Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(84)

Faith showed her mother the red blotch in the palm of her hand that had appeared as she climbed up from the stream in the Flatlands, away from the rising tide.

“A bar of black soap should wash that away,” Maria said. “You are not responsible. And likely, neither am I. Whatever we might have wished for, the truth is, Martha Chase made her own fate.”

Faith shrugged, defiant. She knew precisely what she’d done. “What you put into the world comes back to you threefold. I watched her die and was happy to do so.”

Faith had walked through the door into vengeance, and in doing so she had lost her childhood, but she was still young, and there was time enough for her to reclaim her life. “For every evil under the sun there is a remedy,” Maria said as she embraced her daughter. Let love be one, let it heal what had been broken, let it open the door to hope for the future. Time had passed too quickly and not at all. What was done could not be undone, but they were in Manhattan now, under the Tree of Heaven, and after all this time, they were together.



* * *



Faith was delighted to discover the small room under the eaves that had been waiting for her since the day the house was purchased. It was a child’s room, but still she adored it, even though she hadn’t the thoughts or emotions of a child. There was comfort to be found here, and for a few moments she could imagine she was the person she’d once been. She grinned as she held up the poppet she had loved when she was little more than a baby. “I remember this. Gogo made it for me. Poor Goat. I wonder what happened to him.”

“Poor! That’s far from what he is. This is his house.”

“Is it?” Now Faith was curious. She had noticed the ring on her mother’s finger and wondered if there was a man. She was accustomed to looking at details, no matter how small, for her life had depended on such things: the door unlocked, the window open, the mint or sassafras growing by the side of the road, the blink of her foster mother’s eyes when she was beginning to anger. “And are you his wife?” she asked her mother.

“The ring is a token, nothing more. I’ll never be anyone’s wife. I lived because Samuel Dias changed the rope on my hanging day, but before I leapt I vowed that anyone who fell in love with an Owens would be ruined. I did so to protect us all.”

“I don’t care,” Faith assured her. “I never want to be in love. But poor Goat. He was always in love with you.”

“You were only a baby! You couldn’t know how he felt.”

“I saw the way he looked at you, and how hurt he was when you teased him.”

Maria did her best to make light of the topic. “What do you know about love?”

“Only that I never want to have anything to do with it.” Faith had learned that during her time with Martha, who had so often professed her love for her. You are mine, now and forever my daughter. No one else’s. Remember that. Faith had never once shown Martha the pools of black hatred behind her eyes. She’d been a perfect child so as not to receive any punishments. No nights locked in a dark cellar, no beatings with a switch. But then, and now, love in all its forms dismayed her. She wasn’t sure she could love anyone, not even her own mother, who could not do enough for her, baking apple pies, ordering new clothing from the dressmakers, reaching for her hand every time Faith was near. Faith kept her thoughts to herself, as she had for all those years in Brooklyn. Now that the iron bracelets had been removed, she could see into people’s hearts, but most of what she saw was a disappointment.

“I’m afraid that one day you may be angry at me for what I’ve done,” Maria said thoughtfully. “You’ll despise me for setting down the curse. You’ll want to be in love.”

It was then Faith knew it was her mother herself who regretted the curse. “I doubt that, but I intend to learn all I can about love. How to make it behave and how to stop it. Teach me and you’ll see. I’m a good student.”

Fortunately Martha had allowed Faith to learn to read the Scriptures, and she had become a compulsive reader, hiding books in the hollows of old trees, and in the cemetery, and beneath the floorboards. Now that she was living in the room under the eaves in Samuel Dias’s house, she set up a lantern so that she might read magical texts late into the night. These were the books she’d brought along and kept hidden from her mother, for there were those who might say she was too young for these volumes, and others who might believe no one should have access to this knowledge. She’d taught herself Latin and Greek so she could immerse herself in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, the Ars Notoria, a section of The Key of Solomon, which included ways to increase one’s mental abilities and focus. Jack Finney had found a translation of the ancient Arabic text Picatrix, which contained all manner of enchantments, and a copy of the Arbatel, a spell book the peddler had uncovered in an abandoned farmhouse which he kept swathed in cotton batting, for it had burned his hands when he’d first taken hold of the book, as many powerful texts did. Faith was fairly certain this was the magic her mother didn’t wish to speak of, black magic, blood magic, left-handed magic, powerful and ancient and dangerous.

Often Faith sat on the stairs, listening in when women came to see her mother to ask for charms and cures. Maria avoided love as best she could, but when women came crying, when they felt they had been destroyed, she gave in. The hue of henna that had been mixed with lime and roses, the tea boiled and simmered overnight, would reflect the strength of a woman’s love; the deeper the color, the more genuine the love. For love to last one must wear an amulet with apple seeds. Rosemary and lavender oil would give a person willpower, and to break a simple hex one must use salt, coconut oil, lavender, lemon juice, and lemon verbena. Faith memorized many of Hannah’s remedies when she read her mother’s Grimoire, but was even more intrigued with Rebecca’s runic spells that bordered on dark magic. In a few weeks’ time, she was delighted when her mother presented her with a book of her own. She saw the rules of magic that must never be forgotten written on the very first page.