49 pages • 1-hour read
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire
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Part 2, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence.
Part 2: “The Deal”
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “A Cat Tells a Story”
Jack falls out of the night and onto the ground near Verity’s feet. Immediately recognizing that he is not himself, Verity panics. She performs a spell, and Jack eventually returns to his typical shape, worse for wear. Then Tacita appears, revealing that she followed Jack because she was worried about Verity.
She is thrilled to hear that Earl is gone, but Verity insists that there is still work to be done. They have to get home. Eventually, they head back to the Millers’ farm, where they discover that Jack is still ailing and will need some days to recover.
Verity and Tacita spend several hours discussing how Jack used his power and what happened with Earl. Tacita reminisces about the days before Earl and tells Verity about her dreams for the future. Verity is excited to learn that Tacita loves sewing and suggests that she and Gilly team up.
Del emerges and excitedly greets Tacita. Mae joins the group, ushering them inside. Suddenly, a storm breaks out, and thunder cracks across the sky. Tacita shrieks and falls to the ground, covered in blood “where her heart should be” (191).
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “A Man Takes a Nap”
A panicked Mae demands to know what’s going on. The group works together to get Tacita out of the storm. Once inside, Verity explains that Tacita traded Earl her heart in exchange for her greatest wish. She performs a spell to mend Tacita’s chest wound, realizing that Tacita will die if she doesn’t act fast. After the bleeding stops, Mae insists that Verity tell her everything that happened on the mountain. She is furious to hear that Verity sent Earl into the mine with Tacita’s heart.
To explain why she is upset, Mae leads Verity upstairs to her husband Matthew’s room. An ailing Matthew is lying in bed, almost dead. Mae explains that when their animals got sick and the farm started failing, Matthew began sneaking off to the mountain to make deals with Earl. Each deal Matthew made to help his family cost him a part of his body, most recently, his ability to hear Mae’s voice. Earl also took his ability to sleep, so he lives in constant torment.
Mae tells Verity that she should let Tacita go because, like Matthew, she isn’t really living without her heart. Verity suggests helping Matthew cross to the other side, but Mae insists that she isn’t ready to let him go. Instead, Verity puts a charm on him so that he can sleep.
Suddenly, Earl’s voice starts whispering Verity’s name. Mae hears it, and Tacita wakes up. They both beg Verity to ignore him. Verity dismisses their concern. Instead, she puts a spell on Tacita so that she can’t follow her and jets off with Jack, desperate to defeat Earl once and for all.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “A Storm Breaks”
Verity takes her broom back to Gilly’s. Gilly is relieved to see her and furious that she didn’t send word sooner. Verity explains everything that happened and insists she needs Gilly’s help. Gilly climbs onto Verity’s broom for the first time. On the ride through the storm, she tells Verity how her relationship with her crush, Earnest, has developed in recent days.
Verity, Gilly, and Jack arrive in the forest, where Earl is waiting. He looks different this time. He reveals that he ventured down to the mine and took powers from the gods. The only thing he wants now is Verity’s power. Like all witches, Verity can fly and travel between dimensions.
Earl says if Verity gives him her powers, he will return Tacita’s heart, restore the bridge, and let the Foxfire residents leave town. Verity refuses the deal, and a magical battle ensues. Verity tries fighting Earl off with every ounce of her energy. Weakening over the course of the battle, Verity realizes her power isn’t enough against Earl.
Gilly appears with Jack. She tells Verity that Earl’s power is destroying everything down below, which she didn’t realize he could do. Verity has a revelation, understanding that Earl cannot wield all this power and destruction himself. She races to the mine, which is spewing out magical power. Earl is using this power to create the storm, fight Verity, and destroy the valley. Verity works fast to close the mine so that its power won’t be accessible to Earl any longer.
When she finds Earl again, Verity discovers that her plan worked. Earl has been weakened because he can’t channel the power of the mine. Verity tells him that she is willing to make a deal.
