Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(95)

“You must be freezing,” Ruth said, as she drew the girl inside. “Snow in April means a hot summer to come.”

Ruth was a kindhearted woman; you didn’t need magic to discern that, all you had to do was gaze into her calm blue eyes. She had been a year older than Faith when she was married with no say in the matter, having lost her parents to exile in Rhode Island because they were Quakers and considered to be enemies of the Puritan colony. Her experience had caused her to be generous to girls who had nothing other than their own abilities, for she wished someone had come to her rescue and let her be a girl awhile longer; perhaps then she might have had a choice in whom she was to wed. She no longer thought about the years when she stood at the garden gate, her hands gripping the posts, wondering what would happen if she walked down Washington Street and just kept walking, through the colony, through Connecticut, going as far as she could. But she had the children, after all, and the fact that her husband paid her little attention suited her fine. He assumed she was still a foolish girl who had cried when he took her to bed, and wept when she was confronted with running a household at such a tender age. He thought she knew nothing at all. But she’d learned quite a bit during their years together. She had seen the mud on his shoes back in the time when he would disappear at night; she remembered the woman with black hair who came to knock at their door. If anything, these things made her even more compassionate to those who had nothing, for no matter how fine her house was, or how much china and silver were in her pantry, she sometimes wished she could change places with them.

“I hope you’ll be happy here with us,” she told the reserved girl who had appeared at the door, calling herself Jane. Faith had given the last name she’d been made to use in Brooklyn, when she was her other self, the well-behaved girl. To Ruth’s eyes, she looked in need of a good meal and a place to lay her head.

“I’m sure I will be,” Faith assured her. She was now fully the obedient girl who never talked back. She had a certain smile when she acted this part, a shy, innocent expression.

“Then you were meant to be here.”

Ruth was happy to lead the girl through the house, reciting a litany of what her duties would be. The snow had all but ended, and was just a flutter of soft flakes. The April sun was strong and beneath the ice the world was already green. It would be a perfect day. Ruth Gardner Hathorne showed Faith the cot in the scullery where she could sleep, and the peg where she could leave her damp coat, and if the inappropriate red boots the girl wore gave Ruth pause it was too late, the offer to work had been extended, and the girl had hugged her as if Ruth were her own mother, then carefully hung her coat upon the hook.





II.


A woman who loses a child twice will be acquainted with sorrow, and yet the second loss will hurt just as much as the first. It is a snake that circles around to bind you hand to foot, heart to soul. If it comes to pass that the child runs away again, there is no magic strong enough to bring her back to you. In the natural order of things, children do leave, but not with bitterness and in secrecy. Maria knew Faith was gone before she opened the door to her daughter’s room. She had dreamed of a dark wood where the birds were silent. She saw The Book of the Raven in a hollow tree. I know more than you think I do, Faith had said in the dream. Maria could hear her voice, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. She awoke in a panic and sure enough the window in Faith’s chamber was open and there were footprints in the damp grass. On the bedside table was a note written with red ink on black paper.

Do not follow me. You should have told me who my father was. If you try to stop me, then you will be the one I never forgive. This is my life to live.

Making her way to the farm in the Bowery, Maria went immediately to Finney, who seemed to know Faith better than anyone. Finney was working in the garden, the white dog digging up mud to bury a bone, but he put down his shovel when he spied Maria.

“Why would she run off?” Maria wanted to know. “And to Massachusetts of all places.”

Finney told Maria of Faith’s vision in Brooklyn in which she had to cross through hell to reach home. They’d assumed the vision had been of Hell Gate in the river, but perhaps there was another meaning entirely, and it was her fate to return to Salem.

“She’s as smart a girl as there ever was,” Finney assured Maria. “Surely she’s got her reasons to go.”

But Maria disagreed. “It’s a dangerous place, and no matter how smart she might be, she’s only a girl.”

“If you decide you want to go after her, I’ll leave with you today.”

Finney insisted they go first to Catherine for advice, and although Maria felt humiliated to ask for another woman’s help in such a personal matter, she agreed. She had a new admiration for those who came to her for cures, for they opened themselves to reveal their most private thoughts and deeds, an act that now mortified her.

“Have you not worried about your daughter?” Catherine asked Maria.

“No more than any mother would,” Maria said.

It was a wonder how those you loved best were often the ones you could not fully see. “She’s gone over to the dark,” Catherine told her. When Maria’s expression was still puzzled, Catherine explained, “You didn’t want to know, so it was easy for her to fool you. She works left-handed.”

“No. That’s impossible.” Maria looked up at Finney, who couldn’t meet her eye. “Isn’t it?”