Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (17 page)

The ghost was, of course, a girl, and we all knew her, except Justina. She lived near the railroad tracks, by the abandoned tobacco factory that not even the Jeffersons used anymore, with her father. He was a drunkard. We did not know her name, but we could identify her without it. She was the ghost, the white girl, the albino: white hair, white face, and thin white hands sticking out from the sleeves of a dress that was too short, that she must have outgrown several years ago. Only her eyes, beneath her white eyebrows, had color, and those were a startling blue. Her feet were bare, and dirty.

We knew that we weren’t supposed to play with her, because she was poor, and probably an idiot. What else could that lack of coloring mean, but idiocy? There was an asylum in Charlotte—her father should be persuaded to put her there, for her own good. But he was a drunkard, and could even Reverend Hewes persuade a drunkard? He rarely let her out. Look at the girl—did he remember to feed her? She looked like she lived on air. Adeline Beaufort and Elizabeth Caldwell agreed: it would be for her own good. Really a mercy, for such a creature.

“Come inside, girls,” said Miss Gray. “But mind you wipe your feet. I won’t have dirt in the front hall.”

It was certainly respectable. The parlor looked like the Beauforts’, but even more filled with what Emma later told us were bibelots or
objets d’art
: china shepherdesses guarding their china sheep; cranberry-colored vases filled with pink roses and sprays of honeysuckle; and painted boxes, on one of which Justina, who had studied French history that year, recognized Marie Antoinette. And there were cats. We did not notice them, initially—they had a way of being inconspicuous, which Miss Gray later told us was their own magic, a cat magic. But we would blink, and there would be a cat, on the sofa where we were about to sit, or on the mantel where we had just looked. “How they keep from knocking down all those—music boxes and whatnots, I don’t know,” Emma said afterward. But we didn’t say anything then. We didn’t know what to say.

“Please sit down, girls.” We did so cautiously, trying to keep our knees away from the rickety tables, with their lace doilies and china dogs. Trying to remember that we were in a witch’s house. “I’ve made some lemonade, and Emma will be pleased to hear that I’ve baked walnut bars, and those cream horns she likes.” There was also an angel cake, like a white sponge, and a Devil’s Food cake covered with chocolate frosting, and a jellyroll with strawberry jelly, and meringues. We ate although Melody whispered that one should never, ever eat in a witch’s house. The ghost ate too, cutting her slice of angel cake into small pieces with the side of her fork and eating them slowly, one by one.

“Another slice, Melody, Justina, Rose?” We did not wonder how she knew our names. She was a witch. It would have been stranger, wouldn’t it, if she hadn’t known? We shook our heads, except for Emma, who ate the last of the jellyroll.

“Then it’s time to discuss your lessons. Please follow me into the laboratory.”

It must have been a kitchen, once, but now the kitchen table was covered with a collection of objects in neat rows and piles: scissors; a mouse in a cage; balls of string, the sort used in gardens to tie up tomatoes; a kitchen scale; feathers, blue and green and yellow; spectacles, most of them cracked; a crystal ball; seashells; the bones of a small alligator, held together with wire; candles of various lengths; butterfly wings; a plait of hair that Rose thought must have come from a horse—she liked horses, because on their backs she felt as though she were flying; some fountain pens; a nest with three speckled eggs; and silver spoons. At least, that’s what we remembered afterward, when we tried to make a list. We sat around the table on what must have once been kitchen chairs, with uncomfortable wooden backs, while Miss Gray stood and lectured to us, exactly like Miss Harris in Rhetoric and Elocution.

“Once,” said Miss Gray, “witchcraft was seen as a—well, a craft, to be taught by apprenticeship and practiced by intuition. Nowadays, we know that witchcraft is a science. Specific actions will yield specific results. Rose, please don’t slouch in your chair. Being a witch should not prevent you from behaving like a lady. Justina, your elbow has disarranged Mortimer, a South American alligator, or the remains thereof. A witch is always respectful, even to inanimate objects. Please pay attention. As I was saying, nowadays witchcraft is regarded as a science, as reliable, for an experienced practitioner, as predicting the weather. It is this science—not the hocus-pocus of those terrible women in
Macbeth,
who are more to be pitied than feared in their delusion—that I propose to teach you. We shall begin tomorrow. Please be prompt—I dislike tardiness.”

