The Rules of Magic

  “She has pneumonia,” Franny said. “I wouldn’t let her go to the cemetery.”

  It was a damp, drizzly day and the Reverend more than understood. He nodded. “Tell her I’ll see her next week.”

  “Tell her yourself,” Franny said.

  They looked at each other, then the Reverend got out of his car and followed Franny into the house. He noticed that the wisteria was blooming, always the first in town to do so. This was the house that had been built with money his ancestor had given to a woman he had loved, then had called a witch. He wondered how often that had happened both then and now. He carried the burden of his family with him and was weighed down by the wrong they’d done in the world.

  The Reverend had arthritis so Franny slowed her usually quick gait. Jet was in the parlor, a blanket around her, drinking tea, reading Sense and Sensibility, which she could happily reread time and again. When she saw the Reverend she was so startled she dropped her book, then quickly bent to retrieve it. She felt fluttery having him in the house, as if something momentous was happening even though everything was so very quiet.

  “Sorry to hear you’re not well,” the Reverend said.

  “I’ll be better by next week,” Jet said.

  “I expect you will be,” the Reverend said. “The weather will be better then, too. So they say.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, too. No rain.”

  “Good,” the Reverend said. He looked around. “The woodwork is nice.”

  “Yes. It is. It doesn’t need much care. But I use a little olive oil on the dustcloth every once in a while.”

  “Olive oil,” he murmured. “I never would have thought of that.”

  “It’s natural. No chemicals,” Jet said.

  “I’ll try that sometime,” the Reverend said, even though he hadn’t dusted the woodwork in his house for years.

  The next week was sunny and dry, and on Sunday Jet went back to the cemetery. She wore boots and a sweater and woolen slacks. She still had a cough, but she’d had a cup of licorice tea before she left the house that would quiet it. She didn’t want Levi’s father to worry. When he did there was a line across his forehead, the same line that Levi had across his forehead when he was concerned. The Reverend looked relieved when he saw Jet walking across the grass and he waved. Jet thought perhaps she was fine, considering everything that had happened, and that by coming here each week, she had made her own fate. She was a woman a person could depend on, in fair weather and foul.

  The sky was very blue and the Reverend said this was because in Massachusetts if you waited a few minutes the weather was sure to change, and she agreed and said that in her experience that had always been true.

  On the harshest days of the year Franny could be seen stalking through town on her way to Leech Lake without use of a hat or gloves. She had discovered that the woods circling the lake fell into the pattern of migration of scarlet tanagers. On the grayest days, the nearby bushes were bright red, as if each branch had a heart, and each heart could fly away in an instant. All Franny had to do was hold out her hands, and they came to her. She laughed and fed them seed. She knew they would be far away in no time, to warmer climates near the Mexican border. She herself no longer had the urge to fly away. She was happy to be where she was.

  That first winter Franny walked to the library on the day the board convened. There was muffled shock when she arrived. The president of the board shook Franny’s hand and offered her a cup of tea, which she declined. The members of the board didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified when Franny then stood to announce her intention to serve on the board, and all raised their hands to vote yea to include her.

  When Franny’s first request was permission to have the rare book room dedicated to Maria Owens, assuring them that in return she would make a donation to the library, the members of the board were relieved. As that room had been Maria’s jail cell, it was only right that she be remembered here. Pages from Maria’s journal were framed and hung on the wall. Teenage girls, especially those who considered themselves outcasts and were interested in the town’s history of witchcraft, often came to study the pages. They didn’t understand why a brave, independent woman had been so brutally treated. Many of them began to wonder why they themselves often feigned opinions rather than speak their minds, no matter how clever they were, for fear they’d be thought of as difficult. Some of these girls came to stand at the fence so they could gaze into the garden. At dusk, everything looked blue, even the leaves on the lilacs.

  When spring came around, and the lilacs bloomed, Franny began to leave blank journals on the bureau in Maria’s room in the library, and every week they were taken home by girls who questioned their worth in the modern world. Walking past Leech Lake, Franny often spied one or two perched on a rock, writing furiously in their journals, clearly convinced that words could save them.

  Summer came and with it the sparrow. This time, however, the bird that could bring a year’s worth of bad luck was met by Lewis, who had perched on the dining room mantel. The poor hapless sparrow swiftly flew out the window.

  “Good work,” Franny said to the crow.

  Despite her flattery, he eyed her with suspicion. They were wary allies who both happened to adore the same person.

  “Even if you don’t like me, come have a cookie,” Franny said, for she knew the crow liked anise biscuits and she’d just made some. She had been thinking of various ways for them to earn money. The house had its own trust to support its upkeep, but without the shop, the sisters had no regular employment. Franny had made the rash donation to the library and there was no shop to help them pay the bills. She thought of baking for profit, but it was so time-consuming. Her biscuits were chewy and probably wouldn’t sell, and the ingredients of the tipsy cake were so costly—the bars of chocolate, the extrafine, aged rum—they’d never bring in a cent.

