walked away, and me with him. He didn’t offer me his arm as I had wanted, but nor did he usher me along like a child. I felt rescued. But more, I felt special.
! When we were some way away, he stopped and turned to face me.
! “I have to apologise on behalf of my friends. Erudite though they are, they know little of etiquette.”
I blinked twice. I felt my silly smile frozen on my face. Understanding somehow escaped me. The silence felt as if it stretched on for an eternity, and all the while I urged myself to say something, urged the blood to stop rushing to my cheeks, urged my mind to function. The noise of the street, his smell of spices, my earlier humiliation - they all fled as we stood frozen.
! “Sir Kirran.” My sister materialised and shattered my little infinity. She had come to fetch him for my father, who needed him for something important.
“I … have to go pick up my blouse,” I excused myself. Sir Kirran nodded with a slightly raised eyebrow, but my sister gave this look, lips slightly parted and shoulders slumped in a sigh, eyebrows tilted up in concern - a picture of exasperation. She could read me so well sometimes.
! I fully intended to torture myself for my stupidity all the way to the tailor’s, but my brooding was cut short when I saw a gangly, hungry looking boy staring out at me from an alley. Was it the same alley? It didn’t matter; it was certainly the same boy. And he was certainly staring at me. I suppressed the chill whispering over my skin and went over to him.
! “Hello,” I said, bending done to be level with his face. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old. “Would you like some food?” He shook his head. “I can buy you some bread,” I offered with my best impression of gentleness. He shook his head harder. He beckoned me to follow him. There is a witch in town, and she roasts little children who wander into her lair and eats them for dinner. I dismissed from my mind the scare story the Woman had told me when I was already too old to believe it, but I was apprehensive about following him all the same.
! “Come see Gran. She needs your help.” This he said so earnestly, so honestly, so childishly that, against my better judgement, I followed him. He scrambled through a maze of Applehirst’s narrow alleys, sometimes over wooden debris people had left out back. I had to hurry to keep up, and whenever I fell too far behind, he would stop at the next corner and and look at me, eyes pleading me to come along. He led me through an almost horizontal door, down steep steps and into a dim underground room lit by one winding tube of Stormgold suspended from the ceiling.
! When the boy had told me his Gran needed help, I had imagined a withered old woman, wasted by hunger or illness or both, swathed in rags and tripping over the threshold of death. But that was not what I found in that basement room. I saw an old woman, yes, short and wrinkled with a shock of white hair. But she was not weak. In the ten feet or so between me and her sat a great spider woven of wire, about as far across as I was tall. And that beast was connected to the woman by a loose wire, a thick worm of steel, that she was whipping around and winding into place. It was in places red hot, in others white hot, and wherever the colour changed, arcs of lightning shot from the wire to the fingertips of that old woman. As I watched in wonder at this great sparking, hot weaving, I noticed the woman had metal tabs attached to her fingertips, like extra fingernails, and it was to these - or from these? - that the lightning arced. Occasionally, little sparks would fly between the tabs. For that minute or so I watched, trying to take in the details of what was happening before me, I truly felt as if I had been struck, physically struck, by wonder. I could not clamp my jaw shut, nor stop my eyes widening, nor stop the goosebumps spreading across my skin like crawling spiders.
! And then she was done, and she dropped the remaining wire. I realised how alive with sound the room has been. The whooshes and twangs of whipping wire, the hissing and crackling of lightning. Now there was just the panting of a tired old woman shining with sweat. I approached as she was removing the tabs from her fingers - I noticed they were connected to rings that went around the fingers.
! “What is your name, child?” she asked me in her old, old voice.
“Leah,” I answered, banishing caution.
A grin spread across her face, showing the few scattered and crooked teeth. “A beautiful name. I am Kiki. People call me the Witch of Applehirst, and I make the most wondrous things.” There is a witch in town … I forced the old memory away once more, drowned the momentary stab of fear.
! “Could you … “ I am talented. I am not my sister, but I can do many things well. “Could you teach me to do that?” I asked. She raised her eyebrows. She took my right hand in her bony fingers. Her finger ran from the bracelet my uncle gave me down to my fingertips. And then she looked into my eyes and grinned even wider. “I think I can, Leah. Everyone has some talent. And you seem to have that and more. It’s all in the hands you see. And you have the best hands.”
! She showed me a little pot. Inside was a bright, silvery liquid.
“Stormgold?” I asked. She nodded. She then put a tab on each of my forefingers and had me dip them in. As I removed them, the droplets that had clung to the tabs were hissing and sparking. I found myself able to force an arc between my hands and was making it wider and wider before it all ran out. “The tabs are antephor,” I said. She may have nodded; I do not know. I was not asking. “So I can learn to do like what you were doing?” I was asking again. “To shape the wires with lightning?”
! “Oh, yes. And so much more.” She took the tabs back from me. Claws, I would come to call them. “However, Leah, there is a little problem. I have so little Stormgold left, and it is so hard to get, so expensive. I have never had the kind of money to buy enough for my work, but as a young woman, I had the will. My poor Vic,” she nodded to the boy I had completely forgotten about, sat playing with a cat in the corner, “is too young. But you … if you could bring me some Stormgold, I could surely teach you my arts.” I couldn’t contain my grin, and Kiki returned it.
! So when I returned to the house that evening, I began plotting how I could steal some of our Stormgold supply. It was very expensive, and surely the staff would know if I took any from the stores. I could empty my light, but that would not be enough … and if I kept needing my light refilling, it would arouse suspicion. Then there was my sister’s supply … I entered my room after dinner with my mind filled with ideas, but they all fled when I looked at my bed. My sister had apparently supplanted my maid. And there was a neatly laid out blouse I had forgotten to pick up.
! “Hello,” said my sister. As if we hadn’t eaten dinner together all of ten minutes ago.
“Evening.” I eyed the blouse.
“I picked it up for you. I thought I’d go looking for you after I’d dropped Sir Kirran off with father. But then you hadn’t been back at the tailor’s, and you were nowhere to be found. So, I suppose something really important must have come up somewhere really unexpected.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, ignoring the hidden questions in her words. My sister was so infuriatingly nice most of the time. It made it hard to get angry at her. And then, “Ellie, you use a lot of Stormgold experimenting in your workshop. Could you, um, give me a key so I could have a look sometime and maybe … have a go myself?”
I thought her eyebrows would fly all the way to the moon. “This is very sudden. Or maybe not after your disappearance today. What are you getting yourself into?”
I sighed and affected exasperation. “I’m not doing anything stupid or dangerous,” I assured her. Yes, playing with lightning and hot metal in a stranger’s underground house. Nothing dangerous there, Leah.
She began to leave. “I’ll think about it, then. You can have your secrets, if you really want them.”
“And you yours,” I said. And she gave me an odd look. It was then that I realised my sister did actually have secrets.
