Broken Wish

by Julie C. Dao

  “My husband’s still getting over his cold,” Agnes said, as Mathilda stirred the pot over the fire, her cheeks glowing from the flames. “He’s sorry to miss another good dinner of yours.”

  Mathilda gave her a wry smile. “You don’t need to lie. I know Oskar would rather swim in the freezing river than come again, and it’s all right. All that matters to me is that you’re here.”

  Agnes searched for some apology, but all that came out was “You’re my friend.”

  “And you’re mine,” Mathilda said, her eyes shining as she poured them two mugs of piping-hot ginger tea. Her long, wavy dark hair had been tied back with a frost-blue ribbon and cascaded over the shoulder of her dark green wool dress. She wrapped her hands around her drink, her eyes soft. “I know what people think of me. And contrary to what they believe, I have had friends before. I’ve even fallen in love, once. But it didn’t work out.”

  “Why not?” Agnes asked gently.

  The young woman fixed her with a steady gaze. “Because to love me is to choose a life of isolation. I was born to stand apart, and few people want to do that.” She looked into her tea, searching for words. “Humans are social creatures. They want to be accepted by others, and if that means going along with what most people think, then that’s what they’ll do. I think Oskar is like that, and he isn’t wrong to be. It’s the safe path.”

  “He had a hard childhood.” Agnes felt the need to explain. “We left much grief behind in Mannheim.”

  “I don’t blame him. If I were Oskar, I wouldn’t befriend me, either. But I don’t get to be him, or you, or anyone else, however much I want to be.” A shadow passed over Mathilda’s face. “I almost didn’t write to say thank you when you first baked me cookies. I thought, I can’t subject this poor woman to that. But I’m glad I did, and I found such a kind person who doesn’t let other people’s opinions scare her.”

  Agnes’s gut twinged with guilt, remembering the lie she had told the Brauns.

  “So will you let me help you?” Mathilda asked, her face bright. “Will you allow me to make the tonic for you, and see what comes of it?”

  Here was the moment Agnes had felt certain would reveal what she ought to do. But no answer, no decision appeared—only a hope so sharp it felt like hunger. “You sounded so certain the other night. Can you really do all that? And how? How is it that physicians and apothecaries Oskar and I have seen over the years couldn’t help us, and you can?”

  Mathilda laughed. “Some might call it magic,” she said, and Agnes couldn’t tell from her playful tone whether she meant it or not. “I was raised by a woman who taught me everything I needed to know. She was a great healer; she showed me how to help people.”

  “And she succeeded?” Agnes asked anxiously, as her neighbor got up to fill two bowls with a spiced pot roast and root vegetables. “She helped someone have a baby?”

  “Yes, and delivered it, too.”

  The answer filled Agnes’s chest like air. “How many times did she do it?”

  “Just once,” Mathilda said, handing her a bowl. “The next day, she was driven out of the town where she lived. It was her reward for helping that woman, who did nothing to defend her. Just cuddled her baby and put her out of her mind. So my mentor never did it again.”

  Agnes stared at her food. Oskar had suggested she betray Mathilda in just the same way. But the tonic had worked before; it had gotten someone else a baby, and it could help her, too.

  “You don’t need to worry about me,” Mathilda said, misinterpreting her expression. “The people of Hanau have left me alone for years. They might talk and abuse my name in the market and the tavern, but no one has come up this hill in almost a decade.”

  “Yes.” The word escaped Agnes without thinking.

  Mathilda paused in the middle of sprinkling pepper on her vegetables. “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I’d like you to help me.”

  The young woman went still. “And you agree to my terms? If I help you, you’ll promise to continue to write me and have supper with me?”

  Agnes swallowed hard. “Yes. I promise.”

  The smile on Mathilda’s face was like sunshine over the frozen hills. Agnes tried to return the smile, even though she had made the split-second decision without knowing whether she would be loyal to her husband or her neighbor in the end.

