Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(106)

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Dr. Joost van der Berg was kind enough to hire a carriage to take Maria to Salem. Governor Phips had changed the way an alleged witch could be tried; by October the trials would be completely outlawed. Because of this success, the doctor had offered Maria an appointment to be his personal secretary, but she kindly turned him down. She did, however, accept his offer to find her a solicitor, and on her way out of Boston the carriage stopped so that a fellow named Benjamin Hardy could draw up a trust and a will. She had come up with a plan to build a grand house in Salem, one that could never be sold, and always remain in the family. This trust would ensure that the Owens women would always have a home.

Maria had not been back to Essex County since the night she left for New York with Samuel. She had been so young the first time she’d seen these green fields and the marshy land abutting the North River, only seventeen. It was impossible to know then what she knew now. The carriage stopped on Washington Street. Maria had looked in the black mirror to see Faith standing on the path to the door, empty now, and covered by fallen leaves. She thanked the driver and went up the path. Ruth heard a knock at the door and she knew who had come. She felt a shiver inside of her, the same feeling she’d had when she was a girl and the sheriff had told her that her parents were gone.

When Ruth opened the door they recognized each other as if it had been only days since Maria had been driven along the road in an oxcart wearing a white sackcloth, her hair shorn. The truth of it was that Ruth had imagined running after her, but she had stayed here, behind the gate.

“All I want is my daughter,” Maria told her.

Ruth understood a mother’s love and concern. “I knew she was his daughter. She resembles him. But she’s not here now. He sent her away.”

Hathorne had punished Ruth for taking on the girl without his permission. Look where it had led. He was still coughing up small bits of bird bone. Ruth had been made to get on her knees and recite passages of Scripture for hours without a drink of water or a bit of rest.

Maria could hear the thudding of Ruth’s heart. She did not envy her life. “Tell me where she’s gone.”

“If I knew I would. I promise you that.”

“Did he know her for who she was?”

During Ruth’s punishment the tea Hathorne had been given was still at work and he’d told her the truth. The girl was his flesh and blood.

“He did. I could tell he thought she was clever,” Ruth said. He had not said as much, but she knew from the way he looked at the girl each time she hadn’t backed down. “Now I see, she’s very much like you.”

“Did she hurt him?” Maria asked.

“Oh no,” Ruth said. “If anything I suppose she was hurt by him.”

Relieved, Maria threw her arms around the other woman, then just as quickly she broke off the embrace and hurried through the garden gate. The black leaves unfurled and fell like rain. Standing in the doorway, Ruth put a hand over her eyes. Maria was already gone, as if she had flown, as people once said she did, when they swore she rose like a crow above the fields at night.

Pine, oak, chestnut, plum tree, elm, walnut, ash, witch hazel, wild cherry. Maria could find her way without thinking, running as fast as she could. It might be possible that Faith had escaped the darkest reaches of left-handed magic; either way, she was desperate to get her girl back. She went through the fields and didn’t think about Cadin and the night when the men of Salem set out to kill as many birds as they could. She didn’t think about the winter when eight feet of snow fell, the coldest winter, when bread rattled on the plate. She didn’t think about her loneliness, a well so deep she couldn’t bear it. She didn’t think of the man waiting in the trees when the rope broke, waiting for her all this time, waiting for her still. Perhaps she flew as crows do, for in no time she had made her way to the shed that had been their home, the roof covered with grape vines, and the tumbled-down fence meant to keep rabbits and deer out of the garden. She looked at none of it, for on this day every flower on the magnolia had opened so that the sky appeared to be filled with stars, and beneath the tree was the man she loved.

They were older than they had been, but they saw each other as they once were. A sixteen-year-old girl with diamonds in the palm of her hand. A man of twenty-three who kept the note she’d left for him in his coat. That was who they were beneath the tree. They had no time, so they didn’t think, and for once Samuel didn’t talk. They belonged to each other and they didn’t stop, not even to take off their boots.

They could hold what they had in their hands, they could see it with their own eyes, and they weren’t about to give it up now.



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They went to town to search the taverns; they looked in the windows of the house on Washington Street, and in Martha Chase’s abandoned house, where the roof had fallen in. They hunted through the woods, peering into shadowy caves where bears slept, investigating the stony ridgetops where there were still wolves, despite all that had been done to destroy them. Faith was not to be found. After midnight, they were back beneath the magnolia tree. They climbed into the tallest branches so they might look for sparks in the sky or bonfires lit in the fields, any signs of life. Maria fell asleep for a brief time, there in the branches, nesting like a crow. She dreamed of dark water and when she woke she was drenched, even though there had been no rain. Samuel was sleeping still, holding onto a bough of the tree.