A Witch Alone (The Winter Witch Trilogy #3) (27 page)

There was one silver lining at least: Emmaline and Abe would have a bloody hard time finding me here.

The thought gave me an idea.

‘Seth, do you have a map?’

He looked at me like I’d lost the plot and then nodded.

‘Er, yes. They tend to be quite useful in sailing, you know. But it’s not much use without GPS, or even a compass. Without that, I can’t take a proper bearing.’

‘Can I see it? The map, I mean. I want to try something.’

Seth led me back into the cabin and I sat while he spread the table with charts. I didn’t really understand them – some of the coastlines looked vaguely familiar, but the charts were covered with lines and shapes I didn’t recognize at all. I guessed they must be currents, or depth readings, or shipping lanes.

Then I looked around.

‘I need something like a chain or a bootlace, with a heavy object at the end.’

‘How heavy?’ Seth asked.

‘Not very heavy – like a ring.’ The thought made me look down at my finger again and I sighed. I’d loved the seaglass ring. But I couldn’t regret it – it had saved Seth’s life.

‘Um …’ Seth was searching round the cabin and at last he came up with a piece of string. He tied a keyring to the end of it. ‘How’s this?’

‘It’s a bit big, but it’ll do.’

‘What are you
doing
?’

‘It’s a form of divination. It’s called cartomancy. I’ve never tried it before but I’ve seen Maya do it. Now shh, I need to concentrate if this is going to work.’

I stood up, over the spread-out charts, and held out the piece of string with the keys on the end. Then I shut my eyes and began to swing the makeshift pendulum in slow circles above the map, waiting for the pull.

‘
Séce
,’ I whispered, as the pendulum swung round and round in ever widening circles. ‘
Séce
 … 
Séce
 … 
Séce
 …’

The tug came unexpectedly on the fourth and widest circle, far to the right. I let the pendulum complete another revolution and then felt it again, in just the same place, stronger than before. One last slow circle and the tug this time was a yank. The keys pulled from my grasp and chinked on to the map and I opened my eyes.

‘Did it work?’

Seth looked down at the chart and then began to laugh.

‘No, I can safely say it didn’t.’

‘Why not? It felt like it did. Are you sure?’

‘The keys seem to think we’re in the Kara Sea.’

‘Which is…?’

‘Somewhere north of Siberia.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ I asked. Seth laughed again, slightly incredulously this time.

‘Anna, tell me you didn’t do Geography at GCSE? Have you got any idea
where
Siberia is?’

‘Yes!’ I said, slightly annoyed. ‘It’s in Russia. So are we. What’s wrong with that?’

‘Russia is the size of a continent. And St Petersburg is on the far western side, tucked into a long crevice under Finland and Sweden. Whereas Siberia is on the far eastern side. Look.’

He showed me with his finger, tracing the route the boat would have had to have drifted: along the Gulf of Finland, past Finland, Poland, Germany, north round Norway and over the top of Sweden, and then all the way along the immensely long coast of Russia, miles, and miles, and miles disappearing beneath his finger as it traced the route. Even I could see it was impossible. It was something like the equivalent to drifting from the UK to America and back. Twice. In a single night.

‘There’s absolutely no way we can have gone more than thirty or forty miles,’ Seth said. ‘And even that’s unlikely given the wind.’

‘Oh.’ That was good – right? ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Well given your magical map thing didn’t work so well –’ Seth was suppressing a smile ‘– I guess we wait. I’ll get the sails up and you can make us a cup of tea.’

‘Can I get dressed first?’ I asked meekly.

‘As captain of this boat, if I said no, would you obey my order?’

‘No. And I might have to give you two fingers as well.’

Another smile twitched Seth’s mouth.

‘Well, since you’d probably whip my arse if I tried to flog you for mutiny, I’d better say yes then.’

My clothes were still wet from the night before so I helped myself to some of Seth’s. The shirts were OK – baggy but wearable – but he laughed out loud when I came on deck in his jeans. The waistband didn’t meet around my hips so I’d threaded some string through the belt loops into a makeshift belt and the legs were so long I’d had to roll them into fat sausages around my ankles.

‘Nice! Very nice.’

‘Oh shut up,’ I said and handed him a cup of tea. He kissed my cheek and then my lips.