  But underneath the warring emotions—and the feeling that she had started something from which there was no going back—she felt hope and joy for the first time in years, and she clung to them with everything that she had.

  Once the supper dishes were cleared away, Mathilda began gathering the ingredients for her tonic. “They all come from my garden,” she explained, laying bundles of leaves, roots, and tiny flowers on the table. They released a dark, earthy smell when she rubbed them between her fingers. “The materials for this tonic have to be gathered at night. The moon happened to be just right the evening you and Oskar came over, so I collected them after you left.”

  Agnes studied the plants, touched that Mathilda had begun preparing to help even before they had given her an answer. “Didn’t you say the tonic would have three ingredients only?”

  “Three active ingredients, yes, but they have to be delivered in a special solution.” Mathilda pulled more bottles from her cabinets. “They can’t be taken as they are, because their properties are strongest when mixed with other agents.”

  “You learned all this from your mentor?” Agnes asked, impressed. Her mother had taught her how to read and write, which was more of an education than most girls of her age and class had, but she was awed by how much knowledge Mathilda seemed to possess.

  “Yes. She always said that magic relies on balance.” Mathilda chopped the leaves into neat, precise slivers. “People think it’s as simple as making things appear from out of nowhere but don’t understand that it all has a cost. We never take without giving back in return. We can’t.”

  “What’s the cost of helping me, then?”

  Mathilda smiled. “Why, the promise you just made me, of course. A promise is like a contract,” she explained. “I gave my word to use my magic to help you have a child, and in return, you gave your word to continue writing and visiting me. It’s an easy exchange for us because we’re already good friends. But I assure you, there can be serious mishaps.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s power in a promise, no matter who you make it to. The most powerful are made when magic is involved. If you break one of those promises, you release its energy into the world.”

  Agnes found that she was holding her breath. “What happens then?”

  “No one knows. Where magic gives, it can also take—in ways that no one can foresee.”

  “And that affects people like you, too? People with…magic?”

  “Of course.” Mathilda chuckled. “The promise I regret breaking the most is the one that took away my ability to sing. I used to have a voice like a nightingale, but now I can only croak.”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it? You have to accept the consequences forever?” Agnes asked. “That seems very harsh.”

  Mathilda shrugged. “Those are the rules. But I know I don’t have to worry here. I trust you,” she added, leaning over to pat Agnes’s hand.

  Agnes couldn’t help it—her hand jerked guiltily away, but Mathilda didn’t seem to notice as she picked up a pestle and ground the dry ingredients together in the bowl. Every now and then, she added a few drops of water, and slowly the mixture became a deep purple paste.

  “You add it like a dollop of honey to a cup of tea,” Mathilda said, sprinkling in a bit more water. “There’s lavender and sugar in there to make it taste better. You need to drink all of it in three sips. Do this on each of three nights. Tonight will be the first.”

  “Why three?”

  “It’s a powerful number, like seven. It appears in all sorts of potions, poultices, spellwork…” Mathilda dusted off her hands and went to get t
he kettle. She poured boiling-hot water into a pretty cornflower-blue teacup filled with dried lavender flowers, then stirred the paste into it. “Here you are. Blow on it first, so you don’t burn yourself.”

  Agnes accepted the cup with trembling fingers. The tea had turned an attractive shade of lilac, and she could see her own wide, anxious eyes in it. She had the odd sensation that all the world held its breath as she stared at her reflection. Once she drank this tonic, there would be no going back. She would have to decide, at the end of it—no matter what happened—whether to continue her friendship with Mathilda or betray her.

  Perhaps Oskar had been afraid of this woman for a good reason. Perhaps people didn’t gossip about her without just cause. Because try as she might, Agnes couldn’t think of any way to describe all this talk of spellwork and power but witchcraft, plain and simple. She shivered, wondering whether the creatures in Lina’s throat and the poisoning of the troublemakers had been accidents, or something worse.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Mathilda said gently. “The tonic won’t hurt you.”