! I struggled to sleep that night. My mind was too full of spiralling thoughts. I thought about music and drawings. I thought about stories and songs. I thought about my new teacher and what I could learn. I thought about showing everyone the things I could do, the things I could make. I thought about the looks on their faces. The Woman’s shock at my new brilliance, my father’s simple pride and Sir Kirran … impressed, praising me. Oh, I still had to play the organ for him sometime, didn’t I? And so I thought of other things too, speculating on what secret my sister might be keeping, what Cook Tava might cook up tomorrow, when the Governor might actually arrive. And most of all, my mind went to what other mysterious arts Kiki could teach me.
! I thought of that day as a tumultuous one then, the dramatic start to my everything. A day of failures outshines by brilliant new discoveries. But now I see it as just the gathering of the
stormclouds.
Part II - Strikes
! The old witch watched me through narrowed eyes, crouching, hands poised, a crouching tigress. I had none of that. I stood hunched, sweat dripping past my eyes, hands moving up and down with my deep breaths. And between us, the wires. Ten ribbons of steel, each tied to an antephor tab on one of my fingers and its opposite on her tough old hands. Kiki’s tabs - her claws - were just touching the Stormgold in the kettle in front of her. Suddenly, she flicked her right ring finger, sending a wave down the wire. Instinctively, I flicked my left ring finger in response, willing, pushing, and the wave reversed and returned to Kiki’s finger, where a spark emerged. The spark I had successfully repelled. It bounced across her fingertips, from right ring finger to left thumb, and then there was another tug and another spark to fend off. Soon, I was fending off three at once, some of the wire tugs became decoys, some sparks were sent with no tug at all. Sparks rolled across her fingers as mere diversions. Every now and then, I would miss one or fail to push it back and I would feel the sharp numbing sting through to my elbow, and then I would lose five strings to the reflexive spasms and five to a lapse in focus. Kiki would give me only the slightest reprieve. I had been playing the string game every day for a week; it was hard work, tricky to the point of being infuriating … but most of all, it was fun.
! After a couple of torturous days of deliberation, Ellie had given me the spare key to her shed. In the meantime, I had persuaded my father to let me go to town on my own as I pleased. With that, my lessons had begun. With the basics.
! “Stormgold. Liquid lightning. It reveals its true form when it comes into contact with antephor. This, everyone knows,” Kiki had told me at the very start. “This is not what my art is about. For you have seen it already: the lightning bends to my will. Flowing through wire, heating it up, forcing its shape to change, until I tear it away and put it somewhere else. And that is what I will begin teaching you, the old way.” The string game was meant to motivate me to turn the sparks away through pain. Perhaps on a physical level, it did. But I think I was more motivated by the desire to become better, and, of course, to beat my mentor at her own game just once. At first, we had kept it simple - a wave would come as a nice visual cue with every spark. Back then, I didn’t have to feel the spark with my hidden senses. All the complications, all the feints and tricks, they had come later.
! As I was leaving, Kiki sighed. “You are impatient to advance, and yet you are running back early. As it is, it will be a long time before you can master even the basics. And I cannot let you handle real lightning so soon, not when you still miss the odd spark.”
! “I know,” I told her, “But sometimes things come up that I can’t avoid.” She looked sceptical, and rightly so. I left with Vic in tow. The boy had two permanent companions: a gangly ginger cat and a wide staring look. Indeed, the first time I had come back, I had gotten hopelessly lost despite having thought I’d committed the route to memory. I was saved when I saw his wide eyes staring out at me yet again. After that first day, I had bought myself a map of town and marked on the location of the den the following day. I had stared at that map until it burned into my mind. I had no more need of Vic’s help to find my way, but he wanted to walk with me, so I let him. On that first day, I had struck my arm on something once, when I took a spark, and put a dent in my bangle. Since my sleeve was long enough to hide it, I dismissed it as nothing to Kiki when she asked, but since then, I’d stopped wearing it. Now I felt I missed its cold touch a little.
! The winter sun was already well on its way to setting as I left Applehirst. I had left Vic behind where I had stabled my horse - a service that was adding up to cost me a lot of money. There was a chill in the air and a bite to the wind that made me glad of my hat and coat. There had been a storm on the lake the day before and the Governor had had to stop his slow cruise eastward to take shelter. But even now, the winds were strong there and the water choppy, enough to delay him for some time yet. Nonetheless, a few more guests had arrived at the manor. First had come a withered old politician, Lord Axmire. His bad eyes and poor joints meant he had to be helped in everything he did. Then had come a wealthy heiress from the Back Country, Madam Howle, who seemed the image of those few elite who ruled the Backs - hardworking, bold and brusque - but from my limited encounters with her, I suspected she was actually not very intelligent. The most recent was a retired garrulous old guardsman from Enderstown, who was simply called Berc. Each had brought with them their own little retinue, and the house was already busier than I could ever remember it having been. As a result, my absences were noted, but I was not missed. That day was a little different; I was to perform on the organ - one of my own compositions - for all the eminent guests as a little pre-dinner entertainment. Honestly, it did bother me that it was stealing me away from my learning time with Kiki, and she was right to think it wasn’t necessary for me to go. But I did relish the chance to show off, and my father had approved. And Sir Kirran had been the one to suggest it to me.
! When I returned, I knew something was a little off. The house was all too quiet, with none of the usual bustling of servants. The only place I found busy was the kitchen, where Tava was knifing vegetables for dinner. She was a big woman, Tava, with an even bigger voice to shout orders over the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. I asked her where everyone was.
! “The Master took everyone out for hunting this morning. They took lunch with them, but I’m sure they’ll be back for dinner.”
! “But I was supposed to perform for everyone. Before dinner.”
! “Well, something happened and plans changed. But, say, I think the Lady wanted you to see her when she came back? Or so I heard.”
! “‘Something happened’?”
! “It’s not my place to say,” she said reluctantly. I saw the two kitchen maids exchange glances, like they all knew what had happened. This was infuriating.
! “I see. I suppose I’ll ask Ellie then.”
! “I wouldn’t do that, Miss. She’s probably not in the mood to see anyone right now. I reckon she’s a little upset.” She spoke quietly compared to her normal volume.
! I looked at her. Questions formed, but I stopped them on my tongue, knowing she wouldn’t feel it was ‘her place to say’. I left. And I wondered. My sister? Upset? Did she fight with my father? That never happened. I wondered whether having an older sister meant she would always feel a little more advanced, a little more mature, that she would always feel like something unattainably different - was that why this situation seemed so alien to me? Or maybe it was just that I had never really known my sister that well, that I had always seen her more as a giant casting me into a pit of shadow than a sister. Maybe it was just that something very big had happened, and everyone knew about it but me.
