The Secrets of Hawthorne House

Chapter 6: Herbology and Magic

From then on, Gerallt came over two or three times a week. Although they still occasionally played video games, usually they would go for long walks around the neighborhood, or stay in and listen to Matt's CD collection when it was raining or too cold outside. They talked for hours about how much they missed the parents they'd lost, how much they missed living on the coast, how much they disliked Colin, Clayton, and Dylan, and how much they felt like they didn't really belong at Hawthorne High School. Matt was surprised to learn that Gerallt, Gareth, and Gwyneth had always been home-schooled in Maine. He was curious about what that had been like, but Gerallt was always vague about just what it was that they studied.

By October, Matt and Gerallt were inseparable. They sat next to each other on the school bus and at lunch. They did their homework together and played video games at Matt's house. And every Saturday, they worked together at the Hawthorne House.

Once the boys finished working on the yard, Gerallt's mother had them clean and repair the windows of the Hawthorne's small greenhouse. The following Saturday, Matt arrived to find dozens of small pots holding herbs that needed to be transplanted into larger pots. Each little pot was carefully labeled with the name of the plant, which Matt read as he and Gerallt moved the plants and added potting soil to their roomier pots. Many of the herbs were familiar spices such as parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and oregano.

However, quite a few of the plants had strange names that Matt had never heard of. The boys transplanted belladonna and foxglove with their purple bell-shaped flowers, mandrake with its thick multi-limbed roots, wormwood with its tiny yellow flowers and parsley-shaped leaves, and even wolfsbane with its bright blue blossoms and large leaves.

"Is your mother worried that werewolves will come trick-or-treating on Halloween?" Matt jokingly asked as the pair transplanted the wolfsbane.

"Of course not," Gerallt replied indignantly. "Mothah was the best herbalist back on Deeah Isle. She knows all of the uses of every plant in this greenhouse, and she knows the uses of lots of plants that are too big tah fit in heah. Some of these herbs have natural medicinal properties, and she uses them tah make poultices and potions. For example, a very dilute infusion of wolfsbane is useful for fevahs, colds, croup, and asthma."

"Wow! I thought it was only useful to protect you from werewolves."

"Seeing as werewolves aren't real, I guess wolfsbane wouldn't be very useful if that was all it was good foah," Gerallt said with a smirk. "She makes all manner of concoctions, decoctions, tinctures, and infusions from some of these plants. She also uses some in her soaps tah help cure various skin conditions, and she adds others just because they make the soap smell good. She would hang some of the ones with a strong smell up tah dry so that she could use them tah make potpourris and incense. Everyone in the colony used tah come tah the house foah the stuff she made. She even sold some tah flatlanders during the summah tourist season."

Gerallt's mother had taught her children herbology while home-schooling them, and Gerallt was happy to share what he'd learned. By the end of the day, Matt was sure he'd learned far more than he'd learn all semester in his freshman biology class.

Once the boys had finished with the repotting, Gerallt was rewarded by finally being allowed to spend the night at Matt's house. During dinner, Matt introduced Gerallt to the joys of pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.

Afterward, the two friends went upstairs to Matt's bedroom where they watched one of the many Halloween-themed movies being shown in the weeks before the holiday. Actually more of a comedy than a horror movie, it involved a teenage boy and girl coping with a trio of bumbling witches who returned from the dead to steal the souls of the local children. Matt thought that it was pretty funny, but Gerallt often snickered at inappropriate moments and then got offended when the witches talked about being hungry and wanting to cook one of the children.

"Matt, how can you think that's funny?" Gerallt asked when his friend laughed during a particularly silly scene. "That's just sick, and besides, witches aren't anythin' like that."

"Come on, Gerallt. It's only a movie; it's all make-believe. And anyway, it's not like witches are real."

"No, Matt, you're wrong; witches ah real," Gerallt said indignantly, as if Matt had said something personally offensive. "And the movie's lies about eatin' children ah just the kind of p********a that used to get people burned at the stake."

"What are you talking about?" Matt asked, surprised at the unexpected vehemence of his friend's reaction.

Suddenly remembering where he was, Gerallt looked over at his friend with a mixture of embarrassment and fear on his face. "Nothin'," he answered nervously, quickly turning back to face the TV. "Let's just watch somethin' else."

"Not so fast," Matt said, unwilling to let it drop. "You don't really believe in witches, do you? It's all just superstitious nonsense."

Gerallt turned and looked closely at Matt. "If I tell you somethin', do you promise not tah laugh?"

