The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(15)

“She came here, onto the property. To our home. What was I supposed to do? Just walk in and ignore her standing out there?”

“Yes. Get inside and lock the door.” Hettie’s face looked strained. There was no give in what she was saying, Vanessa could tell, there was no negotiation possible. Her heart and head had settled into their usual rhythms but this instruction from her mother sent them reeling off again. Vanessa thought of the nights they had spent at the cottage and she had woken and heard voices or noises and always her mother had reassured her and sent her back to her room. She was too big now to be sent back to her room.

“What will she do?”

“Just leave it be. This is my job, not yours.”

“I want to help.” this was all Vanessa had ever really wanted. She thought of all the times she had offered such help and she thought she already knew the response, but, when it came it was not what she had anticipated.

“I know. I know that.” her mother was shaking, her voice barely managing to find its way out “You have to understand… you are not the Gamekeeper.”

“I know, I don’t want to be, I just want…” her mother grabbed at her forearm, held tight.

“No. Listen. You are not the Gamekeeper. Ever. Do you understand? I can’t teach you. It isn’t for you.” her mother’s face was trembling with emotion. Hettie reached for her daughter’s hand. Vanessa wanted to back away, felt more afraid than ever before in her life.

“Remember the pike? Remember?” Hettie’s face was only just holding its foundations against the earthquake of emotion. Vanessa thought, for a moment, that her mother was talking nonsense.

“Pike?” she was confused, afraid, as a memory glimmered strongly, a net, a fish, the snowed-in globe of its eye. Aurora. Hettie held her hand painfully tight, her other hand reaching for Vanessa’s face, turning her daughter’s head so that she could look directly into her eyes.

“I did not decide this. The Pike. Remember?” There was no escape, memory surged back, water and weed.

“Esox Lucius.” Vanessa said and Hettie nodded, nodding and nodding, the only way to keep the tears back. She stroked Vanessa’s hair, the way she had when she was small.

“This place…Havoc Wood. Pike Lake. Cob Cottage…This place, is not your place.”

It was so cruel. So definite. Hettie let her daughter go, her hands moving to her own face, covering her mouth, her eyes closing against the tide of tears.

Vanessa walked out through the double doors onto the porch, jumped down the flight of three steps and across the grass. Hettie watched her daughter stride to the lake, pick up pebbles and begin to throw them one by one into the water.

Hettie leant forward in the armchair, resting her head in her hands for a moment. She was tired, the kind of tired you became from having fought hard enough to live to fight another day. She peeled off her sweater, moving her left arm gingerly. The sleeve beneath was ragged and the claw marks had cut deep. She would need to stitch the wound. First she needed a painkiller as her arm was aching from where it had been dislocated and she had been forced to pop it back. She checked the wound, it was cleanish but she needed to be certain. She stood up, making for the sink and her first aid box, the room wheeled around and Vanessa’s arm caught her, steered her back into the chair.

“I can stitch that for you.”

Hettie, eyes filled with tears, nodded.

They were quiet as Vanessa worked to repair the wounds.

Vanessa had understood all her life that her mother’s job was not the usual run of gamekeeping, that that was just a name to pin it with in the world. This fact did not make it any the less disconnecting.

Much later, with starlight sprinkling the lake they sat on the porch, wrapped in blankets against the chill air. “I thought I could use science to protect you.” she confessed “Explain. Measure. Classify.”

Her mother nodded.

“I know.”

They sat together for some time longer, then Hettie hefted herself out of the chair and stepped towards the door. She hesitated.

“Vanessa.” she took a second to gather herself. Vanessa’s heart was pounding again and she felt as tired as if she had run a marathon. “The sooner you can get away from here, the better off you will be.” her mother’s voice cracked with emotion.





PART FOUR


Arctic ‘85

What delighted and depressed Dr Angela Byrne about her intern, Vanessa Way, was that the young woman was full of intelligence and passion and creativity and that, before many more years passed, that intelligence would be questioned, the passion dimmed and the creativity crushed.

Vanessa Way was resourceful and hardworking. There was no task too small, no project too large. She had been out in the field from forest to tundra, she had learnt to use the snowcat in one lesson and could, in fact, strip it down. Dr Byrne felt she could trust Vanessa Way with her life, and that was quite something out here in the far north where Norway and Finland, Sweden and Russia all began to blur into the snow.

The male contingent at the research station were, in Dr Byrne’s less than medical opinion, like primates that had undergone one too many neurological experiments. Dr Byrne had been carrying them for too long and, once she got the measure of Vanessa, she realised that she didn’t have to carry that burden any longer. She could leave the men to their idleness and atavism and she and Vanessa could do the proper research.