Magic Lessons (Practical Magic, #0.1)(21)

“Take me to a meeting,” Maria said.

“Never,” Juni told her.

Juni’s great-aunt had warned her to mind her business when it came to magic, advising that a woman always paid dearly for her interest in such matters. Still, Maria was persistent. When she’d stood inside the circle she’d felt a surge of power.

“I won’t ask for anything else,” she promised Juni. “We can just watch. I’ll do all the housework for a week. I will never divulge your secrets.”

Juni’s secrets consisted only of kissing a few young men and occasionally avoiding their mistress by hiding in a tall bureau; still a friend was a friend. Eventually Juni gave in and brought Maria to the meeting. On the night of the ritual, they held hands and watched from behind the tallest mango trees. The singing was beautiful, as if the angels had gathered in the clearing, with high, clear voices that echoed through the gleaming blue evening. The clients came one by one, many distraught and in tears—grieving parents, women in love, men who needed to escape from a bad situation. When the hour grew late, the group dispersed. Maria and Juni were bleary-eyed, yet they had made a pact, and they now crept into the circle of sand that had been cast, so that they might examine the amulets that had been left behind, for both the living and the dead. Seashells, stones, packets of seeds, small white bones. They were so intent on the discovery of these magical objects they didn’t notice they weren’t alone. Juni’s great-aunt, Adrie, came from beyond the hedges. Adrie had the sight, and one of these two young ladies was about to find herself in trouble. Juni’s great-aunt signaled for them to come forward. She was very old, known to be a curioso, a healer, famous for her teas. She was well aware that in this world it was best not to trust anyone who wasn’t a blood relation. It was one thing for her great-niece to be here, quite another for a stranger to spy on them.

“Why did you bring her here?” she asked Juni, her eyes on Maria. She saw a young indentured girl who owned nothing of her own. But there was something more to her. Adrie saw the mark inside the girl’s elbow.

“She’s my friend, Auntie,” Juni explained. “We were only watching.”

The old woman shook her head and clucked her tongue, sure of herself. “She’s a witch. Stay away from her.”

Juni laughed, equally sure of herself. “Would she clean the Jansens’ house if she were a witch? Would she see to their laundry and draw their baths? No witch would do that.”

“Of course she would. Didn’t I do the same?” Adrie turned to Maria and looked directly into the girl’s silver eyes. “Don’t come back here.”

“I honor what you do,” Maria said.

“Do you?”

“Yes, I admire your skills, and I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“I’d better not see you here again,” Adrie said, which held a very different meaning than her first response. It wasn’t an outright no, merely a warning not to be caught. “And don’t let me hear you talking about this to anyone.”

They had gotten their permission. The girls watched the meetings from a distance after that, just close enough to hear the incantations. Adrie ignored them, until one night, after the gathering had ended, she signaled in their direction. The girls came forward, nervous. “Just the other one,” she told Juni. When Maria approached, Adrie patted the ground. “Why do you come here?”

“Because you know so much,” Maria said.

If Adrie was flattered, her stern expression didn’t change. “You’re not a blood relation. Why should I give my knowledge to you?”

“I’ll use it,” Maria told her. “I’m not afraid of it. The woman who raised me was like you. I learned from her, and I wish nothing more than to learn from you.”

After that Juni went out with her suitors at night, and Maria spent her time with Adrie. She added her lessons to the Grimoire. There were lists of plants, those that could break a fever, those that could set a man’s imagination on fire, or could ease a woman’s childbirth. There were recipes for revenge and for love, for health and well-being and to fend off curses.

Cura?ao Cures

Soursop tea made from a glossy green tree with yellow-green flowers, cures insomnia, infections, and keeps away lice.

Mampuritu, a slender weed for tea to cure for nausea and cramps.

Kleistubom, a creeping weed with an extract helpful to ease prickly heat.

Lamoengras for fever.

Caraway cures the bites of poisonous scorpions and centipedes.

Wandu helps with an easy delivery of a baby, also good for the blood and improves memory and strength.

Tawa-tawa, a tea made from the hairy plant found in the grassland, a cure for Dengue, called Breakbone Fever, that stops bleeding inside the body.



“You may be a witch, but remember you’re a woman as well,” Adrie told her. By gazing into a pan of still water, she’d already seen several mistakes Maria was destined to make. The wrong man, the wrong trust, the wrong vow, the wrong curse. It was so much easier to see another person’s future than it was to understand your own. Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.



* * *



Maria tucked a packet of lavender inside her dress to protect herself from evil, but in all this time she had not once thought to protect herself from love. Maria knew it happened to other women, but she never expected it to happen to her. She had renounced it and had made a vow to always do so. She recalled how many lives her mother had ruined because of love; she remembered that Hannah’s beloved had turned her over to the authorities. But fate could be beyond a woman’s control, even a woman who had the sight. She paid no attention to the dark bits of the future flickering in every mirror she passed, pulsing like fireflies in reverse, black sparks of regret. Her dream had always been the same since she had come to Cura?ao: to be a free woman, one who could do as she pleased, bowing to no master. In only a few months that time would come to pass. She would no longer sweep another woman’s floor or brush her hair, or bring beer and warm milk to a man who called her meisje, Dutch for girl, because her name didn’t matter to him so he never bothered to remember what it was.