Magic Lessons

by Alice Hoffman

  Faith often walked to the end of the old Indian path, which led past the cemetery. She left seashells to decorate Lady Moody’s grave, for she felt this Englishwoman who had made her way in this wilderness to be a kindred spirit. On the shortest night of the year, she left the house after dark when there were only patches of silvery light slipping through the clouds. She brought along a white candle to honor the town’s founder. Never hide who you are inside, she’d always been told, but all that she was had been hidden, even from herself.

  By now Faith understood that she was living a lie. Over the years, she had slowly gained her foster mother’s trust. She was always well behaved and did as she was told without complaint. She didn’t talk back, and when they went into town on the day the peddler came, she knew well enough not to talk to strangers. Martha Chase told Faith that she was the perfect child, and if being perfect meant she could see into Martha’s bitter heart and know she was deceitful, then perfect was what she was. By the time she turned eleven, Martha agreed to let Faith be called Jane, a simple name Faith far preferred over Comfort, which made her feel as if she were a blanket or an old dog. In time, Faith was allowed to wander the beaches, and even to go into the village on the last Friday of the month when the wagon came to town. She stole pennies from Martha and bought a hand mirror from the peddler, an affable English fellow named Jack Finney, a modest individual who had few attachments in the world and wore a shabby blue jacket and boots that were too large for his feet. Faith asked if she might have a bit of black paint, which she used to coat the glass, and when the paint dried she peered into the dark mirror. There was her mother, in a black dress, crying in the night. There was her dog, standing at the gate. She dreamed that her mother spoke to her: Do what you must until we are together again. But never believe a word she tells you. Believe only in yourself. You are my daughter and mine alone, whether we are together or apart.

  Whenever she could, Faith did as she pleased. She bought old water-stained volumes from the peddler, and she could often be spied with her parcels, walking the lanes while reading a book, which she made sure to hide before Martha Chase could catch her. As far as Martha was concerned, one learned to read only to have access to the Scriptures; all other reading was the devil’s work, inflaming men’s imaginations with stories that weren’t true and ideas that could lead a reader to a path of rebellion. A streak of independence and a curious mind meant trouble. In Martha’s opinion, a woman who spent her time reading was no better than a witch.

  Martha Chase believed in evil. She was absolutely certain that it walked alongside them every day, on the road and in the fields, tempting them to leave the grace of the Lord. Witchery was a brand of wickedness Martha had hoped they’d escaped when they left Massachusetts, for in that colony witches were born and bred. She would have been stunned to know that Faith climbed out her window at night to go to the graveyard. Faith had set up a kettle in order to make the black soap her mother had been known for. She bought or pilfered ingredients that she remembered as useful from the time when she’d watched Maria practice the Nameless Art. Ginger, lemon, salt, the bark of the elm, chokeberries, cherry pits, white candles and black candles, black fabric, red thread, blue beads, feathers, wild belladonna which was dangerous and agitated the spirit, bright yellow-green ferns, for lightning never strikes where ferns grow. She’d begun to trade her soap for books and herbs, and Finney, the peddler, said every woman who bought a bar of the fragrant black soap had returned to beg for more.

  On Saturdays, Faith sat with Martha to read from the Geneva Bible, the Scriptures that formed all Puritan beliefs. She always washed her hands and face before they read, so as not to smudge the pages. In Martha’s eyes, Brooklyn was a land of disbelievers, where all denominations other than Quakers were welcome to own land; there were Dutch Reform Protestants and some Catholics, and even, some people said, a few Jewish families from Amsterdam. It was a free and wild place compared to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and one had to keep watch at all times to remain on the narrow path.

