Page 85 of The Book of Magic

“Should I have said nothing?” he wondered aloud. He had made mistakes such as this before, saying too little, saying too much.

“I’m not a witch,” Kylie told the librarian. “My aunts are healers. They have a greenhouse, they grow herbs, and people come to them for remedies. It’s nothing more than that.”

“Witchery is not a choice. This is not the Unnamed Art, which women have been practicing for hundreds of years, perhaps since the beginning of time, training themselves to use herbs and green magic. It’s a bloodline situation.” When she still looked blank, he added, “An inheritance.”

Kylie mulled this over, thinking of the rules her mother had set out when she and Antonia were young. She felt the shivers, as one did when the truth suddenly became evident. “Fine,” she said in an even tone. “Let’s look for my family.”

They poked around in various genealogy catalogues for the Owens name and found there were many listings of births and weddings and funerals, particularly in Essex. Kylie’s eyes burned, but she read on, as if reading could save her from her fate.

“May I ask what the curse is?” David Ward asked.

Kylie peered over at him and was quiet. Trust was for fools. Was it rude not to answer?

When the girl hesitated, David thought perhaps he had been too forward. “Of course, you are entitled to your privacy.”

What had secrecy done for her in the past? Absolutely nothing. “It ruins whoever loves us,” she told him. “And it ruins us, too.”

David understood her meaning, for he’d been ruined by magic and love. “I see,” he murmured, and went back to the catalogue. “It’s likely that you need to go back to the birthplace of the person who set the curse.” He had begun to scan witch trials, hoping to find her family’s name. Part of the skill of research is the ability to guess what might have been, the glimmering of a sixth sense combined with the doggedness of a detective, along with the precious talent of being able to imagine how another’s life might have been lived.

They took a break for tea, heading for the simple kitchen in the rear of the building, where David heated tomato soup and brought out a small platter of crackers and cheese. Kylie was ravenous, she realized, and very grateful to be fed, delighted to know that tea included food. She felt surprisingly comfortable here, even though she had always hated spending time at the Owens Library, perhaps because her mother was in charge.

“You must have talents you don’t know about,” David Ward suggested.

Kylie shrugged and spooned up soup. “Nothing much. I can forecast weather. I think I may be able to change it. I see colors around people. It always seemed like a game, like knowing what people will say before they speak. I didn’t think it was magic.”

David threw her a look; there was an awkwardness in not knowing how to respond. To have magic inside of him was what he’d always wanted. Instead, he had settled for second best, being an expert. He certainly was not about to make an admission, but he had walked on the left-hand side when he was younger, in the blundering way of men in need.

Kylie didn’t mention the dark aura she saw around the librarian, a dense halo of blue. As for David, he didn’t ask what she saw when she studied him. He knew what it was. He felt guilty for every moment he was alive.

After their tea break, they went back to the task of inspecting the Owens family files. The name surfaced in records in East Anglia, where Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed witch-finder general, had begun his search for evil in 1644, resulting in 233 dead, before his own death by drowning, at last ridding the world of the being in which true evil had resided. And there it was, the name Hannah Owens. David eagerly showed Kylie the page of slanted scrawling of the town notary. Hannah Owens had been arrested, tried, and found guilty. It was written that she was a cunning woman who encouraged other women to turn to witchery and that she was too dangerous to be allowed to live. Hannah had come from a village called Thornfield where a man named John Heron had testified against her, saying she had enticed him into her bed and that she had a tail and practiced the Dark Art. Fortunately, the witch trials ended as suddenly as they’d begun, and for just as little reason. In the end, Hannah was let free from jail, fined three shillings that she didn’t have, and therefore beaten three times with a whip instead.

“Hopefully this John Heron got his comeuppance,” David Ward mused.

It was written that after Hannah was released from jail, she was murdered by a man named Thomas Lockland, who claimed she had turned his wife’s affections cold by use of witchery. David soon found a marriage document between a woman named Rebecca and this Lockland, but Rebecca’s name had been crossed out. In each generation that followed, the oldest son had carried a curse blamed on a hex called down upon them by Hannah Owens, who had been burned to death in her own garden.

