The first sign that it wasn't going to be an ordinary day was when his mother shouted for him to come to the phone.
He hardly ever got phone calls, most of his friends didn't live far away and tended to just drop by.
When his mother handed him the receiver and mouthed "Jane Drew" Will just stared at her for a second. He'd had no contact with any of the Drews for about four years.
"Yes", he said as he put the receiver to his ear. It comes out more warily than he'd intended.
"Um...hi, Will, I'm sorry to just call you like this, out of the blue, and it's been such a long time...it's Jane, by the way, Jane Drew. We met on holiday? In Cornwall?"
She sounds scared, he thought, and very unsure. Oh Jane, what kind trouble has found you after all this time?
"Of course, I remember. It's been a while, Jane, how are you? How are Simon and Barney?"
He made his voice as light and carefree as he can with the feeling of foreboding that's growing in his stomach.
His mother smiled at him and moved over to the table to pretend to read the paper while eavesdropping shamelessly. He was used to it. There was no real privacy in a family as big as theirs. And his mother had been bothering him about finding a girlfriend for a while now.
Jane seemed take aback by his tone for a moment.
"They're ok, doing well at school and everything. Me, I don't know, it's why I'm calling...though I'm not really sure why I'm calling you...and I'm sorry if it's a bad time. ..I don't want to impose...I really shouldn't have called."
Will smiled and stopped her babbling with a quiet: "Just tell me what's wrong, Jane."
It did the trick and he could hear her catching her breath.
There was silence on the line for a while.
"I don't think I can talk about this on the phone. It doesn't feel safe, somehow. Could we meet? I know it's the holidays and you must have plans and I'd understand if you didn't have time or didn't want to go to all that trouble. ."
Will thought he'd never heard her that insecure before.
"Actually I was thinking about going to London on a day trip anyway. Look at universities, or something. I can meet you there somewhere? Would the day after tomorrow be soon enough? "
"Oh yes, of course, whenever is best for you. I'm really glad you're coming. "
He could hear the relief in her voice as she tells him the address of a café.
"I have these dreams. They started four years ago and they always come around the same time of the year, for three nights, each time. Exactly three nights. I keep a diary, I know that's very little-girl-ish but it helps and it's useful for things like this. I wrote down every dream. "
She didn't look at him as she talked. She was afraid she'd see disbelieve or worse mockery in his eyes. She pulled apart the scone on her plate instead then put down the pieces uneaten in a neat row. Her tea was untouched and slowly going cold. She didn't care because she felt like anything she'd swallow would make this nausea even worse. She knew she looked too thin, exhausted, like she'd not slept much and eaten even less.
Which was nothing less than the truth. Those dreams always left her with a sense of danger, a knot in her stomach that made even the thought of food intolerable. And they drained all her energy, leaving her tired and weak all day afterwards.
She finally looked up at Will and it once again hit her how much he looked exactly like she remembered. He was still so wholly, totally, aggressively ordinary.
She was relieved to see only guarded interest on his round face instead of the mockery she had feared. Simon had laughed at her when she'd told him that the dreams worried her.
But you've never laughed at me, have you, Will Stanton? You've always taken everything I said seriously, even when we were children. You've always taken everything seriously.
Will took a sip of his own tea then pushed his hair out of his eyes with a gesture she so clearly remembered from his younger self.
"What are those dreams about, then? Sounds like they are more like nightmares, if they leave you so out of sorts."
Jane rubbed her forehead, trying to rub away a very persistent headache.
"That's just the thing...they aren't really nightmares, not the way I usually have nightmares. They are neither good nor bad, they just are. And they scare me like no nightmare ever has."
She poked the pieces of scone around on her plate until they form a circle while she tried to find a good way to put her feelings into words.
"Do you remember that holiday when we met? How they built this big figure of sticks and leaves and blossoms and called it the Greenwitch? My dreams...they feel a bit like it felt sitting there in the flickering firelight, watching them built it. There is just this sense of...otherness, of something beautiful and terrible, powerful and childlike, good and bad, old and young, all at once. And the sea, I always smell the sea."
