Chapter Eight

Hoax

It’s morning once again and Marley and I are exhausted all over. We can barely lift our spoons for our cereal, and I spill the milk twice. The only thing giving me even a fraction of energy is the knowledge that we’re going on another quest. We are going to find that creature before Portia’s army does.

Leanna is marking some of Marley’s homework. She’s been lying to the school about both of us coming down with terrible chicken pox. We only have a week left of term, so the teachers don’t seem to be fighting her too much. They know Marley is smart enough to teach himself at this point, and they’re probably pretty relieved to be free of me.

“I’m starting to believe you are both ill,” Leanna says. “What’s wrong?”

“The wind is loud in that tower,” I say, not untruthfully. “It’s hard to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Oh,” she says frowning in concern. “Well, maybe we can move you both.”

“It’s fine, Mum,” says Marley, throwing me a glance and shaking his head just slightly. “We’re all right.”

“Well, okay.” She looks over to the windowsill. “You know… I really hate winter.”

She waves her hand softly. Some dying plants outside start to bloom again. Only a little, but it is beautiful magic. She causes some bluebells to appear in front of us, at the table.

“Blue is one of the rarest colours in nature, you know,” she says, and she looks directly at me. “But things that are rare tend to be the best, don’t they?”

I smile. Aunt Leanna’s magic is softer and quieter than her sisters’, but no less impressive or important.

“Where’s Opal?” I ask, staring at her empty chair in the breakfast nook.

“She’s working on an extremely taxing spell at the moment,” Leanna says. “It’s taking up a lot of her energy.”

I narrow my eyes. “What kind of spell?”

“Nothing to concern yourself about.”

Opal stands in the doorway, and, although she spoke the words with her usual dryness, she sounds absolutely exhausted. She’s wearing a ratty oversized knitted jumper with matching black shorts. Her legs are long and thin, and she looks so young this morning. Dark circles and her hair scraped into a messy updo.

Opal is neurodivergent like me. She gets overwhelmed. She processes things at her own pace. She likes routine. Her hands sometimes shake, she gets headaches easily and she is blunt and direct and to the point. She’s also loyal. Brave. The only person who came to that island to save me when I thought I was completely alone in the world.

“Come on, you,” she says to me. “Marley has English homework, and you’ve got witchcraft theory. Let’s go.”

I leap to my feet and cackle in Marley’s face. “Enjoy your boring book about a whale.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles.

I follow Opal up to the first floor, to the small library. I’ve poked my head in a couple of times, but we’ve never taken lessons in here.

“Are we going to practice launching books at people?” I ask gleefully.

“We’re doing theory today,” she says, gesturing for me to sit at a small table by the window, where the sun is pouring in. “Not practice.”

I groan. “Theory of what?”

She sits at the table herself, not speaking until I sulkily collapse into the chair across from her.

“Curses.”

My mouth drops open and I make a noise of elation. “No!”

“Yes!”

“I get to learn how to curse people.”

“No,” she says, frowning at me. “I’m teaching you about them. Why would you want to curse someone?”

I shrug. “There are some kids in my old class who could do with a curse. That baroness who came to our school, the one who was secretly a Siren. Portia.”

“Ramya,” she says carefully, “you need to know about all kinds of witchcraft. But magic is not your weapon. It’s your defence. It’s a gift. Not something to use to hurt people.”

I exhale. “Fine. Tell me about a hypothetical curse I’ll never be allowed to cast.”

She smirks. “Remember, magic is different with every single person. No two spells are the same. One witch cannot imitate another.”

“When you cast that Medusa Hex on Ren,” I butt in, “when you turned him to stone, was that a curse?”

“No,” she says and something sad crosses her face for a moment. “That was exactly that. A hex. A curse… a curse is irreversible. It cannot be undone.”

“Not even by the witch who casts it?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve never heard of a curse being reversed. By anyone.”

“Have you ever cast one?”

“No.”

