The bones of a skeleton were stitched together with brass pins; a marionette flung across a chair, strings tangled, arms and legs sprawled out every which way.
A chandelier of half-burned candles sparked with flames as Etta walked beneath it.
“Where are you, Madame Peaks?” Etta called out.
“In the back. Come.”
Etta followed the voice. A hallway stretched before her, winding narrowly like a dark river. Pockets of gloom and dead air lurked about, while candlelight quivered in splotches along the floor, sprouting into sturdy, infrequent stripes.
Etta pushed open the kitchen door. The woman slumped over a sink, her spindly back curved into a question mark as she rinsed herbs. “Have a seat, child. Be gentle with yourself. I can feel your fragile heart.”
Etta slid into the nearest chair at her table. “How?”
“That’s for me to know.” She turned around and stared at Etta with foggy eyes. She wore a heaping pile of black fabric. Her brown skin held deep folds. When she walked toward Etta, her cane scratched across the floor like sharp-nailed claws.
“Can you fix my heart?” Etta handed her the tiny perfume bottle, then reached into her pocket and revealed the crumpled bills.
She took the money from Etta’s palm. “I can do you one better. I can either fix it or give you a new heart.”
“A new heart?”
“Yes. You got to decide whether you want me to grow yours back or if you want to select another.”
“You have that kind of thing here?”
“I have everything I need, and yes, that means hearts, child. Let me show you.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
When they were thirteen years old, Etta and Jackson found a conjure map in his parents’ basement. It was tucked away in a hatbox and up on a shelf, and Etta never knew how he’d found it all the way up there.
They spread it across the floor, brown foreheads slick with sweat as they gazed over a map of the constellations littered with red lines that Etta felt sure were blood. Their baby pictures sat tucked into opposite corners, and pen marks revealed their full names, birth time, weight, and other numbers neither of them could decode.
“What does this all mean?” Jackson asked, his nose crinkled with curiosity. She loved the way he bit his lip when he focused and how his head cocked to the left.
“Didn’t your mama tell you?” Etta asked. “We supposed to be together forever.”
“Forever is a long time. What if you leave our town? You said you wanted to travel once we graduated high school.”
“You can come with me.” She couldn’t imagine doing anything without him. They were inseparable.
Jackson loved Etta, and Etta loved Jackson. That’s how it went.
“And leave them to work the farm? I couldn’t do that.”
“It wouldn’t be forever. We’d come back. Don’t you want to see what’s out there? Aren’t you tired of Blue Hill?”
“No.” He dropped his gaze back to the map, and they didn’t say another word to each other that day.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Before you decide, I’ll show you the hearts. Follow me, child.” Madame Peaks led Etta down a set of staircases into a cellar. “It’s been so long since someone has come needing a heart. I’ve got quite the collection as of late.” She shuffled forward, and reached for something in the dark. A candelabra illuminated in her hands. “Come, let me present you with a few to consider.”
The walls were covered in glass sarcophaguses, each boasting a heart.
Etta’s eyes widened. “Where did you get all of these?”
“They were traded or collected.”
Etta didn’t know what that meant, but she was sure afraid to ask questions.
“I’ll present a few of my suggestions.” Madame Peaks stopped before the third one on the left. “The iron heart. Shiny, bright, still malleable in case you change your mind about love later in life—or the universe presents you with someone worthy. Doesn’t rust.” She shuffled forward to the fifth one. “The amethyst. A semiprecious stone and variety of quartz. Will protect you against your heart feeling intoxicated by love.”
Etta marveled at how this heart twinkled in the light, shades of purple glittering almost like a trapped star.
Her mind became a tangle of indecision. She didn’t know how she could ever choose another one.
But before she could even think through the first two, Madame Peaks held the light up in front of two others.
“This one is my personal favorite. The gold heart. Took me many years to acquire,” she mused. “It’s definitely too soft for a person so young, and I’d need to work on it to increase its strength. But it sure is a beauty.” She tapped too-long nails on the sarcophagus, then stepped forward to one final glass coffin. “Lastly, a thorned metal heart. I bargained for this one. The ridges should provide ample protection. They open and close when attacked.”
Etta grabbed her chest.
Madame Peaks took her hand. “It’s time to choose, child.”
“How could I possibly?”
“You ain’t got no choice. You can have any of the hearts here. I’d probably pick the amethyst one. Saw your eyes get big as coins. Or I can regrow the one dying in your chest.”
“Will it hurt if you fix the one I have?”
“It’s never easy. I suppose like love itself. But if I do, you’ll have to relive the relationship—the high and the low, the sweet and the sour, the light and the dark. It’s what conjure requires.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“You spending too much time running around here with that boy,” Ms. Mildred told Etta right after she turned sixteen. “You haven’t made a single diorama this month. This year even. You promised me one.”
Etta was undoing the plaits in her hair and preparing to go meet Jackson. He’d said he had a surprise for her, but he was never good at hiding things. Not from her. She’d seen him whittling wood and collecting light bulbs, and she couldn’t resist. She’d sneaked over to the woodworking shed he shared with his daddy to see what he was up to. And it was the greatest thing: he’d made her a life-size diorama of a traditional Japanese teahouse. “We’re in love,” she replied to Ms. Mildred, bracing herself for one of her grandmother’s bites. “And we’ve been busy. Too busy for me to make those silly dioramas anymore.”
“We?”