“I’m not a little kid anymore,” I say with a little kid’s whine. “You don’t have to read me bedtime stories.”
Sophie ignores this. “I want you to focus on my words as I’m reading. See what’s happening clearly in your mind and stay focused on that.”
At first this experiment does little to help. Sophie has read only five pages before my attention begins to wander as I think about Henri again. I’m remembering our kiss in the forest when my blanket turns into a swarm of snakes that scatter in every direction. Sophie is unfazed by this, holding up Mama’s charm and saying a few magic words that cause pieces of my blanket to appear all over the room. Then she continues to read.
I wish I could have Sophie’s patience, her discipline that lets her keep so calm under pressure. I wish I could love books the way she does. I wish I could be so confident in using magic as she is—as Aggie and Mama are as well. But I can’t. I’m just the misfit, the proverbial black sheep of the family.
“Sylvia, you have to pay attention,” Sophie scolds me, her voice sounding eerily like Mama’s.
“I’m sorry. Maybe we should try later.”
“No. I think we need to try something else.” Without warning, Sophie tears a strip from my sheets. She leans over me to tie the strip of cloth around my eyes. “That should help you focus better. Now, try to listen to what I’m saying and see it in your mind.”
This time I’m better able to focus on the stories Sophie reads me. I can see the knight in my mind; he looks strangely like Henri. I remember when Henri and I first began playing in the woods, when he acted out the marquis’s death and then said that he wanted to be a valiant knight.
As I’m thinking this, I feel something rap against my kneecap. Sophie stops her reading to hiss, “Pay attention.”
I’m reminded of when Mama taught me how to read and do sums. This was something most little girls in France didn’t learn—Henri’s sisters never learned to read or do math without using their fingers—but Mama insisted we should have at least a basic education. She took me into the library and sat me down at the desk Sophie used when she read in the library. Mama put a book in front of me and I began the difficult process of sounding out words. If I faltered or if I began daydreaming, Mama would smack a wooden spoon down on my wrist to snap me back to attention.
Now I’m going back to school again, only this time my sister is the teacher. In both cases I’m not a good student. It isn’t long before my knees and wrists are sore from repeated taps of Sophie’s wooden spoon.
And yet there’s progress. An entire day goes by without a magical mishap. Then another and another. Soon an entire week has gone by without something in my room turning into something else. Sophie finally takes off my blindfold. I lean back against my pillows to continue listening to Canterbury Tales, to draw closer to becoming a witch.
***
I’m fourteen years old when I finally leave my bedroom. I’ve been locked up in my room for six months, long enough that winter has come and gone. It’s spring again. My shutters have been closed for so long that I wince when Mama opens them to let light in.
She puts a hand around my shoulders and sits down beside me on the bed. I haven’t had a magical outburst in a month, not even during my sleep. My body still feels tingly at times, but no longer am I afraid that I’ll turn my chamber pot into a dove or make my clothes vanish.
“I think you’re ready, dear,” Mama says. “Why don’t you come down and have breakfast with the rest of us?”
“Rest of us?”
“Your sisters are downstairs.”
“Aggie is here?”
“She came in last night.”
Aggie hasn’t appeared once during my convalescence. This seems like a betrayal since Mama and Sophie have spent so much time in my room, helping me. Didn’t Aggie want to help me too? Didn’t she care about me?
For that reason I put on one of my dresses Aggie didn’t make for me when I emerge from my bedroom. Mama stays close to me, poised to bring out the charm if I have a relapse. She’s also there to catch me if I fall, my steps as uncertain as a newborn’s after six months of little use.
As promised, both Sophie and Aggie are waiting in the dining room. Sophie nods and smiles slightly, which for her is like a sob of joy. Aggie’s smile is even slighter, a brief flash before she looks shyly down at her plate. I sit across from them, having one side of the table all to myself.
Mama sits at the head of the table, trying to act as if there’s nothing unusual, as if we’re all one big happy family again. Except now we’re two full witches, a junior witch, and an apprentice. Mama still snaps at us if we don’t sit perfectly straight or slurp our tea, chiding us about being “proper ladies” even after all that’s happened. At this point I welcome Mama’s scolding as a return to normalcy.
After breakfast Aggie asks me to do her hair as I used to do when I was a little girl. I know it’s part of her trying to make up for her absence, to reach out to me. We go into the living room, where I begin combing out her hair.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” she says as I work.
“It’s all right,” I say, pulling back her hair hard enough to make her gasp.
“I wanted to be here, but Mama said she and Sophie had it under control.”
“You don’t have to apologize. I’m fine.”
While I braid her hair, Aggie explains that most of her absence was due to her promotion to a full witch in the coven. Though I’m an apprentice now, she doesn’t give me too many details about the coven or the rituals involved. “I had to take some tests, to show them what I could do,” Aggie says. “I had to show I was worthy.”
“And you were?”
