Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,120

for sleep had eluded him ever since they’d left Gravesend. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw an image of the tall, awkward madwoman who thought she could outrace a horse over a narrow bridge. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d cried out at the moment she fell to the marsh below, and worse, if she’d still been alive when they left her there. That was the thing that haunted him. When he’d gone to peer down into the shallows, the woman was facedown, her gray dress and bonnet soaked with saltwater, unmoving. She didn’t give any sign of life when he dragged her to a higher watermark. And yet, looking back on it, he could swear he’d seen the flutter of her back as she inhaled more water than air before he climbed back into the carriage to wait for Faith. Go on, Faith had told him. And he had. He had done as an eleven-year-old girl ordered him to do because she was fearless and he was not. Finney had actually been shaking as he stood there gazing into the creek. He knew the difference between life and death—a flutter, a heartbeat—and yet he had climbed up in his wagon and he hadn’t looked back.

“What’s done is done,” Faith had told him when at last she’d scrambled back onto the carriage seat beside him, her boots and dress soaked, her hair streaked white with salt. He’d looked at her and nodded and knew it was likely they had killed someone. But the sky was blue and there were miles to go before they made their way across Brooklyn, and it was true, what was done was done and could not be undone.

* * *

Faith and Keeper walked side by side, completely at ease with each other. Maria had grown dizzy with emotion, but fortunately Jack Finney brought out smelling salts to revive her. “You’ll be fine,” he told her, but she wasn’t as certain. It was a shock to see someone come back from the great unknown. What was gone could return, but not necessarily as it was.

“I assume she was with the lady who took her from me?” Maria asked once she’d recovered her senses. Finney had helped her into the wagon, and they followed after Faith, who seemed to welcome the mayhem of Manhattan.

“She wasn’t a lady,” Finney said. “I’d say she was more of a monster.”

Maria looked at him more closely and she liked what she saw, a kindhearted, wounded man. Perhaps he was a hero after all.

“Anyway, the girl’s the one who found me,” Finney went on. “She’s got the sight, you know.”

“Does she?” Maria’s back was straight. She had been taught never to discuss the Nameless Art with outsiders.

“I’ve known such people before, in the town where I grew up, but none as young as your girl. She’s a special one. Seems it’s in her blood.”

* * *

When they reached Maiden Lane, the first thing Maria asked Finney was to build a fire in the yard, and as soon as it was lit, she tossed her mourning veil onto the flames. Without the veil, the light of day was so bright there were tears in her eyes. Finney led Arnold inside the barn and unhitched him from the wagon. Maria felt a tug inside her, thinking of the nights Samuel had slept there, and how long he’d been gone.

Maria and Faith sat in the garden as the fire burned and the sky darkened, together for the first time in five years, ill at ease, as if they were strangers. Now that she was in her mother’s presence, Faith had questions, ones that had haunted her.

“Martha told me you gave me to her. You didn’t want me.”

“They had me in jail and she promised she would take care of you. She would do so until I could come for you.”

“And you believed her?” Faith’s eyes were narrowed, a suspicious daughter glaring at her mother. Somewhere inside herself Faith had always wondered if any of Martha’s claims had been true. A monster makes you hers in small ways, each time she insists you must behave, you must not disagree, you must never show your feelings, and if you’re not careful, you may start to believe what she tells you. No one else wants you, no one else cares, you are nothing without her, you are nothing at all.

Maria pulled at the collar of her dress so that Faith could see the mark of