The book of magic, p.3
The Book of Magic, page 3
When it was time to leave, Jet couldn’t bring herself to wake Rafael. She wished she could stay all week, but if she remained with him for too long her heart would break; it was breaking already. She watched him sleep for a few moments, grateful to have known love despite the curse. She wasn’t normal, she never could be, but Rafael hadn’t seemed to mind. She left a note on the bedside table, a quote from her favorite poet. Rafael would understand. He always had. They would never be parted.
Unable are the Loved to die
For Love is Immortality.
On the train back to Boston, Daisy sat on Jet’s lap and gazed out the window as they passed through the pale green marshes in Connecticut. “Service dog,” Jet told the conductor, and who would argue with such a dear, old lady who appeared to be crying black tears, the tears that witches cry no matter that lore says they have no hearts and are incapable of love. There were osprey nests on the tallest utility poles and one huge bird with a wingspan of five feet swooped over the lowering tide in search of fish. Tall tawny grass was growing in the rivulets, and the clouds reflected in the water. Had there ever been a marsh as beautiful? Everything you did for the last time was a miracle, no matter how ordinary. Jet had been beside Rafael while he brushed his teeth, she had taken the subway with him to Queens, she had seen the way he looked at her, as if nothing else mattered. This is the way their real life might have been if she hadn’t been forced to keep vigil over the curse.
“You don’t have to worry about the curse anymore,” she’d reassured him as they’d walked along the landscape of their past, so that it almost seemed as if they were young again and had all the time in the world.
“I was never worried,” Rafael told her. “I’ve been lucky and I know it.”
* * *
Franny came in from the garden with a basket of fresh parsley and mint. She stopped when she saw that her sister had returned. She could see an ashy shadow around Jet, visible only if you knew what death looked like, if you dared to peer into a black mirror and see the future of those you loved most. It was the evening of the second day and by tomorrow the color of the shadow would be more ink than ash.
“Back at last,” Franny said crisply. Her heart was breaking, but what good would it do to let it show?
“Here I am,” Jet replied. “Yours for the next five days.”
Mine alone, Franny thought. Beautiful, darling, dear sister. “Then we should make supper,” she said. We should make the most of every minute we have.
They spent nearly every moment together during the next few days, linked in thought and deed, as sisters often are. Who can you trust if not your sister? Who knows your story better than she? If you saw one Owens sister at the grocery, the other would be right beside her. If one was working in the garden, making certain the rows of herbs were weeded, her sister would be there as well, carrying a basket to collect the dandelion greens. When Jet went to visit Reverend Willard at the retirement home, Franny tagged along, even though she was the least social creature in town and had certainly never visited anyone there before. Daisy was with them, and no one at the retirement home considered giving them any trouble concerning a canine visitor, knowing if they did they’d have Franny to deal with, who had already cast a domination spell in the entry hall to ensure that people on the premises would bend to her will.
The Reverend had performed the marriage ceremony for Franny and her beloved Haylin Walker soon after Haylin was diagnosed with cancer, and due to that kindness, Franny had made allowances for the way he’d treated Jet when she was a girl, which, in point of fact, had been all but unforgivable. But forgiveness was one thing, a social call was another, and Franny simply couldn’t fathom holding a cheerful conversation wedged in between emergency alerts going off for failing residents and Reverend Willard’s labored breathing, for spring always affected his asthma. Franny remained on the threshold while Jet went to sit at the Reverend’s bedside. That was as social as Franny got. She pursed her lips as she gazed at Reverend Willard. Things didn’t look good for the old man and he had been despondent for some time. Once you are over a hundred you stop counting days. Once you’ve lost your son you glimpse death everywhere. All the same the Reverend let out a whoop when Daisy jumped onto his bed.
“Here’s my girl.” He patted the dog, wholly absorbed, turning to Jet only when she politely coughed. “And my other girl!”
