Page 40 of The Book of Magic

“See you in the morning,” he told his granddaughters now that they were parting for the night, giving them a peck of a kiss, which to his joy, they didn’t reject. “If you need me, holler,” he told Franny.

“And the same to you,” Franny, his childhood protector, teased him. “I’ll come running and beat them off with my umbrella.”

“He’s a handsome old man,” Jesse said as she led the others down the corridor to their rooms. “I’ll bet he was quite the romancer in his day.”

“He was a musician,” Gillian informed her.

“That explains it,” Jesse said brightly. “Always beware of a man who can make music. He’ll steal your heart.” She noticed all three women wore boots, though there was fine weather, with the old woman donning a surprising pair in red leather that Jesse thought very trendy for someone her age. “I adore those,” she said.

“You should get yourself a pair,” Franny suggested to the young woman who was helping them get settled in.

“I might just do that,” Jesse said, already sensing that once she slipped on a pair of red shoes, she would be certain to go a bit wild.

Jesse first led Sally and Gillian to their rooms and stood back as they embraced and said good night; the old woman kissed both of the younger ones, though it was clear she was a bit fierce and something of a cold fish if she didn’t care for you. Jesse felt honored to find the old woman appeared to enjoy her company.

Jesse opened the door to Franny’s room. It really was the nicest one, overlooking the front garden. She thought if anyone would complain it would be this lady, so it made sense to give her what they called the Harpwell Room—since two or three guests had sworn they had heard a harp being played in the middle of the night, complete balderdash in Jesse’s opinion. It was more likely the jukebox down in the pub, a fixture there since the fifties; perhaps rock and roll sounded angelic when it came up through the floorboards. “There’s been a glut of Americans in our village,” Jesse told Franny. “I can’t imagine what they think when our pub closes at eleven.”

Franny felt her heart hit against her rib cage when she heard about other Americans in town. “You’ve had other Americans recently?”

“We always do. They come from as far away as California,” Jesse said dreamily.

“But this week? Any Americans?”

“A girl.” Jesse shrugged. “Wouldn’t listen to a word I said.” Jesse had carried Franny’s bag into her room and set it on the rickety baggage stand. When she turned Franny was right behind her. “You scared me now.” Jesse laughed. “People say there used to be witches here and they could do with you as they pleased.”

“What did you tell her?” Franny wanted to know. When Jesse looked blank, Franny clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, sounding like the clack of a crow. “The American girl!”

“To stay away from the fellow she was with. He’s a bad sort, and she seemed innocent.”

Franny instantly softened to Jesse Wilkie. “That was good of you,” she said. “We should all watch out for other women.”

“I try,” Jesse responded proudly before she left Franny to get her rest.

They would do more than that, Franny thought as she sat on the bed, which, with its old saggy mattress, would do her no good at all when it came to a night of sleep. They would bring Kylie back home, and quickly, for the longer she was lost, the more the left would claim her. In the morning they would go after her, but tonight Franny would stay awake and read through the Grimoire, paying special attention to everything that had been written by Maria Owens, first in her childish scrawl, then later in her small, well-formed script. There were enchantments jotted down in red ink composed of hibiscus and the brown ink of hazelnuts and gallnuts, in which a wasp lays its eggs, used before the larva could burrow out, with deep crimson blood, with the black bark of hawthorn branches or the soot of lamps, some of these inks indelible, others invisible, some laced with vinegar or rainwater, written in English and Latin and runic.

She thought about the house on Magnolia Street, and how Aunt Isabelle had called to her on the day before her death. She had chosen Franny, whom she’d seen as the strongest, to carry on as the caretaker of the book. “If it isn’t written down, it will likely be forgotten,” Isabelle had told her. That was why women had been illiterate for so long; reading and writing gave power, and power was what had been so often denied to women. Franny had always been conflicted about who to leave the book to when it was time to do so. Sally was the stronger of the sisters, but she had no interest in magic. And Gillian, would she even want the responsibility? Perhaps it would be best to leave the book to whoever lived in the house and was willing to take it on. That individual would likely leave the light on the porch turned on and open the door to any woman in need. The book was a burden and a blessing. Franny thought it was likely it would choose its own caretaker.

She unpacked, setting the Grimoire on an old walnut desk. Franny handled it with affection, and with respect. She hoped to find a reference to The Book of the Raven and perhaps a method for finding daughters who went astray. She knew that each hour that a woman was missing equaled a day in which all could go wrong, and every day was as good as a year. There was no time to waste, for daughters might disappear for one reason, and remain unaccounted for for completely different reasons. A misstep, an accident, an error, a man.

Franny went to the window to take in the measure of this land of her ancestors, where women were both drowned and saved. What had been inside those women was inside of her now, blood and bones, courage and fear. She wished Jet was beside her, for Franny had the distinct impression that she had come home and she would have loved to share this moment with her sister. There were glowworms in the trees and the world was a marvelous thing to behold. How must it have been to gaze out over this village three hundred years ago when the stars shone so much more brightly and a book was worth a woman’s life? There was the pink moon and a familiar scent that was puzzling to Franny. For some reason she felt a surge of hope. They were not going to lose another woman here in Essex. She opened the window and breathed more of the fragrance, then realized what it was. The lilacs in the garden down below were in their last bloom, a pale purple gleaming in the dark. Franny was reminded of something Jet had told her every year as they worked in the garden together.

Where there were lilacs there would be luck.

