Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,95

too, was not at her best. “I’m not at all prepared.” She had dirt from the garden under her fingernails and her hair was in knots.

Samuel’s fever was raging, and he was still a man who either said too much or said nothing at all. When they went inside, he immediately felt at home, a comfort he experienced only when he visited New York. But it was all too much on this day. Samuel found he needed to take a moment to sit and catch his breath before greeting anyone properly.

“What do we have here?” Abraham Dias said, his voice trembling. There was a handsome man with dark eyes who seemed exhausted and wore a familiar black coat. “You look like my son.”

“He should,” Maria assured the old man. “That’s exactly who he is.”

Samuel gathered his strength and went to embrace his father. The two men were not afraid to show their raw emotions when they were together. They had seen and done terrible things and had worked side by side for a lifetime, until Abraham could no longer stand upright for more than a few minutes at a time without the pain in his back and legs overwhelming him. Age had come upon him quickly, like a thief, and an injury he’d suffered when they first took their ship from a royal merchant and renamed it the Queen Esther, had worsened with the years so that he limped and could no longer walk very far. On this day, neither man could stand for long. Abraham could deal with his own failing body, but to see his son in such bad health caused him to weep.

“It’s that damn fever,” Abraham declared. “It won’t leave you alone.” He turned to Maria, frustrated. “I thought you had cured him!”

“I cure him every time. That is the only way to treat this disease. Some things return no matter what, and we must deal with it when it does.”

“I’m fine,” Samuel insisted. “I can stay in the barn.”

But Maria insisted he must take the chamber being saved for Faith’s return. Samuel was mortified that she had to help him up the stairs, and yet he wondered if perhaps he had willed the illness to return, if he wanted nothing more than to have her arms around him, despite the price. Everything inside of him hurt, as if his bones were made of glass once more. A single touch was agony, and yet he yearned for Maria’s embrace, for glass could burn as well as break. Once in bed, he moaned and turned his face to the wall. He hated to show his weakness; all the same he hadn’t enough strength to take off his boots.

“You should have come home before this,” Maria told him. “I can tell you’ve been ill for a while.”

Abraham had a right to fault her, but breakbone was a tricky disease that lurked inside a person’s body. You chased it away, only to have it return unexpectedly. Samuel found he was comforted by Faith’s belongings that were stored in this room, the blanket with the blue stitching, the poppet doll he had made.

“There it is,” he said, happy to spy the doll. “You’ve kept it safe.”

“Of course I have,” Maria answered. “Didn’t you tell me I must?”

She went to collect the dried Tawa-tawa leaves that were stored in her herb cabinet so that she might fix a pot of the curative tea, and when she returned, Samuel was already asleep. He was talking as he dreamed, this time about the burning of his mother. The prisoners had been dressed in sackcloth, with dragons and flames painted upon their shirts and hats; they had ropes around their necks, and were forced to carry rosary beads and green and yellow candles. Dias was haunted by the shocking scene he had witnessed as a boy, and in his dreams he often revisited the square where it had occurred. The smoke that arose from the burning bodies was bloody and bitter. He could hear his mother’s voice ringing through a crowd of a thousand. Maria removed his boots and slipped into bed beside him so that she might hold a cold, wet cloth to his head. She reached under his shirt to find that he was burning, his heart red-hot.

“Don’t leave me,” he said, convinced it was she who was the true remedy, not the bitter tea she insisted he drink or the broth she made for him out of fish bones to keep