The Sevenfold Spell

by Tia Nevitt

  I didn’t know much about children, but I knew enough to soon realize that there was something odd about Rose. She learned to sing long before she learned to talk. The old women in and around Tallow’s End, my mother included, spoke of this as if it were a wonder. Children, they said, must learn to talk before they can sing. But with Rose, it was just the opposite. She did not talk; she sang. She put her childish requests and conversation to lovely melodies with effortless skill. And even when she finally began to speak, her voice had the lilt and a rhythm of song—and it didn’t quite sound right with speech.

  One day, Aunty Danty came to me in a panic.

  “Rose!” she said. “She’s gone!”

  Rose, at this time, was only five years old.

  I stood. “Where’s Allegro?”

  “Gone! To the market!”

  “You knock on the neighborhood doors, and I’ll check the children’s favorite play places.”

  Mother—who by now had grown quite fat—heaved herself out of her chair. “What can I do?”

  “Go sit in Aunty Danty’s doorway,” I said. “You can pass along messages as necessary.”

  And with that, I began rushing all over the neighborhood, checking gardens where indulgent fathers had constructed balance boards or swing-ropes. I checked the low walls that children loved to walk along and the drains that so often bore treasures with rushing floodwaters.

  And at a drain, I found her. It was in a low spot, intended to clear the streets of rainwater. It went for hundreds of feet underground, and from my own wanderings as a child, I knew it crisscrossed in several areas. It was currently dry, but one could easily get lost.

  “Go on,” one of the boys said. “We’ll meet you at the other side with a surprise.”

  “It is dark,” Rose said in that strange, stilted voice of hers.

  “It only looks dark because it’s so bright outside. Come on, Rose, don’t you want a surprise?”

  She nodded trustingly. “I love surprises.”

  “Then go. Don’t turn anywhere—just go straight.”

  Fury welled within me. I knew Rose wasn’t likely to remember that instruction. Once inside, panic would probably overset her altogether.

  “Stop!” I said.

  The children all turned to look at me. I was angry—angrier than I had ever been in my life.

  “We weren’t going to send her in alone,” one boy said. “We were going to follow her.”

  I glowered at him. “Go home before I tell your mother.”

  “She’ll never believe you. You’re Talia the Tart!”

  I made a move as if to swat him. The boys scattered, leaving me alone with Rose. She blinked at me in confusion.

  “I want the surprise.”

  I sighed. “There was no surprise, Rose. They were just trying to trick you.”

  She looked at me with her big blue eyes. “No surprise?”

  “No. It was a trick.”

  “I like tricks.”

  “Not this kind. This kind was mean.”

  She appeared to think about this for a moment. “Why is a surprise mean?”

  “No, I didn’t mean all surprises are mean. I meant the trick was mean. I don’t believe the boys had a surprise for you at all.”

  Tears welled up out of her eyes. “Why no surprise?”

  As I led her home, she continued to ask for her surprise. It was the most heartbreaking conversation of my life. I could not get her to understand the concept of a trick, or even of a lie. She persisted in believing that the boys had a surprise for her and that I had cheated her of it. My heart grew heavier and heavier.

  By the time we got home, we were both in tears. When she saw Aunty Danty, she broke away from me and threw herself into her aunt’s arms. Danty looked at me, bewildered.

  “Where’s your sister?” I asked.

  “Still out looking. Where did you find her?”

  “I need to talk to you and Allegro. I have something to tell you. I’ll come by after Rose’s bedtime.”

  ***

  Later that evening, I sat with Andante and Allegro and I broke their hearts.

  “I’m afraid we must admit it to ourselves,” I said. “There’s something very wrong with Rose.”

  “Wrong?” Allegro said. “She’s as healthy as a horse.”

  “Yes, but you must admit, she’s often…except for musical things…rather difficult to teach. And today, I couldn’t get her to understand that the boys were trying to trick her. At all.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “What are you trying to say?” Danty asked.

  I took a deep breath. “That Rose is simple.” It was the hardest sentence I ever had to utter.

  Silence.

  “But she’s a genius with music!” Allegro declared.

  “Yes, she is. And with the two of you in the house, I can see why. But for her own safety, you must see that what I’m telling you is true. You cannot permit her to run loose like the other children do. She must be watched constantly. Otherwise, someone will recognize her simple beauty and…and do something terrible to her.”

  Andante started crying, but Allegro got angry. “How dare you call our baby simpleminded!” she shouted. “Get out, you filthy strumpet! Get out!”

  I left without a word, hoping she did not mean it, hoping I would still be allowed to see little Rose. Three days later, much to my relief, Allegro came by the shop, with Rose.

  “I’m so sorry, Talia,” she said, her eyes on Rose as she promptly went to our display counter and stared at all the spools of thread. They were arranged by color, a rainbow of spools from one end to the other. “I didn’t want to believe you, but you are right.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I would have hated hearing something like that.”

  “I should never have called you such a thing. You have only been good to our Rose.”

  “May I…” I stopped.

  “May you what?”

