Matthew and I sat in silence. I took a shaky breath.
“Did we screw up, Matthew?” I reviewed the past months: meeting Philippe, breaking through Matthew’s defenses, getting to know Goody Alsop and the other witches, finding out I was a weaver, befriending Mary and the ladies of Malá Strana, taking Jack and Annie into our home and our hearts, recovering Ashmole 782, and, yes, conceiving a child. My hand dropped to my belly in a protective gesture. There wasn’t a single thing I would change, if given the choice.
“It’s hard to know, mon coeur,” Matthew said somberly. “Time will tell.”
“I thought we could go see Goody Alsop. She’s helping me with my spell to return to the future.” I stood before my father, my spell box clutched in my hands. I was still uneasy around him after the lecture he’d given Matthew and me yesterday.
“It’s about time,” my father said, reaching for his jacket. He still wore it like a modern man, taking it off the minute he was indoors and rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I didn’t think any of my hints were getting through to you. I can’t wait to meet an expereinced weaver. And are you finally going to show me what’s in the box?”
“If you were curious about it, why didn’t you ask?”
“You’d covered it so carefully with that wispy thing of yours that I figured you didn’t want anybody to mention it,” he said as we descended the stairs.
When we arrived in the parish of St. James Garlickhythe, Goody Alsop’s fetch opened the door.
“Come in, come in,” the witch said, beckoning us toward her seat by the fire. Her eyes were bright and snapping with excitement. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
The whole coven was there, sitting on the edge of their seats.
“Goody Alsop, this is my father, Stephen Proctor.”
“The weaver.” Goody Alsop beamed with satisfaction. “You’re a watery one, like your daughter.” My father hung back as he always did, watching everybody and saying as little as possible while I made the introductions. All the women smiled and nodded, though Catherine had to repeat everything to Elizabeth Jackson because my father’s accent was so strange.
“But we are being rude. Would you care to share your creature’s name?” Goody Alsop peered at my father’s shoulders, where the faint outlines of a heron could be seen. I’d never noticed it before.
“You can see Bennu?” my father said, surprised.
“Of course. He perches, open-winged, across your shoulders. My familiar spirit does not have wings, even though I am strongly tied to the air. She was easier to tame for that reason, I suspect. When I was a girl, a weaver came to London with a harpy for a familiar. Ella was her name, and she was very difficult to train.”
Goody Alsop’s fetch wafted around my father, crooning softly to the bird as it became more visible.
“Perhaps your Bennu can coax Diana’s firedrake to give up her name. It would make it much easier for your daughter to timewalk, I think. We don’t want any trace of her familiar left here, dragging Diana back to London.”
“Wow.” My father was struggling to take it all in—the strange accent, Goody Alsop’s fetch, the fact that his secrets were on display.
“Who?” Elizabeth Jackson asked politely, assuming she’d misunderstood.
My father drew back and studied Elizabeth carefully. “Have we met?”
“No. It is the water in my veins that you recognize. We are happy to have you among us, Master Proctor. London has not had three weavers within her walls in some time. The city is abuzz.”
Goody Alsop motioned to the chair beside her. “Do sit.”
My father took the place of honor. “Nobody at home knows about this weaving business.”
“Not even Mom?” I was aghast. “Dad, you’ve got to tell her.”
“Oh, she knows. But I didn’t have to tell her. I showed her.” My father’s fingers curled and released in an instinctive gesture of command.
The world lit up in shades of blue, gray, lavender, and green as he plucked at all the hidden watery threads in the room: the willow branches in a jug by the window, the silver candlestick that Goody Alsop used for her spells, the fish that was waiting to be roasted for supper. Everyone and everything in the room was cast into those same watery hues. Bennu took flight, his silver-tipped wings stirring the air into waves. Goody Alsop’s fetch was blown this way and that in the currents, her shape shifting into a long-stemmed lily, then returning to human form and sprouting wings. It was as if the two familiars were playing. At the prospect of recreation, my firedrake flicked her tail and beat her wings against my ribs.
“Not now,” I told her tightly, gripping at my bodice. The last thing we needed was a cavorting firedrake. My control over the past might have slipped, but I knew better than to let go of a dragon in Elizabethan London.
“Let her out, Diana,” my father urged. “Ben will take care of her.”
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My father called to Bennu, who faded into his shoulders. The watery magic around me faded, too.
“Why are you so afraid?” my father asked quietly.
“I’m afraid because of this!” I waved my cords in the air. “And this!” I hit my ribs, jostling my firedrake. She belched in response. My hand slid down to where our child was growing. “And this. It’s too much. I don’t need to use showy elemental magic the way you just did. I’m happy as I am.”
“You can weave spells, command a firedrake, and bend the rules that govern life and death. You’re as volatile as creation itself, Diana. These are powers any self-respecting witch would kill for.”
I looked at him in horror. He’d brought the one thing I couldn’t face into the room: Witches had already killed for these powers. They’d killed my father, and my mother, too.
“Putting your magic into neat little boxes and keeping it separate from your craft isn’t going to keep Mom and me from our fates,” my father continued sadly.
