Page 45 of Magic Lessons

“You were only a baby! You couldn’t know how he felt.”

“I saw the way he looked at you, and how hurt he was when you teased him.”

Maria did her best to make light of the topic. “What do you know about love?”

“Only that I never want to have anything to do with it.” Faith had learned that during her time with Martha, who had so often professed her love for her. You are mine, now and forever my daughter. No one else’s. Remember that. Faith had never once shown Martha the pools of black hatred behind her eyes. She’d been a perfect child so as not to receive any punishments. No nights locked in a dark cellar, no beatings with a switch. But then, and now, love in all its forms dismayed her. She wasn’t sure she could love anyone, not even her own mother, who could not do enough for her, baking apple pies, ordering new clothing from the dressmakers, reaching for her hand every time Faith was near. Faith kept her thoughts to herself, as she had for all those years in Brooklyn. Now that the iron bracelets had been removed, she could see into people’s hearts, but most of what she saw was a disappointment.

“I’m afraid that one day you may be angry at me for what I’ve done,” Maria said thoughtfully. “You’ll despise me for setting down the curse. You’ll want to be in love.”

It was then Faith knew it was her mother herself who regretted the curse. “I doubt that, but I intend to learn all I can about love. How to make it behave and how to stop it. Teach me and you’ll see. I’m a good student.”

Fortunately Martha had allowed Faith to learn to read the Scriptures, and she had become a compulsive reader, hiding books in the hollows of old trees, and in the cemetery, and beneath the floorboards. Now that she was living in the room under the eaves in Samuel Dias’s house, she set up a lantern so that she might read magical texts late into the night. These were the books she’d brought along and kept hidden from her mother, for there were those who might say she was too young for these volumes, and others who might believe no one should have access to this knowledge. She’d taught herself Latin and Greek so she could immerse herself in Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, the Ars Notoria, a section of The Key of Solomon, which included ways to increase one’s mental abilities and focus. Jack Finney had found a translation of the ancient Arabic text Picatrix, which contained all manner of enchantments, and a copy of the Arbatel, a spell book the peddler had uncovered in an abandoned farmhouse which he kept swathed in cotton batting, for it had burned his hands when he’d first taken hold of the book, as many powerful texts did. Faith was fairly certain this was the magic her mother didn’t wish to speak of, black magic, blood magic, left-handed magic, powerful and ancient and dangerous.

Often Faith sat on the stairs, listening in when women came to see her mother to ask for charms and cures. Maria avoided love as best she could, but when women came crying, when they felt they had been destroyed, she gave in. The hue of henna that had been mixed with lime and roses, the tea boiled and simmered overnight, would reflect the strength of a woman’s love; the deeper the color, the more genuine the love. For love to last one must wear an amulet with apple seeds. Rosemary and lavender oil would give a person willpower, and to break a simple hex one must use salt, coconut oil, lavender, lemon juice, and lemon verbena. Faith memorized many of Hannah’s remedies when she read her mother’s Grimoire, but was even more intrigued with Rebecca’s runic spells that bordered on dark magic. In a few weeks’ time, she was delighted when her mother presented her with a book of her own. She saw the rules of magic that must never be forgotten written on the very first page.

Do as you will, but harm no one.

What you give will be returned to you threefold.

The lines on Faith’s left hand had changed so radically they were unrecognizable; the red splotch that had appeared was still there, and sometimes it burned. She dyed her hair with madder root, which turned it a blood-red color. In truth, she didn’t care for rules of any sort; rules made little sense to a person who had grown up in a world without compassion or pity, where there was no moral code by which to abide. The rules that applied to the Nameless Art seemed childish. What she desired most of all was to find a Grimoire of the dark arts. She wanted protection and revenge, all that she might have used to defend herself when she was made to wear iron bracelets and pretend she was a perfect child; magic without rules, dark and deep and endless. Some people grow weak when they are victimized, others grow stronger, and still others combine those two attributes to become dangerous, even if the person in question is a girl who has recently turned twelve.

Faith soon grew accustomed to Manhattan and came to know the markets quite well. She regularly visited bookstalls to search through old piles of water-stained manuscripts. She would know the text she needed when she found it. It would feel like a nest of bees when she touched it, swarming and alive, ready to do damage once it belonged to her. Keeper followed at her heels, clearly disapproving of her mission. He growled at the booksellers and at those searching through the stacks. Occasionally, Faith was asked to leave a stall and take her hellhound with her. She began to leave him at home when she went searching, though the poor beast clawed at the door and howled, startling the birds in the branches of the Tree of Heaven.

And then one morning, in a bookstall on the outskirts of the Fly Market, among piles of ruined and rotted manuscripts, Faith found a handwritten treatise of the Dark Arts, a Grimoire that should have been burned on the day of its author’s death, but had managed to escape the fire. It was called the The Book of the Raven, dated 1600, London. The prose was written on thin pages of vellum in alternating red and black inks, then bound in black calfskin that had been tied together with knotted black thread. When Faith set her ear to the spine, she could hear it humming as the book came alive.

The Grimoire’s mysterious author was a woman with a huge range of knowledge, writing in both Italian and English. She’d been born in Venice and had become a member of the court of England; she knew more than most educated men about politics and falconry and music and myth. The author maintained that she was a poet, which was thought to be impossible for a woman, yet her claim was true enough. She had been the first woman to publish a volume of poems, a text that had gone largely unrecognized, not due to the quality of the work, but to the particularity of the sex of the writer. On the first page of her Grimoire was a quote from a man who many claimed had written love songs of admiration and desire for her, celebrating her strengths.

In the old age, black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.

The author of The Book of the Raven was dark in every way, not a traditional English beauty, but a beauty all the same. There was no cure for the sort of passion her admirers felt for her. It was an illness, a devastation, and, often, a crime. Those who desired her wondered if their love was natural, or if it had been induced by the use of magical incantations.

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

The author of this Grimoire knew more about love than most, for at thirteen she’d been given over to a lord of the court who was three times her age. She looked at love with a cold, clear eye and a heart that was as practical as it was passionate. The Book of the Raven was the author’s book of spells and enchantments, lost at the time of her death, nearly fifty years earlier.

Know what you want, and be sure of it, for regret gives birth to more regret and nothing more.

The author could call up strange maladies, force a liar to tell the truth, conjure demons that would haunt men’s dreams. She had studied astrology with a great master in Italy, and the written conjurations and charms formed by the power of her words were so intense and beautiful they turned silver in the dark and could be read by the light of their meaning alone. She had been trained to be charming, but she gathered knowledge solely to make certain she would never again have to do anyone’s bidding. The men who had used her, she used in return. Always it was words that saved her and renewed her and gave her freedom, even when she appeared to be chained to her life by love.

The Book of the Raven

What I have sacrificed, what I have given, what I have hidden from the world, what is needed to do the same.

A wand of hazel will be needed.

Rose water should be beside you at all times.

The pentacle of Solomon should be drawn on the floor to summon the spirit of Oberon, the king of magic.

Stand in a circle that unites the four sections of the world and the four elements, then burn myrtle wood and sandalwood. Burn white nettle, the herb of the archangel.

After this process one would be able to see into the future, control the elements, enchant mortals, subdue enemies, and invoke a malediction for enemies.

I conjure you by fire, by blood, and by memory so that you may perceive your eternal sentence.

Let it be so.

This thing of darkness I acknowledge to be mine.