! I found the Woman in the drawing room. She sat on the floor at the low table in front of the hearth, where I once lay and played and made drawings on my blackboard. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, back straight, hands poking out from the wide, loose, cuffs of her blue dress. Slender long-nailed fingers held a few of the many papers spread out before her with delicacy. The deep V-cut of her dress came nearly to her navel, revealing the dark green patterned corset that pushed her breasts up and in, as if she were holding them close, afraid of letting them too far from her body. A subtle artificial blush coloured her cheeks over the white powder that uncoloured them. The dark make-up on her eyelids seemed to weigh down on her long eyelashes, exacerbating the gracefulness with which she read the papers. She makes it look so simple, as if grace and beauty are like breathing to her, I thought with envy and disgust in equal measure. It cast my mind back to last night, when Sir Kirran had asked me about performing today. He was sipping coffee calmly, sitting on the armchair with legs crossed. As I talked to him, he listened with apparent interest and laughed in all the right places. And simply and elegantly, he slipped in the question: would I perform for everyone, for he would love it if I did, and he had long wanted to hear me play? He and the Woman seemed to me to be like mirror images, dark and pale, male and female, both effortlessly beautiful. I returned to the present.
! “Yes?” I used the word as a greeting, sullenly.
! She didn’t even glance at me. “You are going to have a lesson with me now, until the others return.”
! I just stared at her.
! “Your father and I have discussed it and decided you need to learn a little more about some things, like-“
! “I finished my schooling when I turned fourteen. Why are you doing this now?” I really meant ‘Why you?’
! She looked at me, light brown eyes piercing my green. “Please sit down.”
! I’m not sure what made me do it, but I gave in and sat down. She gave me a set of problems - all figures and business planning - to do; a ‘test’. We worked in silence - there was the crackling of the fire, the scratch of my pen, the rustle of papers but we spoke only as much as we needed to. When I had finished the problems - nearly two hours later - I moved to leave, but she motioned me to stay.
! “I think you should learn how to read people,” she said. “You’re spending a lot of time in town.”
! “I have friends there.” I was wary. She was like a snake, watching me, waiting for weakness. Or so I convinced myself.
! “Yes, this Vic … what sort of a name is that? A boy’s or a girl’s?”
! “Does it matter?” I was reflexively defensive.
! “No, I suppose not.”
! “Besides, there are others too.”
! “Strangers are dangerous, Leah.” I rolled my eyes, but she held up a hand. “I know, but it is true. Faces tell stories, but they are hard to read.” She reached out to touch my face. I flinched at her contact, her fingers cold, yet oddly gentle. “Here is the brow from your father, the eyes from your mother, the scar from the carving accident when you were eight … “ I moved away from her hand, and she withdrew it. “But I know you. Strangers are harder. If you want to believe it, a scar from fighting with the town guard can be an accident. If you want to believe it, a broken nose can be from a drunken brawl rather than a bad fall. With a stranger, we can see what we want to see. Or what they want us to see. So, you should learn to read people carefully.”
! I tried to read the intentions on that painted face, but I couldn’t see the difference between concern and judgement. “You think I’m being careless, and you want me to be scared of my friends in town,” I said slowly, gathering my thoughts as I spoke, “So that I’ll stop going to see them and come back.”
! “No,” she said, but I thought she was lying.
! “And then you want me to focus on helping with the estate, hence the test.”
! “That bit is true,” she conceded. “I think you should have your independence, but it is high time you answered to duty also.”
! We spent the rest of the lesson in an exercise where I described the faces of people we both knew and I tried to ‘read’ them. We finished with Sir Kirran, over whom I blushed and flustered quite a bit.
! She sighed. “You need to be mindful of yourself as much as strangers. An ornamental blade is beautiful, and means no harm, but a careless girl can still cut herself on one.” I felt the heat on my face more acutely then, but said nothing. As she told me our next lesson would have a ‘game’ designed to help with thinking critically and reading people, I wondered if maybe that last bit about Sir Kirran is what she had wanted to say all along.
! At dinner, my sister was unusually quiet and my father unusually talkative, keeping up with the retired guardsman Berc. Lord Axmire was taking his dinner in his room, as he often did, whilst Madam Howle kept trying to start conversation with Ellie. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to stir the hornet’s nest or if she was just dense; as I tried to ‘read her face’, I began to think it might be both. For the most part, I was watching people, trying to use this new idea as a way to piece together what had happened in the morning without actually asking anyone.
! After we had finished, Sir Kirran said “We should all move to the organ room now, to hear Leah play, should we not?”
! I laughed. “You cheated me! You asked me to play before dinner, and I rushed back all excited, only to find myself stuck with an exhausting lesson instead.” He graced me with an amused smile. Or perhaps it was a fake smile hiding … boredom? Irritation? I thought it looked genuine, but I reflected that my father’s wife could sound polite and favourable even to those she disdained. Maybe those two really were so much alike, and … I banished the thought to some distant corner of my mind. “Now,” I continued as I stood, “I am rather tired so I must retire to my room. Perhaps I could play for you all another day.” I caught Ellie’s eye for a moment before I left. She looked relieved, I thought.
! I put together that there had been some kind of fight that morning, and my father had taken all the guests out as a diversion, and somehow it related to me starting lessons with his wife. The aftermath of this quarrel had left an awkward air in the house, and it felt as if everyone in the family were avoiding one another. I thought myself reluctant to jump in the middle of my family’s fight, but I think it was more that I was unnerved about confronting how different they all were from my idea of them. Although I only really saw my sister at breakfast and dinner during that period, I did notice the effects of her changes, mainly in the work shed. It had once been a place for my father to tinker with things, but he had given it over to my sister many years ago. Since then, it had been filled with rollers to press foil, a furnace for blowing glass, all sorts of materials and odd instruments and, of course, barrels of Stormgold. Now it began to get cluttered with new little devices my sister was making, newspapers with articles on technology splayed open with scribbling and annotations all over them. Once, I saw an article about Imperial Technical College in the capital recruiting technician-students. I was beginning to feel that I knew what had happened and why.
! I got rid of my concerns in my favourite way: I distracted myself. I spent most of the day learning with Kiki, or else travelling there and back. Every other day I would have to hurry back early to have lessons with my father’s wife, with whom I was now playing a tough tactical board game that was popular in the capital. All the talk about reading people made me confused about Sir Kirran in a way which I didn’t know how to handle. So I avoided him too, put off entertaining the guests with my organ playing and avoided talking to them even at dinner. Only Madam Howle would comment on this in earshot of me, calling me something like a ‘confused rat’. All the while, winter deepened, snows covered the roads and the storms over the lake grew more ferocious. The Governor delayed his arrival more and more until at last he declared he would winter where he was and visit us in spring, much to the dismay of our staff and some of our guests. The others yet to come either made a detour to where the Governor was staying, or stopped wherever they were. The hustle and bustle of the busier house soon became the norm, and as the days grew shorter, the nights longer and the air colder I slipped into my routine and worried about little else.
! It was more than two weeks since the incident before I would inadvertently find out the truth. Kiki had promised me that the next day, I would begin the next stage of my training, and anticipation was making it hard to sleep. I tried to lull myself with monotonous thought exercises, but I could not help but let my mind wander and, every time it did, sleep escaped. Agitated, I padded out of my room, ostensibly to fetch some water, but really to relieve myself from the boredom of sleeplessness. The house was vast in the dead of night - vast and quiet. Closed doors muffled the crackle of flame and the snoring of sleepers, and the light of the half-moon seemed to leech everything of its colour, creating a world of greys and blacks and blues, a world of shadows. I slipped through the work of some morose painter until I reached a tear in the canvas. The drawing room door was slightly open, spilling orange and yellow into the hall. Sound came from within - conversation. Feeling not in the least guilty, I began to eavesdrop.