  Unless I break my promise, Agnes thought.

  “It will help you, because one good deed deserves another,” the woman went on, and there was such kindness and trust in her eyes that Agnes found it difficult to look at her. But she forced herself to, and for a moment, she felt as though her soul was bared before this strange, elegant, solitary person. She wondered if loneliness was another unwanted consequence of magic, another price Mathilda was paying for a broken vow.

  I could go, Agnes told herself. The cup steamed, smelling of dewy spring mornings. I could return to my husband and never see her again. No harm done and no promises broken.

  But whenever she closed her eyes, she would see that child with Oskar’s bright blue eyes. She would hear that little voice calling, Mama, Mama, and feel that tiny hand reaching trustingly for her own. And she would know, with every painful beat of her heart, that it was not real.

  That it would never, ever be real.

  Unless…

  Before her courage could fail her, Agnes picked up the cup and sipped. Within the tonic, she tasted secrets she had never told a living soul, winter nights by the fire as her mother combed her hair, and lullabies with words she had long forgotten. Her entire life passed down her throat, burning her insides, and she felt an overwhelming rush of both joy and melancholy.

  “Two more sips,” Mathilda encouraged her, and Agnes tipped the cup to her mouth again. The liquid scalded her all the way down, and she gasped for breath and then, at a nod from Mathilda, took her final sip. The cup slipped from her hand, and she only vaguely registered Mathilda catching it before it could shatter. “Good. How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” Agnes said, though her head swam and the cottage seemed to be tilted on its side. She looked around in a daze and noticed that the velvet over the mantel had slipped a bit more, revealing a dark glimmer as though oil and canvas did not hang there, but a sheet of silvery glass.

  “The tonic will make you a bit drowsy, so let’s get you home,” Mathilda said kindly. She helped Agnes slip her arms into the sleeves of her coat and buttoned the front for her. “You’ll feel wonderful in the morning, with a great deal of energy. Come back at the same time tomorrow evening and I’ll have your second dose ready, all right?”

  “All right.” Agnes’s knees wobbled as she opened the door. She had never had a sip of ale in her life, but thought this might be what it felt like to be drunk. “Tomorrow evening.”

  The walk back down the hill was a blur, and then she was home, where Oskar, pale and worried, helped her into a chair by the fire. He knelt in front of her, asking over and over if she was all right as she blinked away her confusion.

  “I took the tonic,” she heard herself say. “I’m going back tomorrow night.”

  “Do you have to?” Oskar asked tensely.

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “Katharina Braun came a few minutes after you left. She must have just missed seeing you go up the hill, thank god. She brought us a chicken pie.” He pointed to a covered dish on the table with a desolate little laugh. “I had to make something up about where you were. I wanted to say you were in bed sick, but she would have wanted to come in and see you.”

  The murky, dazed feeling dissipated, and in its place was fear. “What did you tell her?”

  “That you had forgotten to buy something for supper and had to run into town.” Oskar ran a weary hand over his face. “She asked why she hadn’t passed you and I said you were still learning the routes, so perhaps you’d taken the wrong path. I don’t think she believed me.”

  Agnes took one of his hands in hers and felt his pulse thundering. “You have no reason to lie that she knows of,” she said reassuringly. “And she accepted my story about the goat escaping and damaging Mathilda’s hedge. She hasn’t the faintest idea I went back up the hill.”

  “But what am I going to say when she comes back tomorrow?” Oskar asked. “She and Sophie want to call on you and get your recipe for those molasses cookies. I can’t make excuses for two more nights….” He got up and paced before the fire, his features strained with anxiety. “They’re watching us now. They’re curious. And if they knew the truth…My god, Agnes, the way these women gossip. In the few minutes before I got rid of her, I heard all about a failed marriage, a truant child, and a family in ruin, and I didn’t even know who these people were! That’s how it will be when the Brauns find out you’ve been seeing the witch. It will be all over town.” He stopped pacing. “We have to leave Hanau.”

