THE LINIMENT TURNED OUT a bit runnier than Jane had expected, but she thought she could make it work. If it didn’t set over the following hours, Jane could just use a brush to paint it all over the broom. It might even work a bit better that way, in the end.
Regardless, she would need to wait before using it. There was dinner to prepare, and the chores she’d put off in favor of work of a different kind. That was for the best, though. While it might already be dark, given the season, Jane wasn’t inclined to make her first flying attempt when anyone might still be awake.
If she was successful, of course. An enormous “if,” admittedly—but at the same time, Jane was feeling fairly confident. And she had a hunch that Smudge would have done something, interfered in some way, were she completely at angles to the solution. After all, his purpose was to assist her, and he had proven himself not only capable but eager to do so.
Dinner was a rushed affair—a savory cake made with grated winter vegetables. It hadn’t turned out too badly, Jane thought. Once again Miriam said she would handle all the clean-up, and Jane made them a cup of Bovril as she did.
“Will you take this one to my mother?” she asked. “I assume you’re headed down . . .”
Miriam nodded. “I will. And thank you. I’ve been a little under the weather recently. This should perk me right up.”
Her own steaming mug in hand, Jane went upstairs, where she set to applying layers of salve to the broom with the cleanest of the paintbrushes she’d found in an old coffee can in the shed. The moment she touched bristle to wood, she knew something would happen that night. She was cheered by that familiar effervescent sensation—it happened sometimes, for no reason any diabolist had ever adequately explained—but that night she was especially thrilled to feel the energy that seemed to come from changing the natural via extra-natural means.
The salve was absorbed by the wood with unnerving quickness—by the time Jane painted the final twig, the handle was dry. Dry, but not lighter than air. She glared at the broom as it lay heavily in her hands. She hadn’t been sure what success would look like, if she managed to achieve it, but she had reasonably assumed she’d be able to perceive some change.
She’d failed. Whatever she’d done to the broom, it wasn’t going to fly.
She looked to Smudge. The cat sat on the bed, blinking inscrutably at her.
Jane uttered a wordless, guttural exclamation of frustration as she hurled the offending object across the room. She stalked to her bed and flung herself down upon it in a rage of disappointment and anger, sending Smudge jumping out of her way.
“Meow.”
Jane went completely still. Someone was in the room with her—someone who had just said the word meow, as if imitating a cat. It was a moment or two before her heart slowed enough for her to be able to sit up and peer over the edge of her bed.
There was only Smudge, and he was sitting beneath her broom. Beneath it, because it was hanging there, right where Jane had thrown it, about three feet off the ground.
Smudge looked even more pleased with himself than usual.
Jane had eyes only for the broom. It was unsettling but also enthralling to behold, but Jane’s attention was drawn away from this miracle in part because she was also very concerned about the cat. If indeed it was a cat that sat there, purring happily, almost seeming to smile, his tail lashing back and forth across the floor.
He said, “Meow,” again, like a human would when talking to a cat, before jumping up to sit on the bit of the broom where the bristles were tied to the shaft.
It felt like an invitation. Jane took it. Climbing aboard, her skirt tucked up to guard her thighs against splinters, she felt both exhilarated and a bit embarrassed—like a child caught playing make-believe.
She could still stand on her tiptoes astride the broom, and did so for a few moments while working up the courage to lift her feet. Jane wobbled, and then corrected—the required balance was just like and yet nothing like a bicycle’s. She lifted one foot, then the other, and then hung there for a few moments before clambering off the broom. Once again her legs failed her and she sank onto her bed.
Smudge hadn’t moved. He looked back at her in silence, his long tail now swishing from side to side in the empty air beneath the broom.
“I did it,” said Jane, and then it occurred to her that she hadn’t, not really.
She’d created a potion of levitation, not of flying.
There were plenty of armamentaria out there for levitation, and some of them less baroque and more efficient than what she’d done.
Jane said a bad word.
The demon Quetzalcóatl’s Blood gave its host the power of flight. Real flight, like Peter Pan, with control of velocity, attitude, and so on. It also, however, gave its host an insatiable lust for human flesh, so it was on the “Not to Be Summoned” list. Thankfully, one of the Société’s official Botanists cultivated a coffee bush in her garden that had been discovered in the possession of a wild diabolist. Jane had wheedled three small coffee beans out of her, but had been told in no uncertain terms that that was all she would get.
She’d used two and a half to make the salve.
Jane pushed down on the broom. It wouldn’t budge. Then she picked it up and placed it somewhere else. There it stuck.
While that was an admittedly neat trick, it wasn’t flight.
Smudge stood. Stalking over to where her hand lay upon the wood, he put his paw on her hand.
That time, the broom moved down a bit from the pressure of her hand. Down—and then up, as she willed it.
She had done it. She’d figured out how to fly, but she needed Smudge to do it. The cat was the connection she needed to pilot the broom. And that meant the only way to prove that she’d done what she set out to do was to reveal her own unforgivable crime.
