For tonight’s miracle, Juniper requires help.
She strides down a dark street, leaning on the slender cane that is the piss-poor replacement for her cedar staff, and two women walk beside her: a young nurse named Lacey Rawlins who works at St. Charity Hospital, and Miss Jennie Lind.
Jennie had turned up at the Sisters’ last meeting, looking—different. Her skirts were fancier and frothier than Juniper remembered, and she wore a chestnut wig instead of her own cornsilk-colored hair, but mostly it was her eyes that struck Juniper. They were colder and harder, like twice-beaten iron.
“Where the hell have you been?” Juniper asked, thumping her so hard on the back that Jennie coughed a little.
“They sent me to a . . . different workhouse, then released me into the custody of my family. Took me a while to get away.” She looked over Juniper’s shoulder and smiled at Inez. “Inez gave me a place to stay, and all this.” Jennie gestured at her fine skirts.
Juniper hadn’t said anything then, but she’d had herself a little think about it later. Why would Jennie be sent someplace different than all the other girls? And why would she be released without trial?
Before the Sisters left that evening she pulled Jennie aside. “Are you, by chance, the daughter of some fabulously wealthy member of New Salem society? Who pulled strings to spring you the second you got caught? And who you have now broken ties with?”
Jennie blinked at her once, then murmured, “Oh, we broke ties a long time ago.” She fingered her crooked nose.
“Huh. Well, next time you’re home steal a couple of candlesticks for us. We could use the cash.”
A genuine smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
Now Jennie follows behind Lacey as they creep through the doubled iron doors of St. Charity Hospital.
It looks nice enough inside—halls of green tile and white plaster, rows of doors with neat-painted numbers—except there don’t seem to be any windows. The smell turns Juniper’s stomach: lye and lesions, stained sheets and stale air.
Lacey pauses before a door at the end of the hall. Juniper tries not to look very closely at the smears of rust and yellow on its surface. She can almost feel the heat of fevered bodies behind it. “Ready?” Lacey asks, and they are.
They work three spells that night.
The first is for sleep, requiring crushed lavender and an old prayer. Now I lay thee down to sleep. Only when the rustling of bodies falls still do they creep through the door and into the sick ward.
The second spell is for driving down a fever, requiring a red thread tied around fingers slack with sleep. Juniper and the others move from bed to bed to bed, endless doubled lines of them, occupied by women and children and ruddy-cheeked men. This strikes Juniper as strange—surely any natural illness ought to fall hardest on the youngest and oldest.
The third spell is for healing, requiring willowbark and silkweed and knocked knuckles. This one proves more difficult than the others. Juniper hisses the words, veins hot with witching, and feels them vanish into the air, as if swallowed down some cold, invisible throat.
A chill creeps up Juniper’s spine. She looks at the dark twist of shadows and wonders if somehow Gideon is watching her even now, if he’s working against this small act of mercy.
Juniper had asked around about Gideon Hill and found his life bafflingly ordinary. As a boy he went by his first name—Whitt or Wart or something equally unfortunate—and spent his time reading novels and daydreaming. Then his favorite uncle passed away, leaving him a considerable sum of money and a pitiful black dog, and Hill had sobered considerably. There was no missing interlude of years when he might have disappeared to study ancient magics in the libraries of Old Cairo, no wicked grandmother who might have passed on her witching; no indication at all that Hill was anything but a balding, middle-aged gentleman who wanted to be mayor.
Now Juniper grits her teeth and speaks the spell again. She bends her will against whatever-it-is that opposes them, joining hands with Jennie and Lacey, and the magic burns reluctantly into the room. Lungs clear around her, bruises fade from beneath tired eyes, pulses steady.
Juniper grins at the bodies now sleeping soft and well in their cots, leaning heavily on her spindly cane. She can already hear the headlines shouted by news-boys tomorrow (WITCHCRAFT WORKS MIRACLES! FEVERS CURED!).
She limps into the night with her Sisters at her side.
SIGNS OF WITCHCRAFT AT
CHARITY; FEVER WORSENS
July 12th, 1893, The New Salem Post
Miss Verity Kendrick-Johnson, a spokesperson for St. Charity Hospital, has confirmed to The Post that the patients of the first floor ward were found with definitive signs of witchcraft about their persons, and denied that any member of their staff would have participated in such devilry.
Miss Kendrick-Johnson further advises people seeking miracles to look elsewhere; none of the bewitched patients have shown the slightest signs of improvement. Their condition may in fact have worsened, and several of the weakest patients have since passed away. “Put your faith in science and the study of man,” recommends Kendrick-Johnson. “Not stardust and sin.”
ARREST MADE IN CONNECTION WITH THE PORTER CASE
July 6th, 1893, The Times of Salem
. . . the police have taken Miss Claudia Porter into custody in connection to the disappearance of her husband, Mr. Grayson Porter. Mr. Porter, a respected member of the Rotary Club and benefactor to this very publication, has been missing since the 25th of June. “Check the stockyards,” Miss Porter reportedly advised her arresting officers, cackling, “It takes a pig to find one.”
NEW LEADERSHIP NEEDED
July 15th, 1893, a letter to the editor of The Post
In light of the daily headlines about malfeasance and witchcraft running loose—in light of Mayor Worthington’s failure to produce even a single one of the Eastwoods—it seems clear to this letter writer that the city of New Salem is in need of new leadership. I call upon the Mayor to step down from his post, that we might elect a brighter light against our present darkness.
Sincerely,
Bartholomew Webb
Hush little baby, don’t say a word,
Mother will call you by mockingbird.
A spell to send a message, requiring a mockingbird pinion & a great need
Over the following weeks Agnes doesn’t think of Mr. Lee at all. She doesn’t look hopefully down the alley at the end of every shift; she doesn’t feel anything in particular when Mr. Malton flips the page of his calendar to the correct month, or let her eyes linger overlong on the capital lettering at the top (AUGUST). The trick to being nothing is to want nothing.
The shift bell rings. Agnes lines up with the other girls, treasuring the way Mr. Malton’s eyes skip right past her sewer-colored hair and scarred-up face. They fall instead on the girl behind her in line.
The girl started just a few days ago. She’s nothing, too, but not the right kind. She’s young and hungry-looking, bones raw beneath cream-colored skin. Agnes can practically smell the desperation rolling off her.
So can Mr. Malton. “You. Ona.” He picks her from the line like a housewife choosing a chicken at the market. “Come back to my office for a moment.”
Mr. Malton saunters to the back of the mill, keys jangling on his hip, and Agnes stops in the doorway, jaw gritted, willing Ona not to follow him.