The Conjure Book

by A. A. Attanasio

  “Oh, come on, Jane. You don’t believe all that slanderous gossip about me spewed by that nasty witch and her chicken-hearted familiar?” Tufts of silver whiskers above his slant green eyes lifted inquisitively. “Do you?”

  Jane gaped with wonder at the sparks curling off the fox’s red pelt and wisping away in the night air. “But your name is Trick E.”

  “Isn’t that simply the coolest name?” He stuck out the white bib of his chest proudly. “It’s a nickname that’s supposed to make my enemies think twice before messing with me. My real name is Vulpes Aer — which means, Spirit Fox. But it just doesn’t have the same flair, does it?”

  Jane narrowed her eyes. “You killed my mother.”

  “Ah, well…” Trick E’s shoulders sagged, and he lowered his head and looked up at her coyly. “I’m not going to lie to you, Jane. Our planet is at war.”

  “You killed my mother,” Jane repeated.

  “Humanity is hellbent on destroying the natural world,” Trick E said. “I’m a warrior who’s trying to stop that.”

  “You killed her and my unborn sister.”

  “Your mother was an innocent victim, a casualty of war. I’m sorry she had to die.”

  “Are you really sorry?” Jane’s voice shook with emotion. “I don’t think you’re sorry. You killed my mother on purpose.”

  “Sure I did.” The spirit fox sat up taller and the space around him fizzed with sparks. “But, Jane, you have to understand, every single day, Sundays included, people are cutting down forests on purpose and polluting rivers on purpose and spewing pollution into the air on purpose and gouging out mountains on purpose and destroying whole species of animals on purpose. Every day. It’s a war, Jane. A war. And the planet is losing. So, I got desperate. I knew your mammy was carrying a child that would grow up to be a powerful witch. Most witches are on my side. They don’t want the Earth to suffer anymore from civilization. But your pappy, he’s a scientist. And I was pretty sure that your sis would grow up to be a witch like that horrendous Hyssop Joan — someone who admires science and human achievement and strives to further civilization. I couldn’t allow that.”

  “You’re not God.” Jane stamped her foot angrily. “You can’t go around killing people you don’t like.”

  “But the planet...”

  “The planet is fine,” Jane cut him off sharply. “People aren’t doing anything worse to it than what was done before, lots of times before, by falling asteroids and comet impacts. Species get wiped out. Like the dinosaurs. New species take their places. The Earth rolls on. It doesn’t care who survives and who dies. It rolls on.”

  “My, my, Jane Riggs. You are one tough cookie.” Trick E nodded his fiery head admiringly. “I’ll admit, I didn’t much care for the dinosaurs. Not that I knew them personally. They were long gone before my time, of course. But I do know that they ate furry things like me, and I’m glad they’re gone. Even so, I don’t want to see the world I grew up in go the way of the dinosaurs. I like forests and the animals that live in them. And I don’t at all like cities. They’re noisy and poisonous, and the people that live in them are selfish and uncaring.” He lifted his snout high and smiled, electrical teeth spitting tiny blue volts. “At least, I’m honest. You got to give me that.”

  “You killed my mother and my sister,” Jane said in a voice almost as low as a growl, “and I’m always going to hate you. I’ll never give you the conjure book.”

  “Okay, Jane.” He shrugged a rainbow of flame colors. “Then, I guess I’m just going to have to take it!”

  He snapped the last two words and jumped at her. His lightning jaws slashed for her hands, and she whacked him hard across the muzzle with the grimoire.

  The spirit fox tumbled to the ground with a shriek, rolled upright and sat there rubbing his pointy nose with two paws. “Hey! That hurt!”

  “You get away from me!” Jane yelled. “You get away, and you stay away!”

  “All right, I’m going.” Trick E curled around, tail tucked, and walked over to where Jane’s friends lay asleep on their backs. “The faerïe have forbidden me to attack you — but they didn’t say anything about these other kids. I’m taking this carrot-top’s soul with me.” Trick E stood over Alfred, and the spirit fox’s head disappeared inside the boy’s chest.

  “Hey!” Jane rushed forward. “Stop that!”

