Page 3 of The Book of Magic

On the train back to Boston, Daisy sat on Jet’s lap and gazed out the window as they passed through the pale green marshes in Connecticut. “Service dog,” Jet told the conductor, and who would argue with such a dear, old lady who appeared to be crying black tears, the tears that witches cry no matter that lore says they have no hearts and are incapable of love. There were osprey nests on the tallest utility poles and one huge bird with a wingspan of five feet swooped over the lowering tide in search of fish. Tall tawny grass was growing in the rivulets, and the clouds reflected in the water. Had there ever been a marsh as beautiful? Everything you did for the last time was a miracle, no matter how ordinary. Jet had been beside Rafael while he brushed his teeth, she had taken the subway with him to Queens, she had seen the way he looked at her, as if nothing else mattered. This is the way their real life might have been if she hadn’t been forced to keep vigil over the curse.

“You don’t have to worry about the curse anymore,” she’d reassured him as they’d walked along the landscape of their past, so that it almost seemed as if they were young again and had all the time in the world.

“I was never worried,” Rafael told her. “I’ve been lucky and I know it.”

Franny came in from the garden with a basket of fresh parsley and mint. She stopped when she saw that her sister had returned. She could see an ashy shadow around Jet, visible only if you knew what death looked like, if you dared to peer into a black mirror and see the future of those you loved most. It was the evening of the second day and by tomorrow the color of the shadow would be more ink than ash.

“Back at last,” Franny said crisply. Her heart was breaking, but what good would it do to let it show?

“Here I am,” Jet replied. “Yours for the next five days.”

Mine alone, Franny thought. Beautiful, darling, dear sister. “Then we should make supper,” she said. We should make the most of every minute we have.

They spent nearly every moment together during the next few days, linked in thought and deed, as sisters often are. Who can you trust if not your sister? Who knows your story better than she? If you saw one Owens sister at the grocery, the other would be right beside her. If one was working in the garden, making certain the rows of herbs were weeded, her sister would be there as well, carrying a basket to collect the dandelion greens. When Jet went to visit Reverend Willard at the retirement home, Franny tagged along, even though she was the least social creature in town and had certainly never visited anyone there before. Daisy was with them, and no one at the retirement home considered giving them any trouble concerning a canine visitor, knowing if they did they’d have Franny to deal with, who had already cast a domination spell in the entry hall to ensure that people on the premises would bend to her will.

The Reverend had performed the marriage ceremony for Franny and her beloved Haylin Walker soon after Haylin was diagnosed with cancer, and due to that kindness, Franny had made allowances for the way he’d treated Jet when she was a girl, which, in point of fact, had been all but unforgivable. But forgiveness was one thing, a social call was another, and Franny simply couldn’t fathom holding a cheerful conversation wedged in between emergency alerts going off for failing residents and Reverend Willard’s labored breathing, for spring always affected his asthma. Franny remained on the threshold while Jet went to sit at the Reverend’s bedside. That was as social as Franny got. She pursed her lips as she gazed at Reverend Willard. Things didn’t look good for the old man and he had been despondent for some time. Once you are over a hundred you stop counting days. Once you’ve lost your son you glimpse death everywhere. All the same the Reverend let out a whoop when Daisy jumped onto his bed.

“Here’s my girl.” He patted the dog, wholly absorbed, turning to Jet only when she politely coughed. “And my other girl!”

“She’s a grown woman.” Franny reminded the Reverend, still not venturing any farther than the doorway. “An old one at that.” One who was spending precious time with a man who had made her life miserable long ago, but that was clearly water under the bridge to everyone but Franny. The Reverend hadn’t wanted his son to have any dealings with an Owens girl because of her family, but he’d realized he’d been a bigot and over these many years he’d come to think of Jet as a daughter. Today she looked sadder than usual.

“Am I dying?” he asked her. They had loved the same person, that was their lasting bond.

“Not yet,” Jet told him. “It’s me this time.”

“So, you won’t be coming to visit anymore?” The Reverend was struck by emotion, his eyes and nose running.

“No.” Jet smiled at him with tenderness. “That will be Franny from now on.”

“What!” Franny said sharply. She’d only been half listening, but she’d paid attention when she heard her sister’s remark. “Not me. I’m not one for social calls.”

“Then one of my grand-nieces will come,” Jet reassured the Reverend. “Kylie or Antonia. Someone will always look in on you. And don’t worry about Daisy. I’ve found her the perfect home.”

