SUSANNA
Summer, 1865
The war is … over? It’s four months since General Lee of North Virginia surrendered to General Grant in the Appomattox Courthouse. But no peace has yet been declared. America remains disordered and even the weather is tense and oppressive.
Up here in Maine, the tall trees of the forest shape a great cauldron around Haven, all its inhabitants broiling in it. You let Tommy run naked most days, for all that Missus Kilpatrick chides you it’s not proper.
You stopped sleeping in a nightgown weeks ago. The shrew would upbraid you for that too, if she knew.We’re a coven, not a convent,is the retort held ready on your tongue if she so much as tries.
You reach for the nightgown now, though, where it lies crumpled on the floor. Your grandmother tells you to take more care of your things, because not everything can be fixed by witching. But so much can. Why pretend otherwise? When living among mundane folk, of course it’s needful to hide what you can do. Their impotence makes them jealous and ireful. But here you’re all witches. Magic should be the air you breathe.
Not quite all witches. You yank the nightgown over your head then stop by Tommy’s little pallet. Your son is snoring like apiglet beneath the thin quilt you hand-stitched for him, which he insists covers him every night despite the heat. He hasn’t a drop of magic, but the sweetest temper, and no doubt his daughter or son will be a fine strong witch. You look forward to teaching your grandchild everything they need to know.
Now, though, it’s your grandmother who concerns you. Elora has taken to walking the grounds on the searing nights she can’t sleep, or simply rocking on the porch. She casts a charm so the creak of the rocker and the squeal of the boards won’t wake anyone, but you know she’s there. You’ve watched her night after night as you stand naked at your window using magic to refresh your sticky flesh with a cooling breeze. You can’t see the porch from this spacious attic room, but you see her long shadow cast by moonlight, ticking backward and forward like the hand of a broken grandfather clock.
She’s in the chair when you present yourself, thick braid over one shoulder and feet planted firm on the timbers. Elora Fenn is wrapped in a thin and faded cotton housecoat, a relic of older times. She was born not long after the Revolutionary War, and now in her old age she has lived through another, civil strife. She’s a small woman, but authority is as dense in that bent body as life is in babies, or wholesomeness in a bag of milled flour. Her faded auburn hair is coiled thickly about her scalp like a Roman diadem. The eyes that peer up at you are bright and gleam with moontouch.
‘Granddaughter Susanna.’
‘Gramma Elora.’
Her wrinkled mouth twitches with what could be amusement, could be displeasure. Likely both.
‘Come to lecture me again, have you?’
Well. If she expects a lecture, she shall have one.
‘What use is it creating Haven as a place of safety,’ you demand, ‘if everywhere outside is unsafe? What about all thewitches who don’t know of Haven, or will never be able to escape here? Safety doesn’t lie in walls and wards, grandmother. You don’t get it by hiding.’
‘Tell me how we get it, Susanna.’
‘What advice do we give bullied children? It’s certainly not,Run away and hide.Christians say,Turn the other cheek,but mostly it’s,Stand up for yourself. Fight back, if you must.We need to live more fully in our Gift. Show our strength. Surely you see the way we perform magic needs to change?’
‘Here at Haven we already perform magic beyond what the law permits,’ she says, stilling the motions of her chair. ‘We live and work our craft together as a coven. But that’s not what you mean, is it?’
It’s not what you mean. You draw a deep breath.
‘Why do you restrict the magics that can be practised here at Haven? Why would you limit us? Surely there’s no branch of our art whose fruit we shouldn’t seek to nurture and to harvest?’
She studies you shrewdly. ‘Speak plainly, Susanna. You mean the Old Signs.’
‘You know I do.’
‘Ahh, granddaughter. A good cause can triumph without resort to evil means. There’s a reason so few copies of Starcross exist. Why the old witchfinders hunted down every copy they could.’
‘Why you keep our Starcross under lock and key and charm,’ you retort. ‘You reckon the townsfolk are fearful and hostile because they’re afraid of our magic, and so you’d hide it. Hide us. Out of sight, out of mind. But look where that got Abner – he’s barely healed from the hurts they gave him. Hiding won’t save us.’
‘The common folk fear us already,’ Elora tells you. ‘Imagine how much more frightful we’d be living in the open.’
You toss your head impatiently because you’ve heard it allbefore. This argument’s path is as well-worn as a cart-track to market. As rutted and inefficient.
Your grandmother knows what you’ll say next. You say it anyway.
‘The common folk don’t fear us enough.’
44
SUSANNA