  Agnes’s heart clenched at his helpless panic. “Oskar…”

  “But how are we going to afford to leave?” he went on, raking his hands through his hair. “We spent every last penny on this cottage and the hired wagon for our furniture. Good god, I’ll have to go to Otto. I’ll have to swallow my pride and let him help us like he offered to….”

  “Oskar!” Agnes cried, and he finally stopped talking. She got up and took his face in her hands. “Listen to me. There is no need to go to your brother for help or for us to leave Hanau. I truly believe Mathilda can help us. She’s given me hope for the first time in a long time, and I need to go back twice more. I need to finish taking this tonic. We can’t stop now.”

  “If the Bergmanns or the Werners hear of it…”

  “No one will hear. Because the friendship will not continue.” The words shocked Agnes, though they came from her own lips. She shivered, as though Mathilda might have somehow heard her. “I love you, Oskar. You are my husband and my priority. I wish there was another way. I wish I didn’t have to hurt Mathilda. But I don’t want to keep running, so I’ll end it with her.” She closed her eyes, picturing the gifts and messages that had made her so happy.

  Oskar wrapped his arms tightly around her, his sobs muffled in her hair.

  “I have to keep taking the tonic,” Agnes said, her voice breaking, and she felt Oskar nod. “Tomorrow morning, I will find Katharina and bring her my recipe. I’ll tell her I’m coming down with your cold and not to come over for supper until next week. That should hold her off. I will go back to Mathilda two more times, and then never again.”

  “Thank you,” her husband whispered.

  Agnes closed her eyes, feeling exhausted with the weight of the decision, the friend she would have to betray, and the consequences—unknown and uncontrollable—that she would have to face for her broken promise. Where magic gives, Mathilda had explained, it can also take—in ways that no one can foresee.

  But it was a sacrifice Agnes had to make for Oskar, and for the family they hoped to have. It was the only thing she could tell herself to make it feel any better.

  To my lovely friend Agnes:

  I was expecting you last night! I hope nothing is the matter. I wanted to see how you were feeling after taking the third dose. Sometimes the tonic can make you feel sick to your stomach. I’m worried that this is the case, since you have always come when you said you would.


  Here is a package to make you feel better, with some mild biscuits and hard candies I purchased for you in Hainburg, along with my own ginger tea and honey. Please drink plenty of tea and water and get rest, and do not worry about writing me back until you feel better.

  With great affection,

  Mathilda

  To my dearest Agnes:

  How did you fare with the biscuits and candy? Did the ginger tea help? I hope you’ve been able to keep food down, poor thing. I think you must be very ill indeed, since it has been five days without any response. Here is another blanket I made for you. Stay warm!

  This snowstorm is truly horrible, and if it weren’t for that and my fear of annoying Oskar, I would have come down to see you already. Please write back when you can.

  Your concerned friend,

  Mathilda

  Dear Agnes,

  It has been a week and a half since I last saw you. Is anything amiss? I was in the garden gathering winter berries for a pie yesterday (yes, you’ve inspired me to try something other than cakes!) and I heard voices down the hill. Imagine my relief when I saw you with Oskar, looking perfectly well. I’m glad the tonic’s effects did not linger, but I hope you haven’t been troubled by anything. I suppose something has happened with Oskar’s brother, or perhaps someone else in your family, to occupy your mind?

  Please write to me soon. I will send over a berry pie tomorrow if it turns out all right.

  Your friend,

  Mathilda

  Dear Agnes,

  How did you like the berry pie? I hope whatever has been troubling you is over. It must have been a very bothersome family matter for you to not write back for so long. I’m glad we are nearing the end of February. That warm day we had was such a blessing. Perhaps if we have another one, you might be able to come up and have tea? We can sit in the garden, and Oskar is of course invited, though I feel certain he won’t wish to come.