Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(112)
Instead of burning the book, Maria went through the fields into town late at night, in the dark, as she had long ago, when she was mistaken for a crow. She carried the keys that unlocked the library door. She hid The Book of the Raven behind the loose bricks where long ago she had hidden her own journal. She left that book of magic in the place where she’d looked out the window to spy the magnolia, thinking that a miracle had taken place. She worked a few drops of her own blood into the mortar. In time, an Owens woman would discover the book, and use it as it should be used, with love and courage and faith.
* * *
Maria always wore the sapphire Samuel Dias had given her. Sapphire was the stone of wisdom and of prophecy that allowed the wearer to be true to herself. When he was gone, she let herself miss him. He was too tall for the bed, but it was empty without him. Maria often sat beneath the magnolia tree when he was at sea. Even in foul weather she found comfort there. When he returned he would bring back stories of seashells that were as big as cabbages, and mysterious birds with blue feet, of white bears that lived on the ice, and islands where every flower was red. He was arrogant and difficult, a man who liked to argue, but he was a man who could do more than talk. He knew how to listen.
She had been wrong about love. She had thought it was meant for fools alone, only to discover it was a fool who walked away from love, no matter the cost or the penalty. They waited for the curse, to see if it could find him, but after a while Maria was satisfied that the curse was convinced Samuel Dias had remained in the lake that had no end. He wasn’t the same person he’d been before he died, and a man could not be cursed twice. On dark nights, when she feared for the women in her family who were yet to be born, she found consolation in the knowledge that an Owens woman was made not only to seek remedies, but to fight curses.
Fate can bring what you least expect, and it brought them a daughter they called Hannah Reina Dias Owens, named after Hannah Owens and Samuel’s mother. In this way two women were returned from the ashes and remembered each day when their names were spoken. The baby was born in January, a winter baby, with black hair and dark gray eyes. She could call birds to her with a single cry and unfurl the bud of a flower so that it bloomed in the palm of her hand, but she couldn’t fall asleep unless her father told her a story. It was time anyway, Samuel announced one morning, he would stop going to sea. Like his father before him he had come to love being on land and spent most days in the garden, where he grew vegetables and kept bees that were known for honey that was so sweet strong men cried when they tasted it. Samuel was out there every day, even in winter, spreading hay over the garden, starting hardy seedlings in the sun, wearing his black coat, the baby in a basket beside him. He was always talking, even as he worked, for he had a thousand stories to tell, and the baby listened so intently she forgot to cry.
On the last snowy day in March, when spring was greening beneath the ice, Maria left Samuel asleep in their bed. She tucked Hannah into her coat and walked over the grass that was brittle with frost. Crows clustered above them and ice shone on the birch trees. As she walked in the cold morning, her breath cutting through the bright air, Maria thought she heard Cadin’s call. She could remember that day in Devotion Field, in the Essex County of her birth. The fields of snow, the bright blue sky, the forest that was so deep, the woman who taught her the Nameless Art, the quick black eye of the crow. It was then that she saw what was before them, what she had always seen in the mirror, a black heart in the snow.
A nest had been tossed from a branch when the wind swept through. Maria knelt to point out the small fledgling to the baby. The black bird ignored Maria, but he looked at the baby with his glittering eye, unafraid. You cannot choose a familiar, it must choose you. When Hannah held out her hand, the crow came to her and settled beside her, tucked into Maria’s coat. Maria felt the beat of his heart inside him slowing to match the baby’s heartbeat.
They would take him home and wrap him in a blanket and Hannah would feed him sugar water from the tip of her finger. In no time he would be hopping around the house, perching on the staircase and on the brass rods above the damask curtains. By the time spring had fully bloomed, he would be flying. He would never be far from the girl who had been born on a snowy day, whose father had come home from the sea so that he could tell her every story he knew, whose sister took her in her arms to read to her, whose mother would teach her all she needed to know. This is how you begin in this world. These are the lessons to be learned. Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To Carolyn Reidy, for all that she did for literature and publishing, and for her extraordinary kindness to me.
Gratitude to everyone at Simon & Schuster for their ongoing support, most especially Marysue Rucci. Thank you, Jonathan Karp. Many thanks to Richard Rhorer, Wendy Sheanin, Zachary Knoll, Anne Pearce Tate, Elizabeth Breeden, Angela Ching, Hana Park, Samantha Hoback, Carly Loman, and Jackie Seow. Thanks also to Richard Willett.
Gratitude to Suzanne Baboneau at S&S UK for so many books over so many years.
Gratitude always to Amanda Urban and Ron Bernstein.
Thank you to Denise Di Novi for believing in magic for twenty-five years.
Thank you, Joyce Tenneson, for your amazing photography.