Page 10 of The Book of Unwritten Stories

‘I am in love with you, Lucine English, I cannot help it. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you.’

Lucine was taken aback. ‘So in love with me that you brought me a cow when you could have picked some wild flowers?’

‘Yes, flowers will wilt and die, but every time you look at May you will think of me.’

Lucine laughed. ‘You are a strange one, Mister…?’

‘John to you, plain old John. I have no airs and graces; I do not need you to call me so formally, Miss English.’

She smiled to herself, he was indeed named John, and she had hoped for something a little more exotic. ‘Then you must call me Lucine, for I have no airs or graces either. How long are you here for, John?’

‘Well now, I was passing through because I got misdirected by my nightmare horse, but I am pleased that dreadful old mare brought me this way now, for if she had not, I would not have fallen upon the graceful beauty of yourself and your lovely sisters.’

Lucine snorted in the most unladylike manner, which made John’s eyes sparkle in the midday sunlight.

She led the cow to the pasture next to her garden and patted its flanks. ‘Help yourself, May, there is plenty of grass for you.’

John was smiling at her. ‘Would you care to walk with me?’

‘To where? I fear the village is not the kind of place you would want to spend time in unless you need ale to quench your thirst from Ingersoll’s.’

‘I have no need of the dreadful slop they serve in there, have you drunk it yourself?’

She shook her head, biting her lip to stop laughing out loud. ‘I have once and I did not try it again. My sister Seraphina is better at making ale than the entire Ingersoll family but pray do not tell them I spoke so wicked of them. I will have to pay penance on Sunday at the meeting house, and I cannot abide those three-hour sermons that talk of nothing but nonsense and drivel. As if the devil is among us. He would have to be in need of desperate times to walk amongst the Puritans of Salem village.’

It was John’s turn to snort. He laughed loud and bent double, slapping his thigh.

‘I fear, Lucine English, that ’tis too late for you, the devil has already corrupted thee.’

Lucine felt her cheeks flush pink and turned away. She felt his warm hands take hold of hers, his soft fingers warm and not at all like she expected them to feel.

‘John, this is most improper.’

He pulled her close and planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘Aye, ’tis, but you have stolen my heart, and I think you are keeping it for thine own pleasure. Come walk with me, I promise not to throw you to the devil. I will take very great care of thee should he appear from behind a tree.’

Lucine shook her head but followed him all the same. She would not, could not admit it but he, too, had stolen her heart the moment she laid eyes on him, and she knew she would not be able to say no even if she wanted to.

NINE

SALEM, PRESENT DAY

Morana dragged herself from her bed. She had endured almost a full night of the worst nightmares. They had all been about her mom. She barely remembered what she looked like, and in some ways it didn’t matter, as what she remembered was how it felt to be abandoned as a child at the time when she needed her mom more than anything. That feeling had filled her nightmare.

Then there had been other nightmares. Those of a life she did not remember; living with a woman who was not her mom, a flamboyant man that came to visit her, riding the most beautiful dapple-grey horse, his smile wide. He looked familiar, yet she had never seen him before in her life. He left her, too, riding away into the sunset leaving a crushing feeling of loss inside of her chest. She’d screamed after him, but he’d never looked back. She was just a child trying to chase after his horse. Even in her dreams everyone she knew and loved left her. The bad dreams had only stopped when the sun began to rise and its rays filtered through the crack in her blinds. Who was that guy and why had she dreamed about him? He looked as if he belonged in a travelling show from hundreds of years ago. It wasn’t as if she’d watched any movies lately, no historical ones; in fact, she preferred classic slasher flicks to anything remotely educational.

She peered at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and grimaced. Those dark bluish circles under her eyes had not been there yesterday morning. Sticking out her tongue it was off-colour.

‘Am I ill?’ she said out loud, and her reflection shrugged back at her.

Splashing icy water onto her eyes and cheeks to wake herself up, she hoped she wasn’t coming down with the flu. It was a busy season, and she didn’t have the time to be sick. Her apartment was still cooler than usual which made her check the AC again. Maybe it was broken too. It was on the setting she’d changed it to in the middle of the night.

Morana stared at the spell book on the table and decided to take it back to the shop with her. She didn’t want it in her home a moment longer if it had caused her nightmares and her rotten mood. She would tell Kim that if a weird woman came into the shop to give her the book back. That thought made her feel better, and the fizzing in her stomach calmed enough that she could eat half a buttered bagel.

As ready as she was going to be for the day ahead of her, she scooped the book back into the brown paper bag, tucking it inside of her purse. Then she did the same with the planchette necklace, unsure which of the two items had caused her all this grief. She was giving them both back, and even though her shift didn’t start for another hour, she needed to get them out of her apartment.

* * *

Morana stepped out into the crisp, chill autumn air and sucked in a huge breath. She could smell the salt from the sea and for a moment she thought about heading down to the House of the Seven Gables to go sit in the gardens and try to clear her head. It wasn’t open yet, so that was a no, but it was one of her favourite places in Salem, the mansion had such a lovely history to it and had been a favourite place of the great Gothic author Nathaniel Hawthorne who had been born in a house on Union Street in Salem on the fourth of July in 1804 that had been moved onto the beautiful campus of the mansion.