The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

  Tonight it smelled of love.

  PART TWO

  Alchemy

  The most glorious hour in Manhattan was when twilight fell in sheets across the Great Lawn. Bands of blue turned darker by the moment as the last of the pale light filtered through the boughs of cherry trees and black locusts. In October, the meadows turned gold; the vines were twists of yellow and red. But the park was more and more crime-ridden. The Owens siblings had ridden their bikes on the paths without adult supervision when they were five and six and seven; now children were forbidden to go past the gates after nightfall. There were muggings and assaults; desperate men who had nowhere else to go slept on the green benches and under the yews.

  Yet to Franny, Central Park continued to be a great and wondrous universe, a science lab that was right down the street from their house. There were secret places near Azalea Pond where so many caterpillars wound cocoons in the spring that entire locust groves came alive in a single night with clouds of newly hatched Mourning Cloak butterflies. In autumn, huge flocks of migrating birds passed over, alighting in the trees to rest overnight as they traveled to Mexico or South America. Most of all, Franny loved the muddy Ramble, the wildest, most remote section of the park. In this overgrown jumble of woods and bogs there were white-tailed mice and owls. Birds stirred in the thickets, all of them drawn to her as she walked by. On a single day waves of thirty different sorts of warblers might drift above the park. Loons, cormorants, herons, blue jays, kestrels, vultures, swans, mallards, ducks, six varieties of woodpeckers, nighthawks, chimney swifts, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and hundreds more were either migrating flyovers or year-round residents. Once Franny had come upon a blue heron, nearly as tall as she. It walked right over to her, unafraid, while her own heart was pounding. She stayed still, trying her best to barely breathe as it came to rest its head against her cheek. She cried when it had flown away, like a beautiful blue kite. She, who prided herself on her tough exterior, could always be undone by the beauty of flight.

  Near the Ramble was the Alchemy Tree, an ancient oak hidden in a glen few park goers ever glimpsed, a gigantic twisted specimen whose roots grew up from the ground in knotty bumps. The tree was said to be five hundred years old, there long before teams of workers turned what had been an empty marshland into the groomed playground imagined by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1858, giving the city a form of nature more natural than the very thing it imitated. It was here, one chilly night, that the sisters dared to unearth the abilities they had inherited. It was Samhain, the last night in October, All Hallows’ Eve, the night when one season ended and another began.

  Their parents were out at a costume party, having dressed as Sigmund Freud and Marilyn Monroe. It was a night of festivity, and troops of children were scattered along the city streets. Two out of three little girls were witches with tilted black hats and rustling capes. Halloween in New York City always smelled like candy corn and bonfires. Jet and Franny cut across the park to meet Vincent after his guitar lesson. As they were early, there was time to sit on the damp grass. The summer had started them thinking: If they were not like everyone else, who, then, were they? Lately they’d been itching to know what they were capable of. They had never tried to combine whatever talents they might have.

  “Just this once,” Jet said. “Let’s see what happens. We can try something simple. A wish. One each. Let’s see if we can make it be.”

  Franny gave her sister a discouraging look. The last time she had said Just this once, two boys had been struck by lightning. Franny was definitely picking up something; Jet had an ulterior motive. There was something she desperately wanted. If there was ever a time to make a wish, it was now.

  “We can find out what Mother has been hiding from us,” Jet suggested. “See what we’re really able to do.”

  If there was a way to get Franny involved, it was suggesting an attempt to prove their mother wrong. They joined hands and right away the air around them grew heavy and dense. Franny repeated a phrase she had overheard Aunt Isabelle recite when one of her clients had asked for a wish to be fulfilled.

  We ask for this and nothing more. We ask once and will ask no more.

  A soft fog rose from the ground and the birds in the thickets stopped singing. This was it. Something was beginning. They looked at each other and decided they would try.

  “One wish apiece,” Franny whispered. “And nothing major. No world peace or the end of poverty. We wouldn’t want to push it over the limit and have some sort of rebound that does the opposite of the wish.”

  Jet nodded. She made her wish right away, eyes closed, breathing slowed. She was in a trance of desire and magic. Her face was flushed and hot. As for Franny, she wanted what she most often experienced in her dreams. To be among the birds. She preferred them to most human beings, their grace, their distance from the earth, their great beauty. Perhaps that was why they always came to her. In some way, she spoke their language.

  After a few minutes, when it seemed nothing would happen and the air was still so heavy Franny’s eyes had begun to close, Jet tugged on her sister’s arm.

  “Look up.”

  There on a low branch of the tree sat a huge crow.

  “Was that your wish?” Jet whispered, surprised.

  “More or less,” Franny whispered back.

  “Of all the things in the world, a bird?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “It is definitely studying you.”

  Franny stood up, took a deep breath, then lifted her arms in the air. As she did a cold wind gusted. The crow swooped off its branch and came to her just as the sparrow had in their aunt Isabelle’s house, as the heron had walked to her, as birds in the park were drawn to her from their nests in the thickets. This time, however, Franny was caught off guard by the sheer weight of the bird and by the way it looked at her, as if they knew each other. She could swear she could hear a voice echo from within its beating breast. I will never leave unless you send me away.

