Devotion(27)

I peered over Thea’s shoulder and saw the heading ‘To protect yourself from infection’ and, underneath, directions for boiling juniper berries, cloves and mint.

‘See?’ Thea said, turning the pages. ‘Directives for healing. This is what Mama used to treat your mother when she was bleeding out.’

The text continued in thick, gothic writing. ‘What is that?’ I asked, tapping her on the shoulder. My mouth went dry as I read, ‘If you want to harm your enemy, write on a glass plate in ink after sunset: “Your misfortune will fall on your head and your malice will fall on your head!”’ Thea let the page fall open, and I continued reading instructions to smoke the glass seven times, to invoke the wrath of someone called Adonay. I stepped away from the table, heart thumping. ‘Who is Adonay?’ I whispered. ‘A demon?’

Thea shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. It is just another name for the Lord.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, of course.’

I stared at her. The house was so quiet. I could hear only the crackle of the fire, my own quickened heartbeat. ‘Thea, is your mother a witch?’

Thea looked horrified. ‘Look, here is a protection against witches. “Schutz gegen Hexen”.’ She tapped the opposite page to the one I had read, and then pointed to a shadowed corner of the cottage ceiling. A blown eggshell hung from a thread, swaying slightly. I had never noticed it before. ‘It’s called a “restlessness”,’ Thea said. ‘It drives witches away.’

I nodded, swallowing hard. ‘What is in the sixth book?’

Thea bit her lower lip. ‘Mama does not let me read that book.’

‘Why not?’

‘It contains magical seals. Symbols, with words beneath.’ She placed her palm over the open text. ‘With them one may conjure angels and spirits. Even the dead.’

My skin rose in goosebumps and I felt a sudden, terrible fear that I had stumbled on to something dark and sinful. I lurched towards the door and fumbled with the bar.

‘Hanne?’

‘I want to get out,’ I said. I was vaguely aware of Thea hastily wrapping the book, entreating me to stay, telling me that the book was holy, and then helping me lift the lock so that I was once again in the summer light and its reassurance of birdsong. My chest was so tight I had to kneel in the grass and bring my forehead to the ground. I could feel myself trembling, could hear Thea beside me, feel her hair brushing against my cheek as she pressed her head to mine, telling me again and again that I need not be scared.

‘I was afraid too,’ she was saying. ‘I was afraid, but Mama told me all about it. You know my mother, you know she loves the Almighty, you know she is not a Hexe.’

I let Thea lift my head from the ground.

‘Really, Hanne. She says she will teach me how to use it one day. For good. Only for good.’

‘Why would you show me such a thing?’ I asked her.

‘Because it is powerful,’ Thea said. ‘Mama is going to consult it to learn whether we ought to leave, and . . . and I thought . . . I thought maybe we could use it.’

‘Use it how?’

Thea opened her mouth, searching for the right words. ‘To . . . To ensure that we might remain together.’

I stared at her. ‘Is there such a thing in it?’

‘I don’t know. I thought we could look.’ Thea shuffled closer to me on her knees and took my hand. ‘I’m sorry if it frightened you.’ Her cheeks were high with colour and as she entwined her fingers with mine, I realised she was upset. ‘I don’t want you to go and leave me here,’ she said softly.

We were silent for a long moment. The wind picked up and swept down around us, and I let my hair blow across my face, breathed deeply of the sound that it carried, such a rushing sweetness. The grass around us curved in surrender. We bend, it sang. We bend and bow, breathe upon us.

‘I don’t want to use that book,’ I said eventually. I stared down at our clasped hands and, for a moment, could not tell my own fingers from hers. ‘I don’t know it. I don’t understand things like that.’

Thea looked up at me. Her eyes were red. ‘Maybe we could pray. We could ask God to keep us together.’

‘Here?’

‘No. In the Lord’s house. We could go back to the church.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Hanne, we need to do something.’

‘Not the church,’ I said. ‘It’s dead there.’ I remembered the feeling of divinity I had felt under the pines the night my father had preached, when Thea had turned around and looked at me. ‘I know where we can go.’


The wind blew us to the forest. Hand in hand, skirts buffeted against our legs, hair stringing out into the air above, we let ourselves be carried to the only cathedral we had known together. As soon as we stepped through the shield of pines, into their soft shadow and quiet green, I felt the holy in the air. The wind could not reach us in there, and the stillness on the forest floor, while the tops of the trees above us rushed, made the space seem protected. Sacred.

We reached the small, circular opening amongst the trees. Sunlight tolled down in its centre, a well of brightness on the thick floor of needles. I led Thea to it and faced her.

‘I feel like we ought to have a Bible,’ Thea whispered. ‘Like in a prayer meeting. Or worship.’