  But Trick E was quicker. The spirit fox pulled his head out of Alfred’s chest and pranced away with a big blue amoeba quivering in his jaws. Tiny squeaks and squeals came from the blue blob, sounding a lot like Alfred’s voice calling, “Help! Somebody help me! Help! Help!”

  “Trick E put him down!” Jane ran after the swift fox, and the spirit animal tore across the field and vanished into the dark tunnels of the forest.

  Jane rushed back to the blanket, opened the conjure book, and slapped it closed in front of her slumbering friends. Sheryl sat up groggily, mumbling, “Gee, I must’ve dozed off.”

  Alfred didn’t stir. Jane opened the book and slammed it shut several times, each time closer to Alfred’s face. And still, he did not move.

  “What are you doing?” Sheryl asked.

  “Alfred won’t wake up,” Jane said, her voice scorched with fear. “Come on! Get up!”

  “Get up, lazybones. Stop goofing around.” Sheryl shoved Alfred and, feeling the deadness of his body, faced Jane with alarm. “I think something’s wrong.”

  Jane used the cell phone her father had given her and called 911 and then her father.

  When the medics arrived, their howling ambulance drove right onto the field, swiping red lights across the wall of the forest. But even they couldn’t rouse Alfred.

  Ethan arrived shortly after the medics. He put the three bicycles in the trunk of his car, drove Sheryl home and then took Jane to the hospital.

  The Contini family crowded the waiting room — Alfred’s parents, grandparents, two brothers and a sister, several uncles and aunts, and a gang of cousins — and when Jane arrived they all huddled around her for an explanation.

  But she couldn’t speak. Her voice wadded up, crumpled around her secret, like trash caught in a garbage chute, her words all gummed up with lies and stuck in her throat.

  Unnameable Feeling

  Jeoffry sat on the windowsill to the left of her desk when Jane returned from the hospital. The cat said nothing, merely watched her with his placid blue eyes.

  “Okay, you were right.” Jane closed the door behind her and stood leaning back against it. Her face looked pale and her eyes red from having cried most of the way home. “Trick E stole Alfred’s soul — and now Alfred is in a coma.” She shook her head with disbelief. “Alfred is in a coma — because of me.”

  The cat gazed mutely at her.

  “What do I do?” Jane swallowed a gulp of air to keep from sobbing. “What do I do, Jeoffry?”

  Jeoffry motioned with his blunt head to the blank computer monitor. “Perhaps you should consult your mentor, Hyssop Joan, whose wisdom has guided you to this remarkable state of affairs.”

  “Oh, Jeoffry, don’t make fun of me.” Jane banged the back of her head against the door and stared with aggravation at the ceiling. “I was wrong.”

  “I should very much favor hearing the present opinion of dear Gristle-and-Bones.” Jeoffry plopped from the sill to the floor and poised a paw above the red switch that controlled power to the computer. “May I?”

  “No, Jeoffry.” Jane crossed the room, flung the conjure book onto her desk, and sat on the edge of the bed. “She’ll just argue with you. I want to hear what you have to say.”

  “You intend to listen to what I have to say?” The cat angled his head inquiringly. “You won’t simply dismiss the opinion of this scaredy cat?”

  “Just tell me already.”

  “All right then, miss.” Jeoffry swooped onto the bed. “Change of mood is the thing. Catch a few winks. Undertake a leisurely tour of the Land of Nod. Seek out the comforting company of Monsieur Sandman. Come ros
y-fingered dawn, consume a hardy breakfast and then off to the halls of learning with you.”

  Jane stared at the Manx with disbelief and worry. “What about Alfred?”

  “Al is beyond rescue for the time being.” Jeoffry reassuringly rubbed his head against her elbow. “But fret not, valiant Jane. So long as you possess the conjure book, Trick E shall be willing to negotiate. If he can destroy Hyssop Joan’s grimoire before she enters the Twilight, her ghost may well be doomed to wander the earth forever. Such extreme vengeance would very much please the spiteful Mister E. Therefore, dear Jane, you have but to twiddle fingers. And not very long, I dare say. Sooner than later, Trick E will approach you with an offer. Alfie’s soul for a book. Not a shoddy deal. And, for the health of your own soul if not the soul of your curly-headed school chum, I do recommend that you accept the offer of that dangerous rascal. But for now — rest, Jane. Crawl in and surrender your cares to forgetful darkness.”

