Magic and the Modern Girl
Page 16
He demonstrated, shattering his vanilla cookie into shards in his excitement to get to the slip of paper inside. “You will go on many journeys and have many adventures. In bed.”
“What?” Gran asked.
“In bed!” Neko bounced up and down on the couch. “That’s the way you read fortunes. You put ‘in bed’ after the words. It’s much more fun! Everything’s more fun in bed! Right, Jane? Read yours next.”
I kept my head down, refusing to take the slightest chance that I would meet David’s gaze.
I couldn’t kill Neko. Executing my familiar would negate my entire magical plan. Murdering him would make the rest of my arcane redemption impossible; I would never locate Ariel. Throwing daggers at him, attacking him with boiling oil, skinning him from head to toe—each option would leave me worse off than I was now.
Now. When I was struggling to swallow, fighting to smile, trying to remember that he wanted me to flush with embarrassment.
Instead, I took a deep breath and sat up straight on the edge of the overstuffed green couch. “I’ll read my fortune later. After we’re done.”
“Done, dear?” Gran was immediately attentive. “What are we doing?”
Studiously avoiding looking at David, I said, “I have a favor to ask you. Both of you—Gran, Clara.” They looked curious. “It’s about witchcraft.”
Gran pursed her lips. When we’d had our run-in with the Coven the year before, she’d alternated between worrying about me and my desire to fit in, and worrying about herself and her disdain for a group of women who could be so divisive as to mock her witchy shortcomings.
Clara, on the other hand, looked pensive. She was far more disposed to matters arcane; she’d spent years meditating in Sedona, absorbing the powers of crystals and the vibrations of the Vortex. She had less use for the Coven than Gran had; Clara considered her basic female essence to be a greater foundation for witchcraft than any group of women who gathered together for a touch of socializing and ostracization. She responded first to my statement. “What about witchcraft? What do you want us to do, Jeanette?” She must have seen me flinch, but she didn’t bother to rephrase her question with my real name.
I took a deep breath. “I haven’t really told you what’s been going on here. I—” I stopped as sudden tears thickened the back of my throat. I hadn’t realized that I was still so emotional about the topic. I hadn’t realized that I was afraid to talk to Gran and Clara. I swallowed hard and rushed ahead. “I need your help.”
Gran leaned over and patted my hand. “Of course, dear. Whatever we can do to help you.” She fumbled for her handbag. “Is it money? Because if it’s money, I can help you, but I really have to question your planning, inviting us over and spending so much on dinner, only to ask for a loan.”
“No, Gran,” I said, and I actually managed to smile. “It isn’t money.”
“It’s some type of spell, isn’t it?” Damn. Clara could be perceptive. There was no reason for me to deny it, no reason to beat around any more bushes. Of course, it helped her to guess, having David and Neko standing close.
I glanced at them before I said, “Yes.” And then, because I’d run out of every last delay, I said, “I’ve lost my powers. They faded because I didn’t use them. I was distracted in the past year, with work and with—I don’t know—life.”
“Didn’t use them!” Clara shook her head in surprise. I knew that she spent her power in dribs and drabs, casting runes every morning, stretching her magical senses to measure the aura of every person around her.
Gran pursed her lips. “Well, dear, if you lost yours through nonuse, then I can’t imagine the state of my magic.” She dusted her hands, as if she were trying to shed some dry residue. “I haven’t used mine since those terrible Coven women ran us round in circles.”
I stared at her, my entire plan disintegrating in my mind. “I—” I started, but I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “But—”
I threw a panicked glance at David, only to find him smiling gently. “Sarah, it all has to do with baseline powers. With raw ability. You know that your powers have always been…subtle.”
Gran pursed her lips. “I’m the weakest of the three of us, when it comes to these magic things.”
David permitted himself a nod. “And weaker witches don’t experience the same type of drain. Oh, your power will eventually trickle away if you never use it, but the loss will be relatively slow. Even after a year of nonuse, you likely haven’t lost very much at all. Not like Jane, here.”
Great. Yet another so-called advantage of my amazing ability to work spells. I turned into a washed-up old husk faster than anyone else.
“So I can still help Jane?” Gran asked, and her earnest desire to assist brought fresh tears to my eyes.
David nodded. “You can still help.”
Clara leaned forward. “But what exactly are we here to do? What have you tried already?”
I shrugged. “David and Neko tried to help me, when I first realized what was going on. We thought we’d found the solution. I worked a spell to make an anima—”
“A what?” Clara turned her head to one side, curiosity on her face.
“An anima. A sort of magical robot. But she doesn’t look like a robot. She looks like a woman. She—Oh, it doesn’t matter. She didn’t work out. She was supposed to build up my powers by getting some magical work done around here. Polishing my crystals, cleaning my books. That was supposed to bring back my own magical strength, reflect it back to me since I made her. But something went wrong, things didn’t fall into place the way they should have. I got the tiniest bit of power when she spoke to me, but the rest of mine was drained away. Completely.”
Gran looked at me shrewdly. “It sounds to me like you were trying to play a bit of Tom Sawyer. Get someone else to do what you should have been doing on your own.”