“The Locklands were a grand family once,” David revealed. “With a huge land grant from the court. The manor is up in Essex, just outside Thornfield. Somehow, your family and theirs were intertwined. It seems both were cursed, and this Hannah Owens seems to be the connection.”

So that was it. To find the curse she had to look not only into The Book of the Raven, but into the history of her own family. Kylie thanked the librarian and packed up her bag. Time would not allow her to stay longer. The library had been a haven and she dreaded what came next, for those who wish to understand left-handed magic must embrace it first. The most recent Lockland was listed as still living in Thornfield.

“I’ll see what he knows about the curse,” Kylie told the librarian before thanking him and saying her good-byes.

David Ward was worried for her, even though it wasn’t his place. In truth, he’d spent most of his life fretting over one thing or another. He’d twisted himself to fit into a family and had failed despite his attempts. To this day, he often dreamed of his own daughter, lost when she was not much older than Kylie. In his dreams his girl was often perched in a tree, unreachable, with gravity having no pull on her. “You could stay,” he found himself telling Kylie. “There’s a room here at the library for overnight guests. We have volume after volume listing curse-breakers.”

Kylie shook her head. “Not my curse,” she said, and there was little he could do to refute that. It was raining outside, the dark green rain that meant something was about to change. It happened before deaths and discoveries, before people went on journeys that were successful and those from which they would never return. When Kylie asked how she could get to Thornfield, David directed her to Liverpool Street station, then took his wallet from his gray suit jacket and thrust the fifty pounds that he always carried for an emergency into Kylie’s hands.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Kylie was quick to say. Trust was for fools, The Book of the Raven had insisted. But then they exchanged a look, for certainly Kylie could use the cash after giving the rude boy at the shop a twenty, so she swallowed her pride and said, “All right, then. Thank you.”

David’s hands ached when he pressed the money into hers. He might not have magic flowing through him, but after a lifetime of study he knew when the future was uncertain. They walked to the door together, and as he watched Kylie duck into the rain, he thought of his own daughter, whose favorite summer dress was blue, blue for protection and for luck, although she’d had no luck at all, not even when he’d made a bargain for her future using the Dark Art.

David wanted to explain that there were curses that could be broken only with a payment that was far too costly for most people to bear, but he had failed at his attempts to protect the person he loved best in the world, so he kept quiet now. He had second thoughts as Kylie was leaving, and called out to stop her. She had already decided not to go back to her hotel, but to instead take a taxi directly to the train station. Time was everything when it came to bringing Gideon back. Still, she took a moment to turn to face the librarian. He had one bit of advice for the girl from his own experiences in the world of left-handed magic. “Don’t trust anyone,” he called.

Kylie gazed back at him with a faint smile of gratitude. This was one bit of advice The Book of the Raven had already made abundantly clear. “I don’t intend to,” she assured him.

Perhaps the book would protect her. David certainly hoped so, although he was not a hopeful man. He continued to watch as Kylie dashed down the steps and hailed a taxi, her red-brown hair spattered by raindrops. They had been researching all day and time had vanished as they dove into the records of the past. It was already that blue hour when people had left work and the streets were nearly vacant. Dappled light fell onto treetops and pavement and the city felt haunted. A taxi stopped and Kylie scrambled in. David Ward raised his hand in a gesture of farewell, deeply unsettled by his fears of what might come to be. The girl rolled down her window, but before she could call out her gratitude, the taxi plunged onto the street and rounded a corner and she disappeared, something that the librarian had witnessed once before, only this time the circumstances were different, and hopefully the outcome would be different as well.

III.

Antonia was walking through the mud in her dream. Of course she was alone. She was the one left behind to take care of things, the responsible one who did what she must without anyone’s help. In her dream, however, she was much wilder, she was wrecking her dress and as she trod through a bank of reeds she lifted her skirt, for the hem was already soaking. This traipsing about seemed foolhardy in a way she would never be in her waking life. Still, she had no choice but to go forward. How strange, she rarely wore dresses, but this one suited her well. There were crows above her, clouds of cawing birds blocking out the sun, their jeweled blue-black feathers falling to the ground. As she entered the water, there was a woman in the shallows, facedown, her dress floating out like a lily, her arms and legs unmoving. Antonia approached, but before she could stop herself she went under and she went under fast.