The Conjure Book

by A. A. Attanasio

  “You are summoning a hollow, devastated wraith,” Jeoffry warned from out of sight. “That crotchety old hex-woman exhausted the last of her strength days ago. She cannot now offer encouragement, advice or assistance.”

  Jane remembered the chant and continued pacing her circle. “Not death but the flower of it — Not flesh but the living spirit — Come back, come back through astral avenues — Come back Joan and give me strength I may use.”

  The sunlight in the windows turned brown, and the room got cold and filled with silence like the depth of the ocean. Time crawled.

  From the corner of her eye, Jane noticed something very strange. Bulbing out of the floorboards, a gout of ichor glowed like lava. She could not see it clearly, because her head turned slowly, jammed in dreamtime. When she did manage to twist her neck enough to observe the center of the room, she wished she hadn’t.

  A fetal thing writhed there, a slither of crimson jelly with tiny bud limbs and a face of syrup that bore the squeezed features of Hyssop Joan — a tiny crone’s face gilled with ruffled tissues and dripping oily mucus.

  Jane wrenched herself away. The conjure circle collapsed. The plutonic sunlight cleared off like smoke. And the soupy homunculus of Hyssop Joan dwindled away among tiny funhouse mirrors in the varnished floorboards.

  With a shudder, Jane sat at her desk and clamped a hand over her nose against a stink like charred hair.

  “Now, that was a truly revolting spectacle.” Jeoffry stuck out his head. “If you would be so kind as to open the door, or even a window, I shall take my leave. I have a barter arrangement to conduct with the insidious Trick E.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” Jane sat perfectly still, each breath a decision. “I don’t need Hyssop Joan. That was stupid of me. I’m the witch.”

  “Not without the grimoire, I dare say.” Jeoffry went to the door and scratched at it. “I’ll not be party to anymore errant witchcraft. I am away. Ta-ta.”

  “Don’t ta-ta me.” Jane sat still as a photo, thinking, rummaging through everything she had learned from the conjure book, searching for a way. Her eyes touched the spray bottle on her bookshelf that she used to mist her ferns, and she nodded once, decisively. “I’m not done with you, yet, Jeoffry.”

  “I am deeply pained, dismayed, and generally unhappy at your tone, young miss.” Jeoffry returned to his hiding place under the bed. “I beseech you to release me. Our relationship is smack up against a brick wall. We shan’t be seeing anymore of each other.”

  Jane placed the spray bottle at the center of the floor, where the distorted apparition of Hyssop Joan had shriveled away. She knew that the residual magic at this spot would facilitate her spell, and she chanted confidently, “Beam, bloom, braw — make a beauty of awe — Let pulchritude create a mood — and comely looks inspire trust.”

  “Oh, really, Jane,” Jeoffry dissented. “What passions do you hope to unchain by transforming a bottle of water to an elixir of glamour?”

  “Glamour is bewitching, if I remember correctly what I read in the conjure book.” Jane held the spray bottle up to the pallid afternoon light to see if the water looked different. It didn’t. “Of course, I wouldn’t have to remember at all if you’d just go and bring back my book.”

  “You apparently continue to ignore the very pith of what I have said.” Jeoffry protruded his head and shoulders from under the bed and narrowed his eyes petulantly. “The relationship of this young, inexperienced, impulsive witch and her wise, caring, knowledgeable familiar has concluded for now and evermore.”

  “Do you think my spell worked?” Jane shook the elixir and held the bottle close to her eye. “I mean, I’m not even sure what I said. ‘Beam, bloom, braw.’ What the heck does ‘braw’ mean?”

  Jeoffry gave Jane a curious look. “You don’t know ‘braw’ and yet you know what a mouthful like ‘pulchritude’ means?”

  “My fifth grade teacher was always saying he had a plethora of pulchritude.” A glimmer of a smile came and went. “He looked like a short, bald Abraham Lincoln, and so I never forgot that plethora is a fancy word for ‘a lot’ and ‘pulchritude’ means beautiful. But what’s ‘braw?’”

  “The same. It’s Scottish for sightly, pleasing to the eye. But let’s not get technical. You’ve just transformed that water into a cupful of beauty. Whatever do you intend to do with that? Glamorize Trick E?”

