Free Shamanka by Jeanne Willis Page A

tell you that, having spoken to the witch, he truly believed that his baby daughter was dead. He didn’t believe it at first though. Like everyone who’s lost someone they love, he hoped it had all been a dreadful mistake and that, by some miracle, she’d been saved.
    John watched the top flat in St Peter’s Square for nights on end, listening for baby cries but he heard none. He saw no one. No one answered the door. The front windows were boarded up and he assumed, quite understandably, that its wicked tenant, Candy Khaan, had moved out – but it was just an illusion. She was there all along, in a drunken stupor. Sam was there too, her pitiful cries muffled in the knicker drawer.
    He couldn’t go to the authorities to see if anyone had signed Sam’s death certificate; her birth had never been registered. There was no paper trail to say she’d ever existed. He couldn’t go to the police because he had a dark secret: he’d entered the country on a stolen passport. He was wanted for murder.
    John Tabuh was probably innocent. Probably? Usually a man can be sure if he’s murdered someone, but not in this case. The manner of the victim’s death was most bizarre; he couldn’t help wondering if it had been caused by the Old Magic and panicked on two counts:
    1. Was his father infinitely more powerful than he’d given him credit for?
    2. Had he murdered the man himself and, unable to live with the guilt, grossly exaggerated his father’s power in order to shift the blame?
    Judge for yourself when you have more evidence. For now, the facts are that under very trying circumstances, John Tabuh exhausted every means of finding baby Sam alive and returned to the witch in a state of unbearable grief.
    â€œIf only they’d found her body,” he cried. “My father might have brought her back to life.”
    He’d told the witch about the alleged resurrection of Lola and asked if she thought it could have happened in reality. Did she know any magic strong enough to wake the dead? Could he buy such a spell from her? He was sceptical, he said, but he’d been told to ask questions.
    Sam’s brain is whirring. It strikes her that not only has she followed her father’s footsteps onto the Piccadilly Line and through Covent Garden, but also into Ruth Abafey’s waiting room. Has she been sent on a quest too?
    It’s beginning to look that way. She only left home to find Lola and the Dark Prince but it seems Fate has other plans – or is it Fate? The witch must be reading her mind because she suddenly claps her hands, declares that Fate is a fickle thing and tries to change the subject.
    Sam’s not having it. “I know Fate is fickle but can it be
deliberately
altered?”
    The witch is evasive. “It can be – if you’re good with a needle.”
    â€œI wish you’d give me a straight answer instead of resorting to riddles,” groans Sam.
    Ruth Abafey wags a finger at her. “You won’t get the right answers unless you ask the right questions. That’s where your father went wrong.”
    Sam has three questions she’d like answers to:
    1. Who rescued her from the fire?
    2. How did she end up living with Aunt Candy?
    3. Where is Kitty now?
    But these questions are not the Big Three. They’re not the ones the witch doctor told his son to ask; the ones that would reveal the truth about resurrection. Having nothing to lose, she questions Ruth. “What is magic? What is illusion? What is real?” she asks.
    Here is the witch’s reply:
    â€œI know many antidotes to poison, but I have never brought anyone – man, woman or beast – back from the dead. Resurrection is against the laws of nature. Witches work with nature, we never go against it. Although magic can achieve wonderful things, it cannot create miracles. Witches do not have the power of life over death.”
    But do witch doctors? Sam