The Faintest Ink (Watty Winner 2015)

Chapter Sixty-Eight

"Drink this," said the witch, handing Jain a clay cup. "Every drop."

"What is it?" She was curled up by the fire, sitting on a rug which gave off the distinct impression of a pile of assorted rags knitted together by time and heavy boots. The witch had draped a thick, and somewhat lumpy, quilt around her shoulders, but it wasn't enough. She could not stop shivering.

"You tell me."

Jain poked her hand out of the blanket, and took the cup. It was warm, filled with a hot and dark liquid. "Camomile," she said, recognising the tiny yellow buds which bobbed along the surface of the tea. The witch raised her eyebrow, clearly expecting more. Jain leaned in for a quick sniff. "Impatiens, valerian and..." she took a small sip. "Catnip?" She hoped this witch's cottage didn't come with a resident feline.

"Very good," said the witch, nodding with satisfaction. "So you haven't forgotten everything I taught you then. I don't think there's much call for the arts of the wise woman in the court of the young princess."

"They didn't much want anything from me." She didn't cry, and her voice didn't shake. It was as if all her sadness had been spent.

The witch clucked and with a heave of effort, knelt beside her daughter. "They are fools not to see the value of my beautiful girl," she said, stroking Jain's jaw with her thumb. "Now drink, before it gets cold. It will help you sleep."

Jain shook her head. "No. I don't want to sleep."

"But my darling, you must."

"No!" she said, dashing the contents of the cup into the fire. The flames smoked, but managed to stay alight.

The witch sighed, unsure what she could do to help the child she had been kept apart from for over twenty years.

"I've heard it said time is a great healer," said the witch. "But we both know that isn't true. The pain of being apart from the one you love cuts just as deep after decades of separation as it did on that first day. But we do become stronger, and better able to put aside that pain, long enough to get on with the business of living. Because the world doesn't stop just because we are hurting. There is life still to be lived. And responsibilities that must be dealt with."

"But we weren't apart. Not really. And I can't feel him. I... He can't be gone. I couldn't bear it."

The witch stroked Jain's hair, sweeping the blonde curls away from her daughter's hot cheeks. "We are a long way from the brotherhood. Not many could hold name magic over so many hundreds of miles."

"I have held the name magic together for sixteen years," she said, the words catching in her throat. "I formed a connection as strong as any master. It should hold. No matter how far apart we are."

The witch sat back on her heels and looked at her daughter. She wanted to comfort the girl, tell her that even the strongest master would be hard pushed to push his magic out this far, but it would only hurt more when she realised the boy was dead.

Her husband had been a fool to send their girl away to Hoxleigh. As if feelings could be locked as easily away as a person. At court, the relationship might well have run its course, and in a year or two, her daughter might have been married off to a suitable young lord and forgotten all apart her youthful dalliance with that sweet young clerk. But buried in Hoxleigh, with only the care of two infants to distract her, it was only going to make her love solidify, forming an impenetrable wall around her heart.

It frightened her to think that her golden child, who she had last seen as a joyous bundle of frills and petticoats, her curls barely contained by soft ribbons, was now as cold as a statue. Those huge blue eyes which had once glowed with love, now drifted about the room, unseeing. She looked at the herbs, drying from the rafters, the sad looking rocking chair, and finally at the cauldron, hung above the fire. So unlike their home at Havenot.