Chapter 14 – Finding Mabel [Blackmere at night]

Joyce had not meant to leave the house.

She remembered sitting at the small desk beneath the window, the lamp turned low, her pen resting against the margin of a half-written page. The shop below had long since gone quiet. Even the boards seemed to have settled for the night. She had been thinking, not writing. The sea had been louder than usual, or perhaps she had only begun to notice it.

Then she was standing on Blackmere Point.

The wind pressed against her coat and salt lay sharp on the air. The dark line of the horizon held steady beneath a washed, moon-thinned sky. She did not question how she had come there. Her shoes were firm against the chalk and grass, and the path behind her lay pale and narrow in the dark.

She felt no fear, only recognition.

The place was not strange to her. Nor was it new. It seemed instead that something within her had come into alignment with the cliff, as though two pieces long separated had finally met without effort. She stepped closer to the edge, not recklessly, but with certainty. The sea moved below, immense and indifferent, yet she did not feel small before it.

For a brief moment, the wind seemed to pass through her rather than against her. The boundary between herself and the night thinned. She understood nothing in words, yet something settled.

Witness.

The thought did not arrive as language. It was simply known.

Then the feeling loosened. The wind became cold again, the sea became merely sea, and the chalk beneath her shoes felt ordinary.

The next clear memory she had was of the shop door closing behind her.

She stood in the narrow hallway, her hand still resting on the latch. The lamp upstairs was lit and the pen lay where she had left it. She did not recall the walk home.

Joyce went to bed without trying to make sense of it. Sleep came quickly.

In the morning, she found Mabel behind the counter, weighing potatoes into a brown paper sack. The bell above the door had just finished its small, bright complaint. Joyce waited until the customer had gone.

“I was at the Point last night,” she said.

Mabel did not look surprised. She folded the top of the sack neatly and set it aside.

“Yes.”

Joyce searched her face. “I don’t remember going.”

“You were meant to stand,” Mabel said gently. “Not to travel.”

Joyce hesitated. “It felt…” She struggled for the word. “Familiar.”

Mabel’s eyes softened.

“Now you know.”

She turned back to the scales, as though nothing further required saying.

Joyce stood a moment longer, then nodded once to herself. There were apples to sort, and a page upstairs waiting to be written.

──✿──

The afternoon had been her usual walk around a crimeless town. Not boring. She had seen the sharp end of life for far too long to complain about that. It was an afternoon walk that inevitably ended at Shirley’s Grocers.

As she approached, she saw two children crouched on the pavement beside the shop, chalk dust smudging their fingers white. Spirals ran along the kerb, crossing and re-crossing in patient loops. The little girl had drawn something separate from the patterns, a tall shape in white chalk pressed thick against the grey stone. A long suggestion of fabric, a small oval for a face, but no features. Just a presence.

Joyce slowed.

“That’s a fine drawing,” she said.

The girl looked up. “She stands there.”

“Where?”

The child pointed vaguely towards the rise of the road that led, eventually, to the cliffs. But the gesture was more instinct than direction.

“She always stands.”

The boy smudged one of the spirals with his shoe. “Mum says not to draw her,” he muttered, though without fear.

Joyce crouched slightly and studied the chalk figure.

“Who is she?”

The girl frowned, as though the answer should be obvious. “The lady.”

Joyce straightened and, as she did, caught her reflection in the shop window. Dark uniform. Sensible coat. Then, for the briefest flicker, a pale line fell from her shoulders to her feet. Not cloth, exactly. More like the memory of cloth, white against the glass.

She blinked.

Her reflection settled back into its ordinary shape. Behind her, the chalk figure remained, simple and featureless.

The girl looked from the drawing to Joyce.

“You look like her today,” she said matter-of-factly.

Joyce said nothing.

She stepped into the shop, the bell ringing softly above her head. Upstairs, the unfinished page waited, and Malkin would be there. This time she would not be fobbed off with vague answers.

On the pavement outside, the chalk woman stood in silence, already beginning to blur at the edges.

──✿──

Joyce walked into the room and sat at the desk. Today, she did not prepare herself to channel Mabel’s diary, or attempt to lift the pen. She placed her hat on the table and looked at the cat.

He looked back at her and knew what was coming.

“About time we cleared some stuff up, puss,” she said, using Mabel’s way of getting under his skin. “Ever since I came to this town, people have been welcoming me back. I can accept the reincarnation stuff, but the White Lady? You and Mabel have been liberal with the truth. I need to know, Malkin, and I need to know now, or all this writing stops and I go back to being a copper.”

Malkin took a deep breath.

“There has always been a White Lady at Blackmere Point. She has always been known as the Witness. She was there before we arrived, and for thousands of years she has been the envoy of the undercurrent.”

He paused before continuing.

“She has a life cycle, like everyone else here, and it is considered an honour to reincarnate in her place. Only those who are able to bear witness and not pass judgement on anyone can take her place. You were such a soul and were destined to be the next.”

Joyce shook her head, not really wanting to take it in.

“But I grew up in London, not here.”

“Yes, but the woman who was to bear you met a man who coerced her into moving away from the village. By that time, the undercurrent had already chosen you. Your mother was one of us.”