‘I meant it. You look –’ he took a swallow of tea, his eyes smoke-dark over the rim of the cup ‘– I don’t know. There’s something about seeing a girl in your own clothes. It’s – very sexy.’

‘Don’t get used to it,’ I said grumpily, though a part of me melted inside at his words and the look in his eyes. ‘As soon as my jeans are dry I’m putting them back on.’

‘There’s always an alternative,’ he teased. I raised an eyebrow and he looked back at the bed with a shrug. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t mind … ?’

‘Drink your tea!’ I said scoldingly. And he did, suppressing a smile and turning to watch the horizon.

For the next few hours we sailed slowly on. I watched Seth guiding the boat and occasionally pulled a rope or checked the barometer if he asked me to. The compass was still pointing to me, resolutely following me as I padded about the boat in my bare feet.

By late morning the wind was cold and there was sleet in the air. Seth was in his sou’wester and I was huddled below making lunch, sticking my head out of the hatch only occasionally to ask how to work the stove or where to find a knife.

At last lunch was ready and Seth came below to eat it. He wolfed it down, keeping one eye watchfully on the window.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked at last.

‘I don’t know.’ He wiped his mouth and ducked his head to look out of the porthole again. ‘This just – it all feels wrong. We should have seen something.’

‘Land, you mean?’

‘No, not necessarily land, but just
something
. This is a shipping lane – there should be boats, ferries,
something.’

‘They closed the ferries I think, last night, because of the weather,’ I said. Seth shook his head.

‘Makes no difference. There’d be people stranded in the wrong place, keen to get home. They’d be on the sea by now.’ He looked over at the compass and his face was suddenly fierce with frustration. ‘You don’t think … Could you make it, you know, work again?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly. ‘I could try, but …’

‘Or even better, the GPS system?’

‘I’m really not sure. I don’t know how they work. I’m not very good with stuff like that …’ I trailed off, remembering how I hadn’t been able to fix my phone when it was waterlogged.

‘Will you try?’ Seth pushed his plate aside and looked out of the window at the rolling grey sea and then at the thermometer on the window, which was dropping steadily along with the barometer.

‘I’ll try.’

After he went back up on deck, I took the compass down off the shelf and stared at it. I had no idea how they worked; I knew that the needle was magnetized and pointed to magnetic north, but the physics behind the actual magnetism was a mystery. It was something to do with electrons, I thought – or was it protons? Either way, I was pretty sure I’d have even less success with the GPS system. It was a flashy-looking thing with a blue backlit display, on a console with the radio. The display showed numbers all right, but according to Seth they were completely meaningless. I had nowhere to begin with that – but the compass …

I held it in my hand and began tentatively probing it with my magic. There was definitely some kind of magic tangled up with its workings, I could feel that, but I couldn’t see how or why. In the end I shut my eyes and opened my mind up cautiously. In the shadowy magical realm the room was dim, but the compass glowed with a white light, something like witchlight. It was enchanted – I could see it, feel it, clearly now. But with magic so pure, so elemental, I didn’t even know how to begin disentangling it. It wasn’t a spell, or a charm, or anything that could be explained or written down or solved. It throbbed with
need
. My need, but also Seth’s. Our need to be together. The need to find each other.

Somehow, through me, through my power, the compass had become that simple, burning desire. There
was
no way of mending it, any more than you could ‘mend’ an ordinary compass to tell the time. It was what it was. To change it would be to destroy it. And destroying it wouldn’t bring us any closer to finding out where we were.

With a sigh, I pushed the compass away and went up on deck to find Seth. He was standing at the tiller, staring out to sea. It was cold, very cold, and I shivered as I shut the hatch behind me.

‘Seth …’ I said and he turned.

‘Did it work?’

‘No. I can’t fix it. I don’t think it can be fixed.’

‘Shit.’ He sank on to a bench and put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy trying that map thing again?’ There was no mockery in his face now. In silence we went back down into the galley and in silence I watched as he spread the charts again. I picked up the keys and began to swing them, just as before.

This time the pull was almost unbearable; I tried for a second revolution but the keys wouldn’t leave the spot they’d chosen and, when I opened my eyes, they were suspended at an unnatural angle, defying gravity.

