Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(50)



“He’s only a pup,” Maria assured Anne. When she told the dog to hush, he did as he was told, curling up beside the little girl’s bed. Maria had been expecting a visitor, for the broom had fallen only an hour earlier, which always meant company was coming. She had already brewed a pot of Courage Tea.

They know what they want, Hannah had told her. Ask the right questions and you’ll get the right answers. Even those who have been afraid to speak aloud will tell the truth when they must.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Anne said apologetically. She looked back at the door, and for a moment it seemed she might flee. “It’s late.”

“Perhaps it’s not too late, but of course you’re welcome to come or go as you like.”

Anne steadied herself. Once he knew she’d gone, there would be hell to pay. This was likely her only chance to escape. “I’ll stay.”

Maria gestured to the table so they might sit together. She was not yet twenty-two, but that was two years older than the unhappy young woman before her, and by now Maria knew a thing or two about love. She understood the situation as soon as Anne removed her jacket and unclasped the hooks on the front of her dress. Anne raised her chin defiantly as she showed herself, but even before she did, Maria knew what would be revealed: bruises in the shape of blooming flowers, the same color as the ones marking Rebecca on the day she came to see Hannah Owens. In Boston Maria had been called upon for cures and love magic. This was something entirely different.

“He does it to punish me when I’m slow or stupid,” Anne said. “If I charge the wrong price or burn supper or when I speak too loudly.” She had thought of murdering him in his sleep, but she hadn’t the heart for such things, only the imagination.

Maria gave the shopkeeper’s wife a salve of calamine and balm of Gilead for her bruises, and an amulet made of blue glass beads and blue thread for protection.

Anne Hatch shook her head, displeased. “This isn’t a strong enough cure for my problem.”

The women stared at each other. To come this far alone, a woman must be willing to take a risk. What she wants she must want desperately. Maria wished to have nothing to do with the pains of love; still her heart went out to Anne. In point of fact, this wasn’t love, but love gone wrong, a different story entirely.

“What did you have in mind?” Maria asked.

“I need poison,” Anne said softly, her chin up, her eyes meeting Maria’s.

There were many toxic potions that could be made from the local plants: hogweed, lily of the valley, castor bean, tansy, bittersweet nightshade, mountain laurel, yew leaf, white baneberry, henberry, horse nettle, pokeberry, pure cyanide in the pits of wild cherries. But what was done could not be undone, and vengeance always returned to its maker.

“Neither one of us wants death on our hands,” Maria told her. “It would come back to us and extract a price we wouldn’t want to pay.”

Anne’s eyes were swollen from crying. “How then am I to be rid of him?”

“You have to be certain this is what you want.” Maria looked over her shoulder. Faith was still sleeping peacefully. “Once he’s gone, he won’t return.”

Anne Hatch smiled then, the first smile in a very long time. She was ready to begin.



* * *



Maria had Anne cut a lock of her hair to burn in a brass dish. This was the end of an old life and the beginning of a new one, and the transition must be marked. From black cloth and red thread a small poppet was fashioned, stuffed with blackthorn and cherry bark, and then Anne’s husband’s name, Nathaniel, was stitched upon the cloth. Anne pierced her finger in the process and her blood stained the cloth, but she had bled many times before on her husband’s behalf. The incantation for the end of love was written on a slip of paper that she attached to a candle that burned brightly.

Let our bond be broken by the powers above. You will wish to run, and you won’t look back. When I look for you, nothing will remain. You will not remember me and you will be nothing to me.

This was magic that needed words, for literary magic held the greatest power. Once home, Anne was to bury the poppet outside her front door, then burn the incantation and walk the perimeter of their property, laying down the ashes. When she went inside the house, she must dust his clothes with salt.

“This will drive him away,” Maria said. “Once he leaves, his fate is his own and neither you nor I are responsible for what happens then.”



* * *



Nathaniel Hatch was gone for a fortnight, then a month. Before long it was summer, and he still had not been seen. Anne ran the store herself, and after six months she went to the court and was declared a widow. A search party had found her husband’s boots and his gun on the far side of Leech Lake. It was thought he had drowned while hunting the sea monster, as others had before him, for there was a pile of salt near his belongings, and salt was known to call to saltwater creatures. No one but Maria had seen the footprints of his bare feet continuing on past the pond, driven by an overwhelming urge to leave Massachusetts.

As a widow, without any male heirs, Anne Hatch was allowed to own property; the store was now hers. She never again charged Maria for her purchases, whether it be molasses or chicory or flour. When there were items that were difficult to come by, Spanish oranges, for instance, or myrrh oil from Morocco, luxuries that occasionally arrived when ships that had visited faraway lands docked at the harbor, Anne saved them for Maria Owens.

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