The Lighthouse Witches(86)

Saffy can’t help but smile to herself. Rowan hasn’t got a clue what the mural meant, and for a moment she relishes standing in the Longing.

Now that they’ve stopped walking, she feels woozy, and her cheeks are aflame. She presses a hand to her chest and feels the skeleton key there.

“Look what I have,” she tells Rowan.

Rowan’s eyes widen when she sees the key. “For the cave?” she whispers, and Saffy sways, her eyes taking in the grooves of the key. Her mind turns to the history of witches, a cinematic scene of naked, shorn-headed women being flung into a pit. How apt that they chose a phallic building in which to torture women and call them witches. The patriarchy, Alpha and Omega, eternal without end.

“Let’s open it.”

They slide down the long, narrow neck of the entrance, both of them collapsing with a loud “ow” onto the wet floor at the bottom.

Saffy wrenches herself up into a sitting position, though it takes a staggering amount of effort, like a triathlon—were there triathlons that involved sitting up? She hurt her knee on the way down, but the drug has made the pain fabulously distant. Her head is crazy heavy. She wonders if she might be wearing a crown made of some kind of metal that weighs a ton.

“Am I queen now?” she asks Rowan, completely serious.

Rowan stands and dusts her dress down. “I don’t think so.”

The cave spreads out in front of them like the mouth of an enormous beast. Jagged remnants of limestone skewer upward from the floor like fangs and the uneven, craggy floor glimmered with rock pools. Somewhere moonlight is seeping in, and it is astonishing that such a massive space exists beneath the Longing. It would be terrific for candlelight orchestras, Saffy thinks, though the damp would probably affect the instruments. The air is cool and clammy, the kind of dampness that gets into your bones. It is exciting, really, being in such a weird place with such a weird girl.

She turns to Rowan in a dizzy haze. “So this is Witches Hide. They killed witches here.”

Rowan laughs. “You mean, they killed women here, silly. I know this is Witches Hide. I’ve lived here all my life.” She produces a lighter from some hidden pocket in her dress and flicks it.

“So you’ve been in here before?”

Rowan looks away. “They’ve always had it locked. But I’ve seen photographs. Most of the islanders are terrified of this place.” She rights herself, flicking her long black hair over one shoulder. “But I’m not.”

They walk a little farther into the cave, into the part where it seems to swell and deepen, the walls green and damp with algae and shadows swirling on the ground. Rowan walks ahead, holding her lighter to the walls until she finds what she seemed to be looking for. Markings on the walls. She shivers and raised a hand reverently, as though not daring to touch the marks.

“This is incredible,” she whispers.

“So,” Saffy said, in what she deems a valiant attempt to bring herself around, “you’re OK with me and Brodie, then.”

“I never said I was OK with it,” Rowan says. She says it so easily that it takes a long minute for the words to spiral in the air and sift their meaning to Saffy’s brain.

“Then how come you’re here?”

Rowan is suddenly sitting next to her with her legs crossed, looking around the cave. She is probably admiring the beautiful ceiling too, Saffy thinks, with its symbols of black magic that have started to glow bloodred, as though a rich sunset was bleeding its light all along the cave floor and up into the engravings.

“I have a proposal for you,” Rowan says.

“A proposal?” Saffy rolls onto her belly. She feels happy and snug. “Do you want to marry me?”

“No, silly,” Rowan says. “I want to cut you.”

Saffy isn’t sure how it happened, but one moment she is on her belly kicking her legs, and the next she is sitting upright staring at a sharp knife that Rowan is holding in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Saffy says, the knowledge that she is in danger pitching her into semi-soberness.

“It’s the law of return,” Rowan says, as if Saffy is stupid. “You took what wasn’t yours. So now you have to pay.”

“No,” Saffy says, rising awkwardly to her feet. Is she dreaming this? Is Rowan really suggesting that she cut her? She tries to will herself sober, but her head is spinning and the ground beneath her feels light as clouds. “I didn’t take anything,” she says.

“Yes, you did,” Rowan says, with surprising clarity. “Three times is what he said. And so you owe me. Three cuts.”

Saffy laughs, but a glance at Rowan’s face tells her she is deadly serious. “I’m not letting you fucking touch me,” she says, backing away. She looks left and right, realizing with panic that she can’t remember how to get out of the cave. Which way is it? The cave seems like an endless loop, with no indication of whether she needs to go up or down, left or right.

“You said you came to warn me,” Saffy says, her heart racing. She reaches to the side and feels the wet, rough contours of the cave wall, a gasp of wind on her skin telling her she is near an exit.

“I did,” Rowan says. “I didn’t lie. But I had promised myself to him, and you took him.”

And with that, she lunges forward, the blade landing in Saffy’s shoulder. Saffy screams, the pain both distant and so gut-wrenchingly real it knocks her to the ground. But when she looks down, her hands are red with blood, and suddenly she is on her feet, running to the night sky ahead. The sea is howling, calling her name. She can hear Rowan calling after her, telling her not to go that way, doesn’t she know where it leads? Come back, she is shouting, come back!