The Conjure Book

by A. A. Attanasio

  “On the contrary.” Ethan met her worry with a friendly smile. “You’ve said something important we should all remember. What we’ve left behind we carry with us.” He turned his handsome smile on Jane. “Don’t stay out too late. Mrs. Babcock has prepared a wonderful Halloween meal.”

  “I won’t serve dinner until you return, Jane,” Mrs. Babcock called to the two girls as they traipsed down the blue flagstones to the street. “You’re invited too, Sheryl dear. We’re having roast goose and pumpkin soup.”

  “Your landlady really likes you,” Sheryl remarked. A leafy breeze swirled between their ankles and sent the girls skipping along the sidewalk. “What was that perfume you used on her cat? It must be pretty amazing to have moved her so deeply.”

  “A magic elixir,” Jane answered honestly, searching their surroundings for any sign of Trick E. The dull ache of her bruised ribs and legs forced her to slow down. “I’m pretending to be a witch today, you know.”

  “I thought witches had black cats,” Sheryl joked and pointed at an elegant, well-groomed Jeoffry springing after them through the red spruces in front of Bosky Glen.

  “Oh, black cats are for wicked witches,” Jane explained, trying to hide her surprise. “I’m a good witch. And this — this is my familiar, Jeoffry.”

  “I thought his name was Lester.”

  “What are you doing here?” Jane asked the cat with undisguised concern, afraid the familiar had come to stop her. She knelt to hear his whispered protest — and, instead of arguing, the white Manx charged up her arm and perched on her shoulders.

  Sheryl giggled. “I guess your familiar wants to come along.”

  “I do not approve of children flying on broomsticks,” Jeoffry murmured in Jane’s ear. “But, no matter my disapproving tut-tuts, I am your familiar, this is Samhain, and we are the proverbial peas.”

  “Thanks, Jeoffry!” Jane reached behind and rubbed his scruff — then said to Sheryl, “I call him Jeoffry. It’s his real name. But it’s a secret. So, don’t tell anyone.”

  The two girls visited the old, ivy-scribbled houses on both sides of the street while the sun settled lower behind the rooftops and sent crimson beams flaring along driveways and side streets. Halfway down one of those fiery lanes, Sheryl stopped and stared with large, searching eyes at the black veil. “I think you really are a witch. You weren’t joking when you admitted it.”

  Jane laughed and kept walking.

  “No, wait up.” Sheryl chased after. “I mean it. I’ve been thinking about this. That old woman we saw on your computer screen looked real to me. And the way Alfred and I fell asleep in the field the night he didn’t wake up. That was strange. Then, how you got the whole school to take the day off — that’s never happened before. I think you’re a real witch. Am I right? Were you a witch in New Mexico and that’s why you had to leave?”

  “Laugh again and keep walking,” Jeoffry whispered.

  “Sheryl, witches don’t go blabbing about themselves.” Jane gestured at the little kids and parents with strollers crowding the sidewalks. “Real witches hold their secrets close.”

  “I get it.” Sheryl winked. “It’s like that Chinese saying: ‘Those who say don’t know — those who know, don’t say.’”

  Nothing more was said as they continued among the houses where jack-o’-lanterns glared with fiery, toothy grins in the purple air and costumed kids scrammed across lawns with their bags of loot.

  That silence pretty much confirmed for Sheryl all her suspicions. And each time kids from their middle school recognized Jane and hurried over to slap her on the back and congratulate her for getting them a day off to make costumes, Sheryl’s knowing look sharpened.

  “Now might be a good time to wag your charming fingers at your inquisitive pal,” Jeoffry whispered from her shoulder.

  Jane didn’t want to mystify her friend with a spell. That just didn’t seem friendly. So, they kept on ringing doorbells and collecting funds for Alfred. Eventually, they found themselves standing in front of the garden shop where Sheryl and her parents worked. Their apartment was upstairs, and Jane decided this was a good place to leave her friend.

  “You better take this.” Jane handed Sheryl the milk carton stuffed with bills and change. “Who knows what werewolves I’ll run into on the way home!”

  They giggled as they parted, and a moment later Sheryl felt bad about sending her pal off into the night alone. Deciding to ask her to come in and have a snack, Sheryl pranced to the street corner that Jane had just turned.