Margaret Wright had grown up in Essex, and like many here, it was the only home she’d ever known. She might have left for a bigger town after having her son, one where everyone didn’t know her story, but she had no desire to be anywhere else in the world. She was born into the Nameless Art, with her mother and grandmother raising her in the tradition of green magic in the very house in which she still lived. By the time she was thirteen she was well versed in all that grew in the woods, able to discern which could harm or heal. It was her obligation to follow her path, and it was clear from the start that she would be a healer. She was a cunning woman, not a bloodline witch, although she’d known one such individual in her time, a very old woman named Cora Wilkie, who said that in an earlier time local people had nailed the feet of women suspected of witchery to the ground so they couldn’t run away. Cora had lived out on the fens. It was a muddy trek to see her, and few people bothered, but those who did were grateful to her, for her cures were a revelation. A book she had handwritten, My Life as a Witch, was in the local library, carefully stored in plastic. For hundreds of years women who were suspect had their houses burned down, their animals were killed, their children taken away, and yet they were still here. If you knew where to look, it was possible to find witches in villages and towns throughout this county. They’d outlasted their enemies.

Margaret Wright’s sixth great-grandmother had passed down a story about a fire in the woods nearby that had burned alive a woman who practiced the Nameless Art. It was a cautionary tale recounted throughout the generations. A woman with knowledge, one who could read and write, and who spoke her own mind had always been considered dangerous. Hannah Owens hadn’t been forgotten, though she had become as nameless as the art she had practiced. All the same, on Midsummer’s Eve, when light triumphs over darkness, women came together in Devotion Field and danced until midnight. They no longer recalled the meaning of the dance, called the Witch’s Reel, but they remembered the steps and taught them to their daughters and granddaughters, all of whom were happy to come together to celebrate. It was the longest day of the year, after all, and people in neighboring towns could hear the gathering from a great distance for there was joyous music and a bonfire was set with sparks filling the inky sky.

Margaret knew quite a bit about love and its dangers, but that hadn’t stopped her from falling for the wrong man. Such things happen even to the wisest women, especially when they’re young. Ian’s father was a man named Jimmy Poole, a distant cousin of the fellow who ran the taxi service. Jimmy Poole traded in horses and belonged to the Society of the Horseman’s Grip and Word, a secret society, whose members had to walk an actual crooked path, made of stones and bricks and sometimes, for a laugh, horse manure, in imitation and appreciation of left-handed magic, undergoing an initiation that included being beaten and made to drink horse urine, before being hanged with a rope from a hayloft that was meant to break at the last moment. All of this was done to test a man’s courage; if he passed and didn’t beg to be let free of his initiation, he was taken into a brotherhood in which he was granted the secrets that allowed him to speak to horses so that they would bend to his command. There was magic in this, the real stuff, knowledge that had filtered down from the bloodline witches who lived in the fens when this was a hideaway for ragged outliers, some of whom lived in the trees with the herons.

Jimmy Poole was a handsome man, too handsome, and Ian resembled him, in form and in temperament, perhaps too much so, at least in his youth. Ian’s father had never meant to stay in Essex or continue on with Margaret Wright. He asked her to make certain no baby would come of the nights they spent together. He was very clear about that, ready to walk away if she protested, for though he wanted her, there were plenty of other women in town, many of them more attractive. Margaret promised no child of his would come of their nights, but her mouth was scalded when she told this lie. She wanted a child more than anything, more than truth, more than any man. She mixed the cure she’d seen her grandmother give to women who wanted a baby and could have none, a secret recipe begun by Cora Wilkie long ago, one used only in their county, made of myrrh, juniper berries, licorice, pennyroyal, hemlock, and black and white hellebore. Some of the ingredients were so poisonous, a person must wear gloves simply to handle them, but Margaret was well trained, and she wasn’t afraid to partake of the potion that would bring her heart’s desire. Nine months later she took one look at Ian and knew that he was trouble and that she would love him more than anyone else on earth. And now here he was at her door at such an ungodly hour, a man of fifty, but still her child, the one person for whom she would have given up her life. She’d made him supper; all the dishes he liked best were waiting, covered by dishcloths, still warm.

Margaret opened the door and said, “You’re late,” as a greeting, and Ian laughed and bent to kiss her cheek.

“I’ve brought some chaos with me,” he said, which surprised neither of them. On the train, he’d silently recited an ancient incantation that scholars in Alexandria had relied upon when they wished to concentrate on their studies, blocking out the outside world. But it hadn’t worked. “Ma, I think I might be in love.”

“That would serve you right,” Margaret said, delighted despite her son’s look of worry. The news didn’t stop them from sitting down together at the old pine table. Ian had been so deep in thought walking home, that he’d become lost in the woods for the best part of an hour, even though he knew the place as well as he knew the back of his hand, and he was indeed late, and there was supper to attend to.

Gillian sat perched on the edge of her lumpy mattress in her room at the inn. Most people were asleep by now, but her internal clock was off, and besides, she felt she wasn’t alone in the small chamber at the top of the stairs. The wallpaper was decorated with large purple flowers, and the rugs had been hand stitched by village women years ago when a sewing circle met in the lobby on Thursday nights. Gillian wore a flimsy blue nightgown, her tawny hair pulled back; for some reason, she felt young again, ready to take a risk. If the room was haunted, so be it. Perhaps she had something to learn from the other world. She was the selfish sister, the one who couldn’t pass a mirror without stopping to gaze at herself, the one who’d dated men who were nothing but trouble. Long ago, a man had nearly destroyed her. She’d thought his sort of love could withstand the curse and now, whenever she heard about women who were caught up in a relationship that was tied to violence, women who stayed for years, sometimes for a lifetime, she understood. Gillian had been that woman, unable to walk out the door, reduced to nothing. She’d changed her life, but the wild girl she’d once been still lived inside her heart.