Afterward, Verity walks home alone. She is shocked by the destruction she finds when she returns to the valley. Finally, she arrives at Gilly’s shop, where Tacita is waiting for her. Tacita is furious that Verity left her and used her magic against her. Verity apologizes, insisting she was trying to protect her. Tacita forgives her, as long as Verity doesn’t repeat the mistake.
Part 2, Chapters 8-10 Analysis
In these latter chapters of Part 2, Verity’s ongoing attempts to defeat Earl fuel the novel’s theme of the Use of Power for Good Versus Evil by clearly juxtaposing the ways in which the characters use their power and the results. The narrative uses Verity’s internal monologue throughout these chapters to convey Verity’s internal conflict regarding her power and influence. For example, when Verity successfully ejects Earl from the mountain by sending him to the mine, she is momentarily convinced that she has used her magical powers for good, ridding the region and Foxfire of the monster once and for all. However, she soon learns that her decisions are having unpredictable consequences on her companions. Her responses to each discovery of harm convey Verity’s work to wrestle with the effects of her magical capabilities, highlighting her moral approach to her power. The first impact of Verity’s decision at the mine is Jack’s ailment. Verity immediately turns inward when she notices her cat’s weakened state:
The witch instantly blamed herself, assuming this must have been some kind of blowback from the candle spell. It had gotten out of hand so fast that she had to see it through, otherwise she risked being burned up permanently. Had it taken her constant companion with her somehow? No, that wasn’t right. Had it caught him up in the flames in such a way that he was injured? That must have been it. This was her fault (173-74).
In this passage, the third-person narrator inhabits Verity’s consciousness and reveals her private thoughts. The use of questions and self-correction in the above passage affects a worried, anxious tone that mirrors Verity’s fear that she has caused irreversible harm. Verity is grieving the potential loss of her familiar (Jack), but she is also beginning to interrogate the effects of her decisions. Verity has the same response when Tacita suddenly falls ill as a result of her heart wound. The more suffering Verity witnesses, the more “guilt formed in Verity’s mind” (175), contrasting her concern with the repercussions of her power with Earl’s selfish and thoughtless use of his.
Verity’s self-blame conveys her authentic desire to use her power for good. She and Earl are foils, meaning their primary traits contrast with one another to greater highlight aspects of their character. The more evil Earl proves himself to be, the more evident Verity’s goodness is. The repeated passages in which the narrator enters Verity’s mind and reveals her thoughts on the page contribute to this sense of Verity as earnest and responsible. While her habit of taking accountability for everything that goes wrong around her has potential detriments, her penchant for self-reflection is also one of her strengths, allowing her to grow and mature as she reconsiders the effects of her power. She understands that she has powers others do not, and that with these powers comes responsibility. When Jack and Tacita fall ill, she begins to witness firsthand the profound repercussions of wielding her power without concerted forethought.
Verity maintains her commitment to helping Foxfire in these chapters, and she seeks to correct her mistakes by confronting Earl once more and sacrificing her safety for the sake of her new friends. Amid this fantastical battle, Verity again confronts the intense responsibility of wielding magical power. When she discovers the open mine spewing its power, she realizes she “could sing down comets with this power,” “could command the slumbering things deep below the mountain with this power,” and “could wreck and ravage the land if she used this power” (232). Instead of co-opting the mine’s power for her own selfish use, however, Verity closes the mine in defense of Foxfire, again contrasting her approach with Earl’s. She gives up the chance to become even more powerful and puts herself in harm’s way to reverse Foxfire’s curse and attempt to recover Tacita’s heart. Verity’s decisions in Chapter 10 reiterate how different her regard for power is than Earl’s. While Earl is power-hungry, greedy, and exploitative, Verity is self-reflective, humble, and sacrificial. Power in the hands of the wicked, the narrative implies, has dangerous consequences, but in the hands of the good, power can create positive change.
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