  Faith looked unnatural with her black dyed hair and the oversized gray dress her foster mother insisted she wear at all times, along with a pair of heavy black boots that she kicked off whenever she walked to town, preferring to go barefoot. People considered her to be the oddest of creatures, a well-mannered girl, sure enough, with unnatural raven hair and pale eyebrows, who always had her nose in a book. When she wasn’t reading, she was talking to herself, reciting recipes to make certain she wouldn’t forget them. Be True to Me Tea, a boon for lovers; Travel Well Tea, a tonic for good health on a journey; Frustration Tea, which granted good humor and cheer even on the outskirts of Kings County; Clairvoyant Tea, concocted from mugwort and rosemary and anise, which helped the drinker see beyond the curtain of the here and now; and Faith’s favorite, Courage Tea, which provided bravery and grit and was made of vanilla and currants and thyme. Every time Faith recited a remedy, she felt a thrill, as if she were unlocking a door to her true self. Whenever she did so, the iron bracelets burned and chafed, but she had learned to ignore them as a dog ignores its collar and a horse its reins.

  Faith was walking through town one afternoon on her way home from seeing the peddler, a treasured new book of Shakespeare’s sonnets in hand, when she heard sobbing. A woman stood outside a small cottage with a tilted roof, convinced that her child would die of the wracking coughs that plagued him. In that instant, Faith remembered a cure for this affliction. She’d only been six when she was taken from her mother, but she had always paid attention when the Nameless Art had been called upon. She ran back to the peddler and asked him for quince seeds and honey, which she heated on a stove in his wagon.

  “What is that supposed to be?” the peddler asked.

  Jack Finney had grown fond of this odd girl through his dealings with her, for she had an endearing sort of charm. In his travels, he always looked for editions of books she might favor. He was a Cornishman who’d come to this country with nothing, after his wife and child had died of the pox. He’d wanted to be as far away from England as possible, but now he felt lost in this vast, flat land of Brooklyn, and it was a pleasure to speak to someone with whom he felt at ease. As far as he could tell, the girl was an outcast just as he was, a loner by nature or by design. Though she was now eleven, and had lived at the end of the world for nearly three years, she was less a child than anyone of her age the peddler had ever seen. She spoke with assurance and without the vanity and self-centeredness of childhood. Faith bit her lip when she was thinking and narrowed her eyes, and now she paid strict attention to the concoction on the stove.

  “It’s a remedy,” she told Jack Finney. “If you let me have one of your glass jars, I’ll tell you the secret.”

  She went on to teach him how to cure a cough. He wished he’d been aware of this cure when he’d had a child of his own who’d been ill with a similar disease, heartbreaking to watch when at the very last his daughter could not draw a single breath.

  Finney gave Faith a jar with a cork top for her mixture. “How did you learn all this?” he asked.

  Faith shrugged. She remembered bits and pieces, and sometimes whole spells, but the truth was, she’d been born with the knowledge. She returned to the house where she’d seen the crying woman, then knocked at the door and told the distraught mother that a spoonful of the tonic given twice a day would stave off the boy’s coughs. The woman was suspicious, but after Faith went on her way, she tested the cure by tasting a spoonful herself. There were no ill effects, so she gave a dose to her son. His coughing stopped that very night, and before long he was out and about, healthy as anyone.

  The women in Gravesend took note of the child’s healing. Though Faith was only a girl, they began to seek her out. Perhaps she was too young to be a proper witch, but she seemed to have a natural talent for the Nameless Art. In time, people in need knew where to find her, within the cemetery gates on Friday evenings, the traditional time for working love spells, mirror magic, health tonics,
and potions for reconciliation. Faith often suggested castor oil, milk, and sugar, a children’s tonic her mother had fixed in Boston, along with summer savory for colic. She made most use of the recipe for Fever Tea, to nip high temperatures in the bud, made of cinnamon, bayberry, ginger, thyme, and marjoram.

  Faith climbed out her window no matter the weather, as soon as Martha Chase was in bed, for she hated to disappoint one of her clients, some of whom waited hours for her to appear and came from the far-off towns of Bushwick and Flatlands. Faith had recently bought a black book from the peddler to use as a journal. Finney had added a small bottle of ink and a pen, and she’d written down all she could remember from the nights when women in need came to her mother’s door. How to end toothache and insomnia and skin rashes, how to cast away bad dreams and regret, how to make amends, how to find happiness.

