Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(94)

When the purser returned, he no longer noticed Keeper and failed to say another word about the wolf’s presence. In fact, the purser’s vision was cloudy and would remain so. It was the first time Faith had used left-handed magic for her own selfish reasons, and later, in the evening, when she bit into a slice of bread she’d brought along for her supper, she tasted blood and found that a tooth had broken. Blood magic had a price. Faith felt a chill, and she wondered if she was about to go too far. What you send out comes back to you threefold. What you give to the world returns in kind. Blood begets blood.

She huddled close to Keeper to stay warm. Several of the sailors looked her over, for a girl of thirteen traveling alone was considered fair prey. Keeper growled low down in his throat to warn them, but that was not the only thing that kept the sailors away. It was Faith’s silver eyes, cold as coins; it was how she appeared to be one thing, a red-haired girl, and then suddenly she seemed to be a woman with black hair it was best not to cross.



* * *



They arrived in the morning light with Salem glittering before them in the cold spring sun. The harbor had nearly frozen solid even though the new leaves on the trees gleamed green. Men in rowboats had to cut through the forming shell of blue ice so that the ship might dock. It was foul weather and people on board whispered it was a sign of foul things to come. As for Faith, she pricked her finger on a piece of wood and her blood boiled on the deck and red steam rose into the chilly air.

She remembered little of arriving in Salem when she was a babe, only the bumpy carriage ride and the deep forest and the trees with black leaves that were strewn along the path to an imposing house with diamond-patterned glass windows. The docks were quiet now because of the storm, and Faith’s red boots made a clicking sound on the ice. She went to a tavern where there were sailors who were more raucous than usual, trapped on land as they waited for the ice to thaw and their ships to set sail. When Faith took a table, no one disturbed her as they might had she been another girl who had wandered in unaccompanied. They were wise enough to let her be, for she had a protector who lay at her feet, his eyes glinting. Not one of the men in the tavern had ever seen a dog that looked like this one. The girl and her beast appeared as a single creature that had been joined in some wicked way, she in her black cape, he with his long black fur. A young serving maid was told to wait on her, for the older server could already tell this red-haired girl was trouble.

Faith asked for two bowls of stew, one for herself, one for Keeper, and a pot of boiling water for her own brew. Tea was dear and often unavailable; and so Faith carried her own Courage Tea. She placed a tarnished silver coin on the table. She could see the serving girl’s hunger, as well as a silence she had been trained for. The girl was being mistreated on a regular basis. Across the room, the owner of the tavern was watching them with a lazy eye. He had the nerve to nod at Faith.

“Is he the one?” she asked the girl.

The maid was quick to look over her shoulder and even quicker to turn her gaze away. “I don’t know what you mean. He’s nothing.”

“If you say he is, I should believe you.” Faith knew from her own experience there were times when it was impossible to do anything other than lie. “I want to find a man named John Hathorne,” she went on to say. When there wasn’t a flicker on the serving maid’s face, Faith set another coin on the table.

The server swept the silver into her hand before anyone could see. “You’d do better to stay away from the magistrate,” she murmured. She confided that a cousin of hers had been brought up on charges and was awaiting trial. Her only crime was to have taken a walk with another woman’s betrothed. She’d been accused of witchery shortly thereafter. “Most of us don’t dare to say his name aloud.”

“Do I look as though I’m afraid of any man?” Faith’s voice was soft, but steady. “And you shouldn’t be either.” She reached into her satchel and handed the girl a figure stitched from red cloth and black thread. “Burn this and the man causing you trouble will disappear.”

“Will he die?” The mild serving girl was shocked by the idea, despite her wish to be rid of her abuser. In her experience, punishment came with every attempt at freedom.

“He’ll only disappear.” When the girl continued to appear nervous, Faith added, “To Rhode Island or Connecticut, not to hell, just far enough away not to bother you.”

Faith and Keeper were given two heaping bowls of stew, and by the time they left, the serving girl had managed to unearth the address of the magistrate’s house, south of the courthouse on Washington Street. Faith’s breath came hard as she walked through town. The streets were slippery and the roofs of the houses looked slate-blue in the dusk.

She saw the elm trees before long, the leaves unfurling, the black bark slick and wet with melting ice. The temperature had risen, and the ice storm was all but forgotten. Now that she had returned, Faith remembered the banks of white phlox in bloom and the boy she had waved to and the shock on her mother’s face when she saw him. She felt her heart beat faster as she approached the door. Her heart had been beating just as fast on the day they ran away from the little boy in the garden and the woman who was calling out to him.

Keeper went off toward the woods where he could go unnoticed, for he certainly would not be welcome here. Faith, however, was just what Ruth Gardner Hathorne had been looking for. There was a hired woman who came to help with the laundry and another to cook on the Sabbath, but the household work was never done. When Ruth opened the door to find a lovely girl in need of work, one who declared herself an orphan, but solemnly promised that she could cook and bake and clean as well as anyone, and had no aversion to using strong lye and washing sheets in the large kettle set over a fire pit in the yard, Ruth Hathorne thanked the Lord for this day and for His wisdom. Caring for six children had worn her down. This girl with nowhere to go was a godsend.