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I slump against the wooden back of my chair as one of the Coven members reads the same introduction I’ve heard over the past four days into a tape recorder.
Now commences the recording of the formal inquiry by the Coven into the death of David Cadwallader, occurring on or about the twentieth day of June, in the year 2000…subject of today’s inquiry session is Lucille Ruth Salisbury…
As if there have been any other subjects of this bloody inquiry. There’s no one else they could interrogate. Unless they’ve got a scryer working in the background, trying to call Davy through a crystal ball, which I highly doubt. I tilt my head up at the ceiling and close my eyes so I can roll them without anyone noticing.
“Miss Salisbury?” a reedy voice—Mr. Maddox, I think—calls from on top of the bench. “We’re ready to begin.”
“Back to the same questions as yesterday, I suppose.”
“Miss Salisbury, that is hardly an accurate summation. We are merely trying to establish a fact pattern. Soliciting your repeated testimony is imperative to achieving that end.” Maddox sniffs. “My most sincere apologies if this matter is boring to you.”
“You should apologize for forcing me to relive the worst day of my life again and again.”
Murmurs run along the Coven bench. Mitali looks scandalized, which really means she raises her thick, dark eyebrows at me as if to say don’t test their patience, they’re baying for blood.
“As you are the only witness who can provide testimony—”
“—because you still have the scruples not to place my son under oath—”
“You are the only one who can speak to what happened!” Mr. Maddox finishes in a huff. Even from here, I can see his face has gone blotchy. “And I believe I speak on behalf of all Coven members present when I say the insinuation that we would compel a child who is barely three years old to testify in an official proceeding is heinous!”
“It’s far from beneath you.”
Mr. Maddox gurgles like he’s swallowed his tongue and half his teeth. The rest of the Coven bench glances at each other. I’ve kept calm for most of this, but my patience has reached its end. None of them want the truth, not really. All they want is someone they can hold up as an example, so they can say see, now this is why you don’t run away from the flock! This is why we stick together! So we don’t go leaving dead bodies where any old Welsh farmer could chance upon them!
“Let’s get started, shall we?” Mitali, always the mediator. Always the one to immediately hop in and try to fix every problem, smooth over every conflict. She never could stand tension of any kind. “Miss Salisbury, please recount what happened the night of June 20, 2000. Speak slowly and clearly for the record.”
As if she doesn’t know. As if I didn’t spend that night shivering at her kitchen table after scrambling out of Aberystwyth by train, Simon and a duffle bag bundled in my arms. I can’t stand that she’s going along with the Coven’s nonsense. But I oblige her, because she’s my oldest friend, and I must.
“It was after dinner. I was in the kitchen, doing the washing-up like always,” I start. “Davy—David—had taken Simon out to the backyard. Sometimes they would feed the chickens together.”
That was about the most normal thing Davy ever did with Simon, aside from reading him to sleep every night. Davy never read him anything like Goodnight Moon or Curious George: he picked thick, heavy books about magical theory and rituals, hoping that some of it would rub off on Simon’s little brain. An effort in vain.
“I was listening to music, so I didn’t hear what was going on outside right away.”
I remember the disc spinning round inside the tiny boombox I’d bought at the grocery store. The Dance. Lindsey Buckingham was snarling about a little demon bringing him down. Between the loud, grating guitars and the dishes clanking in the sink, I was all but deaf to the world.
Until I heard Simon screaming.
“Davy would perform…spells on Simon.” I sigh. “Do I really have to go over all of this again? You should have everything in the record already.”
“Just speak in generalities, then,” Mitali answers.
“He would use spells to try and bring out Simon’s magic. Make him stronger. I would tell Davy, he’s only a toddler, he won’t speak with any magic yet, but that didn’t make any difference. He still wanted to try.”
“Do you believe these are related to the prenatal rituals you underwent prior to Simon’s birth?” asks someone else on the bench. Might be Maeve Kelly. “You described those previously, no need to recount them.”
“Yes, I do.” I swallow. “Like I told you before, Davy was convinced our child—his child—was going to be the world’s Greatest Mage. Everything was calculated and planned.”
My stomach flip-flops thinking about the notes and papers that had been seized by the Coven. Davy had always been curious about astrology and its impacts on magic, but I never realized he took it so seriously. Somewhere he got the idea that the Greatest Mage would be born on the summer solstice, so he apparently worked backwards, factoring in the ideal thirty-eight weeks of gestation. I thought he had just been enthusiastic in celebrating my birthday that year. Like many other things about Davy, I’d thought wrong.
Sometimes I can still hear Simon’s screaming in my mind. Even when he’s sitting at my feet, quietly playing with blocks or his little foam rugby ball, the screaming will rush forward in my mind, and nothing will stop it. I know he’s safe, but I can’t stop thinking about when he wasn’t safe, and what might have happened if I hadn’t been there.
“So, these spells…they were something that would happen regularly,” a third voice on the bench says.
“Yes. But something Davy was doing that night was different.” He’d been in a strop all day, hidden in his workshop. I had barely been able to coax him out for dinner. “Usually, Simon would be fine after these spells. This was the first time I’d heard him scream.”
