Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [1]
Berkley Books by Alice Hoffman
PROPERTY OF
THE DROWNING SEASON
ANGEL LANDING
WHITE HORSES
FORTUNE’S DAUGHTER
ILLUMINATION NIGHT
AT RISK
SEVENTH HEAVEN
TURTLE MOON
SECOND NATURE
PRACTICAL MAGIC
HERE ON EARTH
LOCAL GIRLS
THE RIVER KING
BLUE DIARY
For Children
FIREFLIES
HORSEFLY
AQUAMARINE
INDIGO
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Alice Hoffman.
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eISBN : 978-1-440-67375-7
Hoffman, Alice.
Practical magic / by Alice Hoffman.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-440-67375-7
1. Title.
PS3558.03447P-47013 CIP
813’.54—dc20
PLEASE VISIT THE AUTHOR’S WEBSITE AT
www.alicehoffman.com
http://us.penguingroup.com
For every evil under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none.
If there be one, seek till you find it;
If there be none, never mind it.
MOTHER GOOSE
SUPERSTITION
FOR more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street. It didn’t matter what the problem was—lightning, or locusts, or a death by drowning. It didn’t matter if the situation could be explained by logic, or science, or plain bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of trouble or the slightest misfortune, people began pointing their fingers and placing blame. Before long they’d convinced themselves that it wasn’t safe to walk past the Owens house after dark, and only the most foolish neighbors would dare to peer over the black wrought-iron fence that circled the yard like a snake.
Inside the house there were no clocks and no mirrors and three locks on each and every door. Mice lived under the floorboards and in the walls and often could be found in the dresser drawers, where they ate the embroidered tablecloths, as well as the lacy edges of the linen placemats. Fifteen different sorts of wood had been used for the window seats and the mantels, including golden oak, silver ash, and a peculiarly fragrant cherrywood that gave off the scent of ripe fruit even in the dead of winter, when every tree outside was nothing more than a leafless black stick. No matter how dusty the rest of the house might be, none of the woodwork ever needed polishing.