Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Toil and Trouble

With washed-out red brick and a subtle Tudor Revival influence, Goodwin Manor stands three stories tall at the top of a large hill. It has been in our family since the late nineteenth century and has more windows and chimneys than one can count. The lawn is perfectly manicured despite the lack of a gardening service for several decades. The manor looks over the painter’s palette landscape of Ipswich’s autumnal forests from the back and a view of the glistening blue-black ocean from the front.

I unlock the back door, and we walk inside the dark, silent house. The living room is a ghostly scene, every couch and cushion covered with white and gray sheets.

“There’s nothing quite so strange as walking into a place once full of laughter and life and finding it silent.” I voice the thought before I have time to censor it.

“Well, there’s no one better than a hedge witch to bring something back to life, right?” Matthew says next to me, his voice and eyes soft.

I laugh quietly. “If only that were within my reach. Besides, isn’t that more your expertise?”

He gives me a quizzical look but shakes his head. “Shadow magic can’t create life.”

“Pity,” I murmur. I move forward and begin yanking bedsheets off the furniture. After a moment, Matthew joins me in the chore.

When he learns exactly how the sheets need to be folded, I leave him in the family room and make my way to the kitchen. Shimmering copper cookware lines the exposed brick walls. I pull one of my mother’s small sauce pots from the rack above the island and fill it with water. As it boils, I check all the appliances and dust the breakfast table. Once the water is roiling, I lower the temperature and drop in some dried spices from my mother’s cabinet.

Nutmeg, allspice, bay, cinnamon, vanilla, and black tea leaves. With each new addition, I imagine the wooden floors and walls of the house absorbing the aroma of fall and welcoming in the changing energy of the new year.

The kitchen is spotless now and Matthew has made quick work of the family room, library, and dining room. All the furniture is uncovered, and every shutter has been flung open, allowing bright sunlight to stream in. The downstairs, dusted and aired, already looks transformed. With the scent of the simmer from the kitchen and the familiar October breeze from the windows, this could be a year ago. Back when the manor still had life. I almost expect my mother to walk into the living room and start giving us directions.

“What next?” Matthew asks from the dining room. He is staring out the window that looks on the side garden.

I catch my breath, leaving past years behind.

“The upstairs beds need to be made, and then decorations,” I say, leading him out into the foyer and up the grand curving staircase. I sniff the air as we climb, pleased that my simmer pot has already begun to spread its scent to the second floor.

We head to Celeste’s room first. The deep blue and antique gold room is full of her brass astronomical equipment and still smells of incense, even though she hasn’t called the manor home in over four years. Matthew strips the cover sheet off her bed as I run a dust rag over the astrolabe she keeps on her side table.

“Are you still close? With your sisters?” he says aloud, watching as I carefully organize the zodiac figurines that line the shelf above Celeste’s bedframe.

“You ask a lot of questions,” I say.

He laughs. “A trait I inherited from my father, I’m afraid. He questions everything. Most suspicious man I’ve ever met.”

“Another feature you have in common,” I say lightly with a smirk. Matthew pauses his work and looks at me. I bite my lip.

“Sorry,” I murmur, embarrassed by my rudeness. But he surprises me by laughing again.

“No. That was funny.” He smiles. “And for what it’s worth, I understand if you’re suspicious of me.”

“Oh, I most certainly am,” I admit freely. Matthew seems unsurprised by this answer.

“So, your father is naturally suspicious … what about your mother?” Matthew knows an endless laundry list of facts about me. I’m eager to balance the scale. He doesn’t seem bothered by my intrusive question.

“My mother’s lovely,” he says. “A very calming balance to my father’s eccentricities.”

“How so?” I wonder, continuing to dust.

He looks up at the ceiling as if wracking his brain for an answer.

“Well, when I was a boy, my father would play this game with me. Three truths and a lie?” He looks at me, questioning if I’ve heard of it.

I nod. I’d played it more than once with Miranda. She always seemed to win.

Matthew continues.

“He wanted to make sure I could tell when someone was lying to me. And that I could lie under pressure, in turn.”

I grimace, though I’m unsurprised given what he’s already said of his father and what I know of the Pacific Gate. They seem a paranoid, unsettled sort.

“My mother, though—she hated that game. Refused to play it with me.”

He fiddles with the lace edges of Celeste’s cover sheet, perfectly folded in his arms. I’ve abandoned my cleaning, watching him.

“I’d ask her to play Three Truths and a Lie, to practice. But instead, she’d insist on playing her own game: Four Absolute Truths.” He smiles so softly it’s like a whisper. “Then she’d prattle off three random facts, different every time, like the Earth is round, spiders are smaller than humans, candy corn is delicious.” He laughs. “After that, she’d wrap me up in her arms and tell me her fourth absolute truth, the same one every time.”

