Page 38 of The Book of Magic

“Now I’ve insulted you.” Sally was surprised, not expecting him to be so thin-skinned. Perhaps that was the reason for all of the ink. Beneath his clothes, his tattoos were his armor.

“I owe you and I’m here.” Ian was doing his best to sort it out. “Shall we leave it at that?” He was bringing her home to his mother, who had never met a woman he was involved with, since none lasted, not that he was involved with Sally, but mothers will think as they please and his would get a good laugh out of this.

“Yes,” Sally said, chastened. “I’m sorry. I’m the rude one.” She turned away, overcome. For a moment, she stared out at the darkening light. Bats flickered over the trees. There was a false story that had passed through generations claiming witches couldn’t cry. Perhaps that made it easier to burn them; perhaps you could drown a woman if you convinced yourself she had no feelings at all.

“Your girl will be found.” Ian sounded sure of himself. He knew Essex as well as anyone, having spent hours out in the fens and the bogs, despite his mother’s warnings that he would drown if he wasn’t careful. There was an old abandoned house past where they lived, nearly surrounded by water when the tide was high. He’d spent a good deal of time out there, watching the herons and egrets and spoonbills perching in the trees and wading through the water. In his opinion, that was magic.

Gillian looked out the window and wondered if she was too greedy. She had a perfectly good life and yet she wanted more. As she gazed out she saw something, an unexpected shadow. It was a figure out in the fens, what people called a shade, not a ghost exactly, but rather a memory, as if a person was caught in an unending cycle of time they couldn’t break, unable or unwilling to move on to the world beyond. Gillian had heard about such sightings in Salem and Boston, layers of regret set in between the brittle history of the past which caught a soul and kept it there to repeat a moment or a deed. It was said you could walk down Beacon Street at dusk and glimpse half a dozen of these shades. Though witches were born with the ability to see spirits, Gillian had never come upon one herself, and now she craned her neck to see, moving so near the window her nose touched the glass.

In the distance a girl of eleven was plodding through the water weeds, carrying her possessions above her head so they would not be soaked. A crow soared across the sky, black against the violet twilight, difficult to see, but clear enough when Gillian narrowed her eyes. The bird had been circling above the trees for three hundred years, following a girl who had left the mortal world long ago. On some nights the machinery of time was rewound as the past leaked into the present. It was as if the back of a watch had been slid open to see its workings. Even for those with the sight it was a marvel to behold time in all its beauty and confusion: What has been, what is, what will be.

The girl in the fens turned as if she could hear the train that wouldn’t exist until hundreds of years later, cocking her head, so that strands of her long dark hair nearly covered her face, for she seemed to catch a glimmer of Gillian, who had cupped her hands against the glass so that she could stare out without any flickering reflections to obscure her view. The girl walking through the water-logged landscape was carrying a black book. It all seemed familiar, as if it were an image Gillian had seen in a dream.

Do you see me as I see you? Do you wish me to know what you know?

The train moved on and soon enough there was nothing beyond the glass, only the dark settling over reeds and water, fish and fox and crows. Gillian leaned forward to talk to Sally through the split in the seats. “Are you okay?” she asked her sister.

The historian was reading; he was never without a book, and this small volume was a Grimoire written by a girl in Manningtree, whose mother and sisters had been put to death during the witch mania. His gaze shifted; he saw Gillian take her sister’s hand and found himself moved by their tenderness.

“Of course,” Sally said. “I’m fine.”

Exactly what she would say, not that Gillian believed it for a minute.

“I saw a shade out there,” Gillian murmured.

“A shadow,” Sally was quick to correct her sister, denying magic as always. “Likely a tree.”

Gillian shook her head. “It was a girl. I think it’s good luck. There was a crow with her.”

In their family, crows signified good fortune. Sally squeezed her sister’s hand, wanting to believe. They really weren’t so different anymore. When Gillian shifted back in her seat, Sally noticed Ian’s gaze. “Did you want something?”

“I always want something. Right now, I want to go to sleep.” He was a good liar, but Sally didn’t believe him for a minute. She felt his gaze on her still.

They were quiet for a while, then Sally said, “Are there ghosts out there?”

“Time is out there. Everything that ever happened is still happening. For instance, if I took your hand in mine.” Which he did as he was speaking. “It would be happening for hundreds of years.”

“Would it?” Sally said.

“That’s what people say.”

She slipped her hand from his. His touch had burned. This was not going to happen. It most certainly was not what she was looking for.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said when she withdrew from him. “It’s still happening.” When she frowned, Ian shrugged. “I’m only repeating local lore.”

“Magic,” Sally said disdainfully.

“It’s not the thing that ruins you,” Ian assured her.

“Isn’t it?” She looked at him deeply. Despite her cool demeanor, she found him curious and intriguing.

“I know from experience. People ruin themselves.”

At last they came to the town where Ian had grown up, called Thornfield, the place he had found so intolerable that he’d spent his entire youth plotting his escape. The village had arisen around a grand manor house, which was now derelict, having been abandoned when the family who owned it fled in shame.

When they arrived, Ian whistled for the taxi, driven by a fellow named Matthew Poole, with whom Ian had gone to school. Matt Poole helped fit their luggage into his large blue van, clearly in need of repair, but the only taxi based in Thornfield.

“Looks like you’ve brought a crowd to see your mum,” Matt said as he dealt with the suitcases, tossing them into the rear of the van. “How will they all fit into her house?”