Incantation

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

CHAPTER 1

SOUL

Be careful

Ashes

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice thechanges that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you lookaround and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.

My name once meant daughter, granddaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Nowthose words mean only what their letters spell out: Star in the night sky. Truthin the darkness.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone Iwould have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me.Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

We lived in a tiny village in Spain. It is gone now, but then it was calledEncaleflora, the name of the lime flower, something bitter and something sweetmixed into one. It was a town that had been my family's home for more than fivehundred years, a beautiful village in the most beautiful countryside in all ofAragon.

It began on a hot day.

I was out in the garden when I smelled something burning. Not lime flowers, onlypure bitterness. Cores, rinds, pits. That was the way it started. That was theway our world disappeared.

On the day of the burning, my dearest friend, Catalina, ran into our yard andgrabbed my hand, urging me to follow her.

Let's run to the Plaza, Catalina said. Let's see what's on fire.

Catalina was always curious, always fun. She had a laugh that reminded me of thesound of water. She was shorter than I, but even though my grandmother saidCatalina's hair was too curly and her nose was bumpy, I thought we looked likesisters.

Catalina and I were so close nothing could come between us. We had been bestfriends from the time we were babies. When I looked at my friend I saw not onlythe child she'd been and the girl that she was, but also the woman she was aboutto be. Other girls I knew talked behind your back and smiled at you falsely. NotCatalina. She knew who I was deep inside: I could be lazy sometimes; I believedin true love; I was head-strong and loyal, a friend until the end of time.

Because of our jet-colored hair, Catalina and I had been given similar pet namesas little girls. I had been called Raven and Catalina had been Crow. Ourbirthdays were one week apart, and we had at last turned sixteen. We thoughtabout our futures, how they twined around each other, as if we were two strandsof a single braid of fate. Even when we were married women, we planned to livenext door to each other. We thought we knew exactly what our lives were made of:still water, not a moving river.

We thought nothing would ever change.

On the burning day, we raced down to the Plaza, where we always went to fetchwater. There was a well in the center of the Plaza, and the water we pulled upin wooden buckets was said to come from heaven. It was sweet and clear and socold it made us shiver.

To the north stood the old Duke's palace, but he was gone, and our churchcouncil reported directly to the king, Ferdinand. The palace was empty, exceptfor the soldiers' barracks and the center where letters could be posted. Peoplesaid the ghost of the Duke came down to drink cold, clear water on windy nightsand that you could hear him if you listened carefully. But today no one wasdrawing water from the well, not even a ghost. There were scores of men allaround, but they hadn't come for water. Soldiers had built a pyre out of agedwood. Pine and old forest oak, all of it so dry it burst into flames the momenta lit torch touched the wood.

At first I thought the soldiers were burning doves. White things were risinginto the sky. I felt so sad for those poor burning birds, then I realized theburning pile was made of books. Pages flew upward, disappearing, turning toembers and ash, drifting into nothingness.

I saw a man with a red circle on his coat, crying. He had a long beard like mygrandfather, but my grandfather would never cry, with tears streaming down hisbeard, there for all to see. The crying man was begging the soldiers not tothrow his books on the fire, and they were laughing at him. A guard took ahandful of ashes and tossed them onto the old man so that sparks flared all overhis coat.

He's from the alajama, Catalina whispered about the old man.

That was the part of town where Jews lived that some called the juderia.Our parents didn't allow us to go there. We were Christians. A hundred yearsbeforehand most of the Jews in Spain had either been forced to convert or fleethe country. The stubborn ones who remained and declared themselves to be Jewswere the ones who lived behind gates–the red circle people who seemedwilling to do anything, even die, for their precious books; people who by lawcould not own land, marry outside their faith, eat a meal with a Christian.

There were cinders floating down into Catalina's black hair. She didn't notice,so I brushed them away.

Those are his books, Catalina said of the old man in the ashes. Thetown council has posted a new decree. No Jewish books, no medical books, nomagic books.

I saw the way the soldiers treated this man. As if he were a bird caught in asnare made of his own bones. His coat had caught on fire, but he no longercried. I think he may have looked at me. I think I may have looked back.

Catalina applauded with the other onlookers in the square when a soldier threw abucket of cold water over the old man. I merely stood there.

My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. Whenour days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden. My mother hadput a finger to her lips when she told me this. She taught me some of what she'dlearned from her father, secret things I must never repeat. Lessons that soundedas though they would be easy, but which turned out to be difficult. How to lookat stars and know their names. How to gaze into a bowl of water until it waspossible to see all that existed in that one small bowl.

Once I fell asleep while gazing, and my mother laughed when I awoke with astart, my chin in the water.

I'm not smart enough to learn anything, I had admitted.

You don't learn such things, my mother had said. You feel them.

Now my mother saw me with Catalina in the Plaza. She looked shocked to see us inthe middle of the rioting, in a place we shouldn't be.

My mother had a basket of wool with her; she had been to the dye vats near theriver, and her arms were tinted from her work. My mother was known for the yarnshe sold. Whatever Abra did was beautiful; she had the ability to make somethingwondrous out of something plain. That was her talent, one I envied. Any woolspun at her wheel was finer than all the rest, even though our sheep were assilly as any others.

Sometimes I went with my mother when she called on her clients, carrying abasket of yarn that was dyed every shade of blue imaginable. Turquoise, aqua,night blue, ultramarine, bird's egg blue, early morning blue, inside-of-a-cloudblue, pond blue, river blue, blue as all eternity. My mother's hands were alwaysblue, sometimes like water, sometimes like the sky, sometimes like the colors ofa bird's feathers.

There in the Plaza, my mother was like a piece of the sky coming right at me. Aperson should never come face-to-face with the sky. She looked as frightening asmy grandmother did when she was angry. Fierce. Unrelenting. She ran over andgrabbed me. There must have been sparks in my hair as there had been inCatalina's, because my mother put her hands in my hair. She clasped my head sohard that it hurt.

My mother and I had always been more like sisters than mother and daughter, butnot today. Today I was a child, one who should have known better than to be inthe Plaza. Without waiting for me to explain, my mother dragged me along,tugging on my hair. My black hair that was so long I sometimes felt I had wings.Even before the other children called me Raven, I had often dreamed I could fly.I would fly until I could go no farther, so far away no one had ever been therebefore. In my dreams I would enter into a garden where the roses were big enoughfor me to curl up inside them. I would know how to decipher symbols I had nevereven seen in my waking life.

As we left the Plaza, I looked over my shoulder. The man with the red circle wascurled up as the guards kicked him. There were no roses, only the brightness ofthe flames. Ashes kept falling. The Plaza was dirty and gray.

Something from deep inside the world had crept up from the well; a monster setloose in our midst. The fire was his breath; the jeers all around were hissnarls. I felt something burn inside of me.

I called for Catalina, but she was too busy watching the guards to pay anyattention. My mother refused to let me stay alongside my friend.

We are leaving and that's that. Never look at other people's bad fortune, mymother said. If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightfulowner.

Bones

All that day we could hear people shouting in the streets. Stones were thrown;windows were smashed; the gates of the juderia were painted red, the color ofthe devil's work. In edicts posted all over the village, the town fathersdeclared they were sick of the Jews stealing from them, although what had beenstolen was never disclosed.

Because some Jews were moneylenders, they were blamed for the town's recent badfortune. In truth, everyone knew Jews were only permitted to lend money becausethe church wouldn't allow one Christian to lend another money. How much moneycould there be in such dealings? The Jews weren't rich. In the walled-offsection of town where they lived, there were no lime trees, no ivy, no gardensfilled with jasmine. In summer, the heat baked the bare earth into bricks. I hadseen the children looking through the wall; they wore no shoes. At night, thegate was locked, the way we locked the pens of our chickens and pigs.

People came to ask my grandfather, Jose deMadrigal, what he thought of what washappening in the Plaza. Our closest friends always wanted his advice. Mygrandfather was a respected teacher. Boys in the village often came to studywith him; only the best students, the brightest boys. These students were afraidof my grandfather, as I was, but there was something more in these boys' eyes:they admired him. They hurried to their lessons and bowed when my grandfatherwalked in the door. They huddled around him to hear his wisdom, just as ourfriends did on the day of the burning.

My older brother, Luis, was studying at the seminary. He was my grandparents'favorite, and for good reason. Luis was compassionate and kind, a brilliantstudent. Being at the seminary was an honor, and Luis had passed many difficultexams before he was chosen. My grandfather had helped him in his studies towardbecoming a priest; he'd worked hard with Luis, teaching him Latin and Greek. Ioften heard my grandfather say a prayer for my brother when he thought no onecould hear, not like the ones we said in church; something special, for Luisalone.

