A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [57]
Matthew was twirling the spoon’s handle in his fingers like a baton. “Witches know they’re witches. They’re not like daemons at all,” he said with a frown.
Hamish put his spoon down with a clatter and topped off his wineglass. “You know full well that having a witch for a parent is no guarantee. You can turn out perfectly ordinary. Or you can set your crib on fire. There’s no telling if, when, or how your powers are going to manifest.” Unlike Matthew, Hamish had a friend who was a witch. Janine did his hair, which had never looked better, and made her own skin lotion, which was nothing short of miraculous. He suspected that witchcraft was involved.
“It’s not a total surprise, though,” Matthew persisted, scooping some soup into his spoon and waving it slightly to cool it further. “Diana has centuries of family history to rely upon. It’s nothing like what you went through as a teenager.”
“I had a breeze of a time,” Hamish said, recalling some of the daemonic coming-of-age stories he’d been privy to over the years.
When Hamish was twelve, his life had gone topsy-turvy in the space of one afternoon. He had come to realize, over the long Scottish autumn, that he was far smarter than his teachers. Most children who reach twelve suspect this, but Hamish knew it with deeply upsetting certainty. He responded by feigning sickness so he could skip school and, when that no longer worked, by doing his schoolwork as rapidly as he could and abandoning all pretense of normalcy. In desperation his schoolmaster sent for someone from the university mathematics department to evaluate Hamish’s troublesome ability to solve in minutes problems that occupied his school-mates for a week or more.
Jack Watson, a young daemon from the University of Glasgow with red hair and brilliant blue eyes, took one look at elfin Hamish Osborne and suspected that he, too, was a daemon. After going through the motions of a formal evaluation, which produced the expected documentary proof that Hamish was a mathematical prodigy whose mind did not fit within normal parameters, Watson invited him to attend lectures at the university. He also explained to the headmaster that the child could not be accommodated within a normal classroom without becoming a pyromaniac or something equally destructive.
After that, Watson made a visit to the Osbornes’ modest home and told an astonished family how the world worked and exactly what kinds of creatures were in it. Percy Osborne, who came from a staunch Presbyterian background, resisted the notion of multiple supernatural and preternatural creatures until his wife pointed out that he had been raised to believe in witches—why not daemons and vampires, too? Hamish wept with relief, no longer feeling utterly alone. His mother hugged him fiercely and told him that she had always known he was special.
While Watson was still sitting in front of their electric fire drinking tea with her husband and son, Jessica Osborne thought she might as well take the opportunity to broach other aspects of Hamish’s life that might make him feel different. She informed her son over chocolate biscuits that she also knew he was unlikely to marry the girl next door, who was infatuated with him. Instead Hamish was drawn to the girl’s elder brother, a strapping lad of fifteen who could kick a football farther than anyone else in the neighborhood. Neither Percy nor Jack seemed remotely surprised or distressed by the revelation.
“Still,” Matthew said now, after his first sip of tepid soup, “Diana’s whole family must have expected her to be a witch—and she is, whether she uses her magic or not.”
“I should think that would be every bit as bad as being among a bunch of clueless humans. Can you imagine the pressure? Not to mention the awful sense that your life didn’t belong to you?” Hamish shuddered. “I’d prefer blind ignorance.”
“What did it feel like,” Matthew asked hesitantly,