“But I know our family line. I know where we came from. She was born in London,” Joyce said desperately.

“All falsified. Your mother was under the spell of a man who wanted to remove Easterwich’s bond with the undercurrent so he could seize the power for himself. He did not realise that trying to grasp that power would shorten him. It was his downfall.”

She looked at him aghast, yet he continued.

“As Mabel has told you, the undercurrent cannot be owned. It flows through those who release themselves to it. It recoils from those who grasp.”

Joyce tried to compose herself. It was nigh-on impossible with what had just been revealed.

“Is that why she told me to stop being a daydreamer as a child? Told me to stop reading and get outside into the real world? Constantly?”

“Yes,” Malkin replied. “She had been told not to let the awakening take hold. Not to let us find you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Feld was the man who did this to you. When Mabel finally defeated him, we found the address among his belongings. It didn’t take long to find you.”

She looked at him blankly. “But you never brought me back then?”

“No,” he said, with a hint of regret. “You were too old to awaken, too conditioned to accept what would have seemed like a fairy tale. We gave you space to grow and find your own path. You found it without our help.”

Malkin didn’t add anything more. He watched Joyce trying to compose herself.

“I feel it, you know, this undercurrent. It speaks without words. Compels me to that clifftop all the time.”

“It’s calling out for you to link with it. To be our Witness.”

“They keep calling her the Witness,” Joyce said. “Witness to what?”

Malkin regarded her for a moment.

“Easterwich.”

“That’s not an answer,” she retorted.

“It’s the only one that matters.”

He settled himself more comfortably on the chair.

“So, you’ve felt the Undercurrent?” he asked.

Joyce nodded.

“And you’ve seen what has happened here since you came back. People like you. Families from all over Europe. Children discovering things about themselves their parents don’t understand. Things that haven’t happened in Easterwich for a very long time.”

“But Mabel brought them here.”

“She gave them somewhere to come. The Undercurrent did the rest.”

Joyce frowned. “I thought they drew their power from it.”

“They do. But that’s only half of it. The Undercurrent needs them as much as they need the Undercurrent. Magic isn’t something buried beneath Easterwich waiting to be dug up. It exists because there is a relationship.”

“And the Witness?”

“Is its voice in that relationship. She is our link to it and its link to us. The Witness comes from our bloodline, from the same people who draw upon the Undercurrent. We need it, Joyce, but it also needs us.”

Malkin saw from her face that it hadn’t registered.

“Think of a path through a wood. People walk it because it’s there, and it’s there because people walk it. Stop walking it and nothing destroys the path. The wood simply takes it back.”

Joyce looked towards the window, towards Easterwich beyond it.

“That’s what happened here?”

“Slowly. The Undercurrent had fewer people drawing upon it, and its Witness was gone. The connection weakened. Given enough time, it would have found somewhere else.”

“But it didn’t?”

“No.”

Then it dawned on her.

“Because Mabel brought the sensitives here.”

Malkin smiled.

“Now you’re seeing it.”

Joyce was quiet for a moment.

“Then why bring me back? If the magic has returned, what does it need me for?”

Malkin’s smile disappeared.

“To make sure we don’t lose it again.”

──✿──

The women walked the path to Blackmere Point. It was a brighter day than the last time they had been there together.

“Are you ready for this, Joyce?” Mabel enquired.

“Yes and no,” she replied. “If it means jumping off the cliff like you did, you can forget it.”

“That was a sacred ritual. You have to train from birth for that.”

“But I am the Witness. Do you want another try at it?”

“Not at my age, darling. Besides, you have to look at today like the changing of the guard.”

Their light-heartedness continued between them as they made their way to the top.

When they reached the standing place at the peak of the cliff, Joyce could already feel the energy building. It flowed around her like the air sweeping across the cliff edge. They stopped and looked towards the blue horizon and the sun-blushed sea.

“She is here,” Mabel said, turning towards her. “Now remember, this will not harm you. She is what remains of the last Witness, kept here by the Undercurrent. Walk out and meet her halfway. When she holds out her arms, go to her and accept her embrace.”

Joyce nodded and walked towards the ghost-like figure.

Just as Mabel had said, the White Lady held out her arms. Joyce went to her and they embraced.

Something flowed into her. It filled her being with a feeling like a mother’s love for a lost child, and then came the sense of the whole world opening around her. Thoughts, emotions, sacrifices, the lives of those who had called Easterwich home. Not simply memories, but the knowledge that they had been here, that they had mattered.

For a moment, Joyce felt all of it.

Then she understood.

She was the Witness.

The White Lady released her embrace, but the power and the memories remained. She stepped back and smiled at Joyce, blew her a kiss, then dissolved into a swirl of smoke that sank gently into the soil.

Joyce turned towards Mabel. A flowing white gown now covered her uniform. She looked down at herself, then back at Mabel with a smile before walking to her side. Together they looked out to sea.

“How does it feel, Witness?” Mabel asked.

“Limitless,” Joyce replied, still trying to adjust to being between two worlds.

“Yes,” Mabel said. “I know that feeling well.”

Joyce glanced at her.

“Do I have to stand here all night and day?”

“No, darling. Only the best part of you.” Mabel turned towards the path. “Let’s go home and save the world again.”

The End