Streetlights whisked by, casting shifting bands of
white light
across Vex’s hands and the steering wheel. All of the traffic lights
were green
tonight; it was an easy fare, a straight shot down Southern from Mesa
Drive to just past Mill
Avenue. Price. McClintock. Rural. The major
streets blurred by in an almost surreal progression. Three in the
morning on a
Wednesday night. No traffic.
The stars were out on a very clear night and the
moon
glowed like a silver disk in the sky overhead.
If it weren’t for the fact that this taxi’s A/C was stuck
permanently
on, Vex would have rolled her window down.
That’s when Vex noticed her: a woman standing by
the side
of the road, like an apparition, just past Rural. A pool of lamplight
embraced
her as she looked at and through Vex as the taxi passed. When Vex
checked her
rearview mirror to get another look at the woman after passing, Vex saw
that
she was no longer standing there.
A chill swept through Vex and numbness tingled
in her
hands on the wheel.
Daughter. Our daughter, a voice said in
her head. Are
you ready? It begins.
“Do you think we did it right?” David asked, licking
his lips. A
sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead in the flickering candlelight.
With a
huff, he wiped some of his short brown hair away from his glasses.
“Of course we did it right,” Darlene said. The
heat was
creating a slight amount of perspiration on her forehead as well.
Silently she
thanked herself for pulling her hair into a long braid. Now it wasn’t
likely to
stick to her face or get tangled up.
“Good,” David breathed with relief.
Darlene paused a moment to light the next
candle. “If I
were off by one tenth of an inch at the point we would be so screwed by
now…”
She stopped after lighting the small black wick and looked back over
the design
on the floor drawn out in silver powder over red paint. “Uh oh.”
“Uh oh, what?” David said suddenly concerned,
his startled
eyes became comically gigantic behind his glasses.
“I think that I drew a line wrong,” Darlene
snickered.
“We’re all doomed!”
David frowned, hearing the sarcasm in her voice.
“That is
so not funny.”
“Chill out, you two,” Mary Beth snapped as she
stepped
around a bookshelf into the candlelight. Her squarely-built boyfriend,
Korey,
followed close behind. Darlene waved. Mary Beth’s curly red hair bobbed
around
her freckled face as she nodded back.
The four were now together. They had been
practicing magic
together ever since they’d met each other in the Hayden Dormitory
recreation
room the previous year. Though, nothing so elaborate as the ceremony
tonight.
Everything had to be perfect, the sigil work on the floor done by
Darlene, the
white robes sewn by Mary Beth’s hand, the necessary chants pulled from
books by
David, and Korey… Korey was always simply an extension of Mary Beth
with
muscles.
Korey and Mary Beth were both dressed in the
white silken
robes that everyone had donned at the beginning of the ceremony. Mary
Beth’s
robes were adorned with strange symbols drawn in with magic marker that
spiraled up from the hem of the robe and split into two twining spirals
around
her breasts and connected near her throat in a symbol like the one
Darlene had
painted on the floor.
“It does look a little crooked,” David whined.
He adjusted
his eyeglasses and pointed.
Darlene gestured dismissively with her free
hand. “I drew
it exactly like it is in the book, it’s crooked there too, haven’t you
looked?”
She held the book out to him with one hand, he squinted.
Mary Beth sighed loudly. “It’s an Elder Sigil.
It’s not a
Star of David, okay? The so-called crookedness is because that point
develops
into the Celestial Spiral, there, with the seat of power where that
candle is.”
As she spoke she swirled her hand about the symbol and traced the lines
with
her pointed finger. “Darlene did a good job of painting it. I’d say
it’s
flawless.”
“Thank you High Priestess,” Darlene said, making
a smart
bow.
“I’m not High Priestess until the ceremony
starts.” Mary
Beth waved an admonishing finger. “So, is everyone ready?”
The rest mumbled their assent.
“Good. No interruptions?” Mary Beth leveled her
gaze and
looked pointedly at David.
