The Conjure Book

by A. A. Attanasio

  The incandescent world behind her dwindled away, and soon she moved entirely blind, feeling ahead with timorous fingers. Gradually, the opening widened almost enough for her to stand.

  The fragrance of exotic flowers thickened to spicy jungle aromas that tickled her sinuses. She was sure that, if she could have worn her helmet, flashlights would have revealed walls of pink mimosa and colorful air plants with looping vines that dangled among pollen mists and breezes of kaleidoscopic butterflies.

  A thread of light glinted in the darkness ahead, shimmering like quicksilver. She crawled faster, and the ghostly illumination brightened. Soon, she emerged onto a ledge that overlooked a luminous cavern enormous as an airport. Clear radiance shone forth from a great rock dome and off stonewalls ribbed like the inside of a massive beast.

  As her eyes adjusted to the phosphorescent cave, Jane discerned numerous creatures of white fire embedded in the architecture of the cavern: Overhead, stalactites hung like immense incisors, and in each of these titanic limestone formations glimmered writhing bodies of no definite form.

  Below, on the floor of the cave, piles of mineral drippings — stalagmites — glistened like giant gobs of melted plastic, and in their crystal folds sparkled more fiery forms, tiny, frosty white and multitudinous as flurrying snow.

  She pushed to her feet at the edge of the overhang, and the glittering motes of light in the dark air fluttered closer, full of soft voices: “Child, are you lost in the wild? Lovely child, gone and away, gone evermore, you motherless child, are you lost in the wild?”

  “Faerïe — I’m not lost,” Jane declared, and her voice returned in overlapping echoes against a backdrop of muffled chimes from some distant dripping water. “I’ve come for Alfred.”

  “Listen — listen — this is the Wiccan child — the wild child…” The soft voices shimmered with excitement. “Oh, did she forget her hazelnut debt? Speak in whispers! Speak in whispers! She did forget her hazelnut debt!”

  “Alfred Contini.” Jane called. “I’m here for Alfred Contini.”

  One of the spinning sparks of white fire flitted twice around Jane’s head, then settled beside her on the rock ledge. Wild vapors flared up from the rock and swirled to the shape of a teenage girl with dazzling white skin and breezy hair of red mist. Her eyes burned like stars.

  “Jane — Wiccan child…” The faerïe girl pulled aside her raiment of smoky light and revealed the pentagram of green ink that she had taken from Jane’s flesh when last they met. “Why are you here in this place your people fear? Wild child, did you forget your hazelnut debt?”

  Jane exhaled with amazement, “It’s you!”

  “Wiccan child…” Faerïe voices tottered in the dark air where their silver firefly bodies circulated among hanging spires. “Wiccan child — wild child — so gentle and mild — why are you here with us in the hollow hills?”

  “Why are you here?” the faerïe girl repeated, louder, sharper. “Here in this dark you fear.”

  “I — I’ve come for my friend — Alfred.” Jane winced at the displeasure she met in the faerïe girl’s burning eyes. “Trick E stole his soul. I must get it back.”

  The faerïe girl scowled angrily. “We do not hold the man-child’s soul. The spirit fox holds him, holds him fast in a vixen den deep in the hollow hills, holds him fast and chews on him in the dark.”

  “You’ve got to help him!” Jane pleaded. “Trick E kidnapped him!”

  “The man-child is not ours to help.” The faerïe girl’s eyes flickered like flames. “And he is not yours, wild child. Why are you here, Wiccan child? Samhain night is soon, and you have taken the hazelnut and promised us darkness under the moon. Why are you here in the dark you fear? If your debt is not paid by midnight tonight, then the spirit fox will use his bite. And that bite you should fear. So, why are you here?”

  “Alfred’s in a coma!” Jane whined. “If I don’t return his soul, he’ll die.”

  “Beguiled child.” With her face half hidden in long tresses of cold flames, the faerïe girl rocked her head ruefully. “Deny us darkness and Trick E becomes your master. You may run, but he’ll run faster. He’ll chew your bones and laugh at your disaster. You owe us a debt, a hazelnut debt. So, go. Go and darken the lights of the city, for if you fail we shall have no pity.”

  “I’m not going without Alfred.” Jane met the faerïe girl’s furious stare without flinching. “I’m responsible for him. It’s my fault he’s here. I’ve got to get him out.”

