Philippa had noticed the stick before but had said nothing. It was the day at the beach when Dorcas had gone to swim and came back, what turned out to be, hours later walking up the shore from, what turned out to be, almost several miles away. Philippa honestly hadn't noticed it at first. She had woken up from a nap, watched a couple stare at her from their place a little up the beach, scramble to pack their things and then leave glancing over their shoulders.
Dorcas loved the beach when the weather was like this. They were both on holiday now and it was a special treat for her since the sky was plugged up with fog and it was still the summer. Philippa, adorable as she was, thought this an enormous waste she couldn't get cute for weather like this. Or she could but she'd have to cover up anyway. She considered splashing around at the edge of the water but could already feel the laziness to do the extra work to wash the sand off her feet so opted instead for a book and magazine. Her sheet music always tucked into the bottom of her bag.
They packed snacks, as Dorcas mentioned they would have the beach all to themselves.
"That's the problem!" Philippa retorted and the dissolved into peals of laughter. They took the bus and then the tube and then the bus to the shore. She noticed the twig in Dorcas' bag and she remained curious in passing but then she saw the other beach goers leave. She read her book on and off, to calm herself. She then became distracted by the music trilling at the bottom of her bag. She pulled out the sheet music and went over several passages, going so far as to rearrange some to try for later. She hadn't noticed the time go by and wouldn't have been nervous. Dorcas had taken up "swimming in the wild" as they called it. She no longer swam in pools only but enormous freezing lakes. By then, Philippa had all but forgotten the stick until she saw it again years later. Dorcas knew Philippa wasn't a snoop and, if she had been, the question would have come up earlier. It was only that Philippa recognized it now and thought but why would one remember a branch at all? And it had been revealed that her friend was a witch. It had taken a long time to understand, to process what that might mean and yet she had: understood and processed. It was a new side, another part of Dorcas to love.
Dorcas limbs burned and the weight of being on land weighed her down making her trek up the shore slower. Philippa's arms were crossed over her chest as she squinted to through the still lingering fog, a fog that would burn off and make way for one of the seasons hottest summers. When she got close enough, Philippa whistled and waved. To Philippa, it looked like Dorcas had swum a great, tiring distance, which she had. Dorcas threw a towel over her shoulders and didn't even notice the wand sitting just visible out of the bag she had carried there. She did not feel partial to it that day. Dorcas rarely swam with it and found out that day at the beach that she did not need her wand as much as she had been taught. She was not an extension of her wand and her wand was not an extension of her and even if it had been, that it didn't keep people alive forever. That wasn't its job. If Philippa had noticed, Dorcas would have been hard pressed to not tell her truth. Philippa would know immediately she was lying. She might have tried her best anyway to say was that it was useless, even as it was the object she used to cast the charm over her best friend so she could have been surrounded by people and left alone to nap in the sand. A charm that camouflaged her with the sand that was heated under the blanket and bags they'd carried. If Philippa moved outside of the area, she would become visible again, as she was now but there was barely anyone there to notice. Just a few people dotting the entire strip of land and the closest ones were quite a ways off. With Philippa setting the crocheted blanket on the sand, her back turned, Dorcas hoped that she could cast that charm and spell with her hand inside her bag. Philippa smoothed out the blanket and weighted a corner with a bag, the other she would use as a pillow and yet another throw used to cover herself.
"Well, at least the sand isn't so cold." Philippa said. Dorcas grinned.
Maybe that's why she loved the beach anyway. People left each other alone for the most part even if it were crowded. Even if Philippa had noticed, there was something about the expanse and the roar of the beach that made so many things seem so small. Especially a branch, a twig, a stick. Today, trudging up the beach, arms linked with Philippa's both of them exhausted with worry for different reasons and for each other, they chose not to speak. Dorcas wanted to step on that branch, to snap it in half. Then, on that day, it had been a burden. She could feel her willing her body to keep moving and dreading the moment the bus arrived. She wasn't sure she would be able to get up she was slumping with soreness. And knowing her wand was in her bag made it heavier. And hadn't she proved that she was as fine without it? The day started out full of laughter and joy but Dorcas had gone to the beach with the intention of swimming so hard she would make her body as tired as her mind. She would be leaving school soon. Where would she stay? She wanted to do something after school but she didn't then know what that could be. The very person she could talk to about this in great detail wouldn't be attending school with her next term. Of course, grandpa would let her stay at home but how would she find a job to help? Where could she say she attended school? And then, there was the other things. There was a small pulsing current under all of these questions threatening to pull her down into the cold.
Philippa knew something was bothering Dorcas but she wouldn't talk. She would give her time, it always came out with Dorcas. She just had to give it time and she agreed to go to the beach for no other reason than she could feel and see how restless Dorcas was, otherwise she would have just stayed home. Especially with the weather as gloomy as it was. Everyone was at home bored out of their minds with nothing to do. The big parties having ended earlier in the season and the last big event to look forward to was their birthday before the school year began. The time to spend together was winding down but there was still enough to not feel obligated to pretend to enjoy the beach. Philippa wore sunglasses and braced herself to feel good and dingy with that gritty, salty beach air feeling she despised. Dorcas walked as fast as ever.
