Half Bad (4 page)

We are in the woods near Gran’s house. The air is still and damp; the autumn leaves lie thick on the soft, muddy ground. The sky is flat and gray like an old sheet laid out to dry over the black branches of the trees. Jessica is holding a small dagger, her hands flat in front of her. The blade is sharp and bright. Jessica is smirking and trying to catch my eye.

Deborah stands slightly hunched, but she is smiling and calm, her empty cupped hands held out in front of her. In Gran’s hands are a brooch that had been her grandmother’s, my mother’s engagement ring, and a cufflink that belonged to Deborah’s father. Gran slowly lowers her hands over Deborah’s. Their hands touch. Gran carefully passes the gifts to Deborah, saying, “Deborah, I give you three things so that you can receive one Gift.” Then Gran takes the knife and cuts the palm of her own hand into the fleshy pad below her left thumb. Blood runs down her wrist; a few drops fall to the ground. She holds her hand out and Deborah bends forward, puts her mouth round the cut, her lips tight on Gran’s skin. Gran leans toward her and whispers the secret words in Deborah’s ear, and Deborah’s throat moves as she swallows the blood. I strain to hear the spell, but the words are like the sound of wind rustling leaves.

The spell ends. Deborah, eyes closed, swallows one last time before releasing Gran’s hand and standing straight.

And that is it. Deborah is no longer a whet; she is a true White Witch.

I glance over to Arran. He looks solemn but smiles at me before turning to hug Deborah. I wait my turn to give my congratulations.

I say, “I am pleased for you.” And I am. I hug Deborah, but there is nothing else I can say, so I walk off into the woods.

Another notification arrived that morning, before Deborah’s Giving.

Notification of the Resolution of the Council of White Witches of England, Scotland, and Wales.

It is forbidden to hold a Giving Ceremony for a whet of mixed White Witch and Black Witch parentage (Half Code: W 0.5/B 0.5) or mixed White Witch and Fain parentage (Half Blood: W 0.5/F 0.5) without the permission of the Council of White Witches. Any witch disobeying this Notification will be considered to be working against the Council. Any Half Code accepting gifts or blood without permission of the Council will be considered to be defying the Council and corrupting White Witches. The penalty for all concerned will be imprisonment for life.

Gran read the notification out and then Jessica started to speak, but I was already heading out the back door. Arran grabbed at my arm, saying, “We’ll get permission, Nathan. We will.”

I couldn’t be bothered arguing with him, and I pushed him away. There was an ax by the pile of wood in the garden and I hacked and hacked and hacked until I couldn’t lift the ax any more.

Deborah came to sit with me among all the broken bits of wood. She put her head on my shoulder, resting her cheek on it. I always liked it when she did that.

She said, “You’ll find a way, Nathan. Gran will help you, and so will I, and so will Arran.”

I ripped at the blisters on my hand. “How?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You shouldn’t help me. You’d be working against the Council. They’ll lock you up.”

“But—”

I jolted her off my shoulder and stood up. “I don’t want your help, Deborah. Don’t you get it? You’re so bloody clever, but you still don’t understand, do you?”

And I left her there.

And now Deborah has received her three gifts and Gran’s blood, and in three years Arran will go through the same ceremony, but for me . . . I know the Council won’t let it happen. They are afraid of what I’ll become. And if I don’t become a witch I’ll die. I know it.

I have to be given three gifts and drink the blood of my ancestors, the blood of my parents or grandparents. But apart from Gran there is only one person who can give me three gifts, only one person who can defy the Council, only one person whose blood will turn me from whet to witch.

The woods are silent. It feels like they are waiting and watching. And suddenly I know that my father wants to help me. I know the truth of it so well. My father wants to give me three gifts and let me drink his blood. I know it like I know how to breathe.

I know he’ll come to me.

I wait and I wait.

The silence of the woods goes on and on.

He doesn’t come.

But I realize that it’s too dangerous for him to come to me and take me away. So I must go to him.

I must go and find my father.

I’m eleven. Eleven is a long way off seventeen. And I have no idea how to find Marcus. I don’t have a clue how to begin to find him. But at least now I know what I have to do.

Notification of the Resolution of the Council of White Witches of England, Scotland, and Wales.

Any contact between Half Codes (W 0.5/B 0.5) and White Whets and White Witches is to be reported to the Council by all concerned. Failure by the Half Code to notify the Council of contact is punishable by removing all contact.

Contact is deemed to have been made if the Half Code is in the same room as a White Whet or White Witch or otherwise within a close enough distance that they are able to speak to each other.

“Shall I go and lock myself in the cellar now?” I ask.

Deborah takes the parchment and reads it again. “Removing all contact? What does that mean?”

Gran looks uncertain.

“They can’t mean removing contact with
us
?” Deborah looks from Gran to Arran. “Can they?”

I’m amazed at Deborah; she still doesn’t get it. It can mean whatever the Council want it to mean.

“I’ll just make sure that we keep a list of witches Nathan has contact with. It’s easy enough. Nathan hardly meets anyone and certainly not many White Witches.”

“When he starts at Thomas Dawes school, there’ll be the O’Briens,” Arran reminds her.

