Cadin knew what this woman was capable of, and he flew away, his wings obscuring the rising moon. Rebecca stepped over the threshold, one hand over her eye so that she could see him well enough to spell him and be rid of him once and for all. But then she spied Maria and all else fell away. There was the baby she’d left in Devotion Field, now a dark fury of a girl in sopping clothes, her black hair in knots.
Rebecca went to meet her daughter halfway. The grass was damp and she left footprints behind, each one turning as dark as some of the choices she had made. In truth she was anxious, for the girl was an unusual creature; even Rebecca, who usually cared only about her own affairs, could see that. Talent is something you’re born with. It’s a gift and a curse, and it’s often cause for jealousy from those who are without it, although in this case, Maria’s talents brought Rebecca a good deal of pride. She was a mother, after all. She might not look like one or act like one, yet she had a mother’s heart. Great power was something to be celebrated.
“Why did you give me away?” Maria called out with more emotion than she wished to reveal, for this was the question she’d been carrying inside her ever since she’d come to learn that Hannah was not her mother.
“For your own safety.” An excuse was an excuse, but this one was true.
“To protect me from my father?”
Maria was too clever to accept an easy answer. There was no reason for Rebecca to lie anymore, and even if she had, Maria would have known. It was clear the girl had the sight. What was to come was in the corner of Maria’s eye, so that she spied both the present and the future. A death, a blessing, a love affair. She could see it all, and the world knew it and responded to her. White moths were collecting in the grass all around her. Doves gathered in the branches of one of the oldest elm trees in the county. Robbers had been hanged from its branches; the tree had turned blood red wherever a rope had been tied, and the ground beneath it was red as well. No grass grew here. The Lockland family had a legacy of greed and cruelty, and even the trees knew their history.
“My husband was not your father,” Rebecca admitted in a soft voice.
“But surely I had one.” Maria’s face was pinched. She felt twisted inside. Hannah Owens had been her family, and now she felt alone in the world. “Or perhaps you no longer remember who he was, as you failed to remember that your husband would punish whoever might help you. Your men came to kill the woman who raised me.” Maria met her mother’s gaze, unafraid. She blamed Rebecca for Hannah’s death, and it was in her nature to speak her mind. She could already tell, her mother might be more learned when it came to magic, but of the two, Maria was stronger.
“I did not mean for that to happen,” Rebecca vowed. “She was a good woman. That was why I left you with her. I never thought my husband would be able to follow my trail.” Rebecca’s red hair nearly reached to her waist. She was vain and she always had been, but her expression showed heartfelt remorse. “I laid out cayenne, pepper, and lavender to confuse his dogs. I thought he’d prefer his drink to me and that he’d be too filled with rum to find where I’d been. That was my mistake. I underestimated the power of the Tenth. I know I can’t undo what has been done, but even if I am at fault, I wish you would stay with me. If you ever have a child and lose her, a tragedy I wouldn’t wish on any living soul, then perhaps you will forgive me.”
Maria scrutinized the house, three stories of pale stone with a cobbled courtyard, the home of the Locklands for over two hundred years. She looked at her mother, who had given birth by herself in a snowy field despite her fine manor house, and who had initialed Maria’s blanket with blue silk thread spun halfway across the world by glowing worms that turned into moths with bright wings.
Perhaps it was meant to be. Maria would take a chamber on the second floor. The largest one, with a lock on the door so she could have her privacy, for magic was a private affair, even between mother and daughter, and magic was all she cared about now.
* * *
Although Rebecca could neither read nor write, when it came to matters of love, she was an expert. Her Grimoire was filled with runic marks, the ancient alphabet of alchemy. She used these symbols to denote which herbs to use and which to avoid, which spells were best to recite in the waning or waxing of the moon, to bring forth the power of the earth and sky, incantations which were dangerous in a novice’s hands. She taught Maria the eight lesser love charms, and the Ninth Potion, which was so potent one must wear gloves during its preparation. The Tenth Potion was the one she herself had used, and she did not recommend the use of that enchantment. If she knew Maria had copied it into her own Grimoire, at the very back of her book, she did not say; she only told her daughter to be vigilant. There were sinister aspects of magic, and what you brought into this world was your responsibility, to deal with forevermore.
Rebecca herself was drawn toward the dark, what some people called left-handed magic, and she certainly didn’t care about any man’s wrath, even after her years with her husband, who had known enough about her skills to set out a circle of salt around her and tie her to an iron chair before he beat her, for salt and iron deplete a witch’s talents. Of course he would want to change her once he knew what she was; that was the way their love first unraveled. Rebecca knew how to blind a man and how to make him see again, what herbs would help to bring on a pregnancy, as well as those that would end that condition. Rebecca was as acquainted with the many forms of magic as she was with the corners and walls of her own bedchamber. She was a seeker of revenge, fearless since her first day on earth. She, too, had grown up as a motherless child, and because of this Rebecca had learned to survive by her wits early on. Her own mother was a witch who had disappeared after her daughter’s birth. Rebecca was an outcast from the start, for her father did not wish to have her in his household. It was no mistake that Rebecca had left her daughter in Devotion Field rather than with a nurse, as she had experienced the terrors of such a childhood. For what was perceived as a bit of magic—a white deer that came to her, unafraid; the sight of the red crescent mark on her leg—she’d been slapped and beaten by her nurse, then locked in a dark room until she learned to keep her talents to herself. The nurse had granted Rebecca one meal a day, unless she stole from the pantry, which she always did. She thanked that horrible woman now. The nurse had taught her how to survive, and Rebecca made her way on her beauty and her talents to the home of the Locklands, but she had wanted a real home for her daughter. She’d heard of Hannah Owens and her remedies and had chosen Hannah to raise her child with kindness and a gift for the Nameless Art. Now, after all these years, she had the chance to mentor the girl herself. Rebecca felt that she was Maria’s proper teacher, with access to private knowledge known only to the women in their family. They’d come from a long line of women whose blood burned black in the snow, who could cure or wound with words and herbs, who spoke to birds and bees, who changed the weather and were either feared or respected by their neighbors.
Studying under her mother’s tutelage, Maria wrote down lists of herbs and useful plants in her Grimoire, along with remedies for sorrow, illness, childbirth ailments, jealousy, headache, rashes, desire. There were other spells, not medicinal treatments, but spiritual, ancient enchantments that began with the Hebrew word Abracadabra, I create as I speak, taken from the even earlier Aramaic chant, Avra kadavra, It will be created in my words. Some spells were too dangerous to use, unless there was no choice, for they could wound the practitioner as well as the object of their conjuring. Spells for revenge or survival, in which the spell maker’s own blood was used as ink to ensure that only she could read the words. Sympathetic magic, using poppets and lifelike figures, and, when revenge was involved, pins and hooks. Poisons that were tasteless and odorless, but stung like a wasp before they could be noticed. Black magic, red magic, blood magic, love magic. Rebecca divided both the world that she walked through and the world that was unseen into these categories. Maria kept her book under the floorboards beside her bed. No women came here asking for Rebecca’s help even if they might have wished for it. They were all too frightened of her. She did not mind if a subject had to take ill, or die, in order for her to get her way. A pin in a poppet, a vial of blood, a bird bled to death on the hearth—all of it was in her book, brought to bear when deemed useful.