  Jane took Jeoffry’s advice and suffered a miserable night of restless sleep. The next day at school, she patiently denied allegations from the gossipy kids that Alfred had eaten a poison mushroom or that a brown recluse spider had bitten him or that his brain got pickled when he drank a bottle of aftershave. At lunch, she listened quietly to Sheryl’s hopeless speculation that her friend suffered from some rare disease that he had nobly kept secret from her.

  All the while, Jane anguished, fully aware that she alone was responsible for Alfred’s coma.

  Then, in study hall, writhing inwardly with guilt while watching afternoon shadows growing across the windowsill, she thought she spotted Trick E. He seemed to flash out of the auburn trees and across the playground: A red rag chucked over the asphalt and flashed out of sight in the October wind. She stood up to see better, and the teacher asked her to sit down.

  Though she believed that she held her secret close — and though she was convinced that her anxieties about Alfred and Trick E were discreet — her teachers noticed how distracted she had become in the days since she had begun dressing differently. The vice-principal called Jane’s father and discussed this briefly with him.

  Ethan felt strangely relieved that Jane’s behavior had perturbed others. He had been worried that he was too worried about the changes he had noticed in his daughter. He had no idea what was normal for a teenage girl, and the school’s concern convinced him to confront Jane and press her for the truth.

  After a quiet dinner with Mrs. Babcock and before leaving to teach his evening class, he visited her room. Meticulously neat as usual, her private space appeared particularly homey with Lester the Manx loafing on the counterpane at the foot of the bed. And though Ethan glimpsed the conjure book on her desk among her other textbooks, he didn’t pay it any particular heed.

  He sat on a cane chair beside the bookshelf where she kept her ferns, photo albums, teddy bear and the special rocks from their desert hikes. “What’s troubling you, Jane?”

  “My friend is in a coma.” She turned around at her desk to face her father and casually covered the grimoire with a notebook. “I’m scared for him.”

  “That’s understandable,” Ethan agreed. “But I sense there’s something more going on with you.”

  “Really?” She was scared for Alfred. He might die — because of her. But her father didn’t know that. To keep the secret close, to protect whatever hope she had of using witchcraft to save Alfred, another lie was necessary. She groaned. “Yeah, well, you see — uh, I’ve been having these dreams — about mother — yeah, about how we left mother behind in Buford and all. Bad dreams.”

  Ethan nodded sympathetically and a doleful shadow darkened his brow. “Maybe we should have stayed in Buford. But we talked about this — about your future — about my earning enough money for your education...” His voice trailed off, his cheeks puffed out, and his eyes winced, stricken. “Money. I uprooted our lives for money — and look what it’s doing to you. I think I made a big mistake moving us all the way across the country, didn’t I?”

  “No, it’s not like that.” Jane felt her heart wince, and she slid out of her chair and knelt beside her father. “You did the right thing bringing us here. Don’t worry about that. Honest.” Her eyebrows tightened as she drew forth an important decision from the depths of herself. “Look, I really have to tell you something. It’s going to sound weird. Way weird. But I just can’t keep it to myself any longer...”

  A tormented shriek curled into a howl that made Ethan bounce in his chair and Jane jump to her feet. Jeoffry continued to caterwaul as he jolted across the room and scratched furiously at the door.

  “What’s gotten into Lester?” Ethan asked, wide-eyed.

  “I’ll take him outside,” Jane offered and quickly exited the room with the screeching cat.

  On the way down the spiral stairs, Jeoffry calmed down and whispered, “Is my operatic message sufficiently clear, miss?”

  “Why’d you do that?” Jane leaped the last three steps and spun about to fix Jeoffry with an icy stare. “You scared us out of our skins!”

  “Has your superb brain come entirely unhinged, Jane?” Jeoffry traipsed past her and hissed, “Secrets should stay secret!”

  The cat fled into the kitchen, and Jane followed. “I can’t lie anymore. Not to my father.”

  “Then don’t.” Jeoffry skidded to a stop before his bowls of food and water and arched his back. “Don’t lie. Don’t say anything. Strike a mysterious pose. Assume a cryptic nonchalance. Employ enigmatic silence. There is more than the sentimental hope of a cordial visit with your deceased mum at stake here, dear heart. An innocent life hangs in the balance. Your classmate teeters upon the slippery slope to oblivion, and only you can pull him back. You must continue to hold the secret close.”

