On Saturday will be the annual Blessing of the fleet. It’s funny how today people still rely on the old traditions. Mom says the fleet has been blessed every year for over a hundrend years. Of course, it’s the Catholics who run it and make the big show. But I know that Roiseal always does are part as well.
I stopped for a moment. Ròiseal? The Blessing of the Fleet I had heard about—a lot of fishing communities have it every year, where the priest comes out and sprinkles holy water on the bows of the fishing boats to protect them through the year and give them luck.
Sam and I went down to Filbert’s today and got some orange soda pop. Mom would kill us if she knew. Mom and her “whole food, natural food” stuff. She thinks artificial flavours and taste are enough to dull your sense and abilities. I haven’t noticed any difference.
Whoa, I thought. And I thought Hilary was bad, with her organic toilet paper. I mean, she thought sodas weren’t good for you, but I didn’t think she actually believed they would dull your senses. A glimmer of a memory went through my head, of my mom saying something to me, telling me a story about when she was a little girl. About how funny her mom had been about some stuff. But the memory was too vague to really remember—maybe I was getting mixed up. After all, my mom had died when I was three. This was an amazing coincidence, though. If it was a coincidence, a scared little voice inside me whispered.
I am still trying to talk Mom and Dad into an out-of-state college. I figure I have another three years to work on them—who knows what could happen? They just don’t want me mixing with people who aren’t like us—like if I meet different people, I’ll leave and not come back.
I frowned as I remembered Dad telling me about how Mom’s parents hadn’t wanted her to go away to college, either. Oh, God—what did this mean? This couldn’t just be a coincidence. But how was it possible—God! As if mesmerized, I turned back to the book for answers.
The lilacs have been blooming for a couple of weeks now. When I go outside, the damp salt of the sea is overlain with their gorgeous, heavy perfume. Mom’s bushes are covered with bees in ecstasy. Seeing the lilacs in bloom breaks me out of my northeast winter blues every year. I know that warm weather is coming, that summer is almost here, that school will be out soon.
My throat felt like it was closing. Once I had brought home a little bunch of lilacs from the grocery store, and Dad had looked at them and turned pale. Later he told me that they’d been Mom’s favorite flower, that she had carried them at their wedding, and that it still made him sad to see them. So I’d eighty-sixed the lilacs. Oh, Mom, I thought desperately. What’s going on?
In the mean time, my asinine brother, Sam is still auditioning for the world’s biggest pain in the butt award. Last week he switched all of the copper plant labels in the garden around, so the chard has “carrots” written above it and the corn has “radishes”. Mom almost had a fit. And twice he has taken my bike and stored it up on the widow’s walk. It was a nightmare getting it down through the trap door, listening to him cackle in his room. But I am getting him back—this morning I sewed the toes of all his socks together. Insert wicked laugh here.
I chuckled, feeling relief sweep through me. Thank God. This wasn’t my mom. This Sarah Curtis had a brother. My mom was an only child, and Dad had said by the time he met her, she was estranged from her family and never saw them. That’s so sad. It means I grew up with only one set of grand-parents and cousins. None from her side. But God, what a relief to hear this woman had a brother. I had been practically shaking with dread about this witch Sarah Curtis.
Time to go. I have to practice the full moon rite that I’m supposed to do on Litha.
I turned the page.
Ok I am back. Mom is in the kitchen making a healing tea for Aunt Jess. Her tonsillitis is acting up. I can’t believe I have school tomorrow. I keep looking at the calendar: three more weeks until Litha. Litha and summer. Mom and I have been crafting a fertility spell for the last two months. Basically it is to make everything in the land and sea do well and multiply. A typical Rowanwand all-purpose spell. I can’t wait. At Litha all of Roiseal will be there and it will be the first big spell I’ve cast in public since my initiation last Samhain.
With a thud all my sensations of fear and nervousness came back. This couldn’t be my mom—I knew that. But someone with my mom’s name had written this book. Hands trembling, I set it down.
She had come from Gloucester, Massachusetts. Like my mom.
Like my mom, she’d loved lilacs. It was too weird, too similar.
But some things didn’t fit: her brother, Sam. The fact that this Sarah Curtis had been a Rowanwand witch.
Crash! I jumped about a foot in the air. My wooden jewelry box had fallen off my dresser and was lying on its side on the floor. How the hell had that happened?
This was all crazy. I closed the book without marking my place and went to my jewelry box. It was one of the very few things I had that had been my mom’s. I picked it up and cradled it in my arms.
That Sarah Curtis had been a witch.
My mom hadn’t been a witch. I searched my patchy, foggy memories. My mom, who smelled of lilacs. Her smile, her light brown hair, her laugh, the way it felt when she held me. There had been nothing about her that said witch. I didn’t remember spells or chants or circles or even candles. There were two Sarah Curtises. One of them had been a witch. One of them had been my mom. Just my mom.
I took the box over to my bed, unlatched it, and dumped everything out on my comforter. My fingers brushed through the fake jewelry, the goofy pins I collected, the charm bracelet my dad had been adding to since I was six. There were a few pieces of my mom’s jewelry, too: her engagement ring, with its tiny sapphire. Some pearl earrings. Even an anklet with little bells on it.
I looked at the empty box as if it would reassure me somehow. None of this could be real. There had to be some sort of explanation. A nonwitch explanation. My mom hadn’t even had a brother.
Open me.
I hadn’t heard the words—I had felt them. I stared down at the box as if it had turned into a snake. This was too creepy. But, compelled, I turned it upside down. I shook it, but nothing more came out. I opened and closed it a couple of times, looking for another latch somewhere, a hidden hinge. Nothing. Inside I ran my fingers around the lid and down the sides. Nothing. There was a small tray insert that I had dumped out onto my bed. The bottom of the box was lined with cushioned pink satin. I pressed it with my fingers, but there were no lumps or catches anywhere. I was imagining things.
Then I saw the pale pink loop of thread sticking out from one side of the cushion. I hooked my finger into it and pulled gently, and the whole cushion came up in my hand. Beneath the cushion was the wooden bottom of the box. There was a tiny catch on one side, tarnished and almost impossible to see. I poked it with one fingernail, and nothing happened. I turned the box another way and held it in my lap and pushed at the latch again.
With a tiny snick the bottom of the box swung upward. And I was staring at a yellowed pile of old letters, tied with a faded green ribbon.