I shrugged. “David and I thought it would work.”
“Shortcuts usually don’t, dear,” Gran said simply.
I bit back a few words of frustration and settled for nodding my head in agreement. “You’re right. And so, I’ve got another plan.” I saw Gran’s eyes dart toward David. “David’s agreed, Gran. He thinks this one is a good idea.”
“And what is it?” asked Clara when I steeled myself for the great reveal.
“I want you each to awaken your own familiar. I want to teach you about witchcraft, teach you like the Coven never took the time to do.”
Silence.
David watched my relatives, his face impassive. Neko stared at me as if I’d suddenly sprouted fangs, wings and a trunk. Gran looked confused, and Clara seemed slightly put out. Not surprisingly, Gran recovered first. Practical, logical Gran. “I don’t understand,” she said. “How can teaching us help you regain your powers?”
“Magic isn’t like science,” I explained. “With science, when you use something up—like a battery—it wears out. Magic is exactly the opposite. Using it makes it stronger. My awakening Ariel should have increased the power I had at my disposal, would have, if I hadn’t made a mistake. If you make familiars, and if I teach you everything I know, then there should be some sort of multiplication effect. I should get back to where I was. And then some, with any luck. It would be like having a coven of our very own.”
Gran shook her head. “That coven was nothing but trouble.”
“They were,” I agreed. “But we won’t be. We’ll have our own rules. We’ll set our own limits. We won’t be like them.”
Clara wasn’t concerned about our social organization; she was still dwelling on having a familiar. “It’s like meditation.”
“What, dear?” Gran was starting to sound a bit annoyed. For the first time in ages, though, I felt a rush of love toward Clara.
“Exactly!” I said. “It’s like meditation. The more you center yourself, the more energy you draw into yourself, the greater you become.”
Clara picked up the figurative ball and ran. “And it’s like yoga!”
Gran continued to look uncertain, but Clara’s eyes swept over to the mysterious boxes. “There?” I nodded. “And they’re cats? Like Neko?”
I looked at David. I didn’t actually know what form the newcomers would take. He cleared his throat before he said, “No. Each witch awakens a familiar uniquely suited to her. Sometimes it reinforces her personality. Sometimes, the familiar is a complementary force.” He hefted one box and brought it to Gran, then deposited the other in front of Clara.
Both women looked from the containers to David to me. “Will you do it?” I looked from Gran to Clara and back again. “I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way. I need you.”
Gran harrumphed. “Well, of course, dear. Of course we’ll help you.” Clara nodded as well.
I suddenly remembered Christmas mornings when I was a little girl, when I’d stared at Gran with all the expectation—and the barely smothered greed—that a good girl could muster. I grinned at the image and waved toward their boxes. “Go ahead, then. Take them out.”
The containers weren’t taped closed. Instead, they had lids that lifted off smoothly. Gran and Clara moved with an eerie synchrony, as if they’d practiced their motions in another age, another life. Both boxes were filled with mundane packing peanuts, white curls that billowed to the floor. Neko wriggled closer, and I half expected him to pounce on the cushioning material.
Gran freed her familiar first. It was a wooden statue, the length of her forearm, painted in brilliant colors—crimson and yellow and cobalt-blue. Shrewd eyes peered out above a curved black beak. A scarlet macaw.
Clara lost no time rooting around in her own box. Her familiar tumbled into her hands. It was carved from wood as well, but the artist had let the statue’s natural colors shine through. A long, prehensile tail curled around four legs. A white ruff framed a fine-featured face. Clara’s familiar was a capuchin monkey.
Neko had leaped to his feet as the packages were opened. He started stalking around the couch, viewing the statues from all angles. I knew him well enough that I could read his inquiry, understand the questions that he was asking as he sought to understand the magical powers unwrapped before him.
A macaw. A parrot. Long-lived and intelligent, bonding with its humans over decades. A perfect match for Gran.
And for Clara, a monkey. Inquisitive. Willing to explore anything, and capable of infinite distraction. Trouble-some—although that probably wasn’t a trait that David had screened for.
But Clara was already falling in love with her familiar. Or at least with the notion of having one. She looked up at me, awe in her eyes. “What do we do?” she breathed.
I glanced at David, but he merely extended a hand, inviting me to respond. Neko came and settled by my side, warm and comfortable. Apparently, my shrimp bribe had worked completely. All was forgiven. “There’s a spell,” I said. I settled my fingers on Neko’s shoulder, and the words came back to me, as clearly as if they were written on a page before my eyes. “For Neko, I said,
‘Awaken now, hunter, dark as the night.
Bring me your power, your strong second sight.
Hear that I call you and, willing, assist;
Lend me your magic and all that you wist.’”
Gran and Clara nodded. They weren’t the best-trained witches, but they could sense words of spellcraft. They could remember chants that conveyed energy. Strength. Power.
“But we’ll have to change it,” Clara said. “Change the first line to match our own familiars. Right?” She looked to me for guidance.
I nodded. The spell that had awakened Neko had been laid out for me by his old owner, by Hannah Osgood. The book had been waiting for me—or some other unsuspecting witch—to work the magic. The basic shape of the power remained the same for any awakening, but Gran and Clara would need to tweak the spell to their own ends.
