There had been a great deal of rain that spring and the rushing water was high. The banks were slick with heaps of last autumn’s falling leaves, as they dissolved into mulch. It was a warm, still evening and when Tom was done with his beer he pitched the empty bottle into the ferns, then stood and ambled down to the bank, where he stripped off his clothes. He had brought the book with him and tossed it into the tall grass. It was said that whoever carried a fern seed could become invisible as promised by the villain in Henry IV, Part I when a highwayman assures his accomplice, We have the receipt of the fern-seed; we walk invisible. But ferns could also allow a practitioner to find answers, understand birds and animals, discover a treasure. If you have the sight, you can see more clearly wherever there are ferns.
“Afraid?” Tom called to Kylie, teasing her about her inability to swim.
There was, indeed, a twist of fear in her chest. It was the way he threw the book down so carelessly, as if it belonged to him. Still, she couldn’t be waylaid by her fears. Kylie stripped off her jeans and shirt, leaving on her undergarments and shivering despite the warm air. She had a stab of panic. How had she gotten here, so far from home, a black-haired girl in the woods with a man she barely knew?
Tom had plunged into the water and when he arose he shook the drops from his hair. “See what you’ve been missing?” he called. “Nothing to fear.”
She made her way through the reeds into the water, which streamed around her legs, cold as ice. Water calls to water, like calls to like. Kylie went deeper, but when she tried to dive it was impossible, it was as if the surface of the water was a solid wall, and she could only float. This was the proof Tom wanted. This was the reason her mother had never allowed her to swim. Witches couldn’t drown, that was the test that was always used against them, their strength turned into weakness.
Tom was watching her, and she thought she saw a flicker of resentment in his eyes.
“It’s too cold,” she told him, making her way back to the muddy bank, more confused than ever. Who had she been before? Certainly not the person she was now. Or was it only that her true self had always been hidden? As she stepped out, shivering and panicked, she slipped on the wet leaves, and as she lurched to steady herself, The Book of the Raven tumbled into the shallows. She dodged after it, and grabbed it as it floated there. Tom came racing toward her. “What have you done?” He tried to seize the book from her, but she grasped it even more tightly. Before her eyes the paste Jet had used on the last two pages dissolved. All she had needed was water, the element they were drawn to and was most dangerous to them. The last page opened and “How to Break a Curse” was revealed. Tom came to the bank and pulled his clothes on over his wet body as Kylie read the last page. It was what she suspected, a terrible bargain, but the only way to break the curse once her beloved had been afflicted. Someone had to die, and if it wasn’t to be him, the only way to change fate was to take his place.
Tom grabbed the book away, a wary look in his eyes. “Get dressed,” he said, for Kylie was in her sopping underclothes, her black hair streaming water. “You’ll freeze to death before we get anything accomplished.”
Kylie dressed quickly, but while her back was turned, Tom stalked up toward the manor with the book. Kylie ran after him, her heart pounding. Who you trust is everything. Who you trust can save you or ruin your life. Never give your words away. She tracked him to the manor house, following his wet footprints. He had already begun to set out a circle of red madder root around them, mixing in the poison he had used in the robbery in London.
“I want the book,” Kylie said. “It’s mine.”
“It was,” Tom said. “And now it’s mine.”
He used a match to spark the flame and as the first billows of smoke flooded the room, there was the sound of fluttering, birds’ wingbeats, perhaps, or bats that had taken up residence in the chimney now flickering through the treetops as they fled the smoke and fire. Bees flew out from behind the mantel, where the walls were thick with honey. Kylie had heard that bees driven from their hive portend disaster. The smoke drew upward and the fire flamed orange and blue until Tom threw on a handful of russet madder root, which turned the blaze red. Red for magic and for love and for a curse returned. Revenge had taken the place where his heart used to be, coiling and uncoiling, turning darker with every breath.