In the Leaves #2
I walked him to the door, and as he was going, he said, “I can’t help feeling there are things you aren’t telling me, Miss Penrose.
I know Jack can be hotheaded, and maybe that’s the reason for your reticence.
But if you do think of anything that might help us catch this killer, for everyone’s sake, I hope you will send for me. Jack needn’t know.”
My hands were trembling, and I clasped them together. “I will, sir, thank you.”
He studied me a moment longer, maybe hoping I’d say more. Then he put on his hat and went out to his waiting horse and gig.
I closed the door and fell against it.
I am completely useless. I couldn’t help Mr. Tregarrick. I couldn’t help Mr. Hilliard. I couldn’t go to my job. All I could do was sit here and wait, hoping no one else would be attacked.
I might go mad.
Breathing a heavy sigh, I straightened, then noticed my basket resting beside the door—with the book inside! Mr. Tregarrick’s letter had so taken up my notice that I had completely forgotten about it.
In the Leaves: A Primer on Tasseography, by Jane Rochester.
I snatched up the book and went to the stove to put the kettle on again. Flipping through the pages while I waited for the boil, I saw the book had many sketches of sample readings. Dear Mr. Tregarrick!
I placed book, pot, and cup on a tray, carried them out back, and set them on the milking stool, shooing away the curious animals. After dragging over a rickety chair that Jack hadn’t gotten around to mending, I sat down in a sunny spot.
While my tea steeped, I continued paging through the book.
The author turned out to be the woman Mrs. Moyle had mentioned—the one who ran the school for young ladies in Yorkshire.
Mrs. Rochester wrote that no special steps were required for reading tea leaves, but that “simple spells can amplify your efforts, focus your intention, and yield more accurate results.” I was sure Mum hadn’t learned from a book, but without her here, this was the next best thing.
I poured tea into my cup without straining it, and following Mrs. Rochester’s instructions, I took hold of the handle and spun the cup three times, chanting, “Leaves of tea, reveal to me whatever I most need to see.”
Then I drank almost to the bottom before flipping the cup over onto the saucer to drain out the remaining liquid. Holding my breath, I righted the cup.
No shapes jumped out at me this time. The author had mentioned that people should only read their own leaves if they had no one else to do it.
It was hard to be clearheaded about your own cup.
I desperately hoped not to find more wolves, and I figured this was exactly what Mrs. Rochester meant, so I tried to pretend I was reading someone else’s cup.
Turning it this way and that, I picked out two clumps that held promise. One was so clearly a cross that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it right away. The other looked like a candle.
At the back of the book was a list of symbols with their meanings. They came with this advice at the top: Correspondences are malleable. One cup’s death warning is another cup’s promise of a fresh start. Be guided by your intuition.
According to Mrs. Rochester’s list, a candle meant hope, or finding your way in the dark. Finally something encouraging! But then the cross . . . there was no happy way to read that. Trouble on its way, or suffering, or even death. Or it might mean a sacrifice would need to be made.
I looked at my farmyard family. Jenny was nosing a half-rotten apple while the hens searched out insects among the fallen leaves. “But it doesn’t tell me what to do,” I complained to them.
The red hen, Rosie, let out a series of clucks that were easy enough to read: If you are going to idle about in the garden, you could at least bring stale breadcrumbs or table scraps.
Aware that it was silly to expect so much from a quick skimming of the text, I sank back and paged to the book’s beginning. The important thing was that, thanks to Mr. Tregarrick, I had a place to start. And I didn’t feel so alone.
Though my seat was both hard and unsteady, I somehow managed to doze off before I’d read more than a page or two.
I suppose I hadn’t fully recovered from my ordeal yet.
I woke to the sound of anxious clucking, my neck sore and my chin dipping toward my chest. The book had slipped to the ground and Jenny now nibbled at one corner, but she raised her head suddenly and let out a bleat. I followed her gaze beyond the garden.
A patch of fog had risen no more than five or six yards away.
Inside it, something was moving. I could only make out what looked like antlers.
Or more like tree branches. Long and twiggy, spreading like a fan from the head of a tall shadow.
Too tall for beast or man. Too tall for the creature I’d seen yesterday—yet I couldn’t help feeling I was seeing that creature again.
My skin went cold and clammy, and I jumped up. The hens began squawking, down feathers flying loose as their wings beat the air. Rosie fled back toward the coop, the others flapping after her. Jenny, too, gave another fearful bleat and ran around one corner of the cottage.
Then I noticed two small rounds of fiery light.
My courage fled. I snatched up my book and ran inside, bolting the back door.