  “Not Trick E.” Jane sloshed the water in the bottle. “You.”

  Jeoffry raised a paw of protest, and before he could slide back into hiding or even meow, Jane squirted him. On contact, his white fur sprang into a thousand glossy, bouffant curls.

  “Wow, Jeoffry!” Jane grinned mightily. “You really are looking braw!”

  “Oh, dear!” The cat emerged from beneath the bed and promenaded across the room, astonished by the airy lightness of his body. “Have no anxiety, miss. Your glamour potion seems to have worked most splendidly.”

  “I see that.” Jane knelt and stroked the cat under his chin. “Now, do you suppose you could do me a big favor and fetch my conjure book?”

  Jeoffry’s eyes slimmed with pleasure, and he broke off his sonorously humming purr to reply with utmost cordiality, “For you, young miss, I would fetch every anchovy in the sea.”

  Consider the Pumpkin

  After Jeoffry returned the grimoire, he sat on the desk and assiduously licked every part of his body, eager to remove the last of his perfectly coiffed curls.

  “I sorely regret threatening to leave you at this dire hour in your struggle with Trick E,” he apologized without interrupting his busy grooming. “I have disparaged the noble tradition of the familiar, and for that I am most contrite. Yet, no matter what deluge of glamour potion you drench upon me, I shall stand firm as a wild asparagus and object to your attacking Trick E. He is far too wicked a foe to fight with wickedness.”

  “Maybe I should squirt him with glamour water,” Jane mumbled as she perused the conjure book.

  “Trick E is an agent of the faerïe,” Jeoffry reminded her between licks. “He is impervious to your glamour — or your wiggly fingers of charm. I still heartily recommend that you surrender to him the grimoire, and we shall face the consequences together.”

  Jane ignored him and spoke aloud her thoughts, “I have to find a way to get to the top of a switching tower outside town. From there, I can shut down the power in the high tension lines and black out Wessex at midnight. Most people will be asleep by then. If I’m lucky, it won’t cause too many problems.”

  Jeoffry continued his warning as if Jane were listening, “I am not the weak and ineffectual feline you may think. I possess the thews and sinews of a mental lion, a veritable jungle lord of courageous fortitude. Verily, I crave to annihilate our nemesis, to liberate the world from his villainy. But once the spirit fox purloined young Alfred’s soul, I abandoned violent tactics and fell back on prudence and self-sacrifice. I should rather be eternally denied the bliss of the heavenly T than subject a starry-eyed maiden to Trick E’s brutality. And that is precisely where the rectitude of Jeoffry departs from the selfishness of that toad-loving hag who inspired this misadventure in the first place. I warned her you were too green to burden with so hazardous a business as witchcraft.”

  “Why not use my caving gear to climb up the switching tower?” Jane wondered aloud and sat back from the grimoire with a shake of her head. “No. That would take too long and leave me completely exposed to attack by Trick E. There’s got to be a better way. What good does knowing how to switch off the high tension lines do me if I can’t get up the tower to where the circuit breaker is?”

  “Jane, am I making any impression at all upon your gray matter?” Jeoffry lifted his chin, indignant. “I am soothed to my very follicles by your glamour spray, but I declare, young witch, if you do not at least pretend to listen to me I may well fly off the handle and once again snatch that damnable conjure book out from under your indifferent nose.”

  “What?” Jane twisted about in her c
hair. “What did you say?”

  “I say, at the moment you are behaving like an insufferably rude adolescent.” Jeoffry aimed a piqued stare at her. “You could at least pretend to listen to me.”

  “No, not that. You said — ‘fly!’” Jane jumped to her feet and seized the besom from where she had tossed it on her bed. “Fly! That’s the way to get to the top of the switching tower! I’ll fly there!”

  “Your noodle is overcooked!” The familiar’s mouth hung open, appalled. “That is far too dangerous. In the event you fall, the grimoire offers no bouncing spell, you understand.”

  “I’m not afraid to fly.” Jane laid the broom across her desk and started flipping through the grimoire, searching for an appropriate place to cross her eyes and summon a levitation spell. “If you can think of a better way to get to the top of the switching tower and throw the circuit breaker, I’ll consider it.”