"Sure," Matt replied hesitantly.

"I mean it, Matt. You have tah swear you'll nevah tell anyone what I'm about tah say," Gerallt said, with a look that showed he was dead serious. "And you especially can't tell anyone from my family."

"Sure," Matt answered, unclear where the conversation was going or why Gerallt was suddenly so serious.

"Okay. Then ayuh, Matt, I do believe in witches. And I don't mean the Wiccans with their modern pagan superstitions like the ones who'd shop at my mothah's little candle store back on Deah Isle. I mean the hidden truth behind it all: the worship of the Great Goddess. It's an ancient religion and way of life that's just as good as any othah."

"Wow!" Matt said, not sure how to respond.

"Think of it this way. Foah hundreds and hundreds of years, the people you call witches were discriminated against, persecuted, and killed for theah beliefs. Why else do you think Ahnt Vivianne would live like a recluse?"

"You don't mean she really believes she's a witch?"

"Ayuh, Matt, that's exactly what I mean. But it is moah than that. It's not just something she believes. She knows she's a witch." Gerallt paused and looked deeply into his friend's eyes as if deciding how much he could really trust him. "In fact, Matt, all of us Hawthornes ah."

"Are what? Witches?" Matt was stunned. He had gradually grown to accept the Hawthorne's eccentricities but had assumed that it was merely a cultural thing. To Matt, it had seemed like how his mother, a member of the Coos Indian tribe, had been raised to believe that spirits inhabited the trees and hills of her ancestral lands along the southern Oregon coast.

"But, you don't mean that you actually believe in magic spells, curses, and riding on broomsticks, do you? I mean, how can anyone still believe that stuff after everything we've learned and accomplished with science and engineering? Except for things like a magician's illusion and sleight of hand, there's no such thing as magic."

Although Matt's mother had weakly held some Native American and New Age beliefs, his father was a no-nonsense secular humanist. Allowed the freedom to choose, Matt and Tina eventually decided to follow their father. He'd taught them to place their trust in science, technology, and humanity's ability and responsibility to fix humanity's problems rather than relying on faith that some deity would solve them for us. Thus, for Matt's father, the supernatural was for the superstitious and gullible, and a religion was merely a myth that hadn't yet died out. But living as atheists in a mostly Christian culture, Matt had also learned to be tolerant of other people's beliefs, which he knew from experience were rarely open to argument or change.

"Ayuh, Matt, I do," Gerallt said. "It's what I believe and who I am."

"Still, even if your family worships some goddess, it doesn't mean that magic's real," Matt said, not ready to concede any more. "If it were true, it would violate all sorts of physical laws. If it were real, surely someone would have proved it a long time ago, and we'd be studying it in school. I think you'd need to give me some serious proof before I could believe that spells actually work and that you can really fly around on broomsticks. You wouldn't care to show me something truly supernatural, would you?"

"Then what about Clayton's chair?"

"What, you're trying to say you made that happen? You're just trying to take credit for something that was an accident. Clayton's big, and he was putting all his weight on the front two legs of his chair when they broke. It was probably old and ready to break when he leaned on it. You could have just gotten lucky that it broke when it did."

"And the seagulls?"

"Well, I have to admit that was really weird. Still, birds do poop on people, and it could have been just another lucky coincidence. How about proving you can do magic by doing a spell right now?"

"I can't," Gerallt replied, shaking his head.

"I thought so." Matt grinned in triumph.

"It's not that I'm not able tah. It's that I'm not allowed tah, not in front of an outsidah. Mothah would skin me alive. In fact, she'd probably ground me forever if she knew that I'd even been talkin' tah you about it. After hundreds of years of being hunted and burned at the stake, we've learned tah keep tah ourselves and avoid doing anything that would arouse suspicion. That's why what I did with Clayton's chair and the seagulls was so stupid. I lost my tempah and could have ruined everythin' for all of us."

Gerallt paused for a second and shook his head at the magnitude of what he'd risked. "Besides, I can't do anything you would call magic now even if I dared; I can't without something that's at home in my room."

"Okay, Gerallt, have it your own way," Matt said, giving up the argument and turning off the TV. "We don't have to watch the movie, and it's getting late anyway. Let's go to sleep, and you can show me some real magic when and if you finally decide to."

"Okay," Gerallt said, unrolling his sleeping bag on the floor.

Once they were ready and Matt reached over to turn out the light, Gerallt looked at his friend and said, "I'm sorry Matt. Someday, I hope I can."