  For her services, Faith was paid whatever a client might have. A bag of apples, forks and spoons, coins, pies, and once she was granted a pair of heavy black stockings. The payment didn’t matter. What mattered most was that Faith was still herself, even though the iron bracelets kept her from using her full talents. She had to trust in what her clients told her, for she was unable to read the lines on their right or left hands, the first of which, she remembered, revealed the future you are given, the other which allowed you to view the future you made for yourself.

  By now, Faith Owens had grown into a gawky, tall girl, and the iron cuffs dug into her flesh. She wondered if without them she might be able to fly far from here and find her mother. She knew the map of the sky and could chart the world, north and south. She’d once known a man called Goat who could divine the stars and had pointed them out to her. Faith considered running away, but she didn’t know the name of the place they had come from so that she might return, only that there had been a bottomless lake nearby, and a water serpent who ate bread from her hands, and a wild black dog she’d found in the woods who never left her side.

  Most of those who came in search of Faith were illiterate, and the fact that she could not only read and write, but could recite passages in Latin and Greek that she’d taught herself, amazed the women of Gravesend. As it turned out Faith had a prodigious memory and could recall the charms of Agrippa and Solomon that had been written down in Maria’s Grimoire. It was clear that sorcery was second nature to her. In New York magic was not outlawed and magic books were sold on the streets, hidden inside black covers, available at a high price for those willing to pay. It was possible to find copies of The Greater Keys of King Solomon, the conjurations and curses and spells written out by hand, explaining the knowledge and wisdom of that ancient king. The Mystical Alphabet, The Mystical Seal of Solomon, The Pentacles of Solomon, along with The Lesser Key, a Grimoire written by Cornelius Agrippa, a most secret explanation of the mysteries of mankind and nature—all could be found, if one knew where to look. Finney had managed to get his hands on a few of these books, but the prices he quoted to Faith were too dear. She had to depend on her memory and the notes she jotted down in bits and pieces in her black notebook.

  I am with the All and the All is within me.

  The letters flickered on the page and then disappeared, but when she ran her hand over the parchment she could feel them. In this way, alone and abandoned, shackled by metal cuffs she could not remove and pretending to be someone she was not, she began her practice of the Nameless Art, for one does not have to have the talents of a witch to be called to the Art. She simply has to have the desire to see beyond what is right in front of her.

  * * *

  Martha Chase had planted thirty raspberry bushes when they came to Gravesend, but the soil was too sandy, and one by one the plants had withered until there was only one spindly specimen left. Faith had been given her own patch of land, and despite the soil, her garden grew so well it would not keep within the bounds of the fence that kept the rabbits away. Rabbits were everywhere in Brooklyn, and there was a place near the sea where there were so many of the creatures that the land there was called Rabbit Island. There were deer and turkeys and all manner of wading birds and ducks in the marshes, but the land itself was fairly barren. It was a miracle that Faith’s garden was such a marvel. She grew feverfew for health, rose hips and skullcap for healing, lavender for luck. She’d plucked wild black nightshade to start from seed. Martha spied it snaking out of the ground, its black flowers already in bloom. She saw Faith standing among the blossoms, her dyed hair blue-black in the harsh light, her lips moving as she recited an incantation to Hecate, the ancient goddess of magic, who held power over heaven and earth and sea. Martha watched and grasped at her chest. Despite all her efforts she’d come to believe that Faith was permanently infected by her mother’s blood, and even the iron cuffs were not enough to change who she was. The older the girl became, the more convinced Martha became that it was her duty to cure the child of her heritage. The daughter of a witch must be carefully watched. Once she planted nightshade, anything might happen.

  III.

