“Once,” said Miss Gray, “witchcraft was seen as a—well, a craft, to be taught by apprenticeship and practiced by intuition. Nowadays, we know that witchcraft is a science. Specific actions will yield specific results. Rose, please don’t slouch in your chair. Being a witch should not prevent you from behaving like a lady. Justina, your elbow has disarranged Mortimer, a South American alligator, or the remains thereof. A witch is always respectful, even to inanimate objects. Please pay attention. As I was saying, nowadays witchcraft is regarded as a science, as reliable, for an experienced practitioner, as predicting the weather. It is this science—not the hocus-pocus of those terrible women in Macbeth, who are more to be pitied than feared in their delusion—that I propose to teach you. We shall begin tomorrow. Please be prompt—I dislike tardiness.”
As we walked down the garden path, away from the Randolph house, Emma said to the ghost, “How did you know about the lessons?”
“My Papa was sleeping under the Observer,” she said. Her voice was a rusty whisper, as though she had almost forgotten how to use it.
“Here, I don’t want this,” said Emma, handing her the last cream horn, somewhat crumbled, which she had been keeping in her pocket.
None of us realized until afterward that Miss Gray had never told us what time to come.
“The first lesson,” said Miss Gray, “is to see yourselves.”
We were looking into mirrors, old mirrors speckled at the edges, in tarnished gold frames—Justina’s had a crack across her forehead, and Emma stared into a shaving-glass. Justina thought, “I look like her. My mother looked like her. They say my mother died of influenza, but perhaps she died at the asylum in Charlotte, chained to her bed, clawing at her hair and crying because of the lizards. Perhaps all the Balfours go mad, from marrying each other. Is that why Father left?” Because to the best of her knowledge, her father was in Italy, perhaps in Rome, where Serenity glared out through the bars of her prison, so far beneath the cathedral that no daylight crept between the stones, at the Inquisitor and his men, monks all, but with pistols at their sides. Justina looked into her eyes, large and dark, for signs of madness.
Rose scowled, which did not improve her appearance. What would she have looked like, if she had taken after the Winslows rather than her father? She imagined her mother and her aunt Catherine, who had never married. How daunting it must have been, taking for a moment her father’s perspective, to marry that austere delicacy, which could only have come from the City of Winter. In Boston, her mother had told her, it snowed all winter long. Rose imagined it as a city of perpetual silence, where the snow muffled all sounds except for the tinkling of bells, sleigh bells and the bells of churches built from blocks of ice. Within the houses, also built of ice, sat ladies and gentlemen, calm, serene, with noses like icicles, conversing politely—probably about the weather. And none of them were as polite or precise as her mother or her aunt Catherine, the daughters of the Snow Queen. When they drove in their sleigh, drawn by a yak, they wore capes of egret feathers. If she were more like them, more like a Snow Princess, instead of—sunburnt and ungainly—would she, Rose wondered, love me then?
Emma imagined herself getting fatter and fatter, her face stretching until she could no longer see herself in the shaving glass. If she suddenly burst, what would happen? She would ooze over Ashton like molasses, covering the streets. Her father would call the men who were harvesting tobacco, call them from the fields to gather her in buckets and then tubs. They would give her to the women, who would spread her over buttered bread, and the children would eat her for breakfast. She shook her head, trying to clear away the horrifying image.
Melody thought, “Lord, let me never wish for whiter skin, or a skinnier nose, or eyes like Emma’s, as blue as the summer sky, no matter what.”
We did not know what the ghost thought, but as she stared into her mirror, she shook her head, and we understood. Who can look into a mirror without shaking her head? Except Miss Gray.
“No, no, girls,” said Miss Gray. “All of the sciences require exact observation, particularly witchcraft. You must learn to see, not what you expect to see, but what is actually there. Now look again.”
