Free The Witch in the Lake by Anna Fienberg Page A

in the morning.
    â€˜Have you heard from your sister?’ he asked boldly.
    Francesca’s face darkened.
    â€˜No. I haven’t heard a word,’ she said. ‘Not one word. I don’t know what she can be thinking of—she knows how I worry.’
    Leo’s tongue burned with things he’d like to say. But he didn’t say any of them. Why spoil this time with Francesca? He just wanted to keep on standing there, feeling safe with her, having her trust him.
    â€˜Will you let me know when you hear something?’ Leo asked. ‘You could leave a message with Signor Butteri, or Signor Eco.’
    Francesca looked uneasy, fiddling with her necklace. Then her face cleared. ‘Yes, I will,’ she said suddenly. ‘I shall do what I like. I know how you care for Merilee.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ said Leo, and without thinking, threw his arms around her waist. She hugged him back for just a moment.
    â€˜Oh, Signora, you forgot your pears,’ called the man behind the fruit stall. Francesca turned, clutching her basket, and walked quickly away.
    Leo stayed. He bought two pears. Her scent was still in his nostrils. He remembered her bending over him when he was little, her smooth fingers combing his hair after a bath. He remembered a story she told him about a little hen and a wolf. There’d been so many stories before their midday nap.
    His throat ached and he began to walk too, away from the busy market and the hurt.
    The meeting with Francesca changed Leo’s days. He’d seen how her face softened and came alive when she looked at him. She’d hugged him close, her cheek pressed against his. For those few minutes at the market, Leo had felt himself loved. And it gave him faith in himself again.
    Now when he practised his magic, he concentrated with new energy. He was most himself when he was immersed in ‘seeing’ something else. He felt he was using all his powers, flexing every part of his gift, and he was determined to get better. Be as good as he could be. As good as his father had hoped.
    Failure, family of failures
. When Beatrice’s words floated into his mind, he tried to think of Francesca. He thought of Merilee and her songs, and all the games they’d ever played. And it gave him strength. He had the twin signs after all, and if he lived up to the power he was born with, then maybe he could rescue Merilee and send that Beatrice—and any other old witch—packing!
    Some days he worked so hard that he missed the market, forgot to prepare dinner. He walked around with his head full of things he’d ‘seen’. In his mind he talked with them, fought with them—it was hard to let them go. Small nuggetty presences, they hulked inside him, clinging to his thoughts, refusing to be banished. He could never be alone any more—his brain rustled with creatures and shadows, the essence of things.
    At night Leo fell into bed exhausted. It was as if he’d run for a hundred miles, when all he’d done was sit still as a stone all day. He had to use all his energy to concentrate.
    Only the voice still nagged at him. At night, when he was falling asleep, the breathy sound blew in through the shutters.
Leo, whoo, Leo soon!
And he’d turn over and hold the pillow over his ears.
    Leo had no trouble ‘seeing’. In fact he sometimes thought he saw too much. It was the transformation part that was difficult. When he looked at a stone, an apple, he could see the heart of it so clearly—the rightness of the thing, the inevitability of it—and he was reluctant to change it. Often he’d become so convinced by the essence of something—all the glittering grains of sand in a stone, the messages inside a seed—that he couldn’t touch it. He saw the meeting of ancient oceans and boiling earth—who was he to fool with that?
    â€˜You have to hold that thing in your mind, all of it, and then see the