司氏姐妹 第13章：收回魔力

第13章 – 收回魔力

摩根和瑪麗伸出她們用來寫字的手。法媽在排成一字的女兒們面前一一走過，在她們伸出的手上仔細地戴上了她從藏在閣樓上的青銅盒裡拿出來的玉石手鐲。摩根的手鐲是珍貴的羊脂白玉，而瑪麗的是翠綠色中透出一些渦狀紅色碎點。

孿生姐妹倆記得只戴過一次這些手鐲。那是三，四年前，她們的魔力才開始初現，法媽把她們帶到閣樓，打開了盒子。手鐲在黑暗中發出光暈。盒子里總共有四個手鐲，四姐妹們一人一個，法媽拿出了中間的兩個。她把手鐲懸浮在空氣中，輕聲而嚴肅地說。

「你們開始變得有魔力，」她說。 「這將很容易讓事情失去控制，甚至可能產生炫耀的慾望，」在法媽講話時，手鐲在空氣中慢慢地轉動。摩根和瑪麗全神貫注地傾聽著，在一生中她們第一次如此完全投入，而不是無聲地彼此通過感應溝通著。

「讓你們可以有控制地發展你們的魔力是很重要的，你們要不斷練習，使你們不想它們出來時就不出來，」法媽繼續說著。「但是，更重要的是你們要知道除了我們家裡人之外，不能讓任何其他人見到它們。我相信你們－－」說到這里，法媽深深地看了看每個女兒的眼睛。「但是如果你們打破了我的信任，這些手鐲將行使對你們的懲罰。只要你們戴上它們，你們的魔力就會被收回。只有我可以把它們戴上或摘下。」

她接著讓女孩們試戴了一下手鐲以證明其效果。瑪麗頓時感到一陣熱潮，從她的胸部升起，上升到她的臉，下降到她的腳趾，把她體內的水分蒸發得一乾二淨，而摩根感到一陣顫抖的寒意順著她的脊椎傳到全身，把她體內的火氣滅盡。這種潮熱和寒意傳遍全身，然後逐漸平息下來，女孩們才感到變回正常。法媽讓摩根去點燃蠟燭，讓瑪麗在它上面倒一杯水。女孩們努力嘗試著，但她們都沒有成功，並且當她們努力時，潮熱和寒慄再次象她們第一次戴上手鐲后一樣襲擊她們。在這次以後，她們還沒有見過這些手鐲。

到目前為止，瑪麗是預期到這種結果的。摩根賭氣地撅著她的嘴，但她知道她沒什么可以做的。米娜站在她們旁邊，眼睛睜的又大又怕。她以前從來沒有見過這些手鐲，老實說也不知道它們是什么。因為她的魔力還沒有開始顯示，她的母親還沒有給她那警告的談話。她只能從摩根和瑪麗臉上嚴峻的表情猜測手鐲的性質。

姑娘們要與她們的母親一起外出，但法媽不想冒任何險。這是格雷厄姆亨特的追悼會。司家有應盡的義務參加。

前一天晚上，市長再次訪問了司家房子，告知姑娘們追悼會的事情。他強調，他相信參加追悼會對她們整個家庭的整體形象很有好處，他補充說，他和他的妻子會很感激她們的參與，這象徵著她們的態度。亨特市長的訪問是匆匆的，他幾乎沒好好地看一眼房間里的東西，就留下了他的邀請書，消失在門外。

市長的訪問給姑娘們留下困惑，讓她們感到相互矛盾。市長的行為在格雷厄姆遇害和瑪拉被捕的一周以來顯得非常奇怪。在報紙上發表評論和第一次訪問司家后，他立即召開了新聞發布會，讓他的妻子再次指責瑪拉。亨特太太通常總是保持那種在她丈夫身邊沉默微笑的形象，但是在過去的一周里，她似乎講了比她一生中其他時間加起來更多的觀點鮮明的話。雖然她的語氣在婚禮那晚后開始平靜下來，她還是強烈地富有感情地暗示，與她丈夫圓滑的外交辭令相左，叫喊著「這起謀殺是一個可以被避免的悲劇，」並呼籲鄉親們「要對已知的犯罪嫌疑人及其同夥採取謹慎措施。」

