The Book of Shadows by James Reese

nuts and twigs to fall clatteringly down through the tall dark trees.
    I ran up the drive, along a line of hedges that bordered our neighboring fields. I bore through a narrow opening, into the hedge, full and green in its summer dress. I pushed thorned branches aside, incurring more scrapes and cuts, like those from a cat…. Ah, but what of a bit more spilled blood?
    I sank into the lower branches of the hedge. A sort of rude pallet was formed of an exposed web of roots, the muddy soil, the matted leaves blown there by the winds. I’d disturbed the soil: pale and belted worms writhed blindly up from the coffee-dark earth. A branch too near my face bore the slick, sticky trail of a snail.
    It was then, hidden—safe?—that tears truly overtook me. I trembled. And panic settled over me like a cloak. Panic and other strange desires—to fight, to flee, to die, to kill.
    Eventually, reason prevailed:
    What would I do? I could not run away. I hadn’t the means…. Ah, but there was money in my trunk, was there not? (Enough to hire a horse and driver? Enough to buy a crust of bread? I did not know.) Perhaps, if only….
    Pushing branches aside with the cross, I opened a window in the far side of the hedge. There sat our tenanted fields of harvested wheat sloping away toward the sea. The sun gilded the thick cones of hay. The storm had passed; the sky was cloudless and pale. A large raven wheeled overhead, claimed the sky with its scrawled black X. Alert as I was, I took in the greens and golds of the trees and the leaves, the browns of the branches, and the textures of it all. And this stilled me. Calmed me. For a short, very short while, till reason again demanded, What will you do?
    I slipped from the hedge, cross in hand. Moving along its far side, I’d be obscured from sight. My wounds, certain of them, still ran red. To anyone seeing me, I would have appeared a terrible, feral thing crawling from the scene of a fresh kill. Or my own birth. Keeping close to the hedgerow, pulling myself along by its heartier branches, I made slow, very slow progress. Back to the house.
    Then a seed of…of stupidity bloomed suddenly, a horrid black-petaled flower in my mind, and yes, I resolved to make my way back to the house. To gather my things and go. Escape.
    Whatever was I thinking? Was I thinking at all?

6
Maluenda
    M Y REASONING , as best I can recollect it, was this: I would wait for the girls to gather, in the chapel or elsewhere, allowing me to move through the house unmolested, gather my things, and somehow effect an escape. I had that stash of money in my trunk, for Marie-Edith had insisted on paying me for our months of clandestine tutorials. I knew not how much money I had; for, embarassed to accept it, afraid to be caught with it, I stuffed it away without further thought. Too, I’d no idea of its value. What was money to me, then? With this money and my very few effects, including a change of clothes, I might make my way to the crossroads on the far side of the village of C——, where the southbound hirondelle stopped on alternate days. Perhaps I’d go to Mother Marie?… Thought? Planned? No; to say I did either of those things is inaccurate. I merely moved , fearing that an excess of stillness might cause my fears to rise up, strong as the Breton tides, and overtake me.
    I sprang from the bank of hedges to the kitchen door, and there saw that room empty—blessed be!—save for the turned back of Sister Brigid. Two quick corners and I gained my former room, the pantry, where the pine I’d worked stood against the wall and tools lay scattered on the packed-dirt floor. My cot had been disassembled, the thin mattress rolled. There I would wait: I had no plan.
    It was not long before I heard the outer door open—my breath caught!—and then there came the welcome voice of Marie-Edith. “Bonjour,” said she, quite happily, to Sister Brigid, whose face