A little puff of air escaped my lips. Witches.
Agnes sighed. “All right. I just wanted to avoid shocking Katy.” She turned toward me. “You see, among the uninitiated—”
“She means ‘ignorant,’” Mrs. Ainsworth interrupted.
“. . . the term ‘witch’ is sometimes misunderstood. Ordinary people—cowen—often believe that witches are evil, or even worship the devil. We don’t really know why this misunderstanding came into being, except—”
“Oh, pooh. Of course we know. Men aren’t comfortable with women having power, and the kind of power witches have tends to be inherited through women. Some men can do magic, of course, but far more women. It’s in our nature. Even cowen women know when their babies are in distress.”
“Nevertheless, in their world, that sort of ability isn’t honored. To cowen, power means money, influence, and physical strength. Getting others to do what they want.” Agnes sat up straighter. “But our world is different. Our first ancestors were humans with extraordinary abilities: Magicians, shamans, witch doctors, medicine women. Also clairvoyants, psychometrists, teleporters . . . psychics of one stripe or other.”
“What’s a psychometrist?” I asked.
“Someone who can see into another’s life by touching an object belonging to that person.”
I sucked in my breath. That was what I’d done at the restaurant, with my mother’s wall hanging.
“We know, dear,” Mrs. Ainsworth said kindly. “Hattie told us. These episodes will probably occur more and more often. That is why we came to you, despite . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“Your father forbade us to contact you,” Agnes said. “He made that very clear when he left Whitfield with you. We are going against his express wishes by speaking with you now. Knowing that, you may leave now or at any time, and we of course will never bother you again.”
“But we wanted you to know that you’re not alone,” Mrs. Ainsworth said, stroking my hair.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said. “Yet,” I added cautiously.
Agnes’ lips curved into a slight smile. “At any rate, cowen believe that these special abilities—the sort of thing that you’ve begun to exhibit—are not gifts, but merely aberrations of normal behavior. Many of them don’t believe these abilities even exist at all. Everything to them is a trick, an illusion, a lie.”
“Or crazy,” Mrs. Ainsworth added.
Agnes didn’t say anything to that. The two of them just sat for a moment, absorbed in their own thoughts and, it seemed to me, inexpressibly sad.
“Was she?” I asked. Both women looked at me, their heads turning in unison. “My mother. Was she crazy?”
Neither spoke for a moment. Finally Mrs. Ainsworth said, “We don’t know, dear.” Her voice cracked. “She was the most gifted witch in Whitfield. Perhaps too gifted. Her abilities may have been too great for her mind to bear. We know it was very hard for her to see some of the things she saw.”
“The Darkness,” I said. “That’s what she called it, ‘The Darkness, with fire as its soul.’”
The old woman’s face sagged. “We call it the Darkness because we cannot see it. All we see are the results of its power, the evil it spreads.” She dabbed at her eyes. “It was, however, well known to your mother. She had been in its presence at a young age.”
She took a long, ragged breath. “You tell her, Agnes.”
My aunt templed her fingers, thinking carefully before she spoke. “Your mother possessed a most rare and peculiar talent. She was what we call an oracle, one who can see the future. Like all great gifts, it was both a blessing and a curse.
“But to tell you about my sister, I must first tell you about our parents. They were intense, passionate people, a very political couple during very political times. When Agatha and I were fourteen, they visited a remote community of expatriates in Africa. It was supposed to be some kind of people’s paradise, where everyone shared things equally, and there wouldn’t be any kind of government interference. No taxes, no wars.”
“Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the case,” Mrs. Ainsworth said. “Thank God you had the flu, Agnes.”
My mother’s twin cleared her throat. “Yes, it was just the three of them, our parents and Agatha. The day after they arrived, gunfire broke out in the compound. Almost everyone was killed.”
“My . . . grandparents?” I asked hoarsely.
Agnes nodded. Mrs. Ainsworth covered her eyes with her handkerchief. Her wrinkled hand was trembling like a leaf in the wind. I put my arm around her. “Agatha made it back home, though,” she said. “She was never the same, but she came back.”
“For the rest of her life, Agatha was obsessed with the Darkness.”
“And so, Katy,” Mrs. Ainsworth said gently, “we can’t really say with any certainty that your mother wasn’t . . . mentally incapacitated by this event.” She wrung the handkerchief in her hands. “I think it may have been why she married a cowen. To get away from her visions.”
“As if she could.”
“Then again, the Ainsworth women always marry for love.” The old woman smiled. “Whatever demons she battled, dear, your mother did love your father. Very much.”
If only he could have loved her back, I thought.
“I believe she planned to move away from Whitfield and raise you as cowen,” Agnes said. “Your father was already in the process of changing his name back to what it had been when . . . when the incident happened with the Shaw baby.”
“Why did she do it?” Mrs. Ainsworth whispered. Clearly, she had asked herself the same agonizing question for the past ten years. “How could she even think of doing such a thing?”
Agnes shook her head.
“Your father blamed us,” Mrs. Ainsworth said. “He said that we’d fostered Agatha’s insanity. He’d never believed in witches, you see, and Agatha may have hidden her talents from him at the beginning.”
“So of course when she could no longer hide them, he interpreted her abilities as psychosis.”
“We tried to keep in touch with you, but all our letters were returned. Also, there was such a fuss made in the news that we thought perhaps he was right to take you away.”
Something occurred to me. “You weren’t at the Halloween party,” I said.
“No.” Agnes looked at her hands. “We keep to ourselves these days.”
“But Hattie said that all twenty-seven families were represented. Who was there for the Ainsworths?”
They both looked at me then. “Why, you, dear,” Mrs. Ainsworth said.
“Oh.” I blinked. “Everyone knew from the beginning, then,” I said. “Everyone except me.”
The old woman clucked. “Shameful,” she said. “Keeping you in the dark like that. Naturally, as soon as you’d matriculated at the school, word spread like wildfire. That’s why we’ve made ourselves known to you. After what happened at the restaurant, Hattie thought that . . . well . . .”
“That I’d need a family?” I suggested.
“We’re sorry that it’s such a notorious family,” Mrs. Ainsworth said. “But at least you know that there are two people who care about you.”
“And care very much,” Agnes added.
My eyes filled. My heart felt as if it would burst. I wasn’t alone. I belonged here with these women, and with Hattie Scott, and Eric. And with Peter.
I belonged with them all.
Finally, I belonged.
CHAPTER
•
TWELVE
SORCIERE
There are all kinds of magic, I’ve learned. Some is spectacular, and bends your mind just to think about it. But there’s other magic, too, quiet magic that maybe you don’t even notice unless you’re looking for it.
Hattie says that magic, like love, has to be believed to be seen. Once I became willing to see I noticed magic everywhere, in the trees and the wind and the sea, in the way everything changes all the time, but is still beautiful.
Whi
tfield was full to the brim with magic. My job was full of magic too. Hattie kept me on even after the Halloween rush, teaching me how to make all sorts of soups and stews, mulled cider and hot chocolate, plus whatever exotic things she came up with. Once we made a dish called yang gobchang-gui (broiled beef tripe and chitterlings) (!!!), infused with an anti-anxiety spell, for two Korean students who wandered in tense and left mellow.
School, on the other hand, wasn’t magical. It was just common sense not to try reality-bending things in front of the Muffies. But I was doing better there, too. Thanks to Peter, people started opening up to me a little. I rarely had to eat lunch alone anymore. Verity and Cheswick issued a standing invitation for me to run with them on the indoor track after school. I think it was their way of apologizing for wanting to kill me that day.
I visited the relatives a couple of times a week. I even talked them into having dinner at the restaurant a few times. Hattie cooked for them on those occasions, though. I guess they needed more magic than I could come up with.