As we walked down the garden path, away from the Randolph house, Emma said to the ghost, “How did you know about the lessons?”

“My Papa was sleeping under the
Observer,
” she said. Her voice was a rusty whisper, as though she had almost forgotten how to use it.

“Here, I don’t want this,” said Emma, handing her the last cream horn, somewhat crumbled, which she had been keeping in her pocket.

None of us realized until afterward that Miss Gray had never told us what time to come.

“The first lesson,” said Miss Gray, “is to see yourselves.”

We were looking into mirrors, old mirrors speckled at the edges, in tarnished gold frames—Justina’s had a crack across her forehead, and Emma stared into a shaving-glass. Justina thought, “I look like her. My mother looked like her. They say my mother died of influenza, but perhaps she died at the asylum in Charlotte, chained to her bed, clawing at her hair and crying because of the lizards. Perhaps all the Balfours go mad, from marrying each other. Is that why Father left?” Because to the best of her knowledge, her father was in Italy, perhaps in Rome, where Serenity glared out through the bars of her prison, so far beneath the cathedral that no daylight crept between the stones, at the Inquisitor and his men, monks all, but with pistols at their sides. Justina looked into her eyes, large and dark, for signs of madness.

Rose scowled, which did not improve her appearance. What would she have looked like, if she had taken after the Winslows rather than her father? She imagined her mother and her aunt Catherine, who had never married. How daunting it must have been, taking for a moment her father’s perspective, to marry that austere delicacy, which could only have come from the City of Winter. In Boston, her mother had told her, it snowed all winter long. Rose imagined it as a city of perpetual silence, where the snow muffled all sounds except for the tinkling of bells, sleigh bells and the bells of churches built from blocks of ice. Within the houses, also built of ice, sat ladies and gentlemen, calm, serene, with noses like icicles, conversing politely—probably about the weather. And none of them were as polite or precise as her mother or her aunt Catherine, the daughters of the Snow Queen. When they drove in their sleigh, drawn by a yak, they wore capes of egret feathers. If she were more like them, more like a Snow Princess, instead of—sunburnt and ungainly—would she, Rose wondered, love me then?

Emma imagined herself getting fatter and fatter, her face stretching until she could no longer see herself in the shaving glass. If she suddenly burst, what would happen? She would ooze over Ashton like molasses, covering the streets. Her father would call the men who were harvesting tobacco, call them from the fields to gather her in buckets and then tubs. They would give her to the women, who would spread her over buttered bread, and the children would eat her for breakfast. She shook her head, trying to clear away the horrifying image.

Melody thought, “Lord, let me never wish for whiter skin, or a skinnier nose, or eyes like Emma’s, as blue as the summer sky, no matter what.”

We did not know what the ghost thought, but as she stared into her mirror, she shook her head, and we understood. Who can look into a mirror without shaking her head? Except Miss Gray.

“No, no, girls,” said Miss Gray. “All of the sciences require exact observation, particularly witchcraft. You must learn to see, not what you expect to see, but what is actually
there.
Now look again.”

It was Melody who saw first. Of course she had been practicing: Melody always practiced. It was hot even for July—the flowers in all the gardens of Ashton were drooping, except for the flowers in Miss Gray’s garden. But in the laboratory it was cool. We were drinking lemonade. We were heartily sick of looking into mirrors.

“Come, girls,” said Miss Gray. “I would like you to see what Melody has accomplished.” We looked into Melody’s mirror: butterflies. Butterflies everywhere, all the colors of sunrise, Swallowtails and Sulfurs, Harvesters and Leafwings, Fritillaries, Emperors, and Blues, like pieces of silk that were suddenly wings—silk from evening gowns that Emma’s mother might have worn, or Rose’s. “O latest born and loveliest visions far of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! Butterflies are symbols of the soul,” said Miss Gray. “And also of poetry. You, Melody, are a poet.”

“That’s stupid,” said Melody.

“But nevertheless true,” said Miss Gray.

“It’s like—a garden, or a park,” said Emma, when she too saw. And we could also see it, a lawn beneath maple trees whose leaves were beginning to turn red and gold. They were spaced at regular intervals along a gravel path, and both lawn and path were covered with leaves that had already fallen. The lawn sloped down to a pond whose surface reflected the branches above. Beside the path stood a bench, whose seat was also covered with leaves. On either side of the bench were stone urns, with lichen growing over them, and further along the path we could see the statue of a woman, partially nude. She was dressed in a stone scarf and bits of moss.

