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but it was women who dealt in magic who were best known for donning red shoes, and the idea of a scarlet woman who did as she pleased made wearing red shoes an act of defiance; they might just take the wearer places she would not otherwise go.
That year Franny had been seventeen, Jet sixteen, and Vincent fifteen. They were perfect and they didn’t know it.
They had loved each other madly for their whole lives, only Franny’s life had been longer, and now here she was, walking home alone, with a single crazy wish, that she would spy Hay on the lane, waiting for her, calling out for her to hurry.
Why on earth did so many of them want love charms to trick people who wanted nothing to do with them into falling head over heels? Ridiculous, Franny thought. If that’s being normal, then normal is madness.
For years they told each other they didn’t want to ruin their friendship with anything as complicated as sex, then went ahead and ruined it anyway.
Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches, a feminist retelling of the creation story that included folk medicine and magic from Italy.
They were both old, and because of this they likely knew too much.
“Witchery is not a choice. This is not the Unnamed Art, which women have been practicing for hundreds of years, perhaps since the beginning of time, training themselves to use herbs and green magic. It’s a bloodline situation.” When she still looked blank, he added, “An inheritance.”
Part of the skill of research is the ability to guess what might have been, the glimmering of a sixth sense combined with the doggedness of a detective, along with the precious talent of being able to imagine how another’s life might have been lived.
This was the price of being the older sister. She was vigilant and always looked before she leapt. She was the one Kylie depended on when their mother was preoccupied. Should they walk into the dim woods? Absolutely not. Should they leap from the flat ledges above Leech Lake? Not on your life. There were bees and poison ivy to watch out for, broken limbs and concussions. This is the way a doctor is often formed, an individual aware of possibilities others chose to ignore.
Be a forthright woman and all hell could break loose.
What you learn yourself will suit you best, she had told him. Be a man who knows how important books are.
Weren’t all souls finely calibrated mysteries?
He felt like an addict, out of control, unable to stop himself from taking what he imagined he was entitled to, not yet understanding that no one is entitled to anything other than his freedom and the choices he makes.
“Do your time and learn what you can,” Margaret had told her boy and for once in his life he’d listened. That was the good luck. That was what saved him, those books.
“I’m a bad boy,” Ian admitted, failing to mention there was no wife and likely would never be one given his inability to commit or emotionally connect with anything other than a book. He liked women, it was true, he simply botched up romance. You keep yourself hidden, his mother had told him. As do you, he’d shot back. He was still angry at not having known his father. And I’m alone, Margaret Wright responded. And don’t mind being so. The implication was, he was not.
The illustrated man, a revelation of pain and beauty, his soul laid bare.
“How do you know if you’re in love?” she found herself saying now as they ate their cake. Antonia felt comfortable confiding in the Reverend; she had the distinct impression that her secrets were safe with him. “Love does as it pleases. It can’t be controlled.”
“I’ve never been in love.” “You should try it.
“Do you ever regret running away?” Vincent had asked William during his final day, for it was in this way they had escaped the curse; they had started new lives and never looked back. It was their last night together, but they didn’t know it. The lines on their hands were blurred, their futures unsure. “I didn’t run away. I ran to you,” William told him.
This was in the days when people more often hid their sexual nature. It was easy to do, if you didn’t mind breaking your own heart.
Sally was right there before him, a dark, serious girl who wished she would never fall in love, so afraid her heart would break that she had never unmasked it and had thereby broken it herself.
“I like books,” Sally said. “I’m a librarian.” “Are you?” Of course she would be. Ian found women who were librarians exceedingly sexy. It was a combination of their love of books, which always increased their beauty, along with the fact that they usually knew more than he did, which he found oddly arousing.
Why was he debating her? He knew who he was, a self-centered man, not terribly interested in other people’s issues, always the thoughtless boyfriend who didn’t blink when a woman decided she’d had enough of his cool, selfish ways and left him, since that was what he wanted all along. No entanglements or complications.