Jane laughed aloud. It sounded hysterical, even to her own ears, and it snapped her back to her current situation. She had just figured out how to fly on her very own broomstick, and instead of going for her first flight, she was sitting in her room thinking about how to present her success to others! Surely she’d have plenty of time to come up with something.
As for her first flight, there really was no time like the present.
A knock at her door startled Jane. Smudge sprang off the broom and hid under the bed; the connection broken, Jane had to manually set the broom down before she answered the door.
It was Miriam. She looked unhappy.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jane. Had Miriam heard her laughing?
“It’s Nancy,” she said. “I’m worried about her.”
“Did something happen?”
Miriam shrugged. “She didn’t drink the Bovril.”
Jane sensed Miriam was worried about more than just the Bovril.
“I’ve never seen her like this before,” said Miriam.
“I know. I’ve seen her become absorbed in her work before but haven’t seen her losing herself in it like this.”
“Except she’s not doing work,” said Miriam. “I don’t know what she’s doing, but it’s not anything to do with the Library. That stack of slips is only growing thicker by the day.”
Jane hadn’t noticed, but that was indeed highly irregular.
“Maybe it’s to do with the war?”
Edith was a spy; perhaps Nancy, too, was involved with some sort of clandestine effort. If it was something that important, it might make her less inclined to regulate her time in the Library, or even eat and sleep.
“Maybe,” said Miriam. She didn’t seem convinced. “But at the same time, it’s not like her to just not tell us things.”
The two of them still stood—Jane inside the room, Miriam in the hall—with the door ajar just enough for conversation. Jane pointedly hadn’t invited Miriam in; she respected Miriam’s concerns, and shared them—now just wasn’t the time, what with Smudge under the bed and the broom out in the open in her room.
“She’s just been so very odd,” said Miriam. “She never moves from her desk. It’s after eleven now and she’s not taken a break. But she doesn’t seem like she’s doing anything!” Miriam seemed close to tears. “Her desk is overflowing, Jane. I can’t imagine this can go on much longer. What if someone really needs a book?”
“I’m sure everything’s fine,” said Jane, though that was not at all true.
On impulse, Jane gave her friend a big hug. Miriam looked utterly miserable. She was really worried—and had been for a while, Jane realized.
Miriam pulled back to dash tears from her eyes. “She just seems so different suddenly. I . . . I miss her.”
It occurred to Jane that she didn’t, not really, except in little sentimental bursts here and there. She had learned it was better not to act on and, if she could help it, not to notice what feelings she had toward Nancy.
“It’ll be all right,” said Jane, because it was what one said.
“Do you think we should write to—”
“No!”
Miriam looked confused. Jane blushed. It seemed Miriam hadn’t meant her father.
“Oh,” said Miriam. “I meant Edith might know what we should do.”
“You’re right,” said Jane. “If things get worse, we’ll tell Edith.”
Miriam relaxed enough to smile. “I’m glad I can always count on you to keep a cool head.”
Jane certainly did not know what to say to that, so they stood in awkward silence for a moment. Then Miriam looked down the hall at her door. “I suppose I’ll be going, then.”
“Good night,” said Jane.
Miriam looked surprised, but Jane didn’t relent. It wasn’t her fault that the night Miriam wanted her company was the one night she couldn’t give it to her.
“It’s late,” said Miriam. “But I suppose we’ve both been putting in more late nights than usual.”
“Maybe not for too much longer, for me,” said Jane. She was surprised at herself after she said it. She saw Miriam was, too. It was not like Jane to brag, and they both knew it.
“Oh!” said Miriam. “Congratulations!”
“No—not yet. I mean, I haven’t—” She stopped speaking when she saw Miriam crumpling before her eyes.
“I’ll leave you to it,” said Miriam. “I know how much you want to get out of here.”
Jane startled. How could Miriam know what she was up to? Then it hit her—Miriam was talking about Jane finishing her Practical and seeking out an internship, not her imminent flight.
“That’s not—”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” said Miriam, looking as miserable as Jane had ever seen her. “Good night, Jane.” And with that, she disappeared down the hall.
“Good night,” said Jane, though Miriam was out of earshot, and shut the door behind herself.
After a moment, Smudge poked his head out from under the bed.
“It’s time to leave all this behind,” muttered Jane.
The cat nodded in approval.
AFTER WEIGHING THE RISK OF going out the window against that of sneaking down to the back door, Jane elected to use the door. She could explain away sneaking outside, broom in hand—probably—but she couldn’t really explain why she’d fallen from her window and broken her leg if things didn’t go according to plan.
It was a cold night, even though Jane had bundled up with a coat and hat and scarf and mittens and two layers of woolen stockings. As Jane nipped over the frozen lawn for the deeper darkness of the stand of trees beyond the barn, she mentally scolded herself for failing to think through everything, including how cold it would likely be when flying. Next time she would brew up a Winter Warmer, an easy and useful potion that apprentice diabolists were universally assigned because it used the First Transmutation. She could shed a few layers that way, at least—or even go sky-clad, if she liked.
