Page 39 of Witchlore
“Yep, we need to head to the beach at Lytham St. Annes.” Mystomach contracts and I try to nod in an inconspicuous way. “It’s one of the beaches there where they reckon Kilgrimol sunk.”
I nod. I remember the legend that was told to me, growing up staring at the wide Irish Sea every morning. I remember the tolling bell that would drift, forgotten, off the sea on moonless nights, the sunken church steeple still making its haunted music. Bastian keeps talking, explaining, because of course he has no way to know that we’re driving toward my hometown.Why should I tell him?I think to myself.It’s not any of his business.
“Apparently it was swallowed up by the sea but still makes its presence known. People hear bells and singing and find bones, all the classic haunted underwater town stuff.”
I nod like this is fascinating and pull out my phone, surreptitiously beginning to check my emails, searching for any from [email protected]. I see one, sent two weeks ago, with the subject heading:Paris in October. I breathe a sigh of relief. They won’t be there.
“And we need to find a bone?” I say, tucking my phone away. “What, do we just pick up one of those sandcastle-making kits and start shoveling?”
“I’ve been thinking about it, I have a plan in mind,” Bastian says, ignoring the person who is honking their horn violently behind him as he drives at sixty in the middle lane.
“What?”
“I’ve got it under control, don’t worry,” he says with a grin. I smile back tightly and try to relax my shoulders.My parents are in Paris,I tell myself.They won’t be there. No one needs to know.It doesn’t quite work, so I take outThe Witchlore of Bodiesand pick up again on the part I reached the night before. Bastian looks at me in horror.
“You brought it with you?”
“Yeah, I’m reading the diary, it’s interesting.”
“It’s an ancient magical grimoire and you’ve just been carrying it around?” Bastian swears as he swerves the car, tearing his eyes away from the grimoire and fixing them back on the road.
“It’s fine, I keep it wrapped in a plastic bag.”
“You’re meant to be keeping it safe!”
“It is safe with me!” I can’t explain to Bastian why I feel itchy whenever I consider leaving the grimoire under my bed, but I know that if I had left it behind today, I would have been worrying about it at the back of my mind. “I live in a house full of witches, Bastian. This way I make sure no one nicks it.”
His jaw is ticking and his lips are pursed in anger. I can tell I’m not getting him on board so I decide to change tactic.
“Look, what if we need it for something to do with the spell? Doesn’t it feel right that we have the grimoire with us when we’re finding the essential components? I mean, isn’t that what everyone says you should do with complicated gramarye? You wouldn’t go shopping without the recipe, would you?”
“I suppose.”
This is what we’re all taught in class and I can see Bastian is swayed by it. I don’t tell him the truth: that to me, doing this without the grimoire feels wrong, as if I’m leaving someone important out of a conversation.
“And look, it’s really interesting reading, too. This is from the First World War, listen—” I shuffle the book on my lap and read aloud:
Father wants me to shift into a female form now that war has broken out, but I don’t know how I could stand to lie to the ladshere who are joining up. Lots of them are my friends, I saw them grow up, some of them marched with us and supported Mrs. Pankhurst’s cause. I can’t let them go alone. There are terrible things happening in the world and it is my job to do my part, to speak up, to help where I can help. If I do not, what is there?
“So they weren’t into traditional gender stuff?” Bastian muses. “That seems unusual for the time period and for everything you’ve told me about shapeshifting culture.”
“Yeah, it is.” The thought of it makes me happy. “I get the impression they liked to shun shifter expectations.”
“Kind of like you.” Bastian grins. It’s not a sarcastic smile or a wry smirk. It’s genuine. I want to bat it off, to say something funny, but the words stick in my throat. I flush, even though I don’t want to, and fix my gaze out the window so I don’t have to look at that smile anymore.
“Thanks,” I say quietly. I open my phone and find my photos of Elizabeth. I stare into her face and think about how good it will be when I have her back and how this tiny, fluttery feeling I have when Bastian compliments me will fade, it’ll become nothing, when she’s back in my arms.
As soon as we get out of the car and smell the salty air, I realize this was a bad idea. The sound of wheeling gulls immediately takes me back to my childhood: tuning into the sound of their mournful voices to ignore whatever recriminations my parents were shouting at me, shame curdling inside.
Stop it,I tell myself.They’re in Paris.
If Bastian notices me withdrawing into myself, he doesn’t sayanything as he pays for parking and I follow him mutely into my childhood town.
“So this is Lytham St. Annes,” Bastian says, as we walk down the high street and past NatWest, the small pretty houses with their pointed roofs and the traditional shop fronts—the greengrocer, the fishmonger—with their green Victorian awnings on either side. “Seems like every other seaside town.”
“Seems like it.” I keep my voice light, attempting to hide the truth that I am holding my breath, hoping we don’t run into anyone who could recognize me. Then, with a jolt, I realize that no one ever recognizes me. A sharp, bitter wind is blowing off the sea and down the high street, pressing against us. In the offseason, it has that sleepy, neglected feeling, as if the closed-up pastel-colored beach huts are props for a show that hasn’t started yet. All the seaside accoutrements that usually hang from awnings, the aqua-blue and hot-pink inflatables and bodyboards in primary colors, are gone, and the residents and shoppers are dressed in heavy coats with umbrellas hanging on their arms. Some of them glance at us a little suspiciously, all eyes fixing on Bastian’s face and then darting over my eccentric clothes that scream “gay as hell” at the top of their lungs. We’re attracting a lot of “you’re not from around here” kind of looks and it makes me want to run back to Manchester. Bastian’s shoulders are so tense they’re practically up by his ears. He catches my nervous gaze, his gait deliberately slowing down.
“You okay?” I ask quietly.
