The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel

by Alyssa Palombo

  I screamed, and just like that the pictures vanished. The wall of flame that had become my mirror melted away and was only a candle again. I screamed again, this time from sheer shock.

  “Katrina!” I heard Charlotte cry, her hands already grasping my arms. Swiftly she crouched beside my chair. “Katrina, what happened? Are you all right?”

  I gasped for air. “It was him,” I gasped. “I saw him. It was him.”

  “Who?” Charlotte asked. “Brom? Ichabod?”

  “No, no.” My voice wavered. “It was the Headless Horseman. I saw him.”

  “The Horseman?” she asked, her tone tinged with disbelief. “You … saw him? How?”

  I pointed wildly to the candle. “There,” I said. “In the flame. I was staring into it, and … it seemed to be calling me, somehow. And I could see…” I let out a sob and buried my face in my hands. “I could see all sorts of things.”

  Charlotte embraced me, rubbing a hand on my back. “It is all right, Katrina,” she said. She drew back, frowning. “What else did you see?”

  “I…” Suddenly the words for which I was reaching all seemed silly, overblown, dramatic. Like the words Master Shakespeare might use in one of his plays about witches. “It was nothing, I am sure,” I said. “Fanciful dreams and imaginings, nothing more. I got lost in a daydream, that is all. I am overwrought and overtired and it is nothing more than that, I’m sure.”

  Charlotte did not look so certain. “I do not know if that is all it was,” she said slowly. “Fire does not reveal its secrets lightly.”

  I stared at her as though she had started speaking in tongues. “What do you mean?”

  She sighed. “There are those who can see visions, sometimes in water, sometimes in stone or glass, sometimes in fog or clouds, and sometimes in fire. Fire visions are rare, and always meaningful.” She gave me a look heavy with significance. “Of course, one would have to have the Sight.”

  I shot her an incredulous look. “What nonsense is this? Visions? The Sight? Me? That is all very well for you, Charlotte,” I said. “I know you have seen things. But me? I have never—”

  “I do not think that is true, Katrina,” she said gently. “You have told me many times of your dreams of the Horseman. And I have always told you I thought they had meaning.” She gestured toward the candle. “It would seem I am right.”

  “But that … that’s…” I could not form the words. I had never had the kinds of visions Charlotte did, back when she would still whisper of them, before Brom’s terrible deed and she became too afraid to speak of such things to anyone, even to me.

  Or, at least, I had not had visions until now.

  I tried to laugh, but it was a sorry imitation of the sound. “This is madness,” I said, covering my face with my hands. “Madness.”

  “I do not think so.” She squeezed my hand tightly. “Tell me what you saw.”

  Those fleeting shadows and images I had glimpsed, as though through a dark veil, began to come back to me. “I saw figures, one chasing the other through the woods,” I said slowly. “I heard a horse’s whinny, and sounds of a struggle. And I heard…” I recalled the sound, and a shiver went through my whole body. “I heard the sound of a blade being unsheathed. The Horseman’s sword.”

  Charlotte was silent for a moment. “But did you see him?”

  “Only his silhouette. And only quickly.” I shuddered, my whole body wracked, as I remembered how I so casually invoked the Horseman earlier. He had heard, and he had responded.

  She nodded, lost in thought. “I wonder what it means,” she murmured.

  “As do I, I assure you.”

  She rose from where she was crouched beside me. “Perhaps we should stop,” she said, nodding toward the cards. “The reading. Maybe it is best if we do not continue.”

  A part of me wanted to agree, but the rest of me had to know, despite this vision that suddenly felt like a most dire omen. “No,” I said. “No, we are almost finished. We must…” I swallowed. “I must know what is on the last card.”

  Charlotte hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded, resigned.

  Slowly she sat back down in her chair. “Very well,” she said, taking a deep breath. I did the same, trying to calm my still-racing heart.

  When she turned over the final card, I gasped, a scream caught in my throat.