She shrugged, helplessly. She'd run out of words yet her head was so full of images and feelings she had no way of expressing.
Will made a non-committal noise and stared past her, deep in thought. She took the moment to watch him again.
He reminded her of someone, she thought. Someone warm and reassuring yet strangely aloof like he wished he could care more about the world around him yet for some reason just could not manage it. Someone who so often seemed to be deeply lost in thought or listening to something she couldn't hear.
He reminds me of Gummerry, that's it. He's always taken me serious as well, no matter what I told him. And he's always made me feel safe and protected. Will has that same aura. It doesn't feel like we're about the same age, it feels like he's older and stronger. Safe.
Will's attention shifted back to her and she thought she could nearly physically feels his gaze on her skin. It felt like he was touching her without moving so much as a hand towards her, like he was touching her with his mind.
Get a grip, Jane, you're starting to sound like some mad poet.
"And you've had these exact same dreams for four years? What made you call me this time when you didn't before?"
Jane had to look away again, his eyes were too knowing, too deep, too old, for his young everyday face.
"Because they're not exactly the same every year, it's more like they get stronger each time. It feels like they are pulling me in a little more each night - and this is going to sound silly – and I fear that soon I won't be able to leave them, they'll take me away."
She reached down into her bag and pulled out a hawthorn twig. She twirled it in her fingers thoughtfully for a second before holding it out to Will.
"I found this on my pillow after the first dream of this year. And it scared me so much I felt like I couldn't breath any longer. And at that moment, when I was so very scared, the only thing on my mind was I need to tell Will, Will can protect me. I don't know where that thought came from, why you'd be the first one on my mind. I hadn't talk to you for so many years, and I must admit I hardly ever thought about you or those holidays. But at that moment, when I thought I'd go mad with fear, I remembered your face and I felt...calmer, safer."
She shrugged, embarrassedly, and looked up at him again.
Will was staring at the twig she was holding out like he was wondering if it would bite him. After a while, when Jane was already thinking of putting it back in her bag, he finally reached out to take it.
His hand was shaking a tiny bit right before he touched it, she thought, and as soon as he'd taken it out of her hand his eyes seemed to lose focus, like he were listening to something only he could hear.
Why do you disturb me, Old One? You have no right...no power...the Light is gone and the Dark is gone but I remain. Forever, always.
Will shivered as his mind touched this creature of the Wild Magic at the same time as his hand touched the token it had left with Jane.
Greetings, Greenwitch. I mean no harm, and I am sorry for disturbing you. But you are overstepping your boundaries. Jane Drew is not yours to take.
A wave of anger hit Will, so strong it makes him dizzy.
She's mine now, the Light threw her away. She's no longer under your protection. She's mine...mine...
She is still one of the Six, even if she has no memory of it. The Wild Magic has no right to her, she's under the protection of the High Magic. Leave her alone.
Feelings flooded through him again, loneliness and coldness and longing. They were strong and untameable as the sea and he knew that he could never hold back that tide. It might even cause him some damage should he try to. So instead he let them flow through his mind without allowing them to touch him, like he was merely a conduit.
She gave me a gift, a secret, like she promised. I found it, it's mine now, forever. She made a wish for me, I gave her my old secret. She owes me.
Will felt the desperate loneliness again and suddenly knew what this creature of the Wild Magic wanted, what it craved. Something it had no word for because it is a thing of humans, not a thing of the sea. There is no friendship in the deep oceans where the Greenwitch has to live. And never before had anyone touched this creature's heart like Jane had. Jane had shown the Greenwitch that it must not be cut off from humans, that it can communicate with them. And Jane had shown it kindness and care like no one before and most likely no one since.
All the Greenwitch wanted was a friend.
She will die, you know, if you bring her to you? She can not live underwater. Is that what you want for her? Is that how you would repay her kindness?
She's mine, she called to me, she touched me. Then she left me, but I found her again. I found her...
Shall we strike a bargain, you and I, Greenwitch? I am sure we can find a way that will be satisfactory for all involved. Or shall I have to appeal to Thetis to rein in her wayward child?
