Not long after, I was aboard a huge ship set for Ireland, wedged inside a filthy, lice-ridden cabin with fifty other men and boys, about half of whom were puking their guts out with seasickness. The smell was almost as bad as the noise, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as miserable in my life as I was then. The boat rocked so violently I didn’t expect to survive the night, but that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst was knowing that I’d drown not in seawater but in the pool of bile sloshing up and down the deck beneath my hammock.
But that night, as I opened my small bag of belongings, I found a flat stone tucked in between the pages of my Bible. It was from Amy. In blood, she’d painted a rune on the back, one that I recognized.
It was a love charm from a woman toward a man, and it offered protection. With my knife, I skewered a hole through the top and fed a piece of string through it, tying it around my neck. I might otherwise have supposed that I’d never see Amy again, not with an ocean between us and her father’s will against me.
But like I said, Amy had a gift.
The rune would bring us together again when the stars were in our favor.
I was gone for five years and put to work in a butchery. I acquired an extensive knowledge about anatomy, which came in useful toward the end of my tenure.
My mind continued to loosen. I would wake up sometimes completely naked and drenched in blood, clasping an ax, without knowledge of why I was thus nor in whose blood I was soaked. I was no longer certain that I would ever see Amy again. Or, if I did, that she would want me. I was not who I was.
I had just turned seventeen when the guild took action against my employer. There were thirty reports of him selling rotten meat. After a brief trial, it was William O’Daly alone who was dragged through the streets and smeared in horseshit by the peasants before being hauled into the stocks. His business finished, I was sent back to Scotland with a bag of coins for five years’ work and no plan for my life at all, except finding Amy.
And find her I did, or at least a version of her, for she was forever changed. And it was entirely due to Witches Hide.
LUNA, 2021
I
The smell wakes Luna up. The bitter smell of smoke hits the back of her nose. She bolts upright in bed and calls out.
“Are you OK, Clover?”
No answer. Luna scrambles out of bed and tears downstairs, where a thick plume of black smoke is trailing from Clover’s bedroom.
Clover is standing beside her pile of new clothes, but they’re on fire. Bright orange flames dance above the dresses, sparking on the lace fabric. Clover looks up at her, the blaze revealing menace on her face.
Luna darts into the bathroom, where it seems to take an eternity to find something to fill with water. All the pans are downstairs collecting the drips from the ceiling that Luna drenched with bathwater. The room is thickening with smoke, stinging her eyes and the back of her throat. She spies a small bin beside the toilet and grabs it, filling it quickly with water. Then she runs into the bedroom and throws the water over the pile, but it’s not enough to damp out the flames completely. They curl dangerously toward the bed, and Luna has to pull Clover out of the room and order her out of the cottage while she races back into the bathroom for more water.
Mercifully, the fire dies down, though thick black smoke clings to the air. Luna covers her mouth with her hand as she rushes outside, gasping. Clover is in the garden of the cottage wearing only her nightie and a scowl. Luna sits down on an old garden bench, utterly spent.
She sits a long time in silence, her elbows on her knees and her head lowered into the palms of her hands. It was a mistake to bring Clover to an Airbnb. Her training has taught her that children with traumatic backgrounds need to be watched carefully in case of dangerous behavior, that the environment needs to be controlled. In her own home, she’d have put all sharps, pills, and matches in a locked drawer. She has no idea where Clover found the matches, but it’s her fault that she did.