“She’s a grown woman.” Franny reminded the Reverend, still not venturing any farther than the doorway. “An old one at that.” One who was spending precious time with a man who had made her life miserable long ago, but that was clearly water under the bridge to everyone but Franny. The Reverend hadn’t wanted his son to have any dealings with an Owens girl because of her family, but he’d realized he’d been a bigot and over these many years he’d come to think of Jet as a daughter. Today she looked sadder than usual.
“Am I dying?” he asked her. They had loved the same person, that was their lasting bond.
“Not yet,” Jet told him. “It’s me this time.”
“So, you won’t be coming to visit anymore?” The Reverend was struck by emotion, his eyes and nose running.
“No.” Jet smiled at him with tenderness. “That will be Franny from now on.”
“What!” Franny said sharply. She’d only been half listening, but she’d paid attention when she heard her sister’s remark. “Not me. I’m not one for social calls.”
“Then one of my grand-nieces will come,” Jet reassured the Reverend. “Kylie or Antonia. Someone will always look in on you. And don’t worry about Daisy. I’ve found her the perfect home.”
As Jet was leaving, Reverend Willard seized her hand. “Make sure it’s not your sister.” He spoke in a low voice, eyeing the fearsome figure at the door who was gesturing for Jet to hurry. Jet ignored Franny rushing her and took her time. Why not? She had grown to love this old man who, if fate had taken a different route, would have been her father-in-law.
“It won’t be,” she promised.
“Whoever it is, she won’t be as good as you.”
Franny looped her arm through her sister’s as they were leaving. The world was still beautiful and they stood in the front yard of the retirement home while Daisy nosed around. There were old people sitting on wooden benches, gazing at the pink-tinged sky. “Did you ever imagine you’d forgive him?” Franny asked, remembering how the Reverend had made Jet’s and Levi’s lives intolerable when he flatly refused to allow his son to see her. He’d been a fool who judged Jet by her family’s history of witchery.
“I still can’t forgive myself.” Levi had loved her and she had brought the curse to him. “Forgiveness is the most difficult undertaking.”
“I forgave you for being the better sister,” Franny said bluntly.
“Nonsense,” Jet said, and because she didn’t have all the time in the world, she threw her arms around her sister even though Franny was always uncomfortable in an embrace. “Dear sister, that was always you.”
* * *
On the fourth day, Jet and Franny went out to the greenhouse to read through the Grimoire, the thick book that was the repository of the family’s magical knowledge. Their treasured Grimoire had been created in Essex, England, by Maria Owens’s adopted mother, Hannah, a birthday gift when Maria was ten, old enough to study magic. The cover was the cool green-black skin of some strange leather that was said to be toad skin, a material that was both delicate and strong. Maria’s original cures and spells could be found in these pages, learned in England and Curaçao, and it was here in this book that the original curse had been written down years after it had been set when Maria stood upon the gallows, having been judged to be a witch by the man she imagined she loved. There were also several pages written by Maria’s daughter, Faith, who had assisted her mother in opening the library and a well-respected girls’ school, thanks to the most loyal wealthy patron, Thomas Brattle, the treasurer of Harvard College who had helped to thwart the witchcraft trials, publicly refuting Cotton Mather’s unprovable beliefs in spectral evidence, calling the entire episode a delusion, a man who was also rumored to be the father of Faith’s two little girls, Avis and Violet.
The women in the following generations had added to the family’s knowledge, including their cherished aunt Isabelle, who had invited Franny and Jet to Magnolia Street when they had no idea who they were. They’d been kept in the dark by their mother, Susannah, who had abandoned the family and its history when she was little more than a girl. The most recent pages in the Grimoire had been written over a period of fifty years by Franny and Jet, and there were remedies and enchantments Gillian had added, even though Gillian had always had less talent for magic than the others and had been mortified by her lack of skill. She was frankly jealous that magic had come to Sally so naturally, when Sally clearly had no use for such things and only craved to be normal. Sally had never written a word in the Grimoire. “I’m not interested,” she always said when the topic of magic was broached. “I’ve got better things to do.”
