Magic Lessons

by Alice Hoffman

  Maria apologized to the peddler, and was soon convinced to invite him to stay with them on Maiden Lane, for he had nowhere else to go and Faith was insistent that they treat him like family. Truthfully, she knew him better than she knew her own mother.

  “Thank you. Much appreciated.” Finney could use the rest, for sleep had eluded him ever since they’d left Gravesend. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw an image of the tall, awkward madwoman who thought she could outrace a horse over a narrow bridge. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d cried out at the moment she fell to the marsh below, and worse, if she’d still been alive when they left her there. That was the thing that haunted him. When he’d gone to peer down into the shallows, the woman was facedown, her gray dress and bonnet soaked with saltwater, unmoving. She didn’t give any sign of life when he dragged her to a higher watermark. And yet, looking back on it, he could swear he’d seen the flutter of her back as she inhaled more water than air before he climbed back into the carriage to wait for Faith. Go on, Faith had told him. And he had. He had done as an eleven-year-old girl ordered him to do because she was fearless and he was not. Finney had actually been shaking as he stood there gazing into the creek. He knew the difference between life and death—a flutter, a heartbeat—and yet he had climbed up in his wagon and he hadn’t looked back.

  “What’s done is done,” Faith had told him when at last she’d scrambled back onto the carriage seat beside him, her boots and dress soaked, her hair streaked white with salt. He’d looked at her and nodded and knew it was likely they had killed someone. But the sky was blue and there were miles to go before they made their way across Brooklyn, and it was true, what was done was done and could not be undone.

  * * *

  Faith and Keeper walked side by side, completely at ease with each other. Maria had grown dizzy with emotion, but fortunately Jack Finney brought out smelling salts to revive her. “You’ll be fine,” he told her, but she wasn’t as certain. It was a shock to see someone come back from the great unknown. What was gone could return, but not necessarily as it was.

  “I assume she was with the lady who took her from me?” Maria asked once she’d recovered her senses. Finney had helped her into the wagon, and they followed after Faith, who seemed to welcome the mayhem of Manhattan.

  “She wasn’t a lady,” Finney said. “I’d say she was more of a monster.”

  Maria looked at him more closely and she liked what she saw, a kindhearted, wounded man. Perhaps he was a hero after all.

  “Anyway, the girl’s the one who found me,” Finney went on. “She’s got the sight, you know.”

  “Does she?” Maria’s back was straight. She had been taught never to discuss the Nameless Art with outsiders.

  “I’ve known such people before, in the town where I grew up, but none as young as your girl. She’s a special one. Seems it’s in her blood.”

  * * *

  When they reached Maiden Lane, the first thing Maria asked Finney was to build a fire in the yard, and as soon as it was lit, she tossed her mourning veil onto the flames. Without the veil, the light of day was so bright there were tears in her eyes. Finney led Arnold inside the barn and unhitched him from the wagon. Maria felt a tug inside her, thinking of the nights Samuel had slept there, and how long he’d been gone.

  Maria and Faith sat in the garden as the fire burned and the sky darkened, together for the first time in five years, ill at ease, as if they were strangers. Now that she was in her mother’s presence, Faith had questions, ones that had haunted her.

  “Martha told me you gave me to her. You didn’t want me.”

  “They had me in jail and she promised she would take care of you. She would do so until I could come for you.”

  “And you believed her?” Faith’s eyes were narrowed, a suspicious daughter glaring at her mother. Somewhere inside herself Faith had always wondered if any of Martha’s claims had been true. A monster makes you hers in small ways, each time she insists you must behave, you must not disagree, you must never show your feelings, and if you’re not careful, you may start to believe what she tells you. No one else wants you, no one else cares, you are nothing without her, you are nothing at all.

  Maria pulled at the collar of her dress so that Faith could see the mark of the rope. “They tried to hang me. I had no one to turn to and I didn’t want you to be in jail.”

  “But I was in jail,” Faith said softly, eyes shining with resentment. She was picking at the black mark on her hand, a nervous habit. “I couldn’t escape.” She held up her hands so that her mother could see the indentations from the metal bracelets around both wrists. “She had me in irons.”

  Maria blamed herself for all that had happened and mostly for trusting Martha, though it could be so difficult to see inside someone who was bound and determined to trick you, who hid her intentions beneath a scrim of false kindness. Even a witch can be betrayed.

  Faith nodded to the barn, where Finney was seeing to his horse. “He was the one who sawed off the cuffs. That’s why we must reward him. He deserves whatever his heart desires. You should see that he gets it. I wouldn’t like to be thought of as a liar.”

  “Of course. I’ll see to it.” Maria had a strange lurching feeling in the pit of her stomach. Faith had power, that much was certain. This girl of hers was a complicated being.

  Faith was thoughtful, biting her lip. “Does a person have to pay for any life they’ve taken?”

  Finney had begun to wash off the carriage, carrying buckets of water from the well. Maria assumed he was the reason Faith had asked about penance. “Did he kill Martha?” Maria asked.

  “No,” Faith said grimly. “It was me.”

