Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(29)

Maria studied him, observing his pallor and the blood he spit upon the dock, then turned to his father. “Take him on that ship and he’ll be dead before you reach Boston.” She sounded utterly sure of herself, so much so that Samuel Dias had begun to listen to her despite the attack of pain that left him straining for the next mouthful of air. “Unless you take me with you,” she added. “I won’t let him die.”

She had the ingredients for a breakbone fever cure that Adrie had taught her. It had been added to her Grimoire with ink drawn from the stalks of vibrant coral-colored hibiscus so that the written remedy was nearly as red as blood.

Abraham Dias didn’t trust Maria. He was a practical man who’d never meant to go to sea, and had now been to all corners of the world. He knew a witch when he saw one. Maria carried a black bird in a cage and she spoke her mind, as if she were a man. If the truth be told, he didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t a blood relation, but his son begged him to allow Maria to travel with them. For once in his life, Samuel was truly afraid, though he tried his best not to show his raw emotion. “How can it hurt us to take her with us?” he asked his father. He had seen this disease affect other men. They often bled to death and became empty shells, with white eyes and white skin, like the walking dead local people spoke of. When he died, as all men must, this was not the way he wished to leave this world.

“She has a child,” his father said. “A ship is no place for a babe. Most likely this woman only wants passage to Boston and will say anything to get what she wants.”

Samuel gazed at Maria and she looked right back. He took her in for the first time, really seeing her. She did indeed look like trouble, but he kept this to himself.

“Let us take that chance,” he told his father, and Abraham had little choice but to agree. This was his beloved son, his only living child, and he would agree to anything that might save his life.

Samuel had Maria and the baby stay in his cabin rather than on deck, where straw-filled mattresses were strewn about for the crew and their safety might be in question.

Maria took the baby directly to the small, airless cabin, before either man could change his mind. There was a bunk for the ill man, which he could barely climb into, and a hammock where Maria and the baby could sleep. Right away Maria boiled water over a flame and made Tawa-tawa tea, using the powerful herb that looked like nothing more than grass.

“Isn’t that what you feed to goats?” Samuel asked in a thick voice. He was sweating out his disease and had drenched his linen shirt. Samuel hadn’t valued his life enough, and now he was filled with regret. He’d seen other men die—frankly, he’d been party to some of their deaths when it came to fighting the Spanish at sea—but he’d never actually considered that the moment of his own death might come while he was still a young man.

“Then you’ll be my goat,” Maria told him, as she touched her hand to his forehead. “And you’ll eat the grass I give you.”

She’d known that his fever would be high, for it always presented to her as a red aura circling the afflicted individual, though she never would have known from his behavior. Samuel Dias refused to show his suffering, although when she went for more water, and he thought she couldn’t hear, he moaned and cursed his state of being and her heart went out to him. A ship was a dreadful place to be ill, suffocating in the cabin, freezing and damp on deck. Maria fed Dias a spoonful of tea every hour. She demanded she be given all the papaya on board, then ground the leaves into a tincture for him to drink. When her patient had regained some of his strength, she fed him slices of the fruit, which he ate from her fingers. Maria often kept Faith in her lap when she treated Dias, and the baby mimicked her mother’s motions, patting Dias on the head.

“You’re not afraid she’ll catch my disease?” he asked.

“You can’t become ill with breakbone from another person, Goat,” Maria informed Dias, using her pet name for him. “Only from the insects in the swampland.”

“How are you so sure?”

“It’s easy to be sure about the truth. Even a goat should know that,” she teased.

She continued to feed him the tea made from weeds that he had complained about at first, but now he drank the brew willingly, no matter how bitter. He was feeling stronger in a matter of days. He had faith in Maria, a mad, joyous rush of feeling which often made him laugh out loud, for at last the fever was breaking. And then one day, the pain eased, the hammer stopped, and he was no longer glass. Without either of them noticing, he grasped her hand. That was when it happened, the heat between them. There she was wearing little more than her shift and her apron, her legs bare, as if the two had taken up living together. Maria drew away and saw to feeding Cadin some fruit for his supper. She wondered what he thought about this man. “Do you mind if I let my crow out of his cage?” she asked. Poor Cadin had been trapped in his basket watching their every move with his quick eye. “He’ll eat any mosquitoes that come near.”

When Dias agreed, she opened Cadin’s door. He quickly flew up to perch on a beam, clacking happily, gazing at Dias with a bright, friendly glance.

“You travel with a crow rather than a husband,” Samuel said thoughtfully. “The crow I understand. He seems a clever fellow. But where is your man?”

Maria made a face. “Is it your business?”