That night I dreamt that I was the Woman in White of Raven Rock, haunting the lonely forests and waiting for my love to return. In the dream, I called out Ichabod’s name; called out “My love! Have you come for me?” just as the Woman in White had been heard to do, my despair growing with each unanswered call. I awoke in the early dawn light, my cheeks wet with fresh tears, and only the thought that Anneke would need feeding and changing propelled me from the comfort of my bed.
I must have looked nearly as frightful as the Woman in White, too, for as I came downstairs with Anneke to break my fast, Nancy took one look at me and asked, “You all right, Katrina?”
I smiled weakly. “As well as can be expected, Nancy. I did not sleep well last night.”
She took my chin in her hand, inspecting my face. “Hmmm. You look like you’ve been weeping.”
I met her gaze and didn’t bother to deny it. “Sometimes I am sad.”
“I can understand that,” she said at last, and turned away to fix us both some coffee.
After we ate, I dragged myself to my desk and recorded the techniques Charlotte had outlined the night before, and our unsuccessful results. I was just getting ready to take Anneke out into the garden when Charlotte arrived, announced by excited barking from Nox.
“I just wanted to see how you were feeling,” Charlotte said, stepping inside.
I shrugged. “As well as can be expected,” I said yet again.
“Well, that’s good enough, I suppose.”
“I want to try again, Charlotte,” I told her, cradling Anneke against my chest. “As soon as possible. I don’t want to stop, not until we have the truth. By whatever means necessary.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened at my forcefulness, but she nodded. “Very well. I understand. Come to my house tonight and we will try again.”
“Good. I will be there. And pray we have some success this time.”
* * *
“Why do you not ask the fire, or your mirror or what have you?” I demanded of Charlotte that night, when I saw nothing new—only those same images I had already seen. “Why can you not see the truth for me?”
“Visions are easier to come by when they relate to the seer directly,” she said. “And besides, do you not want to see it yourself? To find your answers yourself?”
“Yes,” I admitted, a touch of petulance in my tone.
“I thought as much. So we try again.”
* * *
Summer faded into autumn as Charlotte and I continued our quest. Our time together was somewhat limited; we preferred to have a house mostly to ourselves so as not to alert her mother or Nancy to our doings, and when Brom was home there was no question of us practicing such arts. God only knew what his reaction would be if he learned I was dabbling in witchcraft.
Perhaps a month into our endeavor, Charlotte was waiting for me one night at her cottage with a steaming mug of tea. “Here,” she said. “Drink this.”
I eyed it suspiciously. “What is it?”
“It’s brewed with herbs that are thought to heighten the sixth sense and bring on stronger visions,” she explained.
I started. “And you are just giving this to me now? Why have we not tried this before?”
Charlotte sighed. “I had hoped that you might succeed without it. Too much of this mixture can make you very sick, so it must be imbibed sparingly and only in very small doses. It becomes a bit more potent if you mix it into wine, but unfortunately we do not have any. And perhaps it is best to start with tea, in any case.”
“Well, I am certainly willing to try it,” I said. I took the cup from her, then hesitated. “Charlotte … who is to say these visions are real at all? That they are not just my own imagination? The dreams, everything … it could all be fantasy and illusion on my part.” I knew it was not the first time I had asked these questions, but after so many failed attempts, so many shadowy visions with nothing new, I no longer trusted my own mind.
“The human mind is a very powerful thing,” she conceded. “Too powerful, sometimes, for our own good. But it is also capable of things most people cannot imagine. Your dreams of the Horseman have meaning, Katrina; they are more than mere illusions or even nightmares. I think…” She trailed off. “I think that Ichabod’s disappearance is in some way connected to the Headless Horseman, but perhaps not in the way we think.”
“In what other way could it be connected?” I asked, incredulous. “I suppose the Horseman could have just ridden him off? Scared him away? But I cannot believe he would have been so scared that he would never return for me, nor send word.”
Charlotte shrugged. “I cannot say. It is just a feeling I have.”
I nodded in acknowledgement of all this, and without further comment drank the tea Charlotte had handed me, wincing at its bitter taste.
My heart thundered in anticipation that night, thinking these herbs would finally reveal all to me. While I was disappointed in that regard, I did manage to see something new.
“Gunpowder!” I called, and found myself thrust out of the vision again. I was breathing hard, across the table from Charlotte. “I saw Gunpowder! Ichabod’s horse!”
“Where was he? Did you see Ichabod as well? Riding him?”
I frowned. “He … he had a rider, but I could not see who it was. I assume it was Ichabod. And he was galloping through the forest, fast. That is all I saw.” I shook my head. “In all these visions, I always see the forest. But why? There would have been no need for Ichabod to ride through the forest that night. The Albany Post Road would have taken him straight home from my parents’ house. And if he decided to flee, well, there was even less reason to ride through the woods. The road would have taken him north to Albany, or south to New York.”
Charlotte shrugged. “He must have had a reason, for it seems certain that ride through the woods he did. Perhaps, as we’ve said, he went for a ride to clear his head. And either he decided to leave, or … something else befell him.”
I remained silent. I did not believe Ichabod would have taken a leisurely ride through the woods on All Hallows’ Eve of all nights, not after all the tales I’d told him, after the stories exchanged at the party that night. But for whatever reason, he had. That much we knew.
We kept it up as the months passed, and though I wanted to ask Charlotte for more herbs, I did not, nor did she offer them again. I heeded her warning about the danger of such a potion and let it alone for the time being.
I sought visions on my own as well, without Charlotte, and also tried to see in a mirror. But I had no luck. It seemed that Charlotte was right: the fire seemed to particularly wish to speak to me. Yet I only ever saw scraps of new sights—a different angle on Gunpowder, more hoof beats, and once I caught a glimpse of the church, standing dark and silent amid the tombstones of the burial ground.
All the while, I recorded everything in my book. Every attempt, whether success or failure, was written down.
As fall and the harvest wore on, we consulted the cards again one night, and afterward a part of me wished we had not. Somehow, Charlotte turned over the same three cards as the last time: The Devil, The High Priestess, and Death.
“Very strange,” she said. “I do not recall ever getting the exact same reading more than once.”
I stared dejectedly at the cards. “It is not telling us anything we do not already know,” I said. “We are no further ahead than we were months ago.”