  There was a film of black behind the girl’s pale gray eyes, the mark of guilt. Still, she was a child.

  “No,” Maria said. “You didn’t.”

  “I might as well have,” Faith admitted. “I watched her die. I could have pulled her out of the tide, but I left her there to perish as it rose around her.”

  If anyone was to blame, Maria felt it was herself. She thought of the wax figure and the pins, and the fire that had melted it into a black pool as Martha’s name was recited. You get what you give. You walk into the dark and the darkness abides within you. “I wished her ill and tried to cause it to be so,” she told her daughter. “I used the sort of magic we must never turn to.”

  “What sort is that?” Faith asked, her eyes bright.

  Maria shook her head. “We should not discuss it.”

  Faith showed her mother the red blotch in the palm of her hand that had appeared as she climbed up from the stream in the Flatlands, away from the rising tide.

  “A bar of black soap should wash that away,” Maria said. “You are not responsible. And likely, neither am I. Whatever we might have wished for, the truth is, Martha Chase made her own fate.”

  Faith shrugged, defiant. She knew precisely what she’d done. “What you put into the world comes back to you threefold. I watched her die and was happy to do so.”

  Faith had walked through the door into vengeance, and in doing so she had lost her childhood, but she was still young, and there was time enough for her to reclaim her life. “For every evil under the sun there is a remedy,” Maria said as she embraced her daughter. Let love be one, let it heal what had been broken, let it open the door to hope for the future. Time had passed too quickly and not at all. What was done could not be undone, but they were in Manhattan now, under the Tree of Heaven, and after all this time, they were together.

  * * *

  Faith was delighted to discover the small room under the eaves that had been waiting for her since the day the house was purchased. It was a child’s room, but still she adored it, even though she hadn’t the thoughts or emotions of a child. There was comfort to be found here, and for a few moments she could imagine she was the person she’d once been. She grinned as she held up the poppet she had loved when she was little more than a baby. “I remember this. Gogo made it for
me. Poor Goat. I wonder what happened to him.”

  “Poor! That’s far from what he is. This is his house.”

  “Is it?” Now Faith was curious. She had noticed the ring on her mother’s finger and wondered if there was a man. She was accustomed to looking at details, no matter how small, for her life had depended on such things: the door unlocked, the window open, the mint or sassafras growing by the side of the road, the blink of her foster mother’s eyes when she was beginning to anger. “And are you his wife?” she asked her mother.

  “The ring is a token, nothing more. I’ll never be anyone’s wife. I lived because Samuel Dias changed the rope on my hanging day, but before I leapt I vowed that anyone who fell in love with an Owens would be ruined. I did so to protect us all.”

  “I don’t care,” Faith assured her. “I never want to be in love. But poor Goat. He was always in love with you.”

  “You were only a baby! You couldn’t know how he felt.”

  “I saw the way he looked at you, and how hurt he was when you teased him.”

  Maria did her best to make light of the topic. “What do you know about love?”

  “Only that I never want to have anything to do with it.” Faith had learned that during her time with Martha, who had so often professed her love for her. You are mine, now and forever my daughter. No one else’s. Remember that. Faith had never once shown Martha the pools of black hatred behind her eyes. She’d been a perfect child so as not to receive any punishments. No nights locked in a dark cellar, no beatings with a switch. But then, and now, love in all its forms dismayed her. She wasn’t sure she could love anyone, not even her own mother, who could not do enough for her, baking apple pies, ordering new clothing from the dressmakers, reaching for her hand every time Faith was near. Faith kept her thoughts to herself, as she had for all those years in Brooklyn. Now that the iron bracelets had been removed, she could see into people’s hearts, but most of what she saw was a disappointment.

  “I’m afraid that one day you may be angry at me for what I’ve done,” Maria said thoughtfully. “You’ll despise me for setting down the curse. You’ll want to be in love.”

  It was then Faith knew it was her mother herself who regretted the curse. “I doubt that, but I intend to learn all I can about love. How to make it behave and how to stop it. Teach me and you’ll see. I’m a good student.”

  Fortunately Martha had allowed Faith to learn to read the Scriptures, and she had become a compulsive reader, hiding books in the hollows of old trees, and in the cemetery, and beneath the floorboards. Now that she was living in the room under the eaves in Samuel Dias’s house, she set up a lantern so that she might read magical texts late into the night. These were the books she’d brought along and kept hidden from her mother, for there were those who might say she was too young for these volumes, and others who might believe no one should have access to this knowledge. She’d taught herself Latin and Greek so she could immerse herself in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, the Ars Notoria, a section of The Key of Solomon, which included ways to increase one’s mental abilities and focus. Jack Finney had found a translation of the ancient Arabic text Picatrix, which contained all manner of enchantments, and a copy of the Arbatel, a spell book the peddler had uncovered in an abandoned farmhouse which he kept swathed in cotton batting, for it had burned his hands when he’d first taken hold of the book, as many powerful texts did. Faith was fairly certain this was the magic her mother didn’t wish to speak of, black magic, blood magic, left-handed magic, powerful and ancient and dangerous.

