Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,102
was absolutely certain that it walked alongside them every day, on the road and in the fields, tempting them to leave the grace of the Lord. Witchery was a brand of wickedness Martha had hoped they’d escaped when they left Massachusetts, for in that colony witches were born and bred. She would have been stunned to know that Faith climbed out her window at night to go to the graveyard. Faith had set up a kettle in order to make the black soap her mother had been known for. She bought or pilfered ingredients that she remembered as useful from the time when she’d watched Maria practice the Nameless Art. Ginger, lemon, salt, the bark of the elm, chokeberries, cherry pits, white candles and black candles, black fabric, red thread, blue beads, feathers, wild belladonna which was dangerous and agitated the spirit, bright yellow-green ferns, for lightning never strikes where ferns grow. She’d begun to trade her soap for books and herbs, and Finney, the peddler, said every woman who bought a bar of the fragrant black soap had returned to beg for more.
On Saturdays, Faith sat with Martha to read from the Geneva Bible, the Scriptures that formed all Puritan beliefs. She always washed her hands and face before they read, so as not to smudge the pages. In Martha’s eyes, Brooklyn was a land of disbelievers, where all denominations other than Quakers were welcome to own land; there were Dutch Reform Protestants and some Catholics, and even, some people said, a few Jewish families from Amsterdam. It was a free and wild place compared to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and one had to keep watch at all times to remain on the narrow path.
Faith looked unnatural with her black dyed hair and the oversized gray dress her foster mother insisted she wear at all times, along with a pair of heavy black boots that she kicked off whenever she walked to town, preferring to go barefoot. People considered her to be the oddest of creatures, a well-mannered girl, sure enough, with unnatural raven hair and pale eyebrows, who always had her nose in a book. When she wasn’t reading, she was talking to herself, reciting recipes to make certain she wouldn’t forget them. Be True to Me Tea, a boon for lovers; Travel Well Tea, a tonic for good health on a journey; Frustration Tea, which granted good humor and cheer even on the outskirts of Kings County; Clairvoyant Tea, concocted from mugwort and rosemary and anise, which helped the drinker see beyond the curtain of the here and now; and Faith’s favorite, Courage Tea, which provided bravery and grit and was made of vanilla and currants and thyme. Every time Faith recited a remedy, she felt a thrill, as if she were unlocking a door to her true self. Whenever she did so, the iron bracelets burned and chafed, but she had learned to ignore them as a dog ignores its collar and a horse its reins.
Faith was walking through town one afternoon on her way home from seeing the peddler, a treasured new book of Shakespeare’s sonnets in hand, when she heard sobbing. A woman stood outside a small cottage with a tilted roof, convinced that her child would die of the wracking coughs that plagued him. In that instant, Faith remembered a cure for this affliction. She’d only been six when she was taken from her mother, but she had always paid attention when the Nameless Art had been called upon. She ran back to the peddler and asked him for quince seeds and honey, which she heated on a stove in his wagon.
“What is that supposed to be?” the peddler asked.
Jack Finney had grown fond of this odd girl through his dealings with her, for she had an endearing sort of charm. In his travels, he always looked for editions of books she might favor. He was a Cornishman who’d come to this country with nothing, after his wife and child had died of the pox. He’d wanted to be as far away from England as possible, but now he felt lost in this vast, flat land of Brooklyn, and it was a pleasure to speak to someone with whom he felt at ease. As far as he could tell, the girl was an outcast just as he was, a loner by nature or by design. Though she was now eleven, and had lived at the end of the world for nearly three years,