The Book of Magic, page 32
* * *
Now, a year had passed since that day, and the world had changed. The dark spring had taken its toll, but this season the lilacs had surged with masses of blooms. Sally’s wedding took place on the first of June, the ceremony held beneath the tree that had been brought to town three hundred years earlier by a man who believed in love. Women still whispered his name, as if the words Samuel Dias were a prayer that could bring them the sort of love Maria Owens had found with him. They were buried together in the Owens family cemetery, sharing a single headstone decorated with an etching of a magnolia tree, the oldest tree on earth, here long before men and women lived and died, before there were bees. Men still got down on one knee and declared their love beneath the magnolia’s branches; women said their vows here and meant every word.
Reverend Willard, now the oldest man in the county, officiated at the wedding and was proud to do so. He was carried across the lawn in his hospital bed by the Merrill brothers, George and Billy, now close to seventy themselves, and he was clearly overjoyed to still be alive on this glorious day. The Reverend had agreed to perform the service if it took under five minutes and Chocolate Tipsy Cake was served afterward, a bargain that was quickly agreed to.
The cake for Sally’s wedding took three full days to bake and was the size needed to feed fifty people. It was the largest of its kind ever made, with so much rum involved that half the town was drunk merely because they breathed the air. Bees found their way into the kitchen, their wings dusted with powdered sugar, but they didn’t linger on the day of this joyous occasion, and strays were chased away with dish towels, for no one wished to be stung on a day of celebration.
The sky was cloudless and blue and most people believed that the Owens sisters ensured it would be so. Rain on a wedding day is said to be good luck, but it’s also quite messy when the festivities are to be held outside; no one wanted that gorgeous Tipsy Cake to dissolve into a pool of melting chocolate. Blue ribbons were laced through the tablecloths, and everyone in the wedding party had their jacket or dress hemmed with blue thread. The Owens family from Maine was there, told in no uncertain terms to keep family secrets to themselves, and the New York Owenses were all staying at the Black Rabbit Inn, while the members of the Dias-Owens contingent from California had arrived, speaking Portuguese among one another, all of them dark and good-looking.
The weeklong celebration began with a pre-wedding lunch in a nearby field, where the bride and groom-to-be were toasted. Long wooden tables were propped up in the grass. Ice-cold beer and rosé wine were served at lunch, along with oysters that out-of-towners wolfed down, and then, for anyone who still had room, rich slices of Honesty Cake, which made for several interesting speeches in which declarations of love and buried desires were blurted out and later retracted. An older gentleman had arrived from France, very elegant, wearing a black linen suit, and speaking French whenever he wanted to avoid a question. It was said he was Franny and Jet’s baby brother, Vincent, beloved and missed for many years. He liked to walk through town at night and the neighborhood dogs took to following him on his route. Everyone in town fell in love with him and people came outside to wave when he passed by. After the first two days of his visit, they all knew his name, and many local people decided to sign up for the conversational French course at the library on Monday evenings.
On the third day of his visit, Vincent was no longer alone. An English gentleman had joined him, arriving in time for the weekend, and he and Vincent were soon ensconced in the bridal suite at the Black Rabbit Inn. A year earlier, before leaving England for Franny’s funeral, Vincent had phoned David Ward, asking him if they might meet on his way to the airport. Vincent remembered what William had told him on the last day of his life. Be in love. It won’t take anything away from us. And it hadn’t. Vincent and David now lived together in the village of La Flotte, and had brought Dodger with them to run along the beach and take up space in their bed. It had all happened because Vincent had known it was what William would have wanted for him.
When he’d gone to meet David in London, Vincent had waited on the bench in Hyde Park, surprised by how nervous he was.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” David told him when he arrived.
Vincent laughed. “I think you knew.”
“Hoping isn’t knowing.”
“Isn’t it?” Vincent had said.
* * *
There was a great deal of excitement now that Sally Owens had arrived back home after a year away, bringing an Englishman of her own with her. Ian Wright was carefully observed by one and all, and had been asked several times if he had known any of the Beatles. Indeed, he had not, he was sorry to say, which was a disappointment. People exchanged glances when they noticed he was covered with tattoos; they had assumed so much ink meant he had ties to the music business, but obviously that was a wrong guess. Several of the Maine cousins began to wonder if perhaps this fellow of Sally’s was a criminal, but it was soon discovered that he was a professor and a writer, which would explain why he sat at home at his desk all day and had never met any of the Beatles. But Sally would be returning to England after the wedding, and you never knew who she might meet.
It was a surprise that Sally had left town, but it was impossible to know where fate would lead you, and it seemed she had made the best of it. The fiancé she’d brought home was exceptionally friendly, chatting with everyone, even the cousins from Maine; he could hold his drink extremely well and he seemed bemused by the family. Maybe this was why Sally seemed changed, and many people vowed that her silver-gray eyes had turned a pale blue. She had always been so reserved, ice-cold some might say, but now that she’d returned after a year away she actually remembered local people’s names, something that had never occurred when she’d worked at the library. Back then she would stare at you, point a finger at the middle of your chest, and announce the last book you’d withdrawn. You were forever known to her as Fahrenheit 451 or Olive Kittredge or Beloved.
