All the same, Margaret handed her a card. It was a very simple recipe that had been used for generations. The ink was red, likely blood. Margaret hadn’t been born with the sight, but she’d been at the Art long enough to decipher what a woman wanted most in the world. “It was given to me by Cora at a time when I was in desperate need.”
“I’m not desperate,” Gillian was quick to correct her.
“Just take a look,” Margaret suggested.
Take two lettuce roots and pour your urine upon them.
If the root shrivels, throw it out. If it germinates, plant it in a pot on your windowsill. Boil garlic each night and eat the entire bulb.
Bake the following cake and feed to the man involved, using eggs, flour, milk, your blood, and honey. Be on top and he will be hungry for more.
“What is this?” Gillian said, gazing up at the cunning woman before her.
“Recite the incantation each night.”
Gillian turned the card over, tears rimming her eyes.
Goddess of the Night, Hecate, honored above all, you are the beginning, you are the end. From you are all things, and in you, eternal one, all things end.
“This is the recipe that worked for me when I wanted a child,” Margaret Wright told her. “I’ve been grateful ever since.”
* * *
Sally couldn’t bring herself to have lunch with the others under her family’s watchful eye. She was falling apart and didn’t want their pity. What was worth living and dying for? How did one go on in the trembling darkness of what might happen next? Women who lost daughters or husbands, women who were skin and bones, who were filled with sorrow, women who couldn’t find their way home, who denied who they were or what they might be willing to do. Instead of joining the others at the table, Sally walked to the marsh. She’d left her boots behind and held up her skirts. The sun beat down on her narrow shoulders. She stopped to watch a cloud of crows soar overhead. With one hand across her eyes she still searched for them vainly even after they’d scattered to perch on the banks, where they couldn’t be seen in the tall grass. She wanted a sign. A voice, a song, an omen. Clouds that turned pink, a vision of another place and time. This was a remote area, one where you rarely saw a person, perhaps the occasional fisherman on a long boat. Sally’s heart lifted when she saw a figure in the reeds. Perhaps it was her daughter, it surely must be, but as she waded forward she observed a dark-haired girl she didn’t recognize treading through the land that was half earth and half water, a leather bag held above her head for safety’s sake. Everything was blue, her dress, the water, the sky.
“Wait,” Sally called. “It’s too deep,” she scolded.
The girl turned and their eyes met across the marsh and then Sally knew it was a shade out there; Maria had steadfastly been repeating her steps for three hundred years, unable to rest while the curse was at work. Sally stood there spellbound as the girl vanished between the bands of shadow and light. Once she had, the crow gave a shrill cry and lifted back into the sky.
“Are you all right?” Ian had come up behind Sally, breathing hard. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened until Sally turned and he saw the wonder looming in her eyes. “You witnessed the appearance of a shade.”
“It was a girl.” Sally’s palms had grown clammy and panic overtook her. She started off into the water. “I won’t let her drown.”
Ian didn’t wait to hear any more of her explanation. He was vain about his knowledge of the marshes and fens. People drowned by accident all the time and Sally wasn’t going to be among them. “Stop right where you are, Sally. That was not your daughter. It was a ghost if it was anything at all. Something that was mortal and is no longer. I’ve seen her, too.” He’d been high on LSD at the time, but there was no need to mention that. He had seen a shade with black hair, a young girl who vanished as he approached.