It was Melody who saw first. Of course she had been practicing: Melody always practiced. It was hot even for July—the flowers in all the gardens of Ashton were drooping, except for the flowers in Miss Gray’s garden. But in the laboratory it was cool. We were drinking lemonade. We were heartily sick of looking into mirrors.
“Come, girls,” said Miss Gray. “I would like you to see what Melody has accomplished.” We looked into Melody’s mirror: butterflies. Butterflies everywhere, all the colors of sunrise, Swallowtails and Sulfurs, Harvesters and Leafwings, Fritillaries, Emperors, and Blues, like pieces of silk that were suddenly wings—silk from evening gowns that Emma’s mother might have worn, or Rose’s. “O latest born and loveliest visions far of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! Butterflies are symbols of the soul,” said Miss Gray. “And also of poetry. You, Melody, are a poet.”
“That’s stupid,” said Melody.
“But nevertheless true,” said Miss Gray.
“It’s like—a garden, or a park,” said Emma, when she too saw. And we could also see it, a lawn beneath maple trees whose leaves were beginning to turn red and gold. They were spaced at regular intervals along a gravel path, and both lawn and path were covered with leaves that had already fallen. The lawn sloped down to a pond whose surface reflected the branches above. Beside the path stood a bench, whose seat was also covered with leaves. On either side of the bench were stone urns, with lichen growing over them, and further along the path we could see a statue of a woman, partially nude. She was dressed in a stone scarf and bits of moss.
“How boring,” said Emma, although the rest of us would have liked to go there, at least for the afternoon, it was so peaceful.
And then, for days, we saw nothing. But finally, in the ghost’s mirror, appeared the ghost of a mouse, small and gray, staring at us with black eyes.
“He’s hungry,” said the ghost. Emma handed her a piece of gingerbread, and she nibbled it gratefully, although we knew that wasn’t what she meant. And from then on, we called her Mouse.
“If you’d only apply yourself, Rose, I’m sure you could do it,” said Miss Gray, as Miss Osborn, the mathematics teacher, had said at the end of the school year while giving out marks. Rose scowled again, certain that she could not. And it was Justina whom we saw next.
“It’s only a book,” she said. It was a large book, bound in crimson leather with gilding on its spine, and a gilt title on the cover: Justina.
“Open it,” said Miss Gray.
“How?” But she was already reaching into the mirror, opening the book at random—to a page that began, “And so, Justina opened the book.” The rest of the page was blank. “Who writes in it?” asked Justina, as the words “’Who writes in it,’ asked Justina” wrote themselves across the page.
“That’s enough for now,” said Miss Gray as she reached into the mirror and closed the book. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
On the day that Rose finally saw herself, the rest of us were grinding bones into powder and putting the powder into jars labeled lizard, bat, frog. Mouse was sewing wings on a taxidermed mouse.
“That’s it?” asked Rose, outraged. “I’ve been practicing all this time for a stupid rosebush? It doesn’t even have roses. It’s all thorns.”
“Wait,” said Miss Gray. “It’s early yet for roses,” although the pink roses—La Reine, she had told us—were blooming over the sides of the Randolph house, and their perfume filled the laboratory.
Sitting in the cottage afterward, we agreed: the first lesson had been disappointing. But we rather liked grinding bones.
Rose’s heart swung in her chest like a pendulum when Miss Gray said, “It’s time you learned how to fly.” She told us to meet in the woods, at the edge of Slater’s Pond. Mouse was late, she was almost always late. As we stoo
d waiting for her, Emma whispered, “Do you think we’re going to use broomsticks? Witches use broomsticks, right?”
