Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(68)
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At the Fly Market on the far end of Maiden Lane, Maria noticed a person of interest farther down the row of stalls, buying lemons at the fruit stand. The shopper was an elegant woman who wore an embroidered mauve dress stitched in France; her pale hair was caught up with small combs, all of which were blackened silver. A small white dog followed at her feet, devoted beyond all reason. If Maria wasn’t mistaken, the woman wore red boots.
“I wouldn’t look at Miss Durant for too long,” the fishmonger warned Maria as he weighed out haddock. “It wouldn’t be wise.”
“Why is that?”
Maria wore a black veil over her face whenever she was in public. On the day when she finally found her daughter, she would throw the veil away, or burn it over a pile of sticks, or tear it to shreds. For now, it had its desired effect: people steered clear and avoided her, for no one wished to step too close to tragedy. And yet there were still those who took pity on her, the fishmonger among them, for she was unmistakably a woman in mourning.
“Catherine Durant is an enchantress,” the fishmonger confided in a low tone as he nodded to the other shopper. “You might call her a witch.”
“Is she?” Maria craned her neck to see, for the woman they spoke of was already leaving, her back turned to them. Her little dog gazed at Maria with bright eyes before hurrying after his mistress.
“I sold her fish she said wasn’t fresh, and for the next two months I didn’t sell another thing,” the fishmonger went on. “Not a scrap or an ounce. People walked by as if I was invisible, and those who saw me held their noses, as if my wares stank. So I had a bushel of mussels delivered to her house, and after that it was business as usual. Now I send a gift of mussels or clams to her on the first of every month. It’s worked out well for both of us.”
Maria soon made her way to the fruit vendor, but before she could choose any of the produce, he handed her a satchel.
“Sir,” Maria said, surprised by his forwardness. “I don’t yet know what I want.”
“It doesn’t matter. She knows.” He nodded in the direction in which the woman had disappeared. The vendor looked sheepish, but when a witch suggested you do something, it was best to comply. Inside the satchel were ten apples, already paid for, shiny red. “She said to bake a pie.”
“Did she?” Despite herself, Maria smiled. Someone had seen her for who she was, most likely a sister in the Nameless Art.
“She said you wouldn’t regret it. And to bake one every week and set it on your windowsill.”
If this was magic, it was made of simple, practical stuff. All the same, Maria went home and cut up the apples, then made a crust. She rolled out the dough, and when she added the apples to the mix, the white slices turned crimson. Perhaps the fruit was not as ordinary as she had first thought. She felt her hopes rise as the pie baked in the brick oven beside the fireplace as she sent a message to Faith, wherever she might be: Do what you must until we are together again, but never believe a word she tells you. Believe only in yourself. You are my daughter and mine alone, whether we are together or apart.
When the pie was done, Maria let it cool on the windowsill. It sat there, red as a heart, the crust brown, perfectly done. From then on she baked a pie each and every week, with apples that turned from white to red. People passing by sniffed the fragrant air and were reminded of home, and many longed to find their way back to their loved ones. That was all Maria wished for. That was all she wanted in the world. To look out her window and see her darling girl, to have her walk up the stone path and fling open the door.
II.
In a place called Kings County, originally called Breuckelen by the first Dutch settlers, newcomers arrived to find a land of marshes dotted by snow-white clouds where the horizon reached out in bands of blue until at last it met with the sea. This low land had reminded the Dutch of home, and many had sunk to their knees and wept upon their arrival in this wild place where the sky was filled with ducks and geese, and fish jumped in the streams. Rough workingmen, both farmers and fishermen, established the original villages on land where the native Lenape people had once lived, before they were slaughtered and driven out, first by the Dutch, then by the British who replaced the original invaders. In a world that had begun with murder, there was always cruelty, despite the beauty of the shore and the sea.
There were five towns originated by the Dutch in the county, and the sixth, Gravesend, was populated by those who wished to disappear from their previous lives. It was built in 1645 on a parcel of land originally belonging to Lady Deborah Moody and her son, Sir Henry, both of whom had fled from the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of religious freedom. Lady Moody had been fortunate enough to have the Crown grant her a small wedge of Kings County. She’d begun her life in England, close to royal life, and had happily ended her time on earth in Brooklyn, where she’d been free to do as she pleased and had been buried in the one cemetery, at the end of an Indian path. Her son had disappeared. Some people said he’d been buried beside his mother, others vowed he’d left for the unknown territories in the West, and that he preferred native people to Englishmen.
The original settlement had been destroyed by the war-ravaged native population, who had lost more than a thousand to the Dutch aggression and hundreds more to the British, though they did their best to fight back. In the end, they were defeated, and their population had all but vanished. When Faith was brought to Gravesend, it was the farthest outpost of what was called the Flat Country by detractors and admirers alike, populated by hardy souls who did not fear isolation. Martha Chase paid a pittance to the village elders for the use of an abandoned house overgrown by weeds and vines. She wished to be in a place that was on very few maps, and the farther she was from the crowds of Manhattan the better, for all the previous year there had been an epidemic of yellow fever which had killed ten percent of the population. Gravesend was cold in the dead of winter with ice coating the cattails and reeds, and it was equally hot in the blazing summer when the sun beat down. Their house was far enough from the village so that hundreds of gulls and terns wheeled across the sky all through the day and not another sound was heard. It was a worthwhile spot, for they could fish in the streams and have a garden, though the sandy soil was a trial. It was easy enough to hide away in this desolate location where there would be few questions asked concerning the girl with her hair dyed pitch-black from a tint of crushed inkberries and the boiled bark of a black walnut tree, a quiet, thoughtful child who didn’t resemble the pale nervous woman who insisted Faith call her Mother. When Faith repeatedly told her she already had a mother, Martha Chase calmly said that Maria hadn’t wanted her, and had given her to Martha, otherwise she would have been in a workhouse. Faith wept at night; when she looked at the inky sky she wished for a sign that her mother still loved her, in her dreams or in her waking life, which would let her know her mother was still thinking of her.