“Which was?” I ask. He looks up and meets my gaze.

“I love you,” he says after a moment.

My heart clenches. What I’d give to hear my own mother say those words again, to see her walk through the bedroom door and tell me all would be well. I swallow. Matthew is staring at me, a pained expression in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says like he knows exactly where my mind went.

I clear my throat and walk over to Celeste’s window, throwing open the dark velvet drapes so that sunlight can stream into the room. I stare down toward the side yard, my mother’s garden blooming with autumnal foliage.

“This room is done. Once everything else is finished up here, we should pick some flowers from the garden to put in the bedrooms,” I say, grateful my voice doesn’t break.

Matthew shifts his feet, uncomfortable. “You may have to do that task alone. I’m not a good gardener.”

“You wouldn’t have to plant anything,” I say, amused. “Just take a pair of kitchen shears to the overgrown purple sunflowers.”

“Even so. I’d likely do more harm than good,” he says somberly as I lead him out of Celeste’s room and toward Miranda’s.

“My craft, the intention I invite around me, makes it difficult to grow things. Life, struggles to flourish,” he explains. “But I’ve always loved the sight of a healthy garden. As a boy, I would watch my aunt as she tended to her roses and pumpkins. I’d marvel at the transformations that would take place almost every day. But the more I practiced shadow craft, the less the garden changed. When my aunt eventually realized I was the cause of the stagnation, I was asked to stay away.”

We fold Miranda’s cover sheet together. My heart clenches again, and despite all my misgivings, I pity him.

“I’m sorry you were kept away from something you loved,” I say.

Matthew stares at me strangely, as if confused by my sympathy.

“I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t walk through a garden every day,” I say. Realization dawns in his eyes.

“Ah yes, well.” He clears his throat. “I adapted quickly.” He flashes a grin toward me.

“I’m also impressed at the intensity of your power,” I admit. A hexan so connected to shadow craft that life struggles to flourish around him is a terrifying thought, but I try to keep my nervousness to myself.

“What’s on the agenda for the next few days?” he asks, changing the subject as we finish uncovering Miranda’s bed.

My mind turns back to the mental task list I’d been forming.

“Well, first we will have to make our way to the Bennet Farm to pick up pumpkins. Then I’ll have to carve the pumpkins, which I’m admittedly dreading,” I say, shaking my head. The pumpkins were always the chore that haunted me the most.

“Miranda and Celeste arrive on Thursday. There will be a dumb supper that night. Mischief night we usually spend preparing for Samhain. Though I’m sure Celeste will convince me to pull a prank or two. Saturday, we will go into Ipswich for the morning parade. Coven members will arrive at the manor in the late afternoon. And I’ll spend the rest of the evening listening to dozens of women regale me with their marriage, health, and financial woes.” I regret the sardonic tone that escapes me, but Matthew laughs.

“That’s certainly an exciting way to spend your birthday.”

I shrug. “It’s my duty as a hedge witch.”

“That’s not the role of a hedge witch,” Matthew says incredulously. I look at him blankly.

“Sure it is,” I say. “I’m to offer shelter, aid, and an ear to those who need it. Be it person, animal, or plant.” They are the very words my mother made me repeat over and over again that first year of my training. The very words my Herbal rejected until I knew them by heart.

“And?” Matthew says with another confused laugh, but this time it’s almost nervous, as if he’s hoping I’m joking.

“And what?” I say, bewildered.

His eyes flash toward me, studying my face, and I notice his grip tightens on the sheet in his hands.

“Hedge craft, first and foremost, is the balance between life and death energies. A hedge witch is guardian to the living and the dead alike.”

I’m speechless for a moment.

“Hedge craft has nothing to do with death energy,” I insist coolly. The very idea of an Atlantic Key witch meddling in such magic is absurd. What an absolutely wild thing for him to claim, as if my mother hadn’t spent my whole childhood protecting me from exposure to death. As if the very feeling of death energy doesn’t make me sick with its stinging rottenness.

Matthew blanches at my words. “Have you not been taught your craft?” he asks. A heavy sort of horror replaces the confusion in his eyes. “Did your mother show you nothing other than her kitchen tricks?” His voice becomes more agitated with every word.

I can feel my flush the instant it happens. My heart rate rises, and for a second, I’m thirteen again, standing in front of the coven and forest, convinced I’m not ready. I try to shake the memory off as my face grows stony.

“My mother’s recipes were not tricks . She taught me everything she knew; I studied how to preserve and keep life. I learned to heal and protect.”