Miss Gray, who had been looking away from us and into the woods, presumably for Mouse, turned and said, “Although Emma seems to have forgotten, I trust the rest of you remember that a lady never whispers. The use of a broomstick, although traditional, arose from historical rather than magical necessity. All that a witch needs to fly is a tree branch—the correct tree branch, carefully trained. It must have fallen, preferably in a storm—we are fortunate, this summer, to have had so many storms—and the tree from which it fell must be compatible with the witch. The principle is a scientific one: a branch, which has evolved to exist high above the earth, waving in the wind, desires to return to that height. Therefore, with the proper encouragement, it has the ability to carry the witch up into the air, which we experience as flying. Historically, witches have disguised their branches as brooms, to hide them from—those authorities who did not understand that witchcraft is a science. It is part of the lamentable history of prejudice against rational thinking. I myself, when I worked with Galileo—Sophia, I’m afraid you’re late again.”
“I’m sorry,” mumbled Mouse, and we walked off into the woods, each separately searching for our branches, with Miss Gray’s voice calling instructions and encouragement through the trees.
Justina’s branch was a loblolly pine, that only she could ride: it kicked and bucked like an untrained colt. Melody rode a tulip poplar that looked too large for her. It moved like a cart horse, but she said that it was so steady, she always felt safe. Rose found an osage-orange that looked particularly attractive, with its glossy leaves and three dried oranges, now brown, still attached, but they did not agree—she liked to soar over the treetops, and it preferred to navigate through the trees, within a reasonable distance of the ground. When she flew too high, it would prick her with its thorns. So she gave it to Emma, who rode it until the end of summer and afterward asked Henry to carve a walking stick out of it, so she would not forget her flying lessons. Rose finally settled on a winged elm, which she said helped her loop-de-loop, a maneuver only she would try. Mouse took longer than all of us to find her branch: she was scared of flying, we could see that. Finally, Miss Gray gave her a shadbush, which never flew too high and seemed as skittish as she was. Miss Gray herself flew on a sassafras, which never misbehaved. She rode side-saddle, with her back straight and her skirt sweeping out behind her, in a steady canter.
“Straighten your back,” she would say, as we flew, carefully at first and then with increasing confidence, over the pasture beneath Slocumb’s Bluff, the highest point in Ashton. “Rose, you look like a hunchback. Melody, you must ride your branch with spirit. Think of yourself as Hippolyta riding her favorite horse to war.”
“Who’s Hippolyta?” asked Emma, gripping her branch as tightly as she could. She had just avoided an encounter with the rocky side of the bluff. Mouse was the most frightened, but Emma was the most cautious of us.
“Queen of the Amazons,” said Melody, attempting to dodge two Monarchs. Since the day she had seen herself in the mirror, butterflies had come to her, wherever she was. They sat on her shoulders, and early one morning, when she was cleaning the mirror in Elspeth Jefferson’s bedroom, she saw that they had settled on her hair, like a crown.
That day, none of us were being Amazon Queens. Rose was flying close to the side of the bluff and over the Himalayas, in a cloak of egret feathers. She could see the yak she had once ridden, sulking beneath her. She was, for the first time she could remember, perfectly happy. Somewhere among those peaks were the Forbidden Cities. She could see the first of them, the City of Winter, where the Snow Queen ruled in isolated splendor and the Princesses Elizabeth and Caroline rode thought the city streets in a sleigh drawn by leopards as white as snow. She flew upward, over the towers of the city, which were shining in the sunlight. And there were the people, serene and splendid, looking up at her, startled to see her flying above them with her cloak of egret feathers streaming out behind her, although they were too polite to shout. But then one and another raised their hands to wave to her, and the bells on their wrists jingled, like sleigh
bells.
She raised her hand to wave back, and plunged down the side of the bluff.
“What were you thinking!” said Emma, when Rose was sitting on a boulder at the bottom of the bluff, with her ankle bound up in Miss Gray’s scarf.
“I pulled out of it, didn’t I?” said Rose.
“But you almost didn’t,” said Melody. “You really should be more careful.”
Rose snorted, and we knew what Miss Gray would say to that. A lady never snorts. But Miss Gray had other problems to take care of.
