Page 39 of The Rules of Magic

“Here you go,” a man ambling by said to Jet. He took her hand and was gone before she could see his face. “This will cure you,” he called over his shoulder.

“Nothing can cure me,” Jet said. She saw that she had a tab of acid in her hand. People said it was magic. One taste could transport you. And perhaps, if she were very lucky, she would no longer be herself or carry her burden.

She placed the tab of LSD on her tongue and let it melt. She had a shiver of expectation, and wasn’t that the sign of magic to come? She waited, but nothing happened, so she went on, drifting through the crowds. When she got a bit lost she stood still and tried to get her bearings. She had somehow blundered into a maze that everyone else seemed able to navigate. What path led uptown? Where was north? Where was her soul? Was it up above her in a tree, perched there like a goblin?

She must have looked as if she were setting off on a voyage because a young woman passing by said, “Happy travels.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jet replied. And then she realized that she was. She saw it happen in fast motion, in a whoosh. The grass was thrumming with life, a shimmering hallucination coiling and uncoiling in long stalks, populated by thousands of ants and beetles. There was music and someone grabbed her arm to dance with her, but she slipped away.

Forty minutes of real time had passed, but it seemed as if only moments had gone by. Surrounded by so many people, she felt even more alone. She experienced sickening waves of paranoia and lowered her eyes so no one could see into her mind. She had lost the gift of sight, but now she could see the air was crumpling into hard, little waves; the earth itself was folding, like a piece of paper. Perhaps there had been a small earthquake.

Jet darted down a path, dodging into the Ramble, where she could catch her breath. She was hyperventilating, so she counted to ten with each breath and raced on. Sunlight fell through the overhanging branches, and the shadows on the ground formed lacy patterns. Before she knew it she was at the Alchemy Tree, which was pulsating with green blood within its bark, so alive it might as well have been human.

She stood with her arms out and ran her hands over the tree. Everything glowed and shimmered, undulating before her eyes. She could actually taste the air. It was vanilla and moss. There were black weeds beneath her feet and when she wished them to bloom they did so, in shades of lilac and persimmon. She lay down in the brambles, sinking into them, yet she didn’t feel the stickers. They drew blood but the thorns didn’t hurt and each bruise of blood resembled a rose. If she were dead, would she be reunited with Levi? Was he waiting for her right now?

There were yellow warblers flickering by as they migrated, as if specks of light had broken off from the sun. The brightness of the little birds in the fading shadows was blinding. Jet closed her eyes. Still she couldn’t escape the light. Inside her eyelids there were fireflies. How had they gotten there? Everything was too bright, dazzling.

She thought she saw Levi, and she ran after him, but when she blinked he was gone. Now she was in the dense woods. Her breath was composed of filmy black sparks that rose up whenever she exhaled. She definitely heard his voice. She tracked the stream called the Gill and traipsed through the mud, not stopping until she came to the lake. The black water had turned into a mirror. Jet crouched on hands and knees and looked at herself. What she saw loomed. The girl who had ruined everything she touched.

She crawled closer to get a better look and as she did she tumbled into the lake. In no time she was in up to her waist. She deserved this. This was what was done to witches. Though she was freezing she plunged farther into this watery looking glass. She wanted to sink down, to be punished and done away with, but she felt the buoyancy inside her, and she floated when she meant to drown.

It was no good. She would not sink. She swam to the edge and sloshed through the mud. The grass was still pulsing with life. Jet struggled to breathe. It had been six hours since she had taken the tab of acid. It was no longer daytime. Stars filled the sky. There were still a few fireflies behind her eyelids.

She walked all the way home, following Fifth Avenue to the very end. When she came inside Franny saw that her clothes were wet, and that her dark hair was damp around her face.

“What did you do?” Franny asked. There was a circle of sorrow around her sister, a pale gray-blue, as though she were still walking through water.

“Nothing,” Jet said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You tried to drown yourself.” Franny could see it. The edge of the lake, the water weeds, the moment when her sister gave in to the call to go deeper.

“It was an accident.”

Franny went to embrace her sister. “The world will do enough to us, we don’t have to do it to ourselves,” she said. “Stay away from water. Promise me.”

Jet promised, she crossed her heart, but in fact she now knew that if a witch wanted to drown herself, she could do so. All she needed was some assistance. A stone, a rock, a spell, a cup of poison, a steely heart, a world of sorrow. Then, and only then, could it be done.

Once a week Jet walked uptown to the Plaza Hotel at Fifth and Fifty-Ninth Street. No one knew where she was. To the crowds rushing by she was nothing, just a young woman in black standing on the sidewalk crying. She always went directly to the place where it happened, and when she did she could feel the last moments she had spent with Levi before his accident. Even though she’d lost the sight, those instants were so powerful they hung in the air and were threaded through the trees. Everything glowed with a peculiar bright light. He’d held her near. He’d told her to close her eyes. She’d said, Don’t be silly, but he had insisted. At last he’d placed something in her hands. Now look, he’d said.

What is this? She’d laughed, feeling the small circular surprise in her hands. A bottle cap?

But when she opened her eyes she saw he had given her a ring, a thin silver band with a moonstone. She hadn’t taken it off since, though the silver had tarnished.

In the park in front of the hotel she watched the trees for a sign, but there was none. No dove, no raven, no spark of light. Then one day as she was working in the shop, she stumbled upon what she needed. The potion. That week she walked into the Plaza Hotel and rented the room Levi had reserved. He had showed her the reservation so she knew the room number: 708. Sometimes that number came up in the oddest places. On the cash register in the shop when someone bought a bar of black soap. In the grocery store when she went to pay for bread and milk. If it was over the door of a restaurant she then must stop, whether or not she was hungry.

Jet told the bellman she didn’t need help, then she tipped him five dollars and went up alone. There was no one in the elevator, or in the hall. It was very quiet. She was glad she couldn’t hear the thoughts of those inside the rooms she was passing. She appreciated silence now. Even the door to her room made no noise when she slipped inside. She drew the curtains and flung open the windows. Then she peered into the bathroom to see the huge tub and all the lovely bath salts and soaps, and finally she lay down on the bed fully clothed. She could spy the tops of the trees in the small park in front of the hotel and a wedge of blue sky. She thought about what might have been if the accident hadn’t happened. How they would have walked into the hotel together, come up to their room, this very room. They would have sat on the bed, shyly at first, before daring to embrace. He would have been gentle, and kind, although mad for her, and they might have cried together afterward, overwhelmed by sex and emotion. She supposed she was weeping as she thought about this, and the sound carried, and there was a knock on the door.

She didn’t answer. Perhaps guests nearby had complained. She forced herself to be quiet. But as it turned out, she had left the door unlocked and someone came into the room.

“Are you all right, miss?”

It was the bellman. Jet didn’t answer, so the bellman pulled up a chair and sat down. He was young and had a worried expression.

“When people check in without luggage you never know what they’re going to do,” he said. “And then I heard you crying. I put two and two together.”

“I’m fine,” Jet managed to say. “Please go.”

“You’re not going to kill yourself or anything like that?”