“Admirable pursuits, yes,” he says. “But not the entire picture of your craft. Did you ever learn Binding or Shadow Walking? Siphoning? Guiding?”

“No,” I say firmly, not understanding any of the words he used. “That sounds like shadow magic. Which is forbidden.”

“Not to a hedge witch!” he implores. “Good God! You have been left completely unprepared.” He sounds panicked, but I don’t care. I can barely keep my own voice from rising when I speak.

“My mother devoted herself to me and my sisters. I won’t let you stand here, in her house, and insult her ability to train a witch. She was one of the thirteen elders of the Atlantic Key and one of only three witches in the whole coven who actually had any significant power, which she used to help people. Every golden strand of happiness in this town can be traced back to a meal she cooked at some point in her life.”

Matthew grimaces. His eyes are hard and serious.

“Do you include yourself in that count?” he questions quietly. The tone of his voice makes me want to shiver.

“What count?” I ask, confused. I want to look away from him, but my eyes do not stray from his gaze.

“The three witches with significant power in the Atlantic Key. Do you count yourself as one of them? Do you believe yourself to be powerful?” he asks almost fiercely.

The question sits in the pit of my throat. “I’m a good healer. Great, even,” I say.

He shakes his head.

“Answer the question, Kate,” he insists.

It’s not a simple question. Power can mean so many different things. Because of the Containment, Atlantic Key witches are very successful at their crafts. But most of us practice smaller and specialized magic; very few of us would be able to attempt anything on a large scale. Miranda certainly had never been able to conjure a tempest in all her years as a sea witch. But powerful compared to members of other covens? To Matthew, whose shadow craft is so strong it can cause whole gardens to wither at his mere presence?

“I can do more than most in the Atlantic Key,” I say. “I have my mother’s training to thank for that. But no, I’m not significantly powerful. Not the way she was. Not the way you seem to be.”

Matthew’s mouth shuts closed into a thin line, and his eyes widen in horrified anger.

“You’re wrong,” he says, looking out the open window toward the ocean. “And the fact that your own mother let you think so is—”

“What’s it to you?” I interrupt, cutting him off as anger boils through me. My whole body has gone cold and hot within a matter of seconds.

His eyes flash back to meet mine. “Whether you are properly trained or not is of importance to every member of every coven. It’s unforgivable. You have been left defenseless!” He looks aghast.

“Defenseless?” My head is spinning. “Against what?”

He opens his mouth to speak but closes it again sharply. He breathes but the pause doesn’t seem to calm him. When he finally speaks, he is just as agitated as me—more so, even.

“Against all that you have been exposed to since the moment you declared yourself a hedge witch.”

The air in the room is so thick with our separate intention that it is hard to breathe. My hands ball into fists, and something around Matthew sparks and crackles. I turn on my heel and storm out. Miranda’s door blows shut behind me as I leave. Whether it was Matthew, the wind, or me, I can’t tell.

“Who does he think he is?” I whisper to no one in particular as I stomp up the stairs to the third floor.

With more dramatic flair than I intend, I rip down the cord to the attic. The folded ceiling ladder opens with an almost violent crash. I let out a defeated breath as it shakes and trembles. I can’t let too many negative emotions fill up this house. I’ll never be able to purge them by Halloween. The coven members would be brawling with one another after a single cocktail. I take a few deep breaths and close my eyes, letting the anger seep away from me slowly.

I let other, happier things fill my mind. I think of sitting over a large pot of bubbling caramel. Listening to my mother’s old record of Halloween music. Dancing with Celeste and Miranda to “Coolest Little Monster.” The scent of spiced apples, sugar, and natural cleaning solutions.

I open my eyes as calmness washes over me, and I release a breath and climb the ladder.

The attic is dim at first, but after turning on a lamp, the whole room fills with warm orange light. Antique furniture, trunks filled with family treasure and trash, and dozens of sturdy cardboard boxes all fill up the floor space. Dust motes float through a single sunbeam coming from a small widow’s watch window that looks out to the sea. In the corner where the holiday decorations are kept, there are roughly twenty boxes in total, ranging in size and shape. Inside are yards and yards of pumpkin garlands, orange and purple lights, spiderweb tablecloths, and every sort of Halloween knickknack imaginable. There are also boxes full of larger, heavier decorations, like cast-iron cauldrons and the metal broomstick lamps we use to line the front driveway.

“Oh, yikes,” I whisper. In my anger, I had forgotten that this isn’t a one-person task. Mom and I usually took an entire afternoon carrying down these boxes on the last day of September so we could focus solely on decorating come October 1 st .