“And then what happened?”
I remember dropping the dish I’d been washing back into the soapy water – I heard it clink against the sink bottom. I was barefoot, and the dirt path out into the yard was cool on my heels. Davy was standing in front of the decrepit card table we’d found for free at the end of someone’s driveway, his wand raised like a conductor in front of an orchestra. Simon was sat up on an overturned crate, tears streaming down his tiny cheeks. He always turns red when he cries, but this time he had a definite glow. A magical glow.
“I confronted Davy.”
First, I tried going for Simon, but Davy blocked my way. Said something about it being too dangerous. I begged to at least touch him, but I wasn’t allowed. Could you imagine, not being allowed to comfort your own son when he’s crying?
“I need you to understand,” I look up at each of the shadows sitting behind the bench, “what I mean when I say Simon was glowing. You know how a lightbulb looks right before the filament pops and the light burns out? That last burst of bright orange you see? That’s what I saw.”
“Duly noted, Ms. Salisbury. Continue.”
“I told Davy this had to end. His experiments. Him endlessly trying to fix our son, who was never broken.”
He’s just a boy! I remember yelling. Not the Greatest Mage!
He will be great! Davy roared back. I have to unlock his potential!
“He said something about finally tapping into the innate solar core Simon had within him, how Simon would have near-infinite magical capacity…” I hold up my hands. “That’s when I’d had it.”
“Can you elaborate, please?” Mitali asks.
For the second time today, I refrain from rolling my eyes. She knows this part of the story – everyone does. “I was the only one who ever believed in what Davy had to say. About the elitism in the World of Mages. About how we shackle ourselves by who we let in and who we keep out. About how magic could be so much more if we were just willing to be open to new possibilities. So, when we were done at Watford, I followed him wherever he wanted to go. What else could I do?”
I take a sip of water from the glass in front of me before I continue. “My brother, Jamie, was rejected from Watford. Didn’t have enough power, according to the entrance examiners. Teaching him wouldn’t be worth the effort.” I glare up at the shadows. “Imagine being told you’re worthless when you’re eleven years old. And you have nowhere else to go, because this is the world you’ve always known. You’ll have to stick around where you’re not wanted, just because you’re lacking a bit.”
“Ms. Salisbury.” Maddox again. “I think you may be veering off-topic—”
“When someone talks about building a more equal world, a place that would accept people like your brother without question, why wouldn’t you bloody believe them?!”
My voice cracks off like a shot; there’s even a short echo as the sound bounces off the high ceiling. No one in the gallery nor on the bench dares to breathe, because what would they say to contradict me? Who would tell me I was wrong?
“As the years went by, I started seeing the cracks in Davy’s thinking. If he was so insistent that the World of Mages had to move forward, why was he always looking back? But by that point, Simon was on the way, and I convinced myself that he needed a father.” I shrug. “As much of a father as Davy ever could be, anyway. I don’t…” I take another sip of water, the glass trembling in my hand, “Davy loved the vision he had for me: the Great Mother of the Greatest Mage. I’m not sure he ever loved anyone for who they were, only what they could be.”
Someone on the bench coughs rather loudly. I get the sense that I’m wasting their time. Good. They’ve wasted four days of my life on this farce of a trial; they can handle listening to me go on for a bit longer than strictly necessary. For once, someone has to listen to me speak.
“Ms. Salisbury, let me get to the point,” Maeve Kelly says. “Did you kill David Cadwallader?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is a basic ‘yes or no’ question!”
“And I am telling you, I don’t know.”
“I think the ambiguity of the events immediately leading up to the death of David Cadwallader have been made quite clear in previous portions of the record.”
I jerk my head up. Natasha Pitch is leaning forward over the bench, arms crossed in front of her. She’s staring down at me with a mix of intimidation and curiosity.
“Ms. Pitch, as a junior member of the Coven—”
“Headmistress Pitch,” she corrects, shifting her eyes to the left. “I may be a junior Coven member, but I will be referred to by my proper title. A title which, as I recall, this Coven conferred upon me by majority vote, so I know all those present are aware of what it is.”
The gallery hums behind me. Not everyone may like Natasha Pitch personally, but everyone respects her.
“Now,” she says, her gaze coming back to me, “Ms. Salisbury, did you cast a spell right before David Cadwallader’s death?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What was that spell?”
“And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again! I can still hear you saying, you would never break the chain.” I clear my throat. “I…believe I had been singing the first verse before my magic kicked in.”
Natasha leans back slightly and raises an eyebrow at me. “Song lyrics. Notoriously difficult to get right, even for nursery rhymes. You clearly had some intent in your casting.”
“Davy and I weren’t married, but we were bound. He made sure we were before we, ah, conceived Simon.” The gallery hums louder. For older magicians, magical bonds and marriage go hand-in-hand. To be bound outside the confines of marriage is, for some, still scandalous. “You probably know that if a magical bond like that is broken, sometimes the parties are physically,” I bring the backs of my hands together in front of me and push out to the sides, “thrown apart.”
