poked at the knot with her finger. “There’s one of those hidden in every spell?”
“At least one. Really complicated spells might have two or three knots, each one tying into the threads you saw last night in the keeping room—the ones that bind the world.” I smiled. “I guess gramarye is a disguising spell of sorts—one that hides magic’s inner workings.”
“And when you say the words, it reveals them,” Sarah said thoughtfully. “Let’s give yours a go.”
Before I could warn her, Sarah read the words of my spell aloud. The paper burst into flame in her hands. She dropped it on the table, and I doused it with a shower of conjured water. “I thought that was a spell for lighting a candle—not setting a house on fire!” she exclaimed, looking at the charred mess.
“Sorry. The spell is still pretty new. It will settle down eventually. Gramarye can’t hold a spell together forever, so its magic weakens over time. It’s why spells stop working,” I explained.
“Really? Then you should be able to figure out the relative ages of spells.” Sarah’s eyes gleamed.
She was a great believer in tradition, and the older a piece of magic was, the more she liked it.
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully, “but there are other reasons that spells fail. Weavers have different abilities, for one thing. And if words were left out or changed when later witches copied them, that will compromise the magic, too.”
But Sarah was already in front of her spell book, leafing through the pages.
“Here, look at this one.” She beckoned me toward her. “I always suspected this was the oldest spell in the Bishop grimoire.”
“‘An exceeding great charm for drawing clean air into any place,’” I read aloud, “‘one handed down from old Maude Bishop and proven by me, Charity Bishop in the year 1705.’”
In the margins were notes made by other witches, including my grandmother, who had later mastered the spell. A caustic annotation by Sarah proclaimed, “utterly worthless.”
“Well?” Sarah demanded.
“It’s dated 1705,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but its genealogy goes back beyond that. Em never could find out who Maude Bishop was—a relative of Bridget’s from England, perhaps?” This unfinished genealogical research project provided Sarah her first opportunity to mention Em’s name without sorrow. Vivian was right. Sarah needed me in her stillroom just as much as I needed to be there.
“Perhaps,” I said again, trying not to raise unrealistic hopes.
“Do that thing you did with the jars. Read with your fingers,” Sarah said, pushing the pulpit toward me. I ran my fingertips lightly over the words of the spell. My skin tingled in recognition as they encountered the ingredients woven into it: the air blowing around my ring finger, the sensation of liquid coursing under the nail of my middle finger, and the explosion of scents that clung to my little finger.
“Hyssop, marjoram, and lots of salt,” I said thoughtfully. These were common ingredients found in every witch’s house and garden.
“So why won’t it work?” Sarah was staring at my upraised right hand as though it were an oracle.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “And you know I could repeat it a thousand times and it will never work for me.” Sarah and her friends in the coven were going to have to figure out what was wrong with Maude Bishop’s spell themselves. That, or buy a can of air freshener.
“Maybe you can stitch it back together, or weave a patch, or whatever it is that witches like you do.”
Witches like you. Sarah didn’t mean to do it, but her words left me feeling uneasy and isolated.
Staring down at the page from the grimoire, I wondered if an inability to perform magic on command was one reason that weavers had been targeted by their communities.
“It doesn’t work that way.” I folded my hands atop the open book and pressed my lips together, withdrawing like a crab into its shell.
“You said weaving started with a question. Ask the spell what’s wrong,” Sarah suggested.
I wished I’d never seen Maude Bishop’s cleansing spell. Even more, I wished Sarah had never seen it.
“What are you doing?” Sarah pointed to the Bishop grimoire in horror.
Underneath my hands the writing was unspooling from its neat curlicues. Leftover splatters of ink marred the otherwise blank page. Within moments there was no trace of Maude Bishop’s spell except for a small, tight blue-and-yellow knot. I stared at it in fascination and had the sudden urge to— “Don’t touch it!” Sarah cried, waking Corra from her slumber. I jumped away from