‘Annie has spake all of moon fish and whispering shells. And you and the farmer’s lad.’ He waits, and every passing moment of silence torments me. ‘He’s only courting that pretty little blacksmith’s daughter.’

These are not words, but drops of venom that fall from his invaded lips, seeping into my skin until I see nothing but Daniel and the blacksmith lass, hands entwined, heads together, lips touching, and I reach out for a wall that is not there to steady myself. How can this be true, when just the other day he left the hag stone so we might meet, and he listened with such care to Annie?

John smirks. ‘Aye, thought you might care to know that,’ he says. ‘Only one thing he could want from the likes of you. Didn’t think there was more to it, did you?’

The smoke has dazed me so, I feel no anger at myself for the tears his words bring. I look into John’s face. The serpent is gone, his eyes clear and confused; regretful.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘’Tis perhaps not … I didn’t mean to …’ His voice breaks off and he watches me as his cheeks redden, bites on a nail, then dips his head and hurries into the house.

I am cold now from knowing and losing the comfort of Daniel’s closeness. The loss weighs upon me. This is why I should not have let my life entwine with his, for that is all gone, as I should have known it would be.

I’ve no claim on him, have always known this. Wiping away the tears I’ve no right to shed, I follow John into the house, because though he’s enjoyed giving me this pain and though Mam will not countenance it, I need my family now. They’re all I have. I am the cunning woman’s daughter, born to a fate of isolation and dark power. The kindness of a farmer’s lad, and all else I might have hoped he offered, is not for me, nor ever was.

It is time to embrace my calling now, with all my being, and leave him and his kind to their lives of comfort and courting that I shall never know. There is a stirring within me, a clarity, that allows me to hear the bidding of my master as never before, and this time I do not turn away from it. For what other life is there for me?

Mam has doused the pan and smoke hangs like an apparition in the corners of the roof. I taste it still. Her eyes are black and bright, her movements heavy and fluid as they always are when she has breathed in its vapour.