As Jet was leaving, Reverend Willard seized her hand. “Make sure it’s not your sister.” He spoke in a low voice, eyeing the fearsome figure at the door who was gesturing for Jet to hurry. Jet ignored Franny rushing her and took her time. Why not? She had grown to love this old man who, if fate had taken a different route, would have been her father-in-law.

“It won’t be,” she promised.

“Whoever it is, she won’t be as good as you.”

Franny looped her arm through her sister’s as they were leaving. The world was still beautiful and they stood in the front yard of the retirement home while Daisy nosed around. There were old people sitting on wooden benches, gazing at the pink-tinged sky. “Did you ever imagine you’d forgive him?” Franny asked, remembering how the Reverend had made Jet’s and Levi’s lives intolerable when he flatly refused to allow his son to see her. He’d been a fool who judged Jet by her family’s history of witchery.

“I still can’t forgive myself.” Levi had loved her and she had brought the curse to him. “Forgiveness is the most difficult undertaking.”

“I forgave you for being the better sister,” Franny said bluntly.

“Nonsense,” Jet said, and because she didn’t have all the time in the world, she threw her arms around her sister even though Franny was always uncomfortable in an embrace. “Dear sister, that was always you.”

On the fourth day, Jet and Franny went out to the greenhouse to read through the Grimoire, the thick book that was the repository of the family’s magical knowledge. Their treasured Grimoire had been created in Essex, England, by Maria Owens’s adopted mother, Hannah, a birthday gift when Maria was ten, old enough to study magic. The cover was the cool green-black skin of some strange leather that was said to be toad skin, a material that was both delicate and strong. Maria’s original cures and spells could be found in these pages, learned in England and Curaçao, and it was here in this book that the original curse had been written down years after it had been set when Maria stood upon the gallows, having been judged to be a witch by the man she imagined she loved. There were also several pages written by Maria’s daughter, Faith, who had assisted her mother in opening the library and a well-respected girls’ school, thanks to the most loyal wealthy patron, Thomas Brattle, the treasurer of Harvard College who had helped to thwart the witchcraft trials, publicly refuting Cotton Mather’s unprovable beliefs in spectral evidence, calling the entire episode a delusion, a man who was also rumored to be the father of Faith’s two little girls, Avis and Violet.

The women in the following generations had added to the family’s knowledge, including their cherished aunt Isabelle, who had invited Franny and Jet to Magnolia Street when they had no idea who they were. They’d been kept in the dark by their mother, Susannah, who had abandoned the family and its history when she was little more than a girl. The most recent pages in the Grimoire had been written over a period of fifty years by Franny and Jet, and there were remedies and enchantments Gillian had added, even though Gillian had always had less talent for magic than the others and had been mortified by her lack of skill. She was frankly jealous that magic had come to Sally so naturally, when Sally clearly had no use for such things and only craved to be normal. Sally had never written a word in the Grimoire. “I’m not interested,” she always said when the topic of magic was broached. “I’ve got better things to do.”

Stored beside the book was the black mirror Jet and Franny had been shown during their first summer on Magnolia Street. It was possible to see the future in this mirror, if you dared. You’d know if you had the sight when the mirror was presented; you’d see your future in bits and pieces and begin to unravel the story of your life. But stories change, depending on who tells them, and stories are nothing if you don’t have someone to tell them to. Fortunately, they’d had each other. When they put the book away, they held hands and listened to the riotous birdsong in the trees. How lucky to have a sister.

They had a brother as well, one they loved dearly, the darling of their family, wild and talented, the sort of man who could do no harm and dared to fall in love when everything in their history told him he should not. That evening Jet wrote a letter to Vincent, who had disappeared after being called up to fight in Vietnam. He had managed to avoid the curse with a false death, tricking fate and setting off with his beloved William to a life that couldn’t be shared with his family. Jet kept a photograph of Vincent in her bedside table drawer, along with her treasured packet of letters from Rafael. She took out her best stationery and a pen with red ink that made the white paper flush the color of roses.

Darling boy, Jet began, we have missed you every day. Whenever you can come home, do.

She addressed the letter to Vincent’s great friend Agnes Durant, in Paris, then slipped the key to the house on Magnolia Street into the envelope. She and Franny walked through the gusty night to the post office, where the letter was sent off in the mailbox.