  But Jane was gone. Right there on that brightly lit block behind the shops, Jane had simply disappeared.

  The street stood empty under street lamps and a few dim stars that rattled overhead.

  Walk on Moonlight

  Eyes weeping in the frigid wind, Jane clung with all her strength to the flying besom. She lay flat against the gnarled stick, cheek pressed to the rough wood, ankles scratched by shivering twigs and stiff straw. Jeoffry hung on to her back moaning. The rush of their flight poured around them, a molten cold that burned right through clothes and fur.

  “Take us down!” Jeoffry bawled.

  They had shot straight up into the night when Jane had shouted, “Fly!” And looking down now, they recognized Wessex glittering tiny as a computer chip. Highways and roads radiated from the town like bright circuitry. Thin shining pathways swerved across open farmland and disappeared in dark forests.

  “We’re too high!” Jeoffry shouted. “I can’t breathe!”

  Overhead, the Milky Way twisted bright as diamond dust. Stars drizzled from it, disappearing in the bright air around the rising moon. And far down the other side of the sky, beyond the ancient mountains of western Massachusetts, the broken yolk of sunset spilled.

  “Jane!” Jeoffry cried. “Take us lower!”

  Jane wasn’t sure how to control the flying broomstick. She pushed on the handle, and they abruptly swooped downward. The lights of Wessex spun like a carnival wheel, enlarging rapidly.

  “No-o-o-o-o!” the cat wailed.

  Gently, Jane pulled up on the handle. With a jolt, their flight leveled off, and they found themselves sailing above rooftops. Jane’s heart thundered in her chest. Electrified by their explosive takeoff and wild descent, she heaved an enormous sigh of relief.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of it,” she said in a quivering voice and carefully lifted her shoulders off the besom to slow down. She watched chimneys, gabled roofs, and telephone poles drift by. “If I lie flat, we go fast. Sit up, we go slow. It’s a whole lot easier than I had guessed.”

  “Don’t get cocky!” Jeoffry warned nervously. “Let’s alight in that park over there.”

  “No way!” Jane had a mission. Trick E was coming after her. That was certain. Whether or not she survived this night was less certain. Cautiously, she pushed herself up so that she sat sideways on the besom with her knees bent and ankles resting on the stick. “We’ve got work to do.”

  She deftly pulled the broomstick into a long, slow curve above the treetops. On the streets below, kids in costumes scrambled through their Halloween rounds, and no one caught sight of the witch and her cat floating across the stars.

  “The moon is rising!” Jeoffry anxiously crawled down Jane’s shoulders and arms and perched on the handle between her hands. “People will see us!”

  “It’s okay.” Jane assured him grimly, scanning the skyline for her enemy. “They won’t believe their eyes.”

  “Where are we going?” The frightened cat clenched his claws deeper into the wood of the besom. Their altitude had dropped below the rooftops, and Jane wove a graceful course among curbside trees. “Please, don’t tell me we are presently undertaking a joy ride.”

  They banked and glided over backyards littered with scraps of light thrown off from surrounding houses. Glimpses of these households slid by, framed in windows like snapshots. People were sitting down to dinner, or crowded into masquerade parties, or just lounging around watching television.
Pet dogs howled at the flying trespassers, and both Jane and Jeoffry flinched and scouted about for Trick E. Then, the besom drifted over an empty lot where darkness huddled against the streetlights.

  “Jane, are you listening to me?” Jeoffry stared apprehensively beyond the vacant lot at the anonymous neighborhood of fenced yards, hedges, and a side street noisy with the laughter of children. “You are deepening my unhappy feeling that broom-riding for you is some kind of lark.”

  “Hey, stop worrying.” Jane steered them over a small parking lot where moonlight waxed the hoods of cars and glared off windshields. “I just needed a little practice. This is all business.”

  “And what business might that be?”

  “The business of witchcraft, silly!”

  She flew through the brilliantly cold night under a river of stars, where the brightest stars shivered like creatures of light. These she knew by name from nights of camping in the desert with her father: Vega, Deneb and Altair. They had gathered tonight as mute witnesses to the success of her grimoire studies.

  She had done what she could to learn the craft for which her mother and unborn sister had died unknowing. And now she was ready to fulfill her promise to the faerïe — or forsake her own life trying.

