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 the 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.