  “No.” The faerïe girl shook her head fiercely, and her flame-woven hair blurred like streaking taillights. “As fast as feet can run, you’ll never see the sun. Stay. Wild child, come away. Come away and play with me! You will never grow old. We will have the moon and the stars to hold. Shadows of cats are the color of your hair. Leave behind your hungry world. Stay and play evermore!”

  Jane backed off from the glowing hands that reached for her and felt the drop-off of the ledge at the back of her heels. “Where is Alfred?”

  The faerïe placed both hands over the pentagram inked in green upon her shining skin — and the five-pointed star shone brighter green through the transparency of her fingers. “Shadows of cats are the color of your hair.” She spoke with soft intensity, and the fire of her eyes sharpened to laser points.

  Jane shivered scalp to toes. “Where is Alfred?”

  The faerïe girl’s lovely face smeared away like smoke, and she answered in a cold voice, “Held fast in a vixen den, deep in the hollow hills. And if you go there, Jane, you are the next the mad fox kills.”

  If Love Was Algebra

  A stairway of glowing rocks lit up alongside the ledge where Jane stood. The individual steps — white shining slabs — descended toward a knobby cavern floor. Faerïe lights circling in the air spoke: “Wild child, go down these stairs so bright. Go down. Find your way by our faerïe light. Find your way, wild child, to where your friend is held fast in the vixen den.”

  “No!” From luminescent smoke beside Jane, the faerïe girl’s lovely features appeared again, burning eyes wide with alarm. “If you go, you will not return! Wild child, by my word you are warned! Among the faerïe, you will not be mourned. They hate your kind and want you dead. Do not go.”

  Jane tapped the first of the glowing steps with her foot and found it solid. She looked over her shoulder at the worried faerïe girl. “This really leads to Alfred?”

  “No — do not go!” The faerïe girl peeled the green ink pentagram from her ivory chest. “Wild child, lonely child, I am your friend. Look! My love will never end. I wear your mark upon my heart. Do not go into the dark.”

  The silver flames of faerïe sparks surged faster through the cavern, and their voices sharpened, “Go down, mild child. Find your way by our faerïe light. Find your way by these steps so bright.”

  Jane put her weight onto the first step, and it held securely. She untied the safety line from her harness, because the rope had already extended most of its length. Quickly, she dashed down the stairway of white rocks to the cave floor.

  Behind her, the faerïe girl flowed, calling, “Wild child, lonely child, do not go where you do not know! The faerïe lure you to a miserable death. They hate your kind and will steal your breath. Only I trust you. I gave you the hazelnut. I trust you to be true. I alone of the faerïe trust you to be true. The hazelnut debt is owed to me!”

  The spinning faerïe lights sang gleefully, “The beguiled child did forget the hazelnut debt. This child is not wild but beguiled. Beguiled and defiled, she did forget the hazelnut debt. She did forget, and you lose your bet.”

  Jane ignored the twittering voices and walked quickly along the illuminated path that the faerïe ignited among taffy-twisted rocks.

  “Jane!” The faerïe girl strode alongside, lustrous hair blowing behind and dissolving to drizzled light. “Wild child, lonely child, I have felt your heart. I have touched your sadness. Do not go into the darkness.”

  “Where’s Alfred?” Jane search
ed among rocks filthy with droppings deposited from vaults and archways clotted with bats. The faerïe swarm lit a narrow path around these squalid crannies toward a grotto of slick stone columns. “Alfred! Where are you?”

  “Turn back, Jane,” the faerïe girl pleaded. “Wild child, child Jane, go back wild Jane, back from where you came, go back and there will be no blame. Go back and black Samhain night. Black the night, this Samhain night, that we may dance our frolic in moonlight. Black the night and free us from this hollow hill.”

  Jane reached the grotto edge where brain-shaped rocks lay glistening as if just shucked from the skulls of giants. Down among the rubble, a blob of blue light pulsed and throbbed.

  “Alfred!” Jane shouted. “Alfred, come out! Come out from there!”

  Through weaving echoes of Jane’s shouts, a feeble voice returned, “Jane! Jane Riggs? Is that you?”

  “Alfred! Come out!” Jane brushed away the flurrying faerïe motes. “Do you hear me? You come out of there right now!”