  She fainted right then and there in the grass.

  Vincent had begun to go downtown on a regular basis, most often headed for a bar on Christopher Street that he knew served minors, a rough, ratty tavern called the Jester frequented by depressed NYU students who drank themselves into oblivion before staggering back to their dormitory rooms. Ever since coming home, he’d been running away from himself, and drink was one way to do that. There were pockets of magic in some of the tavern’s booths, where plans had been hatched long ago. It was a good place to have a mug of ale and disappear.

  Occasionally he saw a glimmer of himself in the mirror above the bar, and then he would slink down in the booth. He wasn’t ready to see who he was. In The Magus there was a forgetting spell, which he cast upon himself. Still, he must have recited it incorrectly because he felt a spark of his true self when he was walking through the park at night. He heard his own heartbeat then and felt a quickening in his blood. He wondered what it might be like to open the door to a different life, one in which he did not hide in taverns or walk in the dark.

  Now, as he crossed the Ramble, he was shocked to see Franny lying on the ground, her face a ghostly white. She had been revived, but was still prone, her head spinning.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted when Vincent raced over. “I’m perfectly okay.”

  She had been overwhelmed by the intensity of the crow’s intentions. In an instant he made it clear, he was hers. She who had no heart, the Maid of Thorns, was now beloved by a common crow, and if the truth be told, she was thrilled to be in contact with such an amazing creature. Was this what a familiar was? A being that knew you better than any human ever would?

  There was a cawing from above. Vincent took note of the way the bird appeared to be guarding his sister. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a pet.”

  “I would never have a pet,” Franny said. “I don’t believe in them.”

  “What were you two doing?” Vincent asked, for he had the sense he’d been left out of something rath
er important. The air still felt sticky and damp and it smelled sweet.

  “Nothing,” Franny and Jet said at the same time.

  “Right.” Vincent grinned. Their dual denial was a dead giveaway.

  “We wanted to see what we could do if we combined our efforts,” Franny said.

  “And this was the result?” Vincent said. “A bird? Really you should have waited for me. I would have come up with something far better. A million dollars. A private plane.”

  “We wanted simple,” Franny said.

  The three began walking up Cedar Hill behind the Metropolitan Museum. Milkweed was growing wild even though Fifth Avenue was on the other side of the museum. It was possible to see hummingbirds here in the summer if you lay on your back in the grass and remained perfectly still.

  “Whatever we did it didn’t quite work out,” Franny admitted. “I asked for flight.”

  “You have to know how to ask for things,” Vincent told her. “The Magus says always be specific.”

  When they reached Fifth Avenue, Jet stopped in her tracks. Even though the night was dark she could see what was before her. Her wish was entirely whole and absolutely perfect. She knew how to ask and had been very specific: Send me my true love. It was simple and there was no way for it to be misunderstood, and now there was Levi Willard, sitting on the steps of the museum. He was so handsome, it made no difference that he was wearing a threadbare black suit, a skinny black tie, and a scuffed pair of black shoes.

  “Jet,” Franny said. “Are you all right?”

  Jet had stopped breathing, but only for a moment “That’s him,” she said. “My wish.”

  Franny spied the boy on the steps. When he stood to wave she narrowed her eyes. “Seriously? Him? What about the curse?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Maybe you should,” Franny said, thinking of all the funerals Jet had attended.

  Jet took hold of her sister. “You have to cover for me.”

  Franny looked at the boy on the steps and pursed her lips. “This might be too much for you,” she told her sister. “Sneaking into the house? Dealing with Mother if she does find out? And isn’t this what we said we’d stay away from? We made a vow.”

  “Franny, please. I know I can do it. Isabelle tested me with the tea, too,” Jet said. “Did you think it was just you?”

  Surprised, Franny asked, “Caution or courage?”

  Jet smiled her beautiful smile. “Do you even have to ask? Who wouldn’t choose courage?”

  “Go,” Franny said. “Before I change my mind.”

  Vincent stood with his hands in his pockets, puzzled, as Jet ran down Fifth Avenue.

  “What did I miss?” he asked.

  “Jet’s been keeping secrets.”

  “Has she? Our Jet? Didn’t she choose caution?”

  “Apparently not,” Franny said.

  “Is this our Jet who never breaks a rule?”

  They both thought it over. Jet was something of a mystery.

  “And who’s he?” Vincent asked.

  “I believe he’s her date.”

  “Him? He looks like a funeral director.”

  “It’s him, all right,” Franny said. “He’s the one.”

  In the morning, they knew they were in trouble. Vincent and Franny were awakened early, summoned to the kitchen, where their parents awaited. Their mother and father were at the table, two cups of black coffee set out before them, bleary-eyed and grim, having been up all night. It was difficult to take them seriously, for they were still in their costumes. Sigmund and Marilyn. Their mother was smoking a cigarette even though she had quit several months earlier.

  “Whatever it was,” Vincent was quick to say, “we didn’t do it.”

  “Do you or do you not know where your sister is?” their father fumed.