With a groan, I grab a plastic storage tub near me and lift. I’m unsteady for a moment and catch my hip on the pile of boxes directly behind me. A small box slides off the top and lands with a thud behind one of the antique trunks. My stomach drops at the muffled sound of glass breaking.

“Aw, crap,” I mutter.

Gingerly setting the tub in my hands down first, I reach behind the trunk, grasping for the fallen box. I struggle to get a grip around its edges as it’s wedged itself between the wall and the trunk. There is also something else back there, firm and leathery, just off to the side.

I get my arm under both the box and the foreign object and slowly work them out of the crevice. The box pops free, and I recognize it immediately as the container for a lovely crystal pumpkin my father gave my mother a few months before he passed. It was the last decoration my mother packed away every year. I want to cry. It’s very likely shattered. Before I can properly mourn this piece of my childhood, my eye catches a glint of brass. The second object I pulled up, now resting on top of the dusty trunk. It’s a book, large, about the size of my Herbal, and held together with a leather strap and a brass buckle. The whole thing is bound in a deep brown leather with faint red embellishments that are hard to make out in the dim light of the attic. This is not a decoration I recognize.

I unbuckle the strap, struggling to manipulate the leather, and flip the book open to the middle. The pages are all browned with age on the edges and crinkly, as if they’ve been long exposed to humidity. But they are blank. I flip through the entire tome, blank page after blank page.

Something creaks behind me. I turn quickly, my heart jumping.

There’s nothing there but boxes and dust. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so tense—I’m not doing anything wrong. Before I shut the book, I flip to the front, curious to see if this indeed was simply a fancy prop my mother purchased at a Halloween store. Maybe somewhere on this tome there is a little sticker with “Made in China” printed on it. The first page is large and yellowing, just like the rest. Only this one has words. Right in the middle of the page, written in a bright red ink:

The King Below shall never again know my secrets.

Sybil Goodwin

The nostalgia I’d felt from the crystal pumpkin is dwarfed by a wave of melancholy that rushes over me at the sight of my mother’s signature. A soft sob escapes my lips as I touch the edge of her name. The sob switches to a gasp as the still wet ink smears onto my fingers, and the rest of the words melt into rivulets, spreading to the edges of the paper and finally disappearing, as if the book absorbed the ink. The front page now sits as blank as all the rest. I stare, openmouthed and fascinated.

“What on earth?” I whisper to the surrounding dust.

I flip through all the pages again to see if any other strange writing has appeared, my mind racing.

“Kate?” Matthew’s voice calls out behind me. I let out a short yelp and turn around. He is standing at the edge of the ladder. He looks at me apologetically.

“You’re crying!” He looks horrified. He strides over to me, eyes never leaving mine. I realize for the first time that my cheeks are wet with tears.

“No, I’m fine,” I say, turning quickly back to the book. I shove it behind some boxes before standing up just as he reaches me.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was very insensitive.”

I shake my head.

“No, it wasn’t that. I’m just a victim of my own clumsiness,” I say, grabbing the crystal pumpkin box. I unhook the cardboard edge and pull the top open. Sure enough, inside lies the shattered remains of my mother’s favorite trinket. There are a dozen larger chunks but countless shards and fragments. Matthew gingerly takes the box from my hands and inspects the contents.

“Is it important to you?” he asks, looking back up to my still tearful eyes. I nod.

“My father gave it to my mother the Halloween before he died. He had blood cancer. For many years, even before I was born,” I explain. “He got better for a little while but died when I was four.”

“I remember,” Matthew nods. Of course he did. He seemed to remember every solemn secret I’d shared with him the first time we met.

I break from his gaze, focusing on the broken memento in my hands. “It used to catch the sunlight by the living room window and throw orange-tinted rainbows all over the ceiling. Mom and I would lie on the floor and find shapes in their patterns, pretending they were messages from Dad.” Any other day I would have cried real tears over such a loss, but my mind is too busy wondering over the tome I’ve just hastily hidden.

“Surely you can save it?” Matthew suggests.

I examine it again before shaking my head. “I have an adhesive recipe that can make quick work of clean breaks. But it’s useless for something that’s been partially pulverized. I’ll have to throw it out.”

He stares at the contents in the box quietly for a moment, his dark head bowed away from me. Eventually, he lifts his blue eyes to mine and smiles softly. The usual smugness that accompanies this look is not present. “Let’s take it back to your cottage once we’re done and see if anything is salvageable.”

I take the box back from him. “If you insist,” I say, knowing there is not much to be done. I struggle to swallow the lump in my throat. My head is racing with thoughts and questions, but I can’t investigate the book further with Matthew in the house. I will have to wait until I’m alone to look inside it again.