  It was plain enough what the card was without Charlotte telling me, but still she spoke. “The Devil,” she said, her voice laden with sorrow and dread.

  I closed my eyes, as though that would make the card, and the horrible picture of the winged beast upon it, disappear. “No,” I said.

  “Do you already know the meaning of this card?” she asked, as if hoping she would not have to explain it.

  “No,” I said. “But I can gather it means nothing good.”

  “No,” she conceded, her tone heavy. “It does not.” She paused, as though steeling herself, and when she spoke again her tone was flat. “The Devil signifies a negative state of affairs. Destruction. You cannot remedy the evil he represents; you can only hope, with good fortune, to escape it.”

  “No,” I said, feeling as though I were gasping for breath again. “No, it cannot be. This cannot be my future.”

  With one swift motion, Charlotte gathered up the three cards—The Fool, The Lovers, and The Devil—and swept them back into the deck. “It does not have to be,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “The cards are not foolproof. They can lie, or be meaningless, they can be misinterpreted—”

  “How could we possibly have misinterpreted that?” I demanded, gesturing to the spot on the table where The Devil card had lain. “You said yourself—the first two cards were perfectly, strangely accurate. Why should they be so, but not the last one?”

  “Fortune-telling of any kind is an uncertain art, Katrina,” Charlotte said. “Nothing is absolute.”

  “Why did you read for me, then? Why did the idea of doing it scare you so much?”

  She knelt beside my chair again and took my face in her hands. “You control your destiny,” she told me, looking into my eyes. “You and no one else. What is on a painted bit of paper will not change that unless you let it.”

  I grabbed her wrists. “Even you don’t believe that, Charlotte,” I whispered. “Especially you. You can’t. Not with the things you’ve seen.”

  She bit her lip but did not speak.

  My face crumpled, and tears began to roll down my cheeks. I slid from the chair to the floor, and Charlotte wrapped her arms around me, rocking me like a child as I cried.

  22

  The Sight

  I ended up spending the night at Charlotte’s cottage; by the time I had pulled myself together somewhat it was too late for me to get home alone, and I was in no condition to make the walk, anyway. Once the fear and anguish faded, I felt drained in a way I had never experienced before; utterly hollow, as though the devil—and the Horseman, though perhaps they were one and the same—had taken everything of value within me and fled back to hell with it. I lay awake beside Charlotte in her bed for some time, trying to quiet my mind, trying to think of nothing at all. I especially tried not to think of Ichabod. It hurt too much. To imagine what I might have done—or might yet do—to bring evil upon us.

  It was a long time before I slept.

  * * *

  By the time I awoke, Charlotte had already risen. I could hear her conversing with her mother downstairs. Mevrouw Jansen must have returned from the birth very late, for I had no recollection of hearing her come in. I pulled on my dress over my shift and wove my hair into one long, simple plait before going downstairs.

  I found mother and daughter working in their herb room off the kitchen. “Katrina!” Mevrouw Jansen said, laying down her knife. “I trust you slept well?”

  “Indeed,” I said, avoiding Charlotte’s eyes. “I thank you for your hospitality, and I must apologize for the trouble.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” Mevrouw Jansen said, gesturin
g for me to precede her back into the kitchen. “Better you stay here than venture home alone at too late an hour. Come now, we were waiting for you to break our fast. I’ve some fresh bread and cheese.”

  “That’s very kind,” I said. “You need not have delayed on my account.”

  “Again, no trouble,” she said. “We had work to do that is better done in the early morning hours in any case.”

  “You seemed as though you needed your sleep, so I thought it best not to wake you,” Charlotte added, with a significant look. I nodded gratefully, not meeting her eyes.

  Mevrouw Jansen insisted Charlotte and I sit at the dining room table while she brought us some breakfast and tea. Charlotte kept casting me inquisitive looks whenever her mother was out of the room, and I nodded slightly to reassure her. We could not speak further with her mother in earshot.

