Page 46 of Witchlore
“Learning to control my shapeshifting and my magic.” I shrug. “They think a shifter who can’t do witchcraft, who can’t access the truth inside themself, is like a bird with a broken wing, vulnerable to predators.”
“To witches, they mean.”
I nod.
“That’s… dark,” Bastian says. His voice is very bleak and he looks at me with a slightly shocked expression. “You do know what they did is dark, right?”
I want to say,Of course I fucking know, I lived it,but there’s a part of me that still, inexplicably, rises up and wants to say,It wasn’t that bad, you don’t understand.So I say nothing. Bastian waits for a moment and then shakes his head.
“If they’re so worried about keeping you safe, how come they let you go to college?”
“Ha, that was intervention.” I shake my head. “I told my A-level tutor I wanted to go to Manchester Uni and study a nonwitch course, like creative writing. My parents were horrified and enrolled me in Demdike as soon as they could. They were disgusted by the idea that I was going to… surrender to it. Stop trying to shift, stop trying to do magic. Live as a human.”
“Wow.” Bastian takes a glug of tea. “How did that go?”
“There was no point in fighting it.” I remember how desolate it felt that day, being told that what I saw as my chance to get out, to maybe be normal, had been snatched away. It was the first time the selkies had saved my life, when I recklessly went for a swim with a foolish idea I might even be able to swim to Ireland to get away from them. My parents saw it as a suicide attempt and perhaps it was, but at least the result of it was that they took my request to live away from them in Manchester seriously. “I askedto live in student accommodation. They said yes. My shifts had started to be the right age for some reason.” I glare at the rain against the windows, remembering the long rainy days shut inside. “I realized that if I went to Demdike, I would still be getting out of here, at least.”
“They didn’t bring you home? After…” Bastian looks at my wrist.
“They haven’t abandoned me entirely. They pay the rent at Beryl’s, they get updates from my counselor and from Professor Wallace. That’s the closest to mental health care my parents can manage.” I smile wryly. “But not because they’re mean or want to punish me, they just don’t care enough. They don’t care that I’m queer, they don’t care that I tried to kill myself, all they want is for me to be like them.”
It feels good to say the truth. I realize I haven’t told anyone that before, not even Elizabeth. She just thought we had a bad relationship, filled with animosity. The truth is simpler and more brutal, yet I’ve never said it aloud until now: my parents don’t love me enough to care about me. Not the real me, anyway. We’re just three people who endured these horrible years of a shared existence that wasn’t satisfying for anyone. That’s what I tell myself. What I’m not telling myself is that if there was a returns policy on orphans, they would have sent me back long ago. Or that sometimes, their lack of love, the punishments and treatments for my own good, felt like it was twisting into loathing.
“I feel like I’m supposed to say that’s not true, but I don’t think my dad cares about me, either,” Bastian says after a long pause. “All he cares about is pushing on, forgetting the past at any expense, even when it costs him his wife, his relationships with his family. He says he can still be proud of his heritage without magic, but hecan’t see how hurtful that is to Pépé and Grandma Olive. It feels like he’s chopped away a whole part of himself and he doesn’t care that he’s cutting me out of his life, too. That he’s leaving me alone, no coven, nothing.”
“You could join a coven here, in the north,” I say, trying to be positive but immediately feeling how paltry it is. Like if someone were to say to me,You can just get another girlfriend,about Elizabeth.
“I’m only in college here for one more year, and what’s the point?” Bastian snorts. “People always leave.”
I can’t disagree with that. Bastian stares into the fire, his voice becoming more reflective.
“In films, grief always brings people together, doesn’t it? When parents lose a child it makes them so protective of the kid that’s left. It’s sort of romantic, right? I guess a part of me thought it would happen to us, too. But it’s nothing like that. It’s like… grief made us all strangers who just happened to live together.”
“I get that,” I say softly, because I really do. Bastian has given words to the worst part of my childhood—that the people I lived with weren’t my parents. I didn’t love them; I just felt supremely awkward around them because they never seemed to know what do to with me. The best emotion my parents ever displayed to me was indifference.
Bastian shakes his head slowly.
“There are some people who shouldn’t have been parents.”
I’m surprised but I give him an appreciative look. His face is calm, reflective. He doesn’t think I’m weird for being unwanted—he feels unwanted, too. I know I should feel sorry for him but I don’t. Right now, I’m just glad that he gets it. Right now, I’m grateful that I’m not alone. We both sit as the fire crackles, staringinto its flames. I sigh heavily and stretch my neck from one side to the other and then roll my head. My skull feels heavier than before, as if I’ve gained a few centimeters, and my nose feels different, too. Then I catch Bastian watching me, an amused expression on his face.
“What?” I ask warily.
“You’re in a male form again,” he says softly.
“How can you be sure?” I demand, lifting my eyebrow.
“This.” Bastian’s gentle finger touches my Adam’s apple and it’s like an electric shock. I feel it echoing through me in ways it shouldn’t, and I jump back, immediately shooting my arms behind me to stop myself falling.No, absolutely not,I scold myself internally.I won’t feel those things.
“One thing to learn about shifters,” I say, making my voice as hard as possible as I glare at him. “It’s always best not to assume.”
“Okay.” He’s frowning and his eyes look a little hurt, a little confused, but I don’t care. I don’t want these feelings and if pushing him away a bit stops them, then so be it. I watch him feed newspaper into the fire and the blaze grows stronger, the warmth of the outside of my skin matching the strange lurching feeling in the middle of my cold chest. I won’t touch him again, not if that’s going to happen; I think I would rather never be touched again. Instead, I drain my teacup.
“I’m hungry,” Bastian says. “You?”
“Not really. I’m never that hungry after shifting, just thirsty,” I say. “But feel free to raid the kitchen.”
“Okay.” Bastian leaves the room. I can hear him opening and shutting cupboards and while he does, I pull out my phone and send a message to Beryl, letting her know I’m not coming back tonight. Then I getThe Witchlore of Bodiesout of my bag (thankgod for my ingenious decision to wrap it in plastic, as my bag is utterly rain-soaked) and flip the pages, trying to find the place I left off. I have a theory that I want to test about what I saw in my vision in the water. A heavy thunder begins inside my rib cage as I read the words:
