by Isobel Bird
“For me?” Kate said. “What is it?”
Scott grinned. “Not until tomorrow,” he said. “But I promise you, it’s going to be great.”
No matter how hard she begged, Scott wouldn’t tell her what his big surprise was. She tried for the rest of the lunch period to get it out of him, but when the bell rang she wasn’t any closer to finding out what he had in store for her. Still, just knowing that he was planning something was enough, and for the rest of the day Kate felt almost normal again.
After school, she ran home to change and grab something to eat. Then she headed back out and walked to Annie’s house. It wasn’t hard to find. The area of town where Kate and Annie lived was centered around the campus of Jasper College. The beautiful old stone buildings of the school, and the wide, tree-lined lawns that surrounded them, formed a big square. The streets all ran parallel to the square, making it easy to walk around. In the fall the streets were filled with students walking or riding their bikes to classes. In winter, they scurried by with their hats pulled over their ears and their scarves wrapped around their necks.
Kate walked until she came to the big college library with its wide steps and students going in and out of the revolving glass doors. At the corner, she turned onto Ash Lane. Number 39 sat at the far end of the street. It was a huge Victorian house painted light green with yellow, dark green, and deep red trim. Although the paint was faded and the house looked lived in, it didn’t look run-down. Even in the chill of winter, the garden outside looked neat and orderly. The windows were filled with warm light behind the curtains, and there was a thick stream of smoke coming out of the chimney.
Kate went up the steps and rang the bell. A minute later the door opened and Annie appeared.
“Come on in,” she said, sounding almost surprised to see Kate.
Inside, the house was even cozier than the outside looked. The floors were dark polished wood, and there were carpets everywhere. From the hallway, Kate could see what looked to be lots of rooms opening into one another. They were all painted in rich colors.
“Your house is beautiful,” Kate said as Annie took her coat and hung it in a hall closet.
“It’s my aunt’s house, really,” Annie said. “We’ve lived here since we were little,” she said.
“We?” asked Kate.
“My sister and I,” Annie explained.
As if on cue, a little girl ran into the hallway. She looked like a miniature version of Annie, with the same long braid hanging down her back.
“I’m Meg,” she said to Kate. “I’m nine. How old are you?”
“I’m Kate, and I’m fifteen,” Kate said.
The little girl smiled. “The same age as Annie. Are you friends?”
Kate didn’t know how to answer that question. She looked at Annie. “I think maybe we are,” she said.
“Good,” said Meg. “Annie needs friends. That’s what Aunt Sarah says.”
“Okay,” Annie said. “I think it’s time for your snack. How about some cookies?”
Meg ran into another room and Annie followed her, with Kate close behind. They went into a big kitchen, where Meg was already taking milk out of the refrigerator.
“Does your friend want some?” she asked.
Annie turned to Kate. “Milk and cookies?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“You know, that sounds really good right about now,” Kate said.
Meg and Annie busied themselves pouring milk into glasses and putting chocolate chip cookies on plates. Then Annie sent Meg into the other room. “Kate and I are going to go up to my room for a little while,” she said. “You can watch TV if you want.”
“I’d rather read, if you don’t mind,” Meg replied. “I’m reading Alice in Wonderland,” she explained to Kate. “I’m at the part where Alice eats the mushroom and gets really big.”
After Meg left, Annie headed for a stairway at the back of the kitchen. Kate followed her. It turned out to be a narrow set of steps that went up a flight and turned a corner before going up some more.
“I feel like we’re climbing to the moon,” Kate commented as the stairs turned yet again. Her house was also an old Victorian, like most of the houses in the neighborhood around the college, but it was nowhere near as large and rambling as Annie’s.
“This was the stairway that kitchen maids used when this place was first built,” Annie said as they went up, “so they wouldn’t bother anyone when they got up early in the morning. My room is all the way at the top of the house.”
“Very convenient for late-night kitchen raids,” Kate commented.
They finally reached the top, where Annie opened a door and they stepped through.
“You weren’t kidding,” said Kate, looking around. They were in a huge room. There were windows on three of the walls, and through them Kate could see the tops of the pine trees outside. “This is like being in a castle or something.”
“That’s why I like it,” Annie said as she set the plate of cookies on a dresser. “And it’s quiet.”
The enormous room had wooden floors like the rest of the house. Annie’s giant brass bed was against one of the walls, which were painted a warm honey color, and there was an equally huge old desk beneath one of the windows. The rest of the room was filled with bookcases crammed with books. Next to the bed was a tall floor lamp with an old-fashioned fringed shade.
“Looks like reading runs in the family,” Kate said as she surveyed the books.
She walked around the room, looking at all of the titles on Annie’s shelves. There were rows and rows of books of all kinds, from children’s books to science textbooks. They didn’t seem to be arranged in any particular order, and there were as many books stacked on the floor as there were on the shelves.
“My parents had a lot of books,” Annie said as Kate browsed.
“What do they do?” Kate asked.
“My father was an English professor,” Annie answered. “My mother was an artist. Those are her paintings.”
