I come down in a forest clearing, stepping onto grass. Autumn leaves litter the earth, yellow and brown and gold. It’s early afternoon – the time difference from London is a couple of hours – and the sky is a clear bright blue.
I let the gate close and set off; there’s no track but I know where to go. I’ve changed into jeans and walking shoes, and fallen leaves crunch under my soles. I find myself relaxing as I walk. I’ve always lived in cities, but I like how peaceful the countryside is. When I’m in London, I can always hear traffic and voices, but out here the only sound is the wind. It’s nice.
It only takes a few minutes for the house to appear. There’s a path running through the trees, flagstones laid out like stepping-stones in a grassy river, and the path runs right by the building. It’s a log house with a peaked roof, raised a foot or so off the ground. There are windows on the walls with flowers in window boxes, and a veranda with a couple of chairs. I cross the path and climb the steps. ‘Hey, lazy,’ I tell the fox lying in front of the door. ‘Shouldn’t you be out hunting?’
Hermes flicks his tail at the sound of my voice. He’s sprawled on his side on the wooden decking, and he lifts one paw and twists his head to look at me upside down.
‘You’re just stealing from her, aren’t you?’ I say. ‘Anyone home?’
Hermes blinks. I step over him, pulling in my curse to keep it out of his fur, and knock on the door. A voice calls ‘Come in!’ and I push it open.
The door opens into a combination kitchen/living/dining room. Inside, a young woman is rolling pastry on the table. She’s wearing an apron over a T-shirt and jeans, and there’s flour on her arms. ‘Your fox is getting fat,’ I tell her, closing the door behind me.
‘He keeps eating my pastries,’ Anne says with a smile. ‘Want one?’
You’d never think to look at her that a month ago Anne was one of the most feared and wanted mages in the British Isles. All you’d see would be a tall, slender girl with long black hair and red-brown eyes. Beautiful, maybe; scary, no. You can’t even sense any magic. I know she uses some kind of life shroud, but I can’t see it, though my magesight’s awful so that might just be me.
Technically I’m not breaking the law by visiting like this, but it’s not something I share around. Yes, officially Anne’s been pardoned and taken off the wanted list. But the Council lost a lot of people in that war. As long as they have no idea where she is, it’s easy for them to let it go, but once that changes . . .
I hop up to sit on the table. ‘What’s in them?’
‘Apricot,’ Anne says. She puts aside the rolling pin and starts cutting the dough into strips.
‘I liked the apple ones.’
‘Come on, give apricot a try.’
‘Fine,’ I sigh. They’ll probably be good; I just prefer things I know. ‘Ji-yeong’s hanging around the shop again.’
Anne puts the cutter aside and takes two of the dough strips. ‘Mm-hm?’
‘It doesn’t bother you, does it? I mean, she was Sagash’s apprentice.’
‘Well, so was I.’ Anne starts plaiting the strips together. She makes it look easy, but the one time I tried I made a horrible mess. ‘Though it was a bit more voluntary on her part. But given what I did to her master, I think we can call it even.’
Anne’s a very different person these days, and to be honest I’m still figuring out how to treat her. On the one hand, she’s easier to get on with. I always liked the old Anne, but whenever you talked to her, there was this reserve, this sense she was holding herself back. Nowadays she’s a lot more relaxed. And funnier. I can talk to her about things where the conversation would have stalled before.
On the other hand, she’s also a lot scarier. Like I said, she doesn’t look scary, but somehow I’m very sure that if anyone ever really threatens her she’ll kill them without a second thought. It’s like the safety catches that normal people have just aren’t there. I suppose some people would say the same about Alex, but I never felt with Alex that he’d turn that on me. With Anne, I’m not so sure.
‘Pass the apricots?’ Anne asks.
‘Where—? Oh.’ There’s a small bowl at my end of the table with apricot halves, washed and cored. Anne turns towards me and holds out her hand. I reach out—
It’s the way she’s standing that does it. All of a sudden, it’s a month ago. We’re in the shop, shadows stretching across the floor, and Anne’s in that exact same pose, except she’s wearing a black skater dress and above her palm a mass of black wires is spinning faster and faster. She’s staring at me with those dark eyes and—
—the moment’s gone. I’m quite still, the bowl of apricots half-extended, looking down at Anne’s hand. And suddenly I’m very aware that we’re on our own in a cabin in the woods with no one who knows where I am and no one close enough to hear a scream.
‘You know I wouldn’t,’ Anne says quietly. She’s looking at me and I know she’s read my body language.
I take a breath and hand over the bowl. Our fingers don’t quite touch. ‘I know,’ I tell her. But it’s forced, and when Anne turns back to her dough, there’s a tension in the air.
Most people think Anne did what she did because she was under that marid’s control. I’m one of maybe four people who know better. Oh, the marid had an influence, and it got bigger and bigger until by the final battle it really was possessing her. But the people she killed before that? All the marid did was give her a push. And I’m not completely sure she even needed the push.
I know it was only part of her. But that part’s still there, and the woman standing next to me folding strings of dough around sliced apricots is still basically the same person who went into Jagadev’s fortress and Levistus’s mansion and killed every living thing that got in her way.
I shake it off and start complaining to Anne about the shifts Vari’s working and how I hardly get to see him any more. Anne listens and makes sympathetic noises and we move on to talk about other things, and the tension fades until I’ve almost forgotten it happened.
The pastries are lined up on their tray and Anne’s about to put it in the oven when I stretch and glance around. ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Where’s . . . ?’
‘That way,’ Anne says, pointing. ‘Along the path, then turn off onto the track.’
‘Didn’t even need to ask,’ I say with a grin. I look up; that curved spear of Alex’s is mounted above the fireplace. ‘Are you still keeping that?’
‘You never know.’
I nod and hop off the table. ‘Back in a bit.’
‘Luna?’
I pause halfway to the door. Looking back, I see that Anne hasn’t lifted the tray. She’s staring down at the pastries, and this time when she speaks, she doesn’t raise her eyes. ‘You used to say on your bad days, it felt like you weren’t bearing a curse, you were a curse. That you made everything worse for everyone you’d ever known, just by being alive.’
I nod.
There’s something brittle in Anne’s words. ‘How did you deal with it?’
It’s something I used to think about a lot, and what happened with the monkey’s paw has made me dig it up again. It’s not easy to say, but I speak honestly and hope it’ll help. ‘I suppose the biggest thing . . . you have to get used to the idea that you’re not a good person. Maybe not an awful one either, but . . . You have to accept that what you’ve done, what you’re going to do, there’s a lot of bad in there. You just hope there’ll be enough good to balance it out.’
Anne stares down a moment longer, then nods, the movement jerky and sharp. She picks up the tray and walks to the oven, her usual grace returning step by step.