“Justina!” she called, but Justina wasn’t listening. Serenity Sage was floating over the Alps in a balloon. In a castle in Switzerland, The Mask was waiting for her. He had not been captured by the Inquisition after all, and knowing that he was free had given her the resolve to starve herself until she was slender enough to slip through the prison bars, and then up through the darkness of the stone passages under the cathedral. There, through a rosewood fretwork, she had seen the secret rites of the Inquisition, and they had marked her soul forever. But today she was free and flying in the sunlight over the mountains. For three days now, her grandmother had been sick. Zelia had been sitting with her, Zelia had taken care of everything, and the cut on Justina’s shoulder was healing, although the paperweight with a view of the Brighton Pavilion would never be the same. Three days, three days of freedom, thought Serenity, watching the mountains below, which looked like a bouquet of white roses.
“Justina!” called Miss Emily. “Are you simply going to float up into the sky? Stop at once.”
The loblolly stopped, although Justina almost didn’t. She lurched forward and looked around, startled, at Miss Gray.
“I don’t want to be an Amazon Queen,” said Emma, watching from below, “and I don’t want to learn to fly.”
“How can you not want to fly?” asked Rose.
“Because I’m not you. How can you never remember to comb your hair?”
Rose ran her fingers through her hair, which did look like it had been in a whirlwind.
“Stop arguing,” said Melody. “I’m worried about Mouse.”
“She’s doing all right,” said Rose. What Mouse lacked in courage, she made up for in determination: she was sputtering over the meadow, her thin legs stuck out on either sides of the branch, her body bent forward to make it go faster, her hair falling into her face.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” said Melody. “Have you noticed how thin she’s getting?”
“You’d be so much better if you practiced,” said Rose. “Melody practices. That’s why she’s the best flyer, after me and Justina.”
“I don’t think you’re so much better than Justina,” said Emma.
“You’re not listening,” said Melody. “I said—” but just then a flock of Painted Ladies rose about her, so thick that she had to brush them away with her hands.
We all learned to fly, although it took longer than we expected, and by the time we could all soar over the bluff—except Emma, who preferred to stay close to the ground—the summer storms had passed. We could feel, in the colder updrafts, the coming of autumn.
Despite what Emma had said, Rose was the best of us, the most accomplished flyer. She had explored the Himalayas, had found each of the Forbidden Cities hidden among their peaks, including the city that was simply a stone maze, the City of Birds, where she had practiced speaking bird language, and the temporary and evanescent City of Clouds.
Autumn was coming, and these were the things we knew: how to, in a mirror or still pond, see Historical Scenes (although we were heartily sick of the Battle of Waterloo and the Death of Cleopatra, which Miss Gray seemed to particularly enjoy); summon various animals, including possums, squirrels, sparrows, and stray dogs; turn small pebbles into gold and turn gold into
small pebbles (to which we had lost another pair of Emma’s earrings); and speak with birds. We could now speak to the crows that lived in the trees beside the Beauforts’ cottage, although they never said anything interesting. It was always about whose daughter was marrying whom, and how that changed the rules of precedence, which were particularly arcane among crows.
We thought of them first, when we decided to do something about Mouse.
“Can’t we ask the birds? Maybe they know where she is.” Melody sat curled in a corner of the green sofa, like one of Miss Gray’s cats. “We haven’t seen her for days.” But the crows, who told us everything they knew about mice, knew nothing about Mouse.
“Try the mirror,” said Justina. “If we can watch the Battle of Waterloo over and over, surely we can see where Mouse has gone.” We were startled: since we had learned how to fly, Justina had seemed more distant than ever, and although she still spent mornings with us at the cottage, she always seemed to be somewhere else.
The only mirror in the cottage had once been in the Beauforts’ front hall; it was tall and in a gilt frame, the sort of hall mirror that had been fashionable when old Mrs. Balfour and Mrs. Beaufort, Emma’s grandmother, had ruled the social world of Ashton, whose front halls had to be widened to accommodate their crinolines. When Adeline Beaufort entered the house after Grandma Beaufort’s funeral, she said, “That mirror has to go.”
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