Stored beside the book was the black mirror Jet and Franny had been shown during their first summer on Magnolia Street. It was possible to see the future in this mirror, if you dared. You’d know if you had the sight when the mirror was presented; you’d see your future in bits and pieces and begin to unravel the story of your life. But stories change, depending on who tells them, and stories are nothing if you don’t have someone to tell them to. Fortunately, they’d had each other. When they put the book away, they held hands and listened to the riotous birdsong in the trees. How lucky to have a sister.
They had a brother as well, one they loved dearly, the darling of their family, wild and talented, the sort of man who could do no harm and dared to fall in love when everything in their history told him he should not. That evening Jet wrote a letter to Vincent, who had disappeared after being called up to fight in Vietnam. He had managed to avoid the curse with a false death, tricking fate and setting off with his beloved William to a life that couldn’t be shared with his family. Jet kept a photograph of Vincent in her bedside table drawer, along with her treasured packet of letters from Rafael. She took out her best stationery and a pen with red ink that made the white paper flush the color of roses.
Darling boy, Jet began, we have missed you every day. Whenever you can come home, do.
She addressed the letter to Vincent’s great friend Agnes Durant, in Paris, then slipped the key to the house on Magnolia Street into the envelope. She and Franny walked through the gusty night to the post office, where the letter was sent off in the mailbox.
“Unlikely he’ll get the letter,” Franny chimed in. She had written to Vincent several times and had never heard a word in return, although every year she received a card from Agnes with a bright greeting—All is fine here in France—which she supposed meant Vincent was well.
“I don’t know about that,” Jet responded. “He could always find anything. He had that talent.”
“When he wanted to use it,” Franny sniffed. Her brother’s absence still pained her. “He never found us.”
“He couldn’t, darling,” Jet said. “There was the curse. He had William to think of.”
On the fifth day, after Sally had gone off to the library, Jet turned on the porch light and threw open the door. When the news got out that Jet was available to her neighbors, a line formed along the path and down the street. People wanted cures for rashes and indigestion, enchantments for runaway daughters and for sons who had made a wrong turn, tinctures for forgetfulness and for mean-spirited husbands, and, as always, they came for love. Jet was so busy that she enlisted Franny, who grumbled but set about gathering ingredients from the garden: leaves from their ginkgo tree, one of the oldest varieties on earth, for anxiety; turmeric as an anti-inflammatory; primrose, whose essence would be pressed into an oil that helped skin conditions and lifted the spirts; echinacea, best for the common cold; lavender, to bring wayward children home. In tall glass jars in the pantry there was mandrake, belladonna, mushrooms of all sorts, blue beads, black feathers, apple seeds, the hollow bones of birds, dove’s hearts. The rush lasted until five, and by the time it was through most of the daffodils had been trampled by people who wanted to make certain they got their turn bringing their problems to Jet. Before Sally arrived home to chastise them for practicing magic, Franny chased the last of the visitors from the path and once they were gone, she switched off the light. She agreed with Sally; let the porch light be turned down forevermore.
Jet sat at the table, exhausted, in need herself of a cup of Courage Tea.
“I hope you’re happy,” Franny said. “Half the neighborhood has been here today.”
Jet smiled and poured more tea. She was, indeed, happy, and because Franny couldn’t fight that, she had a cup of tea as well, for courage was what they both needed now.