“How boring,” said Emma, although the rest of us would have liked to go there, at least for the afternoon, it was so peaceful.

And then, for days, we saw nothing. But finally, in the ghost’s mirror, appeared the ghost of a mouse, small and gray, staring at us with black eyes.

“He’s hungry,” said the ghost. Emma handed her a piece of gingerbread, and she nibbled it gratefully, although we knew that wasn’t what she meant. And from then on, we called her Mouse.

“If you’d only apply yourself, Rose, I’m sure you could do it,” said Miss Gray, as Miss Osborn, the mathematics teacher, had said at the end of the school year while giving out marks. Rose scowled again, certain that she could not. And it was Justina whom we saw next.

“It’s only a book,” she said. It was a large book, bound in crimson leather with gilding on its spine, and a gilt title on the cover:
Justina.

“Open it,” said Miss Gray.

“How?” But she was already reaching into the mirror, opening the book at random—to a page that began, “And so, Justina opened the book.” The rest of the page was blank. “Who writes in it?” asked Justina, as the words “ ‘Who writes in it,’ asked Justina” wrote themselves across the page.

“That’s enough for now,” said Miss Gray as she reached into the mirror and closed the book. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

On the day that Rose finally saw herself, the rest of us were grinding bones into powder and putting the powder into jars labeled lizard, bat, frog. Mouse was sewing wings on a taxidermed mouse.

“That’s it?” asked Rose, outraged. “I’ve been practicing all this time for a stupid rosebush? It doesn’t even have roses. It’s all thorns.”

“Wait,” said Miss Gray. “It’s early yet for roses,” although the pink roses—La Reine, she had told us—were blooming over the sides of the Randolph house, and their perfume filled the laboratory.

Sitting in the cottage afterward, we agreed: the first lesson had been disappointing. But we rather liked grinding bones.

Rose’s heart swung in her chest like a pendulum when Miss Gray said, “It’s time you learned how to fly.” She told us to meet in the woods, at the edge of Slater’s Pond. Mouse was late, she was almost always late. As we stood waiting for her, Emma whispered, “Do you think we’re going to use broomsticks? Witches use broomsticks, right?”

Miss Gray, who had been looking away from us and into the woods, presumably for Mouse, turned and said, “Although Emma seems to have forgotten, I trust the rest of you remember that a lady never whispers. The use of a broomstick, although traditional, arose from historical rather than magical necessity. All that a witch needs to fly is a tree branch—the correct tree branch, carefully trained. It must have fallen, preferably in a storm—we are fortunate, this summer, to have had so many storms—and the tree from which it fell must be compatible with the witch. The principle is a scientific one: a branch, which has evolved to exist high above the earth, waving in the wind, desires to return to that height. Therefore, with the proper encouragement, it has the ability to carry the witch up into the air, which we experience as flying. Historically, witches have disguised their branches as brooms, to hide them from—those authorities who did not understand that witchcraft is a science. It is part of the lamentable history of prejudice against rational thinking. I myself, when I worked with Galileo— Sophia, I’m afraid you’re late again.”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Mouse, and we walked off into the woods, each separately searching for our branches, with Miss Gray’s voice calling instructions and encouragement through the trees.

Justina’s branch was a loblolly pine, which only she could ride: it kicked and bucked like an untrained colt. Melody rode a tulip poplar that looked too large for her. It moved like a cart horse, but she said that it was so steady, she always felt safe. Rose found an Osage-orange that looked particularly attractive, with its glossy leaves and three dried oranges, now brown, still attached, but they did not agree—she liked to soar over the treetops, and it preferred to navigate through the trees, within a reasonable distance of the ground. When she flew too high, it would prick her with its thorns. So she gave it to Emma, who rode it until the end of summer and afterward asked Henry to carve a walking stick out of it, so she would not forget her flying lessons. Rose finally settled on a winged elm, which she said helped her loop-de-loop, a maneuver only she would try. Mouse took longer than all of us to find her branch: she was scared of flying, we could see that. Finally, Miss Gray gave her a shadbush, which never flew too high and seemed as skittish as she was. Miss Gray herself flew on a sassafras, which never misbehaved. She rode side-saddle, with her back straight and her skirt sweeping out behind her, in a steady canter.