Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

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.

“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:

When I filled out the call slip, I’d wondered what might be in the volume.

Earlier today my simple musings about who might have written one of the spells in Susanna’s grimoire had caused the ink to unspool from the page and re-form on the table next to it in an exact likeness of her dead grandmother.

I promised Susanna to put the words back as soon as I figured out how. And so I discovered that the practice of magic was not unlike the practice of history. The trick to both wasn’t finding the correct answers but formulating better questions.

“Tell us again about calling witchwater, Diana, and the bow and arrow that appear when someone you love is in trouble,” Susanna suggested. “Perhaps that will provide some method we can follow.”

I rehearsed the events of the night Matthew had left me at Sept-Tours when the water had come out of me in a flood and the morning in Sarah’s orchard when I’d seen the veins of water underground. And I carefully accounted for every time the bow had appeared—even when there was no arrow or when there was but I didn’t shoot it. When I finished, Catherine drew a satisfied sigh.

“I see the problem now. Diana is not fully present unless she is protecting someone or when forced to face her fears,” Catherine observed. “She is always puzzling over the past or wondering about the future. A witch must be entirely in the here and now to work magic.”

My firedrake flapped her wings in agreement, sending warm gusts of air around the room.

“Matthew always thought there was a connection between my emotions, my needs, and my magic,” I told them.

“Sometimes I wonder if that wearh is not part witch,” Catherine said.

The others laughed at the ridiculous notion of Ysabeau de Clermont’s son having even a drop of witch’s blood.

“I think it’s safe to leave the firedrake to her own devices for the time being and return to the matter of Diana’s disguising spell,” Goody Alsop said, referring to my need to shield the surfeit of energy that was released whenever I used magic. “Are you making any progress?”

“I felt wisps of smoke form around me,” I said hesitantly.

“You need to focus on your knots,” Goody Alsop said, looking pointedly at the cords in my lap. Each shade could be found in the threads that bound the worlds, and manipulating the cords—twisting and tying them—worked a sympathetic magic. But first I needed to know which strands to use. I took hold of the colorful cords by the topknot. Goody Alsop had taught me how to blow gently on the strands while focusing my intentions. That was supposed to loosen the appropriate cords for whatever spell I was trying to weave.