Braided tight and shining bright,
A way where once was none.
A spell to escape, requiring three hairs & nimble fingers
When Beatrice Belladonna runs from the riot on St. Mary-of-Egypt’s, she knows two things for certain: that her youngest sister is alive, and that her middle sister is with her.
It shouldn’t comfort her to know that Agnes is there—she learned long ago that she couldn’t trust her when it counted—but it does. If anyone could haul their little sister out of the mess she made and keep her alive through the night, it’s surely Agnes.
“If you’re finished staring at nothing, I would quite like to keep running for our lives now.” Beatrice makes a private note that Miss Quinn grows drier and more cutting under pressure, before bunching her skirts in her fists and following after her.
For a woman born and raised in New Cairo, Quinn possesses an uncanny knowledge of the north side. She leads Beatrice down narrow alleys and nameless back streets, following a winding path that leads them somewhat mystifyingly to the respectable row house where Beatrice rents a room.
“How did you know my address?”
Miss Quinn gives a very unsorry shrug. “Stay inside tonight. The police are awfully scarce this evening, which makes me wonder just who’s behind this mess.”
Beatrice wants to say,Thank you for saving me, orBe careful, orWho exactly are you and what uncanny secrets are you hiding?but Quinn is already turning away, taking long-legged strides down Second Street.
By the time Beatrice is in her attic room, peering down from her round window, Quinn is gone, vanished entirely from the neat grid of streets below.
Beatrice dreams that night of witches and traveling bards and a golden-haired girl smiling from a tower window. Except her hair isn’t golden at all, actually, and her smile is full of secrets.
The following morning, Bella pins her own hair with unusual severity and stares hard at her reflection in the mirror, reminding herself that she is bony and graying and very boring. Then she feels the tug of her sisters through the line—still alive, still together, moving through the city—and wonders if perhaps she is growing less boring the longer James Juniper remains in New Salem.
Beatrice steps into the street just after sunrise, when the shadows lie soft and the air sparks with dew, and hopes very much that Mr. Black-well will forgive her for missing a second day of work.
The headquarters of the New Salem Women’s Association are already jammed full of bustling women and urgent whispers. Miss Stone stands behind the front desk like a small general overseeing her troops, wig pinned slightly askew. She is so surrounded by people—a hand-wringing lady wearing a monocle, a roundish woman in a very fine dress, that young secretary girl sporting a bruised jaw and a sullen expression—that Beatrice doesn’t think she notices the chime of the bell as she enters.
Until she looks up and fixes Beatrice with an iron glare. “Miss East-wood, wasn’t it? I thought you were too busy for suffrage.”
“Oh, I—that is—”
But Miss Stone is already looking back down at the papers spread before her. “If you’re looking for that sister of yours, she’s not here.”
“No, but—”
“And if she has any sense of prudence at all, she will not dare to show her face here again.”
Beatrice deduces from this that Miss Stone was previously unaware of Juniper’s little spectacle, that she has since become aware of it, and that she suffers from the mistaken belief that Juniper possesses a sense of prudence.
She further deduces that the next several minutes are going to be uncomfortable ones. She manages a faint “Oh, dear” before the bell chimes again and Juniper herself strides into the office with all the swagger and charm of a prize-fighter after a winning match, staff clacking merrily across the floorboards. Agnes comes slinking in after her, looking like a woman with deep misgivings about her choices.
The whispers wither and die. A dozen pairs of eyes land on Juniper. She gives them a beatific smile. “Morning, ladies. Bella! What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. She grabs one of the spindly chairs by the window and perches on the very edge, knees wide and hands crossed atop her staff, still beaming.
The smile dims when she catches sight of the secretary and the swollen bruise along her jaw. “So you made it out alright. The others, too?”
The girl nods, a furtive flash of pride in her eyes. “We think Electa’s got a busted rib, but she’ll be alright.” It occurs to Beatrice to wonder how exactly they all escaped unscathed, and if perhaps the respectable members of the Women’s Association have a few words and ways they shouldn’t.
Guilt crosses Juniper’s face, a foreign expression, but she banishes it with a little shake of her head. “Well. I hope at least we can all agree.”
Miss Stone—who has until now been standing perfectly still—clears her throat to ask, “On what, exactly?”
Juniper apparently doesn’t hear the tension lurking in Miss Stone’s voice like an unsprung trap. She meets her eyes squarely. “That we aren’t going to get a damn thing by asking nice and minding our manners. That we need to make use of every weapon we have, or they’ll beat us bloody in the streets.” Juniper leans forward, that swaggering smile returning. “That it’s time for the women’s movement to become the witches’ movement.”
The silence following this statement is so profound that Beatrice imagines she can hear the veins pulsing in Miss Stone’s temples.
