When cockle shells turn silver bells
Then will my love come back to me
When roses bloom in winter’s gloom
Then will my love return to me.
—“The Water is Wide,” Traditional Folk Song
Do you know what it is to be lonely? Truly alone, even amidst a crowd? Even in a family? Perhaps if my mother had been a witch like me with powers of her own, she would have taken me under her wing and guided me on my singular path. But she did not, and I was left to discover what made me different on my own, stumbling and groping along.
I was not a stupid child; I knew that it was not normal for a girl to be able to call on spirits or send birds to do her bidding. Water should not shimmer with messages from beyond the veil. But it did mean that I was apart, different from other children my own age. How could I play at silly games, knowing that the trees speak a different language and will sing in the wind? How could I care about tea parties and town functions when the moon beckoned me to learn the secrets of the sea?
My childhood was uneventful, at least, if not quite normal. Witches are born, yes, but they are also made. Their powers are forged while communing with nature, their sight honed by waking dreams at night. I suppose I always carried my powers within me, but it was not until I was old enough to see the world for what it was that I truly came into my own.
One day—I could not have been much older than eight or so—I was watching the boats come in from the harbor when a fisherman returned with a dolphin that had gotten caught in his net and died. Sun glistened off its pearly skin, its black eyes little more than indifferent slits as it was carried down the dock. There was always a crowd of curious children and idle drunkards on the pier, and at the sight of the dolphin, there was a ripple of excitement. A tall woman with dark brown skin and a purple turban wound round her hair caught my eye from across the crowd, held it for a moment as if she could discern my thoughts, and then turned her attention back to the dolphin.
But it was not the spectacle that drew me in; I wanted to know to where had the spirit of that great animal flown. Why could it not swim and play anymore? If the flesh was too far gone, could another vessel still support an ember of life? I had heard of men, who, in years past, had tried to bring back the dead. They were known as the Resurrection Men, and they had stolen bodies right out of the cemeteries and brought them to laboratories where they had tried to reanimate them. I may have only been a little girl, but even I understood where they had gone wrong. A body, once dead and decaying, could not support life. A soul, on the other hand, needed only an abode in which to take root and flourish.
I pondered this truth many times over the coming years, but my interest in magic was not limited to just this question. Life and death, omnipresent and vast as they are, are best understood through the tiny details, the intricacies of the natural world. If one of my brothers suffered a scrape or bruise, I was fascinated by the pinpricks of blood that emerged from the skin. If I came upon a bird with an injured wing, I was quick to examine the fine, crooked bones. When I awoke one morning to sticky thighs and sheets stained with rusty blood, I was not frightened, only curious and awestruck that my body was capable of such a miracle. Where my mother taught me that a woman’s body was something to be tamed and laced into submission, I celebrated the generous sea swells of my thighs and breasts, reveled in the crimson blood that flowed from me every month, as steady as the phases of the moon.
Every sunrise, every drop of rain was a paradigm of magic, proof of a miraculous world. I was particularly drawn to the herb garden that our housemaid Molly kept, and I would often pinch off budding rosemary and thyme, rubbing the fragrant stems between my fingers. “Mind you don’t eat that,” Molly told me one morning as I was helping her gather elderberries for tea. “It will give you a bellyache and sweats if it isn’t prepared properly.” I studied the innocuous plant, its tiny red berries so simple, yet so mysterious. How was it possible that the same plant that made such a comforting tea could also be deadly? I badgered Molly to tell me all she knew of plants and herbs, and when her patience and knowledge was exhausted, I turned to botanical encyclopedias procured for me by my brother George. But beyond the Latin names and taxonomic tables, a deep intuition guided my explorations. The plants sung to me in a language I had never heard, yet somehow understood. They told me secrets, things that no book would ever dare have printed in black and white: how to cure heartaches, and how to cause them. How to measure one’s monthly courses against the waxing and waning of the moon. How to get with child, and how to stop one already in your belly from growing. My curiosity had no limits, and soon I was wading ever farther out into the vast ocean of forbidden knowledge.
My unusual abilities might have gone unnoticed had I not chanced across a man and a woman one day when I was deep in the woods collecting wild strawberries. I watched from behind a tree as the man pressed himself against the woman, despite her pleas. He was big and burly, and easily overpowered her. My blood grew hot as I watched. Why did men get to take whatever they wanted, just because they were bigger, stronger? Why did the poor woman’s feelings not matter at all? I burned with rage. Would I be submitted to the same injustices when I was a grown woman? Was I destined for a life of subservience and violence?
Although I did not know what I was going to do, I could not sit idly by. Stepping out from behind the tree, I slowly walked toward the man, my hand outstretched, my fingers trembling. I was almost upon them when the man turned and caught sight of me. He sneered over his shoulder. “Run along, missy, unless you want a turn next.”
But I did not turn and run. Calming myself, I focused all my anger, my disgust, until my fingers tingled with energy. My powers had only strengthened over the years, and I had been waiting for such a time as this to use them. Words came bubbling out of me, water from some long-untapped well.
With a cry, the man went reeling backward as if yanked by some invisible rope, landing hard on his backside. We stared at each other, us three, as clouds scudded across the sky, the wind tugging at the leaves above us. The air had gone very quiet, even the birds pausing in their song.
The man was the first to react, running and nearly tripping on a root as he shot one last look of horror back at me over his shoulder.
When the last of his crashing footsteps in the brush had faded, I addressed the wide-eyed woman. “If you find yourself with child, come see me and I will help you.”
I’m not sure if she was more frightened of her ordeal, or of what she had just witnessed. She regarded me with terror, disbelief. I offered her a smile, but she did not return it, or even thank me. Instead, she took off running in the opposite direction.
Soon, word spread that the Harlowe girl possessed uncanny powers and the ability to offer remedies that the town’s male physician would not, and women began making their way to my cabin in the woods. I did not ask for money in return for my services. I had money aplenty from my parents, and wanted for nothing. Instead, I collected secrets and gossip, stories from my customers. I knew which women found pleasure outside of their marital beds, and which men were impotent. I knew who had debts, and who hoarded their wealth. I knew that Delia Fisk’s husband beat her, and that she still loved him and only wanted his affection. When she came to me asking for a love potion, I made sure to slip something in it so that he would suffer from digestive pains. It was not for myself that I wanted these secrets, but because I wanted a record of the events that transpired in the lives of those around me. In the eyes of society, Delia Fisk’s husband was an upstanding, generous man who gave money to the local foundling home; who would know that behind closed doors he was a monster? He suffered no consequences, no punishment for his ill treatment of the woman who loved him. It was a rare thing for a man to be brought to justice for abuse of his wife, as men tend to band together, to protect one another. I collected these secrets and wrote them down so that somewhere in this universe, there would exist a sliver of justice for these women.