Page 3 of A Lullaby for Witches

When Augusta looked up, she found Vin and Maureen staring at her like she’d sprouted an extra head.

“You have aboyfriend?” came the unified response.

Augusta opened her mouth. “I—”

“You’ve literallynevermentioned you had a boyfriend,” Vin said accusingly.

“I haven’t?” Augusta was only half-aware that she had never mentioned Chris. It wasn’t that she was hiding him, or didn’t want people to know that she was in a relationship, he just felt like a separate part of her life from work. Besides, Chris was just...there. They never really did anything worth sharing.

Maureen held her gaze a beat too long, and Augusta shifted in her seat. “I definitely think I would have remembered if you said you were seeing someone.”

A stocky white man wearing a ranger’s uniform and a severe expression appeared in the break room doorway, saving Augusta from having to explain herself any further. “There’s a two o’clock tour in the front and no one there to check them in.” He let his gaze run disapprovingly over the three of them, Maureen’s phone still playing the video of the kittens. “We’re too busy for this kind of thing,” he said. “Vin, you need to fix your hair before you even think of going on tour, so Maureen or Augusta, you’re up.”

Poor Vin’s scowl could have eviscerated him, but Ron seemed oblivious as he perused the plate of muffins. “I’ll do it,” Augusta hurried to offer. Taking the tour would be a distraction from constantly refreshing her email to see if Harlowe House had replied, and she didn’t need Maureen’s knowing gaze sliding to her every few minutes. One more quick glance at her phone told her that Harlowe House hadn’t responded yet, so, pasting on a smile, she greeted the dozen or so tourists waiting in the front entrance. She rattled off the script as she ushered them out of the early autumn heat wave and into the equally stifling hall. She probably could have done it in her sleep at this point, and any meaning the words had once held had long ago faded.

The Old Jail was one of many museums in Salem, a restored building that offered tours, had a gift shop and lots of photo ops for tourists to take pictures of themselves behind bars. Unlike some of the other tourist attractions in the city, the Old Jail wasn’t related to the history of the witch trials in any way, didn’t have creepy wax figures and, mercifully, didn’t require its staff to give tours in costume. But, true to its original function, it was a barren, lifeless building. History was supposed to be alive, a way for people in the present to connect in meaningful ways from the past and learn from it. But that didn’t feel like the case at the Old Jail.

A woman in a Myrtle Beach T-shirt and a fanny pack interrupted Augusta as she led them past the old cells. “Is this where they kept the witches before they burned them?”

“They didn’t burn witches,” Augusta told her with a smile, drawing on all the patience she could muster. “They hanged them. And this prison wasn’t built until 1842—a hundred and fifty years after the witch trials.”

The woman looked disappointed, and whispered something to her companion next to her. They moved on to the warden’s office, and she resisted the temptation to sneak another peek at her phone. If she really did get the job, the best part would be never having to field questions about witches from belligerent tourists ever again.

2

Margaret

When cockle shells turn silver bells

Then will my love come back to me

When roses bloom in winter’s gloom

Then will my love return to me.

—“The Water is Wide,” Traditional Folk Song

Do you know what it is to be lonely? Truly alone, even amidst a crowd? Even in a family? Perhaps if my mother had been a witch like me with powers of her own, she would have taken me under her wing and guided me on my singular path. But she did not, and I was left to discover what made me different on my own, stumbling and groping along.

I was not a stupid child; I knew that it was not normal for a girl to be able to call on spirits or send birds to do her bidding. Water should not shimmer with messages from beyond the veil. But it did mean that I was apart, different from other children my own age. How could I play at silly games, knowing that the trees speak a different language and will sing in the wind? How could I care about tea parties and town functions when the moon beckoned me to learn the secrets of the sea?

My childhood was uneventful, at least, if not quite normal. Witches are born, yes, but they are also made. Their powers are forged while communing with nature, their sight honed by waking dreams at night. I suppose I always carried my powers within me, but it was not until I was old enough to see the world for what it was that I truly came into my own.