  Franny put in an application at the dress shop, but when the owner saw her name, she quickly said the job was filled, a blister already forming on her tongue as she spoke. So much the better, really, as Franny had no interest in clothes and wore the same black dress and red boots, which were mud-caked and in need of new heels. Her rejections continued at the pharmacy and the grocery store. The baker looked positively terrified when she walked in the door. His customers didn’t favor anise, he said, and as for rum in a cake, well that would never do. The shopkeepers did their best to be pleasant enough, though they all had a frantic look in their eyes when she came into their shops, the bells over their doors refusing to ring. She had that effect. She stopped things with her chilly manner.

  “It’s really not a job for you,” the bookshop owner had said when she went to ask for a job. “Perhaps your sister?”

  Of course people would prefer Jet. She was kinder and much more well mannered, and Franny did look savage with her wild red hair and her threadbare black coat. She had lost weight and was gawky, as she’d been when she was a girl. Even when she dabbed powder on her freckled skin she looked sulky and unkempt. And those boots, well, they gave her away. Red as heartbreak. An Owens woman, through and through.

  In the summertime, Franny missed Vincent more than ever. She went to Leech Lake, where she stood on the grassy bank to strip off her clothes, then she waded in to float in the cold, green water. No leeches came near. There were only dragonflies skimming over the surface of the lake.

  You know who we are, Vincent had said to her that first summer, and she had, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it. She didn’t want to be condemned because of her family history or be pigeonholed as an Owens. She longed to be free, a bird in the sky over Central Park, unconnected to the fragile world. None of that seemed to matter anymore. In the shallows of the lake, she closed her eyes and floated through the cattails. The water turned jewel-blue once she reached the depths, which were said to be bottomless. There were rumors of ancient fish living in the deepest parts of the lake, creatures that hadn’t been seen for a hundred years, but all Franny saw were f
rogs in the shallows, and occasionally an eel slipping through the reeds.

  One day she noticed some girls watching her. She swam to shore, where she ducked behind some thornbushes and swiftly dressed.

  “You’re a good floater,” one of the girls said to her.

  “Thanks,” Franny said, wringing out her hair. The water that fell onto the ground was red. The other girls all took off, but one stayed behind. The one who had spoken.

  “Is that blood?” the girl now asked.

  “Not at all. It’s hair dye.” It was neither, it was simply the way her hair reacted to water, but Franny wasn’t about to explain that to a ten-year-old. She’d never cared for children. She hadn’t much liked herself when she was one.

  The other girls had scattered to climb up the rocks.

  “That’s dangerous,” Franny called. No one paid attention to her, except for the one girl who was still staring at her. “Not that it’s any of my business,” Franny said brusquely.

  “Is it true that you can’t be drowned?” the girl asked.

  “Anyone can be drowned. Given the right circumstances.” The girl was plain but had a bright spark of intelligence in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought you were a witch.”

  “Really?” By now Franny was slipping on her boots. She wore them in every season. Even in summer. They were so much better than shoes for gardening. “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone says so.”

  “Well, everyone doesn’t know everything,” Franny responded. She sounded crotchety, even to herself. The girl was carrying a backpack. A blue journal peeking out caught Franny’s attention. It was one of the notebooks she’d left in the library. “Are you writing?” she asked.

  “Trying to,” the girl said.

  “Don’t try, do.” She realized she sounded exactly like Aunt Isabelle when she was irritated. She hadn’t meant to be a wet blanket and had no wish to discourage this clever little girl, so she changed her tone. “But trying is a start. What is your story?”

  “My life.”

  “Ah.”

  “If you write it all down, it doesn’t hurt as much.”

  “Yes, I can imagine,” Franny said.

  The girl scampered onto the rocks to join her friends. She waved and Franny waved back.

  As she walked home Franny thought that the girl at the lake had been perfectly right. It helped to write things down. It ordered your thoughts and if you were lucky revealed feelings you didn’t know you had. That same afternoon Franny wrote a long letter to Haylin. She had never told anyone what her aunt had whispered with her last breath. But now she wrote it down, and when she did she realized it was what she believed, despite the curse.

  Love more, her aunt had said. Not less.

  Jet remembered how much she had enjoyed puttering in the garden when she began working there again. Everything flourished under her touch. She planted spring onions and mint and cabbages and rue and basil and Spanish garlic. She put in lemon thyme, lemon balm, lemon verbena, foxgloves, and zinnias, making sure to plant rosemary and lavender by the back door, where it had grown when Isabelle was there. The Reverend gave her some of his bulbs so she could grow clutches of daffodils and bring her own flowers to the cemetery on her visits. Some were white with orange centers, some were golden, some were butter yellow. When they bloomed she cried because she knew another year had gone by and it was all happening so fast.

