When the music and memories of Emily and my parents became too overwhelming, Sarah and I escaped to the garden or the woods. Today my aunt had offered to show me where baneful plants could be found. The moon would be full dark tonight, the beginning of a new cycle of growth. It would be a propitious time for gathering up the materials for higher magic. Matthew followed us like a shadow as we wended our way through the vegetable patch and the teaching garden. When we reached her witch’s garden, Sarah kept walking. A giant moonflower vine marked the boundary between the garden and the woods. It sprawled in every direction, obscuring the fence and the gate underneath.
“Allow me, Sarah.” Matthew stepped forward to spring the latch. Until now he’d been sauntering behind us, seemingly interested in the flowers. But I knew that bringing up the rear placed him in the perfect defensive position. He stepped through the gate, made sure nothing dangerous lurked there, and pulled the vine away so Sarah and I could pass through into another world.
There were many magical places on the Bishop homestead—oak groves dedicated to the goddess, long avenues between yew trees that were once old roads and still showed the deep ruts of wagons laden with wood and produce for the markets, even the old Bishop graveyard. But this little grove between the garden and the forest was my favorite.
Dappled sunlight broke through its center, moving through the cypress that surrounded the place. In ages past, it might have been called a fairy ring, because the ground was thick with toadstools and mushrooms. As a child I’d been forbidden to pick anything that grew there. Now I understood why: Every plant here was either baneful or associated with the darker aspects of the craft. Two paths intersected in the middle of the grove.
“A crossroads.” I froze.
“The crossroads have been here longer than the house. Some say these pathways were made by the Oneida before the English settled here.” Sarah beckoned me forward. “Come and look at this plant. Is it deadly nightshade or black nightshade?”
Instead of listening, I was completely mesmerized by the X in the middle of the grove.
There was power there. Knowledge, too. I felt the familiar push and pull of desire and fear as I saw the clearing through the eyes of those who had walked these paths before.
“What is it?” Matthew asked, his instincts warning him that something was wrong.
But other voices, though faint, had captured my attention: my mother and Emily, my father and my grandmother, and others unknown to me. Wolfsbane, the voices whispered. Skullcap. Devil’s bit. Adder’s tongue. Witch’s broom. Their chant was punctuated with warnings and suggestions, and their litany of spells included plants that featured in fairy tales.
Gather cinquefoil when the moon is full to extend the reach of your power.
Hellebore makes any disguising spell more effective.
Mistletoe will bring you love and many children.
To see the future more clearly, use black henbane.
“Diana?” Sarah straightened, hands on hips.
“Coming,” I murmured, dragging my attention away from the faint voices and going obediently to my aunt’s side.
Sarah gave me all sorts of instructions about the plants in the grove. Her words went in one ear and out the other, flowing through me in a way that would have made my father proud. My aunt could recite all the common and botanical names for every wildflower, weed, root, and herb as well as their uses, both benign and baneful. But her mastery was born of reading and study. I had learned the limits of book-based knowledge in Mary Sidney’s alchemical laboratory, when I was confronted for the first time with the challenges of doing what I’d spent years reading and writing about as a scholar. There I had discovered that being able to cite alchemical texts was nothing when weighed against experience. But my mother and Emily were no longer here to help me. If I was going to walk the dark paths of higher magic, I was going to have to do it alone.
The prospect terrified me.
Just before moonrise Sarah invited me to go back out with her to gather the plants she would need for this month’s work.
I begged off, claiming I was too tired to go along. But it was the insistent call of the voices at the crossroads that made me refuse.
“Does your reluctance to go to the woods tonight have something to do with your trip there this afternoon?” Matthew asked.
“Perhaps,” I said, staring out the window. “Sarah and Fernando are back.”
My aunt was carrying a basket full of greenery. The kitchen screen slammed shut behind her, and then the stillroom door creaked open. A few minutes later, she and Fernando climbed the stairs. Sarah was wheezing less than she had last week. Fernando’s health regime was working.
“Come to bed,” Matthew said, turning back the covers.
The night was dark, illuminated only by the stars. Soon it would be midnight, the moment between night and day. The voices at the crossroads grew louder.
“I have to go.” I pushed past Matthew and headed downstairs.
“We have to go,” he said, following me. “I won’t stop you or interfere. But you are not going to the woods by yourself.”
“There’s power there, Matthew. Dark power. I could feel it. And it’s been calling to me since the sun set!”
He took me by the elbow and propelled me out the front door. He didn’t want anyone to hear the rest of this conversation.
“Then answer its call,” he snapped. “Say yes or say no, but don’t expect me to sit here and wait quietly for you to return.”
“And if I say yes?” I demanded.
“We’ll face it. Together.”
“I don’t believe you. You told me before that you don’t want me meddling with life and death. That’s the kind of power that’s waiting for me where the paths cross in the woods. And I want it!” I wrested my elbow from his grip and jabbed a finger in his chest. “I hate myself for wanting it, but I do!”
I turned from the revulsion that I knew would be in his eyes. Matthew turned my face back toward him.
“I’ve known that the darkness was in you since I found you in the Bodleian, hiding from the other witches on Mabon.”
My breath caught. His eyes held mine.
“I felt its allure, and the darkness in me responded to it. Should I loathe myself, then?” Matthew’s voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. “Should you?”
“But you said—”
“I said I didn’t want you to meddle with life and death, not that you couldn’t do so.” Matthew took my hands in his. “I’ve been covered in blood, held a man’s future in my hands, decided if a woman’s heart would beat again. Something in your own soul dies each time you make the choice for another. I saw what Juliette’s death did to you, and Champier’s, too.”