“Have you ever wanted to?”

Something flashes across her face. She censors it quickly, before I can name the emotion. She looks out the window and then back to me. “Yes.”

I appreciate the honest response. It sits between the two of us for a moment.

“Who was it?” I ask.

At first, I think she won’t answer. Then, “Someone I used to know.”

“A friend?”

“Once.”

“You’re not friends anymore?”

Her eyes shine in the crisp winter sun coming in from the window, while her lips attempt a smile. “No.”

“I’m not sure they’ll want to be friends again if you curse them, Aunt Opal.”

She laughs and then her face contorts for a split second. She laughs again, uneasily, and looks quickly away. She blinks a couple of times. “No, probably not.”

“What did they do?”

She sniffs once and starts sorting through a pile
of books that were already on the table. “Oh… lots
of things.”

“Maybe you can make up?”

She touches the corner of her eye with the pad of her forefinger. “You know, Dad –your grandpa – he used to always say something. ‘The one thing evil cannot endure, the one thing it cannot bear, is your forgiveness’.”

I wrinkle my nose. “What? That doesn’t make any sense. Forgiving people means letting them off the hook. Why would that—”

“Like I said, it was just something he would say,” Opal says swiftly. She seems to have shaken herself back into teaching mode. “Now come on. You’ve
got to read these and note down the similar points in each text.”

I flip open the first dusty book with a grimace.

“And I’ll give you a help,” she adds. “Casting a curse, or any spell, should never come from a place of anger or hatred.”

I glance up at her. She is watching me with a knowing look. I suddenly think of the Faerie.

“Noted,” I say quietly.

I begin to read.

*

I’m still thinking about curses and Aunt Opal when Alona appears by our window at nine o’clock that night. Marley eagerly climbs out and onto the branches. I lift my tote bag with Grandpa’s book, feeling just a little less enthusiastic than usual.

“Come on,” Marley says impatiently. “New quest, you said.”

I smile and climb out, carefully. “Yeah. Back into
the fray.”

I can’t help but feel like we should be back in Edinburgh. Freddy’s emails have been sporadic and a little clipped, as if he doesn’t have as much time to write. He says things are different there now, and not in a good way.

They need help. I can tell.

I just don’t know how to get to them. I could never fly to Edinburgh by myself, let alone with Marley on my back. Even Opal couldn’t fly that far.

At least, I don’t think she could.

We hit the grass and make our way towards the winding loch. I’d told Alona to ask all the Hidden Folk she knew, including her maker the Druid, about the mysterious creature.

“That Selkie has agreed to speak with us,” she announces, as we scamper down to the bank.

As we reach it, I do what has always been instinctual to me. I kneel and touch the water. I channel the pulses of magic inside of me into my hands and press them against the cold, ancient loch.

It occurs to me that this mass of water has been around for longer than anyone I know, or have ever known, and it will still be here after I am gone.

The electricity that I feel in my hand moves into the loch. Ripples start to swell across the glassy water. I move back a little, ordering Alona and Marley to do the same. We don’t need the Ceasg to return.

She does not. Another creature appears where she once did.

The Selkie. She moves like a seal through the cold waves and breaks the surface in front of the three of us.

“Haven’t been in these waters for the longest time,” she says, shaking off drops of liquid. She sounds contemplative.

“Why?” Marley asks, taking in the majesty of another creature who does not feel the need to Glamour.

“My family were chased out a long time ago,” she says quietly. “I moved to the sea. But I come back in the winter months. To remember.”

“Who chased them out?” I ask, defensively. “Sirens? Fae?”

She looks straight at me. “No. Humans.”

I shrink back a little. “Oh.”

“Can you tell us more about this creature you saw?” Marley asks her.

She shivers. “It’s not what the humans think. It could be a different monster entirely. It is not some underwater creature, or some dinosaur of the deep. It’s… like a ghost.”

