Magic Lessons (Practical Magic, #0.1)(2)

When Maria turned two, the great fire of London destroyed seventy thousand homes in a city of eighty thousand, and smoke filled the air for the entire month of September. Birds fell from the sky and children coughed up black phlegm, a sign they would not see their next birthday. The world was a dangerous place where people were punished for their sins and most believed that good fortune depended upon a measure of faith and superstition. These were years when cruel and unexplained things happened, and kindness was a rare and valued gift, one that Hannah Owens happened to possess.



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There were those in the county known to practice the Nameless Art, spells and rituals handed down through the generations by cunning folk who knew more than most. These women understood the mysterious nature of medicine and love and did their best to pierce the veil that separated men and women from knowledge that might save them from ill fortune and disaster. They could mend a broken heart as easily as they could cure a fever, but they did so discreetly, for women were blamed for much of the world’s troubles, and there were known to be witches in this county.

More than twenty years earlier, Matthew Hopkins, a young man from the village of Manningtree on the banks of the River Stour in Essex County, had begun his wicked hunt for witches. Aided by the Earls of Warwick and Manchester, he became the witch-finder general, and was paid a lordly amount for sending women to their deaths. What made for a witch was in his hands, as if he alone could see through the spectral curtain and pluck out the evidence of evil. A mark on a woman’s hand or cheek, a bird at her window, a dog or cat or some other creature that would not leave her side, a book of magic found in a cupboard or discovered beneath a straw mattress, an embittered neighbor with a grudge and a story to tell. Such was the manner of proof, especially when it came to poor women without a family or a champion.

In the time of the witch-finder, it was believed a witch could be ensnared by nailing her steps to the ground so that she could not flee, and iron traps made to catch fox were set out, for it was well known that a witch’s powers decreased when she was near metal. Some witch-hunters actually nailed women’s feet to the ground and left them to try to escape. If they were able to evade their captors, they then needed to dab rosemary oil on the spot where the nail had entered them while invoking a spell of protection and vengeance: This cannot harm you on this day. When you walk, you walk away. When you return, all your enemies will burn.

Still, protection was hard to find. Three hundred suspects were charged; one hundred of these poor souls went to the gallows, having been tested by being tied to a chair and tossed into a river or pond to see if they would drown or if they would float like a witch. It was a test that was impossible to win. Hannah Owens had been fortunate to have escaped a hanging, for the trials were stopped and the madness was broken, much like a fever, suddenly and for no apparent reason, other than the fact that logic finally prevailed. The accused were let out of prison, grateful even though there were no apologies or explanations, and certainly no reparations. Hopkins died in his twenties of the coughing disease, said to have been contracted after he had been swimming. There were many who were overjoyed to hear that he’d been damned with his own version of drowning, his lungs filling with water that had sunk him as surely as if he’d been tied to a stool and forcibly immersed in a pond. On the day he was buried, scores of women in Essex County celebrated with bonfires burning and mugs of ale poured and enjoyed. As for Hannah, she’d had a cup of tea on that day, made of a mixture she had blended to give herself courage during these dreadful times when a woman couldn’t walk down the street without fear of being accused of misdoings, especially if a book was found in her belongings, or if she could read and write her own name.

Although the mania had died down, mothers continued to tie their babies to their cradles to make certain they wouldn’t be stolen in the night, setting bowls of precious salt on their windowsills to protect those inside. Men nailed upside-down horseshoes above barn doors to ensure that their luck wouldn’t run out, for they privately feared that a witch could ruin any strong man’s health by placing a strand of his hair or his fingernail clippings under the eaves of a house. Children were taught never to speak to strangers; should they stray and be bewitched, they must shout out numbers backwards as a way to break the enchantment. Those unfortunate children who did go missing were searched for with pitchers of goat’s milk, said to be a witch’s favorite drink, and many times children who had been spirited away appeared at the door late at night, with burrs in their hair and no practical excuse to give their mothers, other than a thin apology and a claim they’d become lost in the woods and could not for the life of them find their way home.



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Hannah Owens lived apart from the delusions and bad intentions of men, as deep in the forest as possible, in a small cottage hidden by vines. She’d had it built by a local carpenter, a fellow no one would hire due to a deformity at birth, a simple, honest man who later claimed the old woman had blessed him and given him a salve she had concocted from her apothecary garden that had made his withered arm bloom and become whole again. The roof of Hannah’s house was thatched and the chimney was platted with reeds and clay, with a pot of water kept near the hearth in case a spark should catch the reeds on fire. The path to her door was made of uneven blue stones, hidden by shrubs. So much the better, for the difficult going provided protection from prying eyes. And still, women from town and from the neighboring farms managed to find their way when the need arose, setting the brass bell to ringing when they knocked on the door.