MORNING EXERCISES—run, circuit training, gymnastics. Sometimes two runs. This is the best bit of the day. Usually I run barefoot. The mud is part of my feet now.

CLEANING ME, MY CLOTHES, AND MY CAGE—empty my bucket, fill my bucket with water from the stream, wash in stream, wash my shirt or my jeans if it looks like they will dry quickly (I only have one set of clothes), sweep out my cage, oil and clean the cage, locks, and shackles, though most nights she doesn’t make me put them on.

BREAKFAST—I make it and I clean up after it. Porridge in winter, porridge in summer. I might be allowed honey or dried fruit.

MORNING CHORES—collect the eggs, clean out the chicken coop, put out chicken feed and water, feed the pigs, clean the kitchen range, chop wood. The ax is chained to a log and Celia always watches while I chop. (One of my first, admittedly not well thought out escape attempts was when I tried to chop away the log holding the chain.)

LUNCH—make lunch, clean up after lunch. I bake bread every other day.

AFTERNOON EXERCISE—self-defense, running, circuit training. I am improving at self-defense but Celia is seriously fast and strong. Basically it’s an excuse for her to beat the shit out of me.

AFTERNOON STUDY—reading. Celia reads to me, which sounds sweet but isn’t. She asks questions about the things she reads. If my answers aren’t good enough I get slapped, and those slaps sting. But at least I don’t have to read. Celia tried to teach me, but we came to an agreement to stop that; it was too painful for both of us. She even said, “Sometimes you have to admit defeat,” and then slapped me for smirking.

Last week I picked up a book and started to spell out some of the words, but she snatched it out of my hands, saying she might have to kill me if I carried on. Celia has a few books. There are three witch books: one on potions, one about White Witches from the past, and one about Black Witches. She reads them to me and to herself, I guess. The fain books make a bigger pile: a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a few books on bush craft, mountaineering, survival, that sort of thing, and some novels, mostly by Russian writers. I prefer the witch books, but Celia says she is providing a “rounded education,” which seems a blatant lie. Sometimes when she’s reading these other books Celia doesn’t seem like a White Witch; she seems . . . almost human. She is currently reading us a book called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. She loves all these books about the gulags. She says that it shows that even fains can survive in much tougher conditions than I have to cope with. The way she says it makes me wonder if she is planning something harsher.

TEA—make tea, eat, clean up.

INDOOR EVENING WORK—thankfully this is short in winter, as it’s soon dark and I have to be outside. But for the time we are together we talk about the day, things I’ve learned, stuff like that. Celia says she doesn’t teach, she talks, and I have to learn by listening and talking back “using my intelligence.” After that, if it’s still light, I may be allowed to draw.

OUTDOOR EVENING EXERCISE—in winter when it gets dark early this takes most of the late afternoon as well as the evening. I can run fine in the dark. I can’t see, but something guides me and I let it and just run. This is the one thing that I don’t need a trick to enjoy.

As well as running, we practice combat in the dark. I’m stronger and faster at full moon. If it’s full moon Celia can’t beat me, as long as I keep out of her reach. A number of times now she has said, “Good work. That’ll do for now.” I think she might have been struggling a bit.

BEDTIME (CAGETIME)—shackle myself up if she’s in a bad mood.

NIGHT—sleep most nights, bad dreams most nights. It’s good if I just look at the stars, but it’s often cloudy, and I’m usually too knackered.

Celia is an ex-Hunter. She won’t tell me when she retired or why. All she says is that she’s employed by the Council to be my guardian and teacher.

She guards against me escaping and she teaches me about fighting and surviving. We have now moved from unarmed to armed combat, though we are only armed with wooden knives. I asked if we could practice with guns and she said, “Let’s see if you can master the knife,” like she’s some ninja expert, which of course she turns out to be. The pretend knives are all the same unusually long and slender shape. I’m guessing that the Fairborn is like this.

Celia also teaches me about Marcus.

So it all seems to be heading in a certain direction. At first I said nothing, played dumb, but I can’t play along any more. I have to make some effort to fight back, and so the other day I tackled it head on.

“I won’t kill my dad. You know that, don’t you?”

She blanked me.

But I know blank looks and I shook my head. “I won’t kill him.”

She said, “I’ve been instructed to tell you these things. I tell you them. I don’t question why.”

“You teach me to query everything.”

“Yes, but some queries won’t get answered.”

“I won’t kill him.”

“Let’s suppose Marcus has threatened to kill a member of your family: Arran, say. The only way you can save Arran is by killing Marcus.”

“Let’s suppose something more realistic. The Council threatens a member of my family: Arran, say. The only way I can stop them killing Arran is by killing Marcus.”

“And?”

“I won’t kill my father.”

“All your family. Your grandmother, Deborah, and Arran are being tortured.”

“I know the Council would kill them all. They are murderers. I’m not.”

Celia raised her eyebrows at that one. “You would kill me to escape here.”

I gave her a big smile.

She shook her head. “And if they threatened you? Tortured you?”

“They threaten me constantly. Torture me constantly.”

We were silent.

I shrugged. “Besides, I’m not good enough to do it.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Do you think I’ll be good enough, one day?”

“Perhaps.”

“I’ll need my Gift.”

“Probably.”

“Will the Council give me three gifts?”

Silence. And the blankest of looks. I’d tried that question before and not got anywhere.

“What happens to Black Witches if they don’t get three gifts? Do they die?”

“There was one girl I know of, a Black Whet, captured when she was sixteen. She was kept prisoner by the Council, not mistreated. Of course, she wasn’t given three gifts. She became ill with a disease of her lungs and also of her mind. She died just before her eighteenth birthday.”

Would I be another experiment to see what happens? And what would happen to me?

The lessons about Marcus cover his attacks and his Gifts. There is a huge list of the witches he has killed, where, and when. By where I mean what country, town, or city, but also whether it was inside, outside, near water, mountains, streams, cities . . . By when I mean dates, but also times of day or night and phases of the moon, weather conditions . . . There are one hundred and ninety-three White Witches on the list and also twenty-seven Black Witches, though the list is probably incomplete for them. Marcus is forty-five years old now, and so in the twenty-eight years since he received his Gift that averages between seven and eight killings a year.

The numbers are dropping off, though; he peaked when he was twenty-eight with thirty-two murders in that year. Perhaps he’s getting old, perhaps he’s mellowing, or perhaps he’s killed most of the ones he wants to.

The Gifts for all these witches are on Celia’s list. He hasn’t eaten all their hearts, just the ones with Gifts that he wants.

Marcus’s Gift, his own original one, is that he can transform into animals. He favors turning into cats, big cats. Most of the evidence is from tracks, a few distant sightings, and the bodies. There aren’t a lot of survivor accounts. In fact, there are just two: a young child who hid behind a bookshelf, and my mother. The child didn’t see anything but described hearing growling and screaming. My mother said she hid too, said she never saw Marcus, so that’s a lie, though the lie only became obvious after I was born, but she never said what really happened, not even to Gran.