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And there she was. A little girl.
She tugged herself up from the deep, wearing a white nightdress, with my teddy cat, Goblin, clutched under her arm, crying so hard her tears were streaming.
She had dark hair, and blue eyes, and the shock on her face matched the shock on mine.
Of course, I should have known it.Feeling, not thinking.The trapped girl wasme.
She stared up at me with huge, wide eyes and I pulled her to her feet and held her tight.
“It’s ok,” I whispered. “You’re going to be ok now. You’re free.”
I could barely hear her words through her sobs.
“Why didn’t you save me sooner? I was so scared!”
The answer was obvious to me. I was crying along with her as I answered her question.
“Because I was too scared myself. But I’m not now. I’m not scared anymore.”
I opened my eyes and took a huge gulp of air. The creature in my arms wasn’t the little girl me, it was the vampire who’d led me to the trapdoor.
His stare said it all.
“Yes,” he said. “You were trapped inside and cut off from the light. Bolted in so deeply that you couldn’t hear your own cries.”
The room spun afresh, but I didn’t try to steady myself this time, I let it swirl and swirl, and I trusted Hans to keep me steady. Keep me safe. Keep me warm.
The sobs ate me up, just like the little girl crying with Goblin under her arm. I saw Mum wrenching him away from me in my nightdress, as I screamed and cried and begged her to let me keep him.
NO WITCHES, KATHERINE! NEVER ANY WITCHES!
“I can’t believe they did this to me,” I sobbed to Hans. “They did this to me, didn’t they? Mum and Grandma. Why?”
He held me tighter and his silence said it all. He didn’t need to speak the words, I was already beginning to know them.
Feeling not thinking.
I saw Mum and Grandma in church, praying. I saw them scowling and whispering, trapped in the world on the surface, just as I was trapped in the world underneath. Because they didn’t want to face it either, did they? They didn’t want to open their own trapdoors…
“That’s it,” Hans said. “Keep on feeling.”
The years rewound themself in flickers, my own deep past, where they would hold my hand and lead me into church for prayers every weekend, before I even knew what prayers meant.
Please, our Saviour. Save Katherine from the path of darkness. Hold her in your arms and keep her from sin.
Please, Lord Above, take our child into your embrace, and forgive her the chains of our past.
Ourpast.
The chains of OUR past.
What past did they mean?
Now was the time to use my skills… I had to trust them. Trust myself…
The flickers of the past kept on coming.
Witches being burnt on stakes and drowned in lakes. A chain of women hiding who they were throughout my whole family line. The fear. The torment. The shame.
