Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (16 page)

While, here and there about Qon Oshen, as the mirrors splintered, inverted images crumbled inside the eyes of young men, and were gone.

Iye Linla yawned and cursed, and called for food. The sons of Mhey came back to themselves and rolled in a riotous heap like inebriated puppies. A priest bellowed, an aristocrat frowned, at discovering themselves propped up like invalids, their relatives bobbing, sobbing, about the bed. Each returned and made vocal his return. In Twenty-First Plaza, an artist rushed from his house, shouting for the parchment with the bloodstain of his genius upon it.

By dusk, when the stars cast their own bright broken glass across the sky, the general opinion was that the witch was dead. And decidedly, none saw that wigged and masked nightmare lady again.

For her own hair was light and fine, and her skin paler yet, and her eyes were gray as the iridium lake. She was much less beautiful, and much more beautiful than all her masks. And in this disguise, her own self, she went away unknown from Qon Oshen, leaving all behind her, missing none of it, for he had said to her: “
Follow
me.”

A month of plots and uneasiness later, men burst in the doors of the vacant mansion, hurling themselves beneath the grinning toads and the frigid cats of greenish jade, as if afraid to be spat on. But inside they found only the webs of spiders and the shards of exploded mirrors. Not a gem remained, or had ever existed, to appease them. No treasure and no hoard of magery. Her power, by which she had pinned them so dreadfully, was plainly merely their own power, those energies of self-love and curiosity and fear turned back, (ever mirror-fashion), on themselves. Like the reflection of a moon, she had waned, and the mirage sunk away, but not until a year was gone did they sigh with nostalgia for her empire of uncertainty and terror forever lost to them. “When the Magia ruled us, and we trembled,” they would boastfully say. They even boasted of the mocking kite, until one evening a sightseer, roaming the witch’s mansion—now a feature of great interest in Qon Oshen—came on a scrap of silk, and on the silk a line of writing.

Then Qon Oshen was briefly ashamed of Taisia-Tua Magia. For the writing read: L
OVE, LOVE, LOVE THE MAGICIAN IS GREATER, FAR GREATER, THAN
I
.

Theodora’s Goss’s mysterious Miss Emily Gray and her young pupils employ mirrors in magical ways. We’ve been raised knowing about the evil witch/queen’s magic mirror in “Snow White” and Alice traveling through a looking glass. Most of us think—at least fleetingly—of bad luck when we break a mirror. Covering mirrors after a death is (or was) a common custom in many cultures and religions. There is lore connecting the soul to one’s reflection as well as the ability to glimpse the dead. Witches and others are said to be able to see the past and present, or divine the future through mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Mirrors—in jewelry, sewn onto clothing or set in windows—have also been used to repel evil, but they can also captivate. Mirrors reveal the truth, but can also deceive.

Lessons with Miss Gray

Theodora Goss

That summer, we were reporters: intrepid, like Molly McBride of the
Charlotte Observer,
who had ridden an elephant in the Barnum and Bailey Circus, and gone up in a balloon at the Chicago World’s Fair, and whose stagecoach had been robbed by Black Bart himself. Although she had told him it would make for a better story, Black Bart had refused to take her purse: he would not rob a lady.

We were sitting in the cottage at the bottom of the Beauforts’ garden, on the broken furniture that was kept there. Rose, on the green sofa with the torn upholstery, was chewing on her pencil and trying to decide whether her yak, on the journey she was undertaking through the Himalayas, was a noble animal of almost human intelligence, or a surly and unkempt beast that she could barely control. Emma, in an armchair with a sagging seat, was eating gingerbread and writing the society column, in which Ashton had acquired a number of Dukes and Duchesses. Justina, in another armchair, which did not match—but what was Justina doing there at all? She was two years older than we were, and a
Balfour,
of the Balfours who reminded you, as though you had forgotten, that Lord Balfour had been granted all of Balfour County by James I. And Justina was beautiful. We had been startled when she had approached us, in the gymnasium of the Ashton Ladies’ Academy, where all of us except Melody went to school, and said, “Are you writing a newspaper? I’d like to help.” There she was, sitting in the armchair, which was missing a leg and had to be propped on an apple crate. It leaned sideways like a sinking ship. She was writing in a script that was more elegant than any of ours—Rose’s page was covered with crossings out, and Emma’s with gingerbread crumbs—about Serenity Sage, who was, at that moment, trapped in the Caliph’s garden, surrounded by the scent of roses and aware that at any moment, the Caliph’s eunuchs might find her. She would always, afterward, associate the scent of roses with danger. How, Justina wondered, would Serenity escape? How would she get back to Rome, where the Cardinal, who had hired her, was waiting? Beside him, as he sat in a secret chamber beneath the cathedral, were a trunk filled with gold coins and his hostage: her lover, the revolutionary they called The Mask. We did not, of course, insist that everything in our newspaper be true. How boring that would have been. And Melody was sitting on the other end of the sofa, reading the
Charlotte Observer,
trying to imitate the advertising.