  Vincent and Franny exchanged a glance. Jet was missing?

  “And what is this?” their mother asked.

  There was a pool of melting butter in the butter dish, a sign that someone in the house was in love.

  “Don’t look at me,” Vincent said.

  “It’s nonsense anyway,” Franny added.

  “Is it?” Susanna said.

  “We’ve let you run riot for too long,” their father went on. “That trip to Massachusetts never should have happened. What a mistake!” He turned to their mother. “I told you it was a matter of genetics, and once again I was proven correct.”

  “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Franny was thinking of the boy in the black suit. She didn’t even know his name or where on earth he and Jet had disappeared to.

  “The police?” Susanna said. “The last thing we want is to bring in the authorities. No. Your father is the one who deals with abnormalities.”

  Disgusted by his parents’ reaction, Vincent began pulling on his boots in order to go look for his sister. “Jet is missing and that’s all you have to say? That we’re not normal?”

  “That’s not what I said!” their mother insisted.

  “It’s exactly what you said,” Franny remarked with a dark look. She went to collect her jacket so she might join Vincent in the search. Of course she blamed herself. She should never have agreed to cover for Jet. She’d gone so far as to stuff pillows under her sister’s quilt so it would appear she was home sleeping should their mother check in.

  “Do not leave this house!” Dr. Burke-Owens demanded. “We’re already down one.”

  Vincent and Franny ignored his command and went to the door. When it was thrown open, however, there was Jet on the threshold, hair in tangles, clearly out of breath, holding her shoes in her hand.

  “You’re alive,” Vincent said. “That’s good.”

  “You do realize that ‘Cover for me’ does not mean ‘I’ll stay out all night,’ ” Franny hissed. Now that Jet was safe and sound Franny could allow herself to be furious.

  “We lost track of time,” Jet explained. “We were everywhere. Places I’ve never been to before even though I’ve lived here all my life. The Empire State Building. The ferry around Manhattan. Afterward we walked along the Hudson until we wound up at a diner on Forty-Third Street. He’d never had a bagel before! He’d never heard of lox! Next time he wants to have Chinese food.”

  “You didn’t notice when the sun came up?” Franny said, no longer as angry.

  “I swear I didn’t. Everything just happened.”

  Vincent and Franny exchanged a look. This was the way people spoke when they fell in love.

  “We don’t even know who he is,” Franny said. “He could have been a murderer.”

  “He is not a murderer! His father is a reverend and he’s applying to Yale. I met him over the summer, when we were visiting Aunt Isabelle. Yesterday he happened to be at a national youth club meeting at Queens College. He said that he suddenly found himself thinking about me right there in Queens, in the middle of everything, and he couldn’t stop. So he got on a subway. And then he just appeared.”

  “He sounds fascinating,” Vincent said drily.

  “Well, he is!” Jet said, her facing flushing with emotion. “He wants to do good in the world and make a difference and I find that fascinating!”

  Their mother had come into the hallway, the color drained from her face. She’d overheard just enough to cause her to panic. “Who were you with?”

  “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be this late.”

  “You were with some boy! What is his name?”

  Jet had the sense that she should lie, but it wasn’t in her nature. She turned quite pale as she said, “Levi Willard.”

  To everyone’s great shock Susanna slapped Jet, hard so that her head hit against the wall. Their mother had never before raised a hand to any of them. She didn’t even believe in it.

  “Mother!” Franny cried.

  “Your father is in the kitchen and I don’t want him to hear a word of this. Don’t you ever see that individual again, Jet. Do you understand me?”

  Jet nodded. There we
re bright tears in her eyes.

  “I will send you away to boarding school if I ever find out you’ve disobeyed me. It will happen so fast you won’t have time to pack a suitcase.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Vincent said. “She lost track of time.”

  “Just do as I say. And for now, you’re all grounded. And understand this, just because you can love someone, doesn’t mean they won’t be destroyed.”

  “But you’re married,” Jet said, confused.

  “I gave up love for a normal life,” Susanna said. “That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

  “You never loved our father?” Franny asked.

  “Can’t you tell?” Vincent threw in.

  “Of course I love your father. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m just not in love, which has saved us both in ways you can’t imagine. I recommend you do the same. We are not like other people, that much is true. It has to do with our history, and if you’re lucky you’ll never know any more than that.”

  “I already do,” Franny dared to say. “I spent a great deal of time in the library when we were at Aunt Isabelle’s.”

  “Some things should be left alone,” Susanna told Franny. “You won’t be going back to Isabelle’s or to that library.” She turned to Jet. “And you stay away from that boy. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes. I hear you.” Jet’s eyes were raised to meet her mother’s. She appeared to acquiesce, but her expression was cool. “Loud and clear,” she said.

  Their father called to them. “May I ask what is going on here?”

  They exchanged a look, agreeing it was best to keep him in the dark, but they all trooped into the kitchen.

  “Well, hallelujah,” he said when he saw Jet. “One problem solved and another begun.” He gestured to a crow tapping on the window, clearly wishing to be let in.

  Franny went to unlatch the lock and push up on the window frame. “There you are.” She was actually delighted to see him.