The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(5)

Back at Cob Cottage Vanessa dropped her coat on the back of the kitchen chair and scooted down the short curved corridor. Round in shape, Vanessa’s bedroom was a small short tower of a place, nestling into the east side of the cottage. It was insulated with her bookcases made from curving branches of oak and alder with a long thin window set up in the wall just below the thatch. Although she could not see the lake she could see sky and treetops and the rookery. It was like living, Vanessa thought, in a small mud castle. She shut the gnarly oak door behind her and unloaded her school bag secrets. Yes, she felt confident of her plan to help her mother.

She was busy over the next few days assembling things she needed for the fishing aspect of her plan: twine, wire, wool, string, which she wove and twisted. She made good progress because her mother was suddenly busy too, there had been several more fishermen sneaking to the lake and some traps that her mother had found in Havoc Wood that made her very angry indeed.

“Do people want to catch the animals for food?” Vanessa asked as they ate bacon sandwiches on the front porch on Friday night. Her mother laughed.

“Ha. No sweetheart. They want to catch them because they can. They won’t eat a fox or a falcon. They do it to be cruel and feel powerful.” she kissed Vanessa’s forehead and her mother’s gaze drifted out across Havoc Wood. “They don’t understand, there’s nothing more cruel and more powerful than this wood.”

*

It was cold on Saturday. After breakfast her mother wrapped up in her old black waxed raincoat and pulled on her battered boots ready for her usual Patrol.

“There’s sandwich stuff in the fridge.” she was giving instruction. “I won’t be late. If you get bothered or need me, just light the lantern on the porch…ok?”

“Can’t I come with you?” today Vanessa had no wish to go with her mother but she wanted to make it seem like a normal day, one in which she would read books and do homework and whinge about missing out on Patrol.

“No sweetheart. Not today. Another one, ok?” they hugged and Hettie headed off towards the North of the wood.

Vanessa had stashed her equipment in a small canvas rucksack under the porch, now she simply collected it and started her own short trek to the particular curve of the lake where she thought her plan would work best.

At the shoreline she placed her notebook on a big round rock and glanced over the instructions she’d written down for herself. She had them memorised from reading and re-reading and rewriting them, but it settled her mind to read the words and feel the notebook paper under her tracing finger. She had made a fishing net from twine, string and wire and it was woven around a wide plastic ring she’d taken out of the frame of her washing basket.

So, prepared, she fished.

A few hours drifted by slowly. It was pleasant on the bank and Vanessa had found a smooth stone worn down into a bowl and was sitting in that feeling the coolness of it. She had tried reading a book but there was something about the lake today, it was almost like an electricity, that distracted her. She found her gaze drawn to the glassy grey surface where she could see the perfect reflection of the crowds of jackdaws and rooks taking off from the trees on the opposite shore, the image as clear as if she was looking down into a reversed world. She thought of the cities of birds above her, the nuthatches and treecreepers. Somewhere a woodpecker was knocking. There must be, she thought, yet another world still, in the water.

There was a rippling plash. Vanessa looked up, her binoculars lifted to check out the disturbance in the water. Was that a fin? She jumped down from her stone and took a step closer to the water, scanning with the binoculars. The clouds had thickened and so where Vanessa now stood was darker and more shadowed, the trees leaning in closer. The water looked silken, the ripples rolled towards her and she was tempted to take off her shoes. Her mother gave strict instruction at all times; she was never to go swimming in the lake. They had rowed out in the boat but not ever, not once, even so much as dipped a toe in the steely grey water.

It could not hurt to paddle today, could it? Yes. She would get into trouble. She thought of the prickle of heat she’d felt from her mother when the gull attacked and it seemed like a warning. Vanessa’s mind ticked. She reached into her bag for a jam jar that she had filled with her mother’s homebrewed blackberry squash and, unfastening the lid, drank the squash.

Perhaps there was a way to examine the water without actually getting into it. Vanessa, sitting on her stone above the lake, watched the water. Looked at the empty jar. Of course. That was what she could do. In her pencil case she had a little stash of litmus paper from school. Acid. Alkaline. PH.

There was no way she could fill the jar from the shore without getting her feet a little bit wet but the taboo placed on the lake prickled at her so she climbed quickly back up onto the bowled stone and lay down flat. Yes. Look. If she just reached her arm down like this the jar would…yes… As she was contorting her small frame across the front edge of the stone there was another, heavier splot. Vanessa looked out across the water. From her stony perch she could see, just beneath the surface, a long dark shadow, a flick of fin. A waterboatman was paddling his legs across the lake until, with a glint of sunlight, the insect was gone, vanished into the dimple of water where the pike’s mouth had snapped at its small feast.

Vanessa paused. Her heart was beating fast. She was so very, very close. Now the shadows of the clouds were playing tricks. Was that the pike? That. There? If she just shifted a little bit…further…and if she just angled her shoulder. She watched as a little puddle of water gushed into the jar. Vanessa pulled her arm back, shunted down into the bowl of the stone to look. The water was a soft brownish colour, and there were tiny splashes of green and the flimsy miniature form of a baby fish. There was a word for small baby fish but she couldn’t think of it, she looked at his tiny body, he looked made of glass. What was the word for baby fish? Once more, a deep ploshing sound caught at her. She looked up to see a single rolling ripple expanding out from just below the stone. Speckled. Green. Something skulked. Vanessa sat back.