Page 44 of Magic Lessons

“Does she?” Maria’s back was straight. She had been taught never to discuss the Nameless Art with outsiders.

“I’ve known such people before, in the town where I grew up, but none as young as your girl. She’s a special one. Seems it’s in her blood.”

When they reached Maiden Lane, the first thing Maria asked Finney was to build a fire in the yard, and as soon as it was lit, she tossed her mourning veil onto the flames. Without the veil, the light of day was so bright there were tears in her eyes. Finney led Arnold inside the barn and unhitched him from the wagon. Maria felt a tug inside her, thinking of the nights Samuel had slept there, and how long he’d been gone.

Maria and Faith sat in the garden as the fire burned and the sky darkened, together for the first time in five years, ill at ease, as if they were strangers. Now that she was in her mother’s presence, Faith had questions, ones that had haunted her.

“Martha told me you gave me to her. You didn’t want me.”

“They had me in jail and she promised she would take care of you. She would do so until I could come for you.”

“And you believed her?” Faith’s eyes were narrowed, a suspicious daughter glaring at her mother. Somewhere inside herself Faith had always wondered if any of Martha’s claims had been true. A monster makes you hers in small ways, each time she insists you must behave, you must not disagree, you must never show your feelings, and if you’re not careful, you may start to believe what she tells you. No one else wants you, no one else cares, you are nothing without her, you are nothing at all.

Maria pulled at the collar of her dress so that Faith could see the mark of the rope. “They tried to hang me. I had no one to turn to and I didn’t want you to be in jail.”

“But I was in jail,” Faith said softly, eyes shining with resentment. She was picking at the black mark on her hand, a nervous habit. “I couldn’t escape.” She held up her hands so that her mother could see the indentations from the metal bracelets around both wrists. “She had me in irons.”

Maria blamed herself for all that had happened and mostly for trusting Martha, though it could be so difficult to see inside someone who was bound and determined to trick you, who hid her intentions beneath a scrim of false kindness. Even a witch can be betrayed.

Faith nodded to the barn, where Finney was seeing to his horse. “He was the one who sawed off the cuffs. That’s why we must reward him. He deserves whatever his heart desires. You should see that he gets it. I wouldn’t like to be thought of as a liar.”

“Of course. I’ll see to it.” Maria had a strange lurching feeling in the pit of her stomach. Faith had power, that much was certain. This girl of hers was a complicated being.

Faith was thoughtful, biting her lip. “Does a person have to pay for any life they’ve taken?”

Finney had begun to wash off the carriage, carrying buckets of water from the well. Maria assumed he was the reason Faith had asked about penance. “Did he kill Martha?” Maria asked.

“No,” Faith said grimly. “It was me.”

There was a film of black behind the girl’s pale gray eyes, the mark of guilt. Still, she was a child.

“No,” Maria said. “You didn’t.”

“I might as well have,” Faith admitted. “I watched her die. I could have pulled her out of the tide, but I left her there to perish as it rose around her.”

If anyone was to blame, Maria felt it was herself. She thought of the wax figure and the pins, and the fire that had melted it into a black pool as Martha’s name was recited. You get what you give. You walk into the dark and the darkness abides within you. “I wished her ill and tried to cause it to be so,” she told her daughter. “I used the sort of magic we must never turn to.”

“What sort is that?” Faith asked, her eyes bright.

Maria shook her head. “We should not discuss it.”

Faith showed her mother the red blotch in the palm of her hand that had appeared as she climbed up from the stream in the Flatlands, away from the rising tide.

“A bar of black soap should wash that away,” Maria said. “You are not responsible. And likely, neither am I. Whatever we might have wished for, the truth is, Martha Chase made her own fate.”

Faith shrugged, defiant. She knew precisely what she’d done. “What you put into the world comes back to you threefold. I watched her die and was happy to do so.”

Faith had walked through the door into vengeance, and in doing so she had lost her childhood, but she was still young, and there was time enough for her to reclaim her life. “For every evil under the sun there is a remedy,” Maria said as she embraced her daughter. Let love be one, let it heal what had been broken, let it open the door to hope for the future. Time had passed too quickly and not at all. What was done could not be undone, but they were in Manhattan now, under the Tree of Heaven, and after all this time, they were together.

Faith was delighted to discover the small room under the eaves that had been waiting for her since the day the house was purchased. It was a child’s room, but still she adored it, even though she hadn’t the thoughts or emotions of a child. There was comfort to be found here, and for a few moments she could imagine she was the person she’d once been. She grinned as she held up the poppet she had loved when she was little more than a baby. “I remember this. Gogo made it for me. Poor Goat. I wonder what happened to him.”

“Poor! That’s far from what he is. This is his house.”

“Is it?” Now Faith was curious. She had noticed the ring on her mother’s finger and wondered if there was a man. She was accustomed to looking at details, no matter how small, for her life had depended on such things: the door unlocked, the window open, the mint or sassafras growing by the side of the road, the blink of her foster mother’s eyes when she was beginning to anger. “And are you his wife?” she asked her mother.

“The ring is a token, nothing more. I’ll never be anyone’s wife. I lived because Samuel Dias changed the rope on my hanging day, but before I leapt I vowed that anyone who fell in love with an Owens would be ruined. I did so to protect us all.”

“I don’t care,” Faith assured her. “I never want to be in love. But poor Goat. He was always in love with you.”