  “Well, then…” Jeoffry scratched his chin pensively. “Consider the pumpkin.”

  “Huh?” Jane briefly swung a perplexed expression his way and then returned to her quest. “What pumpkin?”

  “Why the pumpkin in Cinderella, of course.” Jeoffry’s front paws stretched to reach the corner of the desk and lean close to Jane’s intent face. “Need I whisper into your shell-like ears what became of Cinderella’s pumpkin? The fairy godmother transformed it into a regal carriage to convey Cinderella to the royal ball. But at midnight, it promptly reverted to a pumpkin. Thereafter, I assume, it fulfilled its destiny either as pie or compost.”

  “This is what I’m looking for!” Happiness cut across Jane’s bruised face as she located a pertinent page in the conjure book. “Now, we’re getting somewhere!” She crossed her eyes and silently mouthed, ‘Flying!’

  “Is my point so obtuse that I merit your total disregard?” Jeoffry pulled himself closer and sat on the conjure book. “That is a broom. A primitive broom at that. It is not a light-winged aircraft. Whatever spell you cast upon it will melt away at midnight very like the fairy godmother’s spell. That’s the mischief with transformation spells. They end at midnight.”

  “We’re not flying to the moon, Jeoffry.” Jane jerked the grimoire out from under her familiar and sent him tumbling acrobatically to the floor. “All I have to do is get to the top of a tower, throw a switch and glide back down again. I’ll be done way before midnight.”

  “I shall be no party to such foolishness,” Jeoffry contended as Jane whispered what he presumed was a levitation chant and then knocked the conjure book three times against the besom. “My soul sickens in horror at the prospect of you challenging gravity with nothing more aerodynamic than a broom!”

  “Suit yourself.” Through the spruce trees outside the windows, Jane observed small clouds bright as jellybeans. She tucked the grimoire into the pocket of the dress she wore beneath her costume and grabbed her veiled hat and the besom. “It’s going to be dark soon. I’ve got to go.”

  “Suit myself, you say!” Jeoffry sniffed with high dudgeon, trailing after her out the door. “Suit myself! As if I were the tailor of my own fate! I’m supposed to be your familiar, Jane — but you have worn me out! I refuse to collaborate in the breaking of your neck! You’re on your own. Do you hear me?”

  Jane heard him, but she had no time to listen to the aggravated Manx, who sat on the spiral staircase glaring with disapproval.

  She rushed downstairs, through the kitchen, and out into the garden, ignoring Mrs. Babcock’s invitation to taste the savory soup she was brewing. There was no time for civility. Her life was on the line. But she would give her kindly landlady something better than mere politeness. Jane decided that if she was going to risk everything tonight, then she wasn’t going to be stingy with her magic.

  Behind the gazebo, in umber light cast by toffee-colored clouds, Jane sang a Conjure Gain chant:

  “Round dark earth beneath my feet

  “How sweet you grow the food I eat.

  “Won’t you take my wish to heart

  “And to Babcock’s hands wealth impart?

  “Starry sky above my head

  “Witness now how she is led

  “Beyond mere sufficiency —

  “To outrageous luxury!”

  While Jane cast her generous magic spell, Mrs. Babcock watched with curiosity through the kitchen window. A small cry lodged in her throat. With a lunatic’s clarity, she saw — she’d rather have believed that she thought she saw, but she knew she actually saw — a troupe of little people, each no larger than a mushroom (and some, in fact, wearing mushroom caps) tramp across the compost mounds of the garden.

  Clad in gaudy rags of moss and leaf scraps and adorned with hats of chestnut fur and epaulets of thistle down, the tattered parade of brownies frolicked around Jane’s ankles.

  The landlady pushed away from the window and, dizzied with surprise, sat at the kitchen table.

  When Ethan strolled in looking for his daughter, she pointed to the garden. On unsteady legs, she rose to peek again through the window. This time, she envisaged nothing out of the ordinary among the rich debris of her autumn garden. She firmly decided that the elfish processional she had glimpsed in her backyard must have been a renegade dream. As soon as the soup on the stove began to simmer, she determined she would surrender to a nap.

