Page 21 of The Witches of Cambridge

Seeing some canoes set out, Ava climbed into one. Oh, how she wished she could float off and find her way to the underground land where every day lasted for seven years, and humans with their wicked ways could never find you. The sunlight was dazzling, but the thought of going home made her feel like crying. That was when she spied Jamie Mather.

“Are you following me?” he called.

“You’re following me,” Ava called back. Her foolish heart had begun to race.

Jamie stood up, insulted. He looked like a wild man, like someone who would have camped out by the river three hundred years earlier, when the banks were filled with brambles and marsh grass and the river was twice the size it was now, so clean that thousands of bass and shad and alewives were caught in nets.

“Going back to Shithole, Maine?” he called.

“It has a name,” Ava said. “Genesis.”

“Aw. Biblical.” He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “In the beginning,” he said. He was acting like an ass, and he knew it. He was about to stalk away when he heard her softly say, “It’s not the beginning. It’s the end.” Jamie turned to face her, and Ava explained. “That’s what going home feels like to me.”

All at once, the crows rose into the air, calling out and circling. Their sudden flight startled the wild geese, who began to honk and hiss and run along the riverbank.

“Stay,” Ava told Jack, who stood at the edge of the water, growling at the geese. Jack usually did as he was told, but this time he set off so fast he didn’t hear her command. He chased the geese to the edge of the water, and when they didn’t stop, neither did he. They flew into the water, and Jack crashed in after them, focused on his prey. It was an ancient response; it was in his blood and bones to chase them.

Cambridge was quiet in summer; it had been this way when Rose Bridewell first crossed the river from Boston looking for a safe place for a woman such as herself. Jack kept swimming in place, and that was when Ava and Jamie both realized he was trapped. Water weeds had wrapped around Jack’s chest in a tangle of black vines, and although he was doing his best to keep his head above water, he was sinking, pulled down into the deep.

Clouds of mosquitoes and gnats circled, and pollen fell into the water and turned the shallows green. Jamie’s mother had warned that their doctor insisted swimming would be bad for Jamie’s lungs, so he’d been stuck there on the grass watching his brothers dive into the pond on the edge of their property while he sat there broiling in the sun. The most he’d ever done was wade in up to his ankles, and he’d always stopped then, remembering his mother’s stern warning. But now he ran into the river, without thinking, still wearing his watch. He was up to his waist before Ava had managed to reach the bank, screaming for Jack to come back to her.

The dog was snapping at the river water as if he could free himself that way, biting his way out of his watery trap.

“Hold on, boy,” Jamie told him as he drew near. “I’ll get you.”

The water was so cold Jamie was shuddering; he could barely speak. He could see the shadows of shopping carts there among the weeds. Although he’d never been swimming, he now did so as if it were second nature, as if he’d been doing it all his life and his lungs were made for it. When he reached Jack, he attempted to dive so that he might free the dog, but he couldn’t plunge under the water. He tried again and again, but it was impossible for him to dive below the surface.

Ava was there beside him by now, swimming awkwardly, the girl whose mother always demanded she stay on dry land. She had seen that Jamie couldn’t dive beneath the water, and when she tried, she couldn’t either. That was when she knew why her parents had forbidden her to swim. Water told the truth about who was a witch and who was not. But there were other tests as well. How deep was your love, how much could you see when you looked at another, how brave could you be?

Jamie felt his pulse beating, wild and out of control. Ava was drenched, her blouse falling away from her like the petals of a flower. This was it and he knew it, no matter how much he might try to deny it.

“We’ll haul him out,” Jamie called to Ava. They linked their arms around the dog and pulled as hard as they could. They tugged until at last they freed him from the tangled weeds and then from the metal slats of the shopping cart that had trapped him. Jamie swam toward shore with one arm, supporting the dog around his chest until they reached the riverbank. Once he was on dry land, Jack shook himself and then lay at Jamie’s feet.

Ava walked out of the river, her hair streaming down her back, her clothing filthy and drenched. Sometimes you don’t know why you’ve gone somewhere until you’ve reached your destination. They had nearly convinced themselves that they despised one another, but they couldn’t do that now. This was the way it happened, the fate you didn’t expect, the one that occurred when you were on a riverbank, when you were drowning even though you were standing right there in the grass, when you couldn’t run away from your future or your past.

BLACK MOON

SECOND YEAR

Summer 1951–Spring 1952

We know what you want even when you don’t speak

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maine was burning that July, with temperatures so high the trees turned brown, their leaves withering in the heat. No rain fell, and throughout the countryside streams and rivers went dry. Ava carried pails of water down the garden paths to ensure that the vegetables didn’t die. She wore a straw hat to protect herself from the sun, and still she burned; her cheeks and shoulders turned pink. All the while she worked, she burned for Jamie as well, but Cambridge seemed a million miles away, another lifetime and another life. She thought of Claire, the society member most of the others thought had disappeared because of love, and Ava wondered if that was a warning, that she must be careful not to lose herself to another.

Ava had hitchhiked to Maine in order to bring Jack home with her, since the bus had refused them. Only dog lovers stopped for her: a truck driver who had a basset hound at home, a kid on his way home from Boston College who had missed his sheepdog all semester, an older woman who had lost her German shepherd a week earlier and who went an hour out of her way to drop Ava at the dirt driveway that led to the Abbots’ house. The orchard dogs picked up Jack’s scent and approached aggressively, howling and circling, finally slinking away when Ava’s father emerged from the house with the shotgun he said that he carried to scare off coyotes and bears.

“What’s that thing supposed to be?” Mr. Abbot nodded to what appeared to him to be a black wolf. Mr. Abbot was watchful at all times, always expecting the worst. No Hello, no I missed you or Welcome home. “I know a wolf when I see one.”

“He’s my dog.” Ava had dropped her hand to Jack’s head and faced her grumpy father. “A German shepherd.” She set down her suitcase and the satchel of textbooks that would help her prepare for her sophomore year. Her concentration was botany, and she was looking forward to her classes in the fall. All she had to do was get through the summer.

“Like hell he is,” her father responded. “That’s a wolf.”

“He has a collar and he eats dog food, so I’d say he was a dog.” Ava had never spoken back to her father, and he looked quite shocked. “I could see why you’d think that,” she added, backtracking, seeing what appeared to be fear in her father’s eyes. “But he’s just a black German shepherd.”

Ava’s mother came outside when she heard rising voices. She looked much older, as if seven years had passed in one. “Keep him in the shed,” she called to Ava, adding, “Black dogs bring bad luck.”