  “May I be permitted to give her something? To make it up to her?”

  “You never have to ask, Talia.”

  I went to the cellar and opened my old toy chest. Many years ago, before my father had sailed away and never returned, the chest had been full. Now, only a few treasured items remained. One of them was a stocking doll, stuffed with unspun wool, with a stitched face and yarn for hair. I took it upstairs. Rose turned to look at me as I came into view, and her eyes lit up at the sight of the doll.

  “Look, Rose,” I said as I knelt beside her. “It’s for you.”

  She looked up at me, and then she shyly reached out, as if it were a real person. I placed it in her arms, and she hugged it tightly. “It’s a surprise,” she said, her eyes lingering on the stairs.

  “Yes. A surprise for you.”

  ***

  Not a week later, Rose got lost again. Again, we stationed my mother inside their doorway, and we looked for her for long hours. Finally, at sunset, I came back home to fetch a lantern.

  I heard a sound in the cellar.

  I crept downstairs and looked around. Rose was there. My toy chest sat wide-open, but she had found something even more interesting. She looked up at me and gave me a brilliant smile as she spun the wheel of the spinning wheel.

  “Look!” she said.

  “Rose, come here,” I said. “Your godmothers are—”

  “You have a spinning wheel?” another voice asked.

  I spun around and looked at Andante, whom I had not realized had followed me. The look in her eyes I’ll never forget—it was as if I had betrayed her in the cruelest way possible.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but I could not. I was astonished that they didn’t know about the wheel. It was an open secret on the entire street.

  She rushed by me faster that I thought possible, snatched Rose away from the wheel and spun around to stare at me.

  “How could you!”

  “It’s…my mother, she—”

  But Danty was already leaving. She brushed by m
e without another word.

  The next day, they were gone. And my heart was broken once again.

  ***

  In my loneliness after the loss of Rose, I decided to find another lover. Mother was poor company, I had no friends and my experience with Caleb had taught me that even a plain woman can seduce a man, especially one as well-built as me. Under my clothes, I had a body any woman could envy. My legs were slim, hips wide, my waist narrow. My stomach, which had never borne children, was flat and shapely, and my breasts, which had never suckled a babe, were round and pert. I arranged my clothes so they highlighted all my best parts, and put an ever-so-slight shimmy to my walk. And it worked.

  One evening a few months after Rose’s departure, I dressed with care and ventured into Widow Harla’s tavern. A neighbor’s visiting cousin had caught my eye, and I went with the hope of his stopping by during the course of the evening. I took a table in the middle of the room. Harla came over to me.

  “I haven’t seen you in this tavern since it opened,” she said.

  “Mother retires so early each night,” I said. “I get lonely for company.”

  She leaned in close. “I bet that’s not the only thing you get lonely for, is it?”

  I looked at her in surprise. Her voice had a saucy lilt, and her eyes danced.

  She moved away while she took care of some other customers. I watched her closely as I speculated. I realized that she was younger than I thought. Surely she was not yet fifty. Several things I always wondered about her fell into place. By the time she came around to refill my mug of ale, I had some questions ready.

  “Are there any brewers in your family, Harla?”

  She glanced at me. “No, I’m the first.”

  “Hmm. Is brewing an easy art to learn?”

  “Not at all. It’s much like alchemy.”

  “I recollect that there used to be a brewer who lived on this street.”

  “’It’s true. He was getting frail, so he went to live with his son.”

  “Is his son a brewer?”

  “No. He was too dense to learn the art.”

  “Was the brewer the one who taught you?”

  “As a matter of fact, he was.”

  I studied her. “If I were to learn the art of brewing, how would I obtain such a master?”

  She studied me back for long moments. “Why, much the same way you learned the art of carpentry, I suppose.”

  And she walked off. I knew her secrets now, which was only fair, because she knew ours.

  I was eyeing the visiting cousin when she came back by. She sat at the table next to me. “I have a suggestion,” she said.

  I looked at her without comment.

  “When you want companionship and friendship, come on by and I’ll be glad to give you plenty of both.” I blinked at her in surprise. “But if you’re looking for…something else, go to a tavern far away from Tallow’s End, where you aren’t known, and your mother isn’t known.”

  Shame flushed my face. “You’re right,” I said after a moment. “I have been heedless of my mother’s feelings.”

  “I know she’s harsh. But she does love you. Why else would she not have turned you out years ago?”

  I looked at her, stricken, remembering the conversation I’d had with Mother after I had mortified her in the churchyard. Tears flooded my eyes, and I dropped my head in my arms and wept.

  “There, now.” she said, patting me on the back. “I know how it is. The life of a spinster is a lonely one. Watching other women marry around you, watching them have children, and then watching them become dissatisfied with their husbands. At least I had a husband to get me through for a few years.”

  “Sometimes I just want to die.”

  “But you can’t. You have a purpose, like we all do. You can come by here when you need someone to talk to. And I won’t ever pass judgment upon you.”

