Chapter Nineteen #2
As Harper toured the garden, she recognized many of the plants, some of which were famous in the history of witchcraft.
Taxus baccata was a highly toxic taxine alkaloid that could cause rapid death through cardiac arrest. Strychnos nux-vomica was the source of deadly strychnine.
Ricinus communis was the source of harmless castor oil, but also of lethal ricin.
Monkshood, foxglove, deadly nightshade, poison hemlock, Brugmansia, and Laburnum…
they all produced beautiful flowers, and were also poisonous to humans and many animals.
“What, no oleander?” Harper said with a smile.
“More than enough at Delilah’s place, right? Apparently the Perles family planted the original bushes upon their arrival from Galveston. It is said the oleander branch symbolizes the fragile link between sleep and death.”
“Speaking of death, you have quite the poison garden here,” said Harper.
“It’s based on the botanicals wise women have cultivated for centuries.
Before physicians and ‘barber surgeons’ pushed them aside, women were expected to plant and tend their own gardens, complete with herbs to address the basic health care needs of the household.
And you know what they say: One person’s poison is another’s medicine. ”
“I always heard ‘the poison is in the dose.’ ”
“Paracelsus,” Sigrid said with a nod. “Very good. I suppose my point is that most medications are toxic if taken in the wrong dose.”
“I was saying something similar recently. In the course of my studies, I’ve done a fair amount of research on the traditional uses of medicinal botanicals. You and Delilah used these plants to make tonics?”
“I just grow the plants,” Sigrid said. “Delilah mixed the tonics. Her recipes are proprietary, and she kept them close to her chest. She was still working on getting the balance right. Delilah was concerned, as many of us are, about all the viruses—and super-viruses—that are being passed around. She did not trust the pharmaceutical industry and felt her natural drafts provided a special kind of protection.”
“A magical protection, huh?”
Sigrid scoffed. “Not at all. She meant microdoses, and homeopathic remedies.”
“Double, double toil and trouble,” Harper murmured.
“Exactly! As you may know, in the charm, ‘eye of newt’ refers to a mustard seed, ‘toe of frog’ is the stem of a bulbous buttercup, and ‘tongue of dog’ refers to hound’s-tongue, a flowering plant. Delilah painted the charm on the side of my shed, see?”
Painted in red against the white of the shed was “A Charm of Powerful Trouble”:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
“The witches from Macbeth,” said Harper.
Sigrid nodded. “Delilah thought it was funny as hell, used to quote it all the time. She was into theater when she was younger, loved being onstage. Not really surprising, she had a dramatic streak and enjoyed being the center of attention. But after she moved into the Perles Mansion, she became something of a hermit, actually.”
They walked past a bed of lush green indigo plants that could be used to make a beautiful, purplish-blue dye.
“Joel Aristide mentioned Delilah gave him permission to take his tour group into her garden,” Harper said. “Were they friends?”
Sigrid seemed to weigh her words. “More like acquaintances, I’d say. They knew each other from a long-ago community theater production on your campus.”
“Monterey College?”
She nodded. “It was a community outreach thing, back when the college was first being developed.”
Harper searched Sigrid’s face. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Joel…he gave me the impression he had some kind of influence over Delilah. Some unspoken agreement between the two.”
Joel had mentioned knowing a secret about Delilah, and keeping it to himself, Harper recalled.
“Was it related to her concoctions?” she asked. “I heard something about selling her teas and tinctures?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Sigrid scoffed and shook her head. “Delilah came from money, and her paintings sold for a small fortune. She had no need to develop a side hustle. She created her ‘concoctions,’ as you call them, for other reasons.”
“What kinds of reasons?”
“She believed, as many of us do, that we have gotten too far away from nature, from the medicines that come to us via botanicals, for example. She believed that microdoses of certain natural poisons could cure everything from cancer to diabetes to viruses.”
“And that’s what she was working on in the basement?”
“It seems so. She told me she found a book of lab notes down there, from a former owner.”
“From Soren Perles, the doctor?”
“I would assume so. She didn’t say much else about it.
But Delilah was very careful, and she was having trouble getting the amounts right—microdosing is no mean feat.
If it’s done wrong, it can harm, or even kill, a person.
She shared a few basic items with friends, but by and large she was her own guinea pig.
She certainly wasn’t ready to start distributing. ”
Harper stopped in her tracks at the sight of a strange fungus poking up through the earth, its pale gray clusters eerily human appendage–like.
“Do you know this one?” Sigrid asked. “Xylaria polymorpha, also known as ‘dead man’s fingers.’ An appropriate name, don’t you think?”
Harper nodded but quickly looked away. A shiver passed over her as she remembered Delilah’s pale fingers reaching up through the earth of her makeshift grave.
“Did the trespassers hurt anything in the Reflection room?” Sigrid asked. “Were any of the mirrors broken?”
“I don’t think so.” Harper cast her mind back to the ghastly scene. “I did notice an inscription etched into the mirrors, though.”
Sigrid nodded. “That room was originally designed by Isabel Perles, who was a spiritualist. She read that the medieval magician Albertus Magnus wrote that to make a magic mirror, inscribe upon it ‘S. Solam S. Tattler S. Echogordner Gematur.’ ”
“What does it mean?”
She shook her head. “No idea, actually. It’s part of a recipe: Inscribe a mirror with those words, bury it at a crossroads during an odd hour, and on the third day, at the same hour, dig it up.
But do not be the first person to gaze into the mirror.
In fact, it’s better if you let a dog or cat see their reflection first.”
“And then…?”
“Then it becomes a magic mirror, of course,” Sigrid said with a knowing smile.
“Allegedly. And if you know how to use it, they say it will tell you secrets. Look, there is no single recipe for ‘seeing’ things in a mirror. Setting them up the way they are in the Reflection room, however, creates a kind of vortex that thins the lines between our world and the next. Isabel Perles used to hold séances up there, hoping to speak to those beyond the veil.”
“I thought she held séances in the garden.”
Sigrid nodded. “She did, indeed. According to legend, she was trying to clear the adobe bricks of their curse after the rest of her family died. But then she built her Reflection room.”
“I know that spiritualism was big back in the second half of the nineteenth century,” said Harper. “Even among the educated.”
“Especially among the educated. But magic or not, it’s my belief that mirrors help concentrate one’s energy and thereby assist sensitives to see what others cannot.” She fixed Harper with her intense gaze. “What do you see when you look into a mirror?”
“What do you mean?”
“You told me you ‘saw’ someone standing at the window in the Reflection room, and you’re being followed by a Nahual. It’s only the beginning, you know. Are you sure you don’t want me to do a reading for you?”
Harper opened her mouth to tell Sigrid what had happened last night with the woman dancing on the lawn, but hesitated. Sigrid’s dark eyes studied her face.
“Tell me, Harper: Did you see something in the mirrors at the mansion? Have you been visited by the spirit of Isabel Perles?”