“Yes. Barely.” We giggle in unison at this. I finish with Aggie’s braid and she flips it over her shoulder to study it. “Now that I passed their tests, I can be around more to help you out. Learning to control your magic is only the first step. There’s still a long road ahead. Trust me about that.”
“I do.” Since Mama isn’t around, we hug. Everything is right again between us.
***
I wait another few days before I put on my leggings, tunic, and cap to go out and visit Henri. He’s working out in the vineyards with his brothers and father. His skin is paler from the winter, but he looks even stronger than the last time I saw him.
“Hello,” I say, suddenly feeling shy.
“Hello,” he says back.
“Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
“Are you sure your mother won’t mind?”
I’m not sure what that means until we’re alone in the pasture, sitting under the tree where Mama told me about becoming a woman. Henri tells me that he’s been trying to see me for months, but Mama said I was ill and wouldn’t let him in the house. “You look fine now.”
“I’m all better now.”
“Was it a fever?”
“Something like that.”
“I really missed you,” he whispers, leaning close to me.
“I missed you too,” I whisper back, leaning close to him so our lips nearly touch. Then I remember what happened the last time we kissed and pull back. I turn my head to stare primly at my lap.
“What’s wrong? Are you ashamed of me now?”
“No, it’s not that. I don’t want to hurt you again.”
He stares blankly at me and I realize that he doesn’t remember what happened during our first kiss. Mama did something to him so he would forget. Did he forget our entire first kiss or only the terrible things that happened after it?
I’m too afraid to ask him, so I say, “I don’t want Mama to get angry with you. She might send you away.”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
“She will know. She knows everything.”
“Your mother isn’t God. She can’t see everything.”
“I don’t want to take that chance. I don’t want to lose you.”
Henri takes my hand and I force myself to look into his e
yes. “I don’t care what your mother does. We’re going to be together forever.”
We kiss again, but this time I manage to keep my magic under control. I hear music again, but this time I know it’s not from witch magic—it’s from the magic of love.
Chapter 6
Becoming a full witch is a long, arduous process. Mama explains this to me once I’ve learned to control my powers. As an apprentice I’m supposed to for the most part watch her and my sisters without trying any spells, potions, or charms on my own. In addition I have to learn the language of magic, those words I didn’t understand when Mama froze me the day of the portrait painting.
Sophie takes charge of teaching me this language. We work for hours every day in the library, Sophie holding her wooden spoon to smack me if I start to lose focus on my studies. Learning my alphabet was difficult enough at six, but now I have to learn an entirely new one.
Most of the times I feel the sting of Sophie’s wooden spoon are after I start thinking about Henri. We meet each other after my sessions with Sophie. We go to our place in the forest where I first kissed him, an incident he doesn’t remember.
We spend most of our time talking about the future. Henri has given up dreams of becoming a famous knight in favor of becoming a merchant. He hopes to find work on one of the ships that comes to Marseilles and then work his way up to captaining his own ship. I can’t help but laugh at this plan. “What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Do you know anything about boats?”
“Luc works on a freighter. He tells me about it when he comes home.”
“I guess you have it all figured out then.” I shake my head. “Where do I fit into this? Am I supposed to sit at port waving goodbye to you with your babies scampering around my feet?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I grab his right arm to twist it behind his back until he cries out in pain. I soothe this pain by kissing him. Our visits always end up this way, with us lying on the grass and kissing. It’s always my favorite part of our visits.
My fifteenth summer, Henri tells me that Luc has got him a job on the freighter and that he’s going to spend the next six months at sea. “Six months?” I shout with disbelief. “How could you agree to that without asking me?”
“I didn’t realize I needed your permission.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “You didn’t ask my permission when you stayed in your house for six months.”
“That was different—I was ill.” Though I don’t want to show weakness, tears well up in my eyes. “How could you agree to leave without saying anything to me?”
He wraps his arms around me, pulling me close. “I’m doing this for us. So we can have a life of our own, away from here.”
“Away from here? I can’t leave Mama and my sisters.”
“Why not?”
I look down at the ground. I can’t tell him the real reason, that I’m an apprentice witch training to become a novice. “Mama needs me. She’d be alone in the house otherwise.”
“What about your sisters?”
“They come and go.”
“So why shouldn’t you be able to come and go?”
I shake my head. “Someone has to take care of Mama. I’m the youngest. It’s my duty.”
“So what do you want us to do? Keep meeting out here in the forest until we’re old?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head again. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Sylvia. I love you.”
I gasp a little at this. Henri has never said this to me before. “You do?”
“Of course I do. I’ve loved you for a long time. Since we were kids.”
I stare at him for a moment, knowing that he’s waiting for me to say that I love him too. I badly want to say this to him. I replay all those years since that first meeting in the stable in my mind. I’ve always loved him; I was just too young to realize it until now.
But I can’t say it. I remember what Mama said about not fraternizing with mortals. I remember Aggie and that boy kissing on this very spot. Mama had said that she and Aggie could have been brought up on charges for that, and that Aggie would have to fend for herself if she did it again. Now that I am an apprentice, the same rules apply to me as well.