"Please slow down, Tulip, darling. I would like to a make a more graceful entrance." Philippa called from where the bus had just pulled away. Dorcas slowed down but her expression didn't change looking over her shoulder to where Philippa was taking her time. Usually, Dorcas would have guffawed, throwing her head back in exaggerated laughter and probably sped up if it were another day. She would talk eventually. In her own time.
Even that far from the shore, Dorcas could feel the sound sloshing away in her own body. She didn't hesitate to shiver her way into the ocean. The water was usually warmer even when it was cold outside but today it was freezing. She had to fight to make her limbs warm enough to even swim but when she did? She swam that day. She swam until she past out of tiredness and into wakefulness and into consciousness again and remembered that there was time and distance and stopped briefly and then kept swimming until she left those behind too. When she stopped again she could no longer see the shore. She was surrounded by a vagueness and uncommitted small waves and it was time to go back. She had given the sea her restlessness and had given it shape and it was beautiful and unending and horrifying when she looked around and saw it reflected back at her. She regretted not bringing her wand. On the shore her friend was noticing the very thing her friend wanted out of her bag. She could not have given it to her if she had known what it was, which she didn't. She would have snuggled into the heated sand and continued napping if she hadn't noticed the couple a little ways up from her. She would have never got lost in her sheet music if they had not been rude and made her more alert. She would have never lost track of time, if she had not been studying her music.
Philippa scanned the waves that seemed much taller now not knowing that where Dorcas was they were hardly as tall as a hand. She could not see Dorcas from where she stood. Now it felt like there was no one there at all. The beach was empty of anyone with with somewhere warmer and drier to be. It really did used to scare her when she couldn't spot Dorcas from the shore but she got used to it. It was now only that it was the time. Dorcas would have been back by now. Philippa had, long ago and several times, pealed off her outer clothes down to her swimsuit and gone in the water herself. Dorcas never knew that the only time Philippa had gone swimming in the ocean was to search for Dorcas and Philippa had always, always, one hundred percent of the time, come back empty handed. She had cried once so scared that Dorcas had gone too far. She sat in her swimsuit on the sand, the waves lapping at her toes unsure of what to do, scared into immobility when Dorcas emerged out of the water a little ways away. Dorcas had assumed Philippa had been swimming for the familiar, sometimes ocean-swimming, redness in her friend's eyes. Now? Tah! Philippa dug in the bag not thinking about or noticing the wand to pull out one of grandpa's old, knit jumpers. She wrapped herself in it. Dorcas would be back. Now and at her age, it was mostly a gesture, a habit and old contract with herself. She would look out into the ocean and not find Dorcas there. She would worry and then remind herself that everything would be fine and even if it wasn't she did not have the skill to be the one to find her or bring her back. It was only know that she realized that she did not know what that actually meant. How long would Dorcas have to be gone for her to get help? She knew this much about herself then, she would swim in the big, cold, scuzzy ocean to find Dorcas. She knew later that she did not swim as well as Dorcas and never had and so it would be dangerous to swim after her. It would not be an act of kindness or devotion but a form of recklessness and falsely brave. And maybe after, she decided that if Dorcas was ever gone for longer than this, she calculated in her head, the time they left the house, the trips to get there, it must have been this time. If I took a nap, maybe it took this time, give or take. The number of pages she went over, which she could measure with reasonable accuracy, would take about this time and stood stunned. It had been longer than she thought without the nap. If it took longer than that by fifteen minutes, she would have to call for help. She would have to run up the coast or wait for the bus to get help. She squinted and saw, or imagined she saw, a small pinprick of the darkest grey against a lighter gray. She looked out to the ocean again and the waves were even larger, she willed herself to look ahead and willed the small dot to be Dorcas. When she finally turned again, the dot had become slightly larger.
Dorcas, as far as she'd swum, had spun around so many times she'd become disoriented. She couldn't turn around and swim in the direction she'd just come from because she no longer knew where that was. She thought she could sink and never be found again. She thought of learning, as a ghost, what Philippa would think of her being a witch and that the reason they no longer went to school together was because Dorcas had not been sent to an academy on scholarship but because was sent to witch school and how incredulous and unimpressed Philippa would be.
You wouldn't have thought, to look at her, that she swam differently getting there or back. Dorcas could not tell where she was as it was all ocean at that point. This was years before you could be a distance into the water and still make out the shore after they strung lights up on the walk. This was years before the pier was built. It would be longer still, till they erected the lifeguard towers. And still, even with those things, Dorcas had swum even further from that. That day with Philippa on the beach wondering what exactly bothered Dorcas so much it took her this long to swim it out in the soft haziness of the fog, Dorcas turned, spinning around and around unsure of where to go and how to get there. She just chose a direction and told herself to swim until she became tired, reached the shore or.