* * *
On the sixth day, the aunts fell silent, in a haze of disbelief. The future was less than forty-eight hours away. Still, no one had ever called them lazy, and they made good use of their time, setting about cleaning the house, which, frankly, had not been seen to for some time, so that the woodwork and drapes were dusty and the carpets had to be taken out to the porch and beaten with a broom. It was traditional to do so after a death, to prepare for the mourners and clear out anything the deceased might wish to keep private, but knowing what they knew, they had the opportunity to complete the task together before the funeral. They covered the mirrors and opened the windows to let in fresh air. Sparrows were nesting in the shrubbery and buds had appeared on the magnolias that lined the street. The sisters packed up Jet’s clothing and her collection of novels, along with the batch of letters Levi had sent her when she was a girl, mostly concerning how they might manage to meet without the Reverend catching on. There was another correspondence that Jet treasured, letters tied up with blue ribbon. These were Rafael’s. She gazed at them, on the brink of tears.
“His?” Franny said. She’d never questioned Jet about her love life. Still, she’d been curious.
Jet nodded. She thought about what might have happened if Rafael hadn’t taken a part-time job as a bellman while he was going to college. “Life is luck.”
“That it is,” Franny agreed.
When they were through with the house, and the woodwork shone and the cobwebs were all swept away with a broom, they had a picnic lunch that included splurging on all of their favorite childhood foods which were too rich for them now: jam sandwiches, scones with lavender honey, cheese and chive biscuits, sliced apples with cream. Later, they walked to the cemetery where Jet wrote out a check, the final payment for the plot beside Levi Willard, whom she had loved when she was so young and hadn’t any idea of what love meant. Then they went out grocery shopping for the ingredients they needed. In the morning, when Sally came into the kitchen, ready to head to the library, her aunts were baking a Chocolate Tipsy Cake, a family tradition for birthdays, weddings, and funerals ever since Maria Owens’s time.
“Do you know how many calories are in that?” Sally said. All the same, she sat down at the table and ate the leftover batter with a spoon. “What are we celebrating?” she asked.
Sally looked exhausted, with dark bluish circles under her eyes. She worked too much and she hadn’t conditioned her hair for ages, but she was still beautiful and, in the aunts’ eyes, still their little girl.
“If you can’t eat chocolate cake for breakfast, what is the point of being alive?” Franny said.
On the morning of the seventh day, when the ashy circle around Jet closed so that she was surrounded by a black aura and time was running out, they did exactly that. For reasons Sally could never explain to herself, nor understand, she joined her aunts at the breakfast table, and instead of her usual yogurt and blueberries, she had the biggest slice of all.
* * *
Jet insisted they all have dinner in the taproom at the Black Rabbit Inn that evening. She’d already phoned Gillian, who would fetch Kylie and Antonia and drive them up from Cambridge. Jet had made reservations as well, the rear table, far away from the fiddler who played there after six, whose mother had often come to them for a success elixir for her son, though, due to the level of his talent, there was none to be had.
“Are you certain you want them all here on the seventh day?” Franny asked with concern.
“They’ll need to be here on the eighth day, won’t they? I don’t want you to have to handle everything alone.”
Franny had little choice but to agree. She couldn’t yet bring herself to think about the eighth day and a world without Jet. Perhaps just this one time, she might need help dealing with what was to come. Although the Black Rabbit certainly would not have been her choice for a last supper; she couldn’t stand the cheerful dining room, with its red-checked tablecloths and a menu of second-rate New England food: boiled potatoes, baked cod, macaroni and cheese, always burned on top, along with salads that included only shredded iceberg lettuce, and all manner of puddings for dessert, the specialty being something called cheesecake upside-down, which the kitchen had been serving to mixed reviews for more than a hundred years.
At the close of the afternoon, before the others arrived, Jet grabbed her spring coat and set out for the library.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Franny wanted to know. The truth was she didn’t wish to let her sister out of her sight. The deathwatch beetle had situated itself in the linen closet on the second floor and its clacking was louder all the time. Franny had used bug spray and set out traps laced with sugar with no success. When it came down to it, she knew this was one insect it was impossible to be rid of.
“What I want most is for this to be an ordinary day,” Jet explained. “On an ordinary day I’d go get Sally to be certain she left the library at a decent hour.”
“Fine. But be at the inn by five. I’ll bring the girls. Don’t leave me stranded there.”
