Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(96)
“She’s a good-hearted girl,” Finney assured Maria. “No one is saying she’s not, but she was locked away for five years. It could turn anyone.”
“You had lost her before she left for Massachusetts.” Catherine had the little dog on her lap, ignoring how muddy he was. “Now let’s see if you can get her back.”
Catherine filled a glass bowl with cool, clear water. She placed two sticks of bramble into the bowl, which helped to invoke the spirit of the person in question, along with a stalk of thistle, for protection. The water turned black, the better to see into. On one side of the bowl was the future as it was now, on the other side the future as it might be. There was fire on one side, waves on the other that leapt from the bowl, splashing onto the table.
Catherine turned to Finney. “When the girl dreamed of hell, how did she cross over?”
“Through water,” Finney said.
The women exchanged a look. They both knew that meant a drowning to prove witchery was at work. Maria rose to her feet, thanking her hosts, ready to leave, telling Finney he need not accompany her; she would find her daughter.
Catherine held her back. “Listen to me,” she said. “I have seen this before. I know black magic. I have seen more than you could imagine. Following the girl isn’t the answer.”
“I know what people are capable of in Essex County. I know what they did to me.”
“But this is her fate, not yours. She has to cross through hell to come out on the other side. Otherwise she will be trapped in her own darkness.”
Maria shook her head. She held back tears that burned her.
“There’s only one way for you to help,” Catherine told her. “The first and second rules combined.”
Maria saw then that Catherine was older than she appeared to be, older than any mortal should be. Women in the Durant family lived too long, and in the end lost everyone they had ever loved. That was why Catherine had come to New York, to begin anew. She was grateful to Faith for invoking the Tenth and giving her a new life with Finney, a good and decent man. She would now return the favor and help Maria win her daughter back from the dark side.
“If you want your daughter, save someone. That’s the way to win back her life. Wait and the chance will come to you. When it does, don’t let it pass you by.”
* * *
For weeks Maria looked out the window, barely able to eat or sleep. Days passed and then one bright morning a minister’s wife came to Maiden Lane. Catherine had vowed that a sign would appear and now it had arrived at her door. Maria could feel her caller’s sorrow; another grieving mother, one she must help at all costs. The woman was the English wife of a well-known Dutch minister who introduced herself as Hannah Dekker. As soon as Maria heard that the stranger had the name of her beloved adopted mother, she was certain this stranger was the woman who would lead her to her daughter’s rescue.
You receive what you give threefold. Save someone else’s daughter and you’ll rescue your own.
Hannah Dekker had searched out Maria Owens in desperation. Her daughter was in the throes of a fever that had grown worse with every passing day; there seemed nothing to do but watch the poor child sink more deeply into sickness and pain. The family’s dear friend, Dr. Joost van der Berg, an esteemed elder with the Dutch Reformed Church and a physician, had found no success in fighting her affliction. He had given the girl an elixir made of crushed bones collected from crypts, thought to heal bone pain, but to no effect. If anything, the girl grew weaker.
Hannah Dekker had overheard furtive conversations about Maria Owens that took place among women when they thought no one could overhear. She didn’t believe in witchcraft and had no experience with the Nameless Art, but when there was nothing left to try it could not hurt to believe in something, however preposterous it might seem. Hannah made it clear that she was willing to pay any price for a cure.
“When your daughter is well again you can decide what it’s worth,” Maria said as she gathered her cape and her black bag of herbs. She would have her payment, but it wouldn’t be silver or gold. Save a life, win a life. She knew of Jonas Dekker by reputation; he was prominent and well respected within both the Dutch and British communities, and had lived in Boston, but was more comfortable in New York, among more freethinking individuals.
Seeing as the girl was too ill to leave her bed, Maria would call at the Dekkers’ home, something she rarely did. When she arrived, the family’s lavish mansion appeared to be a house in mourning with the damask curtains drawn and the candles and lanterns snuffed out. Maria was led upstairs by a servant, then asked to wait in the dim hall. Dutch paintings lined the wood-paneled walls and hand-knotted French carpets could be found on every floor. All the same, wealth was no protection from sorrow, and when Maria entered the bedchamber she felt great compassion for the patient, a pale ten-year-old girl named Anneke, who writhed in pain. Anneke was in a fever, her bedclothes drenched, her delicate face set in an expression of agony. The girl’s mother could not look at her without bursting into tears. They had tried leaching and cupping, none of it effective, and Dr. van der Berg had been stymied in his diagnosis, for he was most familiar with diseases of the Netherlands and New York and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and this girl was in the grips of a tropical disease. Maria immediately recognized the illness as breakbone fever, so common in the West Indies. The family had been to Aruba to visit relatives, and when questioned closely, Hannah recounted that the children had often been at the shore, where mosquitoes clouded the sky on hot summer evenings.