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Really?” His eyebrows lifted. “You want to try that again, Diana?”
“Sarah says elemental magic and the craft are separate. She says—”
“Forget what Sarah says!” My father took me by the shoulders. “You aren’t Sarah. You aren’t like any other witch who has ever lived. And you don’t have to choose between spells and the power that’s right at your fingertips. We’re weavers, right?”
I nodded.
“Then think of elemental magic as the warp—the strong fibers that make up the world—and spells as the weft. They’re both part of a single tapestry. It’s all one big system, honey. And you can master it, if you set aside your fear.”
I could see the possibilities shimmering around me in webs of color and shadow, yet the fear remained.
“Wait. I have a connection to fire, like Mom does. We don’t know how the water and fire will react. I haven’t had those lessons yet.” Because of Prague, I thought. Because we got distracted by the hunt for Ashmole 782 and forgot to focus on the future and getting back to it.
“So you’re a switch-hitter—a witchy secret weapon.” He laughed. He laughed.
“This is serious, Dad.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” My father let that sink in, then crooked his finger, catching a single gray-green thread on the end of it.
“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously.
“Watch,” he said in a whisper like waves against the shore. He drew his finger toward him and pursed his lips as if he were holding an invisible bubble wand. When he blew out, a ball of water formed. He flicked his fingers in the direction of the water bucket near the hearth, and the ball turned to ice, floated over, and dropped into it with a splash. “Bull’s-eye.”
Elizabeth giggled, releasing a stream of water bubbles that popped in the air, each one sending out a tiny shower of water.
“You don’t like the unknown, Diana, but sometimes you’ve got to embrace it. You were terrified when I put you on a tricycle the first time.
And you threw your blocks at the wall when you couldn’t get them all to fit back in their box. We made it through those crises. I’m sure we can handle this.” My father held his hand out.
“But it’s so . . .”
“Messy? So is life. Stop trying to be perfect. Try being real for a change.” My father’s arm swept through the air, revealing all the threads that were normally hidden from view. “The whole world is in this room. Take your time and get to know it.”
I studied the patterns, saw the clumps of color around the witches that indicated their particular strengths and weaknesses. Threads of fire and water surrounded me in a mess of conflicting shades. My panic returned.
“Call the fire,” my father said, as if it were as simple as ordering a pizza.
After a moment of hesitation, I crooked my finger and wished for the fire to come to me. An orange-red thread caught on the tip, and when I let my breath out through pursed lips, dozens of tiny bubbles of light and heat flew into the air like fireflies.
“Lovely, Diana!” Catherine cried out, clapping her hands.
Between the clapping and the fire, my firedrake wanted to be released. Bennu cried out from my father’s shoulders, and the firedrake answered. “No,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport. She’s a dragon—not a goldfish. Why are you always trying to pretend that the magical is ordinary? Let her fly!”
I relaxed just a fraction, and my ribs softened, opening away from my spine like the leaves of a book. My firedrake escaped the bony confines at the first opportunity, flapping her wings as they metamorphosed from gray and insubstantial to iridescent and gleaming. Her tail curled up in a loose knot, and she soared around the room. The firedrake caught the tiny balls of light in her teeth, swallowing them down like candy. She then turned her attention to my father’s water bubbles as if they were fine champagne. When she was through with her treats, the firedrake hovered in the air before me, her tail flicking at the floor. She cocked her head as if waiting for me to ask her something.
“What are you?” I asked, wondering how she managed to absorb all the conflicting powers of water and fire.
“You, but not you.” The firedrake blinked, her glassy eyes studying me. A swirling ball of energy balanced at the end of her spade-shaped tail. The firedrake gave her tail a flick, tipping the ball of energy into my cupped hands. It looked just like the one I had given Matthew back in Madison.
“What is your name?” I whispered.
“You may call me Corra,” she said in a language of smoke and mist. Corra bobbed her head in farewell, melted into a gray shadow, and disappeared. Her weight thudded into my center, her wings curved around my back, and there was stillness. I took a deep breath.
“That was great, honey.” My father squeezed me tight. “You were thinking like fire. Empathy is the secret to most things in life—including magic. Look how bright the threads are now!”
All around us the world gleamed with possibility. And, in the corners, the steadily brightening indigo and amber weave warned that time was growing impatient.
Chapter Thirty Eight
"My two weeks are up. It’s time for me to go.”
My father’s words weren’t unexpected, but they felt like a blow nevertheless. My eyelids dropped to cover my reaction.
“Your mother will think I’ve taken up with an orange seller if I don’t show up soon.”
“Orange sellers are more of a seventeenth-century thing,” I said absently, picking at the cords in my lap. I was now making steady progress with everything from simple charms against headaches to the more complicated weavings that could make waves ruffle on the Thames. I twined the gold and blue strands around my fingers. Strength and understanding.
“Wow. Nice recovery, Diana.” My father turned to Matthew. “She bounces back fast.”
“Tell me about it,” was my husband’s equally dry reply. They both relied on humor to smooth over the rough edges of their interactions, which sometimes made them unbearable.
“I’m glad I got to know you, Matthew—despite that scary look you get when you think I’m bossing Diana around,” my father said with a laugh.