  Often Faith sat on the stairs, listening in when women came to see her mother to ask for charms and cures. Maria avoided love as best she could, but when women came crying, when they felt they had been destroyed, she gave in. The hue of henna that had been mixed with lime and roses, the tea boiled and simmered overnight, would reflect the strength of a woman’s love; the deeper the color, the more genuine the love. For love to last one must wear an amulet with apple seeds. Rosemary and lavender oil would give a person willpower, and to break a simple hex one must use salt, coconut oil, lavender, lemon juice, and lemon verbena. Faith memorized many of Hannah’s remedies when she read her mother’s Grimoire, but was even more intrigued with Rebecca’s runic spells that bordered on dark magic. In a few weeks’ time, she was delighted when her mother presented her with a book of her own. She saw the rules of magic that must never be forgotten written on the very first page.

  Do as you will, but harm no one.

  What you give will be returned to you threefold.

  The lines on Faith’s left hand had changed so radically they were unrecognizable; the red splotch that had appeared was still there, and sometimes it burned. She dyed her hair with madder root, which turned it a blood-red color. In truth, she didn’t care for rules of any sort; rules made little sense to a person who had grown up in a world without compassion or pity, where there was no moral code by which to abide. The rules that applied to the Nameless Art seemed childish. What she desired most of all was to find a Grimoire of the dark arts. She wanted protection and revenge, all that she might have used to defend herself when she was made to wear iron bracelets and pretend she was a perfect child; magic without rules, dark and deep and endless. Some people grow weak when they are victimized, others grow stronger, and still others combine those two attributes to become dangerous, even if the person in question is a girl who has recently turned twelve.

  * * *

  Faith soon grew accustomed to Manhattan and came to know the markets quite well. She regularly visited bookstalls to search through old piles of water-stained manuscripts. She would know the text she needed when she found it. It would feel like a nest of bees when she touched it, swarming and alive, ready to do damage once it belonged to her. Keeper followed at her heels, clearly disapproving of her mission. He growled at the booksellers and at those searching through the stacks. Occasionally, Faith was asked to leave a stall and take her hellhound with her. She began to leave him at home when she went searching, though the poor beast clawed at the door and howled, startling the birds in the branches of the Tree of Heaven.

  And then one morning, in a bookstall on the outskirts of the Fly Market, among piles of ruined and rotted manuscripts, Faith found a handwritten treatise of the Dark Arts, a Grimoire that should have been burned on the day of its author’s death, but had managed to escape the fire. It was called the The Book of the Raven, dated 1600, London. The prose was written on thin pages of vellum in alternating red and black inks, then bound in black calfskin that had been tied together with knotted black thread. When Faith set her ear to the spine, she could hear it humming as the book came alive.

  The Grimoire’s mysterious author was a woman with a huge range of knowledge, writing in both Italian and English. She’d been born in Venice and had become a member of the court of England; she knew more than most educated men about politics and falconry and music and myth. The author maintained that she was a poet, which was thought to be impossible for a woman, yet her claim was true enough. She had been the first woman to publish a volume of poems, a text that had gone largely unrecognized, not due to the quality of the work, but to the particularity of the sex of the writer. On the first page of her Grimoire was a quote from a man who many claimed had written love songs of admiration and desire for her, celebrating her strengths.

  In the old age, black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.

  The author of The Book of the Raven was dark in every way, not a traditional English beauty, but a beauty all the same. There was no cure for the sort of passion her admirers felt for her. It was an illness, a devastation, and, often, a crime. Those who desired her wondered if their love was natural, or if it had been induced by the use of magical incantations.

  Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

  The author of this Grimoire knew more about love than most, for at thirteen she’d been given over to a lord of the court who was three times her a
ge. She looked at love with a cold, clear eye and a heart that was as practical as it was passionate. The Book of the Raven was the author’s book of spells and enchantments, lost at the time of her death, nearly fifty years earlier.

  Know what you want, and be sure of it, for regret gives birth to more regret and nothing more.

  The author could call up strange maladies, force a liar to tell the truth, conjure demons that would haunt men’s dreams. She had studied astrology with a great master in Italy, and the written conjurations and charms formed by the power of her words were so intense and beautiful they turned silver in the dark and could be read by the light of their meaning alone. She had been trained to be charming, but she gathered knowledge solely to make certain she would never again have to do anyone’s bidding. The men who had used her, she used in return. Always it was words that saved her and renewed her and gave her freedom, even when she appeared to be chained to her life by love.

  The Book of the Raven

  What I have sacrificed, what I have given, what I have hidden from the world, what is needed to do the same.

  A wand of hazel will be needed.

  Rose water should be beside you at all times.

  The pentacle of Solomon should be drawn on the floor to summon the spirit of Oberon, the king of magic.

  Stand in a circle that unites the four sections of the world and the four elements, then burn myrtle wood and sandalwood. Burn white nettle, the herb of the archangel.

  After this process one would be able to see into the future, control the elements, enchant mortals, subdue enemies, and invoke a malediction for enemies.

  I conjure you by fire, by blood, and by memory so that you may perceive your eternal sentence.