  In truth, though, as I let the fresh food and tea revive me, took in the sunlight spilling into the room and over my skin, the night before began to fade away, as though being dissolved by the sun’s rays. In daylight the dining room table was just that, not a candlelit altar for magical cards and prophecies of devils. The cards were just painted pieces of paper, as Charlotte had so rightly named them, and my so-called vision was just the nonsensical imagining of an overwrought mind.

  Charlotte was right. I controlled my own destiny. Doom is not inevitable just because a random sequence of cards says that it is so.

  And so—not without some effort—I pushed last night aside and engaged in idle chatter with Charlotte and her mother. I inquired after the birth Mevrouw Jansen had attended, and she assured me all had gone well. Mevrouw Van Buren had been delivered of a healthy son.

  “I trust you did not suffer over-much from the lack of Charlotte’s help by leaving her here with me,” I said.

  “Not at all,” Mevrouw Jansen said, casting significant look at her daughter. “Charlotte was just where she needed to be last night.”

  Goose bumps pricked along my skin. I was suddenly certain Mevrouw Jansen knew exactly what had transpired here the night before, what I had begged Charlotte to do. She knew, and we had had her tacit blessing after all.

  I suppressed a shiver and changed the subject.

  Once we finished eating, Charlotte and I cleaned up the breakfast dishes. “I had better return home before my mother begins to worry,” I said once we were done. “I also do not wish to wear out my welcome.”

  Mevrouw Jansen stepped toward me and folded me into her embrace. “You could never,” she said fondly. She released me, and held me at arm’s length, studying me. “Take care, won’t you, Katrina?” she said finally. “And do tell your mother I said hello.”

  I told myself her words were nothing more than courtesy. “I will,” I said.

  “Mama, might I walk Katrina home?” Charlotte asked. “Or do you need me to continue working with you here?”

  Mevrouw Jansen smiled indulgently. “By all means. ’Tis another fine day, and you girls should be out enjoying it.”

  I thanked Mevrouw Jansen again, and we departed, stepping out into the warm morning and setting out onto the Albany Post Road. Normally I would be eagerly looking about me for Ichabod, hoping that we might come across him, but today I found I did not want to see him. We were due to meet in the woods that very night, but I did not think that I could face him yet, with the new knowledge I had but could never share with him. He was possessed of a far more superstitious mind than my own, and if I told him what Charlotte and I had done—let alone the outcome—he would be shocked and afraid.

  No. I must carry it within myself, and never let him know the evil and destruction that haunted our future.

  Yet who were the intended victims of this evil and destruction? Ichabod and myself? That certainly seemed the most likely, given the question that I had asked. Or had The Devil card signified that Ichabod and I would, through our actions, bring horror and misfortune onto others?

  Enough of this drama, Katrina, I admonished. Did you not, mere minutes ago, acknowledge the whole business for the foolishness that it is?

  Yet my thoughts were small and excitable birds, one moment perched firmly on the branch of reason, and the next flitting off to the branch of worry and fear. And back and forth and back again, with me unable to capture them and hold them firm.

  “How are you feeling today, Katrina?” Charlotte asked, breaking into my thoughts. “Are you quite well?”

  I sighed, realizing I had been wrong. I need not keep my anguish within; there was one other person with whom I could share the burden. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “At times I think you were right last night, that we control our own destinies. And others I am too afraid to be persuaded by logic. I am too afraid that two such bad omens in rapid succession can never be a coincidence.”

  Charlotte was silent as she considered this.

  I gave her until we were out of the village proper before speaking again. “Say something, please,” I begged. “I would know your true, honest thoughts, even if you think you should not tell me.”

  She hesitated.

  I stopped and took her hand. “Please, Charlotte,” I whispered. “If you are not honest with me, who will be?”