“Soap as white as, as—” she said. “As soap.”

“As the snows of the Himalayas,” said Rose, who had decided that her yak was surly, and the sunlight on the slopes blinding. But surely her guide, who was intrepid, would lead her to the fabled Forbidden Cities.

“As milk,” said Emma. “I wish I had milk. Callie’s gingerbread is always dry.”

“For goodness sake,” said Rose. “Can’t you think of anything other than food?”

“As the moon, shining over the sullied streets of London,” said Melody, in the voice she used to recite poetry in school.

“What do you know about London?” said Emma. “Make it the streets of Ashton.”

“I don’t think they’re particularly sullied,” said Rose.

“Not in front of your house, Miss Rose,” said Melody, in another voice altogether. Rose kicked her.

“As the paper on which a lover has written his letter,” said Justina. Serenity Sage was sailing down the Tiber.

“If he’s written the letter, it’s not going to be white,” said Emma. “Obviously.”

And then we were silent, because no one said “obviously” to a Balfour, although Justina had not noticed. The Mask was about to take off his mask.

“I don’t understand,” said Melody, in yet another voice, which made even Justina look up. “Lessons in witchcraft,” she read, “with Miss Emily Gray. Reasonable rates. And it’s right here in Ashton.”

“Do you think it’s serious?” asked Emma. “Do you think she’s teaching real witchcraft? Not just the fake stuff, like Magical Seymour at the market in Brickleford, who pulls Indian-head pennies out of your ears?”

“You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” said Rose, who was suddenly and inexplicably feeling critical. “Why shouldn’t it be real? You can’t put false advertising in a newspaper. My father told me that.”

And suddenly we all knew, except Justina, who was realizing the Cardinal’s treachery, that we were no longer reporters. We were witches.

“Where did you say she lived?” asked Melody. We were walking down Elm Street, in a part of town that Melody did not know as well as the rest of us.

“There,” said Emma. We didn’t understand how Emma managed to know everything, at least about Ashton. Although her mother was a whirlpool of gossip: everything there was to know in Ashton made its way inevitably to her. She had more servants than the rest of us: Mrs. Spraight, the housekeeper, as well as the negro servants, Callie, who cooked, and Henry, who was both gardener and groom. Rose’s mother made do with a negro housekeeper, Hannah, and Justine, who lived with her grandmother, old Mrs. Balfour, had only Zelia, a French mulatto who didn’t sleep in but came during the day to help out. And Melody—well, Melody was Hannah’s niece, and she had no servants at all. She lived with her aunt and her cousin Coralie, who taught at the negro school, across the train tracks. We didn’t know how she felt about this—we often didn’t know what Melody felt, and when we asked, she didn’t always answer.

“Don’t you think it’s unfair that you have to go to that negro school, with only a dusty yard to play in? Don’t you think you should be able to go to the Ashton Lady’s Academy, with us? Don’t you think—” And her face would shut, like a curtain. So we didn’t often ask.

“The brick house, with the roses growing on it,” said Emma. “It used to be the Randolph house. She was a witch too, Mrs. Randolph, at least that’s what I heard. She died, or her daughter died, or somebody, and afterward all the roses turned as red as blood.”

“They’re pink,” said Melody.

“Well, maybe they’ve faded. I mean, this was a long time ago, right?” Rose looked at the house. The white trim had been freshly painted, and at each window there were lace curtains. “Are we going in, or not?”

“It looks perfectly respectable,” said Emma. “Not at all like a witch’s house.”

“How do you know what a witch’s house looks like?” asked Melody.

“Everyone knows what a witch’s house looks like,” said Rose. “I think you’re all scared. That’s why you’re not going in.”

