Page 59 of Magic Lessons

She pulled Samuel toward the marshy shore, a sob escaping from her mouth as she shivered; water streamed down her back and into her eyes. Maria had always been able to hear Samuel’s heartbeat when he was near and now she heard nothing at all. She tore open his shirt and pounded on his chest, her own breathing ragged.

Faith crawled over, drenched and in despair. “Goat,” she wailed. “Wake up.” There was no answer and Faith began to cry. She was on her knees beside her grieving mother, both coated with mud, weeds in the folds of their clothes, lake water dripping from their hair. Dias’s skin was pale and he was so very quiet. It was clear that he was gone. “You have to stop,” Faith told her mother. She knew death when she saw it. She’d seen it before. “Mother, he’s no longer with us.”

His spirit had left him and he was motionless. The beetle had stopped its clicking, for its work was done. Maria would not let this be their fate. She pounded on Samuel’s chest, again and again, in a fury. They had wasted time because of a curse; death was always possible, with or without magic. Her own mother had confided that there was an ancient bargain a person could make with the darkest powers, one that would bring back the dead to walk among the living. He will never be the same if you do. He will be a shadow self, a dark creature, but you will have him. Mothers had done this with children, only to have the rescued child run away into the woods, a feral creature with no memory of the past; wives had brought back husbands who had afterward left them for other women, or stolen from them, or murdered them in their sleep. Maria didn’t care. She was ready to make the bargain. She hit Samuel’s chest one last time, ready to take up a knife so that she might cut her arm to mix her blood with his, the beginning of this dreaded spell, but before she could, Samuel opened his eyes.

He had been dead until Maria forced his heart into beating. He’d returned from the dark water, from the darkness of the endless depth where he had seen his father sitting in a garden chair, waving him away. Don’t be a fool, Abraham Dias called to his son. She’s waiting for you, you stupid man.

Maria lay beside him in the grass, her arms around him. You cannot curse a man who has already died and come back. He has rid himself of one life and begun another, a life in which love is everything. He had been dead but now his eyes were open and the woman he loved was singing to him.

A ship there is and she sails the sea,

She’s loaded deep as deep can be,

But not so deep as the love I’m in

I know not if I sink or swim.

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er it

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that will carry two

And both shall row, my Love and I.

Samuel had to strain to hear Maria’s voice, but soon he understood she was saying she wanted to be with him no matter the cost.

“Are we ruined?” Samuel asked. The world was so bright and beautiful. Like his father before him, he had a new appreciation of the earth.

“No,” Maria said. She was as sure of this as she’d ever been of anything. “We’re just alive.”

While Samuel slept in the grass, Faith and Maria sat together in the falling dark. They had made a bonfire and sparks rose into the black sky. Faith gazed at her left palm. The line that had stopped when she found The Book of the Raven had begun again. She would live to be an old woman, she saw that now, but one who couldn’t work magic. That was the price she paid when she ignored the rules. She’d lost the sight and with it her bloodline gifts. She was ordinary now.

“If you don’t want me to be your daughter, I would understand,” Faith told her mother.

“You’ll always be my daughter.” Now and forever, in this life and the life to come, no matter what separated them or what brought them together.

At the first light, Faith would return to the field and bring Keeper back to the bonfire so that her loyal companion would be turned to ashes here in the woods, where he belonged. They watched the bonfire burn and remembered when they first saw fireflies and thought stars had dropped from the sky, when Keeper was a pup and drank goat’s milk, when Cadin brought gifts of buttons and keys, when they plucked apples from the trees, when the world of Essex County was brand-new.

Samuel Dias was asleep in the grass, his black coat still soaking wet. He was still dreaming when Maria Owens leaned in to tell him a story, one he already knew and had known ever since he saw her on the dock in Curaçao when she was fated to save his life, and he was fated to save hers in return.

PART SIX Fate

1696

Twelve carpenters had worked for a year without stopping to build Maria Owens’ house. Fifteen varieties of wood were used: golden oak, silver ash, cherrywood, elm, pine, hemlock, pear, maple, mahogany, hickory, beech, cypress, cedar, walnut, and birch. The house was tall, with a twisted vine of wisteria that ran along the porch, in bloom at the first surge of spring. In the kitchen there sat a huge black cast-iron stove; in the pantry were dozens of shelves on which to store herbs. Two staircases had been constructed, one led to the attic, turning and twisting as if it were a puzzle bending in on itself, the other was made of the finest oak, with a broad landing that offered a window seat framed by damask drapes imported from England, ones very like those that had hung in the Locklands’ manor house in the first Essex County. Beside the front door was the brass bell that had hung outside Hannah Owens’ door.

When a traveling portrait painter came through town, he was hired to capture Maria’s likeness in oils, rendering her image perfectly, down to the bump she had on her hand from the day she pounded on John Hathorne’s door. When sitting for the painter, she wore her favorite blue dress, with her dark hair caught up in a blue ribbon and the sapphire that she never took off fastened at her throat. She wore her new red boots, ones Samuel Dias had had fashioned in Boston, which she wore every day. It was said that her eyes followed you when you passed by her portrait, and that she could see what was inside you and that you would know in that moment whether or not you had been true to yourself.

There were dozens of green glass windows, imported from England, and two brick chimneys that towered above the roof. The house was so well made that when a hurricane struck, every other house on the street sustained severe damage, but not a single shutter blew away from the Owens house. Even the laundry out on the line stayed exactly where it was on that day, which led neighbors to gossip even more than before. Maria kept chickens and goats in a small barn, and there was a renegade swan that arrived one day and refused to leave, soon enough spoiled by the crusts of bread he preferred to wild food. Maria called him Jack, and he waited outside for her on the porch each morning, and followed her about all day long, accompanying her on city streets and into shops, so that the children in town whispered that he’d once been a man who’d been turned into a swan, though no one dared to come near him, for Jack had a nasty temper and was devoted to one person alone.

In the garden there grew lily, rue, and arnica, along with fiery onions that could cure dog bites and toothaches. Maria planted Spanish garlic in great abundance, peonies to ward off evil, rows of lettuce, parsley, and mint, and lavender, planted for luck, by the back door. The original shed had been attached to a glass greenhouse so that herbs could be grown all year long, even in the dead of winter. Behind the foggy windows there were pots filled with lemon balm, lemon verbena, and lemon thyme. The more dangerous plants were kept inside the locked shed, which now boasted a murky glass ceiling so that light could enter. Belladonna, yarrow, black nightshade, wolfsbane, foxglove, lords and ladies with its pretty toxic berries, pennyroyal, which could end a pregnancy. It was there that Maria kept her Grimoire in its black toadskin cover, a book that would belong to Faith upon her mother’s death so that she might learn magic all over again, from the start, but not until she was a very old woman who had come to understand the importance of the rules. On the first page Hannah had written the rules of magic, and now Maria added a third, doing so without hesitation. Some lessons you have to learn for yourself, others are best to know from the start.

Do as you will, but harm no one.

What you give will be returned to you threefold.

Fall in love whenever you can.