  Ethan, too, thought he glimpsed an apparition of diminutive figures prancing through the ragged garden. But, in an eye blink, his brain adjusted to interpret his vision as a Halloween fancy among the blur of wind and leaves. And the next moment, what he found Jane doing erased with a laugh any suggestion of gnomes.

  “Did I see you talking to that book?” he inquired of his daughter as he came around the gazebo. “What is that — a spellbook or something?”

  “It’s just something to get me into the mood for Halloween.” Jane tucked the grimoire into her dress pocket under her costume. “I guess I’m playacting more than usual, because this is my first New England Halloween. It’s much weirder up here, don’t you think? Sunlight is dimmer, and the trees, they’re colorful and sad, all at the same time. It’s so different from New Mexico. And take a deep breath.” She lifted her face as she demonstrated an exaggerated inhalation. “The air has these magical smells. Leaf mulch and wood smoke. Do you smell it?”

  “This moodiness and playacting is so unlike you, Jane.” When the horizontal crease appeared above his nose, she flashed two fingers before his face.

  She chanted, “Don’t you just simply love this smell? — It’s a scent without parallel: — It inspires trust you can’t repel — A trust no common sense can quell — A trust no reason can dispel — A trust in me you can’t excel — A trust to hold you in its spell.”

  The wings of Ethan’s nostrils whitened as he drew a deep breath — a fragrance that smelled to him not of autumn but of summer’s yellow heat and the musky first sign of July rain, an aroma wide as a door to another season. For a limpid moment, he stood immobile, enchanted.

  Then, Mrs. Babcock’s elderly voice wobbled across the garden, “Yoo-hoo, Jane, dearie! Your friend Sheryl is here!”

  Ethan snapped alert. “That is a lovely fragrance, Jane. I never thought much about it before — but it does inspire a special feeling. What do you think that is?”

  “Nothing special really.” She took her father’s arm as they crossed the desolate garden. “It’s the season’s magic.”

  Witchcraft Straight Up

  Sheryl Macadangdang, dressed as a ballerina, replete with pink leggings to ward off the autumn chill, awaited Jane in the foyer. With her face and her frilly leotard glazed in candy colors from the sunlit stained-glass transom, she appeared fragile as a cake ornament.

  “This is such a lovely costume, dear.” Mrs. Babcock fingered the taffeta of Sheryl’s tutu. “You say you made this yourself?”

  “Hey, Sheryl.” Wearing her pointy hat with the black veil over her face, the teen witch raised her besom in salutation.

  “Oh, Jane!” Mrs. Babcock held up Sheryl’s hand
and motioned for the ballerina to pirouette. “Isn’t she just darling?”

  Sheryl reluctantly executed a nimble turn and then pleaded with her eyes for Jane to rescue her.

  “We better get going before the little kids snatch up all the candy.” Under the arm holding her besom, Jane tucked the empty milk carton her father had given her in the kitchen for collecting contributions for Alfred’s medical fund and, with her free hand, took Sheryl’s elbow and guided her to the door.

  She darted one final look of farewell to her father, her heart heavy with dread for what lay ahead — and she wished mightily that she had never crawled down that hole in the knoll in the first place.

  “Your costume is kickin’, girl!” Mrs. Babcock grinned at Jane, pleased with the slang she had picked up from TV. “And I must tell you, whatever perfume you used with Lester when you groomed him today has positively changed my heart about leaving this house.”

  “It has?” Jane asked and watched her father and Sheryl exchange mystified glances.

  “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Babcock’s owl face radiated phenomenal good cheer. “I haven’t tolerated perfume in years. Made me sneeze. But whatever you used with Lester has done something marvelous for me. It smells of summertime and picnics I enjoyed as a child in a meadow that’s now the mini-mall off Applegate Road. You know that vile cluster of tacky stores and fast food shops? I used to hate that place and the people who built it, because they took away my meadow. Your perfume brought back such vivid memories and lovely feelings — well, it’s taken me till now to realize it — but, Jane, you helped me understand that the meadow is still inside me, in my mind, in my heart. It will always be there. And so will Bosky Glen, even when it’s gone. I don’t have to hold onto it, because it will never let me go — in here.” She pressed both hands to her bosom. Then, concerned she had been rambling, she turned to Ethan. “I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense, am I?”