  And that’s how Harla and I became friends. It was an unexpected friendship, but one I needed. I went to her tavern at least twice a week where I drank lightly, but laughed heartily. I would go in the early evenings and sit on a stool at her bar in the corner, and there we would whisper and giggle about men.

  “Did I ever tell you about the night Willard didn’t show up at the barn?” I asked her once.

  “I bet that didn’t sit well with you,” she said with a cackle.

  “Lord, no. I waited for him all night, but when the cock crowed, I left. I didn’t want to be sport for his brothers again, you see.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I waited for him at the edge of town. I knew he would be alone, because selling the produce in town was his job as the oldest son, now that his older brother was married.”

  “What did he do when he saw you?”

  “Believe me, he was surprised to see me. I said to him, ‘Let’s find a place.’ ‘Out here?’ he asked, and I swear his voice squeaked with shock. I told him that I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting until that night. And then…”

  I paused, lost in the memory.

  “And then?” Harla prompted.

  “He kissed me. It was as passionate a kiss as any girl could wish for.” I stopped and sighed. “And then, he pulled the cart into an alley—”

  “You’re jesting!”

  “—and he took me as I bent over the edge of the wagon.”

  Harla busted out laughing. “That couldn’t have been comfortable.”

  “You might be surprised,” I said. I remembered well that early morn. I had leaned on the hay on my forearms, my back arched like a cat to receive him, his hands clenching my hips. Our position was unmistakable, and I wondered every moment if we would get caught. “We were doing pretty good right up until a basket of apples upended all over me.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, and then we shrieked with laughter.

  “That put an end to that encounter,” I said through my laughter. “But to this day, I can’t eat an apple without thinking of that morning.”

  ***

  My love affairs were brief and my lovers were many. A merchant. A drover. A tax collector. All were advantageous to me in one way or another. None were true to me. All eventually discarded me for someone else. I began to think that taking lovers was not worth the heartache afterward.

  However, it was difficult to help myself. I have known two types of spinsters. The straight, starched sort, who might as well be nuns, and the strumpet. I had a passionate nature, and self-abuse only worked so long.

  With my neighborhood off-limits, I haunted the taverns near the center of town. I decided to use the men as they used me. We’d begin by flirting, then dandle for a few weeks, and then move on when the newness faded. I did have a few favorites, but I allowed none to touch my heart. I helped a few of the younger, more insecure men gain some experience before their marriages. And I kept the widowers warm on cold nights.

  My infrequent confessions went something like this:

  “I have not been chaste, as a maiden ought,” I would say to the priest.

  “With whom have you not been chaste?”

  “A butcher. A baker. A candlestick maker.”

  “And are you sorry for these sins?”

  “No, I can’t say that I am.”

  “Then until you are, your soul will bear its burden.”

  The local bachelors talked about me, I know. They traded stories—but they always went happily to my bed. To the aisle? Never.

  I spoke of it to Harla, sometimes. “I would make a good wife,” I said.

  “I’ve no doubt of that,” she said.

  “I’m ready to be faithful to a good man who would have me,” I said. “I would devote myself to him and his children.”

  “You’re thinking of Willard.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you love him, then?”

  “I didn’t think of it as love. There wasn’t any time to think of anything but having him.”

  “We all thought you went mad for him.”

>   “I did. I wanted his child.”

  She looked at me in shock. “Out of wedlock?”

  “I couldn’t have him, so I wanted a piece of him.”

  “Then, you really did love him.”

  I didn’t reply, but I did wonder about that. Why did I offer myself to him? Although to lie with him had been my own choice, it would have never been a choice I would have made had we been able to marry. I thought of the child I had wanted so badly, of little Aurora who was never conceived. She would be coming on her menses about now, had she been born. More often, I thought of Willard. Eventually, I realized that I had loved him, just like Harla said. It was the only explanation that made any sense.

  And it was the only explanation that accounted for my odd taste in men. I was picky, in my own way. I looked for the men so often rejected by other women: the too thin, the too chubby, the too pocked, the too graying. But I also looked for shyness, for awkwardness, for the socially inept. Was I looking for another Willard? Perhaps. I never found one, but I did find some men who stayed with me for lengths of time that measures in months rather than weeks. One even stayed with me for over a year.

  Only one was handsome.

  Chapter Six

  Andrew

  I met him, of all places, in church.

  I typically crept into the church during odd hours, as sinners are wont to do. Before dawn, during dinner, after the pubs closed. I would slip into a pew in the very back alcove and pray in the most unobtrusive spot I could find.

  It was no wonder that he never saw me. He stalked up to the altar in the manner of a hypocrite—or of one who has few sins to hide. There, he swept back his cape and started yelling at God.

  “Why, Lord?” he cried. “Why create a girl who can never be a woman? Why make her so wonderful? Am I, too, the victim of a spell? Or do you send the devil to torment us all?”

  He fell silent. I wonder if, perhaps, he was getting his answer from God.

  His next words I would not have heard at all if the church had not been designed to carry sounds so well. “Why make me love her when I can never have her?”

  And then he collapsed into a pew and wept. His cape fell about him so he only appeared as a shadow.