by J. Kowallis
“Better yet,” Dad’s voice is timid, but firm, “don’t come in Angie’s room again. Do you hear me?”
“Dad,” I press. “Coll is—”
Angie cuts me off again. “Not even Coll is worth the risk of opening up that book.”
Her words cut through my chest and I feel my own defiance building, growing. “Not worth it? Do you hear yourself? Coll is your foster son! Not only that, but he’s the other half of the prophecy. I need him. We need him back.”
Another deadly step toward me. “Which is it, Taran? You or ‘we?’ Because you’re acting awfully selfish if you’re actually thinking about the people around you.”
“What does that mean?” I spit.
“Are you even thinking about your father? Are you thinking about me? Are you actually thinking about the small percentage of remaining hexens on Earth that depend on your existence, or are you just allowing your infatuation for Coll to dictate your decisions? Grow up, Taran! There are more important things to deal with than your hormones!”
My teeth grind together, and I fight back the burning in my eyes. “You . . .” that single word seeps like venom over my lips, “don’t know me at all. You have no idea how guilty I’ve felt.” My breath shakes. “I’m not practiced enough. I messed up in Bryden. I ignored Coll. For months. My own ridiculous anger allowed him to stay possessed by his insane ancestor for too long. But no,” I hold up a hand, the tone of my voice instantly becoming sarcastic. “You’re right. All I’m interested in is having hot, nasty sex. Especially since I was just pinned down to a bed last night and assaulted by the asshole living inside him. You’re absolutely right. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”
I force my way out of the bedroom, jog down the stairs, and slam the front door behind me as I storm out with every intention of leaving all of this behind me and knowing I never can.
Fourteen
The breeze off the Irish southern coast beats against my face for a couple solid hours while I do everything I can to berate myself for my stupidity. In the middle of it all—sitting there on the grass, my knees hugged against my chest—I remember something Pete said the night Coll and I were both trapped in the library with all our research. It’s nothing much. Just a word. A phrase, I guess I should say.
And I wasn’t even supposed to hear it.
“She’s one of the most knowledgeable and dedicated colleagues I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”
Dedicated. I snort. It’s just a more respectful way of saying I’m obsessive. Call it whatever you will, I’ve always been like this. Never able to let go of anything until I solve it, find it, or research the crap out of it.
I drop my head against my knees and sigh.
Dedicated. That’s why I went into Angie’s room. It’s why I haven’t been able to get the grimoire out of my head for the last couple hours. I know that the spell we need is in there. And so does Angie. Why else would she be trying to read that . . . Pandora’s Box without opening it?
“Pandora’s Box,” I mouth and then press my chin against my knee.
During my undergraduate years I took a Greek Mythology course. I think it was the fall semester of my junior year. Mostly just for fun, but I won’t deny I was curious to see if there were crossover relations between Greek mythology and hexen history. About halfway through the semester, we talked about the tale of Pandora’s Box. Everything in that box, sickness, death, and all the evils of the world were unleashed the moment Pandora opened it out of curiosity. Murder, abuse, greed, mass slaughter, the worst of the worst. Like other prominent women in folklore, and even religion—the biblical Eve comes to mind—her name’s been dragged through the mud for what we arrogantly consider to be carelessness.
But, even as a student, I never saw her that way. After all, the box also held hope. In fact, my professor even stated that some scholars referred to a myth where the box held virtues instead of vices.
“Books are meant to be read,” I whisper, lifting my eyes. And if Hellia’s grimoire has even a shred of hope inside it, it’ll be worth it.
I stand up and brush off my pants. My body tingles with the tiaseal spell as it waves over me and I leave the coast line and appear on the front stoop of Angie’s cottage.
Nerves buzzing, throat closing off, I open the door and peer inside.
Everything is deathly silent.
“Dad? Angie?” I let my voice ring, checking to see if either of them is around.
Not a single response. Nothing. Except . . . I step forward to the kitchen table when I see the small note. It’s simple. Brief.
Convinced Angie to give you some space, to cool off, just in case you came back. We’ll return in a couple hours, Bug.
Without waiting a beat, I dash up the stairs and open Angie’s bedroom, calling her name once again when I enter. Dad was right. She’s not there. I turn my head, looking toward the wardrobe. The key that was used to lock it is gone. Honestly. As if that could stop me.
I approach the wardrobe, the feeling rolling through my gut telling me this is an incredibly stupid thing to do. Still, I don’t care. It’s Coll, and something inside tells me that this is a risk I have to take.
I snap my fingers, the word “Eíghlase” rolls through my head. As if the spell fell dead in the air, nothing happens. My eyes narrow and I lick my lips. She’s done something. Some other additional spell to lock the cabinet.