Ignoring their banter, I twisted the yellow cord in with the gold and blue. Persuasion.
“Can you stay until tomorrow? It would be a shame to miss the celebrations.” It was Midsummer Eve, and the city was in a holiday mood. Worried that a final evening with his daughter would not be sufficient inducement, I shamelessly appealed to my father’s academic interests. “There will be so many folk customs for you to observe.”
“Folk customs?” My father laughed. “Very slick. Of course I’m staying until tomorrow. Annie made a wreath of flowers for my hair, and Will and I are going to share some tobacco with Walter. Then I’m going to visit with Father Hubbard.”
Matthew frowned. “You know Hubbard?”
“Oh, sure. I introduced myself to him when I arrived. I had to, since he was the man in charge. Father Hubbard figured out I was Diana’s father pretty quickly. You all have an amazing sense of smell.” My father looked at Matthew benignly. “An interesting man, with his ideas about creatures all living as one big, happy family.”
“It would be utter chaos,” I pointed out.
“We all made it through last night with three vampires, two witches, a daemon, two humans, and a dog sharing one roof. Don’t be so quick to dismiss new ideas, Diana.” My father looked at me disapprovingly. “Then I suppose I’ll hang out with Catherine and Marjorie. Lots of witches will be on the prowl tonight. Those two will definitely know where the most fun can be found.” Apparently he was on a first-name basis with half the town.
“And you’ll be careful. Especially around Will, Daddy. No ‘Wow’ or ‘Well played, Shakespeare.’” My father was fond of slang. It was, he said, the hallmark of the anthropologist.
“If only I could take Will home with me, he’d make a cool—sorry, honey—colleague. He has a sense of humor. Our department could do with someone like him. Put a bit of leavening in the lump, if you know what I mean.” My father rubbed his hands together. “What are your plans?”
“We don’t have any.” I looked at Matthew blankly, and he shrugged.
“I thought I would answer some letters,” he said hesitantly. The mail had piled up to alarming levels.
“Oh, no.” My father sat back in his chair, looking horrified.
“What?” I turned my head to see who or what had entered the room.
“Don’t tell me you’re the kind of academics who can’t tell the difference between their life and their job.” He flung up his hands as if warding off the plague. “I refuse to believe that my daughter could be one of them.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic, Daddy,” I said stiffly. “We could spend the evening with you. I’ve never smoked. It will be historic to do it with Walter for the first time, since he introduced tobacco into England.”
My father looked even more horrified. “Absolutely not. We’ll be bonding as fellow men. Lionel Tiger argues—”
“I’m not a big fan of Tiger,” Matthew interjected. “The social carnivore never made sense to me.”
“Can we put the topic of eating people aside for a moment and discuss why you don’t want to spend your last night with Matthew and me?” I was hurt.
“It’s not that, honey. Help me out here, Matthew. Take Diana out on a date. You must be able to think of something to do.”
“Like roller-skating?” Matthew’s brows shot up. “There aren’t any skating rinks in sixteenth-century London—and precious few of them left in the twenty-first century, I might add.”
“Damn.” My father and Matthew had been playing “fad versus trend” for days, and while my father was delighted to know that the popularity of disco and the Pet Rock would fade, he was shocked to hear that other things—like the leisure suit—were now the butt of jokes. “I love rollerskating. Rebecca and I go to a place in Dorchester when we want to get away from Diana for a few hour
s, and—”
“We’ll go for a walk,” I said hastily. My father could be unnecessarily frank when it came to discussing how he and my mother spent their free time. He seemed to think it might shock Matthew’s sense of propriety. When that failed, he took to calling Matthew “Sir Lancelot” for an added measure of annoyance.
“A walk. You’ll take a walk.” My father paused. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”
He pushed away from the table. “No wonder creatures are going the way of the dodo. Go out. Both of you. Now. And I’m ordering you to have fun.” He ushered us toward the door.
“How?” I asked, utterly mystified.
“That is not a question a daughter should ask her father. It’s Midsummer Eve. Go out and ask the first person you meet what you should do. Better yet, follow someone else’s example. Howl at the moon. Make magic. Make out, at the very least. Surely even Sir Lancelot makes out.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Get the picture, Miss Bishop?”
“I think so.” My tone reflected my doubts about my father’s notion of fun.
“Good. I won’t be back until sunrise, so don’t wait up. Better yet, stay out all night yourselves. Jack is with Tommy Harriot. Annie is with her aunt. Pierre is— I don’t know where Pierre is, but he doesn’t need a babysitter. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“When did you start calling Thomas Harriot ‘Tommy’?” I asked. My father pretended not to hear me.
“Give me a hug before you go. And don’t forget to have fun, okay?” He enveloped me in his arms. “Catch you on the flip side, baby.”
Stephen pushed us out the door and shut it in our faces. I extended my hand to the latch and found it taken into a vampire’s cool grip.
“He’ll be leaving in a few hours, Matthew.” I reached for the door with the other hand. Matthew took that one, too.
“I know. So does he,” Matthew explained.
“Then he should understand that I want to spend more time with him.”