! “I think it’s foolish.” Sir Kirran. Oh, I still hadn’t performed as he had wanted me to, I remembered for the thousandth time. It seemed to me he was always nudging conversation towards that point and I was always ducking away. Maybe he was just trying to ask out of polite interest. But no, if I thought about it, about his expression when he spoke to me, about the way he formed his words, he did actually want me to do it. I should do it. I resolved to bring it up at breakfast.
! I realised the conversation had been moving on through my reverie. “ … wasteful not to,” my father was saying. “I do not want her to go, Kirran, but if she so desires, I can’t really stop her. She has ability and she needs somewhere to let it flourish.” For a silly moment, I thought they might be talking me and my lessons with Kiki. But then I realised they obviously didn’t know what I was doing, and I realised I was hearing confirmation of my suspicions. Aha.
! “Yes, yes, you are hoping they won’t accept her and she will have to stay. You know, things have changed in the capital, and if she has the ability you say she does, she has a real chance. You cannot just hope everything will work out, Yannick.”
! “I’m not so sure … “ My father sounded uncertain of himself.
! “She should do what she wants while she still has the freedom.” This came fro my father’s wife. I felt a shiver pass through me, and once again I was trying to reconcile her words with my image of her.
! “Kelly, I know how hard this must be for you, of all people, but you must think about this rationally. You have an estate to care for. You have an estate that must be cared for when you are gone. She needs to be here, learning, gaining experience. She needs to be here when it is time for her to take the reins, and she needs to be ready for them.”
! A pause.
! “We have another daughter,” she said. I felt my heart beating against my chest, heard my breathing sharpen. Now they really were talking about me.
! Sir Kirran spoke again. “What do you want? Do you want your blood to run this estate when you are gone? Or do you want your blood’s husband to do it?” He sounded angry.
! “Kirran,” my father warned.
! “Leah’s fairly talented, but in all the wrong areas. Oh, it’s all well and good she can draw and play music and all those other … ornamental things. But what are you going to do? Do you really think she can run this place for you? Do you even think you can find her a husband with the competence to run your estate for you? Ha! Do you really think … “
! I didn’t listen to any more. It was as if an arrow of lightning had struck me through the heart, and everything has stopped. I ran away. I scampered back into my bed and huddled under the covers as if I could hide from the pain, the pulling, tearing, clutching pain in my chest. She had seen this coming. She had warned me. And in my heart of hearts, I had seen this coming too. But there is a great difference between seeing a storm, knowing there’s some chance you might get struck by lightning, and actually experiencing that moment when it strikes you. So like a little child, I cowered fearing thunder, pained and waiting for the crash.
! * * *
! The misshapen lump of metal sat on its pedestal between us. Vic was winding it up; it was like a potter’s wheel, made to spin the metal so that we could shape it symmetrically. I was running my hands over the metal under Kiki’s instruction, pushing my senses, my own lightning, into it, feeling the shape. She had been teaching me how to read the shape of things like this, how to extend my senses with my abilities.
! “We will work together,” she told me. “This is to make it harder, not easier. You must have perfect control so that we are together in vision, together in direction, together in action.” I put on the antephor tabs she handed me, old and pitted. There were no wires now. “These are your claws. We will use them to cut and carve, to dig in, tear and shape. You will learn how to control the shape of the metal so finely you can manage the finest of details.”
! We worked with the mechanism grinding and whirring, heat flushing our faces, the smell of metal and ionised air hanging heavy around us. Like the wire game, I relished the shaping for the challenge it presented. It had been nearly a month since I had started to learn from her, and I still had much to learn. When I looked into her face, tried to read it, I saw how much hope she had for me, how eager she was for me to progress. I wanted to make her proud, I realised.
! When we had finished, a horribly misshapen pitcher sat despondently before us. I grimaced at the results of my poor handiwork. “Again,” she said, and we did it again. The result was much the same.
! “Again.” I set the board again, sitting across the low table by the hearth from my father’s wife. We had played many times now, but I had never yet won.
! “How is it you became so good at this?” I asked her sullenly.
! “I had a lot of practice. Where I grew up, near the capital, I played this game often. At first, I lost. Then I grew better at strategy, at reading intentions form faces and I began to win. Then I had to lose on purpose.”
! “Why?” That was just silly!
! “It wouldn’t be seen in a good light if I beat someone in a higher station than me. Oh, they wouldn’t say anything, but no one truly spoke their mind there. I learned to read the message behind the words, the feelings behind the frozen smiles and platitudes.”
! “It sounds like a terrible place,” I said honestly. The words felt awkward in my mouth.
! “It was. Perhaps it was my duty to stay, to try to change things for the better bit by bit, as others have done. But I ran away and followed my dreams instead.”
! We played silently for a while. Meanwhile, I built up my thoughts like castles to set out before her. “You want Ellie to go to the College because you don’t see it as fair to get her stuck here with duty when you ran away from it. She’s always been the dutiful daughter, so you can’t stop her from doing what she wants. I’ve always done what I wanted, so you’ve always pushed me towards duty. And so the lessons, which are supposed to prepare me for taking more of a role in running the estate.”
! She looked at me, for once openly surprised. “Yes, I suppose so. So you’ve finally spoken to Ellie about this.”
! I looked away. “Well, not quite.” I wouldn’t tell her I’d overheard her. Never.
! Another silence. Then, “You seem to be avoiding people a lot lately. You still haven’t performed as you promised Kirran.”
! Again that familiar tightness, that clutching pain in my chest. “I don’t want to!” I said much more sharply than I had meant to. A long silence followed. I could feel her eyes on me.
! “In any case, you two are sisters. You shouldn’t be so distant.”
! I thought about that for a long time that night.
! I was walking with Vic the next morning; he had come with his cat to fetch me, as he sometimes did. He was talking, but his words were mostly washing over me. I was tired and too deep in thought. The Woman, as I had once thought of her, had become someone else. More than just my father’s wife or my tutor; over the last month or so, she had become someone important. A friend. My stepmother, maybe. I was still thinking over her words. My sister was going to the capital to take the little workings of her shed and turn them into something more, into real skills, real knowledge. I was happy for her, I realised. When I thought about it, our roads had diverged long ago, if only out of my desire to be different. I’m not living in her shadow anymore, am I? I’m not following her there. I have my own path. But my … stepmother, she was right. I really needed to talk to Ellie about this, at least to support her. Haha, a funny idea that, supporting one another. Is this me growing up?
! “Don’t you think?”
! “What?” I felt a shot of guilt at having not been listening.
! “If you give it to me, I can run and get the Stormgold instead of you. It’ll give you more time for learning with Gran. Please?”
! “No!” I was surprised at my snapping at him. He wanted the key to my sister’s work shed? No, I couldn’t do that, not now. Besides, logically … “My house is far from her. It’s no trouble at all for me to bring it.” And it’s a long way for you.