No matter how proud I was, I missed my brother, especially today, wheneverything seemed so frightening. I knew we'd all feel better if Luis were athome.

As for me, to the great Jose deMadrigal I was nothing more than a bothersomefly, not worth the least bit of attention. I was jealous, because my grandfatherignored me even when I asked the simplest questions: Why did we light candles onsome nights and not others? Why couldn't girls be educated?

Take the child away, he would call to my grandmother whenever Iquestioned him. Teach her to make bread.

He felt that way about all women, except for my mother, whom he treated asthough she were a son. He adored Abra, and because of this my mother thought shewas the queen of all fate. My grandfather had let her run wild, so my mother wasnot afraid of anything or anyone. She could speak so many languages, peoplejoked that she could speak to the birds. She was so intelligent that when mygrandfather's friends came over for tea and heated discussions, my grandfatherlet her participate in the conversations. Women were not often allowed to dothis. Abra had to sit behind a screen at these times. Otherwise men who werescholars might stop thinking about serious matters; one of them might even getit into his head that he should marry my mother.

Abra considered herself married for all eternity even though my father, the loveof her life, had been gone for so long. He was lost to illness when I was only ababy, in the time of the black fever. He left us before I could remember him.But I remembered how much my mother loved him. She still wore an emerald ring myfather had given to her on their wedding day. She was partial to emeralds; shesaid they were the single thing that remained constant, always green, always thesame.

When our friends gathered in our doorway on the burning day, my grandfather toldthem that the soldiers in the Plaza were driven by bloodlust and evil. A monsterbrought to life, just as I'd thought. Something let loose from the very deepestpart of the earth.

Stay away, my grandfather told our friends. You don't fight amonster with sticks and stones.

Even the pigs in the yard were frightened by the noise in the Plaza. Poor Dini,my special pet, hid under the porch. Other families killed a pig every spring tomake chorizo sausages, but my family preferred green vegetables, so Dini wasgetting strong and fat. Catalina and I often sneaked him into my room and lethim sleep on my bed while we played with him as if he were a doll. Once wedressed him up in my brother's baby clothes. When I called Dini by name he camerunning to me, and he would bow on command.

All the same, Dini was still a big baby, afraid of the screaming in the Plaza,refusing to come out from under the porch, even when called, which meant I wouldhave to wash him later with lavender soap so my grandmother wouldn't complainthat he was a filthy creature that should be sold at market.

My grandfather may have ignored me completely, but my grandmother was evenworse. She noticed only what was wrong, never what was right. My grandmother wascalled Carmen, but I never thought of her as a woman with a name. She was toodemanding for anything as human as that. I called her Señora out ofrespect, but also out of fear.

My grandmother had long white hair that she braided and wore up, like most womenher age. She knew all the tricks a girl might play, and she couldn't abidelaziness. Sometimes I truly believed my grandmother could read the thoughts inmy head, especially if they were thoughts of doing bad things, like climbing outthe window at night to sneak through the Arrias family's yard and meet Catalinaso that we could dance in the field of sunflowers when the moon was high in thesky. My grandmother would always be waiting outside the window, ready to catchme when I came back. As a punishment I would have to sweep not just the house,but also the yard where the chickens were kept.

Sometimes the little Arrias sisters from next door, Marianna and Antonia, cameto help me with my chores while their mother was out cutting sunflowers for themarket. All the while we worked, my grandmother would watch with a tight,unfriendly smile. See, she was telling me without saying a word.Even the little sisters do better than you, and they are only eight andnine. She would offer the Arrias sisters drinks of iced lime, alicantegranizado, or horchata, almond milk, treats she never offered to me.

Nothing I did was good enough for my grandmother. When she taught me to makekouclas, the dumplings we added to our favorite dish, adafina,our Friday night chicken stew, she would stand right over me. Mix itfaster, she would say.

Any dumpling I tried to make always fell apart. Unlike my mother, I did not makethings more beautiful. Under my grandmother's watchful eyes, I grew nervous andmade mistakes.

Don't cut your nails and let them fall! my grandmother would tell me.That is a sure way to be cursed. She would gather my nail clippingstogether and burn them in a dish till they were nothing but ash. She said shewanted to protect me from any echizo, witchcraft; witches made spellsout of nails and hair.

Once I used rouge before going to church on Sunday, and although I swore thatthe sun had burned me, my grandmother scrubbed my face with soap.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Incantation by Alice Hoffman. Copyright © 2007 Alice Hoffman. Excerpted by permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
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