讓姑娘們印象深刻的是——尤其是瑪麗，她後來把她的想法告訴了姐妹們－－象新聞發布會一樣奇怪，市長似乎在新聞發布會上比在她們家更傷心欲絕。在她們家拜訪時，他只是顯得疲憊和難過，但在新聞發布會上，他多次滿含淚水，哽咽地說不出話來，甚至有一次痛心到不能自制，默默地把腦袋耷拉在講台上有一分多鍾，直到他恢復了鎮靜。他提到，如果他知道「某些事情」就好了，他「就可能對某些事情做出不同的考慮」，最後他熱切呼籲市民們在這困難時期為亨特家庭提供精神上的支持。人們也注意到他說到，不允許如何人去拜訪犯罪嫌疑人。

鎮民們表示了他們的支持。在幾個小時之內，人們開始來到格雷厄姆被謀害的花園里，帶來了飾品，鮮花和字條來紀念他。在夜間，當姑娘們應該睡覺，但仍然清醒地在被子下悄悄地竊竊私語時，不知名的鎮民們騎車來到司家住宅，在塔瑪尼巷上那最臟，最小，最破的房子，把雞蛋和腐爛的蔬菜扔到它的木牆上。對於這種小事，法媽可以很輕鬆地解決或避免，但由於某些原因，她拒絕去做，因此司家房子的外面顯得更加霉爛和破舊。

格雷厄姆的屍體仍沒被發現，但他已經去世足夠長的時間，而公眾的悲痛和同情性是如此強大，召開他的追悼會是很必要的。此外，瑪拉婚服上的血跡已經由DNA實驗室進行了分析，證實是他的。缺乏確鑿的證據沒能改變鎮民們的觀念，反而使他們更相信他的失蹤是一些不正常的魔力的結果。

而因此，司家姐妹們又一次堆擠到她們的微型小車裡，但這次沒有瑪拉，她們四個人都穿著白色的衣服。他們穿白色是因為法媽要這樣，因為在中國，白色，而不是黑色是喪服的顏色。正是這類事情讓瑪拉覺得她的母親虛假表面的地方，儘管她不願意自己顯得與眾不同，害怕讓人注意到被當作女巫，對於一些文化習俗的小問題，如在什麼場合穿什么顏色，卻是如此的固執。瑪拉和法媽作了很大的爭執才同意她穿一件白色的西式婚紗，而不是傳統的紅色旗袍。然而，具有諷刺意味的​​是，法媽的願望在婚禮結束時詭異地實現了－－瑪拉的婚紗被血染成了紅色。

司家姐妹們在教堂前門停下，在這裡全鎮的人們似乎再次全部聚集，在這裡就在一個星期前瑪拉和格雷厄姆交換了他們的結婚誓言。但這一次，無論是新郎還是新娘都不在現場。

Chapter 13 – Powers Trapped

Morgan and Marie stuck out their writing arms. Fa walked down the line of her daughters and carefully squeezed their outstretched arms through jade bracelets that she had removed from a bronze box in the attic. Morgan』s bracelet was a precious white jade, while Marie』s was green with a swirl of red.

The twins could only remember one other time they had worn the bracelets. It was three or four years ago, when their powers had first started to show, that Fa had brought them to the attic and opened the box. The bracelets glowed in the darkness. There were four in total–one for each of the sisters–and Fa brought out the middle two. She levitated them in the air while speaking softly and severely.

「You are starting to become powerful,」 she had said. 「It will be easy to let things get out of control, it may be tempting to show off, even.」 The bracelets spun in the air slowly as Fa talked. Morgan and Marie were rapt, listening fully for once in their lives rather than communicating silently to each other between the lines.

「It will be important for you to develop your powers so that you can control them, practice so that they don』t come out when you don』t want them to,」 Fa had continued. 「But it will be even more important for you to understand that no one outside of this house can ever see them. I trust you–」 Here Fa looked deep into each of her daughters』 eyes. 「But if you ever break my trust, these bracelets will serve as your punishment. They will trap your powers as long as you wear them. Only I can put them on and remove them.」

She had then asked the girls to try on the bracelets to prove their efficacy. Marie had felt a hot flush rise up from her chest to her face and down to her toes, a warmth to evaporate the water inside her, and Morgan a shuddering chill down her spine, extinguishing her fire. As soon as it arose, the flush and chill went down and the girls felt normal again. Fa ordered Morgan to try to light a candle, and Marie to pour a glass of water on top of it. The girls struggled but neither of them could, and when they tried, the same hot flush and chilling shudder they had felt when they first put on the bracelets swept through them. Since that first time, they had never seen them again.

Until now. Marie supposed she had expected it. Morgan pouted her lips, but she knew there was nothing she could do. Mina stood next to them, eyes big and scared. She had never seen the bracelets before, and frankly did not know what they were. Since she hadn』t begun to show any magical qualities, her mother had not yet given her the warning talk. Her only guess as to the nature of the bracelets were the grim look on Morgan and Marie』s faces.