  Up from ruinous depths, a pale figure clambered. Over blades of red rock and shards of toppled stalactites, the image of Alfred Contini toiled, dressed in the same jeans and plaid shirt he had worn the night Trick E stole his soul. His curly red hair and freckled face floated closer, trailing a spectral taint like a retinal afterglow. “Jane! It is you! What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “Never mind.” Jane reached out, but when he grasped for her hand, she felt only a fragile electric quiver. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Alfred labored onto the crumbly rim of the grotto and stood stunned before her. With a haunted expression, he gawked at the many sparks scampering through high, lightless alcoves of the cavern. His dazed eyes took in the giant molars of squat stalagmites, and like a dreamer newly wakened, he blinked and squinted.

  Jane waved a hand before his slack face. “Alfred — are you with me?”

  The boy’s stunned stare settled on Jane, and he mumbled, “You look beautiful...” Open-mouthed, he gaped at her while the air around them thickened with fiery streaks and tiny wing beats of frosty light. More vigorously, he said, “I heard your voice in the pit. I heard you down there, Jane.”

  Jane turned back the way she had come — but the luminous path had vanished. Darkness, absolute and unremitting, confronted her. Fear packed her heart so tightly her chest hurt.

  “I heard you talking to me in the dark,” Alfred continued to babble as he gathered his wits. “I called out for you. But that didn’t do any good. You were gone. And Green Eyes — he kept coming and chewing on me. He hurts me, Jane. He’s evil!” His eyes darted nervously among the skittering faerïe sparks. “Is he around here now?”

  “Hush.” In the flicker glow of the faerïe, Jane fixed Alfred with a serious look. “Listen carefully to me, Alfred. Your body is lying in a hospital bed. This — this shape you have — it’s really your soul. It can take any form you want it to. Do you understand?”

  “Cool!” A broad smile brightened Alfred’s worried face. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “We’ll talk about that later.” Jane glimpsed puckish faces among the whirling faerïe lights — wicked grins, devilish eyes — and tried to ignore them, tried to stay focused on Alfred’s awe-struck features. “Listen to me, Alfred. We have to find our way out of here. But I don’t have a flashlight. So, do you think you could — I don’t know — make your eyes into flashlights?”

  “How do I do that?”

  “I’m not sure. Just try it. Will for it to happen.”

  Alfred’s face winced with concentration. His eyes sparkled for a moment and then erupted into two piercing rays of white light. The radiant beams swung across the cavern floor, illuminating scalloped masses of limestone — and sparking off red eyeholes of a giant, shaggy cave bear.

  Alfred yelped with surprise as the beast came bounding forward, lumbering around melted-looking piles of minerals, bellowing with rage. Instinctively, the boy retreated into the grotto, and Jane shouted after him, “Don’t run away! It can’t hurt you! You’re a ghost!”

  Jane ducked behind a boulder too small to hide her and groped for loose rocks to throw. The slavering bear lunged, and she braced for the impact of its splayed claws.

  With a karate screech, Alfred leaped from the grotto. Gigantic with packed muscles, he attacked the giant creature. A lightning-flash ripped darkness to white blindness, and the bear’s roar split to cries of pain.

  When sight winced back, Jane beheld the massive bruin dissolve into a dozen ghostly cubs running away into the shadows, tails tucked, afflicted yelps trailing behind. Alfred stood before her, massive and deep-chested, muscles knotting and sliding under glossed skin. He grinned happily and tossed back a glistening mane of red curls. “I am so kick-ass!”

  “No fooling!” Jane straightened with amazement from her frightened crouch. “Come on, big guy. Let’s get out of here.”

  Side-by-side, they marched across the cavern. Alfred lit their way with the throbbing sheen of his majestic bulk. When the faerïe piled together and arrowed toward them like a molten swarm of hostile hornets, he swatted them aside with his giant hands.

  Bold laughter burst from him to hear their hurt song, “His hands are fire! We must fly higher! Fly! Fly! Fly! He holds his hot whip high!”

  “Jane, this is so wicked!” Alfred chortled and snapped a lash of blue fire in a high arc that scattered the faerïe like a splash of pyrotechnics. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before, when I heard you in the pit? I would have kicked the teeth out of that stupid Green Eyes!”

  Jane searched for the white steps that climbed to her rope and freedom. “I’ll explain everything later — just watch where you’re going!”

