Abby the Witch (17 page)

By the look on
Abby's face, clumsy didn't even come close.

Pembrake
looked at the vase for a moment: he would eventually break it
himself in one of his more memorable tantrums, this one over Mr
Hunter trying to send him to boarding school.

'Why don't
you,' Karing took the cup that Lilly was still brandishing, 'go and
grab a loaf of bread and some cheese, and I'll fix the
tea before you break it.' There was no malice behind his words. It
was not an aggressive command, just a playful suggestion.

He didn't know
how much more he could take of this. Without thinking, he pulled
out a chair with one of his legs and sat heavily. It was his
kitchen, after all.

'Oh,' Abby's
voice was by far the most highly strung, levelling in far beyond
even Lilly's sweet yelp. 'I really don't think we can stay for
breakfast!'

Pembrake
tapped a fist against his jaw, all get up and go had seemed to have
gotten up and gone from him. Somehow meeting his parents in the
past, meeting the father he had never known, was stirring up
memories of his childhood and crushing him underneath their
weight.

She looked at
him so expectantly, so pointedly with those stormy-grey eyes. Had
little Abby run out of plans, or was she waiting for him to get up
and run?

Pembrake
rested back in his chair, feeling a headache twist around his
temples.

Abby set her
jaw and managed to put her hands on her hips, negotiating through
the folds of excess fabric that hung over her slight frame.

'Your husband
appears to have sat down, perhaps you can stay?' Karing quickly set
about pulling an extra two cups from the cupboard.

'Husband? He's
not my husband!' Abby spoke with indignation, as if Karing's
statement had been dirty.

'We're to be
married just as soon as Penny here accepts my proposal,' he
supplied quickly, Abby's tone had irked him. It was as if the mere
suggestion of marrying him had brought up her bile. Was he really
that repulsive? Well then, he wasn't about to let her get away with
that. He leant forward and brought his hands together, 'plus, I'm
haven't the money at the moment.'

'Oh, but you
two look wonderful together!' Lilly placed two large loaves of
bread on the table.

'Yes, I could
see the moment I met you – just made for each other,' Karing
agreed.

Abby was now
looking at him with lips drawn thinner than paper, and he couldn't
help but smile back.

'You know,
I've rarely seen a couple that looked so perfect for each other in
fact!' Lilly apparently couldn't stop herself.

'You'll find
that a very valuable compliment,' Karing set a cup of tea in front
of Pembrake, 'Lilly is very good at reading people.'

Abby frowned
at this, her eyes looking distant and thoughtful.

'One of the
old witches even said I had latent second sight!' Lilly trumpeted
as she sat down, 'so I just know you two will never be apart
again.'

Latent second
sight? His mother?

'But you,'
Lilly motioned for Abby to take a seat, 'you almost look like a
witch yourself! You aren't, are you?' there was no accusation
behind her words, she had simply grown even more excited.

Abby sat
stiffly and appeared to think for a moment. 'No.'

'Oh,' Lilly
settled down, clearly disappointed, her green eyes drooping like
little daisies devoid of sunshine.

They had
eaten, actually stayed for the course of the breakfast, talking and
sitting with Pembrake's parents, 28 years in the past.

They were
pleasant, even fun at times, warm and friendly. At one point Lilly
had showed Abby her puppy and Abby had given such a silly laugh,
Pembrake had wondered for a moment if there really was a young
woman under that old-witch mask.

But finally it
had come time to leave, and Karing and Lilly had walked them to the
door. He walked down his garden path, closing his gate and taking
one final look at his house from the past.

Finally, when
they were safely on the street, and Charlie had leapt down to meet
them – Pembrake had turned to Abby and they had had a little chat.
Most importantly, Pembrake let Abby know why exactly he did not
appreciate her not running away when he had suggested it. If the
timeline was ruined, if his father would no longer be his father,
or if his mother would run off and join a pantomime – Pembrake knew
who to blame.