I grew to understand exactly why my dad had fallen in love with my mother. If Agatha had been anything like Agnes, he’d only have had to listen to her discourse for five minutes on Le Morte d’Arthur, and he’d be hooked.
Mrs. Ainsworth tried to teach me tatting, which is lace-making, but all of my efforts came out looking like maps of the Yucatán. So we switched to quilting, where I fared a little better, although my only task was to cut out the little squares. Still, I liked it because it gave me a chance to just sit with her. Everything about her was soft and gentle and cloudlike. I realized that, even when I didn’t know she existed, I’d missed her.
She told me I could call her Elizabeth, but that just seemed wrong. And “great-grandmother” was really awkward. Finally I came up with “Gram,” which I hoped she wouldn’t think was too familiar. One day I tried it, tentatively, as I held up a quilting square.
“How’s this . . . Gram?” I swallowed.
She smiled. “It’s perfect,” she whispered, adding “Katy.”
Sometimes a name can mean a lot.
Then there was Peter. Peter, with his beautiful chiseled face and eyes like an angry sea. Peter, who’d caught me in his perfectly muscled arms on a marble staircase. Oh, Peter . . .
Actually, Peter hadn’t done anything romantic since that day.
What if he was only being nice when he walked me to class, or joked with me at work, or stayed up with me late nights studying? What if he was just being friendly when he took me to his friends’ dorm parties?
Maybe he totally wasn’t interested in me at all. Maybe he was gay.
The prospect began to gnaw at me. I wished I knew someone who understood these things. I needed a consultant, but I couldn’t think of any girls who might be able to help me. Verity Lloyd was, if anything, even less worldly than I was. The Muffy girls would probably know, but I could just imagine what they’d say if I asked them how to get my pseudo-boyfriend to kiss me.
So I did the unthinkable. I went to my relatives.
Aunt Agnes was standing in the entryway, talking with Jonathan and his crew. I was glad my great-grandmother wasn’t around. I loved her, but I wouldn’t feel right talking about the possible homosexuality of my boyfriend with an eighty-year-old woman who wore a doily on her head.
As I approached, once again all the lumber and tools fell out of the carpenters’ hands onto the ground. It occurred to me that these guys must be the clumsiest workmen in New England.
“It’s all right,” Agnes said quickly. “Katy’s a teleporter.”
“Oh, is she now?” Jonathan asked, smiling in surprise, although it was not the degree of surprise I might have expected from a workman hearing that information. Then he lowered his hand to his side and spread his fingers. The fallen hammer shot upward through the air into his waiting palm.
“Me, too,” he said cheerfully.
It took me a moment to recover, but as he and his men all summoned their tools in the same manner, I realized that they hadn’t actually dropped anything when they’d seen me coming, because they hadn’t actually been holding anything in the first place. The materials they’d been working with had been suspended in midair.
“Get me one of those three-inch planks, would you, pretty?” Jonathan asked, gesturing toward a pile of wood.
“Uh, sure,” I said, picking one up. They were very thin and light. “Do you want more than one?”
“One’ll do. But don’t use your hands.” He winked at Agnes. “Well, you said she was a witch, didn’t you?”
Agnes crossed her arms over her chest. “She doesn’t need to prove anything to you, Jonathan.”
“Oh, let her.” He gave me a smile of encouragement. “Have at it, Katy.”
I hesitated. I’d never pushed in front of anyone before. There was the incident at the Halloween party, but the blanket I’d used to put out the fire was imaginary, so no one really saw anything.
Blushing a little, I tried to forget my embarrassment and concentrate on moving the wainscoting. Up, I thought, and there it was, easy as pie. Then I pushed it toward Jonathan. It wobbled a little at first, dipping and veering off course once when I looked over at Agnes.
“Hold on to it, Katy,” Jonathan whispered. That brought my attention back to the piece of wood. “Right, girl. Put it in this slot here.” The wood moved into place with a satisfying snick. “There you go,” he said, nailing it in. “You’d make a fine carpenter, I’d wager.”