At that, we all walked up the path and to the front door, although Justina had forgotten where we were and had to be pulled. Justina often forgot where we were, or that the rest of us were there at all. Rose raised her hand to the knocker, which was shaped like a frog—the first sign we had seen that a witch might, indeed, be within—waited for a moment, then knocked.

“Good afternoon,” said a woman in a gray dress, with white hair. She looked like your grandmother, the one who baked you gingerbread and knitted socks. Or like a schoolteacher, as proper as a handkerchief. Behind her stood a ghost.

That summer, we each had a secret that we were keeping from the others.

Rose’s secret was that she wanted to fly. She had books hidden under her bed, books on birds and balloons and gliders, on everything that flew. She read every story that she could find about flight—Icarus, and the Island of Laputa, and the stories of Mr. Verne. There was no reason to keep this a secret—the rest of us would not have particularly cared, although Melody might have said that if God intended us to fly, he would have given us wings. Her aunt had said that to a passing preacher, who had told the negro people to rise up, rise up, as equal children of God. And Justina might have looked even more absent than usual, with the words “away, away” singing through her head. But Rose would have been miserable if she had told: it was the only secret she had, and it gave her days, and especially nights, when she was exploring the surface of the moon, meaning. And what if her mother found out? Elizabeth Caldwell’s lips would thin into an elegant line, and Rose would see in her eyes the distance between their house with its peeling paint, beneath a locust tree that scattered its seedpods over the lawn each spring, and the house where her mother had grown up, in Boston. She would see the distance between herself and the girl who had grown up in that house, in lace dresses, playing the piano or embroidering on silk, a girl who had never been rude or disobedient. Who had never, so far as Rose knew, wanted to climb the Himalayas, or to fly.

Justina’s secret was that her grandmother, the respectable Mrs. Balfour who, when she appeared in the Balfour pew at the Episcopal Church, resembled an ageing Queen Victoria, was going mad. Two nights ago, she had emptied the contents of her chamberpot over the mahogany suite in the parlor, spreading them over the antimacassars, over the Aubusson carpet. Justina had washed everything herself, so Zelia would not find out. And Zelia had apparently not found out, although the smell— She still had a bruise where her grandmother had gripped her arm and whispered, “Do you see the Devil, with his hooves like a goat’s and his tongue like a lizard’s?
I can.
” “Away, away” the words sang through her head, and she imagined herself as Serenity Sage, at the mercy of the Cardinal, but with a curved dagger she had stolen from the Caliph hidden in her garter. Then she would be away, away indeed, sailing across the Mediterranean, with the wind blowing her hair like a golden flag.

Emma’s secret was that her mother had locked the pantry. Adeline Beaufort had been a Balfour—Emma was Justina’s second or third cousin—and no daughter of hers was going to be
fat.
For two weeks now she had been bribing Callie, with rings, hair ribbons, even the garnet necklace that her father had given her as a birthday present. That morning, she had traded a pair of earrings for gingerbread. Callie was terrified of Mrs. Beaufort. “Lordy, Emma, don’t tempt me again! She’ll have me whipped, like in the old slave days,” she had whispered. But she could not resist fine things, even if she had to keep them under a floorboard, as Emma could not resist her hunger. They were trapped, like a couple of magpies, fearful and desiring.

Melody’s secret was that she wanted to go to college. There was a negro college in Atlanta that admitted women, the preacher had told her. So they could be teachers, for the betterment of the negro race. Because white teachers went to college, and why should only negro children be taught by high school graduates—if that? And Melody wanted to better the negro race. Sometimes she wondered if she should be with us at all, instead of with the other girls in her school—perhaps, as her aunt often said, she should stick with her own. But her own filled her with a sense of both loyalty and despair. Why couldn’t those girls look beyond Ashton, beyond the boys they would one day marry, and the families they would work for? And there was a streak of pragmatism in this, as in many of her actions, because the rest of us checked books out of the library for her, more books than even we read. She had never been told that colored folk could not enter the library, but colored folk never did, and what if she was told to leave? Then she would know she was not welcome, which was worse than suspecting she would not be. So every morning, after her chores were done and before school, when other girls were still ironing their dresses and curling their hair, she went to the houses of the wealthy negro families, of the Jeffersons, who traded tobacco and were, if the truth be told, the wealthiest family in Ashton, and the Beauforts, whose daughters were, as everyone knew, Emma’s fourth or fifth cousins, and cleaned. She put the money she earned, wrapped in an old set of her aunt’s drawers, in a hole at the back of her closet. For college.