The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(14)

“She’s not here. Obviously. Can I help you?” she took a step closer to Alizon and was surprised that the woman looked less confident, her eyes slithering for a second to the lake water as if afraid of what might surface.

“Of course not.” Alizon sneered.

“Then leave.”

Alizon didn’t quite manage to hide the flinch and her eyes widened with anger.

“You have no manners to speak of.” she commented without, Vanessa realised, making one move to leave.

“Neither do you. Off you trot.” Vanessa stepped aside on the jetty to let her pass. Once again Alizon did not move.

“I am looking for your mother.” her voice was black shadows. Vanessa was disturbed by it.

“You won’t find her in the lake.” Vanessa could hear the tone in her voice. She felt shaky now and ill at ease, Alizon was staring, cold and hard and Vanessa felt as if they were engaged in a competition of wills. Vanessa opened her eyes wider, angrier. Alizon Wilde dropped her gaze and stepped past her. As she did so Vanessa felt off balance, as if she’d been shoved and had to shift her foot so that she didn’t tumble off the jetty. There was a smirk on Alizon Wilde’s face as she strolled towards the shore which pulled the pin on Vanessa’s grenade of anger.

Three steps brought her to Alizon and she found her hand reaching out, pinching hard at the bony upper arm and it was so tempting to launch her into the water but her mother had always said, no one must go into the water and so Vanessa half pushed, half carried Alizon Wilde towards the shore, her feet almost tripping with every step.

“Watch your step.” Vanessa warned as they continued to stumble towards Alizon’s car, parked behind Cob Cottage.

At the car, Alizon, shaking and rattled, scraped her key along the paintwork trying to fit it into the door. She fumbled at the lock, scuttled inside but as she tried to pull the door shut Vanessa held it fast.

“Don’t come here again.” and with that warning she slammed the door.

Inside the cool interior of Cob Cottage Vanessa’s anger sifted out of her like sand. She put the kettle onto the stove and thought about finding something to eat.

Her mother arrived back an hour or more later. Vanessa was still wired with the encounter with Alizon Wilde and did not notice how tired her mother looked, nor that her clothes were damp.

“Alizon Wilde was here.” Vanessa informed her mother. Hettie Way did not look surprised.

“What did she want?”

“Looking for you. Out on the jetty.” Vanessa looked at her mother and did not see the dark circles beneath her eyes “Just standing out there like she owned the place when I got home.”

Hettie Way gave no answer to this, she waited for her daughter to continue.

“She’s so bloody up herself. God.” Vanessa turned and noticed, at last, that her mother was very pale.

“Avoid her. Just don’t…bother about her…”

Vanessa thought that her mother was worse than pale, she looked greenish as if she might be sick.

“Are you alright?” as Vanessa said it she was already reaching for her mother who was failing on her feet. Her mother’s weight fell against Vanessa and, amidst a flash of fear at what might be wrong, Vanessa helped her to the chair. As she did so her mother gagged violently, throwing up a cascade of lake water, of dead fish and rotting weed. Vanessa’s heart was bursting with terror but she held onto her mother as they rode out a second wave of retching; more water, a long strangling ribbon of weed slithering like a bilious green tape worm. Vanessa was shaking but her brain pushed her into a primal mode and held tight to her mother.

“It’s ok. It’s ok.” she said over and over as if saying it would make it so. An affirmation. A wish. A spell. The words printed themselves into her head. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok.” she stroked her mother’s hair as Hettie sagged back into the chair, drank in great deep breaths of air. Vanessa reached for the blanket from the sofa, wrapped her mother up. Her mother held her hand for a moment, squeezed tight.

“I’m fine. I will be alright. Don’t worry.”

Vanessa did worry. Her brain and heart were misfiring in head and chest as she reached for the mop and for the towels by the washing machine, using them to mop up the surfeit of water on the kitchen floor. Finding the broom and sweeping up the weed, slithering the fish into the dustpan.

Later, she made them tea and they sat together in the falling dark.

“What was Alizon doing here?” Vanessa asked at last, her mind recalling the image of the red woman, staring into the water. Had she pushed her mother in? Her mother looked at her. For a moment Vanessa thought she might not answer.

“Trespassing.” Hettie said and shifted in the chair, pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. “She’s a pain in the arse.”

“I told her not to come back here.”

Hettie took her hand, held it too tightly, her face looking angry.

“No. Don’t have any interaction with her. She’s dangerous. I’m warning you. Keep away.”

Vanessa felt angered. For just a brief moment she had thought that her mother might tell her something, might include her in the idea of her work as Gamekeeper, might reveal the true nature of her relationship with those bitch queens of the WI. She had felt, for just a moment, that she was going to be included and now her mother shut down that moment.