  Intent on getting this perilous work finished as quickly as possible, she leaned forward and accelerated into the silvery night. Cold air rushed past with a cry like an eagle’s shriek. She felt as though all the tingling atoms of her body were about to fly apart. Soon, she would become the wind itself and walk on moonlight. She felt radiant and imperishable. She felt — like magic!

  “Hell’s bells!” Jeoffry shouted, and his claws bit into her back. “Look there — between the houses!”

  Jane glanced down and immediately caught sight of a spark of red fire streaking through the backyards below. “It’s Trick E!”

  “Fly faster, Jane!” Jeoffry latched onto Jane with all four claws and peered over his shoulder, eyes bulging. “Outrun the devil!”

  Trick E could not be outrun. Like a surface-to-air missile, he burned toward them. In a moment, he blazed alongside, a fox-faced comet trailing frosty vapors and sizzling sparks.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Trick E’s wide grin burned white-hot, a welder’s arc drooling luminous fumes. No trace at all remained of the scorching that Jane had inflicted on him. “Look at you, dreamboat! You fly like a pro.”

  “Beat it, fur face!” Jane shouted into the wind. “We’re on our way to help the faerïe. They don’t want you bothering us.”

  “My, my! The faerïe!” Trick E snorted a fiery laugh. “What about your whiny pal, Alfred? The rats are chewing on him right now.”

  Jane reached under her costume as if grasping for a weapon — the salt she wished she had remembered to bring — and Trick E pulled out of throwing range but continued to fly alongside, insolently wagging a tongue of pink flame. She lay flat against the besom, flying as fast as the magical broomstick would go.

  Trick E easily kept pace, his long, green eyes shining with wicked merriness. “Alfred is screaming like a stabbed bunny rabbit on a stick.” He swung around so that he flew ahead of them, facing backward and dripping fire that whipped past Jane like flaming arrows. “Give me the grimoire. I know you have it on you. Give it to me, cookie, and Alfred wakes up, all his terrible pain just a bad nightmare.”

  Jane knew this was a lie. She knew from the throb of her bruises that Trick E was all lies. “Stuff it!” she shouted and veered sharply. Her hat and veil tore away and flapped like a bat across the pitted face of the moon.

  Jeoffry squawked with fright as the huge darkness of the earth tilted toward them and then abruptly swung aside, replaced by the black sky with its ruffling stars and staring moon. Jane had spun completely around, corkscrewing through the air.

  Trick E zipped directly behind, huffing green fire. “Give me that book, you twit!” He spit sparks, and the twigs and straw at the back of the besom ignited with a percussive ‘whump!’

  “We’re on fire!” Jeoffry squalled. “We’re going to crash and burn!”

  Jane flung a desperate look over her shoulder at smoke and flames coiling behind. “Nuts!” She pointed the besom downward toward the dark woods outside town, and they flared earthward like a shooting star.

  “We’re going to die!” Jeoffry sobbed as the land of night rose to meet them.

  The Reaper’s Twin

  Hair streaming behind, cheeks tugged to a grimace by the speed of their plummet, Jane groaned and pulled back on the wood stick. The besom juddered violently, bucking like a rodeo horse, but did not slow down. Treetops swarmed out of the darkness and lashed around the broom-riders with the gust of a storm wind.

  “Sit back!” Jeoffry called out, pressing hard against her spine. “Sit back to slow down!”

  Jane fought her fear of losing her balance and raised her shoulders. The falling broomstick wrenched sideways, and the tips of pine trees swatted her legs as the besom skidded across the top of the forest. Jane swung herself upright.

  Shuddering and twisting side-to-side, the blazing broomstick fluttered downward. Pine boughs thwacked Jane’s body and the burning besom and extinguished the flames. Control restored, the teen witch shouted, “Fly!” and the flying besom carried Jane and Jeoffry high into the night sky.

  The ivory landscape under the moon bewitched Jane even as she trembled with fear. With the cold wind full in her face, she squinted down at floating woods and sudden splashes of moon in dark ponds. A stream writhed below, a slender white snake. Farmland unrolled like a glass quilt, patched fields polished like porcelain with the night’s bright darkness.

  “Tally ho!” Jeoffry shouted, exulted by the young witch’s flying skills. “The fox is loose and the hunt is on!”