  Alfred’s ton of streaming muscle flowed right over a crevasse that Jane had to jog around. He looked down at her with lucent warmth in his eyes. “Jane, I think you should know — I’m in love with you.”

  “Sure. I love you, too.”

  “No, I really mean it. I fell for you the day I first saw you.”

  “Save it for later, Alfred.” Jane felt a clutch of despair when she scanned the subterranean gloom for the way out and found nothing familiar.

  “I’ve never felt this way about any girl before.”

  “Yeah, well, think about it.” She stopped and confronted him with an annoyed frown. “I’m the one that got you into this mess. All your pain, it’s my fault. I don’t think you should be in love with me. You should be mad at me.”

  “But I’m not mad! This weirdness brought us together.” He lashed his electric whip once again at the skittering glitter points of the faerïe, and his stroke induced tiny shrieks of agony. “Jane, I think you love me too. That’s why you came down here to get me back. If love was algebra, you and me, girl, we’d be a slope intercept!”

  “I’m a little behind in my math…” She stopped before she could complete her objection. From among jagged shadows ahead, two green eyes glinted.

  “I’d be glad to explain it to you,” Alfred went on, oblivious to the approaching threat — until Jane gasped. “Oh, wow!” he shouted. “It’s Green Eyes! I’m gonna kick his furry butt!”

  “Alfred — I don’t think you should mess with him.” Jane reached out to hold him back, and her hands passed cleanly through his huge ghost body.

  Alfred rushed forward, power rippling through his bunched muscles, stupendous fists swinging. He pummeled at the shining green eyes that had tormented him, and spasms of fire strobe-lit the cavern.

  Startling shadows cast by the hanging rocks filled the immense hollow. And then, a shriek cut through the flashing confusion, and Alfred, shrunk to his normal size, fell back in fumes black and coiled as snakes.

  He sat dazed, head lolling, eyeballs rolling as Trick E stepped through the inky vapors. “Hey, hey, hey, cutie!” The fox’s fire-fur seethed a scarlet aura in the cave dark. “I thought we had a deal. You satisfied now that your pal Al is the same wuss he always was? So, where’s the
conjure book?”

  Jane put a hand to her nose to block the acrid stink wafting off Alfred and backed away from the spirit fox. “I’m here for Alfred’s soul! He doesn’t belong to you.”

  Trick E’s acetylene eyes slanted with malicious glee. “I beg to differ.” A sharp whistle shrilled between the lightning-jags of his teeth, and the huge ghost bear shambled back into view among the cavern’s mangled darkness.

  Alfred rose to one knee, gaze hard and angry. He swung a scythe of fire that sizzled through the air with cutting force.

  Trick E twisted about, seized the blade in his dazzling teeth, and shook it to a blur that knocked Alfred to his rump again. The spirit fox snapped angrily. “Cut it out, kid! You keep this up and I’m going to stuff you into a sewage pipe!”

  The next moment, the bear descended upon the boy. Its black jaws clamped onto his shoulder, and — instead of biting into ghostly emptiness — those fangs blazed with supernatural force and pierced the flesh of Alfred’s soul.

  “Jane!” The frightened teen wailed as the colossal animal hauled him backward into darkness. “Jane — help me! Don’t let it take me! No! No! Please! Jane!”

  “What a cry baby.” Trick E shook his long-snout, and his whiskers sparkled like lit fuses. “I am so sick of his whimpering and whining, I can’t tell you.”

  “You let him go.” Jane cringed with sickening remorse to hear Alfred’s piteous cries dwindling to woeful echoes. “You can have me instead.”

  In the enclosing darkness, Trick E’s grin flashed like a knife. “Jellybean — I already have you!”

  The Faerïe’s Dark Kingdom

  Jane backed away so quickly from the leering fire-fox that she tripped on a rock and sat down with a startled gasp.

  Trick E leaped onto an adjacent stalagmite and stared down at her with a widening grin. “Before I rip out your bowels and untangle them across this rock floor, I want you to understand something, cupcake. When I killed your mammy, it wasn’t personal. Afterward, I didn’t chase my tail with joy. I was just nipping trouble in the bud. That’s the work I do. I start factory fires. I knock airliners out of the sky. And I kill wicked witches. It’s my small way of striking back at the cancerous evil of civilization — and it’s never personal.”