Those were the days when witchery was forbidden and women were harshly punished, judged to be dangerous creatures if they talked too much, or read books, or did their best to protect themselves from harm. Long ago, the library had been a jail where Maria Owens, the first woman in their family to set foot in Massachusetts in 1680, had been confined until the judges announced she would be hanged. THE BOOK OF MAGIC Audiobook Excerpt – Chapter 1.Some people unravel or run for shelter when their time has come, they curse their fate or hide under their beds, but Jet knew exactly what she wished to do in the last days she’d been granted. The sweep of the branches of one of the last elm trees in the commonwealth, which shadowed the library’s lawn. The sun streaming through the library windows in fierce bands of orange light. It had taken this long for Jet to appreciate that every instant was a marvel. This was the moment that revealed how you had walked through the world, with kindness or with fear, with your heart open or closed. Its presence meant that the past was over and the future no longer existed. When your time came, the black beetle would withdraw from hiding and follow you everywhere, no matter where you went. On this day, when the daffodils had begun to bloom, Jet saw that she had seven days to live.The deathwatch beetle had begun to call from within the walls of the Owens Library, a sound that often went unnoticed until it was so loud it was all a person could hear.
Jet had no aches or pains and had never been ill a day in her life, but fate is fate and it can often be what you least expect it to be. Each day she washed with the black soap the family prepared in March during the dark phase of the moon, with every bar then wrapped in crinkly cellophane.
Even in her 80s, Jet was still beautiful. It was there that Jet Owens saw her fate in a mirror behind the reference desk. Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library. Hoffman is the author of more than 30 works of fiction, including Magic Lessons, The World That We Knew, Practical Magic, The Rules of Magic, the Oprah's Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Red Garden, The Dovekeepers, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, The Marriage of Opposites, and Faithful. The following is excerpted from Alice Hoffman's The Book of Magic.
0 kommentar(er)
