The Witch in the Lake (8 page)

‘Beatrice, for heaven's sake, she's not a criminal—'

‘No, Francesca, but she's spending time with something worse. Now please let her go and we'll be on our way.'

Merilee's arms went around her mother. She gripped her hard.

Now, from the shadows of the path leading up to the house, there came a voice. ‘'Cesca, my love, where are you?'

A stumbling figure loomed up into the light.

‘Papà!' whispered Merilee. She moved towards him.

‘Franco,' cried Francesca. ‘Thank goodness you're here. Tell her she can't take Merilee. She's too young to start that kind of life, she doesn't want it.'

Franco waved a jug of wine in the air. ‘Ah, leave it alone, Francesca,' he mumbled.

His words were slurred. If they'd been written on a blackboard, Leo thought, they'd look blurred as if all the letters had been rubbed together with a duster. Leo could smell the stink of wine on Franco's breath, as he burped loudly and lurched towards the carriage. He tripped on a loose stone and went sprawling over on the ground. The jug smashed and Franco let out a cry.

‘Damn and blast,' he swore, ‘I'm bleeding, ‘Cesca. Oh, I'm going to be sick—help me!'

Beatrice stared down at him in disgust. She pointed at him with the toe of her shoe, as if he were a particularly ugly species of insect. ‘What kind of education will your daughter have here, Francesca? What kind of life can she lead with this
ubriaco
, this drunk for a father?'

‘All right, all right,' Francesca said tiredly.

Beatrice reached out and took Merilee's hand, pulling her towards the carriage.

Leo's heart was thumping. Now, I should do something
now
, he told himself. But he felt frozen, paralysed. His legs wouldn't move. His throat was dry.

Merilee didn't look back at her mother or father as the driver helped her inside. Leo watched the darkness swallow the small pale moon of her face. Beatrice swung up into the carriage after her, and leaned over the side.

‘
Arrivederci!
' she called merrily. ‘Stay well and get plenty of rest, Francesca, dear!'

‘It will only be for two weeks, then, won't it?' Francesca called back. ‘I'll see you both in a fortnight, won't I?'

But the driver had already whipped the horses and the wheels began to spin and Beatrice was calling goodbye so loudly that Francesca never heard a reply.

When all the pieces of the broken jug had been picked up and Francesca had helped her husband inside, Leo came out of the shadows. He walked down the stony path, into the swim of darkness beyond it. He began to run, his feet fumbling over uneven ground. He ran blindly, trying to escape the hot spurt of shame that was flooding him.

A rabbit hole sent him tumbling and he lay where he fell, not moving. His arms and legs splayed out wide on the damp, cold grass. He felt like a fallen star, grounded, burned out, useless.

He closed his eyes and all he could see behind the lids was the word,
failure
.

It was two and a half weeks since Merilee had gone, and Leo had heard nothing. Every day he did the same things he usually did. He washed, ate, did his lessons, went to the market, but the life had gone out of it all. Sometimes, in the afternoons, he played tag or spun tops with other boys in the square. But deep inside he felt there was nothing to look forward to, no warmth in the days. Just a dull grey dust over everything, with a nagging stab of worry behind it.

Then at the market one morning, he saw Francesca. She was buying some new season's pears. He went and stood next to her, breathing in her familiar scent. Rose and jasmine. It made sudden tears prick behind his eyes.

‘Leo!' Francesca turned towards him and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘It's so good to see you—
dio
, how much you've grown!'

It was true. He was nearly as tall as she was. They both glanced nervously about as they began to wander through the stalls, talking.

Leo could hardly believe his luck. It just didn't seem real, as if they were walking in a dream. How different it all was without Beatrice hovering near. He kept expecting that any minute he'd wake up and Francesca would disappear, like mist in the morning.

‘Have you heard from your sister?' he asked boldly.

Francesca's face darkened.

‘No. I haven't heard a word,' she said. ‘Not one word. I don't know what she can be thinking of—she knows how I worry.'

Leo's tongue burned with things he'd like to say. But he didn't say any of them. Why spoil this time with Francesca? He just wanted to keep on standing there, feeling safe with her, having her trust him.