He shook his head. “This top floor of the Stacks
has been
closed up for renovations. I just happen to have the key. It’s three AM. Nobody is going to bother
us.” He
pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. “At least I don’t think so.”
“Good enough,” Mary Beth said. “I know that we
haven’t
done anything so complicated before, everyone knows that we have to
keep as
close to the script as possible, right, or this just won’t work.
Everyone
ready?” She glanced around and only willing expressions greeted her.
“Positions
everyone. Like we rehearsed.” She knelt down and scooped up her
conducting wand
up, a small black rod with a silver tip. The wand was actually a
conductor’s
baton, painted black, and consecrated in the way the book demanded for
the
spellcraft.
Darlene walked around the Elder Sigil on the
floor and out
of the two circles of salt drawn around the entire working area. Both
circles
had not been connected yet; that would happen right before the
beginning of the
ceremony. Different magical symbols had been drawn by Darlene’s deft
hands in
salt and iron between the two circles.
She knelt down in the shadow of an empty
bookcase and
unhooked the latches on her violin case. She lifted the lid and removed
her
violin and its bow in a single practiced motion. A stand with the
necessary
sheet music had been set up inside of the circles directly opposite
where Mary
Beth would be standing. Darlene set her violin at the base of the music
stand
and dodged Korey as he moved to his place.
While Mary Beth hummed softly to herself and
looked as if
she were off in another world, Darlene added the last bits of salt to
complete
the two circles.
“The warding circles are now complete,” Darlene
said. “The
book warns that nobody must cross these lines or the protection will be
broken.
So, nobody leave the circle, no matter what you see or hear.”
“Spooky,” Korey said with a wry smirk. Silent up
until
this point, his sudden addition seemed to punctuate the group’s anxious
mood.
Mary Beth made a silencing gesture and the grin on his face faded and
his
expression returned to appearing bored.
David snickered, but he too was silenced by a
glance from
Mary Beth.
“Darlene,” Mary Beth said.
Darlene nodded, brushed her thick brown braid
off of her
shoulder, and lifted her violin to her chin. She had to bat at the
paper on her
music stand with the bow to make it stand flat; an uncanny draft of air
ruffled
at the pages and pushed them slightly to the side. When Mary Beth
lifted her
baton high and pointed at Darlene, she began to play.
The song started out with several very long
notes on the G
string. Darlene could feel the vibration through her hand from the
instrument
as she pulled the bow across the string. Each motion of her bow hand
brought
out a slightly varying sound from the last as she walked the instrument
slowly
up the scales. Soon she moved to the next string and the song became
more
complex, forcing her to switch between the strings with carefully timed
motions. All this came easily to her well practiced reflexes.
Soon, Darlene felt as if she were running her
hands
through water, the music flowed through her, and she became the
instrument.
Sweeping the baton along with Darlene’s music,
Mary Beth’s
eyes took on the far-away look again as she focused on the spell. Korey
and
David watched her carefully from their places along the sigil, standing
with
Darlene in a semi-circle in front of Mary Beth.
When Mary Beth lowered the baton again and
swished it side
to side, they saw what they were waiting for and began to chant.
“Anaton, anaton, redmarath ar-ay ar-ay,
Domare naghti, domare naghti, tavi.
Rothame, rothame, redmarath ar-an ar-an,
Domare naghti, domare naghti, tavi.”
The chant melted into the violin as Darlene
adjusted the
speed of her playing to match the boys’ baritone chant. Mary Beth
smiled as she
could feel the music and chant interweaving. The chant repeated two
times and
it was her turn. The spell required three components, the Musician who
was
Darlene, the Chant being Korey and David, and the Voice of the High
Priestess.
Mary Beth took in a breath and lifted the book
up in her
other hand to reference her lines and when the music was right, she
began to
sing. Slightly off key at first, she quickly brought herself down a
notch to
match the violin perfectly; Darlene also changed her playing slightly
to
accommodate Mary Beth’s voice as she began to sing.
