That was when Maria knew. The stranger was her mother.
Hannah glanced at the girl’s shining face. It was never a good idea to place one’s faith in someone who was by her very nature undependable. Rebecca’s presence meant there was trouble ahead. There was a reason she hadn’t come to see her child before now. She’d had other things on her mind. Love for some people was like that, easy to slip on and off.
“I don’t think she’ll be here much longer,” Hannah assured Maria. “Now that she’s seen what she’s come to see she’ll be gone by morning. And don’t expect her to say good-bye.”
* * *
When Maria returned to the pond to wash the supper dishes, she crouched down and dipped her fingers in the silky water. She was usually a well-behaved girl, but now she hastily stripped off her clothes, leaving her shift, her skirt, and her smock on the ground. She felt the prick of a strange sort of freedom as she stood there in the damp evening air, doing as she pleased. Maria had never before questioned her situation. She was Hannah Owens’ girl. But perhaps she was something more. She stalked through the reeds, quickly, before she had time to lose her nerve. Frogs splashed away from her and small fish darted into the depths. When she was knee-deep, she threw herself in. She floated perfectly without effort or skill, exactly as Rebecca had. Curious, she climbed onto a rock. She closed her eyes and leapt, her heart pounding, wondering if she would sink to the mucky depths. Instead, Maria landed so hard on the surface of the water that it took her breath away. Try as she might, she couldn’t sink. When she staggered onto the shore, Maria shivered as she pulled on her clothing, not because of the night air, but because her situation had become quite clear to her. She could not be drowned.
* * *
Rebecca left while they were sleeping, just as Hannah had predicted she would. Twice she had managed to come to this place. Once when her daughter was born, when she ran off through the snow, and now again when she wanted to see how the girl had grown. She was not the sort of woman to say farewell.
Hannah and Maria awoke when they heard the door close behind her, and as it did, the future became the present and the present became the past. The witch had only stayed a night, but one night was all it took for her husband to find her. This wasn’t love. Maria knew that without anyone telling her. It was ownership and revenge. They could hear horses in Devotion Field, and the barking of hounds, all of which gave Hannah time enough to pack what mattered most in a leather satchel. Cheese and bread, a change of clothes, Maria’s Grimoire, a sprig of juniper for protection, a spool of blue thread, packets of herbs, the makings for Courage Tea, the painted black hand mirror, along with the fine wool baby blanket that had been in Maria’s basket when loving hands abandoned her.
Hannah took Maria as far as the pond. They had hustled so quickly that they were soon out of breath. The sky was clear; a perfect day. Hannah had vowed never to leave her home, but the girl had her future ahead of her. She was told to run until the forest ended, then to keep on through the fens until she reached the sea. This wasn’t a country for someone with her bloodline. She’d do better in a new world, one where a woman wasn’t considered worthless.
“But where will you be?” Maria begged to know.
“I’ll be here where I belong. They couldn’t drag me back to the world I used to know.” Hannah shoved her own Grimoire into the girl’s hands. No one gave up such a treasure unless her own end was near. “Burn this as soon as you can. And whatever you do, don’t come back here.”
For Revenge
A wax figure cast into fire can cause damage or death.
A curse thrown to bind a man to the place where he stood.
Nightshade, wolfsbane, foxglove, yew, fire.
The bones of a bird baked into a pie of thorns.
When Rebecca’s husband arrived, the deathwatch beetle came out of the wall and sat on the threshold of the cottage. Its appearance came as no surprise to Hannah, who had known all along that her time was near. There were ten men in all, half of them his brothers, worked up into a fury of rage. They immediately took Hannah for a witch and tied her to her front door. They nailed her shadow to the ground so she couldn’t escape. These men knew a cunning woman when they saw one. Give her a chance and she’d poison you or seek to do you harm. She might look old, she might walk with difficulty, but even more than most women she was not to be trusted.
When questioned about the red-haired lady, Hannah simply said, “She’s gone home. If you think you want her, you’ll regret it.”
Rebecca’s husband told his brothers to leave Hannah where she was as they burned down her house. What was the life of one old woman worth? Nothing to these men. They thought she couldn’t fight back, but she could. Sparks flew everywhere, and in no time the apothecary garden beside the house caught fire, including the plants in the poison garden that Maria had learned not to pluck from the earth. Yarrow and black nightshade, wolfsbane with its purple hooded flowers, foxglove that could slow a heart, yew, lords and ladies laden with poisonous berries, all went up aflame, their dark fumes breathed in by the very men cheering on the blaze. The husband of the red-haired lady, a man named Thomas Lockland, had come closest, so he might shoot an arrow through the witch’s heart, and because of this the poison affected him more than the others, leaving him unable to speak or move or see. Smoke soon caught in his men’s chests; they began to cough and retch, then were beset by dizzy spells. They did their best to run for their lives, but in the end they all lay sick in Devotion Field. Though none ever truly recovered, not a single one died on that day, for what you gave to the world would come back to you threefold, and what Hannah was most proud to give to the world was a ten-year-old girl who had more knowledge than most grown men, and more courage, as well.
Maria had not done as she was told. It was a lesson she’d learned from Hannah. Do what you know is right. She watched from a hillside and wept as the house burned. When it was over, and the men had gone, she went back to add Hannah’s Grimoire to the fire. The smoke was green as it arose in spirals into the canopy of trees. It was a lifetime of knowledge given back to the world from which it had come. Maria saw a glimmer in the grass, the brass bell that had been attached to Hannah’s door. She took it with her so that she would always remember to keep her door open to those in need.
By evening, Maria had reached the fens, where the land was so marshy and wet the hem of her skirt was sodden and her leather shoes were soaked through, for she was ankle-deep in mud. She carried the satchel Hannah had packed held high over her head to keep it dry as she followed the path of the crow, westward. She wept to think of Hannah and her tears turned hot and burned her cheeks when she thought of Rebecca, who had caused the end of one fate and the start of another.
She was so close to the sea that when Maria licked her lips she tasted salt. There were different kinds of birds here, gulls and terns that wheeled through the pink-tinged sky. Soon the water she walked through was brackish, and all along the shore small crabs burrowed in the mud. Maria climbed a tree in which to safely rest for the evening, and from that high vantage point she could see blue in the distance, the miraculous sea. There was her future before her.
She already knew that the past was over and done.