Esmé Sawyer

Extract from Everything’s Rosy 

06.11.06

Having great success w/Essie. Little darling is here every weekend – and after school when she can get away. Can’t imagine what must be going on at home, but poppet does a world of good getting her to open up. I give it another month before she tells me proper. 

Teaching her some basic enchantments – she’s more interested than Rosie ever was. Hard to imagine her at this age. Essie changes by the day. She likes my runes – wonder if the bone tarot will scare her. She’s still a little skittish. Build up to it. 

Add lavender to next few teas. Or chamomile (can split some teabags open from the supermarket if no one will sell to me). Honeysuckle isn’t growing this time of year & all my dried stuff is gone. Concerned also about when the weather gets warmer. Can glamour be brewed cold? Need to experiment w/poppet 1:1. Will record results.

19.11.06

Essie didn’t come today. She always comes on Sundays. Something must have happened. She really would be much safer with me.

Maybe for the best. Fought with poppet while experimenting. Temperature change made it horrible – no face, then face all wrong. Eye dropped out through its mouth (optic nerve and all) when it tried to speak. Mess was a nightmare to get out of the carpet. Locked it in the attic for the day, can’t look at it until glamour wears off. Didn’t sound right either – like it had marbles in its throat. 

Can still hear it wailing now and then. Can’t understand the words. Must have gone wrong on the inside too. Need another songbird for the voicebox. Wonder if it will be too different sounding to Essie if I can’t get another nightingale. Will age matter? Found a nest, could take some eggs to try. 

More bleach needed in that case

& twine (armature repairs)

Rosemary (herb) for memory? Maybe able to cloud Essie’s recollection of poppet enough if I can blend it right. Will record results.

⸙

It wasn’t until that first night in bed together that Esther got to see Rosemary with her guard down. Rosemary was normally the first one up, with tea ready for Esther in the kitchen. For the first time, Esther won the race she’d invented, and woke up first. 

She kept her movements very slow, even as she rolled over to check the clock on the wall. It was 6:24AM. She could roll over and sleep for another hour or two, but the tinges of daylight were peeking through the curtains, and Rosemary had never looked softer. Esther very carefully settled herself on her side to observe Rosemary. The position brought their faces so close that Esther could see her corneas flickering under her eyelids, and she wondered what kind of thing Rosemary dreamed about. If she, too, dreamed about this house. There was nothing calculating on her face, no carefully-crafted quip behind her tongue. 

Rosemary was very good in bed. Esther had never had such great sex before. And she liked Rosemary. But a heavy knot of anxiety weighed down on her chest; there was very clearly something Rosemary was not telling her.

As quietly as she could, Esther extricated herself from the duvet and got to her feet. The wooden floorboards were cold against her bare feet as she went downstairs and into the kitchen.

She fixed herself a coffee and sat down to take stock. She was getting confused, dizzy, unsure of herself, which was unlike her. Esther knew who she was. She was a woman who valued her independence. She liked her job, and she was good at it. She liked coffee more than she liked tea. 

Up until now, she had been dismissing most of the strangeness around here as none of her business. But in feeling the way she did about Rosemary, it was becoming harder to avoid. Esther would not allow herself to be involved with someone who was not being honest with her, and Rosemary was still keeping secrets.

The attic had shaken her. The sex was a great distraction – a really great distraction – but nothing outside of that had changed. There was still the legalese of Agnes’ will to trudge through, Esther still had to return to Nottingham for work next week. Those bones were still in the attic. 

Esther had been willing to write off the witchcraft business as a charming quirk of an elderly woman with nothing better to do. But that box in the attic, full of bones and hair and notebooks kept rising in her mind. The word ‘necromancy’ disturbed the thin veil of passivity with which Esther had regarded Agnes. 

It was time to do some googling. Esther retrieved her laptop from the spare room, and searched Agnes’ name. There were four results, all local news stories. Esther drained her coffee, and put on another pot. 

By the time Rosemary arrived downstairs, she was four cups deep and starting to spiral. 

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Rosemary began, hooking her chin over Esther’s shoulder.

Esther shut the laptop. 

“We need to talk.”

To Esther’s surprise, Rosemary did not pull away. Instead, she closed her eyes and pressed a kiss to Esther’s temple. 

“I know.”

Esther nodded, and got up from the table. “Sit down. I’ll make you a tea.” 

“Alright. Thank you.”

Esther did not bother with the tea set. No loose leaf blends, no teapot, no sweet little sugar dish. Teabag, mug, hot water. 

“This is happening fast. You have a job to get back to. An apartment.” Rosemary’s voice was careful, like she had been planning what to say.

“That’s not what we have to talk about,” Esther replied. “I want to see that book.”

“Book? What book?”

“From the attic. I need you to start telling me things, Rosemary. Obviously I like you. But I don’t like this, I don’t – I don’t like the secrets, I don’t like that I own this land now. I don’t know why Agnes did that. I don’t know why she wanted me back here, at this house, with you. Magic isn’t real.”

“I’m going to cut you off there.”

“Okay.”

“It is.”

“Prove it.”

“No.”

“Show me the book.”

“I can’t.”

Esther was very tempted to throw the teacup across the room. “Do you realise how that sounds?”

With a heavy sigh, Rosemary got up from the table, and cradled Esther’s cheek in her hand. “I do. But I don’t want you to get involved in this. I don’t want to be involved in this. I’ve spent so long trying to put this place behind me and I –  it’s just hard for me to be here.”

Esther studied Rosemary’s expression, painted in early-morning sunshine and honesty. Esther believed her. She remembered how quiet she had been in the attic. How she stared into that glass ball and the twist of black sand within it.

“Okay. Let’s go somewhere else today,” Esther reasoned, and turned her face to kiss Rosemary’s palm. 

Rosemary traced the seam of Esther’s lips with her forefinger. “I’d like that.”

They moved to the living room to finish their respective tea and coffee. Rosemary settled herself into an overstuffed armchair, and beckoned for Esther to join her. 

“Is that a good idea?”

Rosemary’s answering grin was knowing. “Why would it be a bad idea?” 

“Because I want to ask you questions. And you’ll distract me.” 

Reaching out, Rosemary tangled their fingers together loosely. Esther’s resolve weakened. She lifted their hands to her mouth and kissed Rosemary’s knuckles before perching on the arm of the chair, settling her socked feet in Rosemary’s lap.

“Happy?”

“For now,” Rosemary answered with a blissful smile. “I have a feeling your questions are going to dampen the mood.”

Esther pressed her lips together and looked away. She didn’t know where to begin. There were so many moving parts, it felt dangerous to prod at the gears. 

“Okay. Let’s say I suspend my disbelief here. Fuck it, your mum was a witch. Are you?”

Rosemary took a long drink of tea.

“I don’t practise anymore. My mother – I didn’t exactly have a great role model for witchcraft, you know? She was involved in some … dangerous practices.”

“Necromancy.”

Rosemary nodded. 

“It’s illegal for a reason.”

“Oh, there’s a legal system for witches?”

“I thought you were suspending your disbelief! Surely my mother showed you things.”

“She did,” said Esther, “but it wasn’t real. Parlour tricks and children’s games and things vague enough for a gullible kid to buy into.”

Rosemary laughed on an exhale, and crossed one leg over the other. “Now, what does that mean?”

“I was ten, is what it means. If an older woman said those tea leaves look like a star so you’re going to make a new friend, I believed her. If she showed me some pretty pattern she’d baked into a pie crust and said if I ate it, I’d get over the flu quicker, then I sat down and had three slices.” 

Esther was starting to get tired of the enigmatic little smile Rosemary wore. 

“Well, for one thing, a star means recognition for hard work, so you’re off on that one. But you really don’t believe anything she showed you was real?” 

“I think as a kid, I believed any number of ridiculous things. Including that my neighbour could bake magic into pies.”

Rosemary hummed softly, winding a strand of hair in and out of her fingers in thoughtful figure-eights. 

“Alright. Come with me.” And she rose from the armchair and disappeared into the next room.

Esther frowned, turning in her seat to see where Rosemary had gone. “What are you doing?” 

“Just fetching something!” came the reply from upstairs. 

Minutes later, she tumbled back into the room with a Spanish guitar in one hand and an open invitation for Esther’s in the other. Her ever-roguish auburn hair was pulled back from her face with a length of string, and her hazel eyes were sharp and determined.

“Come on. I want to show you something.” 

Esther took the proffered hand, feeling her stomach warm as slender fingers wound around her own. Rosemary grinned, and led her into the woods. 

These woods had been Esther’s playground long before she’d known Miss Agnes. It had changed, aged, in the years since she’d been gone, but the three-trunked birch still stood where she remembered it, the sound of the water rushing through the little brook she used to paddle in was as melodic as her memories told her, and the lilac ribbon she’d tied around the branches of a long-dead holly bush fluttered in the breeze as they passed. 

All at once, apropos of nothing, Rosemary stopped, yanking Esther to a standstill with her. 

“Here. Sit down,” she decided, and found herself a comfortable place to rest against the trunk of a great apple tree. 

The October fog hugged the treeline, closing around the train tracks and fading the long lines into misty nothingness. The early morning dew hung from lacy spiderwebs, fat and heavy like freshwater pearls.

The clearing was small and the grass was dead and brown. Dandelions and other weeds clustered around tree roots alongside flat mushrooms. The sunlight was cut into ribbons by the barren branches overhead, and as Rosemary settled into her seat, an errant sunbeam got tangled in her eyelashes. In that moment, Esther forgot to breathe. Rosemary dipped her head to see the guitar in her lap; the moment passed. Esther’s breath returned to her chest sharply, and she quickly cast her gaze about for somewhere to sit in order to avoid looking at the young Pendle girl too long. As Esther settled herself in the dead grass, a few broken notes started up from where Rosemary was sitting. 

“What’s this about, anyway?” Esther asked, clearing her throat softly. 

Rosemary flattened her palm against the strings and looked up at Esther. 

“I’m showing you something real.” 

They held one another’s gaze as though trying to communicate something secret each way, until a dragonfly cut through their eye line. Esther blinked rapidly, and looked away.

Rosemary thumbed the bridge of her nose. “Watch. Not me, but – just watch, Esther.” 

With that, she settled her fingers against the frets and began to pluck a tender melody from the strings. Obediently, Esther looked up from her lap and watched. Everything around them existed as it had before Rosemary had begun to play, and Esther’s questions remained unanswered, until Rosemary opened her mouth and sang.

Her gentle voice shaped around a song Esther hadn’t known she knew, a song that seemed as old as the earth and then some, that made the sun feel warmer on Esther’s arms. Brighter, even. It looked as though the dandelions were growing towards Rosemary as the melody swelled and built. Esther convinced herself it was her imagination that the birds had stopped singing as though to listen, and the insects stopped flying, the wind stopped blowing. It was just her imagination. She was listening too attentively to Rosemary to notice any other sounds, was all.

And she was imagining the yellow-headed weeds grow a brighter, buttery hue. And the dead grass beneath them growing green again. A trick of the light, she told herself, nothing more. 

It wasn’t until daisies and bluebells pushed up through the grass around them that such thoughts stopped and died in her head. Red and white toadstools sprouted across the clearing, clustering closer around where Rosemary sat. Apples grew in the tree above her, Esther watched them swell from the size of grapes, like someone blowing air into a balloon. They faded from yellow to red like a sunset and fell onto the lush grass around them, the grass that seemed greener – greener than she’d ever thought grass could be, like something out of a picture book. Looking up, she saw birds of every shape and size and colour nestled in the branches over them. Dragonflies and bumblebees circled, and the song seemed to grow in voices, as though the leaves and flowers and animals were echoing the tune. In the trees behind Rosemary, Esther saw foxes peek their flame-eared heads up from their burrows and sit beside rabbits quietly to listen.

The grass, the weeds, the flowers – they all echoed the song that was at once known and unknown to her. On bramble bushes, berries fattened and shone. Dog rose and honeysuckle bloomed around Esther, and as she stood they stood with her, past her knees and even her hips, taller and brighter than any flower she’d seen in any garden. The wordless song pushed through her bones and punctured something deep within her and without her permission, Esther began to cry. She pressed a hand to her mouth, the other fisted against her stomach, trying to hold the ache she felt tight and close. She looked to Rosemary, her eyes shut, her soft mouth shaping the beautiful song into the sun and the flowers. 

It was beautiful. It was unbearable. 

“Stop,” Esther whispered into her hand, before pulling it away to wipe at her tears and pull at her hair. “Stop!”

Everything stood still when Rosemary fell silent. She opened her eyes to look at Esther, and all the eyes of every creature in that forest fell on her too. 

Esther opened her mouth, but there were no words in her throat. 

“Esther,” Rosemary began softly, setting aside her guitar to come to a stand. 

Esther staggered back unconsciously. The silence felt cold against her skin, the absence of birdsong or crying wind or running water felt like an assault after the brilliance of Rosemary’s song and a sob tore from her lungs. 

“Esther,” Rosemary tried again, voice ever soft. As she walked towards Esther, the flowers bloomed in her footsteps and the sun glowed as if from within her very skin.

Esther turned, and ran.