‘Will you let me know when you hear something?' Leo asked. ‘You could leave a message with Signor Butteri, or Signor Eco.'

Francesca looked uneasy, fiddling with her necklace. Then her face cleared. ‘Yes, I will,' she said suddenly. ‘I shall do what I like. I know how you care for Merilee.'

‘Thank you,' said Leo, and without thinking, threw his arms around her waist. She hugged him back for just a moment.

‘Oh, Signora, you forgot your pears,' called the man behind the fruit stall. Francesca turned, clutching her basket, and walked quickly away.

Leo stayed. He bought two pears. Her scent was still in his nostrils. He remembered her bending over him when he was little, her smooth fingers combing his hair after a bath. He remembered a story she told him about a little hen and a wolf. There'd been so many stories before their midday nap.

His throat ached and he began to walk too, away from the busy market and the hurt.

The meeting with Francesca changed Leo's days. He'd seen how her face softened and came alive when she looked at him. She'd hugged him close, her cheek pressed against his. For those few minutes at the market, Leo had felt himself loved. And it gave him faith in himself again.

Now when he practised his magic, he concentrated with new energy. He was most himself when he was immersed in ‘seeing' something else. He felt he was using all his powers, flexing every part of his gift, and he was determined to get better. Be as good as he could be. As good as his father had hoped.

Failure, family of failures
. When Beatrice's words floated into his mind, he tried to think of Francesca. He thought of Merilee and her songs, and all the games they'd ever played. And it gave him strength. He had the twin signs after all, and if he lived up to the power he was born with, then maybe he could rescue Merilee and send that Beatrice—and any other old witch—packing!

Some days he worked so hard that he missed the market, forgot to prepare dinner. He walked around with his head full of things he'd ‘seen'. In his mind he talked with them, fought with them—it was hard to let them go. Small nuggetty presences, they hulked inside him, clinging to his thoughts, refusing to be banished. He could never be alone any more—his brain rustled with creatures and shadows, the essence of things.

At night Leo fell into bed exhausted. It was as if he'd run for a hundred miles, when all he'd done was sit still as a stone all day. He had to use all his energy to concentrate.

Only the voice still nagged at him. At night, when he was falling asleep, the breathy sound blew in through the shutters.
Leo, whoo, Leo soon!
And he'd turn over and hold the pillow over his ears.

Leo had no trouble ‘seeing'. In fact he sometimes thought he saw too much. It was the transformation part that was difficult. When he looked at a stone, an apple, he could see the heart of it so clearly—the rightness of the thing, the inevitability of it—and he was reluctant to change it. Often he'd become so convinced by the essence of something—all the glittering grains of sand in a stone, the messages inside a seed—that he couldn't touch it. He saw the meeting of ancient oceans and boiling earth—who was he to fool with that?

‘You have to hold that thing in your mind, all of it, and then see the otherness of what it will become,' Marco explained to him one night at dinner.

But Leo shook his head in exasperation. ‘It's like holding two sides of an argument in your head at the same time, and being equally convinced by both. You'd have to be strong for that—you'd need the heart of a lion!'

Marco looked at him curiously. ‘Are you afraid?'

Leo stared at his hands. ‘I don't know. Maybe.'

Marco nodded.

Leo had often privately wondered if Marco had ever looked into
his
, Leo's, own heart. What would he see there? Once, when Leo asked him, Marco just said, ‘That is for you to discover.' Whenever Leo felt afraid or weak, he feared what Marco had seen inside him. Was it a mouse, a poor shivering creature, and Marco didn't want to tell him?

‘Sometimes,' Leo said slowly, ‘a thing seems so right, just the way it is. What if I spoil it, what if I fail, and destroy it, so it's not one thing nor another? Then I'd know I wasn't a good wizard—I'd be a dunce!'

‘How will you ever know if you don't try? To go to the second stage of transformation, you need to know all the details of the new object. In a way, you have to become the thing for a moment yourself, in order to understand it.' Marco looked away then, and stared out at the fire. ‘That's where you can get lost. You must never lose your grip then.'

