Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(72)
I am with the All and the All is within me.
The letters flickered on the page and then disappeared, but when she ran her hand over the parchment she could feel them. In this way, alone and abandoned, shackled by metal cuffs she could not remove and pretending to be someone she was not, she began her practice of the Nameless Art, for one does not have to have the talents of a witch to be called to the Art. She simply has to have the desire to see beyond what is right in front of her.
* * *
Martha Chase had planted thirty raspberry bushes when they came to Gravesend, but the soil was too sandy, and one by one the plants had withered until there was only one spindly specimen left. Faith had been given her own patch of land, and despite the soil, her garden grew so well it would not keep within the bounds of the fence that kept the rabbits away. Rabbits were everywhere in Brooklyn, and there was a place near the sea where there were so many of the creatures that the land there was called Rabbit Island. There were deer and turkeys and all manner of wading birds and ducks in the marshes, but the land itself was fairly barren. It was a miracle that Faith’s garden was such a marvel. She grew feverfew for health, rose hips and skullcap for healing, lavender for luck. She’d plucked wild black nightshade to start from seed. Martha spied it snaking out of the ground, its black flowers already in bloom. She saw Faith standing among the blossoms, her dyed hair blue-black in the harsh light, her lips moving as she recited an incantation to Hecate, the ancient goddess of magic, who held power over heaven and earth and sea. Martha watched and grasped at her chest. Despite all her efforts she’d come to believe that Faith was permanently infected by her mother’s blood, and even the iron cuffs were not enough to change who she was. The older the girl became, the more convinced Martha became that it was her duty to cure the child of her heritage. The daughter of a witch must be carefully watched. Once she planted nightshade, anything might happen.
III.
In the month of June, Abraham Dias went to bed and he didn’t get up again. At first he tried; Samuel and Maria held him under his arms and lifted him up, but he soon sank back down, shaking his head. Abraham had no strength and no appetite for life. He knew this weakness, for he had seen it in others; it came at the end of life, it appeared that a person was giving up, but it was an acceptance of the end. He stopped eating, even refusing a bite of his favorite chocolate cake, and what was even more telling for a man of the Dias family, he stopped talking. That was when Maria heard the deathwatch beetle. She got down on her hands and knees to search beneath the furniture, then investigated the attic and every inch of the damp brick cellar, but she couldn’t find the wretched insect. It continued with its clacking call, for once begun the sound could only be ended by a death in the house. Samuel hadn’t stopped the deathwatch beetle by stepping on it outside the jail in Salem; rather, the beetle’s death had foretold that Maria would not hang. This was not the case now, for the beetle didn’t show itself, always a dark sign. She remembered Hannah searching the cottage at Devotion Field when she heard it, never managing to get it out of the walls no matter how she might try, for it predicted the day of fire and destruction, when she was nailed to her own front door and her house was burned to the ground.
Maria turned to the book, reading the Grimoire for hours, trying every remedy that might help the old man regain his vitality. Vervain, feverfew, nightshade, horehound syrup. None of it worked. As Abraham’s condition worsened, Maria was willing to delve into the darker magic that practitioners of the Nameless Art were taught to avoid, though she could find no death spells in the Grimoire.
That is not our business, Hannah had told her. When you go inside darkness, the darkness goes inside you.
She found the spell she was searching for at the very end of the book, on a page she had never noticed before. It was invisible without bodily fluid, but Maria could feel it there on the page, writhing, ready to be called up. She licked her thumb, then ran her damp finger across the page. The letters appeared in small, perfect script. Do not use unless you must.
When Samuel entered his father’s chamber that evening, the scene he witnessed stunned him. They had never discussed where Maria had come from, or more importantly, what she was. Now it was clear; there was no mistaking witchery. Black candles were lit around the old man’s bed, so many that the smoke scorched the ceiling and billowed into the corners of the room. A line of salt had been poured along the walls so that no evil could enter, and herbs were strewn over the bed. Maria sat before the old man, naked, slick with sweat, as she chanted an ancient spell so dangerous and powerful the words turned to ash as she spoke them and her mouth burned as she called to Hecate, the goddess of magic and sorcery and light.
Avra kadavra, I will create as I speak, I will force into being that which is impossible and illogical, all that is against the rules of men. A shield to prevent death, no matter how dark the results might be.
“Enough.” Samuel Dias seized Maria from the bed and covered her with a blanket. He stomped on the candles as if they were bugs, extinguishing the flames, then opened the window and waved the smoke out. At last Samuel turned back to her. He wasn’t often angry, but when he was, he burned. “Is my father an experiment for your Art?”
“It’s a cure! When I cured you, your father was happy that I did. Why can’t you be?”
“This is not the same! The only cure for old age is death. There are things you cannot change. That you should not change! We’ll let him go, as he should.”