Then I went to the kitchen and lit the fire right around sunrise. Mother—who was not my mother, of course, because I didn’t have one, but insisted on me calling her that—always liked the same breakfast. Two eggs and a piece of toast. And for dinner she was content with a stew. So everything else was up to me, and I already had some idea of what to make.
Yesterday Mrs. Hawkins came into town and brought a huge jar of golden honey. When I unscrewed the top, it smelled like an orange grove. I dipped a finger in and took a long lick.
No one cared what I did, really, as long as I didn’t leave the house, I never broke the illusion that I was the real Jenny, and I kept things running smoothly. Mother woke up and took to her chair looking out over the bay on the balcony, where she picked up her sewing basket and started working. I brought her the breakfast and coffee that I conjured up. The coffee was just an illusion, so it didn’t really have caffeine in it, although she thought it was real.
“Thank you, Jenny,” she said, with haunted eyes and an earnest voice that always sounded edgy.
“You’re welcome.”
“It’s warm today, isn’t it.”
“A little bit.” She talked about the weather and made note of who was taking a boat out, and she complained about people in town who had too much money or too much power and weren’t nice to her yesterday when she went to the market. I smiled and tried to listen. “You enjoy,” I said.
Mother was all right if I didn’t upset her. It was sort of like juggling a stack of china in all different shapes.
I checked on the oven, feeling the air inside with my hand and knowing right away if it was just right. It needed a little more heat. I whispered a spell and shut the door, then I gathered up all the ingredients.
Soon it was ready and I boiled sugar, cinnamon and the grated rind of one fresh orange on the stovetop, along with two overflowing teaspoons of that beautiful honey. I stirred and stirred and then I took it from the stovetop and added brandy and sherry and set it aside.
I went to the courtyard for a little break. The house on two sides and the high walls on the other two sides cast shade on the courtyard most of the day so it wasn’t the garden I yearned to have, but it was still a little green space where shade plants grew happily. I sat in the corner where the sun hit me and smelled the sea as I ate the rest of the orange for my breakfast. The sun felt so good on my skin and little birds flew in and out of the trees.
“I’ll have cake crumbs for you later,” I told the birds. “How is your day going? It must be a nice day to fly, huh? Well…I’m sure.” I paused as I heard some voices passing by. People were walking by on the sidewalk in front of the house. Sometimes they giggled nervously, especially kids. It was a sort of initiation for older kids to bring younger kids past this house and give them a lesson in the fine art of gossip.
Mrs. Franch is crazy. You know she keeps Bernard’s familiar trapped in there and calls her Jenny and pretends she’s her daughter Jenny? My mom says the real Jenny died on a boat with Mr. Franch. It’s so sad. It used to be such a nice house.
Yes, I picked up snatches of it sometimes. And technically, it was against the law in St. Augustine to treat a familiar like a human, but mostly that law was meant to prevent humans and familiars from falling in love, or familiars from taking any human work, and things like that. Since I wasn’t allowed outside the walls of the house, no one ever bothered my family about it.
One truth about familiars is that we know things. A wizard’s familiar is born from magic in the air instead of from a woman’s womb. And when we’re born, we know things that humans don’t know, because we are part animal and animals can take care of themselves much more quickly than human babies. Besides that, magic flows through our veins. I had instincts for things I was never told.
I knew that my sole purpose in life was to protect and aid my warlock, Bernard Franch. And when Jenny and Mr. Franch died all those years ago, Bernard told me that I needed to be Jenny now. It was the first time I ever struggled to be a good familiar, but I did it anyway, because all I knew was that he and his mother were so devastated and I felt so helpless. If Bernard was to be a good warlock, he had to feel safe and protected, and it seemed like I was the only person who could fix anything for him.
Lately, I had been thinking how strange it was that there needed to be any laws in this town to stop me from being treated like a human.
I also thought about how I hardly ever saw Bernard these days, since he joined the warlock council guard. I would hardly even know he was my warlock. Mrs. Franch had a familiar too, but he was never around. He certainly didn’t take care of anyone the way I did. Why wasn’t he being asked to pretend he was Mr. Franch, I always wondered?
(Of course, I knew why. The town elders would certainly have words with the Franches if they went that far.)
It was no use to think rebellious thoughts or wish to go see the world or have a garden. This was the place I was needed, and the only place I knew.
I leapt off the courtyard bench and checked that my sugar and honey mixture was cooled off, and stirred in brandy and sherry. How decadent this would be! Now the syrup was done, and I made the sponge cake that I would pour the syrup over. This required a lot of egg beating, all done by hand since St. Augustine was a true witching town, caught between worlds, and no one had electricity.
There was a St. Augustine, Florida in the Fixed Plane too, where regular humans lived, but it was one of a handful of towns in America that also had a parallel version of itself that stood between the human world and the magical realms. I’d never seen the human version of St. Augustine, but Bernard told me it had a lot of tourists and cars and that our fine hotels had been turned into a museum and a college.
The cake didn’t take very long to bake, only ten minutes or so. I turned it out onto a dish towel and sprinkled it with cinnamon. By now it was Mrs. Franch’s tea time so I cut the cake into squares and made us each a cup of tea.
Every day, she put her sewing down when I brought her a pastry, and her face lit up. I knew that otherwise, her day was full of tedious work and grievance. When Mr. Franch died, his income went with him, and he hadn’t left much. Just this house, an inherited family home that fell into more disrepair every year. No one invited Mother to any parties or dances or teas anymore. Her magical skills were not respected. All she could do to make money was to sew protection spells into baby clothes and baby blankets and things like that. I felt quite awful for her, because she didn’t seem as contented with small things as I was, but was always upset at someone or other.
“Oh, Jenny! That smells divine! A honey cake?”
“It’s bizcochos borrachos,” I said. “It was in the Spanish cookbook. It used the oranges and honey we have, so I hope it’s good.”
“Ohh, a new recipe.” She slowly ate a few bites. “It’s very sweet but they honey and orange and cinnamon are such a pure sort of taste…that somehow it isn’t cloying. You are too sweet yourself, my little Jenny.”
At this time of day I was her companion, her beloved daughter. I wish I could say that I felt like I really filled the void of the tragic death of the real Jenny, but I was never able to forget that I was a familiar and didn’t quite fit this life. I identified very much with house pets. House cats seemed pretty happy, and so was I, but I imagined they also looked at the windows and felt a deep yearning sometimes. When Mother had a house cat she used to suddenly run around and let out a wail. I would nod at her with understanding.