  The more dangerous plants were ordered from the Owens farm in Rockport, Maine, and these Jet grew in the greenhouse, still locked with an old iron key. No reason to take a chance that teenagers who could easily mistake wolfsbane for marijuana might manage to get inside and binge on poison. There, behind glass, she kept belladonna; hemlock; nightshade, which could induce visions and was said to be in the ointment that allowed witches to fly; henbane, known as black nightshade, used by men to attract women and by women to bring rain; mandrake, an herb said to scream when plucked from the ground by its roots; thorn apple, used for healing and for breaking hexes, but only in tiny amounts, otherwise death might result.

  One day she saw the old rabbit, Maggie, near the greenhouse, hiding from the cat. Franny had come out and they stood there together. It was definitely Maggie, with her black whiskers and sad eyes.

  “Let’s set her free,” Jet said.

  Franny went over and grabbed the rabbit before it could hop away. “Now what?” she asked.

  Jet went to open the gate, and Franny followed.

  “She’ll just wind up in someone else’s yard,” Franny said.

  “Yes, but it will be her choice.”

  Franny put the rabbit down on the sidewalk. For a minute it huddled there, staring at them.

  “You’re free,” Franny said, waving her hands. “Go on!”

  Maggie took off down the street, running so fast they never saw her again.

  “Good riddance,” Franny said.

  “Good luck,” Jet called after the creature.

  The cat always followed Jet about, but one day Wren disappeared and when she returned home another black cat, soon called Sparrow, followed. After that there was another named Goose, and then yet another enormous long-haired cat, whom they called Crow, since he seemed far more interested in Lewis than he did in the other cats, even though the bird did little more than spend his days drowsing in a sunny spot on the porch. As it turned out, Wren was bringing home cats from an animal shelter on the other side of town, climbing in through a broken window, then leading them to Magnolia Street.

  “You’re becoming a cat lady,” Franny observed.

  “They chase away the rabbits,” Jet responded.

  “Yes,” Franny said with a grin. “But they never catch them. I’ll bet old Harry could. If he wanted to. Which he clearly does not.”

  The dog was usually up on the porch with Lewis. Two old creatures who never were pets, and who now needed their food to be mixed with water, which was easier on the digestion. She wondered if the old dog dreamed of Vincent, as she did. She liked to imagine her brother in a village in France, strolling through the dusk with William, past fields and woods. Occasionally his song came on the radio. Jet always turned it off. Vincent’s voice was too painful a reminder for her. But Franny would take the radio into the garden. She loved to listen to Vincent and was glad that people remembered him. Sometimes cards would arrive in the mail, postmarked from Paris. She kept these and tied blue ribbon around the stack she had collected. Only their address was written out, but the message was clear. I’m still here.

  The light on the porch was broken. Charlie Merrill had tried his best to fix it, but to no avail. “Circuits are shot,” he said. “It will cost a fortune to rewire. I recommend leaving it be.”

  Franny, nervous as ever about money, was quick to agree. So what if their doorway was dark? They certainly didn’t expect visitors. It was fall, their favorite time of the year, and the evenings grew dark at an earlier hour. Jet had visited New York, as she did once a month, keeping her destination to herself, meeting Rafael at the Oak Bar. He was by far her oldest and best friend.

  “You look different,” he had told her the last time she saw him. “Happy.”

  Indeed, Jet had the feeling something was about to happen. And then one day when she was collecting the last of the rosemary that grew beside the door, thinking about Aunt Isabelle’s clients who often arrived at this hour, the porch light switched on.

  Jet stood up, holding the rosemary. It was wilted brown, but as she watched, it became green in her hands. Her gray eyes rimmed with tears. What she had lost had returned. When two girls passed by the fence she knew what they were thinking, although she was too well mannered to ever tell.

  She had the sight once more.

  It was Samhain, the last day in October, when doors between worlds are open and impossible things are accomplished.

  She began to work from Isabelle’s Grimoire, starting with the easy recipes: chamomile for blessing, hyssop and holly to dispel negat
ive energy, and after a few weeks she progressed to one of the most complex spells, the dove’s heart love charm. She went to the butcher’s for the heart, and afterward there was all sorts of chatter on Main Street. People peered out their windows as she walked home with a bloody paper bag. She was to prick the heart she had carefully prepared for a client who was to say, My lover’s heart will feel this pin and his devotion I will win. There’ll be no way for him to rest nor sleep, until he comes to me to speak. Only when he loves me best will he find peace and with peace rest.

  That night the porch light was on.

  No trick-or-treaters ever came to the Owens house on Halloween. They were warned away by their parents and by tradition. But there were other people who were desperate to walk through the gate. The first woman came at dusk, knocking tentatively at the door.

  “It’s probably someone trying to sell us something,” Franny said. “Ignore it.”

  All the same, Jet opened the door. There was the woman who had bought Mrs. Russell’s house, the one Franny had run into years back when Isabelle had fallen ill.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Franny wanted to know.

  “Your light was on.” The woman was unsure as to whether she should cross the threshold or back away. “I know what that means.”

  Franny tossed her sister a dark look. Still Jet motioned to their neighbor, who after a glance around, proceeded to enter the kitchen.