The Book of Magic, page 33
To my mother who introduced me to magic, and to Sally Owens who introduced me to love.
* * *
Not long after Sally had returned to Thornfield after Franny’s funeral, on a day when Ian was at work plastering what would be a guest bedroom, Margaret Wright had arrived and had discreetly taken Sally aside.
“I can teach you the Unnamed Art,” she’d told Sally. “It has its failures and disappointments, but you’ll be quick to pick it up. Perhaps we should start now, before I forget all that I know.”
The Unnamed Art was an acquired skill and Sally was an excellent student. She quickly learned which local herbs were useful and which were so dangerous that plucking them was often a drastic error, with results that could cause spiritual distress and physical agony. Once, when she’d failed to heed Margaret’s directions, she’d picked stinging nettle, an error she never made again, and she was thankful that she knew to use jewelweed to cure nettle’s agony. She had learned how to make elixirs for fevers and rashes and potions for love, and as it turned out, magic came back to her, not the bloodline magic she’d been born with, but the magic she made for herself. This was the fate she had chosen.
Sally was happy to live at the edge of the world with the herons who fished in the shallow water. When the light was thin and pale, she held a hand over her eyes and looked out over the fens, searching for the dark-haired girl she had seen across the distance of three hundred years. She saw her only once, going knee-deep in water to try to reach her, one hand held over her eyes.
“It all worked out,” Sally called to her. “We fell in love and we paid the price, but it’s finally over and you don’t have to worry about us.”
One afternoon, in the chilly blue month of March, on the day when Franny was born and Jet had left the world, Sally was walking through one of her favorite fields, where daisies grew wild and she thought she spied a black heart in the grass. It was a young crow fallen from its nest in the wet gusts of the previous evening, who came to her of its own accord. She named the bird Houdini, after the great magician. She brought it home and nursed it, and when Ian saw it he grinned and said, “Be prepared. He’ll never leave.”
Much to Sally’s delight, he hadn’t. She’d left Houdini with Jesse Wilkie at the Three Hedges Inn to be cared for during their wedding trip to Massachusetts. He was meant to stay in the large iron cage the inn kept in the old milking room, but Jesse had a big heart, however, and couldn’t keep the crow caged, allowing Houdini to sit at the bar, where he often behaved badly, stealing cherries and orange slices and crossly refusing to accept any pats from those who’d had a drink too many. Occasionally he’d swoop across the barroom so he could stare out the window, lovelorn. The crow made a clattering sound that was quite heartbreaking. “Sally will come back to you,” Jesse told him. “Wait and see.”
* * *
Unable are the Loved to die, for love is immortality, the Reverend quoted at the end of the marriage service, a blessing not only for the happy couple exchanging vows, but also in remembrance of Jet, whose favorite poet was Emily Dickinson, and of Franny, who had sacrificed so much for those she loved. The entire ceremony took under four minutes. Sally wore the black dress Franny had worn at her wedding, and her red boots. The color red had come back to her slowly, first in Ian’s flat on the day she met him, in flashes of rose and scarlet, until one day she was cutting an apple for them to share and the color was so brilliant that she burst into tears. Red, after all, was the color of love.
Sally wore Maria Owens’s sapphire pendant, as was customary at an Owens wedding. When Sally and Ian kissed they couldn’t seem to stop, and a sigh went up among the crowd as people remembered what true love was like, and how lucky those who found it were. The babies in attendance were surprisingly well behaved during the ceremony. Birdie, only two months old, was utterly silent, in awe of the magnolia trees with their huge saucer-sized flowers. Antonia had let Leo run around beforehand so he could tire himself out and yet he still had enough energy to hide under the table where the wedding cake was being plated, refusing to come when called. “He’s your spitting image,” everyone declared when Vincent came to claim his great-grandson, and even the Owenses from Maine, who were notoriously argumentative, had to agree. Antonia laughed and told Ariel that if that was true they were in for some big-time trouble. Vincent had never adhered to the rules.
Sally adored the little boy, and didn’t mention to Antonia that when she and Vincent had taken him into the parlor, Leo had made the books in the study jump off the shelves simply by waving his hands. They’d looked at each other and laughed. Antonia had no idea what she was in for.
“I had to practice for ages to do that,” Vincent confided.
When Antonia came looking for Leo, and asked what had happened to the books, Vincent shrugged and said there were known to be little earthquakes in this part of the commonwealth. Sally had then unclasped the necklace she had worn during the ceremony so that she could give Maria’s sapphire to Antonia. “To wear at the next wedding,” she said to her darling daughter. “How lucky to be able to fall in love.”
Vincent sat in the sunlight, where he removed his tie and his jacket and grinned at David, who was so enamored of America he was wearing a Red Sox cap. Oh, how Vincent wished he could tell his sisters how unexpected everything was. He wished they could sit down at the table, today, in the sunlight, so that he could tell them everything. Once, a long time ago, before we knew who we were, we thought we wanted to be like everyone else. How lucky to be exactly who we were.