Kate looked where Annie was pointing and noticed several large canvases leaning against a wall.
“They’re dead,” Annie said.
“What?” Kate asked, examining the paintings.
“My parents,” Annie said. “They’re dead. Meg and I live here with my Aunt Sarah. My father’s sister.”
“Oh,” Kate said. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say next. Like almost everything she said, Annie mentioned her parents’ deaths as if she was simply stating a fact.
Annie turned to one of the bookcases near her bed and picked out a book.
“I guess we should talk about this,” she said, tossing the book onto the bed.
Kate sat on the bed and picked up the book. It was a copy of Spells and Charms for the Modern Witch. Kate looked up at Annie, who dunked a cookie in her milk, took a bite, and swallowed.
“I got tired of checking it out,” she said. “So I bought my own copy. Where should we start?”
CHAPTER 7
Kate was so stunned that she didn’t know where to begin.
“So you did try some of the spells,” she said accusingly.
Annie nodded. “A few,” she said. “But contrary to what you said in the cafeteria, I did not use magic to get good grades.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Kate said. “I just assumed you did because I did.”
“You did?” Annie said.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Kate said. “It wasn’t that hard, really.”
“It’s just that . . .” Annie began, but let her sentence trail off as she sat on the bed and picked at the patchwork quilt that covered it.
“What?” Kate asked.
Annie sighed. “Well,” she tried again. “I said that I tried some of the spells.”
“And?” Kate said.
“I didn’t say they worked,” Annie finished, sounding embarrassed. “At least they didn’t work quite the way I wanted them to.”
“That’s exactly what happened to
me!” Kate said. “What happened to yours?”
“You don’t want to know.” Annie groaned.
“Yes, I do,” Kate said. “Now, come on—out with it. It can’t be that bad.”
Annie made a face. “Oh, yes, it can,” she said. “Did you read the part about spells to make it rain?”
“I didn’t get that far,” Kate admitted.
“I thought it would be a safe way to start,” Annie explained. “So I did one, thinking maybe it would snow or something. You know, something harmless.”
“And what happened?” Kate asked.
“The pipes in the basement burst,” Annie said.
Kate laughed so hard that she thought she might cry. When she was able to speak again, she put her hand on Annie’s shoulder.
“If that’s the worst thing that happened, then you have nothing to worry about,” she said.
“Actually, the mice were worse,” Annie said.
“The mice?” Kate asked, wiping her eyes.
“I tried one of the spells for summoning a familiar, too,” Annie explained.
“Familiar?” said Kate.
“You really didn’t get very far, did you?” Annie said. “Familiars. You know, animals that help witches do their work. Supposedly you can do a spell to summon one. I thought it would be interesting to see what happened.”
“And you got mice?” asked Kate.
“Lots of mice,” Annie said. “They’re still showing up in the kitchen, even though I did the spell two months ago. Now, tell me what you did.”
Kate explained about the spell for passing her chemistry midterm. “It worked,” she said, “but now everyone is mad at me. But that’s not nearly as bad as the whole Scott thing.”
“The Scott thing?”
Kate sighed. Then she told Annie about making the doll and doing the love spell. “And now all the boys in school are pretty much in love with me,” she finished.
“And I thought mice were bad,” said Annie. “So, you got a good grade but everyone else failed because of it, and you got not just one boyfriend but fifty or sixty boyfriends. Nice job.”
“At least my pipes didn’t burst,” Kate retorted. “How do we put everything back to normal?”
“You mean make you a marginal student with no love life?” Annie said. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know!” exclaimed Kate. “You’re the one who read the book a billion times.”
“And maybe if you’d read it all the way through even once you wouldn’t have gone off making up your own spells,” Annie shot back.
The two of them glared at each other for a minute. Then Kate relented. “You’re right,” she said. “I should have read the whole thing. But after I did the first spell and it seemed to work okay, I thought I could just do what I wanted.”
“I haven’t learned all that much about witchcraft,” Annie said. “But what I have learned is that you have to be careful. This isn’t something to just play with. All sorts of things could happen.”
“Like mice and ninety-sevens in chemistry,” said Kate.
“Exactly,” said Annie, picking up the book. “I haven’t done any of the spells in here since mine backfired.”
“Well, I can’t just wait for my problems to go away, or call a plumber or an exterminator to fix them,” Kate said. “I need to do something. There’s got to be a spell in there that will fix all of this.”
Annie began flipping through the book. “I swore I wouldn’t try any of this again,” she said. “But let’s see what’s in here.”
She flipped through the pages, looking at the spells and rejecting each one. Watching her, Kate got more and more anxious. Annie was her only hope, and if she couldn’t find something that would help, Kate didn’t know what she would do. But then Annie looked up at her.
“This might just do it,” she said.
“What is it?” asked Kate excitedly.
“Well, it’s not exactly what you’re looking for,” Annie said. “It’s a ritual for reversing bad luck. But I think it can be reworked a little to fit the occasion.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Kate. “What do we need to do?”
“We?” said Annie. “What do you mean, we?”
“I thought you were going to help me,” Kate said.