  Her wide amber eyes searched mine. “Very well,” she agreed, sighing as she began walking again. “The convergence of two such negative omens is very disquieting. The cards are not much cause for worry on their own, I don’t think. As I said, the strength of the cards is that they can provide us with great insight. But one of their weaknesses is they can be misinterpreted, can be read to say whatever one most wishes them to say—or, in the same way, can reflect one’s worst fears.”

  I nodded. That much made sense to me.

  “Of much more concern to me,” she said, lowering her voice, “is your vision.”

  I snorted. “If it was any such thing, and not merely daydreams and silliness,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.

  Charlotte grabbed my arm. “Katrina,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “I have had many a vision in my life. You know this. I know what someone in the throes of such a vision looks like.”

  Despite the heat of the day, an ice-cold chill scuttled over my skin.

  “But … but why now?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Why after all this time? You have had visions all your life; why would I only have one now?”

  “As I said last night, I do not think that is true,” she said. “I think that your dreams of the Horseman have always been of some significance, and now you have had a vision of him. So it would seem I am right, would it not?”

  I bowed my head and sighed. She was right, she had to be, much as I hated to admit it. Perhaps I did have some semblance of the Sight.

  Another thing I can never share with Ichabod, I realized, feeling my heart grow heavy enough to sink into my shoes. I remembered too well his uncomfortable, nervous expression when I told him Charlotte was my dearest friend. There are rather startling rumors about her in the village, he had said. What would he do if he knew I had the same uncanny way about me as Charlotte?

  He would fear me. At least, a part of him would. There would always be a part of him, however small, that would fear and mistrust me. And that I could not bear.

  But could I bear to marry him, to let him marry me, when I was keeping such a thing from him?

  Yet I could never give him up. Perhaps, in time, these visions would leave me. Or more likely, Charlotte was mistaken.

  “And that you saw a vision in fire,” Charlotte was saying. “Even I have never done such a thing.”

  “So what could that mean?” I asked.

  Charlotte bit her lip and glanced over at me nervously.

  “Tell me, Charlotte, I pray you. I said I would have only honesty between us, and I meant it.”

  “It … it seems to me that it must have been a warning of great import,” she said at last. “Of very great import, to show itself to you in fire.”

  “That is precisely the last thing I wi
shed to hear.”

  “I know,” she said. Impulsively she stopped and hugged me. “Oh, Katrina, I pray you, do not lose hope. Do not lose faith. It all may seem rather dire, but I do very much believe that whatever such visions and fortune-telling show us, we are the authors of our own fates. Else why would we see such things? Why would we be forewarned if we had no chance of changing what was to come?”

  I returned her embrace, feeling heartened. “That is true,” I said, my voice brighter now. “That is indeed true.”

  “Do not lose hope,” she whispered again my ear. “Whatever may come, we shall face it together.”

  * * *

  Late that night, when I ventured into the forest to meet Ichabod, it did not feel as terrifying as before. I had already looked the devil in the face and seen the worst of what might come. What were some shadows and darkness compared to that?

  When I arrived at our spot by the stream, Ichabod was already there, a blanket spread over the ground, Gunpowder tied up a ways away. He turned as he heard me approach, and his lips parted to greet me. But I did not give him the chance. I flung myself into his arms, my lips eagerly seeking his. Surprised, it took him a moment to react. But soon enough his arms encircled me, returning my kiss, and we shed our clothes, falling to the blanket together. As we made love I held on to him as tightly as I could, as though that was all I need do to make everything turn out well.

  I will never let him go, I vowed as he moved inside me. Never. Never.

  And then, thankfully, blissfully, pleasure overcame us both, and I thought no more.

  23

  Nightmares

  I stood at the edge of a clearing in the forest, a spot deep in the woods not far from the church. I knew this spot—it was rumored to be the place where the Headless Horseman had been killed in battle. Few people dared venture here, thinking it an unlucky, haunted place. Suddenly—as if by blinking I had summoned him—the Horseman was before me, sitting astride his mount. And once more, Ichabod stood behind the Horseman, his form faint in the darkness.