Kylie glanced up at him, her eyes brimming and black, truly bewildered. It was then the librarian understood she was unaware of the truth about her family or herself.
“Should I have said nothing?” he wondered aloud. He had made mistakes such as this before, saying too little, saying too much.
“I’m not a witch,” Kylie told the librarian. “My aunts are healers. They have a greenhouse, they grow herbs, and people come to them for remedies. It’s nothing more than that.”
“Witchery is not a choice. This is not the Unnamed Art, which women have been practicing for hundreds of years, perhaps since the beginning of time, training themselves to use herbs and green magic. It’s a bloodline situation.” When she still looked blank, he added, “An inheritance.”
Kylie mulled this over, thinking of the rules her mother had set out when she and Antonia were young. She felt the shivers, as one did when the truth suddenly became evident. “Fine,” she said in an even tone. “Let’s look for my family.”
They poked around in various genealogy catalogues for the Owens name and found there were many listings of births and weddings and funerals, particularly in Essex. Kylie’s eyes burned, but she read on, as if reading could save her from her fate.
“May I ask what the curse is?” David Ward asked.
Kylie peered over at him and was quiet. Trust was for fools. Was it rude not to answer?
When the girl hesitated, David thought perhaps he had been too forward. “Of course, you are entitled to your privacy.”
What had secrecy done for her in the past? Absolutely nothing. “It ruins whoever loves us,” she told him. “And it ruins us, too.”
David understood her meaning, for he’d been ruined by magic and love. “I see,” he murmured, and went back to the catalogue. “It’s likely that you need to go back to the birthplace of the person who set the curse.” He had begun to scan witch trials, hoping to find her family’s name. Part of the skill of research is the ability to guess what might have been, the glimmering of a sixth sense combined with the doggedness of a detective, along with the precious talent of being able to imagine how another’s life might have been lived.
They took a break for tea, heading for the simple kitchen in the rear of the building, where David heated tomato soup and brought out a small platter of crackers and cheese. Kylie was ravenous, she realized, and very grateful to be fed, delighted to know that tea included food. She felt surprisingly comfortable here, even though she had always hated spending time at the Owens Library, perhaps because her mother was in charge.
“You must have talents you don’t know about,” David Ward suggested.
Kylie shrugged and spooned up soup. “Nothing much. I can forecast weather. I think I may be able to change it. I see colors around people. It always seemed like a game, like knowing what people will say before they speak. I didn’t think it was magic.”
David threw her a look; there was an awkwardness in not knowing how to respond. To have magic inside of him was what he’d always wanted. Instead, he had settled for second best, being an expert. He certainly was not about to make an admission, but he had walked on the left-hand side when he was younger, in the blundering way of men in need.
Kylie didn’t mention the dark aura she saw around the librarian, a dense halo of blue. As for David, he didn’t ask what she saw when she studied him. He knew what it was. He felt guilty for every moment he was alive.
After their tea break, they went back to the task of inspecting the Owens family files. The name surfaced in records in East Anglia, where Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed witch-finder general, had begun his search for evil in 1644, resulting in 233 dead, before his own death by drowning, at last ridding the world of the being in which true evil had resided. And there it was, the name Hannah Owens. David eagerly showed Kylie the page of slanted scrawling of the town notary. Hannah Owens had been arrested, tried, and found guilty. It was written that she was a cunning woman who encouraged other women to turn to witchery and that she was too dangerous to be allowed to live. Hannah had come from a village called Thornfield where a man named John Heron had testified against her, saying she had enticed him into her bed and that she had a tail and practiced the Dark Art. Fortunately, the witch trials ended as suddenly as they’d begun, and for just as little reason. In the end, Hannah was let free from jail, fined three shillings that she didn’t have, and therefore beaten three times with a whip instead.