Pureheart by Cassandra Golds Page B

could do to stop herself moving closer.
    Suddenly Gal shut his eyes with the pain of it.
    â€˜What if she is God, Gal?’
    â€˜She can’t be God. She’s dead,’ said Gal.
    â€˜But witches are more powerful after they’re dead!’
    Gal had a sudden, incongruous vision of the neat, undisturbed lawns at the local cemetery. He wondered how anyone could imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
    â€˜Not all-powerful, though,’ he said.
    And as Deirdre stood there in his delicious warmth she began to find the thumping in the building oddly comforting, like the rocking of a cradle. It’s different, she thought, it’s not the same thing as my grandmother and the collapsing of the building. I don’t know what it is, but I recognise it, and it’s not scary, and it doesn’t wish me harm. Then she had a thought, a strange thought, almost the strangest thought she could have had, because it seemed completely at odds with her beliefs.
    What if, after all, Gal is more powerful than my grandmother?
    But that could not be true. Could it?
    It was like wondering whether life was more powerful than death.
    â€˜It’s just a word, Deedee,’ Gal said. ‘It’s a word every two year old knows. I know a word, too.’ And he looked up at the ceiling, at the word and the crack, and said, ‘
Yes.
’
    Deirdre cowered, staring upwards. But nothing happened.
    He knew it wouldn’t.
    â€˜She’s a bully,’ he murmured to himself. ‘She always was.’
    She turned her head to look at him. He looked back at her, with a look of such naked vulnerable honesty it was as if she had, for a moment, seen right into his soul.
    And then she had one of those odd flashes of memory. There had been a time, not so long ago, when she had felt his warm, warm skin against hers, when there had been nothing, no space at all, between them, when they had not even been two people, but for brief, ecstatic moments, one. But when could that have been? How could it have been? He had always been forbidden to her.
    â€˜There’s something strange about my memory,’ she muttered, almost as if she was talking to herself. ‘It scares me. I think it must be something to do with Grandmother dying. It must be the shock. I feel so confused. Especially about you – and the story of my life. I’m so – muddled – about what happened, and when. It’s like I can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality – what I wish had happened, and what really did. And some memories scare me so much I can’t even let myself remember them –’
    Gal gazed at her sadly.
    â€˜There’s not as much difference as you think,’ he said. ‘Between dreams and reality, I mean.’ Then, ‘Look,’ he added quickly, because he was afraid she would get too scared to act, ‘you think this is the end. But it’s not. It’s the beginning. This is the showdown, the last battle. The confrontation. Our whole lives have been leading to this.
    â€˜All this time we’ve been running from her. And she’s been winning. She had us at her mercy. She had us in her power. Now we have to turn around; now we have to go looking for her. And we have to take the power from her – for ourselves.
    â€˜I am not giving up, Deirdre. I don’t care what she does. I don’t care if she brings the building down on top of us. I don’t care if this is our last night on earth. She is not going to win. I came back for a reason. I’m going to free you from this place if it’s the last thing I do. And the only way I can think of to do it is to fight her, to wrestle her for this thing we’ve lost – this thing she’s so determined to hide from us – to find it, to remember it, to look at it and know it and take it back, no matter what she does to stop us. There’s no other way. Do you believe