I think of Angus and his stories of the villagers and the Hidden Folk who swore they had seen a spirit from beyond the grave. “What makes you say that?”

The Selkie glances around, furtively. “It knew things about me. Wordless things. I only saw it from a distance, at first I thought I must be hallucinating. It can shift and transform. It is… quite horrifying.”

I share a look with Marley and Alona. They look as baffled as I feel.

“I can’t tell you how it can exist,” the Selkie adds. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It has the stature and size of a human, but there is something so unnatural about it. It’s… it feels cruel. It does not speak. But it knows things.”

“What do you mean, what things?”

I ask the question a little frantically, as the Selkie is already starting to move back into deeper water.

“Things I don’t want to remember,” she whispers, before her lips disappear beneath the breaking waves.

I make a noise of frustration, and for a moment I consider diving in after her. I obviously don’t. I might have a special relationship with water, my magic may call to it, but I cannot stand the icy temperature of
the loch.

Instead, I dash out onto it. The way I did upon the River Forth, now so long ago. I dance across the flat surface of the loch, connecting with the water so it holds me up. Alona watches in astonishment, her eyes wide at the sight of my true nature. I don’t Glamour the way some Hidden Folk choose to, but I mask. I hide my potential. I dial it down.

I bound across the water and eventually stand still, about ten metres from the shore.

“Stop showing off and get back on land now,” Marley calls out.

“I’m good,” I call back, needing the mask to be gone right now. “It’s fine.”

“That mermaid thing might come back,” he insists. “Come on.”

“Not scared of anything in this loch,” I retort. I start to dance again, moving like an ice skater across the unfrozen water. I dart and leap and command the
fluid glass.

I have a lot of feelings. I have feelings about Fae and Sirens stalking innocent Hidden Folk. I have feelings about the ghost that has allegedly been seen around these parts. I have feelings about Aunt Opal and her stoic secrets. I have feelings about Alona, our new friend, with her giddy freedom and lack of worries. I have feelings about Freddy, my old friend, who is far away and distant over emails. I have feelings about the absolute idiocy of forgiving enemies. I have feelings about Grandpa not being here to see me dance on the water. I have feelings about Mum and Gran disappearing without saying goodbye, without even explaining why or where, without giving me any assurance about it, without saying why it was so important – so important that I cannot know the reason, wasn’t worth a conversation, wasn’t worth—

I lose concentration and fall into the icy depths. I drop like a stone.

I open my mouth automatically to cry out and water rushes in. I push up, using every muscle to get to the top. It is too heavy underwater to use the full force of my magic. I am about to breach the surface when I feel something awe-inspiring and terrifying. Something is underneath me, something large, and it pushes me up. It forces me out of the water. It gives me enough of a launch to fly over to the shore.

“What happened?” yelps Marley, while Alona rubs my arms feverishly. She doesn’t need to, the shock and adrenaline are distracting me from the awful cold.

I stare out at the water.

“I don’t know,” I gabble, all bravado gone. “I have no idea.”

I scramble forwards, now pressing both hands to the water. I once summoned the Kelpies of Edinburgh this way. It called them to us, despite how reticent and reluctant they were around humans.

I try now. Letting the water sing.

Something breaches. Somethings large, right at
the spot in Loch Ness where I dropped. It swims
closer, standing to its full height when the water is shallow enough.

“Oh, my G—” Marley croaks out the words and then falls silent, completely petrified.

“It’s true,” Alona gasps, more still than I have
ever seen her. “Those silly human stories, they were
all true.”

“Not exactly,” I murmur, taking in the enormous creature. It’s the size of an elephant. It’s scaly and rough and has four legs and a long slender tail. It has a colossal pair of wings. It is blue. A deep, electric blue. Its face has been drawn in fairy stories for as long as I can remember, with flared nostrils and large teeth, yet seeing it in person is more astonishing than I could ever have imagined.

“It’s not a monster,” I finally breathe. “It’s a dragon.”