I returned to the worktable and dipped my mother’s quill pen into the ink. It smelled of blackberries and walnuts. Thanks to my experience with Elizabethan writing implements, I was able to write out the charm for Sarah’s dream pillows without a single splotch.
Mirror
Shimmers
Monsters Shake
Banish Nightmares
Until We Wake;
I blew on it gently to set the ink. Very respectable, I decided. It was much better than my spell for conjuring fire, and easy enough for children to remember. When the pods were dry and the papery covering rubbed off, I’d write the charm in tiny letters right on their silvery surface.
Eager to show my work to Sarah, I slid down from the stool. One look at her face convinced me to put it off until my aunt had had her whiskey and a smoke. She’d been hoping for decades that I’d show an interest in magic. I could wait another twenty minutes for my grade in Sleeping Charms 101.
A slight tingle behind me alerted me to a ghostly presence a moment before a hug as soft as down settled around my shoulders.
“Nice job, peanut,” whispered a familiar voice. “Excellent taste in music, too.”
When I turned my head, there was nothing except a faint smudge of green, but I didn’t need to see my father to know that he was there. “Thanks, Dad,” I said softly.
11
Matthew took the news about my mother’s proficiency with higher magic better than expected. He had long suspected that something existed between the homely work of the craft and the bright spectacles of elemental magic. He was not at all surprised that I, in another mark of in-betweenness, could practice such a magic. What shocked him was that this talent came through my mother’s blood.
“I’ll have to take a closer look at your mtDNA workup after all,” he said, giving one of my mother’s inks a sniff.
“Sounds good.” It was the first time Matthew had shown any desire to return to his genetic research. Days had gone by without any mention of Oxford, Baldwin, the Book of Life, or blood rage.
And while he might have forgotten that there was genetic information bound up in Ashmole 782, I had not. Once we had the manuscript back in our hands, we were going to need his scientific skills to decipher it.
“You’re right. There’s definitely blood in it, as well as resin and acacia.” Matthew swirled the ink around. Acacia, I’d learned this morning, was the source of gum arabic, which made the ink less runny.
“I thought as much. The inks used in Ashmole 782 had blood in it, too. It must be a more common practice than I thought,” I said.
“There’s some frankincense in it, too.” Matthew said, ignoring my mention of the Book of Life.
“Ah. That’s what gives it that exotic scent.” I rummaged through the remaining bottles, hoping to find something else to catch his biochemical curiosity.
“That and the blood, of course,” Matthew said drily.
“If it’s my mother’s blood, that could shed even more light on my DNA,” I remarked. “My talent for higher magic, too.”
“Hmm,” Matthew said noncommittally.
“What about this one?” I drew the stopper out of a bottle of blue-green liquid, and the scent of a summer garden filled the air.
“That’s made from iris,” Matthew said. “Remember your search for green ink in London?”
“So this is what Master Platt’s fantastically expensive ink looked like!” I laughed.
“Made from roots imported from Florence. Or so he said.” Matthew surveyed the table and its blue, red, black, green, purple, and magenta pots of liquid. “It looks like you have enough ink to keep you going for some time.”