Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,18

tossed a cape over her shining hair, gazed at herself in the painted black mirror that revealed the future, then ignored her fate and did as she pleased. She was headstrong and had always been so, especially in matters of love, as had been true for her own mother. The women in their family had the talent of the Nameless Art, but Rebecca admitted, they all had difficulties with love. They were prone to ignore the rules and the warnings inside their own hearts and heads. Love could ruin your life or set you free; it could happen by chance or be a well-planned decision.

When Rebecca returned in the mornings after her nights out, there were brambles in her clothes and her hair was unbraided. She had marks on her throat and shoulders, as if she’d been bitten by some animal, and she was so overheated she had no need of a cloak. Even at Maria’s young age she knew there was only one reason for her mother to vanish and to spend all of the next day asleep, with the door to her room bolted shut. Night after night she disappeared, wearing her finest clothes, black crinolines, red dresses, and red boots. One dew-drenched morning when the sun had not yet risen, Rebecca returned to find Maria waiting for her in the Silver Pasture, which was littered with spoons and candlesticks and platters, all tossed out the door to bring her luck. Cadin had presented Maria with three strands of black hair, and when she held them in her hand she knew her mother’s secret.

Rebecca stopped where she stood when she realized Maria was there to greet her in the foggy morning. She had been caught red-handed, as if she were the wayward girl and Maria the strict caretaker. Her boots were slick with mud and she had a fresh bite mark on her throat, as if someone had mistaken her delicate flesh for an apple. She raised her chin, defiant. She had been a willful girl, and that trait didn’t often disappear.

“Do you want to ask me a question?” she asked her daughter.

The girl was growing up, and quickly. It was already possible to see the woman she would soon be. Dark and far too curious for her own good. She came to judgments easily, and held a grudge, and was fiercely loyal. She’d had her first blood, therefore some might call her a woman already. Certainly, she had more skill than Rebecca would have imagined possible. Maria was a weather witch and could stop rain by standing in a downpour with her arms uplifted. She could melt the drifts of snow that she walked upon. Cures for fevers, love madness, insomnia, bad luck, all were within her reach. Neighbors from the nearby farms came to see her, out of her mother’s line of sight, waiting anxiously beside the empty barn where Maria dried herbs. Rebecca believed magic should never be shared or bought; for her it was a bloodline talent, meant for family members alone. But Maria had learned otherwise from Hannah. What gifts you had, you were meant to share. What you set out into the world came back to you threefold. If a child was ill, if an old woman was losing her sight, if a family knew suffering, she was willing to do what she could on their behalf. She charged nothing, but accepted whatever they gave. A silver spoon, a currant cake, a copper coin.

* * *

Now as her mother approached after being gone all night, Maria held up the strands of hair the crow had brought her earlier that morning. They were the exact same color as her own hair, black as midnight, but coarser. She knew exactly who they belonged to. The man who’d been responsible for her life. She could sense who he was. A man who lived in shadow, who did as he pleased, who could convince people he was one thing, when he was someone else entirely.

“I thought I had no father,” Maria said.

“No official father.”

“But a father all the same. One you have come from right now.” When she gave Rebecca the dark strands of hair, her mother held them with a rare tenderness and stored them in a locket she wore around her throat.

A farm boy came riding by, tentative and nervous as he neared the house where people in the village said there lived not one witch, but two. One might curse you, one might