The guests had a lavish wedding supper of lobster and scallops baked into a rosemary crust, with salads of every sort of lettuce, all fresh from the garden, and at last there was Tipsy Cake with cream, served while they all admired Leo and how precocious he was. Why, if you weren’t watching him like a hawk, he’d climb into the lilacs and disappear. He might have shaken down the cake table that he ducked beneath, had his great-grandfather not coaxed him out with the promise of a biscuit.
Margaret Wright, who was visiting America for the very first time, made a rum punch that people couldn’t get enough of, a drink that cheered up even the most contrary people. The porch was festooned with paper lanterns, and candles set into sand-filled white sacks marked the bluestone path to their door and would be lit when twilight fell. Margaret was delighted when Vincent invited her along on the tour of the greenhouse with David. “This is marvelous,” she declared, deciding then and there that Ian must build one for her so that she could grow herbs all winter long.
Women here in Massachusetts had been drowned and beaten and hanged, especially if they were found to have access to books other than the Bible, for the Puritans had been convinced that they alone had the ear of God. On the morning of the wedding day, when several women in the family were sleeping off their hangovers, Margaret decided that she wished to see the spot where the witches here had been hanged. No one knew, she was told. The bodies had been buried secretly, in remote places, for they were not allowed into hallowed ground, although a few were dug up and reinterred in the town cemetery when the witch mania passed. All the same, that morning, before anyone else was awake, Sally had driven Margaret out to the hill where the gallows were thought to have been. There’d been a mist over the ground and the world was beautiful, as if it were brand new. Margaret Wright was a tough individual, but she cried on the hillside as the crows all rose from the trees.
“You’ll take care of him, won’t you?” Margaret had said to Sally.
“Ian can take care of himself.” Sally held Margaret’s hand in her own. They’d become quite close during Sally’s studies of the Unnamed Art. “You taught him that.”
It was likely true, but once you started worrying about someone it wasn’t easy to stop.
“Now, he’ll take care of you,” Sally told Margaret, and perhaps she was right. Just after the wedding service, while everyone was drinking rum punch, Ian had offered to go make his mother a cup of tea, for she’d always abstained from alcohol. True, he’d never returned to the garden with the promised tea, and Margaret had been forced to go in search of him, finding him reading at the kitchen table, ignoring the chaos around him. He had indeed put the kettle on, but then he’d been distracted by an old copy of The Magus that had belonged to Vincent.
“The kettle’s whistling,” Margaret said. She had never seen her son look happier. He was a handsome man, even with all that ink, and of course she saw that for what it was—his pain rising up, his story and his vow to look for magic.
“So it is.” Ian hugged her on the way to the stove and Margaret flung her arms around her son, for a moment not wishing to let him go. Such a display was very unusual for both, for they were not ones to easily show their emotions for one another. They stepped back after their embrace, a bit stunned. Love had done this to Ian Wright. He’d never quite understood it before, why it was written about with such fervor, why people did such profoundly stupid things because of it, sacrificing their futures and their lives, making foolish mistakes they’d live to regret. He knew scores of spells and incantations, in Hebrew and ancient Persian, in runic and Italian, but they’d meant nothing to him. Now he had stepped forward blindly into love, a madman and a fool and proud to be so.
“Where’s our Sally?” Margaret asked.
“Paying her respects to the dead.” When Ian saw worry arise on his mother’s face, knowing she thought it might mean bad luck if they were apart on their wedding day, he added, “I’ll have her for the rest of her life.”
When he was young and in jail, Ian had been told that the one tattoo a man should never get was his woman’s name. People would lie to you and betray you; they would cheat on you and make you wish you’d never met them, and there you’d be, marked by their name. Only fools made a pledge announcing a love that lasted forever, but he had done exactly that before they set out for Massachusetts. Across the wrist of his left hand, there was the fate he’d made for himself, a direct line to his heart, the last story he wanted to tell, Sally’s name, the most important bit of magic, the end and the beginning of his story.
* * *
While the guests gathered in the garden, Sally and Gillian exchanged a look, then left through the gate unnoticed. Birdie was in her stroller, already dozing when they took off, headed toward the end of Main Street, past the magnolia that grew on the library lawn. It was said that Maria herself had planted it there when she was a very old woman, helped by her daughter Faith and by her grandchildren, who were descendants of Thomas Brattle, who had written so eloquently against the witch trials and had secretly loved Faith.
The aunts were divided in death, buried in opposite sides of town. Jet’s plot was beside that of her first love’s, Levi Willard, and Franny was interred in the Owens Cemetery, beside her husband, Haylin Walker. It was a tradition to bring the recently deceased a slice of cake after a wedding; Gillian and Sally went to the town cemetery first, with Gillian pushing Birdie’s stroller along the gravel path. Sally held the plates of cake, along with a bunch of daffodils, Jet’s favorite flower. As they neared the gravesite, they saw that a canvas folding chair had been set up. An older man was there, with a sandwich and a thermos of coffee, a little white dog beside him. There were already daffodils on the grave.
The dog began to bark as Sally and Gillian approached.
“Daisy, stop,” the man commanded the dog, who ignored him and continued to yap. “So sorry,” he apologized. “She’s my watchdog.”
