Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(26)

On all other nights Cadin had been locked away, at John’s behest, for they had become enemies. The crow had done his best to chase Hathorne away, dropping stones from the sky and diving to pull his hair. Beware, Cadin had cried, but crows are proprietary creatures and Maria had paid him no mind. Now she went to her room and got down on her hands and knees beside her bed to reach for the black mirror. She had a sinking feeling even before she took the cloth from the mirror and peered into the glass. There was a ship in a cold gray sea. There was a black heart in a garden, among a tangle of weeds. With a single glance she knew the truth. He was gone.

She made her way to the inn where John had been staying, but it was too late, and now that she was clearheaded, with the sight returned to her, she knew it before she found his room was empty. She went to Jansen’s warehouse, and up to his office. No one working there tried to stop her. Not when they saw the dark expression on her face.

“Wat is er mis?” Jansen asked when she appeared at his door. What is wrong?

Maria looked in a panic. Her hair was uncombed, her feet bare. This is what it did to you. This illogical, wildly impractical emotion.

“Waar is je gast naar toe?” she demanded to know. Where has your guest gone? She didn’t sound like a housemaid, rather like a woman betrayed, and such women do not care if their voices rise or if they stare straight into a man’s eyes. Jansen closed the door and stood to face her. He was a big man and he shouldn’t have been anxious.

“Wat is jour zaak daar?” When Maria left, he would acquire another girl to replace her, and hopefully the next one would be more restrained. What is it your business where Mr. Hathorne has gone?

Although she legally belonged to Jansen until January, Maria didn’t care what he might think of her, and she certainly didn’t fear him. She knew more about him than he would have liked, and perhaps this was why he always grew uncomfortable under her heated gaze. Jansen was well aware she didn’t admire him, and that irritated him. He had never especially liked her, for in his opinion, she should have kept her eyes lowered and done as she was told. People said she talked to a black bird that followed her to the market, sometimes in her language, sometimes in his. Now here she was in Jansen’s office when she was meant to be at work in his kitchen.

It had begun to rain, a hard, green rain that would cause mudslides in the northern hills. Maria shivered in the sudden cold wind that burst through the window. She herself had caused the rain, and all over the island small sorrows would grow and children would fuss for no reason so that not even their mothers’ voices could comfort them. They had never seen rain this color before, and some young women collected it in pots so they might wash with it, for green is love and luck, just as it is jealousy and envy.

“Hij is teruggegaan waar his thuishoort,” Mr. Jansen told her with equal amounts of meanness and pleasure. He’s gone back to where he belongs.

Massachusetts. The cold, gray sea. The house with black shutters.



* * *



Maria left the office without another word; she ran along the pier and didn’t stop until she reached the spare chamber that she shared with Juni. She did not know how to reach Hathorne. All she knew was that he lived in a county called Essex, named for the place she had left far behind. To stop wanting him she wrote his name on a white candle and threw it far out to sea, but it was not enough. A witch’s love is not so easily erased. She drank lettuce water, poured whiskey in an iron pot, bathed in salt and vinegar and then with anise seed and bay leaves, and still she could not rid herself of her emotions. Hannah had warned that it was difficult, perhaps even impossible, to work magic upon yourself. The enchantment to forget him would not take.

She worried that he had been lost at sea, as so many were. Or perhaps he had been taken prisoner, or had contracted a disease and could not leave his bed in Massachusetts, not even to write her a letter. Soon enough she herself fell ill, sick to her stomach, vomiting and unable to keep any food down. When she realized her condition, she went to the beach and, in a fury, threw herself into the waves, but she merely floated back to shore, her hair a mass of tendrils trailing out behind her. In that soft sea she realized there was a reason she had known to trek through the Thames estuary, a reason why she had crossed the wide, cold sea. She was destined to save herself, with or without magic. She was destined to face her own future. She had already seen this daughter she would have in the black mirror.



* * *



January came to mark her five years of servitude. She went to Mr. Jansen’s office to collect the official papers that declared she was a free woman. Jansen scanned her face with cold eyes, glad to be rid of her. Juni had been influenced by Maria and was now a dreamy girl who often didn’t come when she was called. The neighbor’s servants vowed that Maria worked spells, and could speak backwards, and wandered late at night in the caves where there were spirits. They could believe whatever they wished; Jansen knew exactly who Maria was and he didn’t care for it one bit. She was sixteen and pregnant. There was no need to know more. The baby had quickened and Maria could already feel it moving inside of her.

“I want the same for Juni,” Maria announced when she was set free from the family. If not, she explained, she would go to Jansen’s wife and tell her the truth she had learned from Adrie. A man should take care of his daughter, and Juni should be given a small house outside Willemstad, one of the many he had acquired. “Hire a housemaid and pay her,” she suggested. “It’s time for Juni to have her own life.”