YULETIDE FIC: the tide is with us... (Practical Magic, Maria Owens, PG)

[carlyinrome]

TITLE: the tide is with us (now we’re all swallowed up)
RATING: PG
FANDOM: Practical Magic
CHARACTERS: Maria Owens
PAIRING: None
SUMMARY: How Maria is brought to the gallows.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written as a treat for ariestess’s 2017 yuletide.

Maria stands on the rocks on the beach, the stones cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. The beach is grey and the sky is grey and the sea is grey, and Maria has laid out the fish belly-colored shells she has collected over the past weeks in intricate patterns in the dark, wet sand, and she rolls the paper with her spell tight and fits it into the tiny glass vial, and she seals it. The sun is hidden behind the dense grey clouds, and the ocean spray on Maria’s face is cold, but she feels the cold bone ache in her fingers soothe away as the energy pulses from inside the bottle. The glass warms. Her hands warm.

Maria sings a low note, the sound swelling in her diaphragm and then pulsing up her throat. The song rattles her ribcage, burns her throat.

Sunlight streaks the clouds pink as Maria’s song is answered. The whale’s note is higher, longer, but no less mournful. Maria steps off the rocks, her feet sinking into the sand. She steps over the swirls of shells, the vial in her hand, and she sings. The whale sings back. Maria waits. She breathes in the salt spray, the wet weight of the sea air coating her lungs, as the immense, blue black head of the whale crests the waves. The whale sings, and Maria answers. The whale swims closer to the shore, and Maria walks into the surf, the cold water rushing over her feet, soaking the skirt of her dress. The whale surfaces again, close enough that Maria can see the bumps on its nose and the ridges of its underbelly. The whale is as close as it can come to shore, and Maria is as far into the sea as she can safely swim without being swallowed up. She stops swimming, lets the weight of the water soaking her dress pull her beneath the waves. The water is clear, and Maria feels the froth of the whale’s wake tickle her face. Bubbles of Maria’s breath float to the surface. Maria looks up through the water and sees scattered beams of sunlight, sees the great shadow of the beast, its thick, dark hide like rubber and like leather and like nothing else on earth this century. It is enormous, dwarfing her, dwarfing everything else in the ocean. The whale belongs to millennia ago, belongs to an ancient world so long ago Maria can only conceive it as she conceives the great mass of the beast—as a primal response behind her breastbone.

The whale sings. It moves through the water, and the water moves Maria, and Maria opens her hand and lets go of the bottle containing her spell. The whale eclipses the sun as it dives into the darkest depths of the sea, and Maria bobs beneath the water as the spell is swept away into the deep.

***

They come in pairs, black and red, onyx and garnet. There is magic in all things, and in these stones—use onyx to rid your life of bad people, garnet to release bad toxins.

They are both losing stones.

It has been four moons and Isabel is still dead. It took Maria nearly as long to prepare the spell. There is no bringing back what death has taken. What you get back is not the thing you sought.

There is another kind of magic, a magic she has been told since she was a wriggling toddler never to attempt. What you wreak comes back to you, threefold.

The risk is worth it. Any punishment is worth it.

Her whole life, Maria has been aware of Isabel like an organ. A part of her, one she cannot control, but one that is inside her and always there, just beneath the skin.

And now that organ is dead. A man from the village took her when she was walking home from market, a shortcut through the woods. When they found her, Isabel’s face and hands were cut from thorns, the last beats of her heart making them red as her hair. He strangled her after he defiled her, and there were dark marks on her neck in the shapes of his hands encircling her throat.

“There’s no way to know who did this,” the constable said, and Maria was not sure if she was done screaming or if she was screaming still, because now she hears the screaming in her head so often she isn’t sure if it’s real, right now in this moment, or not. Everyone knows. No one wants to admit it. The pastor’s son, with his gold curls and handsome face and broad chest and charm—with the black heart and cruel selfishness Maria can see. She made sure, of course—what she was doing would not be undone. Mother Hecate, show me who took Isabel’s last breath. The boy’s face in the water. Maria does not feel anger as she watches his picture come into focus. She feels like an arrow shown a target.

She collects the shells. She trades charms for a glass bottle with a good stopper, for raw India ink she mixes with ash.

She makes her trade in the ocean, her skirts billowing in the cold sea water.

The pastor’s son’s ship disappears at sea, swallowed up by a leviathan, perhaps. It is not long before the rule of three comes for her. They take Maria in the night, and bind her hands and string her neck—a mirror of Isabel, the necklace of bruises across her throat.

Not today.

Later, on an island far away, the scratchy hemp rope still circling her neck, Maria sobs, aching with loneliness, aching with loss. She creates a curse that day, but it wasn’t just her. It wasn’t just the rule of three.

Owens women—black and red, onyx and garnet. Perhaps they were always destined to lose.