I was so pleased with myself that I focused back on the lumber and lifted the whole pile into the air, organizing it into a solid wall before sending it flying over to Jonathan. He laughed out loud and applauded.
“That will do, Katy,” Agnes said. “There is no need to show off.”
The wood clattered to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have spoken, Agnes,” Jonathan said with quiet authority. He was methodically putting the planks back in place against the wall. “The girl’s got a gift.”
Two red spots appeared on her cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “More than one. Come along, Katy.”
Jonathan’s hands were full, so he didn’t tip his hat, but he acknowledged her leaving with a nod. It was clear to me that they were in love with each other.
I was flushed and thirsty from my unexpected triumph with the wainscoting. Agnes gave me a glass of lemonade and a piece of cheese. “It’s important to eat something after doing magic,” she said. “Food brings you back.”
I knew what she was talking about. While I was pushing, I felt light. Light, and growing lighter by the second. It was almost as if I were disappearing, little by little.
“You are, first and foremost, a human animal,” she said. “Not a witch, not a mind, but a physical being. Don’t forget that,” she said.
“I won’t.” It seemed to be the perfect introduction to what I wanted to talk about, so I jumped right in. “Actually, that’s why I’m here,” I said, trying to hide my extreme discomfort. “Because I’m an animal. Er . . .”
She cocked her head.
“That is . . .”
She looked at me as if I were speaking Chinese. I supposed it hadn’t been a very good segue, after all.
“Is this about a boy?” she inquired.
Was I so obvious? “No,” I lied. “Of course not.”
“Who is he?”
“Peter Shaw.” So much for my expertise as a dissembler. “Do you think he’s gay?”
“Excuse me?”
I considered running, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. One word from Agnes, and Jonathan would trip me up with a floating two-by-four. “Never mind,” I mumbled.
“Are you considering him as a love partner?” she asked.
I wished I’d never been born. A love partner. Old maid aunts actually thought in terms like that. This was all becoming a horrible dream.
“He’s cowen,” she said finally.
“No, he’s not. He was serving at the Halloween part
y, same as me. Isn’t that the litmus test—getting through the fog in the Meadow?”
“He gets in because of Hattie,” she said. “Peter is her ward. Once he’s of age, I doubt that he’ll ever find his way back.”
“But the Shaws are one of the twenty-seven families.”
Agnes stiffened. “Not that they’d ever admit it.”
“Does that matter? They’re the oldest family in Whitfield.”
“Not the oldest,” Agnes said archly. “Only the richest.”
“Does that matter?” I asked, wondering if there was some kind of reverse ratio between wealth and witchcraft.
“Of course not,” Gram said, shuffling excitedly into the room. She must have been listening at the door. “There’s no need to be bitter, Agnes.”
Agnes sniffed. “The Shaws have been denying their magical heritage for more than three hundred years,” she said.
“Nevertheless, they are still one of the families.”
“Only because their name is in the record,” Agnes insisted. “They have no magic.”
“But of course they do!” Gram said. “Serenity Ainsworth’s own daughter married a Shaw!”
“A Shaw who never changed his name,” Agnes muttered.
Gram waved her handkerchief weakly. “Yes. What a pity.” She turned to me. “That was Zenobia,” she explained. “She was one of twins, also. Zenobia and Zethinia. Our family often produces twins.”
“Zethinia fared better, I daresay,” Agnes said.
Gram shook her head. “Alas, the Ainsworth women always marry for love.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Shaw change his name?” I asked.
“Because they have never held to our ways,” Aunt Agnes bristled. “They want to be cowen.”
Gram uttered a little cry at that, as if Agnes had uttered a blasphemy. “Tragic,” she whispered.
“From all accounts, Zenobia Ainsworth was an exceptionally talented witch,” Agnes said. “I imagine she hoped that, by infusing her magical blood into the Shaw line, she and her husband might produce children with at least a portion of her ability.”
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