After the first few words, a breath of air
stirred in the
silent room, ruffling at the pages of the book, and rattling the nearby
windows. Mary Beth smiled. Something was working. David glanced around
a
little, the gleam of the candles glinting in his glasses, but he didn’t
break
the chant.
Darlene seemed lost in her playing and didn’t
notice when
the pages of music were buffeted from the music stand by a short snap
of wind.
Her eyes closed to the world, she kept the tune breathlessly following
the
chanting, and Mary Beth’s heightened singing.
The lines of the sigil seemed to liquefy in the
candlelight. A soothing orange glow began to suffuse out of the figure
that
extended through the lines in a gentle cascade. A brief and barely
noticeable
change, but Mary Beth was certain she wasn’t the only one who had seen
it.
Shadows seemed to lengthen in her peripheral vision. She could see
shifting
figures in the candlelight, and the windows began to fog over.
As the song began to near its end, the
bookshelves nearby
shook with the vibration and frenetic energy of Darlene’s violin
playing. She
had become so absorbed in the final gyrations of the song that she had
nearly
knocked the music stand from its place. As quickly as the music seemed
to dash
into a harmonic train wreck it began to taper off…
Mary Beth sang the last line of the song,
letting her
voice draw out for as long as she could keep her breath… David and
Korey let
their chanting subside… Darlene—in a reversal of the first few notes
played—slowed, let her numbing fingers drink up the vibrations of her
violin’s
strings, and took her bow from the still resounding strings…
As the last note faded all that could be heard
in the room
was Darlene’s hard breathing.
A gust of sudden wind flooded into the room, it
raced from
the floor like a torrent of black, rose up like a whirlwind around the
Elder
Sigil and blew out all the candles. Their wicks sputtered and spat as
they
spent themselves into the gust and suddenly the room plunged into
darkness.
David gasped.
After a moment everyone’s vision began to
return; the
light from outside the windows emitted by various ASU buildings was
more than
enough to see by. For a long moment nobody spoke.
“Did it work?” Darlene asked finally, as she
slowly sank
to the floor as if unable to stand. She set her violin gently onto its
back and
let her sweaty hand slide down the back of the bow. “Did we do it? I
could
really feel it, but my hand got greasy, I was afraid the bow
would
slip.”
“I think I saw something,” David said, adjusting
his
glasses and glancing outside the circle.
“All that for better grades,” Korey snickered.
“Well, that
was fun.” He wiped his hands off on his pants and stretched with a yawn.
“I think…” Mary Beth said calmly. “I think it
worked. I
felt it. I really felt it that time. Wow.”
“So,” David said cautiously. “Does this mean
that I’ll ace
that test on Monday? Heh.” He pushed his glasses up his nose again.
“Well,
bring it on.”
Mary Beth and Darlene shared a gaze for a moment
and then
both shook their heads. The entire spellcraft was indeed supposed to
help
benefit their grades, although the old book spoke of benefits to
“power” and
not academics. The book, and a few websites later, and the two had come
up with
a formula that seemed to suggest that it would offer just that.
“Cool enough,” Korey said. “So, who wants to go
get some
food at Denny’s? I certainly can’t sleep after all that.”
One of the candles lit again with a sizzle.
Darlene narrowed her eyes. “Are those trick
candles?”
“Uh, no,” Korey said. “I bought them, I should
know.”
“It could be a paraffin flare,” David said in
his
lecturing voice. “The candles may have been put out by the breeze but
they were
still hot enough to ignite the wax again.”
Just when he finished, a second one lit again,
and with it
a low moaning sound whistled against the windows.
“Two?” Darlene said.
The sound began to rise in volume and the rest
of the
candles lit, flashing to life. Mary Beth turned around suddenly as if
she felt
someone touch her and she backed towards the other three.
“Did anyone else see that?” David said,
swallowing hard.
“See what?” Korey said, walking towards the edge
of the
circle. “I’ll go turn on a light or something.”
That’s
when the screaming started.
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