! “Oh, I see,” he said. We walked the rest of the way in silence, and I wondered. He knew how hard it would be for him to go there to get Stormgold and how much easier it was for me. Why did he really want the key? So he could have an excuse to tell Kiki so he could go exploring, perhaps?
! Our lesson ended in sweat and misshapen metal, as was becoming the usual. “You need to focus on the details, Leah. Every little crevice in the metal should be known to you lest you widen it. Every little bump should be known to you so that you may smooth it.”
! “I know,” I said. I rubbed my eyes. The bright sparking of lightning made them strained and aching by the end of every session. In my self-made darkness, I remembered the incident with Vic from the morning.
! “What troubles you child? Oh don’t look surprised. Kneading your forehead and biting your lip can be a sign of little else. Tell me.”
! I hadn’t even noticed I was doing either of those things until she told me. I looked at Vic, playing with his cat at the edge of the room, as usual. I leaned close to my teacher and spoke quietly. “Vic asked me for my key, the key to my sister’s work shed, where I get the Stormgold from. Now, I don’t really think he wanted to go fetch it for us, but something else, like … Like he’s lonely and troubled and wants some chance to go wandering perhaps.” I was feeling increasingly embarrassed and knew I was rambling. “I mean, don’t you think he ought to know better?”
! She gave me a measured look. “I will deal with him, then. But, I have had a thought. Take out your key. Now, hold it in your hand. Feel it, really feel it, with the lightning in your body, as I have taught you. Good. Now, can you remember the shape?”
! “I … I think so.” I had felt the form of the key from the inside as I had been taught, but the head was so intricate, so complex, I wasn’t sure I had captured it thoroughly.
! “Now give me the key.” I held it out. As she took it, her hands wandered up my arm, into my cuffs. “I never noticed, but you’ve stopped wearing that bracelet of yours, haven’t you?”
! I smiled, surprised. “Oh, my sleeves are long enough to cover it now, so I suppose you wouldn’t have noticed. I don’t wear it here because I’m a little afraid of damaging it,” I admitted. “It’s very precious to me.”
! “Ah, a gift? You should wear it. Gifts bring luck, don’t you know?” She felt the key in her hand for a moment. Then, suddenly, she dipped her claws into the Stormgold and blasted the key head with lightning, reforming it. I couldn’t even react for my surprise. She handed me the key back, now just a malformed lump on a handle. “You need to learn to feel and visualise. Make the key again.”
! So I did. I brought into my mind the configuration of the teeth, the shape I had felt in my hand just a minute earlier. With Stormgold wetting my antephor claws, I brought forth lightning and carefully moulded a key. When I was done, I knew something was wrong with it. The general shape was right, but some small part of the teeth was somehow wrong. Kiki confirmed it for me.
! “This is not the key you gave me. Well, we have quite a strong supply of Stormgold remaining. About a month’s worth, at the rate we will be using it. So, that shall be your deadline.”
! “You want me to make the key.”
! “Yes.”
! I still wasn’t allowed to take the claws back home with me. “Make the keys whilst you are here; challenge your memory,” she said. Every night and every morning, I went to the shed and felt the lock and probed it with the lightning from my fingertips. However, feeling something hidden away, something I couldn’t touch, was much harder than feeling the teeth of the key. I tried every day to mould and remould my key, but when I tested it, it was always useless. Despite Kiki’s suggestion, I didn’t wear my bracelet, remembering that dent I had made already. She only mentioned it once, and at my explanation, she had said she had understood, but I had seen the disappointment in her eyes. I felt a little guilty, but I didn’t change my mind.
! The days went by and built up a week. I thought about asking my sister to see her key - not to cheat, but to make it easier to get the shape right. But I had barely spoken to her in over a month. I remembered my stepmother’s words and struggled internally. It’s not that I couldn’t go and talk to her about it, I told myself, but if I did, she would surely know I didn’t have the key anymore, and she wouldn’t be pleased. No need to worry her with that. I tried to convince myself that was the reason. I think it nearly worked.
! The week doubled, then trebled … I became slowly better at controlling the lightning, and my lessons ended with pretty little pots and pans rather than misshapen lumps. And then pretty pots and pans became less symmetric, covered in patterns where the metal was thicker or thinner. Then there were little figurines: pairs of dancers looking one another’s eyes, heroes acting out old stories, even a miniature sword, But I failed to make the key. The lock was too complicated for me to really understand. I had asked my father to tell me all about locks and, confused, he had obliged. But it hadn’t really helped. If only there were some way to put my finger in the lock, then I would be able to feel the surface more clearly …
! With two days to go until my deadline, I sought out my sister. So we sat that evening at the low table, and played the board game our stepmother had taught us. I was avoiding asking her about the key until much later, and we spent a lot of time in silence. It was nice though, after all this time, to just be doing something together. When we spoke, we chatted about odd things - years gone by, our odd retinue of guests, when the Governor might finally leave his winter lodgings …
! “I’m going, Leah,” she said suddenly. “They accepted me.”
! A dozen thoughts rushed through my head. We had never really talked about this. I knew what was happening, she knew I knew. We weren’t going to talk about why I knew, how I found out. We weren’t going to talk about why she never told me. We weren’t going to talk about why we hadn’t been talking to one another. We weren’t going to broach any of our unresolved issues. And it didn’t matter.
! “Congratulations,” I said. And I hated that I was surprised I meant it from the bottom of my heart. With that tightness in my chest, I remembered Sir Kirran’s words from that horrible night. But, I insisted, I am not an ornament. “I’ll keep everything together until you get back.”
! “I know you will.”
! And just like that, it was as if all was healed. We began to talk about what she would learn there. All about Stormgold technology, the three ‘active metals’, and so much more.
! “So, another one,” she was saying excitedly, telling me about all the amazing things people were doing with technology. “Some brilliant physician made these needles - they’ve got antephor as the core and copper on the outside - and he pushes them into people’s skin. Then, he drips Stormgold to jolt them!”
! “Why would he … “ I trailed off. I felt a grin begin to spread across my face.
! “It’s so he can see what parts of the body are working, provoking muscles to reacting and things like that. It’s like seeing the body without actually seeing anything! It’s … Leah?”
! I was getting up already. “Sorry, I’ve got to go.” I dashed out of the room, leaving behind the long forgotten game board, the comfort of the hearth and my utterly confused sister. I dashed up to my room, ideas forming faster than I could keep track of. Yes, yes, yes! I had it, I had figured it out! I couldn’t keep the smile off my face, couldn’t keep my heart from racing; I couldn’t temper my excitement at all.
