Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(41)

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One blue evening when the flocks of sparrows and warblers were beginning to migrate south, Maria saw a huge dark creature of more than three hundred pounds standing in the lake in solemn si lence, sniffing at the chill in the air. Perhaps there were monsters in Essex County. Surely people here believed in such things. Wolves that would track a man for weeks and devour him whole, poisonous snakes that favored young women and were said to hide beneath their beds, birds that drilled holes in the wooden planks of a house as if they had knives on their beaks, rabbits that turned from brown to white when the snow fell, magicked in front of your eyes. People in town vowed that a sea serpent resided in the leech-filled lake where Maria and her child bathed. The native people had always believed there was a mysterious creature in the depths, one that had dragged itself inland from the harbor when the countryside flooded in a storm surge and tides engulfed the forest. Perhaps this was nothing more than a story told to chase the English interlopers away; all the same, even after the original people had been dispatched from this area, not a single child from town would dive into that lake, not even on the most stifling days when a swim was the only tonic that might cool heat-struck boys. Instead, they would stand at the edge of the water, throwing rocks, not a one venturing any deeper than his toes. Local men had searched for the serpent with no success, and some of these individuals had disappeared; because the lake was bottomless, they were never seen again, leaving their wives and children to mourn their losses.

Cadin had made himself at home in these woods. He often disappeared to scour the town for treasures to bring home—a shoe buckle, a carved wooden top, a silver thimble that immediately turned black in Faith’s hands, for magic ran through her. She could call the birds to her with a single reedy cry, and at the lake the leeches never dared to come near when she waded into the cattails, clasping her mother’s hand, for Maria warned her not to go too deeply into the water. Once Faith found a toad, withered and close to death, but when she gently picked it up and held it in her palm, the creature revived. Panicked, the toad leapt from her hand and disappeared into the bramble bushes. Maria happened to see this event and she was filled with a deep pride. Her daughter was a natural healer.

Had he been there, Samuel Dias would have applauded all of Faith’s endeavors, for she always shone in his eyes. Faith still sang the Portuguese lullabies Samuel had sung to her. “Gogo,” Faith said in a serious tone as they picked blackberries that grew near the shore, for the berries had reminded her of the man who had always shared the fruit Maria had insisted he eat to help him recover, including papaya and mangoes and berries, holding them out to Faith and applauding when she ate the berries.

“He’s far off at sea,” Maria told the baby, though it was really herself she was reminding that Samuel Dias was not part of their lives.



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Winter came early, with huge flakes falling nearly every day, and nothing had changed.

Three times a month Maria tramped through the dark, past the pear orchards, carrying her sleeping child so they could meet at Hathorne’s warehouse on the dock. She wore black so that no one would take note of her. She took narrow paths at a late hour, though they were icy, and she shrunk into the shadows. Still she was not invisible, and as she made her way one cloudy night, the moon slipped out suddenly, and thinking she was a crow swooping through his fields, a farmer shot at her, peppering her coat with buckshot. Fortunately Maria was only grazed on her arm, and Faith went unscathed, though she startled in her mother’s arms. Before she could stop herself, Maria uttered a curse. “Let he who tried to wound me be wounded in turn.”

The next morning, the farmer vowed witchery was at work. Moles had burrowed up through the hard, frosty ground and a gang of crows descended upon his house. One of the crows had made its way down the chimney and had caused a ruckus in his parlor while his wife screamed and covered her head with a quilt. “There was a witch,” he told anyone who would listen. “You wait and see,” he said. “She’ll come for you as she came for me, a woman who can turn herself into a black bird.”

Every time Maria was with Hathorne there was a flicker in her heart, an ache beneath her ribs, as if a spike of metal had lodged inside her. He was more distant each time; he turned his back to her as he dressed. The black mirror had shown her fate, a man who brought her diamonds, as Hathorne had. All the same, she recalled Hannah’s words, that she must always be careful to love someone who could love her back.

You make love what you want it to be, Hannah had told her. You decide. You walk toward it, or you walk away.

Maria recalled the women who had crossed Devotion Field driven by love they couldn’t renounce, even when it had ruined them. And then one night she knew the answer to her own question. This wasn’t love.



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Maria Owens turned eighteen during her first winter in the second Essex County, the coldest winter in more than forty years. Harbors froze solid and the snow was so deep that horses in the pastures drowned in drifts that were eight feet tall. People who lived on farms far from town would not be seen until the following spring. Time was passing more quickly all the time. Faith was growing up here, just as Maria had grown up in the woods of the first Essex County, in England. This was where they lived, with or without John Hathorne, and Maria hung Hannah’s brass bell just outside the door; when the wind came up the sound of the bell comforted her. She made the best of what she had. She chopped wood every day, and was lucky to have potatoes and onions and winter apples stored. When she ran out, she began to frequent Hatch’s General Store, where she traded dried herbs for provisions. Anne Hatch, the grocer’s wife, often added something special for Faith, a bit of molasses candy or a packet of sugar to help teething. As always Cadin followed along, but he waited for Maria in the tallest trees, for unlike his mistress he had never made this place his home.