Of all the errors, great and small, I had made in my twelve years of life, I believed that taking the jar from the lower cabinet was my greatest offense of all. How could I have overlooked the address etched into the jar? I’d never before made such a mess of things, never in my life.

Oh, how I wished I could turn back the hours. And to think I was once merely useless to Nella. At present that seemed a dream; with my mistake, I might have doomed her and all of us within the pages of her book. I thought again of the many names I’d traced in the register a couple of days ago. I had darkened the ink strokes in order to preserve and protect the names of the women, to give them a place in history, just as Nella had explained. Now, I feared I hadn’t preserved and protected anything at all. Instead, my mistake with the canister might expose the countless women in the book. Might ruin them.

I considered any practical ways to repair my wrongdoing but could think of none. Only the reversal of time could fix this, but it seemed a daunting thing to ask, even of magick.

And yet, Nella had not sent me away. Did she mean to kill me? Force me to account for my mistake? The room in which we sat, not speaking to one another, was thick with her frustration. I aimed to be as quiet as possible so as not to further agitate her, and I shrank in shame near the fated cupboard, hunched over myself, only three things before me: the book of household magick from Tom Pepper, lying open in my lap; the book of midwives’ magick from Nella, set aside; and a candle that was nearly spent. I had not the heart to ask Nella for a new candle, and would be forced soon to put away the books and—what? Fall asleep with my head against the stone wall? Wait for Nella to issue her punishment?

I lifted the dying candle above the open page before me. In the dim light, the printed words of Tom Pepper’s magick book seemed to dance and move on the page, and it took great effort for me to focus on a single line of text. This frustrated me greatly; if there was ever a time to rely on magick, what with its ability to give breath to stillborn baby Tom, it was now. I needed to find a spell to fix it all, and it couldn’t happen a moment too soon. Whereas this afternoon I sought a potion to unburden me of a man’s spirit, now I wished to remove the burden I had unwittingly placed upon Nella and myself and many others: the threat of arrest, condemnation and perhaps even execution.