Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(107)

Long ago, before they’d ever met, before either of them had come to the second Essex County, they had each made the same promise. They would never watch another woman burn. But there were other ways to be rid of a woman who didn’t behave, who did as she pleased, who had courage, who talked back. You held her head under water until she could no longer speak.



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The farmers locked Faith in a neighbor’s barn, for their own barn was smoldering ash. They would have brought her to the magistrate, but the governor had outlawed the witch trials, so they tried her themselves and found her guilty. They had been the judges, and they would be the executioners. It was the Lord’s day when they dragged her to the lake in chains. It was early morning, with a mist rising and the sky breaking into bands of color. The men had frightened themselves with their own cruelty and their own imaginings. They had convinced themselves they had caught a servant of the devil and not a thirteen-year-old girl who pleaded for her life until she realized it wasn’t any use to beg. Now she was speaking backwards, an incantation from The Book of the Raven, hidden in her cloak, that beautiful book a woman had written to help other women save themselves. Women who were bought and sold, women who had no voice, women forced to have secret lives, women who knew that words were the most powerful magic. Faith had vowed to leave the left side and forsake black magic, but she turned to it now. She was wrapped in irons, therefore the spell couldn’t do much damage; still the men’s throats began to close up, and when they tried to speak to each other they could only grunt, as if they were animals. Their hands appeared to be changing, as if they had claws rather than nails. It was the spell of the beast, when an individual shows what resides within him, and it is only dark magic if there is darkness within.

The farmers were brothers, Harold and Isaac Hopwood, cruel men who were even more brutal after drink, and they had been drinking all night. Their barn had burned down and they needed someone to blame. Blame a woman, drown a woman, let the Lord be the judge. They carried her to the lake, which was as deep as the end of the world, the waters where her own mother had been tested as a witch, a lake that no man, woman, or child would enter for it was said to be cursed, and certainly there were leeches in the shallow reedy water, and the lilies were attached to black weeds that reached all the way to hell.

The brothers carried a chair that Faith had been bound to with rope. There were still irons around her arms, chains the farmers used to keep their cows in place. Ready to be rid of her, they could tell she was bad luck, and even though she was a girl, they feared her. They sent her out as if on a boat, so that she drifted out from the shore. Courts and magistrates meant nothing to the brothers; they would make their own law on their own land. The Hopwoods were sweating through their clothes, but they were chilled as well, and they still felt the tightness in their throats. What was done was done, and surely they were in the Lord’s favor, and yet there was fear seeping into their bones, as if they were as brittle as twigs, as if they might break and turn into a heap of dust.

Faith’s black cloak rose up, a dark flower that was disappearing as it sank below the surface. Her face was white, a lily. She remembered when she had a vision in Maude Cardy’s parlor in Brooklyn, when she was underwater and about to enter hell, and she knew this is what she had foreseen, the dark water rushing in, and her own tears, a witch’s tears, tears that burned as if they were made of fire.



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When Maria climbed down and stood in the grass, she saw a dozen crows winging across the sky. The day was bright and she could spy the blue center of the lake in the distance. She took off running without a word. Samuel Dias called to her, but she wouldn’t stop, and so he followed through the woods, not knowing where he was going, disoriented as he made his way through the brambles. Maria was in front of him, and when he looked through the trees she seemed to be flying, untouched, whereas he had to dodge tree stumps and branches, cursing as he ran.

Maria spied the men at the shore. She knew right away they were the ones who had her daughter. Metal, ropes, fire, water. She saw a long red hair on one of the Hopwood brothers’ coats. She spied the aura of disaster, a dark, ashy shade. Maria was almost upon them when she stumbled upon a book that had been dropped on the rough path. Once held in her hands, The Book of the Raven fell open to a spell of protection meant to stop an attack and hold the assailants at bay. She began the incantation right then, and as she spoke the branches swayed and leaves fell down and turned the water green. She could not stop speaking it; she must continue until they were driven off. There was the scent of fire, and the brothers felt as if their skin was burning; still they waded into the water, pushing the chair out farther.

It was then Maria heard the deathwatch beetle. Her breath was sharp and cold. The clacking sound was louder; it echoed now. She continued the incantation. She would not lose Faith a third time. She recited the spell faster until her lips were burning, until the brothers’ skin was aflame. They turned to see her, and later they would swear she was levitating, standing in the air rather than on the ground. They were cursed and they knew it. There were leeches in their boots and they had forgotten their own names. They let go of the chair, unable to do any more harm to Faith, watching the witch on the shore as she hexed them. The chair was sinking into the center of the lake that was so green it seemed made of grass. Faith’s red hair was still above the water, the color of blood and of hearts torn asunder.