“Yes, but that’s all. It’ll be a small list. We just have to make sure we follow the rules.”

Gran is right; the list is small. The only witches I come into contact with are my direct family and those I meet at the Council Offices when I go for assessment. I never go to any festivals, parties, or weddings, as my name is always missing from the invitations that arrive on our doormat. Gran stays at home with me and sends Jessica, and, when they are old enough, Deborah and Arran as well. I hear about the celebrations from the others, but I never go.

White Witches from anywhere in the world are welcomed into witches’ homes, but visitors to our house are thin on the ground. When anyone does stay with us for a night or two they treat me as either a curiosity or a leper, and I quickly learn to keep out of sight.

When Gran and I traveled to London for my first assessment, we turned up late in the evening on the doorstep of a family near Wimbledon, and I was left staring at the red paint of the front door while Gran was taken inside. When she reappeared a minute later, white in the face and shaking with anger, she grabbed my hand and dragged me away, saying, “We’ll stay in a hotel.” I was more relieved than angry.

* * *

Before going to Thomas Dawes Secondary School, I attend the small village school. I’m the slow, dumb kid at the back, the one with no friends. Like most fains the world over, the kids and teachers there don’t believe in witches; they don’t understand that we live among them. They don’t see me as special—just especially slow. I can barely read or write and am not quick enough to fool Gran when I skip school. The only thing I learn is that sitting in class bored stiff is better than sitting anywhere else with the effects of Gran’s punishment potions. From the start of each day, all I do is wait until it’s over. I suspect secondary school is not going to be any better.

I’m right. On my first day at Thomas Dawes I’m wearing Arran’s cast-off too-long gray trousers, a white shirt with a frayed collar, a stained blue-gold-black striped tie, and a dark blue blazer that is absurdly oversized, although Gran has shortened the arms. The one item I have been given that is not a cast-off is a cheap phone. I have it “in case.” Arran has only just been allowed one, so I know that Gran expects there will be an “in case” situation.

I put the phone to my ear and my head is filled with static. Just carrying it around makes me irritable. Before I leave for school, I put the phone behind the TV in the lounge, which seems a good place, as that too has recently started to set off a faint hissing in my head.

Arran and Deborah make the journey to school and back bearable. Thankfully Jessica has left home to train as a Hunter. Hunters are the elite group of White Witches employed by the Council to hunt down Black Witches in Britain. Gran says they are employed by other Councils in Europe more and more as there are so few Blacks left in Britain. Hunters are mainly women, but include a few talented male witches. They are all ruthless and efficient, which means Jessica is bound to fit right in.

Jessica’s departure means I can relax at home for the first time in my life, but now I have secondary school to worry about. I plead with Gran that I shouldn’t go, that it is bound to be a disaster. She says that witches must “blend in” to fain society and should “learn how to conform,” and it is important for me to do the same, and that I “will be fine.” None of those phrases seem to describe my life.

Phrases that come to mind, phrases that I’m expecting to hear, to describe me are “nasty and dirty,” “pond life,” and the old favorite “dumb ass.” I’m prepared to be teased about being stupid, dirty, or poor, and some idiot is bound to pick on me because I’m small, but I don’t mind too much. They’ll only ever do it once.

I’m prepared for all that, but what I’m not prepared for is the noise. The school bus is a cauldron of shouting and jeering, simmering with the hiss of mobile phones. The classroom isn’t much better, as it is lined with computers, all emitting a high-pitched whistle that gets into my skull and is not reduced one bit by sticking my fingers in my ears.

The other problem, and by far the biggest, is that Annalise is in my class.

Annalise is a White Witch, and an O’Brien. The O’Brien brothers also go to my school, apart from Kieran, who is Jessica’s age and has now left. Niall is in Deborah’s year and Connor is in Arran’s.

Annalise has long blonde hair that glistens like melted white chocolate over her shoulders. She has blue eyes and long pale eyelashes. She smiles a lot, revealing her straight, white teeth. Her hands are impossibly clean, her skin is the color of honey, and her fingernails gleam. Her school shirt looks perfectly fresh, like it has been ironed just a minute before. Even the school blazer looks good on her. Annalise comes from a family of White Witches whose blood has been uncontaminated by fains as far back as can be remembered, and its only associations with Black Witches are her ancestors who have either killed or been killed by them.

I know I should steer clear of Annalise.

The first afternoon the teacher asks us to write something about ourselves. We are supposed to fill one page or more with writing. I stare at the paper and it stares blankly back. I don’t know what to write, and even if I did I know I wouldn’t be able to write it anyway. I manage to print my name on the top of the page, but even that I hate. My surname, Byrn, is that of my mother’s dead husband. It is nothing to do with me. I cross it out, scratching it away. My palms are sweaty on the pencil. Glancing around the room I see the other kids are busily scribbling and the teacher is walking around looking at what they are writing. When she gets to me she asks if there is a problem.

“I can’t think of anything to write.”

“Well, perhaps you could tell me what you did this summer? Or tell me about your family?” This is the voice she uses for the slow ones.

“Yeah, okay.”

“So, shall I leave you to it?”