Whenever Sally was vulnerable she was unpleasant and she knew it. Could it be they were alike in this?
Tom was twenty-five years younger than Ian, but he had a reputation in town by the time he was twelve. It was a bad age, set between being a child and being a man, and people often were lost during that year.
“If you knew the whole story, you’d know the reason. The past can take over if you let it. This town is not the reason he’s cursed, yet he blames each and every one of us. It’s what’s inside him that’s the problem. The neglect he suffered, that’s what ruined him. If you think you’re nothing, that’s what you become.”
You could judge a man by whether or not he got along with his mother, and beneath his bad-mannered façade, Ian was devoted to his.
They were quiet for a while, then Sally said, “Are there ghosts out there?” “Time is out there. Everything that ever happened is still happening. For instance, if I took your hand in mine.” Which he did as he was speaking. “It would be happening for hundreds of years.” “Would it?” Sally said. “That’s what people say.” She slipped her hand from his. His touch had burned. This was not going to happen. It most certainly was not what she was looking for. “It doesn’t matter,” he said when she withdrew from him. “It’s still happening.” When she frowned, Ian shrugged. “I’m only repeating local lore.”
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“I might just do that,” Jesse said, already sensing that once she slipped on a pair of red shoes, she would be certain to go a bit wild.
“If it isn’t written down, it will likely be forgotten,” Isabelle had told her. That was why women had been illiterate for so long; reading and writing gave power, and power was what had been so often denied to women.
A woman with knowledge, one who could read and write, and who spoke her own mind had always been considered dangerous.
Margaret knew quite a bit about love and its dangers, but that hadn’t stopped her from falling for the wrong man. Such things happen even to the wisest women, especially when they’re young.
“I’ve brought some chaos with me,” he said, which surprised neither of them.
The forests were thought to be living creatures, with breath and fire and water and air, revered as the owners of the earth, while men were shadows that walked through the trees for the brief period of a lifetime.
“Everything is dangerous. That is the human condition.
Apples were said to be the food of love, as well as the food of the dead, of shades and spirits that went unseen; it was the fruit that could call to those who couldn’t hear any other sound.
When they hung up, Sally went down the hall and told her sister they had to bake a pie. Gillian slipped on her shoes and said, “What are we waiting for?” No questions were asked. That was one of the many things Sally had come to appreciate about her sister, she didn’t have to know every detail before she jumped in to help.
“A few sentences,” she said, shaking her head. So little had been written about Hannah Owens it was as if she had never existed. “Most didn’t even get that,” Ian responded. “If a woman doesn’t write her own history, there are very few who will.”
Wake up, girl! Look at what is right in front of you. Is your heart beating too fast? Are you shaky when you see him and when you walk away? Well, that’s love all right, and it will still be there, even if you want to pretend it’s not.
Franny leaned in and kissed Ian’s cheek, then he was the one to laugh, and he bowed to her, as if she were a queen. Franny looked across the grass and nodded to Sally. You could live a little or you could live a lot.
There was no one as easy to fool as an expert,
“Can you drive on the wrong side?” Sally asked her sister, nervous, especially when they took off at top speed. “I can do everything on the wrong side,” Gillian assured her.
Save a man once, and you have a heart. Save him twice and he has yours.
There was the scent of lilacs, and where there are lilacs, there will be luck.
“Live a little?” It was an old joke between them. “Darling boy.” Franny put her hand to his heart. He most certainly wasn’t done yet. “Live a lot.”
Love was a sacrifice. It was all things and everything. It was the way they had lived their lives.
It was a book of practical magic, containing their history, past, present, and future, with plenty of blank pages for the future, Franny had made sure of that.
She had thought it was hard to love, but it had turned out to be easy, all you had to do was have the courage to open your heart.
“I can’t give her up yet,” Sally told Ian and he understood and sat in silence while she sobbed in the grass. This is what love was, you stayed when you wanted to run away. You held on when you knew you had no choice but to let go.
