Spellcasting in Silk by Blackwell Juliet

Author:Blackwell, Juliet [Blackwell, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780451465788
Publisher: NAL
Published: 2015-07-07T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Early that evening, in my apartment, I placed my Book of Shadows on the counter and flipped through it until I found the section on fertility spells.

I had never worked much with these kinds of spells because I didn’t feel comfortable with such weighty magic. My grandmother did, though; she was also an experienced partera—midwife—as were many traditional curanderas.

Fertility spells were among the most difficult magic because they were meant to bring forth life. What could be more profound, more complicated, and more difficult than that?

How easily life can be taken away compared to how difficult it was to bestow, I thought. And that, I realized, was another reason to be suspicious of Ursula: A practitioner should not be so casual with fertility spells. On the other hand, I supposed she was right; perhaps conception sometimes involved emotions and belief as well as straightforward biology.

“Watcha doin’?” asked Oscar.

I was almost certain his question was the preamble to asking when he could expect his dinner. But I chose to take it at face value.

“Studying up on fertility spells.”

Oscar’s huge green eyes got even larger and more luminous, and he spoke in an awed, fierce whisper. “Mistress is going to have a baby? I thought I noticed you putting on weight!”

I stood up straighter and glanced down at my stomach. Was it pooching out? Was I looking pregnant now?

“Mistress is! Mistress is going to have a baby! Is it Sailor’s?”

“Who else’s would it be?” I said, momentarily distracted from the ridiculousness of our conversation by the notion that I could be pregnant with another man’s baby.

Oscar started hopping around, but I couldn’t tell whether it was out of agitation, or excitement, or both. He scampered up to his cubby over the refrigerator and disappeared within.

Belatedly, I realized I had misled him.

“No, Oscar. I’m not going to have a baby, not with Sailor or with anyone else. Apparently I need to cut back on the red velvet cake, though. Come down from there—are you hiding?”

He crawled out of his cubby and jumped down to the kitchen floor.

“This isn’t about me,” I continued. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to a woman who went to Ursula Moreno for help with fertility.”

“Oh.” Oscar looked crestfallen. Then I realized he was hiding something behind his back.

“What are you hiding?”

“Nothin’.”

“So what’s in your hand?”

“In what hand?”

“The one behind your back.”

“Nothin’.” He shrugged. “I’ll put it back.”

I craned my neck to see. It looked like a bit of cloth of some sort, covered in a hodgepodge of lace and ribbons and dried flowers.

“Oscar, what is that?”

He shrugged again and kicked his taloned feet. “It’s a Ruerymplegandling cloth.”

“A what, now?”

“A Ruerymplegandling cloth.”

“A rue . . . ?”

With exaggerated patience, Oscar enunciated slowly: “Rue. Rymple. Gandling. Cloth.”

At my blank expression, he gasped. “You tellin’ me you’ve never heard of a Ruerymplegandling cloth?”

“I can’t say as I have. What is it? May I see it?”

He hesitated.

“Please?”

Oscar laid the item on the kitchen counter. It was a scrap of

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