! Sherry was not in my room. Good, I had some time then. I took my light from its holder and separated the Stormgold reservoir - a bulbous metal chamber at the top - from the winding glass tube. I scowled at it. Then I smashed it against the floor. I salvaged what of the double layered foil I could - copper and antephor. I thought for a moment, then seized a hairpin from the table by the mirror. I ran out to the work shed with my ad hoc equipment. Without a coat in the heart of winter I felt the chill well before I got there, but I was too excited to care. I pushed some of my foil into the lock with the hairpin, copper layer on the outside. Then, I poured some of the Stormgold from the reservoir into the lock, chastising myself for the drops that spilled onto the ground. I put my finger to the lock and pushed at the lightning forming. I gasped at the clarity of the ‘image’ I felt from it. It was as if I had been wandering through fog and now a great wind had come and blown it all away.
! Now tomorrow I could— no, it had to be now. I fashioned crude claws from the foil and used the Stormgold of the reservoir to create my lightning. I gasped as my arm spasmed. Not good for high currents, I noted. Then, being careful, I began to mould my key stump into shape. It was so easy now! I rammed it into the keyhole. I paused said a quick prayer. Turned.
! The door opened.
! “YES!” I leaped for joy. I shouted to the sky some more. I laughed. I dropped to the freezing floor, felt the wet grass against my hands and neck. I laughed some more. I did it.
! Then I wondered if anyone had seen any of that.
! The next morning, I was up especially early. I rushed to ready myself, much to Sherry’s alarm. I felt in so good a mood, so eager to boast of my success to Kiki, I put on my bangle as an afterthought, thinking to please her even more. Winter Girl, it read. Winter really was my favourite season.
! I arrived at the den panting, sweat making my blouse cling to my skin, coat over my arm. I had run all the way from the stable. My cuffs hung loose from when I had opened them up to let the winter air cool me.
! “You’re early today, child. Ready to make another key?”
! I grinned and thrust out my arm, showing her my key. “Made it. Tested it. It works.”
! She paused. I saw Vic’s jaw hanging open, eyes wide and staring, ignoring the cat clawing at his leg. “I’m very impressed,” she said. “And a day early too. Ahhh, you’re wearing your bangle again too. It’s a rather special bangle, isn’t it?”
! “Oh, yes, my uncle gave it to me.” I lowered my arm, looked into the kind old face of my mentor. I was surprised at what I saw there. She was beaming, smile beatific, eyes tearing.
! “I need the antephor.”
! It was as if the whole world spun away from me. Her words from two months ago came back to me. You have the best hands. My mouth moved, and no words came out. I remembered my stepmother’s warning. With a stranger, we can see what we want to see. Or what they want us to see. My horror grew as Kiki’s features resolved themselves before me. The beatific smile became a dangerous one. The tears of joy became tears of madness.
! No, no no no no no …
! “Give me the bangle, Leah. I can make new claws for you.”
! “NO!”
! The witch’s face flickered with rage. She stepped back and the one claw she always kept on, her ring finger, skimmed the Stormgold pot and lightning struck my arm. I screamed, I spasmed and instinct took over. Lightning shot away from me, into the ground, the wall, a beam … the room was a chaos of flashing lights, burning air and pain, so much pain. The little light hanging from the ceiling exploded, showering us with glass and Stormgold, leaving us with only the light of one dim candle. I fled, dodging past the little boy haunting me with those wide staring eyes, clutching the dead cat.
! Three strikes I had taken in two short winter months. It wasn’t the piling up of coincidence, it was all my fault. I had flown kites in a storm and paid the price. I was dimly aware of these thoughts under the current of pain - physical and otherwise - as I ran. So too was I dimly aware I had kept my coat by holding it in my mouth when I had briefly lost control of my arms, of the biting cold of a winter morning, of the heat of my bangle against my wrist. I ran, hoping, praying that I would never have to face the inevitable crash of thunder. I kept running.
! I didn’t stop.
Part III - Peals
! The old bathhouse had been built into the manor when it was first constructed, over a hundred years ago, to take advantage of the natural heat beneath the ground, but in recent decades it had fallen into disuse and disrepair. I remembered it as a childhood play area; a closed down and closed off section of the house where I absolutely had to explore if only because it was forbidden to me. With the influx of guests, it had been refurbished and reopened to provide a more luxurious experience for our guests; a warm reprieve in the cold of winter. With how busy I had been, I had not really had the opportunity to avail it. Now, I soaked in the steaming hot water, surrounded by austere rocks and pretty wooden carvings. My father had decided to throw an evening party for our guests - they were all outside now, chatting and laughing, feeding a bonfire ready to roast dinner. My absence might have been seen as peculiar, had I not been so reclusive the past few days. I had blamed it on a cold. Now my lie was coming true, and yesterday’s scratchy throat and stuffy nose had become the beginnings of a fever. Maybe this was from all that rolling around in the winter air I had done. I remembered how happy I had been, how pleased I was with myself and how pleased I thought my master would be and I felt a surge of sorrow in my sinuses and tears in my eyes. The jubilant roars of delight that came floating in from outside just then only exacerbated my regret, and I put my head under the water and let the thunderous roar of blood in my ears drown it all away.
! I let myself float. Time was washed away by the continuous heat of the water on my skin and the dull roaring in my ears. As my senses dulled and my breaths grew deeper, I reflected on my stupidity. Stormgold and antephor. In hindsight, all the clues were there. When I had started, I had known. I had known that this was little more than a trade. I would supply the Stormgold and she would pay me by teaching me. Surely I had seen it as nothing more than that. But as time passed, I had been fooled. Even as my stepmother had warned me to be watchful, even as I had tried to read the intentions behind her words, I had tricked myself into believing that she liked me, that she valued me. In hindsight, she had sought me out, stalked me like a cat and trapped me like a spider. Vic had found me for her. Why me? Because I was the daughter of a wealthy family? It couldn’t be that easy to recognise people from a distance, really. It was because I had that bracelet, because I had those ill-fitting sleeves, that that boy, so used to seeing his grandmother at work, could see that I had what they needed. Stormgold and antephor, that was all she had wanted. Not a student.
! Well, I reflected, now she had none of those. She had been close to running out of Stormgold when the incident had happened. I still had the bracelet; when she had struck me with lightning, I had blocked with it and used it to divert most of the current wherever I could. It had burned me, but it had saved my life. She tried to kill me, I remembered, and the enormity of that thought struck me again. If everything were just a little different, I would be a buried corpse, and no-one would ever know what I had been doing, how I had died, what had happened to me. My future would be cut off like an errant branch in a priest’s garden. I squirmed at the thought.
! I must have fallen asleep in the water, for I dreamed a strange dream then, one I expect I will never forget. There was a hero from an old story, dressed in scaled plate armour, like the carapace of a beetle, shrouded in a great cloak and wielding one of those ancient heat blades, a sword of steel with an antephor-lined channel of Stormgold through the centre. He faced a great monster in a hot cave under a volcano. The beast had the body of a lizard, with four wide squatting feet and a long swerving, whipping tail. Ten long necks sprouted from its shoulders, ending in serpentine heads, all spitting, hissing and roaring in a cacophony of threats. The hero dodged spat poison and lunging bites and swung his white-hot sword. They duelled for an age and both grew more ferocious as time went on. The hero took savage blows, but in the end he won by delivering a searing cut, lopping off one of the heads of the beast. The hero went to the nearby town, showed his prize - the head - to the townspeople, and they celebrated his achievement and feasted him for three days and three nights. But when the hero returned, happy and fulfilled, to his castle, he saw horror. The fields lay wasted and the stone crumbling, a dozen serpentine heads poking out from the windows and doors. He dropped to his knees and knew in that moment that everyone and everything he loved was dead.
