Page 10 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
—Tabitha Morgan, July 19, 1929
There are no eggs laid by the hens in the yard for three days after Carrie returns. Every batch of Cora’s muffins comes out either burned or undercooked. Their dog Kep barks at shadows, and that damn frost glitters over everything, like a taunt. Cora purses her lips as she finishes her morning coffee, swirling out the grounds from her cup in the sink. The mountains are unbalanced. Something has disturbed them, she can feel it. There’s a sharpness on her tongue, coating the back of her throat, that reminds her more of a curse than of winter.
“This won’t do at all,” she mutters to herself as she makes their breakfast, stirring a pot of porridge on the stovetop. Even that comes out thick and gloopy, and she almost has to chew it. It’s no good, she realizes.No good at all.
“It’s just winter come early,” Howard says as he winces through breakfast. “Don’t fret.”
“You and I both know the laying hens are like clockwork.We’ve never gone this long without eggs,” Cora says, enunciating her point by stabbing her fork in the air. “Like clockwork!”
“Even so.”
She harrumphs. “The book will know. There’ll be something in there, some warning, some tale—”
“I was wondering when you’d bring that up. Took you all of a five-minute conversation.”
“Are you giving me cheek, Howard Price?”
Howard coughs, scraping the last of the porridge from his bowl, and rises to his feet. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Cora mutters darkly as Howard leads Kep out the front door, on their way to check the field boundaries and talk to the neighbors. Her husband has had the same routine for sixty years, and apart from the day of a wedding or funeral, nothing will shake him from it. He always takes Kep through the front door, never the back. Not among the chickens, and never through the yard.
Cora washes up quickly, stacking the dishes and spoons with the saucepan on the drainboard. She wipes down every surface, ensuring that the stovetop gleams. Then she folds her tea towel just so over the rail on the range cooker, cleans her hands with the soap she makes herself, and checks the time. Ten o’clock already.
“Time to get down the book, I should think.”
She hobbles through to their bedroom, her hip giving her nothing but grief in this sudden cold snap, and pulls the book from its hidden spot. Then she takes it through to the lounge, props herself up in her armchair, perches her reading glasses on her nose, and opens it.
She finds an entry recorded by her grandmother, Tabitha:
This is not a firsthand account. Or even a second, or a third. This tale has been passed down and passed down, discussedaround hearths, embellished and clipped, until I sat down to record it in the book...
Cora sags lower in her armchair, the ache in her hip receding as she’s enfolded by the tale that could tell her what this sudden cold snap means. It’s about the frost. It’s a tale that begins as a love story and ends with a curse. When she finishes, Cora closes the book and stares into space. Then she clicks her tongue and gets to work.
“If someone in Woodsmoke has brought this upon us, there’ll be nothing but heartbreak and sorrow come spring,” she says to the walls as she moves through to the bedroom, putting the book back where she hides it. “They need rock salt. Plenty of it. Dried lavender buds, yes, but also perhaps some fennel seeds...”
She walks to the kitchen and pulls glass jars from the bottom shelf of her pantry. This is where she keeps the ingredients for any workings from the book. Unlike some of the Morgan women who came before her, she doesn’t like to call them “spells.” The word sounds fanciful, like the language used by a child playing dress-up. These ingredients, carefully combined and used correctly, are from recipes passed down through the generations from grandmother to granddaughter.
The workings in the book aren’t all alike. For lesser workings, like this one, only a few ingredients are blended in the exacting conditions needed for them to work. Other workings require pieces of the Morgan woman performing them—usually blood. And promises. Ivy never took to those workings. She would shudder and quickly flip past those pages, fingertips barely brushing the ink. That was how Cora knew, deep in her bones, that the book should never have gone to Ivy. It was always meant for her, for someone who understood the true weight of a bargain.
Cora mixes twenty small batches of the salt, lavender, and fennel in the correct quantities, twists them up in little paper packets, and lines her wicker basket with them. She pulls on her purple wool coat and checks in the hallway mirror that her hair is set rigidly in a tight bun before tying a lilac headscarf under her chin. Then she picks up the wicker basket, sets it on the crook of her arm, and carries it to the passenger seat of the car. She pulls on her leather driving gloves and places her hands at exactly ten and two o’ clock before guiding the car out of the driveway and onto the narrow lane into town.
She rarely bothers with the radio anymore. None of the songs seem like songs at all. They’re all static and jumpy noises, or an awful lot of moaning about nothing. She much prefers classical music if she does turn on the car radio. Vivaldi is her favorite, but of course today the classical channel is playing a Mozart selection. She can’t imagine that anyone with an ounce of tastereallylikes Mozart.
“It’s these young people.” She sighs, twisting the knob and filling the car with silence. Instead, she thinks about which homes she needs to pay a visit to. Which families need a sharper warning than the rest.
She pulls into Lemon Yard on the west side of town, closest to the snow-tipped peaks of the mountains, and pulls the wicker basket onto her arm. The family names of the women she knows can be wayward rattle through her mind: Evans, Peters, Simpkin, Gregson, Brookes... She makes her first stop twenty paces away. The sour-faced Cass Evans greets Cora with suspicion, her bottle-blond highlights looking brassy and limp.
“What am I meant to do with this? Eat it?” Cass waves the packet in Cora’s face. “My Helen is a good girl. She’s not chasing boys, she’s not out at all hours.”
“But she wants to fall in love, doesn’t she?” Cora says, raisingher eyebrows. “And we both know she wandered off into the mountains last spring. Or have you forgotten how you nearly broke my door down begging for a way to find her? Hmm?”
Cass’s eyes widen with something akin to fear, something raw and faraway, before she sighs theatrically, rolling her eyes. “Fine.Sprinkle on the thresholds, I take it?”
“And Helen’s windowsill, to be on the safe side,” Cora says firmly. “And if you even suspect for amomentthat she’s met someone new, someone you’ve not heard of before, you tell me, Cassandra Evans. You come tome, you hear?”
“I hear you,” Cass says grudgingly, accepting the packet between pinched thumb and forefinger. “We all bloody well hear you.”
“And lucky you are too.”