Something
inside him, something from his past, may have made him trust this
witch… Abby, for now. But that didn’t mean he was about to give her
leeway to prove him wrong.

~~~

They had
walked on from Esquire Street, continuing their mission to find
some way of fixing their destinies and of getting into the Palace
without straight away being chased out.

Walking the
streets aimlessly waiting for clues that quite stubbornly wouldn't
appear was getting stupid now. Though it was not half as bad as the
monumental dressing-down Pembrake had given her once they were out
of earshot. She'd felt like a new recruit facing up to her
Commander after doing something awful like chopping down the mast.
His face had set with fierce anger and he'd shouted with the
frightening force of a hurricane.

Apparently the
prospect of meeting his mother in the past had spooked him, though
Abby half wondered if there was something else to it. Pembrake had
looked at Karing with such pale wary, like he had seen a ghost or
something. Just how was Karing his father anyway, and who was Mr
Hunter then?

Before Abby
could really settle down and think hard about the matter, she had
found Pembrake had paused by the small glass windows of a shop. Not
wanting to incur his wrath again by speaking or breathing too
loudly, she'd just walked up carefully beside him.

Too much time
had passed, and Pembrake, she realised, seemed to be looking not
through the window, but at his reflection in it. 'Oh you can't be
that vain, can you?' she snapped, once again before realising what
she'd said.

Pembrake ran a
finger along his jaw line, as if tracing the shape. He did not
shout at her to shut up, or point out that she was an innocent
little witch with no real understanding of life. With was odd
really.

She blinked at
him. 'Pembrake, could we move on? You look fine, as usual. Not that
I care, of course,' she added quickly.

'I wouldn't
expect you to understand, Abby,' his voice had the far-off quality
of someone on the edge of sleep.

She bristled.
'And I wouldn't expect a Commander in the Royal Navy to be so very
disagreeable – but I guess I am wrong.'

'All these
years,' he turned from the window, his eyes closing, 'the
bastard.'

He wasn't
angry at the dirt on his face, was he, or the straw in his hair?
Abby pressed in her lips and tried to avoid his gaze.

'I can't
believe he left. For what? The Navy, the high seas, the better
life?!'

Oh deary dear.
Abby was used to hearing people's troubles. Strangely, more so
since she'd become a window cleaner. But it usually wasn't this
confrontational – it usually wasn't this raw.

She swallowed
hard. 'Pembrake, I… look I understand what you're going through,
but I'm sure Karing had a good reason for…' Abby didn't want to say
it, but couldn't think of any other way around it, 'abandoning
you.'

Pembrake
didn't snap like a dry twig, but he did sniff terribly at the
mention of 'abandon'. 'Don't try and analyse me, Abby; I'm not in
the mood. If you hadn't agreed to go and get their plecking apples,
we would never have been in that situation.'

Yes, Abby
thought to herself, but he still would have abandoned you in the
future. Though, Abby guessed there was more to the story than
Pembrake was letting on, or perhaps more than he knew himself.

Pembrake put a
hand up to his face and breathed into it, and then brought his hand
down quickly as if he were wiping away his frustration.

'Well… your
mother was different – not at all like she is in the future,' Abby
foolishly tried to change the subject, 'she was so bubbly and vague
that I doubt she would remember us in the future from the past,'
she ticked her fingers, trying to follow through the thought in
case she got confused. 'Really,' she tried to rally against the
pained look on Pembrake's face, 'she was just so… young… I'm sure
she won't remember.'

Pembrake
turned on her. 'Young? I'm surprised you could notice a thing like
youth, Abby. The reason you found her so confusing is that she's
your polar opposite. I'm surprised you couldn't see it. The
reason,' Pembrake drew his face closer, the stress of the morning
playing across the creases around his eyes, ‘you found
moth– 
Lilly
– so confounding, is that she is everything
you aren't.' Pembrake's words were not entirely cold, his tone
dipped and bobbed with an edge of stress and exasperation.
'She's young. All that bubbling and giggling, the playfulness,
the open emotion – you are supposed to do all that stuff when
you're young. And you've never done any of that, I'm sure.'

