She draws the page cautiously away. It’s unchanged, except perhaps that the ink is a shade paler and the paper slightly thinner. Older.
The shadow-hand retreats as she watches, coiling back into a dim corner of her office and lying still, as if it were an ordinary shadow cast by a bookshelf or desktop.
A cold foreboding spins over Beatrice’s skin. She has the sudden urge either to fling the book out the window or clutch it tight to her chest, but before she can do either there’s a wooden knock against her office door.
Beatrice flinches, picturing police or witch-hunters or at least Miss Munley, the secretary, but she feels a silent tug and knows, quite suddenly and illogically, who is standing in the hall beating her staff against her door.
Her youngest sister glares at her as she opens it, mouth thin and eyes hot. “If you wanted to run off, you shouldn’t’ve left a breadcrumb trail behind you.” She waves her staff in midair, gesturing at the invisible thing between them.
“Oh! It must be a leftover effect of yesterday’s—events. A spell was begun but not finished, like thread that wasn’t tied off properly.” Beatrice can see from Juniper’s expression that she doesn’t particularly care what it is or how it got there, that she is just a half-step away from an act of violence. Beatrice swallows. “Ah, come in. I’m sorry I ran off this morning.”
“It’s about that tower, isn’t it? You know what it is.” Juniper gives her a searching look.
I think it’s the Lost Way of Avalon. The thought is heady, dizzying, too dangerous to speak aloud even in the soft-shadowed halls of Salem College. “I don’t know. I’m considering some s-some possibilities, is all.”
Juniper watches her with a narrow-eyed expression that says she doesn’t believe her and is weighing whether or not to make something of it. “Alright. I can help you consider them.”
“I’m not sure—”
“And I’m joining the suffrage ladies, like I said. You know where to find them? They got an office somewhere?”
“Three blocks north, on St. Patience. But . . .” Beatrice wets her lips, unsure how much she should or shouldn’t tell her baby sister who has become this prowling, perilous woman. “But I’m not sure the suffragists have anything to do with that tower, or the sp-spell we felt.” She stumbles over the word, recalling the hot taste of witching in her mouth.
Juniper shoots her another sideways look. “I might not have a lot of fancy schooling like you, but I’m not stupid. You don’t get Devil’s-fever from standing around and watching, Bell. Mags said it comes of working witching stronger than yourself.” Beatrice is opening her mouth in confession or denial, but Juniper is already looking past her. “Maybe you’re right, and they didn’t have anything to do with it. Still. Seems to me they’re the same thing, more or less.”
“What are?”
Juniper’s eyes reflect the bronze shine of Saint George’s standing in the square. “Witching and women’s rights. Suffrage and spells. They’re both . . .” She gestures in midair again. “They’re both a kind of power, aren’t they? The kind we aren’t allowed to have.” The kind I want, says the hungry shine of her eyes.
“They’re both children’s stories, June.” Beatrice doesn’t know if she’s telling her sister or herself.
Juniper shrugs without looking away from the square. “They’re better than the story we were given.” Beatrice thinks about their story and doesn’t disagree.
Juniper’s eyes slide to hers, flashing green. “Maybe we can change it, if we try. Skip into some better story.” And Beatrice sees that she means it, that beneath all Juniper’s bitter rage there’s still a little girl who believes in happy endings. It makes Beatrice want to slap her or hold her, to send Juniper home before New Salem teaches her different.
But she can tell from the iron shape of Juniper’s jaw that she wouldn’t go, that she’s charted a course toward trouble and means to find it.
“I—I’ll take you to the Women’s Association. After work.”
“And I need a place to stay.”
“What about Agnes?”
Frost crackles down the line between them at the mention of her name.
“I see. Well, I rent a room a few blocks east. You’re welcome to stay until . . .” She isn’t sure how to end her sentence. Until women win the vote in New Salem? Until they call back the Lost Way and return witching to the world? Until the sullen red is gone from Juniper’s eyes?
“Until things settle down,” she finishes lamely. Her sister smiles in a way that makes Beatrice suspect that things, whatever they are, will not settle at all.
Hush a bye, baby, bite your tongue,
Not a word shall be sung.
A spell for quiet, requiring a clipped feather & a bitten tongue
James Juniper wanted Bella to skip work and head straight to the suffrage ladies, but Bella insisted that she had “obligations and responsibilities” and made Juniper sit on a teetery pile of encyclopedias while she worked, which lasted until Juniper got bored and slipped out the door to wander the hushed halls of the Salem College Library.
It’s still early, and there’s a stillness to the air that reminds Juniper of walking the mountainside just before dawn, in that silent second after the night-creatures have bedded down but before the morning-birds have started up. It feels secret, stolen out of time, like you might see the ragged point of a witch’s hat or the gleam of dragon-scales in the shadows. Juniper closes her eyes and pretends the wood-pulp pages around her are wet and alive, pumping with sap instead of ink. She wonders if her sister ever stands like this—missing home, missing her—and feels a fragile sprout of sympathy take root in her chest.
She hears the rattle-creak of a library cart and opens her eyes to find a prissy, toothy woman hissing at her in a whisper that’s several times louder than a regular old speaking voice. She goes on about library hours and permissions and “the stacks,” although none of the books looked stacked to Juniper, and Juniper is about to cause what Mama Mags would call “a scene” when an affable-looking gentleman with tufty ear-hair rescues her and herds her back to Bella’s office.
Bella blinks up at them through her spectacles and says, “What—oh. I’m so sorry. Thank you, Mr. Blackwell. My sister has never been fond of the rules.”
There’s a little pause, while Bella attempts to glare at Juniper and Juniper attempts to dodge, before the hairy-eared gentleman says softly, “I didn’t know you had a sister, Beatrice.”
Juniper feels that fragile sprout of sympathy wither and die. The truth is that her sisters ran off and never looked back, never even spoke her name, and they’re only together now because of happenstance and a half-spun spell.
Juniper feels Bella watching her and works hard to keep her stupid eyes from filling up with stupid tears.
Mr. Blackwell looks between the two of them with lines of concern crimping his brows. “I never liked the rules much either, to be honest,” he offers. Then he bows to Juniper as if Juniper is the kind of lady who gets bowed to. “Lovely to meet you, Miss Eastwood.”