Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(47)

“She will speak only to you.”

“For that I blame you,” Hathorne muttered.

“And I you,” Ruth said in a soft voice.

At last he went outside wearing his coat, his face set in a dark expression. He had not seen Maria for who she was in the bright light of Cura?ao, but he most certainly saw her now. He’d heard of such creatures, women who were beyond God’s watch and were said to devour a man’s soul and make a mockery out of decency. His wife’s erratic behavior was one more mark of her power.

“You’re not to come here,” he scolded Maria. He knew the neighbors were watching. They were always watching in this town. He stood on the other side of the fence.

“What coward asks his wife to do what he fears to do?”

“We cannot quarrel. No good will come of it.”

“And yet you came to me often enough.” Maria’s words caused the color to flare in his face. “Would you have ever told me you had a wife?”

There were features Maria possessed that he’d never noticed before, suspicious qualities. A black mark in the inner crook of her elbow. Silver-gray eyes that glinted in the dark. Hair that was black as a crow’s feathers. Her arm in a sling. Black leaves falling out of season, gathering at her feet.

“And now you’ve killed him,” Maria said.

“It,” he said. “It was a crow.”

“If only you had shared his qualities, you, sir, would have been a better man.”

Rather than respond, Hathorne reached into his coat and took out a purse. Would he dare to pay her for her heartbreak with a bag of silver? Every woman is a fool at least once in her life, Hannah had told her.

“For my services?” she said in a tone he had not heard before. She was not a weak girl he could command, though he had done his best to control the situation. She was something more than that.

“I have a ship leaving tomorrow,” he told her. “This will pay your way. I gave you the sapphire and the diamonds, and now this silver. Surely that’s enough.” He lowered his voice. “I suggest you do as I say. We are not in Cura?ao now, miss.”

Maria nodded to Faith, carried in her arms. “And yet here is the evidence of that time.”

Ruth was at the window, behind the cloudy glass. She forced herself to watch, not through a mirror but with her own eyes. She would not dare to step out of her house without her husband’s permission, having never gone beyond the confines of her own property unless she was on her way to the market or to church. Later, Ruth would not ask John anything about Maria when he at last came to bed. She would say nothing and bite her tongue, but now she gazed out and imagined she was free, a bird, a ship, a woman on the street with her hair uncovered.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you are,” Maria said.

“And what is that?”

“A liar, sir.”

You can always tell a liar, for he will not look at you when he speaks, and often he has white spots on his fingernails, one to mark every lie he’s told. But no man enjoys being called by that title, even if it’s the truth. Hathorne took Maria’s arm, but she pulled away. She was not about to do as she was told, as if she were the one who wore a white cap and stood behind the window, too fearful to leave her own yard.

She spilled out the purse he’d given her. Ten silver pieces. A year’s payment for a washerwoman or a servant. The moment she touched the coins, the silver turned black. She could see his panic as he observed this witchery.

“You had best never return,” he said.

“You have it wrong,” Maria told him. “You had best stay away from me.”



* * *



That same night, Maria unwrapped the black mirror and looked into the glass, for at last she could see clearly. She spied herself without the sapphire necklace. She recalled what Samuel Dias had told her, that to his eyes the stone did not appear real. She removed it and went out to the lake, where she set it on a ledge of rock. Then she took her Grimoire in hand, the spine of the book in her grasp as she brought it down, smashing the jewel. The stone shattered into a thousand pieces, as glass does when struck, for the gift had been paste and nothing more, as false as the man who had given it to her. Where there was one lie there would always be another. She slit the hem of her skirt, scattering the diamonds on the rock. She stood to stomp on them with the weight of her boot. They shattered also, worthless paste, trinkets meant to buy her love and nothing more, breaking into bright bits of dust.

When you look into your own future, you may see only what you want to see, and even the wisest woman can make a mistake, especially in matters of love.

She’d had the wrong man all along.



* * *



Tell a witch to go, and she’ll plant her feet on the ground and stay exactly where she is. Instead of doing as she’s told, she’ll take a knife to her arm and let her blood drip onto the ground, and in that way she will claim the earth for herself and for her daughters and for all the daughters who follow her. It is the future she’s claiming, the right to be a woman who can do as she pleases.

When Maria returned to the cabin, she took out the book, for what is written will open the world itself. As she paged through the Grimoire, she thought of the woman who took her in on a snowy day and gave her the Owens name, who had shared all she knew about the Nameless Art. Own your own life, Hannah had told her. Never depend on others. Protect those closest to you.