Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,34

missed your father and I should be at the warehouse. If you could direct me, miss, I’ll be on my way.”

Clearly, he had made yet another mistake, taking her for a member of the family.

“I’m happy to guide you there,” Maria offered. She had laundry to see to in the huge pots in the courtyard, and Juni would be waiting in the kitchen so they might set preparations under way for that evening’s dinner, but instead she went back out through the garden, the man from Massachusetts following closely, drawn by what he would later swear was pure enchantment. He’d been warned that black magic was invoked in the caves by the sea on this island and that pirates were welcome in the city of Willemstad, especially if they spent gold stolen from Spanish ships. Yet as they walked under the inkberry trees, on their way to the harbor, he forgot the life he’d led. He forgot his house with its fine pottery brought from England, and the people who lived in that house in rooms that were continually gloomy throughout the year. In summer, the air was filled with flies and gnats. In winter, darkness fell at four in the afternoon. But that was there, a world away. He squinted in the sunlight and stayed close to the girl. She smelled of lavender and salt. Once or twice she gestured to chase away a black crow that seemed to follow her, wheeling through a slice of the sky, then careening down toward Hathorne, so that he might have believed it was his enemy, if birds could think and feel and plan such things. He didn’t yet know the girl’s name, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. This is how it felt to be free of everything you had been trained to do. Be cautious, be sure of yourself, be careful of outsiders, beware of women who have the nerve to meet your eyes, who think they’re your equals, who do as they please, who please you as well, who will never do as they’re told.

Maria glanced behind her when they reached the sea. The water was blue-green and clear enough to see the shadows of large, lumbering shapes cast onto the white sand by the creatures that swam beneath the waves. John stopped to kneel so he might better see them. He was wearing leather boots made in London that cost more than what most people on the island earned in a year.

“A monster,” he said of the huge sea animal that came nearer the shore.

Maria crouched beside him. He saw that she was barefoot, and that the skirt of the dress she wore was hemmed with blue thread.

“Sir, I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she told him. “That is no monster. It’s a turtle.”

Hathorne grinned at her, then pulled off his boots. “We’ll see about that.”

He must have been enchanted, for he leapt into the sea fully clothed, wearing his loose linen shirt and his trousers and even his coat. Only a man possessed would do such a thing. He was so far from the darkness of Massachusetts anything seemed possible. The water was warm and the current helped him along. He remembered feeling this way when he was a boy, at the sea in August. He approached the turtle, for that was what it was, and ran his hands over its bumpy shell, then swam beside it, gliding through the flat water, then floating on his back, his eyes half-closed, a smile on his lips. Hathorne had large, handsome features and a smile that changed his expression so thoroughly he might have been another man entirely. He was inside of a dream, not thinking how he would explain his drenched appearance to Mr. Jansen, not thinking of anything at all other than this island, this woman, this moment he was in.

“Now I see what it is,” he called, joyous. “It is a miracle.”

Maria knew what was happening. She tried to recite a spell backwards, but the words dissolved in her mouth. She remembered that Hannah had said it was difficult to set a spell upon oneself. And now, if she wasn’t mistaken, it was already too late.

After his swim, Hathorne climbed up a ladder to the dock, soaking wet, but laughing. “I think I look to be the monster now.”

Perhaps he was, for a man tells you who he is the instant you meet him, all you have to do is listen, but when he leaned in