It was then the sisters recognized the stranger.
“We’re Jet’s nieces,” Sally said. “We remember you from her funeral.”
“I’m here every Sunday.” Rafael noticed the flowers Sally held. “Her favorites.” He watched as Sally placed the daffodils beside those he had brought, then added the plate of cake.
“We always bring a slice of wedding cake to those we love who are gone,” Gillian explained. “My sister Sally was married today.”
“You should come to the house,” Sally urged. “Dinner is being served right now.”
“What about the curse?”
“We’re rid of it,” Gillian assured him. The sisters exchanged a look. They knew how lucky they were. “Franny and Jet did it for us.”
* * *
Franny’s stone had been installed a year after her death. It was simple granite, taken from the cliffs towering above Leech Lake. The town council had voted to pass a special dispensation which allowed the removal of the granite from town land, which made sense, for long ago the Owens family had donated the outlying woods for community use. Sally and Gillian had both been terrified of Franny at first, and they laughed about it now, recalling her long black coat, her red boots, her pale as the moon skin, the way she narrowed her eyes when you were about to speak, as if she knew you were going to tell a fib before you yourself had even thought to do so. Jet was ready to love you, but you had to work to get into Franny’s good graces, although once you did, it was worth the effort.
When they reached her gravesite in the Owens Cemetery, Sally positioned the plate of Tipsy Cake on the earth. In a year the grass had grown tall and trout lilies and bloodroot had taken root in the dark soil. Sally and Gillian both lay on their backs, hands thrown over their eyes to shield them from the bright sunlight. Gillian had always had an open heart, but Sally had been convinced that she was born to love no one, and that no one would love her. Then she had come to the house on Magnolia Street and she’d taken her mean aunt’s hand and her heart had cracked open, just a little, but a little was enough.
“It’s a beautiful day,” she told Franny through the dark soil. “It’s my wedding day.”
“My little girl is named for you and Aunt Jet,” Gillian whispered.
They would be eternally grateful for their aunt’s love and sacrifice.
Dear, darling Franny, a thousand thank-yous.
Birdie was still napping in her stroller when they left the cemetery, a blanket over her to protect her freckled skin from the sun. She usually fell asleep without the least bit of fuss. Maybe she’d be trouble later, but she was perfect now. The sisters had a plan, one they’d kept to themselves, and there was just so long they could be missing from the wedding, so they hurried into the woods. There was no one at Leech Lake when they got there, except for a few dragonflies hovering over the calm surface. It was early in the season and the water was ice cold.
“This is crazy,” Sally said.
“Exactly,” Gillian replied. When would they be here together again? When would they have the chance?
They pulled off their clothes and dared each other to get into the water first, then they both counted to three and took off running. Birdie slept in the shade, not in the least bothered when the sisters splashed through the shallows, shrieking before immersing their entire bodies. As they swam out to deeper water, they both were thinking of Franny and Jet and of their summers here when they were young. Sometimes you don’t know how lucky you are until the time has passed you by. Sally had the urge to sit her daughters down and say, Don’t waste a minute, but it would do no good. A person had to live through her life in order to make sense of it.
“Do you think there’s really a sea monster?” Gillian asked, her voice lazy. They’d heard such stories ever since they’d first come to town.
“Anything’s possible.”
“But would it still be alive if it had been sighted in the 1600s?”
“Time is relative. There’s probably a loop of us sitting on the porch in our pajamas having chocolate cake for breakfast.”
They laughed and held hands, and then Sally surprised Gillian by diving into the blue depths. She could do that now that she had lost her powers, and, as it turned out, she was quite a show-off in the water.
“Unfair!” Gillian cried when Sally reappeared, bursting through the dark green weeds, spitting water and laughing. “You get to dive.”
“You get to float,” Sally shot back, paddling up beside her sister.
Oh, day they never wanted to end.
“We got what we wanted,” Gillian said in a soft tone. “Both of us.”
Sally felt a wash of love for her sister. Things didn’t last. They both knew that. “Will we have to pay a price for being happy?”
“Everyone does. That’s what it means to be alive.”
The water was so deep it was said there was no bottom, it reached all the way to the end of the earth. They were drifting among the lilies, abloom with their cream-colored flowers, their long, tangled roots dangling. They were shivery with the cold when they climbed out onto the banks. They waited until they were mostly dry, then pulled on their clothes, which they’d hung on the low boughs of evergreens. Birdie was still asleep. There were crows in the branches of the trees, peering down at them. Toads gathered in the shallows, calling softly.
“What do you think it all means?” Gillian asked.
“It means that no matter what, we will never be normal,” Sally said cheerfully. “With or without magic.”
“Never,” Gillian agreed.
They walked home along the dirt path that was called Faith’s Way by the locals. The last of the day’s hazy sunlight beat down on them and the air was still. There was the song of crickets, a trilling that filled their heads. It was still officially spring, but it felt like a summer afternoon.
“Will you miss being here?” Gillian asked.
“I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll spend every summer together at Vincent’s house in France.” Neither of them could bring themselves to call him grandfather; though they had come to love him dearly, Vincent just seemed too young for that title.
