（外文电子版资料）Theodora Goss - The Rose in Twelve Petals.pdfVIP

I. The Witch This rose has twelve petals. Let the first one fall: Madeleine taps the glass bottle, and out tumbles a bit of pink silk that clinks on the table—a chip of tinted glass—no, look closer, a crystallized rose petal. She lifts it into a saucer and crushes it with the back of a spoon until it is reduced to lumpy powder and a puff of fragrance. She looks at the book again. “Petal of one rose crushed, dung of small bat soaked in vinegar.” Not enough light comes through the cottages small-paned windows, and besides she is growing nearsighted, although she is only thirty-two. She leans closer to the page. He should have given her spectacles rather than pearls. She wrinkles her forehead to focus her eyes, which makes her look prematurely old, as in a few years she no doubt will be. Bat dung has a dank, uncomfortable smell, like earth in caves that has never seen sunlight. Can she trust it, this book? Two pounds ten shillings it cost her, including postage. She remembers the notice in The Gentlewomans Companion: “Every lady her own magician. Confound your enemies, astonish your friends! As simple as a cookery manual.” It looks magical enough, with Compendium Magicarum stamped on its spine and gilt pentagrams on its red leather cover. But the back pages advertise “a most miraculous lotion, that will make any ladys skin as smooth as an infants bottom” and the collected works of Scott. 3 The Rose in Twelve Petals by Theodora Goss Not easy to spare ten shillings, not to mention two pounds, now that the King has cut off her income. Lather lucky, this cottage coming so cheap, although it has no proper plumbing, just a privy out back among the honeysuckle. Madeleine crumbles a pair of dragonfly wings into the bowl, which is already half full: orris root; cats bones found on the village dust heap; oak gall from a branch fallen into a fairy ring; madder, presumably for its color; crushed rose petal; bat dung. And the magical words, are