“Someone gave it to my mother long ago, only a year or so before she died. It’s a book claiming to be filled with magick, intended for use by midwives and healers.”

“But she did not believe in magick, either,” I guessed.

Nella shook her head, then walked to her register and turned the pages backward, furrowing her brow as she searched the dates. Skimming her finger along the entries, she nodded. “Ah, yes. Take a look here.” She spun the register around to face me, then pointed at the entry:

6 Apr 1764, Ms Breyley, aus. wild honey, 1/2x pound, topical.

“A half pound of wild honey,” Nella read aloud.

I widened my eyes. “To eat?”

She pointed at the word topical. “No, to spread onto the skin.” She cleared her throat as she explained, “Ms. Breyley was hardly older than me. Hardly older than you. She came to my mother’s shop after midnight. Her cries woke us from sleep. An infant lay in her arms... She said that a few days prior, the little boy had been badly scalded by a kettle of hot water. My mother did not ask how. It did not matter so much as the poor boy’s condition. The wound had begun to fester and pus. Worse still, a rash was forming on other parts of his body, as though the wound had begun to crawl its way through the rest of him.

“My mother took the boy in her arms, felt the heat of him against her breast, then laid him onto this table and stripped off his clothes. She opened the jar of wild honey and slathered it onto his body. The infant began to cry and my mother, too. She knew how much it must have pained his new, delicate skin. It is the most distressing thing, Eliza, to issue pain to someone, even when you know it is for the best.”

Nella dabbed at her eye. “My mother would not let the young woman and her child leave, not for three days. They stayed with us, in the shop, so the honey could be applied every two hours. My mother did not miss a single treatment—she was not so much as a minute late in brushing the honey onto the baby’s skin for three entire days. She treated the boy as though he were her own.” She closed the register. “The pus dried. The spreading rash disappeared. The festering wound healed, with almost no scar.” She motioned to the book of magick she’d just given me. “That is why my mother never opened the book in your hands. Because saving lives with the gifts of the earth, Eliza, is as good as magick.”

I thought of the honey-covered baby that had once lain on the table where I now sat, and suddenly I felt ashamed of having mentioned magick at all.