  Jane snuffled with frustration. “I’m in over my head!”

  “Be staunch of heart, Jane. This is the moment when your reasoning faculties must prevail against unruly emotion. Banish each and every twitchy thought of unburdening your soul and confessing all.” Jeoffry’s ears swiveled. “Hush now! The concerned patriarch approaches.”

  “We should finish our talk before I have to leave for my night class.” Ethan eyed the tailless cat hunching over his dry food bowl. “All that racket for some kibble? You think Lester is okay?”

  “He’s a crazy cat.”

  “What were you going to tell me, Jane?” Ethan peered down at her with worried eyes from his tall place, head-and-shoulders above secrets and lies. “You said you couldn’t keep it to yourself anymore.”

  “Oh, that.” Jane put a hand over her heart where the inked pentagram used to be, where the faerïe had touched her. The anguish and guilt that Jeoffry had evoked reminding her of Alfred melted into a deep, unnameable feeling, as though she were part of something bigger, far bigger, than narrow honesty. “It’s really nothing. Just bad dreams.”

  “Hey, come on, Janie.” Ethan frowned with concern. “You were going to tell me something important. I want to hear it.”

  Over her father’s shoulder, Jane gazed through the diamond panes of the kitchen window to where a red blur flitted across the dead garden and vaulted rapidly up the stairs of the gazebo. In the instant it took her to adjust her focus to that distance, the red trespasser had gone — if he had ever been there. A shudder passed through her with the insight that there was real evil in the world that she could not stop.

  “Jane, snap out of it.”

  “I’m sorry.” She abruptly kissed her father’s cheek and turned away. “I’m just real tired. I think I better go lie down.” She hurried away and Jeoffry sauntered after.

  Ethan crossed his arms and watched them go, a chill and queasy feeling widening in the pit of his stomach.

  Losing the Hag

  Jane mumbled awake from a nightmare. The moon stood in her window. With its long dusty fingers, it had reached into her room and woven sticks of shadows into a tall basket. Hyssop Joan’s head stuck out of the basket. Her face gleamed white and craggy as coral, and he
r long hair dangled and swayed like seaweed. “Aye, Jane, sleep’s dreams make things that are not as though they were. How infirm, how useless are we asleep!”

  “I heard Alfred calling.” Jane stared about the moon-shadowed room with fear in her eyes. “I was back in the field where Trick E took his soul. Alfred was yelling for help — from underground!”

  The witch cooed with laughter. “Ah, indeed, that monkey Alfred! Now hath he full measure of suffering!”

  “Why are you laughing?” Jane thrashed free of her bunched bed sheets and sat upright. “He’s in trouble because of you!”

  “And thee, dear Jane.” The crone’s tiny teeth clacked shut decisively. “‘Twas thee led the boy into the wild night and spelled him to sleep under the greedy snout of Trick E.”

  “Hey, that was your idea!”

  “Forsooth, child, I sent thee to the faerïe not thy comrades. Their hazard is thine. I sent thee and thee alone, for verily thou art the sole heir of my ambition.” Hyssop Joan hobbled closer, and the basket of shadows that held her dissolved into tangles of wild hair. “Responsibility lies as abundantly upon thee as me.”

  “We can’t leave Alfred’s soul trapped like that.” Jane was afraid to ask further advice of the witch. But the nightmare made her feel she had no choice. “What are we going to do? Alfred is in danger. We have to help him. Right away.”

  “Trick E shall not be denied the lad’s soul!” The hag hid her face behind ropes of hair. “Jane — troubled Jane! — have the fates and cruel stars thy ruin sworn? Thou art not a natural witch and so have called down upon Alfred terrible reckoning.”

  “Thank you, H. Joan, for those honeyed words,” Jeoffry retorted, emerging from under the bed. “Such confidence will surely soothe the young miss’s troubled heart.”

  “Will feigned solace ease a true-felt woe, Jeoffry?” Hyssop Joan peered out angrily from behind knotted hair. “Unless thou fulfill the faerïe’s two requests when they ask, their sworn protection ends, Jane — and Trick E will of a certainty stalk and eviscerate thee!”