! “I have not killed it, but made it stronger,” he said. The beast roared at him, and he fled. The years flashed by, and the once-hero found out that to kill such a beast, one must pierce its heart, a feat made near impossible by the many raging, gnashing heads. He vowed to redeem himself, but he couldn’t find the beast. He couldn’t really even bring himself to try. All the while he said to himself, “You must stab the heart.” In a dream-moment, he was sixty, seeking refuge at a mill on a stormy day.
! “Who are you to get a place in my house? I am all too full up,” said the miller, surrounded my his menacing looking guests. And then he resolved into Sir Kirran and the others into his Westender friends.
! The once-hero said, “Please! Once I saved a great many people. They called me a hero!”
! “I do not believe that,” he said. “You are just a miserable old man, blessed with more wealth than you deserve.” They drew out daggers and plunged them into the hero. Again and again, the knives rose and fell, and all the while the hero said, “You must stab the heart,” and the miller cum Kirran obliged. And then the hero was me, the Westenders laughed mockingly, Sir Kirran looked down in disappointment and distaste and ghosts wailed around me, crying for my pathetic death. My sister was there, twelve again, wailing and holding onto my father’s arm. He held his face in his hands and weeped as I remembered him weeping for my mother. My stepmother stood silently by, the tears streaming down her cheeks. But I killed you all, I said silently, my body no longer alive enough to speak. My mother, my real mother, floated above, her features obscured by my hazy memory. It’s not your fault, she said.
! I jolted awake, the water splashing around me. The noises from outside came back, quieter now. How long had I been asleep?
! I dried myself and pulled on my shift. Those last words echoed in my mind. It was the lie parents told you when it really was your fault but it was too late to matter. And then I thought about the monster. Kiki. But she could not hurt anyone, could she? But she had tried to kill me. Yet surely she wouldn’t … In any case, she had none of what she wanted. No Stormgold. No new antephor. Without them, she was no danger to anyone.
! I stopped in reaching for the door. You need to learn to feel and visualise. Test your memory.
! No, no, no …
! This is not the key you gave me. I remembered the certainty with which she had said that, how she had thumbed the key beforehand. As I padded back to my room, I felt a burden weighing down on my shoulders - a burden of fear. We could change the lock, I thought. No, we had to change the lock. And then what? I didn’t really know Kiki. What kind of person was she really? What was she going to do, even if she had the things she wanted? What had she done all these years she had lived? Was I really the first one she had tried to … murder?
! As I slipped into bed far earlier than normal, my mind wandered back to earlier days, to the bang of bare feet on floorboards, to the laughing of children playing and exploring, the smell of incense and the bright clothes. I remembered the old priest sitting on the floor of the prayer room, gaunt and wasted away even then, eyes sunken and hair thinning, smelling of sickness and coughing. I sat with the other children around him, listening to his quiet words. Someone had asked him about telling the truth. “Sin and virtue are not simple; circumstances matter, for compassion is the nature of Almighty God. What may be wrong in one place may be right in another. Moreover, when we err, we can try to make amends. Lies can be confessed, stolen goods paid for, personal slights apologised for. Good and evil are not agents of mathematics; it may never right the wrongs you make, but, dear children, something is better than nothing.”
! As sleep claimed me, I had decided on at least one thing: I had to do something.
! * * *
! I opened my eyes to bright daylight streaming in from the window. The covers were wrapped around me from my writhing and sweat made my clothes cling to me. On a chair placed by my bed sat Sherry. She told me my fever was high, that I should rest. I tried to complain, but I found myself too weak. I drifted back into sleep’s arms.
! I woke again to find my father sitting in the chair, face in his hand, talking to himself. Or to me, I could not tell. “‘Courage is our greatest weapon’.” The quote he has often said to me when I was a child. Who was it from …
! The light was stronger when I saw my stepmother sitting there with he perfect posture. Oddly I felt colder, even shivering. “I ran away from my duty,” she said to me, “When I should have stayed.” She had already told me this. Why was she telling me again …
! The light was fading and I was dancing in and out of consciousness. My visitors became more frequent. My sister sat on the edge of my bed and said nothing at all. I remembered too late that I wanted to tell her to change the lock. Sherry was there many times, busying about me, checking my fever, getting me to drink. Then Berc was there, tidy white beard jutting out from a strong old jaw that moved only slightly as he spoke.
! “They say there’ve been killings in Applehirst of late. Folk have been killed in the middle of the night - terrible burns. Shocking tales. You shouldn’t be going into town any more, little lady. Just stay here and hide, rest.” Yes, I thought. That would be nice. Just run and hide …
! Then I heard Madam Howle confronting Sherry at the door. “Let me in! She needs to know, doesn’t she? This is terrible. Terrible! It’s all her fault!” But I can’t set it right, I can’t. I remembered the witch and her face in rage, the lightning, the smashing, the noise and the smell and the heat. I remembered the dead cat and the boy staring at me. I’m scared.
! The full moon filled the room with its understated brilliance. The old priest, long dead, sat on the chair, his hair thinning and white, eyes sunken and face gaunt. His voice was still strong, from his younger days. “It is our choices that make us, Leah. On the walk of life, we may stumble on temptation and fall to evil, yes. But then we have a choice: it is easy to stay down and accept defeat, but take the harder way, pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and do things right and you will find a wonder like no other.”
! The sunlight pushed through my eyelids again and I heard Sir Kirran’s voice. “ … my acquaintance. He’s been in Enderstown all winter and will be back in Applehirst for a while. I should go to see him, I think.”
! “But you are worried about the girl?” said a harsh, high voice that I did not recognise. “Worry not, my healer assures me she is fine.”
! “It’s not her physical well-being I worry for. There’s something all a bit more to this, and I fear, maybe irrationally, that it’s partly my fault.” I absorbed that in the brief silence that followed. Then Sir Kirran left. I opened my eyes to see the ancient Lord Axmire on the chair.
! “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.
! “Are you a fever dream?”
! “Who knows, dear, who knows.”
! “Why are you here?”
! “I was simply curious as only an old man could be. You know, fevers are a sign of change in a person, or so my parents always told me. I wonder, dear, if you are changing.” He hummed tunelessly. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
! I think my fever, thought fading, tricked me into talking to him. “I’m scared. I’m scared of what I’ve done, scared that everything that’s happened in town, all the people that are dying, that it’s all my fault.”
! “People dying? My, you have had some frightening dreams. Well, you can put that down to the fever, but dreams hold messages from the soul, or so my parents always told me. Maybe you ought to do something. Or maybe not! I’m just an old man, long retired, soon to be dead. What do I know about what folk should do?” I closed my eyes again. I had dreamed it. Thinking back, I found it hard to tell what was a dream and what was real. I resolved again to do something, and slept.