Abby receded,
like a broken wave tracing back across the sand. She should never
have provoked him. She wasn't old, he was wrong about that: she was
sensible, proper and grown up – just like a witch, just like Ms
Crowthy. Still, she conceded, a proper witch probably wouldn't feel
so alienated by his statement, wouldn't let his cold words push
through her like a blizzard. 'That's not fair. You're just
angry….'

'And you are
a lot younger than you think.'

Charlie, who
had remained suspiciously silent, tucked himself in front of her
legs, as if he wanted to prevent her from throwing herself at
Pembrake in anger. He was wrong through, she felt like curling up
like a dead leaf, not launching herself in a death strike. 'Well
then, if you hate me so much and think I'm such
a child, why did you propose to me, ha? And tell me, did
you get down on both knees, or could you never bring yourself to do
that for witch?' At least the hot anger was pushing away her fear
and sadness, even if her voice did still waver with
uncertainty.

'Ha. That
really annoyed you, didn't it? The prospect of marrying me is the
worst thing you could think of, isn't it? Or is it, maybe, that the
prospect of marrying anyone makes those little old-lady
toes of yours curl up in fear?'

Abby stood
back from him, ready to leave, ready to run away from the pleck and
never come back. What a rogue, what a cad what a-

Just as
Pembrake opened his mouth to serve her a fiery dose of scorn, Abby
saw something. Across Pembrake's reflection in the glass, like a
bird flying through a thick mist, a vision clouded the window. Abby
felt herself being drawn towards it, all attention fading from her
feelings and onto the glass before her.

It was a woman
on a broomstick, falling through the air, her body limp and
unconscious.

Abby's face
was so close to the glass, the scene had filled her whole vision,
yet it drew her closer and closer.

The woman kept
falling, soon she would hit the ground that rushed up beneath her,
and then she would-

It was like
being sucked, drawn, pulled into a cold cloud. Abby's skin prickled
with an encompassing chill, as if she had jumped into the ocean
during a storm.

Closer and
closer.

A hand on her
shoulder yanked her back. 'What the pleck are you doing?'
Pembrake's mood hadn't improved any but there was a touch of
concern in his steely eyes.

'I..I,' she
was still trying to process the vision, trying to wipe the image of
falling through the air from her eyes, so she could see what was
before her in real time. 'I think someone's in trouble,' she
chanced upon the correct words and nodded quickly, 'someone's in
trouble.'

'What?'

She had seen a
wall in her vision, one of the walls of the city. There had been a
vine growing up the side and words etched into the stone.
She knew that wall, and she had to get there quick.

Without
turning to him, without bothering to explain where she was going or
what was happening, Abby took off in a flustered flight, hands
drawing up her skirt so she could dash unabated.

'Abby?'
Pembrake barked from behind her. 'What are you doing?'

Too late to
explain.

It was vital,
she repeated to herself as she rushed across the streets, that she
got there in time. She may not be sure what it is that she was
supposed to do, but Abby had to get there before that
girl fell out of the sky. Every witchly sense in her body was
telling her legs and arms to pump harder, her lungs to draw in more
air, and her heart to continue beating like great big drum.

She was not
aware of Pembrake as he pelted up beside her, and ducked under his
arm when he tried to pull her to rest.

'Abby?'

'Pembrake this
is important!'

Very
important.

Finally she
reached the place where she knew she had to be. She could see the
wall with the vines and it matched the one seared into her second
sight perfectly. Pembrake, who had followed her the whole way, ran
right up to her and grabbed her arms tightly.

'What the
pleck are you doing?' his face was flushed with the effort of the
chase.

She kept her
eyes squarely on the wall. He wouldn't understand.

'Abby?'

'I'm
waiting.'

'For
what?'

'To save
someone.'

She needed to
save someone; her second sight had told her so.

'I have to save someone,' she repeated to the
disbelieving look on Pembrake's face, her voice pitching
feverishly.

'Abby.' It was
clear from his face and the desperate tone of his voice that he
thought her irrational.

He didn't
believe in destiny, so why would be believe in second sight?