“So your reasoning was that if you broke the chain, as it were, you would be able to get David away from Simon.”
“Yes.”
Natasha nods. “Unconventional, but I understand it.”
“Headmistress Pitch, now is hardly the time for admiration of unconventional spellwork—”
“Mr. Maddox, you are speaking out of turn.” Another glare from Natasha down the bench. “Since no one else is taking the lead in this inquiry, I have assumed that responsibility. Unless you have a new line of questioning to introduce, I would suggest you be quiet.”
Maddox splutters, but doesn’t say anything else. Natasha turns back to me again.
“You said you believed that Simon’s magical power had been, for lack of a better word, activated. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I answer. “He’d had those little magical accidents like all littluns do. Making toys float, throwing bathwater into the hallway, splattering food all over the kitchen. But this was different. It was like he was…gearing up for something.”
“And you said that as your spell hit David Cadwallader, Simon appeared to…” Natasha rolls her hand in front of her, “go off.”
“He was a bomb.”
As soon as the words break the chain came out of my mouth, I’d seen a thick golden chain stretch between us, only for each link to begin snapping, one by one. Only three links had snapped before my vision had gone searing white.
“I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face,” I say. “But I felt the waves of heat…you know how it feels when you open the door on a hot oven? Just like that, only over and over and over again.”
“But eventually you could see.”
“It took a good minute after the heat subsided before I could see anything. Worse than being snow-blind.”
“And what did you see?”
The same thing I’ve seen every night in my dreams since it happened, of course. “Davy lying there, face-down, in the dirt. He wasn’t moving. There was smoke,” I wave my hand up from the table to the ceiling, “rising from his body.”
Silence weighs heavily in the room. Natasha continues to gaze at me with her dark eyes, her head cocked to one side. She’s the only one on the bench looking directly at me; everyone else is shuffling around, clearly uncomfortable. I hadn’t even described how charred Davy been, how his clothes had fused and melted into his heavily wrinkled skin. I didn’t mention how Simon screamed “Da! Da, wake up!” even when it was clear Davy wouldn’t be moving ever again.
I know how it looks. Good wives don’t leave their husbands’ bodies out for the birds. But Davy wasn’t a good husband, and he was hardly a father.
“If this inquiry has made anything clear,” Natasha says after a long while, “it is how unclear the mechanism of David Cadwallader’s death truly is. I would argue, at this juncture, that how he died is irrelevant.”
A minor uproar breaks out along the bench – there are definitely a couple people who believe how Davy died has been the whole point of this charade. Still, Natasha presses on.
“What is relevant is whether Lucy Salisbury acted in a manner that would suggest culpability. From what I understand of bonding rites, while their termination is painful, they do not result in death. Not even ‘til death do us part invokes that kind of response.” She’s careful not to put magic behind those words. “I am a mother to a son, just as Lucy Salisbury is. And I know I would do anything to protect him.”
I hear an unfamiliar coo from the back of the gallery. I can’t turn all the way, but based on Natasha’s quick smile, I can tell it’s her son calling out to her. He’s a little younger than Simon. Some awfully long name, too, so long for someone so small. Basil is in there somewhere, I think.
“I believe the Coven has amassed enough testimony to make a final ruling. Those in favor of finding Lucille Ruth Salisbury culpable for the death of David Cadwallader, raise your hand and say aye.”
The shadows make it difficult to count, but I think I see only three hands go up. Maddox is one of them, the prig.
“Those in favor of finding Lucille Ruth Salisbury not culpable for the death of David Cadwallader, raise your hand and say aye.”
Slowly, the remaining ten members of the Coven put their hands up. Natasha is the last one to raise her hand. The corner of her mouth twitches up in a brief hint of a smile, then settles down again.
“By a vote of ten to three, the Record shall show that Lucille Ruth Salisbury is found not culpable for the death of David Cadwallader,” she declares. “Further, the reason for death shall be documented as a ‘magical accident’. Scribes, please ensure—”
Natasha continues reciting the typical closing for a Coven meeting, but I can’t hear any of it. Jamie has leapt over the gallery gates and slammed right into my side, squeezing me in a giant hug. Mum is right behind him, carrying Simon in her arms.
“We always believed you, dear,” she says, beaming. She’s been baking up a storm to deal with her anxiety over the prospect of her newly-returned daughter ending up in a tower.
“Mum!” Simon reaches his sticky fingers out to me, and I take him without question. He babbles in my ear for a bit, then plops a wet kiss on my cheek. I turn and press my forehead to his, something that always makes him giggle. There was a chance that I wouldn’t get to do this again, not for a long time. But I’ve been saved by someone I wouldn’t have expected to speak up for me.
I turn to look back toward the bench. Natasha has come down, and her husband Malcolm is right there to meet her. Their little son, who looks so much like Natasha, crawls into her arms and tucks his head right into the crook of her neck. She looks up and toward me, and for a moment, we’re mirrors of each other. Simply mothers with sons, and nothing more.
Natasha Grimm-Pitch, why did you save me?