The blank look on Will's face worried Jane, as did his white-knuckled grip on the twig in his hand. His body might have been right in front of her but Jane was sure his mind was far away.
She reached out a hand to shake him out of it then thought better of it. It did not feel right somehow to disturb him, it even felt dangerous.
She folded her hands in her lab and just watched him. Every moment that passed without him even blinking made her more nervous, more afraid. Whatever it was that was sending her these dreams it clearly was powerful. What had she been thinking, giving Will that twig, giving that thing a way to reach him, too?
And how do I know that? How do I know there is even anything behind those dreams? Am I going mad thinking there could be anything that would have such a power? And yet...and yet I know...I once knew...something.
She should never have called him, should never have put him in danger like this. What if it hurt him?
Yet at the same time she felt that no matter how powerful this being might be it could not hurt Will because in some strange way despite his very human and very ordinary face he seemed just as powerful. There was a blinding strength behind his eyes, a light that at once made her feel safe and afraid.
He'll be fine, he has faced worse and survived, he's protected because he's needed. He's still here for a reason. He's here to...to...
The thoughts slid away like tiny fish slipping through her fingers. Reaching for them felt like trying to hold on to water in her palm. And yet, for just a second, there had been a glimmer of understanding, of knowledge, of memory, that made sense of all of this.
Why can't I remember? How did I know he would be able to help me? How do I know he's no more human than whatever is sending me these dreams? What is he?
The sudden realisation made her shrink back against the back of her chair. If he was not human, what was he? All at once he did not seem so ordinary any longer, he did not seem as safe, and the light was cold and harsh and she knew it could burn her if she ventured too close.
I have felt this way before, haven't I? I have looked at you and known that you were not like Simon and Barney and me, Will Stanton. When have I known this? Why can't I remember?
The fear made her want to get up and run, run all the way back to her home and hide. Yet something kept her in that chair, something that also made her unable to look away from the blank and yet at the same time intense look on Will's face.
She didn't know how much time had passed before he suddenly blinked and dropped the twig onto the table. It could have been minutes or hours or just seconds.
And she realised something else as well: it had been entirely too quiet. There had been no sounds of cars passing, people chatting at the other tables, cutlery and china clinking, no car horns or sirens, not even birdsong. She only realised that absence now when the noise suddenly rushed back in, nearly deafening her.
Will smiled at her, he surely meant it to be reassuring yet it made a shiver run down her spine at how human he once again looked, at how perfect his mask was.
"What just happened? What are you?"
Her voice sounded weak and very frightened to her own ears. The smile on his face turned sad.
"Oh Jane, as always you see entirely too much. You should not have been able to step out of time with me just now, and yet...once touched by the High Magic you can never be quite like the rest of them ever again, not even after he took your memories. I am sorry I frightened you, Jane Drew."
The words were echoing in her mind, bouncing around and taunting her with the feeling that once they would have made perfect sense. She knew they would still make senses if she could just remember.
Jane wrapped her arms around herself. She felt cold and realised she was shaking and sweating with fear.
"I don't understand. What's going on, Will, what are you talking about?"
He just reached out with one hand, the fingers extended towards her, with the same sad smile on his face.
"I deeply regret this Jane, but it is for the best. You'll remember only that we talked about your dreams and that they do not frighten you any longer now. They will not return next year, Jane, I can promise you that. Now forget."
"Oh, will you look at the time? I am sorry I've kept you here so long, Will. There were things you meant to do, weren't there, and now I've talked away for so long about my silly dreams."
Will asked for the bill and paid in cash.
"That's quite alright, Jane. I really enjoyed seeing you again. I hope I could help at least a little bit?"
Jane got up and shrugged on her coat before pulling him into an impulsive hug.
"Yes, you helped me more than I could ever say. I feel so much...lighter now, like you have lifted a great weight off my heart."
She held the hug for a while longer than she usually would have because just before she had taken him into her arms he had looked so sad and lonely it nearly broke her heart.
"I will call you again, Will, I promise, and then we can talk about normal stuff like school and university instead of silly dreams and fears."
"I would like that, Jane."
They said goodbye and parted ways, on their table remained a single forgotten twig that the wind soon carried away.