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Primrose shot Gothel a disapproving look, but Hazel answered. “I think Gothel is right. We should do something with Mother’s ashes. We should put her to rest. I think we should build something in the conservatory’s place, something beautiful so our minds don’t always go to that horrible night every time we pass it.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Primrose. “That’s a good idea, Hazel.”
“Well, who wants breakfast?” asked Hazel, leading her sisters back to their house. “We have scones waiting for us.”
The house seemed heavy with their mother’s memory. More than ever Gothel thought she had made the right decision to let Primrose decorate the house as she wished. Not only would she have her sisters; she would have the time she needed to work out the blood ritual, since Primrose had agreed to stay. Now they just needed to figure out how to get the thicket open so they could get the things they would need to make their somber mansion a home—a home she and her sisters would share forever.
The sister witches sat at the long wooden table in the dining room. It was a deep cherry wood. The only decorations in the barren room were carvings of ravens on the walls and over the archways. There was a blazing fire in the large stone fireplace, which had a mantel supported by two enormous statues crafted to look like dead trees with ravens perched in their branches. It was a cavernous room with many windows, open to the elements, overlooking the dead woods and the graves of their mother’s minions. The entire landscape was bleak, with its gray sky, black trees, and white headstones. The sisters just sat there, silently staring at the plate of scones on the table, which was littered with dried leaves that had blown in from the windows. The scones were untouched, with the hazelnut butter and preserves sitting beside them.
“We have to figure out how to open the thicket. Our pantries are full now, but we will have to refill them at some point,” said Hazel.
“I don’t even know where Mother went to get all our supplies. I mean, I don’t recall her ever leaving the dead woods, do you?”
“I wonder. Do you think the tall creature Jacob would know?” asked Gothel.
“I don’t know, Gothel. I’d rather never wake them again,” sai
d Primrose, finally taking one of the scones and putting it on a small gray plate edged with silver.
“I understand,” said Gothel, not wanting to upset her sister by saying she didn’t agree with her. She quickly changed the subject, directing their conversation to the house renovations. “We should have shutters made for these windows, don’t you think? I never understood why mother wanted this room open to the outside. What do you think, Prim? Shutters?”
“I think that’s a good idea. We can open them when we want to let in the light.”
“Yes! You know, I’m going to find Mother’s journals and see if there is something written about the thicket, and where she got our food and other supplies. Hazel, can you take an inventory and see how long our current supplies will last?”
“Good idea, Gothel,” said Hazel.
“And, Prim, would you like to go around the house and make notes on everything we will need to make the house as you would like it? Furniture, drapes, paintings, statues—you name it—whatever your heart desires.”
“Do we really have enough gold to do all of that?” asked Primrose.
“Gothel has the key,” said Hazel.
“The key?” asked Primrose.
“Yes, she has the key to Mother’s fortune.”
“I suppose it’s our fortune now.” Gothel smiled. She never paused to wonder where the money came from, and it seemed never to run out. “Don’t worry, Sisters. We will make a beautiful life here. I promise we will make this place our home.”
Gothel walked the long winding path that led from the conservatory to the dense part of the dead woods she and her sisters called the city of the dead. It was nice to stretch her legs after many hours of reading her mother’s books, trying to find another way to get past the thicket, and something told her Jacob had the answers she needed. She walked past endless tombstones and crypts lining the little pathways and creating a sort of labyrinth. There was no breeze that day, so the weeping willows’ branches were still, obscuring the gray sky and letting in very little light. The path was littered with dried leaves and broken branches that crunched under Gothel’s feet as she made her way to the creature’s crypt. It was as if she had always known where he rested, her feet guiding her right to his doorstep. His crypt was more beautiful than the others in the city; it was larger, more like a little house with its stained glass windows and weeping angel to the right of the stone door. She wondered if he had made a home for himself in there. She wondered how he spent his time. She imagined him sitting at a little round wooden table, with a single candle, writing a love letter to her mother.
Gods, what am I doing here?
She knew her sisters would be upset if they found out she had come to see the creature, but something within her told her he would have the answers to her questions. And since he was now bound to Gothel and her sisters, he would have to answer her truthfully. Or at least that was what it said in her mother’s book. There was an interesting passage in one of her mother’s journals that called him by name: Sir Jacob. To know his name is to have power over him. To know his name means he can do you no harm. According to her mother’s books, he wasn’t like the other creatures that were bound to the witches of the woods. Something about him was different, and Gothel intended to find out what that was.
Her mother had called the creature her love, and it occurred to Gothel that her mother might have actually loved the man.
She had so many questions she wanted to ask her mother. There was so much she didn’t know. After years of neglect, leaving Gothel and her sisters to wander the woods alone, motherless while she was doing her magic, she was now gone without passing her magic on to her daughters, with no legacy of witches to take her place. Gothel suddenly felt the burden of guilt, not only for killing her mother but for sending her family and their legacy into ruins.
Gothel stood before Jacob’s crypt, its stained glass window adorned with a large red anatomically designed heart. The angel sat before the creature’s stone doorway, splayed on the marble slab, weeping into the crook of her arm, her wings flat against her naked body, giving the poor angel her dignity. Gothel had never noticed before, but the angel looked a bit like her mother, with her long hair and slender frame. It was eerie seeing an image that looked so much like her mother weeping. She had never seen her mother cry, not in all their years, until the previous night. The night of her death. There was so much about her mother she didn’t know, even beyond practical matters like where she got their food or how she did her magic. Gothel knew nothing about her at all, unless she had read it in one of her books. Maybe her mother had slipped away in the night when Gothel and her sisters slept. She could have had an entire life Gothel didn’t know about. She certainly hadn’t spent it with her daughters, except to swoop in on them occasionally with little gifts to appease them and keep them occupied. But where had she gotten those things? Prim’s scissors and Hazel’s paper? She clearly had gone out of the dead woods often for all those little things. Could she really have been so consumed by magic there was nothing else in her life? Nothing but necromancy, cultivating the flowers, death, and resurrection?
Gothel sighed. And she knocked on the creature’s crypt door. Maybe Jacob will know.
“Sir Jacob, rise. Your queen is in need of you.”
The crypt door opened slowly. The sound of stone rubbing against stone was unnerving to her; it set her teeth on edge and filled her body with a strange tingling sensation that made her feel trapped within herself.
He stepped out of the crypt, his feet shuffling among the dried leaves and twigs. Sir Jacob was even taller than the image Gothel had of him in her mind. And his skull seemed remarkably larger than the average male’s head. He was enormous, this man; the size of his hands alone was twice that of hers, if not more. She wondered what this man had looked like when he was alive. He must have had a long narrow face with high pronounced cheekbones, and his eyes, still intact, looked as if they might have been blue, though now they were cloudy and white.