  Jane twisted from the waist to follow the familiar’s line of sight. A hot spit of flame jittered across the pastures. The spirit fox raced after them. She watched the flickering spark expand to a gaseous fireball webbed with soot, and her heart tightened in her chest, hard as a stone.

  “Hang on!” she yelled to Jeoffry and lay flat against the broomstick, pressing the cat to her chest. On the horizon, street lamps brilliantly illuminated a country road. Skeletal silhouettes of electrical towers with high-tension lines reared darkly above the chain of glaring lights.

  “Disaster is upon us!” Jeoffry whined, staring with trepidation at the blazing fireball pulling alongside.

  The sooty lace on the burning gas swirled into a long snout and the malignant grin of Trick E. “Hey, hey…” The spirit fox’s grin twisted to a frown when Jane peeled away, cutting into a sharp dive. “Hey!”

  “Whoa! Slow down!” The upholstered fields swung toward them, and Jeoffry’s cry spun like a siren. “Wau-u-u-u-u!”

  Jane pulled up at the last moment, hoping Trick E would rocket past them and crash into the earth. But he was already ahead of them, spinning wide, lustrous circles in the night sky. As the broom-riders shot through those rings of light, the moon and the stars wheeled overhead, faster and faster.

  “What’s happening?” Jane cried, staring bewildered at the streaking stars in the turning sky.

  “Trick E is accelerating time!” Jeoffry clawed at her back. “Time is going faster! Stop following him! Stop — or we’ll fly past midnight!”

  Jane swerved violently and nearly toppled from the broomstick with Jeoffry. When their flight steadied, she noted that the stars had stopped their blurred turning and the moon loomed high overhead. “It’s almost midnight!” she wailed.

  Trick E flew past, shrieking with insane delight. “Time’s up! You lose!”

  Jane pointed the besom at the distant electrical lines, and the spirit fox rocketed ahead of them, then turned to block their way to the towers.

  “What are you doing?” Jeoffry gaped with terror into the quickening wind as they flew with whistling speed directly at the fiery shape of Trick E on the tilting horizon. “You can’t play chicken with a fox! Foxes eat chickens!”

&nbs
p; Jane tried to say, “We have no choice, Jeoffry.” But the arrowing besom zoomed too fast, and the screeching wind snatched away her breath. The spirit fox’s flaming body rapidly expanded to a fiery curtain, and from its burning draperies Trick E’s wide grin leered.

  “Come to poppa, baby!” the spirit fox laughed.

  Jane gritted her teeth and kept the besom flying directly at the incandescent sheet of foxfire billowing atop the switching tower. Jeoffry’s scream tore like a banshee in the howling rush of their flight, but Jane did not waver.

  “You killed my mother!” she shouted in deaf defiance at the fuming face of the electric fox, and drove the flying broomstick straight into the gigantically grinning jaws.

  Clangorous thunder exploded on impact, and lightning veined the cloudless sky.

  Jane hurtled off the besom and collapsed onto a steel mesh platform atop the switching tower. She lay dazed on her side, hot pinpoints of light spinning before her eyes. Jeoffry sprawled at her feet, head and front paws dangling over the edge of the parapet. Together, they watched the besom topple through the glossy night air and shatter to splinters on the concrete pilings below.

  “Going down?” Trick E stood at the other end of the platform, long head low, fiery tail high, and smiling his blue burning smile. Behind him towered the transformers — three gray elephantine cylinders capped with stacked insulator rings, big ceramic donuts, out of which rose thick trunk lines that carried 330,000 volts of lethal electricity.

  Beneath that Frankenstein array stood the graphite switch panel, with a rubber-grip lever. Jane knew from her conjure knowledge that she had to pull that lever manually to cut power to the country roads bordering these fields.

  Jeoffry shook his muzzy head, saw Trick E slinking closer across the narrow platform and jolted upright. He turned to flee. A strut of the metallic scaffolding offered escape upward, off the mesh platform, and he leaped for it.

  “Run scaredy cat!” Trick E guffawed, sizzling blue sparks. “That leaves just you and me, pumpkin.” He swaggered closer, panting neon puffs of green breath. “Now, you realize if you hand over the grimoire, I could let you live. I could do that. But I won’t!” He barked charred licks of fire. “I’d rather pluck the bloody book from your broken and twisted body!”