  In the month of June, Abraham Dias went to bed and he didn’t get up again. At first he tried; Samuel and Maria held him under his arms and lifted him up, but he soon sank back down, shaking his head. Abraham had no strength and no appetite for life. He knew this weakness, for he had seen it in others; it came at the end of life, it appeared that a person was giving up, but it was an acceptance of the end. He stopped eating, even refusing a bite of his favorite chocolate cake, and what was even more telling for a man of the Dias family, he stopped talking. That was when Maria heard the deathwatch beetle. She got down on her hands and knees to search beneath the furniture, then investigated the attic and every inch of the damp brick cellar, but she couldn’t find the wretched insect. It continued with its clacking call, for once begun the sound could only be ended by a death in the house. Samuel hadn’t stopped the deathwatch beetle by stepping on it outside the jail in Salem; rather, the beetle’s death had foretold that Maria would not hang. This was not the case now, for the beetle didn’t show itself, always a dark sign. She remembered Hannah searching the cottage at Devotion Field when she heard it, never managing to get it out of the walls no matter how she might try, for it predicted the day of fire and destruction, when she was nailed to her own front door and her house was burned to the ground.

  Maria turned to the book, reading the Grimoire for hours, trying every remedy that might help the old man regain his vitality. Vervain, feverfew, nightshade, horehound syrup. None of it worked. As Abraham’s condition worsened, Maria was willing to delve into the darker magic that practitioners of the Nameless Art were taught to avoid, though she could find no death spells in the Grimoire.

  That is not our business, Hannah had told her. When you go inside darkness, the darkness goes inside you.

  She found the spell she was searching for at the very end of the book, on a page she had never noticed before. It was invisible without bodily fluid, but Maria could feel it there on the page, writhing, ready to be called up. She licked her thumb, then ran her damp finger across the page. The letters appeared in small, perfect script. Do not use unless you must.

  When Samuel entered his father’s chamber that evening, the scene he witnessed stunned him. They had never discussed where Maria had come from, or more importantly, what she was. Now it was clear; there was no mistaking witchery. Black candles were lit around the old man’s bed, so many that the smoke scorched the ceiling and billowed into the corners of the room. A line of salt had been poured along the walls so that no evil could enter, and herbs were strewn over the bed. Maria sat before the old man, naked, slick with sweat, as she chanted an ancient spell so dangerous and powerful the words turned to ash as she spoke them and her mouth burned as she called to Hecate, the goddess of magic and sorcery and light.

  Avra kadavra, I will create as I speak, I will force into being that which is impossible and illogical, all that is against the rules of men. A shield to prevent death, no matter how dark the results might be.

  “Eno
ugh.” Samuel Dias seized Maria from the bed and covered her with a blanket. He stomped on the candles as if they were bugs, extinguishing the flames, then opened the window and waved the smoke out. At last Samuel turned back to her. He wasn’t often angry, but when he was, he burned. “Is my father an experiment for your Art?”

  “It’s a cure! When I cured you, your father was happy that I did. Why can’t you be?”

  “This is not the same! The only cure for old age is death. There are things you cannot change. That you should not change! We’ll let him go, as he should.”

  Samuel was right, and she knew it. What was forcibly brought back from death never came back as it was. One lived or died as fate saw fit. It was possible to shift one’s destiny depending on choices that had been made, but some things were meant to be, they had been written and could not be unwritten. Abraham Dias’s time had come. On both hands, his lifelines had reached the ends of his palms. Maria stopped fighting a war she couldn’t win. She washed and dressed, then watched Samuel from the window as he sat alone in the garden, waiting to lose the last member of his family.

  When it was clear that Abraham was about to die, Maria intended to call Samuel to his bedside, but the old man stopped her. He placed a hand on her arm and managed to speak. The man who could talk for hours at a time, and had taught his son to do the same, still had some breath left. When a person was about to die, nothing could prevent him from talking if he had something to say.

  “I need you alone,” he told her. “So you understand Samuel.” Maria sat beside Abraham to listen to his last story, and she wasn’t surprised to hear it was about his love for his son.