I stared straight into the midnight depths of Tristan’s gaze, and within their inky pools it was as though I could lose my soul. “Where have you been?” He squeezed my fingers.
I blinked a few times, trying to formulate a response which wasn’t on the far side of insanity. I couldn’t think of one. “The past,” was all I muttered before the clack of Mrs Cox's heels announced her arrival. Tristan didn’t back away as the force that was the tiny Scot breezed into the cavernous sick bay.
“Mae,” Mrs Cox’s clipped tone was tightened like a violin string. I couldn’t look at her, so I feigned unconsciousness. I didn’t know what to say to anyone, so maybe it was best if I said nothing at all.
I don’t know how long I slept for, drifting in and out of dark dreams. Although what were dreams and what was reality I no longer knew. When I closed my eyes, Tristram was there watching me, his dark gaze questioning and filled with distrust the further she, or me, pulled away from him. No matter how much I pulled away from the dreams, tried to stay within the light of day, they pulled me back until I was no longer sure I’d walked back through the stones at all—maybe that was the dream.
Every so often firm fingers would squeeze mine. Lips brushed my hair and my heart pounded with the thunder of wild horses. He never spoke as I battled to find reality. He was there though and mixed within my dreams, the purple gem at the base of my throat warmed with comforting familiarity.
“You do realise,” it was Phil’s voice who spoke, but in my head it mixed with the smile of Alana. “You can’t miss English forever. Eventually you are going to have to stand up and give your verdict on Romeo and Juliet to Mrs Barlow.”
I laughed, chasing Alana down towards the river. We were closer now, closer than we had been while the secret of my power was hidden. “Anything that ends with the death of two young lovers isn’t worth reading,” I told her, but she frowned in confusion.
“Wake me up, Phil.” Tears burned my eyes, and I blinked them away until they were captured on delicate lips. Tristan.
“That’s enough.” A sharp clap shattered the air, and I blinked at the ceiling above. Even in the deepest darkest dreams, Mrs Cox could still make her presence known. “You can’t miss your whole birthday.”
I blinked towards her voice. I wanted to see my friend, wanted to see Tristan, but only a shadowy shape waited for me by the side of the bed.
“Heather?” I gasped. My head whirled. “Birthday?”
“Oh, my goodness, child, I have never known anyone make things as complicated as you.”
Sleep evaporated, my dreams chased off back into the past. It couldn’t be my birthday. That was still days away. How long had I been asleep? “Mrs Cox? Heather?”
The small round eyes of Mrs Cox rolled. “You remember me then?”
“I’ve dreamed about you.” I managed to haul myself into a semi-upright position, although my head was none too pleased.
“Dreamed? Remembered you mean, Mae.”
Her words came back to me from the day of my arrival. Your ancestors came from here; your blood will remember. “It wasn’t my ancestors who came from here was it?”
Mrs Cox, or who I now plainly saw as Heather, the Kneel Woman from two thousand years ago, shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. “Well they did, but so did you.”
“And you’re still alive because you’re a superhuman witch?”
She snorted and perched a slender hip on the edge of the sick bay bed. “I’m not a witch, Mae.”
“No?”
“No, I’m a conduit for energy. I can sense it, feel it, and sometimes if I’m very lucky, guide it.”
“But you have been alive forever.”
Another uncharacteristic eye-roll. “No. But I tied myself to here, so I could be here when you got back home.”
“But it was my aunt who called me back?” I narrowed my eyes. “Does she know about my dreams, about who I was before?” Then it came to me. “There is no aunt is there?”
The cool fingers of Mrs Cox landed on my hand and patted. “I can be ingenious when required.”
“Like when you made Mae help with Agnese’s baby, even though she didn’t know what she was doing?”
“You, you didn’t know what you were doing.” Her smile was all knowing, and I bristled.
“How did you know where to find me? How did you know I was an orphan in Queens?”
“I felt you from when your soul came back. I always knew it would cycle back when the time was right.” She nodded. “Admittedly I didn’t expect to wait so long.”
“Sorry,” I grumbled. “Didn’t mean to make you wait around.”
Mrs Cox leaned closer. “It was worth the wait, but you’re in trouble. Soon they will know you are back and they will come for your magic once again.”
“Why am I back now, if you’ve been waiting all this time?”
Heather/Mrs Cox, peered at me, her face sombre. “You and Tristram were cursed on the stones. You were never meant to find one another again.” She shrugged. “This is the first cycle you’ve both been back at the same time.” A knowing smile stretched across her face. “I guessed you wouldn’t be able to stay apart.”
“So that’s why he chose this school?”
“What can I say; he’s a Clans man through and through.” She laughed a little and from under the image of Mrs Cox I could see the gap-toothed smile of Heather, her bracelets jingling.
“Is that why we hated one another?”
She raised an eyebrow and I flushed when I remembered the way she’d found us the morning before. She touched the gem at my throat. “You just needed a connection to remember one another.”
If my head hadn’t hurt so much I would have laughed. As it was, my brain resembled a bowling ball rolling around my head, so I kept