“I did help you,” Annie said. “I found the spell. But don’t expect me to do anything else.”
“Come on,” said Kate. “You’ve got to. I can do it myself, but if we both do it, it will be even better.”
“No,” said Annie, shaking her head emphatically. “Not after last time.”
“It might get rid of the last of the mice,” Kate said, trying to coax her into cooperating.
Annie groaned. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do the spell with you. But that’s it.”
Kate clapped her hands together triumphantly. “Great. What do we need?”
Annie consulted the book. “The usual,” she said, sounding as if she’d done spells a thousand times. “I think I have most of the things we need up here.”
She went over to her dresser and pulled open a drawer. There was all kinds of stuff inside. Annie pulled out a box of candles, some matches, a glass jar, and what looked like a metal bowl. She put everything on the floor in the middle of the room.
“I need to get some things from the kitchen and check on Meg,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
While Annie was gone, Kate took the candles and arranged them in a circle, just as she’d done when performing her own spells. The metal bowl turned out to be a small cauldron with three legs. Kate put it in the center of the circle because that’s where it seemed to belong. She put the glass jar next to it. It was filled with some kind of powder, but Kate didn’t know what it was. When Annie came back a few minutes later, she looked at Kate’s handiwork.
“Perfect,” she said. “Now, put this in the circle, too.” She handed Kate a box of salt, an empty bowl, and a kitchen knife.
Kate put the items next to the cauldron while Annie turned out the lights and closed the curtains. With the room almost completely dark, it was hard for Kate to see anything at all. But Annie seemed to know her way around, and a moment later she was standing in the circle of candles with Kate.
“Shall we cast the circle?” she said.
“Cast the circle?” Kate said. “You mean light the candles?”
“That’s only part of it,” Annie said. “You really didn’t read any of the book, did you?”
“Not the first half,” Kate said. “I kind of skipped right to the spell part.”
“That’s half your problem right there,” Annie said. “Now, watch me.”
“Lead on, mouse queen,” Kate said.
Annie turned and faced the front of the house. Bending down, she lit one of the candles. Then she raised the knife, holding it with both hands and pointing it in front of her. “East,” she said, “creature of air. We ask that you come to our circle.”
“What are you doing?” whispered Kate as Annie paused.
“I’m calling the directions,” Annie said. “You invite them to the circle.”
“Are they here?” asked Kate. She had no idea what Annie was talking about. This was the first she’d ever heard about inviting anyone—or anything—into the circle.
“Just listen,” Annie said. “Try to envision the elements as I call them. It’s supposed to help.”
Kate shut her eyes and thought about air. She imagined winds surrounding her. She pictured herself floating in the sky, held up by invisible hands. She felt the wind on her face and beneath her body. It wasn’t nearly as hard as she imagined it would be, and she was almost disappointed when Annie turned to her right and lit another candle.
“South, creature of fire,” she said, holding out the knife as she had before. “We ask that you come to our circle.”
This time Kate pictured a crackling fire. She held out her hands to it and felt the warmth soaking into her skin. She imagined the shadows of th
e dancing flames, and she felt as if she was really dancing along with them.
Once more Annie turned and lit a candle. “West,” she said, “creature of water. We ask that you join us in our circle.”
Kate pictured herself diving into the bluest water she could imagine, and felt it surround her with its cool touch. She imagined a sea without an end to it, stretching all across the world. She visualized the beach that she sometimes rode her bike to, and the way the waves crashed on the sand and then pulled back again. She thought about how the sea was sometimes soothing and sometimes frightening, but always moving.
Annie turned one more time, lighting a fourth candle. “North, creature of the earth,” she said. “We ask that you join us in our circle.”
Kate shut her eyes and thought about the earth. She pictured mountains stretching up to the sky the way the mountains around Beecher Falls did. She envisioned vast deserts of shifting sands. She recalled the smell of digging in the garden in the summer. She imagined putting her hands into the earth and feeling it between her fingers. Suddenly she felt a sense of being rooted to the ground, as if she were standing in a forest surrounded by trees and growing things.
“Our circle is cast,” Annie said, breaking Kate’s concentration.
Kate opened her eyes and looked around. Annie was lighting all of the candles that connected the four main ones, and now they were standing in a ring of light.
“That was really weird,” Kate said. “I could actually feel the earth, air, fire, and water as you talked about them.”
“That’s the whole idea,” Annie said. “When you cast a circle, you’re creating a sacred space for doing magic. You invite the directions, and the elements that represent them, to help you create that space.”
“How’d you learn all of this?” Kate asked.
“I told you, I read a lot,” Annie said. “It’s all in the book. You know, in the part you were supposed to read before you started playing with spells.”
“And what’s with the knife?” Kate said. “It seems kind of hostile to be pointing a knife at things you’re supposed to be inviting to join us.”
“The knife is the traditional tool of witches,” Annie explained. “You use it to focus your energy. When I was casting the circle, I imagined white light coming from my body and flowing through the knife as I moved it around the circle to create a boundary. But it doesn’t have to be a knife. I guess you can use branches or just your hands if you want to.”