I nod, still staring at the piece of paper.

Once she has moved far enough away and is bent over some other kid’s work, I do write something.

i hava bordr and sisser my bordrs Arran
he is niss and Debsis clvrer

I know it’s bad, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything to improve it.

We have to pass our essays in, and the girl who collects mine stares at me when she sees my piece of paper.

“What?” I say.

She starts to laugh and says, “My brother’s seven, and he can do better than that.”

“What?”

She stops laughing then and says, “Nothing . . .” and almost trips over in her rush to get to the front of class to hand the papers in.

I look to see who else is sniggering. The other two at my table seem to be fascinated by their pencils, which they are gripping. The table to my left are grinning away one second and then staring at their desk the next. The same happens with the kids on the table to my right, except for Annalise. She doesn’t look at the table but smiles at me. I don’t know if she’s laughing at me or what. I have to look away.

The next day in maths I can’t work anything out. The teacher, thankfully, has quickly realized that if I’m ignored I’ll sit quietly and not be any trouble. Annalise is hard to ignore. She answers a question and she gets it right. She answers another, correct again. When she answers a third one, I turn slightly in my seat to glance at her and I am caught again by her looking at me and smiling.

On the third day, in art, someone brushes my arm. A clean, honey-toned hand reaches past me and selects a black rod of charcoal. As the hand moves back, the cuff of her blazer grazes the back of my hand.

“That’s a great picture.”

What?

I stare at my sketch of a blackbird that has been pecking at crumbs on the deserted playground.

But I have stopped thinking about the blackbird and the sketch. Now all I can think is,
She spoke to me! She spoke to me nicely!

Then I think,
Say something!
But all that happens is
Say something! Say something!
booms in my empty head.

My heart is banging on my chest wall, the blood in my veins throbbing with the words.

Say something!

In my panic all I come up with is, “I like drawing, do you?” and “You’re good at maths.” Thankfully Annalise has wandered away before I say either of them.

She’s the first White Witch outside of my family to smile at me. The first. The one and only. I never thought it would happen; it might never happen again.

And I know I should steer clear of her. But she has been nice to me. And Gran said we should “conform” and “fit in” and all that stuff, and being polite is part of those things too. So at the end of the class I manage to direct my body enough to walk over to her.

I hold out my picture. “What do you think? Now it’s finished.”

I’m prepared for her to say something horrible, laugh at it or at me. But I don’t think she’ll do that.

She smiles and says, “It’s really good.”

“You think so?”

She doesn’t look at the picture again, but continues to look at me and says, “You must know it’s brilliant.”

“It’s okay. . . . I can’t get the tarmac right.”

She laughs, but stops abruptly when I glance at her. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s great.”

I look at the picture again. The bird isn’t bad.

“Can I have it?” she asks.

What?

What would she do with it?

“It’s okay. That’s a stupid idea. It’s a great picture, though.” And she sweeps her own drawing up and walks away.

From then on, Annalise contrives to sit next to me in art and to be on the same team as me in phys ed. The rest of the school day we are split into graded groups. I am in all the lowest ones and she is in all the highest, so we don’t see a lot of each other.

We are in art the following week when she asks, “Why don’t you look at me for more than a second?”

I don’t know what to say. It feels like more than a second.

I put my paintbrush in the jar of water, turn to her, and look. I see a smile and eyes and honey skin and . . .

“Two and a half seconds at most,” she says.

It felt a lot longer.

“I never thought you’d be shy.”

I’m not shy.

She leans in close to me, saying, “My parents said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

I do look at her then. Her eyes are sparkling.

“Why? What did they say about me?”

She blushes a little and her eyes lose some of their shine. She doesn’t answer my question, but whatever they said doesn’t seem to be bad enough to put Annalise off.

Back at home that evening I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I know I’m smaller than most boys my age, but not a lot smaller. People always say I’m dirty, but I hang out in the woods, and it’s hard to keep clean, and I don’t see what the problem with dirt is. Though I do like it that Annalise is so clean. I don’t know how she does it.

Arran comes in to brush his teeth. He’s taller than me but he’s two years older. He’s the sort of boy I imagine Annalise would like. Handsome and gentle and clever.

Debs comes in as well. It’s a bit crowded. She’s clean too, but not like Annalise.

“What you doing?” she asks.

“What’s it look like?”

“It looks like Arran’s brushing his teeth and you’re admiring your beautiful face in the mirror.”

Arran nudges me and smiles a frothy smile.

My reflection tries to smile back and puts toothpaste on its brush. I look at my eyes as I brush. I have witch’s eyes. Fain eyes are plain. Every witch that I have seen has glints in their eyes. Arran’s eyes are pale gray with silver glints; Debs’s are darker green-gray with pale green and silver glints. Annalise has blue eyes with silver-gray shards in them that twist and tumble, especially if she is teasing me. Deborah and Arran can’t see the glints and neither can Gran; she says it’s an ability few witches have. I haven’t told her that when I look in the mirror I don’t see silver glints, but that my black eyes have dark triangular glints that rotate slowly and aren’t really glints at all. They aren’t shiny black, but a sort of hollow, empty black.