I nodded, scowling.
‘And how to unlock such a door?’
‘You needn’t think I’m going to open it for you,’ I told her, my voice growing sharp with anger at her temerity. I felt my face flush, and knew the little flames Darragh had once noticed would be starting to show on the edges of my hair. ‘If my father wants it locked, it stays locked. I won’t do it.’
‘Bet you can’t.’ She was taunting me.
‘I won’t open it. I told you.’
She laughed, a young girl’s laugh like a peal of little bells. ‘Then I’ll have to do it myself, won’t I?’ she said lightly, and raised a gnarled, knobby hand towards the heavy oak panels. She clicked her fingers just once, and a bright border of flame licked at the door, all round the edges. Smoke billowed, and I began to cough. For a moment I could see nothing. There was a popping sound, and a creak. The smoke cleared. The great door now stood ajar, its surface blackened and blistered, its heavy bolts hanging useless where they had fallen away from the charred wood.
I stood in the doorway, watching, as the old woman took three steps into my father’s secret room.
‘He won’t be happy,’ I said tightly.
‘He won’t know,’ she replied coolly. ‘Ciarán’s gone. You won’t see him again until we’re quite finished here, child; not until next summer nears its end. It’s just not possible for him to stay, not with me here. No place can hold the two of us. It’s better this way. You and I have a great deal of work to do, Fainne.’
I stood frozen, feeling the shock of what she had told me like a wound to the heart. How could Father do this? Where had he gone? How could he leave me alone with this dreadful old woman?
She was standing in front of the bronze mirror now, apparently admiring herself, for she took out a comb from a pocket in her voluminous attire and proceeded to drag it through her wild tangle of hair. Despite myself, I moved closer.
‘Didn’t Ciarán tell you about me, child? Didn’t he explain anything?’ She stared intently at her reflection. I came up behind, drawn to gaze over her shoulder into the polished surface.
The woman in the mirror stared back at me. She might have been sixteen years old, no more. Her hair was a glossier, prettier version of mine, curling around her shoulders with a life of its own, a rich, deep auburn. Her skin was milk-white, so pale you could see the faint blue tracery of veins on the pearly surface. Her figure was slender but shapely, with curves in all the right places. It was the figure I had tried to create for myself that day when I went down to the camp. I had thought myself skilful, but beside this, my own efforts were paltry. This woman was a master of the craft. I looked into her eyes. They were deep, dark, the colour of ripe mulberries. They were my father’s eyes. They were my own eyes. The old woman smiled back from the mirror, with her red, curving lips and her small, sharp white teeth.
‘As you see,’ she said with a mirthless chuckle, ‘I’ve a lot to teach you. And we’d best start straight away. Making you into a fine lady is going to be quite a challenge.’
For as long as I could remember, it had been the two of us, my father and I, working together or working separately, the day devoted to the practice of the craft. Our meals, our rest, our contacts with the outside world were kept to what was strictly essential: the fetching of water, the gathering of driftwood for the fire. Fish accepted from the girl at the door. Messages entrusted to Dan Walker. I had had the summers with Darragh. But Darragh was gone, and I was grown up now. Those times were over. My father and I understood each other without much need for words. Sometimes he would explain a technique or the theory behind it. Sometimes I would ask a question. Mostly, he let me find out for myself, with a little guidance here and there. He let me make my own mistakes and learn from them. That way, he said, I would become more responsible, and retain those things I most needed to know. Indeed, in time this discipline would lead not just to knowledge, but to understanding. It was an orderly, well-structured existence, if somewhat outside the patterns of ordinary folk.
My grandmother had quite a different method of teaching. She began by telling me Ciarán had neglected my education sorely; the least he could have taught me was to eat politely, not shovel things with my fingers like a tinker’s child. When I sought to defend my father, she silenced me with a nasty little spell that made my tongue swell up and grow fuzzy as a ripe catkin. No wonder she had said she could not live in the same place as her son. One of our most basic rules was that the craft must never be used by teacher against student, or student against teacher. My father would have recoiled from the idea of using magic to inflict punishment. Grandmother employed it with no qualms whatever. I hated the way she spoke of him, of her own son.
‘Well,’ she observed as she watched me eating my fish, her eyes following each scrap as it travelled from platter to lips, ‘he’s taught you shape-shifting and manipulation and sleight of hand. How much good will those skills be to you when you sit at table with the fine folk of Sevenwaters? Can you dance? Can you sing? Can you smile at a man and make his blood stir and his heart race? I thought not. Don’t gape, child. Your education’s been quite inadequate. I blame those druids, they got hold of your father and filled his head with nonsense. It’s just as well he called me when he did. Before I’m done with you, you’ll be expert at the art of twisting a man around your little finger – clumsy, plain thing that you are. I’m an artist.’
‘I have learned much from my father,’ I said angrily. ‘He is a great sorcerer, and deeply respected. I’m not sure we need your – artistry. I have both lore and skills, and will improve both as well as I can, for my father has given me a love of learning. Why spend time and energy on table manners?’
She laughed her young woman’s laugh, so incongruous as it pealed from that wizened, gap-toothed mouth.
‘Oh dear, oh dear. It stamps its little foot, and the sparks fly. The first thing you need to learn is not to give yourself away like that, child. But there’s more, so much more. I know your father has given you a grounding in the skills. The bare bones, so to speak. But you can achieve great things at Sevenwaters if you make the most of your opportunities. I’ll help you, child. Believe me, I know these people.’
From that point on she took charge. I was used to lessons and practice. I was used to working long hours, and being perpetually tired, and keeping on regardless. But these lessons were so tedious. How to eat as neatly as a wren, in tiny little morsels. How to giggle and whisper secrets. How to hold myself upright as I walked, and sway my hips from side to side. This one was not easy, with my foot the way it was. In the end she grew exasperated.
‘You’ll never walk straight in your own guise,’ she told me bluntly. ‘You’ll never dance without making a fool of yourself. No matter. You can use the Glamour when you will. Make yourself as graceful as you want. Have the loveliest feet in the world, if there’s need of them. The only problem is, it gets tiring. Keeping it up all the time, I mean. It wears you down. Why do you think I’m a wrinkled old hag? Our kind live long. Too long, I sometimes think. But I’m the way I am from being charming for Lord Colum all that time, keeping him dancing to my will.’ She gave a sigh. ‘Ah, now, there was a man. Shame that little upstart Sorcha thwarted me. If she hadn’t done what she did, there’d have been no need for all this. It would all have been mine, and in his turn, Ciarán’s. Your wretched mother would never have existed, and nor would you, pet. Think what I could have achieved. It would all have been ours, as it should have been. But she did it, she outwitted me, she and those – those creatures that call themselves fancy names. Otherworld beings. Huh! Power went to their heads a long time ago, that’s their problem. Shut our kind out. We were never good enough for them, and don’t they love reminding us of it? Well, we’ll see what the Fair Folk make of my little gift to them. They’ll be laughing on the other sides of their faces when your work is done, girl.’
I hesitated to ask her what she meant. She