Page 119 of The Book of Magic

“Cousin,” Tom Lockland said, pleading now that he was losing the power The Book of the Raven had given him. “If you do this to me, the same result will come back to you threefold.”

“I don’t mind,” Sally told him. “I relinquish it all.”

Tom shook his head, amazed by Sally’s folly.

There were crows above them now in the spaces where the ceiling had crashed through, so many the sky was turning black. A world without magic was an impossible thought. Cures, remedies, stories, books, ink, paper, talismans, protection, hope, conjurations, oaths, blessings. I have saved with this charm, many thousand score of men and women, a magician vowed in 1391, one of the first written mentions of the Nameless Art. Human history is the history of magic, in Egypt and Greece, in the tombs of red-haired women buried with amulets and herbs on the steppes of Russia, here, in the fens, where women were found a thousand years after they’d been drowned with black stones in their mouths.

Sally’s last act of magic was the one that meant the most. Ian opened his eyes and watched the crows above him through the timbers of the ruined ceiling. A beautiful woman crouched down beside him. Sally placed her hands on his face and used all she had left inside to draw out the poison. He had been dreaming he was a crow and that he was high above the manor house and could see everything, acres of land and clouds, fields and trees so old they had lived longer than anyone on earth. Ian’s chest had been burning and his blood had been so hot and he’d had to rise above himself. He thought he could not survive another poisoning, but he had, although he was still burning when he looked at Sally. He didn’t notice that she had shorn her hair, he didn’t care if she had lost her magic; all he could see was her heart. She had saved him twice, and they both knew what that meant.

Out in the woods, Gillian began to recite a Begone incantation. It never hurt to have some assistance from a sister, and this was a simple spell that had been used by women since the beginning of time, with words that resembled the wild clacking of birds when they were spoken aloud. Once said, the intended would fly away, and as gusts of wind came up Tom began to run from the house, through the brambles and the branches, a grim look on his narrow face.

Tom knew the police would come looking for him if he stayed. Had he kidnapped Kylie? Not at all, despite the mark on her wrist, for he had the same burn circled around his own wrist. Had he assaulted people? Only if you could prove he could turn hatred into a red cloud. All the same, he kept on running until he reached the motorway, where someone stopped and he told them his story, how he was a good man who’d been betrayed by one and all, treated unfairly in a cruel world.

On the day Tom Lockland left Essex, Sally had no hair and no magic and Ian couldn’t have cared less. He could only think how lucky he was to be alive. How lucky to be staring into her eyes.

When Sally cried, so relieved that Ian had come back to her, her tears were no longer black, but instead were clear, like anyone else’s. It was what she had always wanted, from the time she was a girl, to have no bond with magic, only now her loss was breaking her heart. She held her hands over her swollen eyes. “I’m normal,” she wept.

“You’ll be fine,” Ian said. “Look at me—I’m supposedly normal.”

Sally laughed through her tears. It was true, he was far from normal, but magic was all he cared about, all he wrote about, all he wanted in this world. What was she worth to him without it? “Why would you want me? I’m nothing now.”

If she wanted an argument he’d give her one. He was always ready for that. “We still have magic together.” And because they did, she kissed him rather than argue with him, at least this time.

Gillian watched them walking back through the field, slowly, for Ian was still reeling from the illness, and their arms were around one another’s waist. Even from a distance it was possible to see that Sally was what she’d always wished to be, an ordinary woman with no ties to the other world. Her gray eyes, the ones the Owens were known for, had turned pale blue, but she looked young again, at least from a distance, as if her life was starting anew.

Already, people were forgetting that Tom Lockland had ever been among them, although every May there would be a town gathering to remember this day so that no one would forget how easily everyday life could be suddenly disrupted, for disaster was always a moment away, in the wind, in a red rain, in the illness that had spread through the village on a beautiful spring day.

IV.

Antonia dreamed that a toad had stopped in front of her on a grassy path. She was barefoot, frantically searching for her sister, but the toad was in her way. “Go on,” she told it. “Move.” In response it burped up a silver key. Don’t you understand anything? someone said to her, and when she looked toward the lake she saw Jet, young again and a bit disappointed by how dense Antonia was. You already have everything you need.

Antonia scrambled out of bed, waking Ariel, who was confused. They’d gone to bed early and had barely slept an hour.

“Is it the baby?” Ariel asked, but Antonia didn’t answer. She had already gone to the living room to search through her purse. Ariel had followed her, a sheet wrapped around her body.

“We have to go now.” Antonia did feel a strange pressure inside of her, but that wasn’t what caused her to hurry.

“Where are we going?” Ariel asked as they went into the bedroom and pulled on their clothes.

Antonia leaned on the bed. The pressure was deep, a tight band around her middle. A few breaths and it was gone. “The law office.” She held up the silver key that would open the box of Maria’s papers.

“Right now?” Ariel asked.

“It should have been yesterday,” Antonia answered. “It should have been three hundred years ago.”

The metal box was stored in the subbasement, at the bottom of an old filing cabinet that contained the Owenses’ documents, the deed to the property on Magnolia Street, along with an accounting of bills from the carpenters, birth and death certificates, wills, records from the Owens School for Girls, letters written in Portuguese tied in blue ribbon, and a faded envelope on which Do not read unless you have the book had been scrawled in pale ink. Antonia had asked to be alone, and Ariel, though concerned that Antonia’s pains seemed to be sharper and closer together, went up to her office to brew coffee that turned out to be too bitter to drink.

The paper was so thin Antonia could see through it, the ink fading as she read, worrying her as it disappeared, word by word.

The Book of the Raven nearly ruined my daughter Faith’s life. I could have destroyed it, but it was written by a woman of knowledge who wrote it in order to grant the reader her heart’s desire, whether it be revenge or love. It will instruct you on the way to end our affliction, then you must pass it on to the next woman who needs the raven’s knowledge.

I thought a curse would protect us, but curses come back to you threefold. There is only one way to put an end to it. Courage. My letter is written for the bravest among us. To save a life, a life must be given.

To end the curse, the book in which it was originally written must be destroyed. The Grimoire which was mine must be no more.

The future rises from the ashes of the past,

Begin at the beginning and end at the end.