The taproom at the inn had been rented out for Friday night, and Sally’s daughters had decorated with black crepe paper and black balloons. Vincent’s guest, David Ward, had taught the bartender how to make a really good martini, and although they were invited to attend, the two decided they would take the opportunity to make a quick trip to Manhattan so that Vincent could show David the house at 44 Greenwich Avenue where he’d lived when he was young, when the world began to open up to him, when he fell in love for the first time, but, as it turned out, not the last.
Kylie and Antonia had planned the bachelorette party for over a month, with Sally putting in her two cents via telephone. No macaroni and cheese! No embarrassing speeches! They bickered over the menu and the guest list, but all agreed on one thing. Now that the curse was gone, they could all love someone without fear of reprisal.
Since her return from England, Kylie’s hair had remained densely black, worn in a waist-length braid. She left it that way to remind herself of the first Essex County, where enchantments occurred and people went missing. It happened all the time. A woman would be found wandering in a desperate search for her beloved, a man would drink himself to death beneath a holly tree, a girl defied her parents and set off to have an adventure never to be heard from again, all were said to have been toad, placed under a spell. Kylie had been toad. She had overheard Margaret Wright assure her worried, bleary-eyed family that she would recover. She’d been on the wrong path, but had returned to them, damaged, it was true, but returned all the same. Still, they must remember that those who had been toad were altered in some deep way that was irreversible, and their futures could be precarious if those around them weren’t vigilant. No snakes, no stones, no nights spent alone for a good long while, no narcotics, no needles, no knives, no razors, no mirrors. Such individuals must be treated with kindness even when they sulked and looked at the world with dread through unenchanted eyes. It was best not to mention the changes that might have occurred, the black hair, for instance, the vacant stares. Best to wrap your arms around the person who’d been missing, for an enchantment is a step out of ordinary life, and when that person returns nothing is the same, not her image in the mirror, not the lines across her palm.
* * *
Kylie had, indeed, been changed, but the one constant was her love for Gideon. She and Gideon had moved into the house on Magnolia Street as soon as his physical therapy ended. Gideon didn’t often speak about the time when he was between worlds.
“I am so sorry,” Kylie said when she first got to the hospital to see him.
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said. “I was the idiot who stepped in front of a car.”
He had changed as well and was a much more serious person now, planning on applying to medical school. He drove down to Cambridge every Tuesday and Thursday to attend classes, dropping Kylie on the other side of the Charles River. She had left Harvard and now attended Simmons University, where she was studying library science. As it turned out, she had a passion for books. On weekends, Kylie worked with Miss Hardwick at the Owens Library, and the after-school story hour she led was beloved by mothers and children alike. Currently, she was reading Half Magic, in which only half of wishes that were made came true, prompting all sorts of unexpected adventures. Many of the children who came on Tuesday afternoons arrived half an hour early, desperate to hear what happened next to Jane and Katharine and Mark and Martha, who was very, very difficult indeed. It seemed that half magic was often quite enough.
Whenever she walked home from the library and turned onto Magnolia Street, Kylie had no desire to be anywhere else. In every generation there was someone who stayed, who planted the garden early in the spring, and kept the bees, and switched on the porch light at twilight so the neighbors knew they were welcome to come for cures and elixirs. As it turned out, Kylie was quite good at magic. She took good care of the red Grimoire Franny had left for them, kept under lock and key in the greenhouse. All they had ever known and all they would need to know had been written down in it, and not a single line had been lost. Kylie was in residence on Magnolia Street, and by rights the book belonged to her now.
There was rarely a night when neighbors didn’t come to the door for help, which was always given freely, although often there would be payment left on the porch, a hand-knitted sweater, a pot of chrysanthemums, a silver serving spoon, an envelope of cash, and once, quite recently, a black kitten Kylie had named Raven, a great mouser who stretched out on the porch on warm days as if he owned the place.
On weekends there was often a full house on Magnolia Street. Gillian and Ben came to visit nearly every weekend, glad to be out of the city. Margaret’s remedy had worked and Gillian had the daughter she’d always wanted, a little girl named Francesca Bridget after the aunts, but called Birdie by one and all. Birdie had been born at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge on March 21, a date that was no longer considered unlucky. Oh, beautiful day. Oh, March 21. People who were born on this day had a unique brand of courage and what more could a woman wish for her daughter? Ben Frye had handed out chocolate cigars to anyone he could stop in the corridor. He and Gillian were both deliriously happy to step blindly into whatever was to happen next. Birdie had a tuft of red hair and her features resembled Franny’s; she was stubborn and serious and could call birds to the window with a wave of her hand, sparrows and hawks alike.
“Something tells me she’s not like all the other little girls,” Ben said of his daughter. He had never understood the Owens curse, but now that it was over he had moved downstairs and was happy to forget whatever it was that had kept them apart. Frankly, nothing could have kept him from his daughter. The baby had silver eyes and she never cried and her father was over the moon every time he saw her.
