The Once and Future Witches - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,85
unlikely dream, Beatrice guides Mr. Blackwell and Miss Quinn through their oaths and inducts them to whatever remains of the Sisters of Avalon. Quinn does not flinch or hesitate as she crosses her heart. Her eyes on Beatrice are a pair of promises, brightest gold.
In the quiet that follows, Mr. Blackwell says, “So. There is, I assume, some reason you haven’t snapped your fingers and called the Lost Way in order to save your sister.”
Beatrice tugs her robe tighter around her shoulders, feeling tired and shabby and not at all like someone who could restore the ancient power of witching or stage a daring rescue. “We have the will, and at least some guesses about the ways. But we’re missing the words.” She flips through her black notebook, trailing her fingers over the rhyme as if it might sprout extra lines and verses. “We’ve looked in every book of witch-tales, every children’s songbook, every scrap relating to Old Salem. If the words ever existed, they’re well and truly lost now.”
Mr. Blackwell does not look especially displeased to be faced with an unsolvable puzzle; he looks instead like a man receiving an early birthday gift. “Well, you know what they say: if you want to find something lost, you ought to look where you last found it.” He beams across the table. “Ladies, I have a suggestion.”
It’s been a long while since Agnes felt lonely. When she first came to New Salem the loneliness was like a cold shackle around her ankle, weighing her steps, tugging her back, but in time she stopped feeling the weight of it.
Now she can almost hear the clank and drag of chains at her heels as she paces. Her room at South Sybil is still unnaturally large, full of the ghostly echo of women laughing and teasing and whispering to one another.
Her pacing is interrupted sometimes by tentative taps on the door and whispers of hyssop. Girls who want to know when the next meeting will be and if Juniper is all right and if Agnes knows any good curses for Hill’s men, who prowl the city with brass badges on their chests.
Agnes ought to tell them to burn their gowns and forget about witching forever, but the words catch in her throat like stale bread. It’s the way the girls look at her—scared but not quite scared away, still hungry and hopeful—or maybe it’s the glow in their eyes when they say Juniper’s name.
She tells them to go home. To lie low. She lets them keep their hope a little while longer, and they leave her alone.
Except she’s not really alone. She never is, now. She whispers to her daughter as she walks, snatches of songs and half-forgotten rhymes, promises she knows she can’t keep. It’ll be alright. I’ll keep you safe.
In the deepening gray of the second evening her pacing is interrupted by three bold thuds at the door and a man’s voice. “Hello? Hyssop.”
Only one man knew that word. Agnes doesn’t move.
Mr. August Lee knocks again. “Miss Eastwood? Agnes?” A slight pause. “I see your shoes in the hall.”
She moves stiffly to the door and opens it a slim, miserly crack.
August’s haystack hair is standing on end, his eyes wide with relief. “Oh, thank the Saints. Your name wasn’t in the papers, but I wasn’t sure whether . . .” He trails away in the face of her hollow stare. “May I come in?” He holds up a grease-blotched newspaper, and Agnes catches the hot smell of gravy and meat.
She steps away from the door and settles herself on the edge of her bed, swallowing the sniveling gratitude in her throat. A strong woman wouldn’t cry just because someone was worried about her.
August fetches a tin plate and unwraps the newspaper to reveal a pair of folded hand-pies, still hot. He hands them to her and she doesn’t cry about that either, or mention that she’s eaten nothing but boiled eggs and cold coffee for two days. She doesn’t think any man has ever brought her hot pies, ever thought of her body as a thing to be taken care of rather than merely taken.
He hovers uncertainly until she takes a bite and makes an involuntary, animal noise somewhere between a growl and a groan. Then a crooked smile flicks over his face and he sits beside her, slightly too close.
“I should have come earlier. I’m so sorry, Agnes.”
The tone of his voice and the angle of his body tells her he