“Henri, I’m sorry.”
He lets go of me so I nearly topple onto the ground. “You don’t love me?”
“I really care about you—”
“Care about me? That’s all?” He gets to his feet and looks at me with such pure hatred that I have to turn away. Without a word he stomps back into the brush. I want to follow him, but I know I can’t; I know there’s nothing I can say.
***
I don’t see Henri again for nearly a year. I slip into the kitchen one day, where his sister Louisa is cleaning potatoes for dinner. “I haven’t seen your brother Henri at the stables lately. What’s become of him?”
She tells me that Henri came back three months after going out to sea. As it turns out, a life at sea isn’t for him. Not more than five minutes out of port he was throwing up over the side. Instead of returning home he’s remained on the docks, working to load and unload ships. It’s unlikely he has any future in this job, but I know he’s only doing it because he doesn’t want to see me after what I said to him the last time we were together.
I finally see him again at Easter. My family doesn’t celebrate Easter or any Christian holidays, but I know that the Devereaux clan does and that Henri will come home to visit with his family. Dressed in my forest clothes, I watch the servant quarters for him to appear.
He shows up at nearly sundown, walking with his older brother Luc. They each have a bag slung over their shoulders that no doubt contains presents for the younger children as well as their personal belongings. I watch them from the brush along the side of the road, the clothes camouflaging me from sight.
As Henri draws near, I let out a shrill birdcall. His head turns and his eyes meet mine. I had hoped that the months apart would cool his anger, but the way he turns away tells me that he’s still angry with me. I slink back deeper into the brush so I can be alone and cry.
From his sister, I learn two months later that Henri is going to work on a neighboring estate. The lord of that estate has promised that Henri will have his own plot of land to farm. He will even have a tiny home for himself—and his family, should he find a suitable wife. I had hoped that wife would be me, but now I know it will never be. Henri and I can never be together.
It’s a few days later when Mama takes me aside to say that my apprenticeship is over. “It is?” I ask.
“You’ve learned the language of magic. You haven’t improperly used your magic. That means you’re ready to become a novice.”
I stare at her in shock for a few moments. A novice. That’s only one step away from being a junior witch and then a full member of the coven. Though I know Mama will be angry, I leap up to hug her. She doesn’t scold me; instead she pats my back with affection. “I’m very proud of you, dear,” she whispers, saying what I’ve longed to hear. “You’ve come a long way in a very short time.”
Mama explains that to begin my novice training I must go to the archives for the coven. These are located on an island called Ireland, far to the northwest of our home. I’ve never been to Ireland or anywhere outside of our little estate in France. “What’s going to happen then?”
“Your sisters will evaluate you and begin training you in the disciplines that you are best at,” Mama says.
“Can’t Aggie and Sophie do that here?”
“No, dear, not your natural sisters. Your sisters in magic. The coven.”
I’ve heard Mama mention the coven before, but she’s never explained it in depth to me before. Now that I’m going to become a novice, she tells me that the coven is a group of witches, approximately fifty at the moment. Some of them are hundreds or even thousands of years old.
“What does the coven do?” I ask. I imagine all sorts of glorio
us adventures, with Aggie and Sophie using their magic to save people and right injustices.
Mama quickly shatters these dreams. “We control the use of magic, to maintain the natural balance.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, dear. It’s not a witch’s job to manage the affairs of mortals.”
“Except those who serve us.”
Mama pats my back again. “I know you’re upset about your friend, dear, but that’s the burden a witch must endure. That’s why I forbade your sister from carrying on with that friend of hers.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t. Not yet. But you will, dear.” Mama lets this ominous statement hang in the air, giving me a chill.
I can’t sleep that night, thoughts of meeting the coven mingling with those of Henri. I imagine him sleeping alone in a tiny house on a rough straw mattress. I desperately want to be there with him, lying next to him, but I know I can’t. I remember what Mama said about the burden a witch must endure. Henri is my burden to carry.
I fall asleep for what seems like five minutes before Mama wakes me up again. “It’s time to get ready to go, dear,” she says.
I remember what Aggie said years ago when she gave me the emerald-colored dress with the gold trim. She made this especially for me to wear this day, when I would become a novice. I wish she were here to see me in it, but Mama says that Aggie and Sophie will be at the archives, waiting for us.
The dress fits perfectly, despite that Aggie made it three years earlier. I can’t help but gasp a little to see my reflection in the dress. Even Mama can’t contain her look of surprise. “You look so beautiful,” she says, coming to stand behind me. “You’re so grown up now.”
I don’t feel very grown up. I feel like a small child again, going to meet older relatives I’ve never met before. This must be what it feels like to have grandparents, aunts, and uncles. To combat my nerves, I work with my hair, fashioning it into a long braid that I then pin up to keep it out of the way. This helps me for a few minutes, but the nerves return as it’s time for Mama and I to vanish into the archives.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Call Page 91