“She’s not like the other girls,” Gillian said proudly. “She’s extraordinary.”
The baby girl Antonia had expected, however, had turned out to be a boy named Leo, now nearly a year old, adored by his four parents, adored by one and all. Scott Morrison, Leo’s biological father and his husband, Joel, loved to come up to the house on Magnolia Street whenever they could, and Antonia, busy as ever, still came for dinner with Ariel and their son every Sunday evening.
Leo was pure trouble, delightful from the start, and when Antonia saw baby pictures of Vincent she was amazed by how much her son resembled him. In public places, where he might easily be lost, Antonia kept Leo on a baby leash, but he was already close to figuring out how to unsnap the harness, and once that happened Antonia was grateful that he had four people to run after him. Often, when she was over at Mount Auburn Hospital on rounds with the attending physician, she bumped into Scott and they would sneak a look at photos of their little boy and mull over what their high school selves would think of their current lives, in which their utmost concerns were day care and consumption of apple juice.
“We would think our lives were perfect,” Antonia told her dear friend. “We would think we were the luckiest people on earth.”
* * *
Sally still had the keys to the library, which she used to enter the building on the night before her wedding, even though it was after hours and meant she would be late to her own bachelorette party, an Owens tradition the night before the wedding, since weddings had been so rare. She flicked on the lights, delighted to see the library was exactly as she remembered it. She went to the rare-books section and found the shelf she’d always ignored, the one Franny and Jet had insisted they keep for magic books. There was a Grimoire written by Agnes Durant’s sixth great-grandmother, Catherine, along with a brand-new copy of Ian’s book, The History of Magic.
She’d gone back for The Book of the Raven after Franny’s drowning, and had kept it ever since, knowing it should be returned to the library. It was such a small volume that it nearly disappeared when Sally fitted it in between two larger, more imposing-looking volumes of English magic. Some people vow that a book contains the soul of the writer, and often the best ones are written by those who have no voice, yet still have a story to tell. Amelia Bassano knew there would be women who would do anything to fulfill a wish or break a curse or fall in love.
Make one wish and pay the price. Make one mistake and it can haunt you. All the same, love who you will. Know that language is everything. Never give your words away.
The Book of the Raven was meant to go to the next woman who needed it. It might sit on the shelf for another three hundred years or it might be discovered the very next day, either way it would continue to live, for people often find the books they need.
Sally locked up the library for the last time, then ran all the way to the inn. She was the last to arrive and threw up her hands, flustered by the size of the crowd at the Black Rabbit and all the fuss that was made when she walked in and everyone shouted, Congratulations, and applauded like mad. She wasn’t used to being the center of attention, but after her first cocktail a feeling of recklessness came over her and after her third, a signature drink that Gillian had concocted, called the Toad, which included crushed mint, vodka, grapefruit juice, and rosemary with a splash of rum, Sally got up on the bar of the taproom with Gillian for a hilarious chorus of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.”
Sally Owens, who had always been so somber and had often held forth about the rules of silence and decorum when she’d run the library, had cast away her dreary black clothes and instead wore a vintage sixties Biba minidress patterned in yellow and magenta, bought in a thrift shop on Westbourne Grove. The Black Rabbit was so crowded there was a line out the door. Many of the clients who’d come to the Owenses for cures over the years were in attendance, along with the board of the library, and the mothers of the children who steadfastly brought their children to story hour, and who, if the truth be told, hung around the edges of the room to hear what happened next. Miss Hardwick gave a speech dressed as Emily Dickinson, all in white. She would remain to oversee the library until Kylie finished her degree and officially took over. The truth of it was, Miss Hardwick would stay until the morning she died, in bed, reading, which was not to happen for quite a long time.
People were well aware that this was Sally’s third marriage, but the curse was over, and love was love, and everyone could see the way Sally gazed into the Englishman’s liquid black eyes when he arrived with Vincent and his guest. Some folks in town swore they had heard Sally let out a burst of laughter when she was in the arms of her husband-to-be, not some hasty sarcastic hoot, but real joy that lingered, as if she were truly happy, and if that was the case, why, then, anything was possible.
Sally’s girls had given her their blessings when she first told them she would be returning to England after Franny’s funeral, and Gillian had held her close and whispered, Live a lot. Ian had already given up his place on Rosehart Mews, and they had begun to renovate a ramshackle place known as the Witch’s House at the edge of the fens, bought cheaply and with the approval of the town council. As for Sally, she had taken a position at Cat’s Library, and in the afternoons, Ian went off to join her at the library to work on his new book, The Uses of Magic. He had taken Franny’s advice and had begun researching local women who had written Grimoires, which, at the rate he was going, would likely take him another twenty years. During the cleanup of Lockland Manor, a desk had been found among the trash, and had been brought over to the library where it was now known as the professor’s desk. Local people, especially those who had been affected by the Red Death, left pens as tokens of their pride that one of their own had published his first book, which was over eleven hundred pages long, though Ian had been more concise with a simple dedication on the very first page.
