Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(70)
Faith often walked to the end of the old Indian path, which led past the cemetery. She left seashells to decorate Lady Moody’s grave, for she felt this Englishwoman who had made her way in this wilderness to be a kindred spirit. On the shortest night of the year, she left the house after dark when there were only patches of silvery light slipping through the clouds. She brought along a white candle to honor the town’s founder. Never hide who you are inside, she’d always been told, but all that she was had been hidden, even from herself.
By now Faith understood that she was living a lie. Over the years, she had slowly gained her foster mother’s trust. She was always well behaved and did as she was told without complaint. She didn’t talk back, and when they went into town on the day the peddler came, she knew well enough not to talk to strangers. Martha Chase told Faith that she was the perfect child, and if being perfect meant she could see into Martha’s bitter heart and know she was deceitful, then perfect was what she was. By the time she turned eleven, Martha agreed to let Faith be called Jane, a simple name Faith far preferred over Comfort, which made her feel as if she were a blanket or an old dog. In time, Faith was allowed to wander the beaches, and even to go into the village on the last Friday of the month when the wagon came to town. She stole pennies from Martha and bought a hand mirror from the peddler, an affable English fellow named Jack Finney, a modest individual who had few attachments in the world and wore a shabby blue jacket and boots that were too large for his feet. Faith asked if she might have a bit of black paint, which she used to coat the glass, and when the paint dried she peered into the dark mirror. There was her mother, in a black dress, crying in the night. There was her dog, standing at the gate. She dreamed that her mother spoke to her: 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.
Whenever she could, Faith did as she pleased. She bought old water-stained volumes from the peddler, and she could often be spied with her parcels, walking the lanes while reading a book, which she made sure to hide before Martha Chase could catch her. As far as Martha was concerned, one learned to read only to have access to the Scriptures; all other reading was the devil’s work, inflaming men’s imaginations with stories that weren’t true and ideas that could lead a reader to a path of rebellion. A streak of independence and a curious mind meant trouble. In Martha’s opinion, a woman who spent her time reading was no better than a witch.
Martha Chase believed in evil. She was absolutely certain that it walked alongside them every day, on the road and in the fields, tempting them to leave the grace of the Lord. Witchery was a brand of wickedness Martha had hoped they’d escaped when they left Massachusetts, for in that colony witches were born and bred. She would have been stunned to know that Faith climbed out her window at night to go to the graveyard. Faith had set up a kettle in order to make the black soap her mother had been known for. She bought or pilfered ingredients that she remembered as useful from the time when she’d watched Maria practice the Nameless Art. Ginger, lemon, salt, the bark of the elm, chokeberries, cherry pits, white candles and black candles, black fabric, red thread, blue beads, feathers, wild belladonna which was dangerous and agitated the spirit, bright yellow-green ferns, for lightning never strikes where ferns grow. She’d begun to trade her soap for books and herbs, and Finney, the peddler, said every woman who bought a bar of the fragrant black soap had returned to beg for more.
On Saturdays, Faith sat with Martha to read from the Geneva Bible, the Scriptures that formed all Puritan beliefs. She always washed her hands and face before they read, so as not to smudge the pages. In Martha’s eyes, Brooklyn was a land of disbelievers, where all denominations other than Quakers were welcome to own land; there were Dutch Reform Protestants and some Catholics, and even, some people said, a few Jewish families from Amsterdam. It was a free and wild place compared to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and one had to keep watch at all times to remain on the narrow path.
Faith looked unnatural with her black dyed hair and the oversized gray dress her foster mother insisted she wear at all times, along with a pair of heavy black boots that she kicked off whenever she walked to town, preferring to go barefoot. People considered her to be the oddest of creatures, a well-mannered girl, sure enough, with unnatural raven hair and pale eyebrows, who always had her nose in a book. When she wasn’t reading, she was talking to herself, reciting recipes to make certain she wouldn’t forget them. Be True to Me Tea, a boon for lovers; Travel Well Tea, a tonic for good health on a journey; Frustration Tea, which granted good humor and cheer even on the outskirts of Kings County; Clairvoyant Tea, concocted from mugwort and rosemary and anise, which helped the drinker see beyond the curtain of the here and now; and Faith’s favorite, Courage Tea, which provided bravery and grit and was made of vanilla and currants and thyme. Every time Faith recited a remedy, she felt a thrill, as if she were unlocking a door to her true self. Whenever she did so, the iron bracelets burned and chafed, but she had learned to ignore them as a dog ignores its collar and a horse its reins.
Faith was walking through town one afternoon on her way home from seeing the peddler, a treasured new book of Shakespeare’s sonnets in hand, when she heard sobbing. A woman stood outside a small cottage with a tilted roof, convinced that her child would die of the wracking coughs that plagued him. In that instant, Faith remembered a cure for this affliction. She’d only been six when she was taken from her mother, but she had always paid attention when the Nameless Art had been called upon. She ran back to the peddler and asked him for quince seeds and honey, which she heated on a stove in his wagon.