“Very nice spell casting, honey.” Sarah was proud of me. “Not a single wobble of doubt or moment of hesitation.”
“Did it work?” I certainly hoped so. Another spell of that magnitude would require weeks of rest first. I joined the witches at the map. “Oxfordshire?”
“Yes,” Linda said doubtfully. “But I fear we may not have asked a specific enough question.”
There, on the map, was the blackened outline of a very English-sounding village called Chipping Weston.
“The initials were on the paper, but I forgot to include them in the words of the spell.” My heart sank.
“It is far too soon to admit defeat.” Ysabeau already had her phone out and was dialing. “Phoebe?
Does a T. J. Weston live in Chipping Weston?”
The possibility that T. J. Weston could live in a town called Weston had not occurred to any of us.
We waited for Phoebe’s reply.
Ysabeau’s face relaxed in sudden relief. “Thank you. We will be home soon. Tell Marthe that Diana will need a compress for her head and cold cloths for her feet.”
Both were aching, and my legs were more swollen with each passing minute. I looked at Ysabeau gratefully.
“Phoebe tells me there is a T. J. Weston in Chipping Weston,” Ysabeau reported. “He lives in the Manor House.”
“Oh, well done. Well done, Diana.” Linda beamed at me. The other London witches clapped, as though I had just performed a particularly difficult piano solo without flubbing a note.
“This is not a night we will soon forget,” Tamsin said, her voice shaking with emotion, “for tonight a weaver came back to London, bringing the past and future together so that old worlds might die and new be born.”
“That’s Mother Shipton’s prophecy,” I said, recognizing the words.
“Ursula Shipton was born Ursula Soothtell. Her aunt, Alice Soothtell, was my ancestor,” Tamsin said. “She was a weaver, like you.”
“You are related to Ursula Shipton!” Sarah exclaimed. “I am,” Tamsin replied. “The women in my family have kept the knowledge of weavers alive, even though we have had only one other weaver born into the family in more than five hundred years. But Ursula prophesied that the power was not lost forever. She foresaw the years of darkness, when witches would forget weavers and all they represent: hope, rebirth, change. Ursula saw this night, too.”
“How so?” I thought of the few lines of Mother Shipton’s prophecy that I knew. None of them seemed relevant to tonight’s events.
“‘And those that live will ever fear
The dragon’s tail for many year,
But time erases memory.
You think it strange. But it will be,’” Tamsin recited.
She nodded, and the other witches joined in, speaking in one voice.
And before the race is built anew, A silver serpent comes to view And spews out men of like unknown To mingle with the earth now grown Cold from its heat, and these men can Enlighten the minds of future man.
“The dragon and the serpent?” I shivered.
“They foretell the advent of a new golden age for creatures,” Linda said. “It has been too long in coming, but we all are pleased to have lived to see it.”
It was too much responsibility. First the twins, then Matthew’s scion, and now the future of the species? My hand covered the bump where our children grew. I felt pulled in too many directions, the parts of me that were witch battling with the parts that were scholar, wife, and now mother.
I looked at the walls. In 1591 every part of me had fit together. In 1591 I had been myself.