They had gotten their permission. The girls watched the meetings from a distance after that, just close enough to hear the incantations. Adrie ignored them, until one night, after the gathering had ended, she signaled in their direction. The girls came forward, nervous. “Just the other one,” she told Juni. When Maria approached, Adrie patted the ground. “Why do you come here?”

“Because you know so much,” Maria said.

If Adrie was flattered, her stern expression didn’t change. “You’re not a blood relation. Why should I give my knowledge to you?”

“I’ll use it,” Maria told her. “I’m not afraid of it. The woman who raised me was like you. I learned from her, and I wish nothing more than to learn from you.”

After that Juni went out with her suitors at night, and Maria spent her time with Adrie. She added her lessons to the Grimoire. There were lists of plants, those that could break a fever, those that could set a man’s imagination on fire, or could ease a woman’s childbirth. There were recipes for revenge and for love, for health and well-being and to fend off curses.

Curaçao Cures

Soursop tea made from a glossy green tree with yellow-green flowers, cures insomnia, infections, and keeps away lice.

Mampuritu, a slender weed for tea to cure for nausea and cramps.

Kleistubom, a creeping weed with an extract helpful to ease prickly heat.

Lamoengras for fever.

Caraway cures the bites of poisonous scorpions and centipedes.

Wandu helps with an easy delivery of a baby, also good for the blood and improves memory and strength.

Tawa-tawa, a tea made from the hairy plant found in the grassland, a cure for Dengue, called Breakbone Fever, that stops bleeding inside the body.

“You may be a witch, but remember you’re a woman as well,” Adrie told her. By gazing into a pan of still water, she’d already seen several mistakes Maria was destined to make. The wrong man, the wrong trust, the wrong vow, the wrong curse. It was so much easier to see another person’s future than it was to understand your own. Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.