The girls were going outside of the house–with their mother, but Fa could take no chances. It was a memorial service for Graham Hunter. The Switch family was obligated to make an appearance.

The night before, the mayor had made another visit to the Switch house to inform the girls of the memorial service. He had emphasized that he believed it would be good for the overall image of the family to attend the service, adding that he and his wife would appreciate it as a token of the family』s sentiments. The visit was hurried, with Mayor Hunter barely taking a glance around the apartment before he gave his invitation and disappeared out the door.

The girls were left confused and feeling conflicted. The mayor』s behavior had been more than a little odd in the week since Graham』s death and Mara』s arrest. After the comments in the newspaper and the initial visit to the Switch House, he had immediately convened a press conference in which he had allowed his wife to berate Mara once again. Ms. Hunter, normally a silent smiling figure at her husband』s arm, had spoken more opinionated sentences in the past week than she seemed to have spoken in all the rest of her life combined. Though her tone had quieted since the night of the wedding, she still hinted strongly at feelings that opposed her husband』s diplomatic visit, calling the murder a 「tragedy that could have been avoided,」 and urging the townspeople to 「take caution against known suspects and their affiliates.」

What struck the girls–and especially Marie, who later conferred her observations to her sisters–as strange about the press conference was that the mayor appeared much more grief stricken than he had at their house. During the visit he had appeared weary and saddened, but at the press conference he teared up many times, choking on his words and once even breaking down to the extent that he hung his head silently over the podium for a minute while he regained his composure. He mentioned that if only he had known 「certain things, he 「might have considered things differently,」 and closed the speech with an earnest plea for the support of townspeople for the Hunter family during these difficult times. It was also noted that the suspect in question was to have no visitors.

The town showed their support. Within hours, people started to arrive at the garden where Graham had been murdered, bringing trinkets, flowers, and small notes to memorialize him. During the night, when the girls should have been sleeping but stayed awake whispering quietly under their covers, anonymous citizens rode by the Switch House, the sootiest, smallest, and most rickety house on Tamany Lane, and threw eggs or rotten vegetables at its wooden sideboards. It was the sort of thing that Fa could easily fix or prevent, but for some reason she refused to, and the outside of the Switch House became even more moldy and decrepit.

Graham』s body had still not been found, but he had been gone long enough, and the outpouring of public grief and sympathy was so strong that it made sense to have a memorial service for him. Besides, the blood on Mara』s dress had been analyzed by a genetic lab and confirmed to be his. The lack of hard evidence did little to disuade the citizens–it only made them believe more strongly that his disappearance was the result of some abnormal foul play.

And so it was that the Switch sisters were piling into their tiny car again, this time without Mara, all four of them dressed in white. They wore white because Fa made them–in China, white instead of black was the color of mourning. This was precisely the kind of thing that Mara had found so hypocritical of her mother, that despite her desire not to stand out or call attention to themselves as witches, she was so stubborn on small  cultural issues such as what color to wear on a certain occasion. It had taken a fight for Fa to agree that Mara could have a white Western wedding gown, rather than the traditional red qipao. Ironically, however, Fa』s wish had been grotesquely met at the end of the night when Mara』s dress was stained red with blood.

The Switch sisters pulled up to the front doors of the church, where once again what seemed like the whole town had convened, where just one week ago Mara and Graham had exchanged their vows. Except this time, neither the bride nor groom were present.

• [09/01]司氏姐妹 第11章：第二天早晨
• [09/01]The Switch Sisters: Chapter 11 – The Morning After
• [09/08]司氏姐妹 第12章：約翰·亨特
• [09/09]The Switch Sisters: Chapter 12 -- John Hunter
• [09/09]為什麼在貝殼村翻譯司氏姐妹
• [09/16] 司氏姐妹 第13章：收回魔力
• [09/16]The Switch Sisters: Chapter 13 -- Powers Trapped
• [09/23]司氏姐妹 第14章: 哀悼的母親
• [09/23]The Switch Sisters Chapter 14: The Mourning Mothers
• [09/29]司氏姐妹 第15章：有其母就有其女
• [09/29]The Switch Sisters: Chapter 15, Like Mother, Like Daughter
• [10/06]司氏姐妹：第16章 - 關閉的門
• [10/06]The Switch Sisters, Chapter 16 – The Door that Closed

• 查看：[Wuwuyu的.最新博文]
• 查看：[大家的.最新博文]
• 查看：[大家的.原創文學]