! I spent the next few days recovering from my fever and struggling to muster courage. There is a vast difference between knowing you have to do something, and actually doing it, or so I have found. It turned out that Ellie had already had the lock changed on the shed after a barrel of Stormgold had gone missing. A whole barrel, I had thought with fear. Still, I convinced myself I could resolve things with Kiki. Stormgold and antephor, that’s what this had all been about, hadn’t it? I would give her the bangle and make her promise not to do anything. Even in my head, that seemed like a feeble plan.
! I used the materials and tools in the work shed to construct rudimentary claws for myself. Like the ones I had used to make the key, I knew they wouldn’t work all that well, but I might still need them. I tried not to think about why. And then I set a date to go and do what I must. In the nights before, I struggled for sleep, dreading what was to come. Even after I did drift off, I was plagued by nightmares of how my confrontation might go. They often ended in my death.
! On the prescribed night, I set off as everyone was going to bed, quickly and quietly. I had barely slept at all the night before, and I was almost falling asleep in the saddle. Only the brisk winter air kept me awake. I reflected on how far I was from a hero in a story. Scared, I had spent the whole day trying to find courage. Even minutes before I left, I was switching between giving up and being determined I would go. My sinuses were still stuffy from being ill, I was exhausted and poorly equipped. I had an untimely case of the cramps and I was frightened. But having left, I was determined to see it through, whatever ‘it’ was.
! I stabled my horse in the usual place in the empty town. A storm was coming, the stable’s owner told me. Everyone was keeping indoors. Already, a persistent drizzle filled the air with the smell of wet stone. I put on my claws - they were wood layered with copper or steel, each different to the next. They would make me no lightning, but they might help me nonetheless. The bangle hung on my wrist, cool against my skin. Winter girl. I took a little courage from that. I desperately needed it.
! Before I found the den, the boy found me. He was watching me in his usual way. Then he ran. As I ran after him, I remembered that first day at the end of autumn, when I had followed him to the den. Then I had been concerned and excited. Now I was just afraid. He led me to the lake and up the great pier. I slowed as I approached the end, catching my breath. There were figures there, alarmed by the boy who had just reached them and talking in angry whispers.
! “ … we wouldn’t be disturbed!” said the taller, a hooded man.
! “Well, I have some other business to be doing tonight, it seems. The sky is cloudy, a storm is coming and it is the depth of winter. Who could come here now but Leah?” It was Kiki. My throat ran dry as I approached - I noticed that the other large figure was an open barrel of Stormgold, and she had her claws on.
! CLANG
! The clocktower bells began to ring for midnight.
! “This is unacceptable,” hissed the man. He moved to leave. Kiki’s hand skimmed across the Stormgold.
! CLANG
! Lightning struck the man’s chest in the din, and he was thrown out and into the water. Dead.
! CLANG
! I scrabbled for words. “I brought the bangle,” I said, sounding calm even as fear grew within me. “Take it. Leave me alone.”
! CLANG
! “Oh, my dear, if only it were still just about Stormgold and antephor. Now you’ve stolen from me.” Her hand hovered over the barrel.
! CLANG
! “I’ve stolen nothing.” My voice cracked.
! “But you have stolen my loyal, loving student. You.” She skimmed the surface again.
! CLANG
! She hurled lightning at me, and, miraculously, instinct made me move. I deflected as well as I could with my makeshift claws, sending all the lightning away rom me and toward her. She moved with the vigour of a much younger woman, deflecting all I sent at her away into pilings and ceiling and sky, all the while launching fresh assaults on me.
! CLANG
! Wood cracked and exploded and, in one place, a fire started despite the wet. I saw Vic leap into the water, fleeing from the destruction.
! CLANG
! “I had so much to teach you still! Wonders you will never know!” She was screaming at me.
! CLANG
! She motioned with her arms, and suddenly a current of Stormgold bolted from the barrel and hit my face. It stayed there and I struggled for breath.
! CLANG
! The witch was screaming, but I couldn’t hear her words anymore. I put my arms to my face, tried to push the Stormgold away from me. She fired lightning at my head, but I diverted it with my claws. My arm burned and I felt the currents swirling around my head, burning away liquid, heating my face. I willed it to fly away from me, anywhere, everywhere.
! CLANG
! The floor exploded between us and fires started everywhere. I saw Kiki’s expression change, and then one of the ceiling beams fell on her, burning. The Stormgold dropped to the floor, and the bells hid her screams.
! CLANG
! I took rapid ragged breaths as I wobbled unsteadily in the heat, feeling pain all over. I fell over the edge and into the water. It was cold there. I dropped and dropped, and the peals sounded over and over again in my head. The bells had ended, but it was not them I heard. It was the roar of the blood in my ears, the might of the sea, and the peals of thunder from which I had run for so long. It wasn’t so bad after all …
! I closed my eyes and exhaled.
Epilogue
! The noise of people chattering wandered out onto the patio. Glasses were filled and emptied. I stood with my sister in the cold. We spoke of the things that would need to be done for the estate in the coming year. I had sat with her, my father, my stepmother and Sir Kirran many times over the past two weeks discussing much the same thing. Nobody said it, but it was everyone easing my transition into my sister’s old role. Tomorrow, she would leave for the capital. She would visit in winter if the weather allowed it, but until then, she would be gone. Spring, summer and autumn. Three whole seasons. It felt odd to imagine it. And then, in a few more days after she left, the Governor would finally arrive and stay with us for a week. The guests gathered under our roof were mostly strangers, throwing a farewell party to a girl they didn’t know as a build up to a much bigger event. My father had told me I would take a group to Applehirst to pick the Governor up when he arrived and escort him to the manor. I wondered at that responsibility. I was still just a girl, fourteen years old and sharing her chambers with a maid.
! Three whole seasons, I thought. Then it will be winter again. My sister will return. The burden of responsibility will ease again, and it will be my season. The words from the bangle had burned into the inside of my wrist when I had plunged it, without thinking, into the sphere of Stormgold Kiki had held around my head. I didn’t often think of that night anymore. I had put it away, locked it in some dark corner of my mind. I had survived somehow. By some miracle, someone had not only heard the noise of our brief fight through the clangour of the midnight bells, but had run out and seen me fall into the lake. And then they had gone in to save me. It was a merchant from Enderstown, they told me. I didn’t want to know who my serendipitous saviour was. I am still sure he did not want to be thanked. Lakers do as Lakers must do, they say.
! As I went to bed, ignoring the now familiar pains from some of my more severe burns, I thought of all that was to come, as I often did. Unusually, I thought about what Kiki had tried to do to me. There was so much more to her magic than what she had taught me; I had seen it. I wondered for the first time how much had been lost with her, how much had been lost when I killed her. I ducked that unpleasant thought and remembered the feeling of lightning at my fingertips, moulding and shaping metal, sparks flying through the air, the intense concentration, the sense of accomplishment. I felt there an itch I wanted to scratch.
! I need some claws, I thought.