There my aunt and I worked in companionable silence. She chopped off the moonwort flowers, which she would use to make a fragrant oil, and returned the stems to me so that I could tie a bit of twine around each one—no bunches here, for fear of damaging the pods—and hang them to dry.
“How will you use the pods?” I asked, knotting the string.
“Protection charms. When school starts in a few weeks, there will be a demand for them. Moonwort pods are especially good for children, since they keep monsters and nightmares away.”
Corra, who was napping in the stillroom loft, cocked her eye in Sarah’s direction, and smoke billowed from her nose and mouth in a firedrake’s harrumph.
“I’ve got something else in mind for you,” Sarah said, pointing her knife in the firedrake’s direction.
Unconcerned, Corra turned her back. Her tail flopped over the edge of the loft and hung like a pendulum, its spade-shaped tip moving gently to and fro. Ducking past it, I tied another moonwort stem to the rafters, careful not to shake loose any of the papery ovals that clung to it.
“How long will they hang before they’re dried?” I asked, returning to the table.
“A week,” Sarah said, looking up briefly. “By then we’ll be able to rub the skin from the pods. Underneath is a silver disk.”
“Like the moon. Like a mirror,” I said, nodding in understanding. “Reflecting the nightmare back on itself, so that it won’t disturb the child.”
Sarah nodded, too, pleased by my insight.
“Some witches scry with moonwort pods,” Sarah continued after a few moments. “The witch in Hamilton who taught high-school chemistry told me that alchemists collected May dew on them to use as a base for the elixir of life.”
“That would require a lot of moonwort,” I said with a laugh, thinking of all the water Mary Sidney and I had used in our experiments. “I think we should stick to the protection charms.”
“Okay, then.” Sarah smiled. “For kids I put the charms in dream pillows. They’re not as spooky as a poppet or a pentacle made of blackberry canes. If you were going to make one, what ingredients would you use for the stuffing?”
I took a deep breath and focused on the question. Dream pillows didn’t have to be big, after all—the size of the palm of my hand would do.
The palm of my hand. Ordinarily I would have run my fingers through my weaver’s cords, waiting for inspiration—and guidance—to strike. But the cords were inside me now. When I turned my hands and splayed the fingers wide, shimmering knots appeared over the tracery of veins at my wrist and the thumb and pinkie on my right hand gleamed green and brown in the colors of the craft.
Sarah’s mason jars glinted in the light from the windows. I moved toward them, running my little finger down the labels until I felt resistance.
“Agrimony.” I traveled along the shelf. “Mugwort.”
Using it like the pointer on a Ouija board, I tilted my pinkie backward. “Aniseed.” Down moved my finger. “Hops.” Up it swooped in a diagonal line to the opposite side. “Valerian.”
What was that going to smell like? Too pungent?
My thumb tingled.
“A bay leaf, a few pinches of rosemary, and some thyme,” I said.
But what if the child woke up anyway and grabbed at the pillow?
“And five dried beans.” It was an odd addition, but my weaver’s instinct told me they would make all the difference.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Sarah pushed her glasses onto her head. She looked at me in astonishment, then grinned. “It’s like an old charm your great-grandmother collected, except hers had mullein and vervain in it, too—and no beans.”
“I’d put the beans in the pillows first,” I said. “They should rattle against one another if you shake it. You can tell the kids the noise will help with the monsters.”
“Nice touch,” Sarah admitted. “And the moonwort pods—would you powder them or leave them whole?”
“Whole,” I replied, “sewn onto the front of the pillow.”
But herbs were only the first half of a protection charm. Words were needed to go along with them. And if any other witch was going to be able to use it, those words had to be packed with potential. The London witches had taught me a great deal, but the spells I wrote tended to lie flat on the page, inert on anyone’s tongue but mine. Most spells were written in rhyme, which made them easier to remember as well as livelier. But I was no poet, like Matthew or his friends. I hesitated.
“Something wrong?” Sarah said.
“My gramarye sucks,” I confessed, lowering my voice.
“If I had the slightest idea what that was, I’d feel sorry for you,” Sarah said drily.
“Gramarye is how a weaver puts magic into words. I can construct spells and perform them myself, but without gramarye they won’t work for other witches.” I pointed to the Bishop grimoire. “Hundreds and hundreds of weavers came up with the words for those spells, and other witches passed them down through the ages. Even now the spells retain their power. I’m lucky if my spells remain potent for an hour.”
“What’s the problem?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t see spells in words but in shapes and colors.” The underside of my thumb and pinkie were still slightly discolored. “Red ink helped my fire spell. So did arranging the words on the page so that they made a kind of picture.”
“Show me,” Sarah said, pushing a piece of scrap paper and a charred stick in my direction. “Witch hazel,” she explained when I held it up for clarification. “I use it as a pencil when I’m trying to copy a spell for the first time. If something goes wrong, the aftereffects are less . . . er, permanent than with ink.” She colored slightly. One of her unruly spells had caused a cyclone in the bathroom. For weeks we found spatters of suntan lotion and shampoo in the oddest places.
I wrote out the spell I’d devised to set things alight, careful not to say the words to myself and thereby work the magic. When I was through, the index finger of my right hand was glowing red.
“This was my first attempt at gramarye,” I said, looking at it critically before handing it to Sarah. “A third-grader probably would have done a better job.”
Fire
Ignite till
Roaring bright
Extinguishing night
“It’s not that bad,” Sarah said. When I looked crestfallen, she hastily added, “I’ve seen worse. Spelling out fire with the first letter of every line was clever. But why a triangle?”