Franny heard the clacking that was meant for her, and so she walked faster. She had no need of a cane or an umbrella to lean on. She had business to attend to. She walked just as quickly as she had when she was a girl, when it was all her brother and sister could do to keep up with her. There was the pond, so reedy and green. When she reached the shore, she knelt for a moment to catch her breath. A dozen toads sat in the grass. She could hear the song she and Jet had always turned to when Sally and Gillian were young, frightened by storms. The water is wide. I cannot get o’er it, and neither have I wings to fly.
Darling girls, Franny thought, who came to show us how to love again.
By now the sky was a vivid blue. All the same, Franny was glad she’d taken a raincoat from the rack in the hall. It was Gideon’s old coat that she’d grabbed, left on a peg to dry out, huge and ill-fitting on Franny’s form. In the quiet of the morning, she could hear Gideon’s heartbeat. He would be the last victim of the curse and the only one to survive it. To be young and alive was a glorious thing. When you possessed it, you were likely unable to fully comprehend that it was a marvel and a gift, no matter your circumstances.
The glade was overgrown, smelling sweetly of grass. Franny realized just how heavy the book was and placed the Grimoire beside her in the grass, then grabbed off her boots and her stockings. Here she was, where she was meant to be, no protection, no blue thread, no beloved, no brother, no sister, only herself on her last day.
Franny gathered flat black stones from the ground. Their weight was comforting and cold when she filled the oversized pockets of the coat. The stones here were nothing like the craggy gray shards of granite at Leech Lake. Franny and Jet and Vincent would lie out on the cliffs on hot August days until their bare shoulders and backs were sunburned. Everything was delicious back then, even their sweat was sweet. No wonder that bees had buzzed around them. No wonder they could spend all day being so lazy and happy. Time lasted forever, with each hour so thick and slow the minutes were honey pouring from a jar. Franny remembered the day Vincent leapt from the highest rock. She remembered Jet floating in the water, as beautiful as a lily. There were lilies here as well, cream-colored buds attached to thick, waxy green leaves. Franny was reminded of the blooms on the magnolia trees all around their house, a genus so old it had existed before there were bees, the leaves tough as leather so that it might protect itself from harm, the flowers glorious and wild.
Once upon a time she was a girl with red hair who could communicate with birds, who watched over her brother and sister, who fell in love even though she tried desperately not to do so, who lost her beloved and believed there was nothing left for her until she took in two little girls who reminded her of what love was. She had thought it was hard to love, but it had turned out to be easy, all you had to do was have the courage to open your heart. The future was what mattered most, whether or not it continued without her. Let there be courage. Let there be love. Franny had overloaded her pockets, just to make certain she would sink.
You sacrifice yourself and the past and let them start anew had been written in The Book of the Raven.
Jet had returned the book to the shelf in the library in case Franny decided that the cure was too much for her, as if she ever would. She recalled the first time they’d gone to the old house on Magnolia Street, sent there after Franny had turned seventeen, a family tradition. The neighbors had watched their arrival with suspicion. Franny had been out front, as always, with Jet tagging along and Vincent waving his arms to scare off prying eyes. Her life had opened like a flower. Her story had begun on that very day, when she took the bus from Port Authority on Forty-Second Street to Massachusetts and discovered who she was.
Like calls to like, love calls to love, courage calls to courage. Franny carried the book in her hands as she walked into the water, heavy as it was. The sodden Owens family Grimoire was heavier all the time, the thick paper handmade three hundred years earlier, each sheaf so expensive Hannah Owens had saved for months so that she might afford the material necessary to construct a proper book for Maria. There were toads in the marshy shore that edged the water, their skins gleaning green, shimmering as the light fell over them. A few followed Franny as she walked through the ankle-deep mud. She loved the squishy feel of mud between her toes. She always had. She wanted nothing more than sunlight and grass and the sound of calling birds.