“I’m truly fine.” I turned my back to him so that he could loosen the laces on my bodice.
“You’re afraid of something. I can smell it.” Matthew spun me around to face him.
“I’m afraid of what I might find out about myself.” I met his eyes squarely.
“You’ll find your truth.” He sounded so sure, so unconcerned. But he didn’t know about the dragon and the rowan and what they meant for a weaver. Matthew didn’t know that my life belonged to the goddess either, nor that it was because of the bargain I’d made to save him.
“What if I become someone else and you don’t like her?”
“Not possible,” he assured me, drawing me closer.
“Even if we find out that the powers of life and death are in my blood?”
Matthew pulled away.
“Saving you in Madison wasn’t a fluke, Matthew. I breathed life into Mary’s shoes, too—just as I sucked the life out of the oak tree at Sarah’s and the quinces here.”
“Life and death are big responsibilities.” Matthew’s gray-green eyes were somber. “But I will love you regardless. You forget, I have power over life and death, too. What is it you told me that night I went hunting in Oxford? You said there was no difference between us. ‘Occasionally I eat partridge. Occasionally you feed on deer.’
“We are more similar, you and I, than either of us imagined,” Matthew continued. “But if you can believe good of me, knowing what you do of my past deeds, then you must allow me to believe the same of you.”
Suddenly I wanted to share my secrets. “There was a firedrake and a tree—”
“And the only thing that matters is that you are safely home,” he said, quieting me with a kiss.
Matthew held me so long and so tightly that for a few blissful moments I—almost—believed him.
The next day I went to Goody Alsop’s house to meet with Elizabeth Jackson and Catherine Streeter as promised. Annie accompanied me, but she was sent over to Susanna’s house to wait until my lesson was done.
The rowan branch was propped up in the corner. Otherwise the room looked perfectly ordinary and not at all like the kind of place where witches drew sacred circles or summoned firedrakes. Still, I expected some more visible signs that magic was about to be performed—a cauldron, perhaps, or colored candles to signify the elements.
Goody Alsop gestured to the table, where four chairs were arranged. “Come, Diana, and sit. We thought we might begin at the beginning. Tell us about your family. Much is revealed by following a witch’s bloodline.”
“But I thought you would teach me how to weave spells with fire and water.”
“What is blood, if not fire and water?” Elizabeth said.
Three hours later I was talked out and exhausted from dredging up memories of my childhood—the feeling of being watched, Peter Knox’s visit to the house, my parents’ death. But the three witches didn’t stop there. I relived every moment of high school and college, too: the daemons who followed me, the few spells I could perform without too much trouble, the strange occurrences that began only after I met Matthew. If there was a pattern to any of it, I failed to see it, but Goody Alsop sent me off with assurances that they would soon have a plan.
I dragged myself to Baynard’s Castle. Mary tucked me into a chair and refused my help, insisting I rest while she figured out what was wrong with our batch of prima materia. It had gone all black and sludgy, with a thin film of greenish goo on top.
My thoughts drifted while Mary worked. The day was sunny, and a beam of light sliced through the smoky air and fell on the mural depicting the alchemical dragon. I sat forward in my chair.
“No,” I said. “It can’t be.”
But it was. The dragon was not a dragon for it had only two legs. It was a firedrake and carried its barbed tail in its mouth, like the ouroboros on the de Clermont banner. The firedrake’s head was tilted to the sky, and it held a crescent moon in its jaws. A multipointed star rose above it. Matthew’s emblem. How had I not noticed before?
“What is it, Diana?” asked a frowning Mary.
“Would you do something for me, Mary, even if the request is strange?” I was already untying the silk cord at my wrists in anticipation of her answer.
“Of course. What is it you need?”
The firedrake dripped squiggly blobs of blood into the alchemical vessel below its wings. There the blood swam in a sea of mercury and silver.
“I want you to take my blood and put it in a solution of aqua fortis, silver, and mercury,” I said. Mary’s glance moved from me to the firedrake and back. “For what is blood but fire and water, a conjunction of opposites, and a chemical wedding?”
“Very well, Diana,” Mary agreed, sounding mystified. But she asked no more questions.
I flicked my finger confidently over the scar on my inner arm. I had no need for a knife this time. The skin parted, as I knew it would, and the blood welled up simply because I had need of it. Joan rushed forward with a small bowl to catch the red liquid. On the wall above, the silver and black eyes of the firedrake followed the drops as they fell.
“‘It begins with absence and desire, it begins with blood and fear,’” I whispered.
“‘It began with a discovery of witches,’” time responded, in a primeval echo that set alight the blue and amber threads that flickered against the room’s stone walls.
24
“Is it going to keep doing that?” I stood, frowning, hands on my hips, and stared up at Susanna’s ceiling.
“‘She,’ Diana. Your firedrake is female,” Catherine said. She was also looking at the ceiling, her expression bemused.
“She. It. That.” I pointed up. I had been trying to weave a spell when my dragon escaped confinement within my rib cage. Again. She was now plastered to the ceiling, breathing out gusts of smoke and chattering her teeth in agitation. “I can’t have it—her—flying around the room whenever she feels the urge.” The repercussions would be serious should she become loose at Yale among the students.
“That your firedrake broke free is merely a symptom of a much more serious problem.” Goody Alsop extended a bunch of brightly colored silken strands, knotted together at the top. The ends flowed free like the ribbons on a maypole and numbered nine in all, in shades of red, white, black, silver, gold, green, brown, blue, and yellow. “You are a weaver and must learn to control your power.”
“I am well aware of that, Goody Alsop, but I still don’t see how this— embroidery floss—will help,” I said stubbornly. The dragon squawked in agreement, waxing more substantial with the sound and then waning into her typical smoky outlines.
“And what do you know about being a weaver?” Goody Alsop asked sharply.
“Not much,” I confessed.
“Diana should sip this first.” Susanna approached me with a steaming cup. The scents of chamomile and mint filled the air. My dragon cocked her head in interest. “It is a calming draft and may soothe her beast.”
“I am not so concerned with the firedrake,” Catherine said dismissively.
“Getting one to obey is always difficult—like trying to curb a daemon who is intent on making mischief.” It was, I thought, easy for her to say. She didn’t have to persuade the beast to climb back inside her.
“What plants went into the tisane?” I asked, taking a sip of Susanna’s brew. After Marthe’s tea I was a bit suspicious of herbal concoctions. No sooner was the question out of my mouth than the cup began to bloom with sprigs of mint, the straw-scented flowers of chamomile, foamy Angelica, and some stiff, glossy leaves that I couldn’t identify. I swore.
“You see!” Catherine said, pointing to the cup. “It’s as I said. When Diana asks a question, the goddess answers it.”
Susanna looked at her beaker with alarm as it cracked under the pressure of the swelling roots. “I think you are right, Catherine. But if she is to weave rather than break things, she will need to ask better questions.” Goody Alsop and Catherine had figured out the secret to my power: It was inconveniently tied to my curiosity. Now certain events made better sense: my white table and its brightly colored puzzle pieces that came to my rescue whenever I faced a problem, the butter flying out of Sarah’s refrigerator in Madison when I wondered if there was more. Even the strange appearance of Ashmole 782 at the Bodleian Library could be explained: