“Right.” Fiona smiles. “I wanted to know what you knew about this.”
She passes the lyrics to “The Housekeeper Card” across to her. “I think it has an interesting parallel to the White Lady myth, don’t you?”
The shopkeeper studies it in silence.
“The Housekeeper,” she says slowly.
“Do you know her?”
“I haven’t seen her in a good while,” she says, her voice low.
“The song?”
“No, I’ve never heard of the song. But the Housekeeper, I’m … aware of. How did you find out about her, Maeve?”
The three of us look sharply to one another. This is supposed to be Fiona’s school project.
“I heard about it from my mother,” Fiona says, deflecting from me. “She’s a musician, and it’s a song she sings around the house.”
“I see,” the shopkeeper says warily. “Well, what do you want to know?”
“Where she came from,” I push. “What she is.”
The shopkeeper frowns, and then straightens. “It’s an old Irish legend. Have you done the ‘Big House’ in History yet?”
Roe, Fiona and I all make vague noises. The shopkeeper looks disappointed by our lack of knowledge.
“Back in the old days, the ‘Big House’ was what you’d call … well, a big house. A rich house where the wealthy English would swan about and the Irish would serve them. Some houses were all right, paid their workers fairly and all that, but some were rancid. Absolute devils. Whippings, docking wages. Inhumane cruelty.”
“Why did people work there, then?”
“Sure, there was so little work around that you were to count yourself lucky if you got into a Big House. It was either that or emigrate.”
“So … the Housekeeper worked there?”
“Well, I believe there was some story, some kind of disease outbreak, tuberculosis maybe. Children going down like flies. A group of female servants, mothers, pleaded with their employers to send for the doctor and … well, they didn’t. And the children died. The mothers were so bereft that they didn’t come to work. But do you know who did?”
“The Housekeeper,” I whisper.
“The Housekeeper. A woman, or something that looks like a woman, shows up for work. The next day, the house is empty. All the gentry are gone.”
“Where was this?” Roe asks, with scrutiny. “When was this?”
“It’s a folk story,” she answers simply. “It could have happened a hundred years ago, or two hundred, or never at all.”
We’re all silent, in total awe. Fiona pipes up.
“So was this a common thing? Did people like … call on her?”
“Well,” she says again, crossing her arms and thinking hard. “This was still an Ireland that believed in fairies, you know? There was a lot of space for magic and belief. So I imagine there was a summoning practice around it, but it would have been understood to be black magic. The price would have been high.”
“What does that mean?”
“Magic like that, you have to give big to get big,” she says, sucking her teeth.
“You mean like … a life for a life?” Roe asks.
“That’s a bit of a simplification, but something like that, probably. In almost all magic the sacrifice has to match the gain. That’s why people give food at temples. It’s not because they think the spirit is actually eating it. It’s because you need to show that you’re willing to make the sacrifice.”
“Could someone summon the Housekeeper again?” Fiona presses. “By accident, even?”
The shopkeeper cocks her eyebrow. “I thought this was for a school project.”
“It is.”
“Hmmm,” she says absently. “I need to sort some of the books out now, but you three feel free to look around.”
She says it quietly but firmly, as though this were not the first time that three teenagers came into her shop asking about revenge demons.
We look around. Roe gravitates towards the crystals, Fiona to the tarot, and I end up looking at the books next to her. I watch Fi for a moment, testing the weight of the cards in her hands, trying to tell which feels right. It might be cool if she starts reading tarot, too. Something that we could do together, to make it fun again.
I pull a book out at random. The Beginner’s Guide to Spellcraft by Alwyn Prair-Felten.
“Made-up name,” Fiona says derisively, glancing over.
I flick through the waxy pages. It doesn’t look particularly inspired. It’s not a dusty tome with pentagrams and incantations. It is, however, very effusive about how “anyone” can do witchcraft, and it’s only a tenner, so I buy it.
Here are some incantations I use, Alwyn Prair-Felten writes. But using another witch’s chants can feel a little like wearing another person’s underwear. Chant what you want, just make sure that both a) you mean it and b) it’s simple and memorable enough that you can say it over and over. Chants are very do-it-yourself. All magic is.
As the shopkeeper is sliding my book into a paper bag, Fiona gets a phone call from her mum.
“School has been cancelled tomorrow?” Fiona squeals, covering the mouthpiece briefly. Roe and I high-five her quietly.
“Mum, no. It’s a snow day. Basically, a public holiday. I don’t see why that means I have to mind Jos. He goes to creche, for God’s sake!”
A silence as Fiona dutifully listens to her mother.
“I know, I know, I know. But she was going to pay for it anyway, regardless of whether I had the day off…”
Her expression turns grim. It’s clear her mum is lecturing her, and she turns around to take the call outside.
The shopkeeper is gazing at the snow falling thinly outside like shredded tea leaves. Her left hand is fiddling at the gold studs in her ears and she’s murmuring something softly to herself. She seems to have completely forgotten I’m standing in front of her, my receipt still between her thumb and forefinger.
“Snow to rain, and rain to river;
We won’t be fooled again. River to sea; and sea to sky;
What’s now will not be then.”
“Sorry?” I ask, leaning closer. Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“Sky to snow and snow to