I let go of the string and they fell to the map with an abrupt, dull chink, like a ball-bearing hitting a magnet.

Seth began shaking his head almost immediately.

‘No. No, no, no.’

‘What is it?’

‘This is not possible.’

‘What?’ I begged. His face was pale.

‘They seem to think we’re in the Laptev Sea now. Which means we’ve travelled – what … ?’ He looked at his charts and made a rapid calculation. ‘Something like four hundred miles in about two hours.’

‘Seth, I could be wrong. I don’t know much about cartomancy. I could be completely wrong.’

But neither of us thought so any more. I could see that from the look on Seth’s face as he stared at the charts and then out at the huge, featureless sea, with nothing between us and the horizon apart from the vast grey waves. I thought of all the times I’d spied on him in the water, the tiny boat scudding in the enormous, lonely waste of the ocean.

And now I was there.

‘I should go back on deck,’ Seth said. He stood, his face very bleak and reached for his sou’wester. Ice spattered on the porthole and suddenly I was calm.

‘Seth, stay below.’

He shook his head, tried to speak, but I put out my hand to stop him.

‘Listen, I think we’re being pulled. I think
I’m
being pulled – reeled in, taken somewhere. I don’t know where. But I don’t think it matters if you steer this boat or not. I think we’ll end up at the same place.’

‘I’m not going to let you get pulled into some trap! We’ll fight! Surely if I sail the opposite way …’

‘But which way
is
the opposite way?’

Seth’s gaze followed mine towards the window and we both stared out at the unending grey. There was no clue to where the danger lay. His shoulders seemed to slump.

‘If I don’t steer we could die.’

‘I think …’ I couldn’t finish. But he knew. He bowed his head.

Then he held out his hand.

Perhaps we
should
have gone on deck, tried to turn the boat around, fought to the end.

But we didn’t. I led him the other way, down the galley to the room with the bed. It felt like we had only a few hours left. If so, I didn’t want to spend them fighting.

I
t was late when Seth stirred in my arms.

‘What?’ I said softly.

‘Can’t you feel? The sea’s changed. We’re near land.’

We pushed back the covers, shivering at the bite of the cold air, and began to get dressed. My jeans were dry now and I pulled them on, along with my top and one of Seth’s sweaters beneath my coat. Seth had on a thick cable-knit jumper under his sou’wester. It made him look huge, like a giant in yellow oilskins. I shivered as he limped down the galley towards the hatch; in silhouette he looked eerily like Bran.

On deck we stood staring across the sea. It was very late, but still not yet dark in spite of the thick clouds that blanketed the sky. Tiny flecks of snow fell from the greyness, disappearing into the sea. A few landed on Seth’s dark curls, melting slowly into liquid diamonds.

‘Look.’ Seth pointed out towards the horizon. At first I couldn’t see anything, but after I strained my eyes into the dim, shifting light, I thought I could see a new darkness between sea and sky. ‘Land,’ Seth said. He looked at me, his face uncertain. ‘What shall we do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, whoever’s bringing you here, “reeling you in”, do you think they’re a friend or not?’

‘I … I don’t know,’ I said. Possibilities flickered through my head, hope and dread fighting in my imagination: Marcus; the mad Russian witch on the bridge; my mother …

‘What I’m saying is, I can try to turn the boat around. Do you want me to?’

‘They’ll just come after us.’ I felt fury and frustration boil up inside me and, most of all, fear for Seth. ‘I’m so, so sorry. You should never have been mixed up in this. Listen –’ I gripped the front of his sou’wester with fierce, numb hands ‘– I have to see this through to the end, but maybe you can get away.’

‘What do you mean?’ He frowned.

‘As long as I’m in this boat they’ll carry on pursuing us. But if I can get ashore, maybe you can make a run for it.’

‘What?’ His face was frank disbelief now. ‘And leave you alone to face – that?’

‘You
have
to.
Please
. If you’re involved, it’ll only make it harder. If I can hold on to just one thing – the idea that you might be OK—’

‘Anna, you’re crazy. Either that or you think I’m a total shit.’

‘I’m not,’ I cried. ‘I don’t. You were never meant to be involved in this. I dragged you in with that stupid spell; please, cut yourself free.
Please
. For me.’