One day—I could not have been much older than eight or so—I was watching the boats come in from the harbor when a fisherman returned with a dolphin that had gotten caught in his net and died. Sun glistened off its pearly skin, its black eyes little more than indifferent slits as it was carried down the dock. There was always a crowd of curious children and idle drunkards on the pier, and at the sight of the dolphin, there was a ripple of excitement. A tall woman with dark brown skin and a purple turban wound round her hair caught my eye from across the crowd, held it for a moment as if she could discern my thoughts, and then turned her attention back to the dolphin.

But it was not the spectacle that drew me in; I wanted to know to where had the spirit of that great animal flown. Why could it not swim and play anymore? If the flesh was too far gone, could another vessel still support an ember of life? I had heard of men, who, in years past, had tried to bring back the dead. They were known as the Resurrection Men, and they had stolen bodies right out of the cemeteries and brought them to laboratories where they had tried to reanimate them. I may have only been a little girl, but even I understood where they had gone wrong. A body, once dead and decaying, could not support life. A soul, on the other hand, needed only an abode in which to take root and flourish.

I pondered this truth many times over the coming years, but my interest in magic was not limited to just this question. Life and death, omnipresent and vast as they are, are best understood through the tiny details, the intricacies of the natural world. If one of my brothers suffered a scrape or bruise, I was fascinated by the pinpricks of blood that emerged from the skin. If I came upon a bird with an injured wing, I was quick to examine the fine, crooked bones. When I awoke one morning to sticky thighs and sheets stained with rusty blood, I was not frightened, only curious and awestruck that my body was capable of such a miracle. Where my mother taught me that a woman’s body was something to be tamed and laced into submission, I celebrated the generous sea swells of my thighs and breasts, reveled in the crimson blood that flowed from me every month, as steady as the phases of the moon.

Every sunrise, every drop of rain was a paradigm of magic, proof of a miraculous world. I was particularly drawn to the herb garden that our housemaid Molly kept, and I would often pinch off budding rosemary and thyme, rubbing the fragrant stems between my fingers. “Mind you don’t eat that,” Molly told me one morning as I was helping her gather elderberries for tea. “It will give you a bellyache and sweats if it isn’t prepared properly.” I studied the innocuous plant, its tiny red berries so simple, yet so mysterious. How was it possible that the same plant that made such a comforting tea could also be deadly? I badgered Molly to tell me all she knew of plants and herbs, and when her patience and knowledge was exhausted, I turned to botanical encyclopedias procured for me by my brother George. But beyond the Latin names and taxonomic tables, a deep intuition guided my explorations. The plants sung to me in a language I had never heard, yet somehow understood. They told me secrets, things that no book would ever dare have printed in black and white: how to cure heartaches, and how to cause them. How to measure one’s monthly courses against the waxing and waning of the moon. How to get with child, and how to stop one already in your belly from growing. My curiosity had no limits, and soon I was wading ever farther out into the vast ocean of forbidden knowledge.

My unusual abilities might have gone unnoticed had I not chanced across a man and a woman one day when I was deep in the woods collecting wild strawberries. I watched from behind a tree as the man pressed himself against the woman, despite her pleas. He was big and burly, and easily overpowered her. My blood grew hot as I watched. Why did men get to take whatever they wanted, just because they were bigger, stronger? Why did the poor woman’s feelings not matter at all? I burned with rage. Would I be submitted to the same injustices when I was a grown woman? Was I destined for a life of subservience and violence?

Although I did not know what I was going to do, I could not sit idly by. Stepping out from behind the tree, I slowly walked toward the man, my hand outstretched, my fingers trembling. I was almost upon them when the man turned and caught sight of me. He sneered over his shoulder. “Run along, missy, unless you want a turn next.”

But I did not turn and run. Calming myself, I focused all my anger, my disgust, until my fingers tingled with energy. My powers had only strengthened over the years, and I had been waiting for such a time as this to use them. Words came bubbling out of me, water from some long-untapped well.

With a cry, the man went reeling backward as if yanked by some invisible rope, landing hard on his backside. We stared at each other, us three, as clouds scudded across the sky, the wind tugging at the leaves above us. The air had gone very quiet, even the birds pausing in their song.

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