7. Walking in a Warded Wonderland #2
“I, ah... well.” Jasper glanced at Delilah, then down at his shoes, then he adjusted his glasses, somehow making them more crooked than before. “That is, I was hoping to document the... that is... um. You have leaves in your hair,” he blurted suddenly.
Delilah’s hand flew to her head. Sure enough, evidence of their tactical surprise exit from the shrubbery remained. Perfect.
“Botanical research,” she said with all the dignity she could muster while picking bits of hedge out of her hair. “Very important witch business. Nothing you need to document.”
“Though if you’re interested in documentation,” Scarlett chimed in with her usual mischievous helpfulness, “I’m sure Del would be happy to show you around the hotel. The architecture is fascinating, especially in the evening. By candlelight. Just the two of you?—”
A little growl escaped from Delilah’s throat. “Don’t you have a boyfriend to torment?”
“Don’t you have a room to assign our historian friend here?”
Jasper looked between the sisters like he was watching a tennis match played with live grenades. “I don’t want to impose...”
“You’re not,” said Scarlett, just as Delilah said, “You are.”
Mama watched this exchange with barely concealed amusement. She hadn’t seen her eldest so flustered by a man since... maybe ever.
“Room 301,” Delilah found herself saying, just to make everyone stop looking at her with those bemused expressions. “Best view of the gardens. Not that you’ll be able to document them, what with the forgetting spell and all, but...” She shrugged. “At least you’ll enjoy them while you’re here.”
“Thank you.” He smiled, and something warm and uncomfortable fluttered in Delilah’s chest. “I look forward to forgetting them thoroughly.”
Their fingers brushed as she handed over the key, and they both jumped in surprise. “Oh! I’m so sorry,” he said quickly. “Static electricity... so annoying this time of year. I apologize.”
“No no...” A little flush appeared on Delilah’s cheeks. “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who shocked you.”
“Oh, I’m quite certain it was my fault,” Jasper argued.
“ Ooh, I’m sorry I shocked you ,” Scarlett said teasingly. “ No no, I’m sorry I shocked you... No I’m sorry ...”
“Shut up, dear sister.” Delilah backed away from the reservation desk. “Mama, you said something about your office?”
“Yes.” Her mother’s eyes were twinkling in a way Delilah absolutely did not like. “I found something rather interesting in the old records. Come along, girls. Mr. Hopkins, you’re most welcome at our inn. Breakfast begins at seven-thirty.”
As the sisters followed their mother, Delilah found herself glancing back at the new arrival.
Jasper had his notebook out again. He was sketching the lobby’s architectural details as though he could make his memories permanent through sheer force of documentation.
He’d fail, of course. More than that, he seemed to know he’d fail.
And something about his dedication to preserving what he knew he was doomed to forget made Delilah’s heart race in a way she was absolutely not ready to examine.
Mama’s office still smelled exactly as it had when Delilah was small: the scents of ripening persimmons and old books and distant campfires, with maybe just a soupcon of nonspecific disapproval.
The piles of books, the hotel ledgers, the mysterious old parchments written in symbols that didn’t make any sense.
.. It was all as it was when Delilah had left.
Her mother’s voice cut through any moment of nostalgia that may have been brewing.
“Girls, look at this letter I’ve found. I came across it while looking for the Christmas pudding recipe.
” Her tone was perfectly casual, as though stumbling on centuries-old documents while researching side dishes was an everyday occurrence.
Which, at the Stargazer, it basically was.
“Please tell me it has instructions for blowing up a hotel,” Delilah muttered. “Because otherwise it’s not anything we need.”
“Hardly. It’s from Agnes Bartlett. She worked at the county clerk’s office when it was established right after the Revolutionary War.
She was one of the town founders, which really was a big enough role to play, if you think about it.
However, she also took a job with the county, specifically to make sure that Oak Haven never ended up in any official archives.
In the course of things, she ended up creating their original filing system.
Which has always amused me, that those pencil pushers at the clerk’s office have no idea their entire bureaucracy is based on magic. Anyway, listen to this:
“ My most worthy successor, I put quill to paper with grave disquiet regarding the nature of truth and remembrance. Though scant years have passed since our deliverance from Salem, already I perceive our tale taking new shape, like clay upon the potter’s wheel, molded to please the hand that shapes it.
We who fled now cast ourselves as martyrs most pure, turning blind eyes to the darker shadows of our history.
The young ones speak of their mothers’ flight as though ’twere ordained by fate itself, as though no other path lay before them. ”
“What other path, though?” Delilah interrupted. “What, were they supposed to stay and get hanged? They had to get out of there.”
“But maybe they should have brought the accused women along,” Scarlett suggested. “Instead of abandoning them?”
“ Maybe ... but maybe not. Maybe there wasn’t enough time. Maybe they tried and the women didn’t want to leave home. We don’t know what was happening; we weren’t there.”
“ Girls !” Her mother’s other eyebrow joined the first. “Might I continue?”
“Sorry.”
“ But truth is not a dress pattern, to be adjusted for a better fit. If we blind ourselves to the weight of our choices, how then shall we guide those who follow to choose more wisely? Thus have I commenced to create certain protections, certain safeguards against the dimming of our common memory... ”
The letter went on, but Delilah was stuck on that phrase: the weight of our choices. What choices? The witches didn’t have a choice; they fled Salem because they had to. Because staying meant death. Because...
She realized her sister was watching her with an odd expression. “Why are you making that face?”
“Nothing.” Scarlett shifted uncomfortably. “Just... I dunno, I guess I’m still stuck on those other women? The ones who were wrongly accused? I mean, why didn’t our ancestors just bring them along? What would’ve been the harm?”
“Because they weren’t—” Delilah stopped. She was going to say they weren’t real witches , but she immediately realized that didn’t exactly excuse leaving them behind to get murdered. “I don’t know why.”
“Me neither.”
Mama lowered her reading glasses. “I suspect that may be the point of this letter. Perhaps there are things we don’t know because long ago, we decided not to know them.”
From the lobby came the sound of Jasper dropping what was probably his notebook. There was a shuffle of papers, a muffled curse, and the distinct sound of someone trying very hard to maintain professional dignity while crawling under a table to chase a ballpoint pen.
Delilah smiled before she could stop herself. Jasper Hopkins. Now, there was someone who would never decide not to know something.
She turned back to see her mother and sister watching her with identically smug expressions.
“Oh, shut up,” she said to both of them.
“What about the rest of the letter? All that philosophy is fine, but does Agnes say anything about magical protection? Like, say, how to prevent a tacky casino from destroying our town?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid,” said Mama. “I don’t think errant casinos were top of mind in colonial times.”
Outside, snow began to fall. Delilah went to the window to look.
Real snow this time, not the enchanted flurries that sometimes decorated Oak Haven’s winter nights.
Through the office window, they could see the casino’s lights reflecting off the flakes, turning them strange colors that nature never intended.
Delilah thought about weight of choices, and about the things people tell themselves to sleep at night.
She thought about her father, about Christmas, about all the things this visit home was forcing her to remember.
And she thought about a county archivist who believed in preserving everything, even the hard parts. Even the parts that hurt.
From the lobby came the sound of Jasper realizing that the lobby baseboards were original to the building’s construction in 1832, when the witches had turned the remains of an old barn into the Stargazer Inn.
His cry of joy would have been goofy if it wasn’t so.
.. what was the word? Genuine . That was it.
The man was genuinely, unabashedly excited about historical woodwork.
“Adorable,” she said without thinking.
“Oh, big sis.” Scarlett joined her sister at the window. “You are in so much trouble.”