I want to say “Marcus.” He’s my father and I want to say his name, but I’m too afraid. I’m always too afraid to say his name.

“The woman goes back to look at the sleeping baby and she reaches out to touch it . . .

“‘Careful!’ the Hunter warns, because even though Hunters are never afraid, they are always cautious around Black witchcraft.

“The woman says, ‘He’s just a baby.’ And she strokes its bare arm with the back of her fingers.

“And the baby stirs and then opens its eyes.

“The woman says, ‘Oh goodness!’ and steps back.

“She realizes she shouldn’t have touched such a nasty thing and rushes off to the bathroom to wash her hands.”

Jessica reaches out as if she’s going to touch me but then pulls her hand away, saying, “I couldn’t ever touch anything as bad as you.”

My Father

I am standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at my face. I’m not like my mother at all, not like Arran. My skin’s slightly darker than theirs, more olive, and my hair’s jet black, but the real difference is the blackness of my eyes.

I’ve never met my father, never even seen my father. But I know that my eyes are his eyes.

My Mother’s Suicide

Jessica holds the photograph frame high to her left and brings it down diagonally, slicing the edge of the frame across my cheekbone.

“Don’t ever touch this picture again.”

I don’t move.

“Do you hear me?”

There’s blood on the corner of the frame.

“She’s dead because of you.”

I back against the wall.

Jessica shouts at me. “She killed herself because of you!”

The Second Notification

I remember it raining for days. Days and days, until even I am fed up with being alone in the woods. So I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drawing. Gran is in the kitchen, too. Gran is always in the kitchen. She is old and bony with that thin skin that old people have, but she is also slim and straight-backed. She wears pleated tartan skirts and walking boots or wellies. She is always in the kitchen and the kitchen floor is always muddy. Even with the rain, the back door is open. A chicken comes in for some shelter, but Gran won’t stand for that, and she sweeps it out gently with the side of her boot and shuts the door.

The pot simmers on the stove, emitting a column of steam that rises fast and narrow and then widens to join the cloud above. The green, gray, blue, and red of the herbs, flowers, roots, and bulbs that hang from the ceiling by strings, in nets, and in baskets are blurred in the fog that surrounds them. Lined up on the shelves are glass jars filled with liquids, leaves, grains, greases, and potions, and some even with jam. The warped oak work surface is littered with spoons of all kinds—metal, wooden, bone, as long as my arm, as small as my little finger—as well as knives in a block, dirty knives covered in paste lying on the chopping board, a granite pestle and mortar, two round baskets, and more jars. On the back of the door hang a beekeeper’s hat, a selection of aprons, and a black umbrella that is as bent as a banana.

I draw it all.

I’m sitting with Arran watching an old movie on TV. Arran likes to watch them, the older the better, and I like to sit with him, the closer the better. We’ve both got shorts on, and we’ve both got skinny legs, only his are paler than mine and dangle farther over the end of the comfy chair. He has a small scar on his left knee and a long one up his right shin. His hair is light brown and wavy, but somehow it always stays back off his face. My hair is long and straight and black and hangs over my eyes.

Arran is wearing a blue, knitted jumper over a white T-shirt. I’m wearing the red T-shirt that he gave me. He’s warm to lean close to, and when I turn to look up at him he moves his gaze from the telly to me, sort of in slow motion. His eyes are light, blue-gray with glints of silver in them, and he even blinks slow. Everything about him is gentle. It would be great to be like him.

“You enjoying it?” he asks, not in a hurry for an answer.

I nod.

He puts his arm round me and turns back to the screen.

Lawrence of Arabia does the trick with the match. Afterward we agree to try it ourselves. I take the big box of matches from the kitchen drawer and we run with them to the woods.

I go first.

I light the match and hold it between my thumb and forefinger, letting it burn right down until it goes out. My small, thin fingers, with nails that are bitten to nothing, are burnt but they hold the blackened match.

Arran tries the trick too. Only he doesn’t do it. He’s like the other man in the movie. He drops the match.

After he goes back home I do the trick again. It’s easy.

Me and Arran creep into Gran’s bedroom. It smells strangely medicinal. Under the window there’s an oak casket where Gran keeps the notifications from the Council. We sit on the carpet. Arran opens the casket lid and takes out the second notification. It’s written on thick, yellow parchment and has gray writing swirling across the page. Arran reads it to me; he’s slow and quiet as always.

“Notification of the Resolution of the Council of White Witches in England, Scotland, and Wales.

“In order to ensure the safety and security of all White Witches, the Council will continue its policy of Capture and Retribution for all Black Witches and Black Whets.

“In order to ensure the safety and security of all White Witches an annual Assessment of witches and whets of mixed White Witch and Black Witch parentage (W 0.5/B 0.5) will be made. The Assessment will contribute to the designation of the witch/whet as White (W) or Black/Non-White (B).”

I don’t ask Arran whether he thinks I’ll be a W or a B. I know he’ll try to be nice.

It’s my eighth birthday. I have to go to London to be assessed.

The Council building has lots of cold corridors of gray stone. Gran and I wait on a wooden bench in one of them. I am shivering by the time a young man in a lab coat appears and points me to a small room to the left of our bench. Gran isn’t allowed to come.

In the room is a woman. She’s also in a lab coat. She calls the young man Tom and he calls her Miss Lloyd. They call me Half Code.

They tell me to strip. “Take your clothes off, Half Code.”

And I do it.

“Stand on the scales.”

And I do that.

“Stand by the wall. We have to measure you.” They do that. Then they take photographs of me.

“Turn to the side.”

“Further.”

“And face the wall.”

And they leave me there staring at the brush strokes in the cream-colored shiny paint on the wall while they talk and put things away.

Then they tell me to put my clothes on, and I do that.

And they take me through the door and point at the bench in the corridor. And I sit back down and don’t look at Gran’s face.

The door opposite the bench is paneled dark oak and is eventually opened by a man. He’s huge, a guard. He points at me and then at the room behind him. When Gran starts to get up he says, “Not you.”

The assessment room is long and high, with bare stone walls and arched windows above head height along each side. The ceiling is arched too. The furniture is wooden. A huge oak table reaches across almost the full width of the room, keeping the three Council members to their far side. They sit on large, carved wooden chairs like ancient royalty.

The woman in the center is old, thin, gray-haired, and gray-skinned, as if all the blood has been drained out of her. The woman to the right is middle-aged and plump and has deep black skin and her hair pulled tight off her face. The man to the left is a bit younger and slim and has thick, white-blond hair. They are all wearing white robes made of roughly woven material, which has a strange sheen when the sunlight catches it.