We’re not witches, Jane.
The voice in Jane’s mind was always her mother’s.
“Speak for yourself,” she murmured. “Well, Smudge, what do you say? Just a short flight, to test it out?”
Smudge jumped up on the broom with the same uncanny nimbleness as before. The way his paws seemed to stick to the handle was almost spiderlike.
“Meow,” he said.
Jane climbed up behind him, so that he could perch between her knees. When he put his paw on her hand, at her will, the broom rose a few inches in the air.
Her feet were no longer on the ground, and it was even more exhilarating than Jane had dared imagine. She was flying! It was astonishing, but it was true.
Her heart said onward, and the broom followed her will almost before her mind agreed with it.
After a few hair-raising wobbles and one tumble, they were skimming their way over the miles of moonlight-silvered hills and hollows surrounding the outskirts of Hawkshead. At first, Jane was disinclined to fly more than a few feet off the ground, but after she caught the trick of it, she grew bolder. She took them up to a heart-pounding height to see the slowly thawing countryside rolling out beneath them like a map, circling the quaint brick house that belonged to their closest neighbor, Mrs. Fielding, then speeding her way toward the town just to see what it was like to race along familiar paths without worrying about stubbing a toe or slipping in sheep droppings. She spied a raven as it winged its way through the night sky on some errand, and two deer leaped from behind the tree line into the moonlight only to bound back into the safety of the wood when Jane swooped near.
From the air, Hawkshead looked dark and solemn. Only a few lights burned this late in the night—or was it early in the morning? She’d lost track of time, just like she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, especially not knowing how long the salve would last.
It was worth it.
She heard the clock tower strike midnight, the twelve peals ringing out across the village like thunderclaps. As they sounded, Jane spiraled up on her broom to survey the village from on high. The witching hour, of course!
That’s when Jane saw a flurry of motion from just beyond the wall of the churchyard, two figures racing across a sheep field, away from town.
Jane panicked for a moment. She knew how exposed she was on this clear a night, hanging like a low cloud over the town. She didn’t know if staying put or moving was the right choice, but the two people were facing away from her, and they were clearly intent on their own concerns.
Jane knew this was a perfect opportunity to escape, to go home, but her curiosity got the better of her. She wanted to know who was racing away from the churchyard at midnight—and why. She slowly circled back down to the ground, like a vulture on a downdraft, and then crept silently closer.
It was a man and a woman, Jane saw, and her stomach felt queasy as she intuited what they were about. A clandestine tête-à-tête was the least interesting thing two people could be up to in the middle of the night—in her opinion at least.
But something about the man’s posture—or maybe it was his hair—caught Jane’s eye. Her heart fluttered as she stared.
Apparently, Sam was a bit of a lad—taking one girl off to do unknown but certainly unsupervised things together, only to then lure another out into the lonely night not long after!
The lovers were still unaware of Jane where she hovered, peering through the spreading branches of an ancient oak. Blissfully unaware, even—before they ducked into a copse of alders, they paused to kiss and giggle; Sam pinched the girl’s bottom as they fled into the privacy of the shadows. Her squeal made Jane startle, it was so piercing in the otherwise silent night, but she kept ahold of her broom.
She was not tempted to investigate further. It was true that a man and a woman might have business together other than the romantic, even at midnight, alone, on a cold early March night, but when bottom-pinching was given and appreciated, it didn’t take a genius to perceive their intentions.
Jane briefly toyed with the idea of playing a prank on the happy couple—even just sending Smudge to interrupt their trysting would work. But as Jane formulated a plan in her mind, the broom dropped a few inches.
Oh no, she thought.
She hadn’t brought more of the salve. It was time to go.
She made it about halfway back home before the broom gave up and sent her tumbling to the earth, but thankfully she’d thought things through and was skimming over the empty fields only a foot or so above the ground itself. She didn’t even twist an ankle when she took her spill.
Smudge, on the other hand, landed nimbly.
As she trudged back to the farmhouse, it finally hit Jane what she’d done. She’d flown, and it had been incredible. She couldn’t wait to try it again. It had been the most amazing, exhilarating experience of her life, perfect in every way.
Maybe not in every way. As Jane approached the farmhouse, she saw a light was on in Miriam’s window. Seeing Sam’s infidelity had been a blemish, that was true. And come to think of it, so had been the revelation that she would never be able to share her success with anyone. At least not the full measure of it.
No one would ever know what she’d achieved. It would do nothing to protect her from the scrutiny of her peers.
But then again, maybe that didn’t matter. After all, if they came for her, she could always just fly away.
“Just you and me, eh?” said Jane affectionately, reaching down to scratch the cat behind the ears. That’s when she noticed his bell had yet again fallen off. Perhaps it had been during their hard landing. “We’ll get you a new one tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Meow,” said Smudge.