Gran looked up from her scarlet bird. Her face was a little pinched, and I wondered what promises she was about to extract, what demands she was about to make. She surprised me, though. “Can we say it at the same time? Can we work our magic together?”
I glanced at David. “Of course,” he said. “If that would make you feel better, there’s no reason that you can’t free your familiars simultaneously.”
Clara snapped her attention back to me. “What do we do, Jean—Jane?” Her remembering my current name was a symbol of how much she wanted my instruction.
“Set the spell in your own mind. Figure out how you’ll change it for your own familiar.”
Gran might have been more timid about her magic, but she was a veteran crossword puzzle worker. I wasn’t surprised when she nodded before Clara.
Even though I would not be doing any actual working, I settled my hand on Neko’s shoulder. I’d wanted him here—needed him here—because he could center me, anchor me in a storm of magic. “Then take three deep breaths,” I said. I could see Gran’s tension flow away with each exhale, even as I recognized Clara’s energy sharpening. “Now, offer up your thoughts.” I touched my own forehead, demonstrating the motion. “And your voice.” I touched my throat. “And your spirit.” I settled my hand over my heart. “And recite the spell.”
They started together. “Awaken now.” I heard Gran’s words first, her recitation as steady as a nurse reading out a patient’s chart. “Winged one, soar like a kite,” she said.
At the same time, Clara intoned, “Mischief, witty and bright.” Then their voices joined together for the rest of the spell.
“Bring me your power, your strong second sight.
Hear that I call you and, willing, assist;
Lend me your magic and all that you wist.”
I felt the familiar flash of darkness with my entire body. The world disappeared, swallowed in a wave of nothingness. Before I could register Gran’s bit-off cry, Clara’s gasp, everything sprang back into existence, sharper than before, clearer than ever.
A buxom woman stood beside Gran, her bright red hair contrasting sharply with the lemon-yellow of her blouse and the overdyed indigo of her jeans. Her nose was long and pronounced; her face looked as if it should be stamped on some ancient Roman coin.
And a child crouched beside Clara, a young boy with the delicate features of a child, but the snow-white hair of an ancient man. Even as I watched, he twitched in his clothes, scratching at his long-sleeved chestnut-colored T-shirt, tugging the garment out of the waistband of his matching corduroy pants.
Gran reached out to her familiar first, stroking the woman’s sleeve with tentative fingertips. Distantly, as if from across a canyon, I felt energy arc between them, the magical power of witch acknowledging familiar. When Clara reached out to smooth down her boy’s cowlick, I felt the magical action a little more.
Nevertheless, the magic was between my relatives and their familiars. It had nothing to do with me. It did not begin to restore my own depleted strength.
I glanced at David, afraid to ask the questions that bubbled to the top of my brain. Had anything happened? Had we gained anything at all by awakening two familiars? He offered the faintest of shrugs, apparently unable—or unwilling—to acknowledge my concerns. My disappointment tasted like lemon juice as I swallowed hard.
Neko seemed utterly unaware of my worry as he settled one hand on his hip. “Well, girlfriend, you definitely made one huge mistake.”
“What?” I said, reluctant to look away from the newcomers. My heart beat fast with the notion that I’d done something wrong, something that would endanger our magical future.
“With two more mouths to feed, you should have ordered a lot more food.”
11
Clara’s little boy turned out to be named Majom. The woman who perched near Gran was Nuri. Even without Neko’s or David’s clarification, I knew that both creatures were tied closely to their wi
tches, bound much more tightly than Neko and I had ever been connected.
Give me credit for something—I’d checked the calendar before I decided on this desperate working. I’d made sure that Gran and Clara wouldn’t duplicate the first witchcraft mistake I’d ever made. They had not awakened their familiars under the liberating gaze of a full moon.
No, Majom wasn’t going to be wandering the streets of D.C., with his deceptively innocent little-boy fingers getting into trouble. We’d still have our hands full—Clara’s familiar had already excused himself to use the bathroom and taken the opportunity to go through every drawer in the tiny room, dumping my makeup onto the floor. He’d been ready to add shampoo and conditioner to the mixture—just to see what would happen—when I’d walked in on him and cut short his fun.
At least Nuri, Gran’s parrot familiar, was a little easier to control. She held herself aloof for the most part, perching on the arm of one of the sofas, casting her head at a curious angle as she watched us talk to each other long into the night. When asked a direct question, she would croak an answer in a voice that was curiously loud, absurdly harsh—like a lifetime smoker working out a fear of public speaking.
We soon realized that Neko had not been entirely facetious when he’d said that the familiars needed to eat. Both were famished; I had no idea how long they had been held in their inanimate forms. I waved Neko toward the kitchen, telling him to have a ball with the cabinets and the fridge. After all, emergencies were emergencies. And I didn’t have any expensive delectables stored away. Gran and Clara followed the familiars, looking like they’d never seen a kitchen before.
I turned to David, trying to keep a note of admiration out of my voice. “Where did you get them?”