Leo looked down at the table. His father was moving his empty glass around, making a wet circle on the wooden surface. In the silence they could hear the rain starting. Leo knew his father was thinking of Laura. He didn't know what to do or say to make it better. Marco probably thought of Laura every single day.

The next morning, when Marco had gone to work, Leo set off early for the market. After he'd bought some fruit and cheese, he sat down for a moment, piling his packages beside him on the low stone wall of the piazza. The early sunlight was warm on his face, and he sat idly for a while, content to watch the passers-by and listen to conversations going on at the stalls.

‘
Ciao
, Leo,' called Fabbio from his meat stall. ‘Why don't you take a few of these sausages home for your papà. You know how he loves them!' Fabbio was hanging great slabs of cured ham and salami onto the hooks of his stall.

Leo smiled and waved at Fabbio. It was true, Marco couldn't resist Fabbio's sausages—always fresh and spicy. But Leo just wanted to go on sitting there for a while. Lazy, he felt so lazy . . . He'd get them later.

A customer walked up to the stall just then, so Fabbio turned away to greet him. Leo watched them, grinning. Fabbio was the best salesman at the market. When he described the succulent qualities of his meat and just how to cook it, the juices started in your mouth. He'd wave his arms around, his endearing double chin wobbling with enthusiasm. No one ever left without a package from Fabbio's stall.

But something was different about this exchange. Leo couldn't see any arms in the air, or hear any excited talk. The men's voices were low, intense—perhaps this was a friend of Fabbio's and they had some other business to discuss. Still, Leo felt uneasy.

He studied the customer. The man wore no hat or cloak, and his long hair was matted with straw. Just then the man smiled and laughed at something Fabbio said, putting a friendly arm on his shoulder. Yes, the man must be a friend, Leo told himself.

Feeling restless now, he bundled his packages together and stood up. As he wandered a little nearer to the stall, he glanced sideways at the man. And that was all it took. Just a glance and Leo had him. He looked at the pale eyes of the man and saw straight through, into the dark soul inside.

Leo dropped everything he was holding and darted forward. He didn't stop to think what he was doing. As he leaped upon the man he yelled, ‘Back, Fabbio!'

At the same instant the man pulled out the dagger that he'd had hidden inside his shabby vest, and lunged at Fabbio. The dagger glinted, for just a heartbeat, above Fabbio's shocked eyes before Leo knocked it out of the man's fist and crashed him to the ground.

People from all around the piazza ran towards them. Fabbio was screaming, ‘He tried to kill me! He was going to kill me!' The fruit vendor flung himself upon the man, sitting heavily on him, while someone else tied his hands together.

The dagger lay where it had fallen, on the pitted wood of Fabbio's bench.

Leo led Fabbio away, over to the wall where he'd been sitting.

‘He was my friend since childhood,' Fabbio was sobbing. ‘Pietro, he had a hard life, never had any luck. He went away to try his fortune and I heard he'd been sick—some fever of the brain. It left him crazy. But why did he try to kill me?'

Fabbio stared at Leo suddenly. ‘You saved my life,' he said quietly, glancing over at the dagger. He shuddered. ‘How did you know, how could you tell what he was going to do? You were there before he'd even put his hand in his vest.'

Leo looked away. He saw the people gathering around them now, talking avidly, pointing at them. He was shaking. He felt something rising up from his stomach, flowing into his chest. He swallowed—was he going to be sick? The feeling was so strange, so unfamiliar. But Leo could feel himself smiling. His mouth was stretching wider and wider, he couldn't help it, as Fabbio flung his arm around him and pulled him up. Pride, that must be the feeling. Bursting, exploding
pride
.

‘How did he know? I saw it all—he got there just in time! Who would have thought it—Pietro and Fabbio were boys together.' The talk was buzzing all around him, as versions of the story spread through the piazza. ‘He's got the second sight!' people told each other, staring at Leo with wonder.

Leo stood next to Fabbio, struggling with himself. He longed to tell them, describe the vision he'd had: the crazed creature, half man, half animal—the rage on its face telling him so vividly what was about to occur.