“Oh, screw this,” I say under my breath. I look at the hinges of the door and realize they’re not even accessible with a screw driver. “Dammit.”
A summoning spell won’t work to get the book if she magically locked the cabinet. I have to think of something else. Something a bit more destructive Something quite a bit more manual. I place my hand on the right panel of the door and say, “Raeske.”
The panel cracks down the center and I slam against it with the palm of my hand. It’s not the strongest of wood, but it does present a slight challenge. After whispering the spell once more and hitting the wood, I’m able to reach inside. Shoved in there, haphazardly, is the locked grimoire on top of a pile of clothes and somewhat covered by hanging scarves. Barely able to fit it through the broken hole, I hold the book tight in my arms. I skip (slash) sprint down the staircase and out the front door.
If I’m going to be opening this book, I don’t want to be in Angie’s house when it unleashes whatever horrors are inside. The soft earth around the lake starts to swallow each of my feet with every step. Grass brushes and rustles against my calves, and the soft chirp of frogs hovers in the cool air. I need to find a location hidden from the view of the cottage but still dry enough that I can feel comfortable.
Like an answer to a prayer, I see a secluded spot just beyond a tall wall of brush ahead. Jogging, anxiety coursing through me, I pull around the corner and glance back at the cottage. It’s about a thousand feet away. A safe enough distance that Dad and Angie won’t see me should they return home before I’m finished.
I cross my legs and sit on the dry ground. About ten feet in front of me is the edge of the grass, and behind me, just a long field of short grass, small rocks, and rich earth. A soft breeze blows my dark hair across my face, so I tuck it behind my ears.
Setting the grimoire in front of me, I run my hands along its spine and rough skin pages. I think back to what Angie spit at me when she found it in my arms.
Bound in leather stripped from the flesh of a Ravn child thought to be a changeling, pages formed from the skin of human slaves of the ancient Ravn tribe.
Human skins. The hairs on my arm stand on end. I’m not unfamiliar with book materials like this from other eras and geographies, but it feels unnatural. Horrible. I look closer at the cover, recognizing that the Ravn skin cover has been coated with some sort of thin paint. Tar even.
My hand cradles the lock and I try the most obvious unlocking spell.
No surprise. It doesn’t work.
I’m Hellia. If I lock my grimoire, what spell, what words wou
ld I use to open it? I ask myself.
She hated the Grims. She wanted power over the afterlife.
My thoughts travel back to that first day back in my apartment when I returned from London. I wasn’t yet aware that Dad was alive, or that anything had changed. I wasn’t even aware of why I continued to have lapses in memory.
A scream. A flash of red light. I had a vision of the tás. And then I heard her voice in my head.
We will have our land, our power. And you and your line will be exterminated. I vow with my own blood.
That has to be it. A vow. I summon a knife from Angie’s kitchen and it appears in my hand. Just a small paring knife. One sharp enough to do the job.
“I vow with my own blood.” The words echo in my head as I whisper them.
Slicing just the side of my finger, I place it on the lock—a sign of sacrifice, of blood loss—and say the words, “Vode fom fuil. Eíghlase.”
A vow of blood.
The lock pops open and I watch as the small drops of blood sink directly into the iron. My heart thumps inside my chest as the wind around me begins to build—nature responding to my own pulse.
I push the locking strap back and pull back the front cover. I don’t know exactly what I expected. A Hocus Pocus beam of light to shoot up into the sky like a beacon, a blast of gray smoke, or maybe even a live hand to reach out from the pages and yank me into another dimension, á la a horcrux, but . . . nothing happens. It’s just a book like any other. The crest of the Ravn clan is meticulously painted on the front page with the words (in hexen), The Book of REVN.
Below that is a series of names, written down like the names in a Christian family bible. The first belongs to an Aldis Ravn. Born midsummer in the three hundred fifth year of our Father Zonne. Then Drogo in the three hundred twenty seventh. Gy in 345. Gerbod in 400.
I follow the names down, both male and female. I’m assuming the grimoire was handed down from Father to son, to son, to daughter, depending on who was the eldest in the family. What’s interesting is that each owner bears the name of Ravn. Even the oldest female owners who had spouses. Perhaps the notation of “Ravn” was used as an indication of tribe, not necessarily family name. For instance, Eudora Myra Ó hAodha Ravn. Ó hAodha is the Gaelic form of Hughes. The same name passed to her son. Then, his daughter. At that point, the surname for her daughter changes to Meagher Ravn—a name passed on to the next five sons in the family line.
At the end of the list, on the second page, is the name Helia Morrgan Revn. Born in the six hundred thirty third year of Zonne. Now, if my memory is correct, that would be 1395 B.C. At least according to the family group sheets I have back in my room. Part of the collection I summoned from my apartment.
I trace my finger over the ink of her name. Even more disturbing than the fact that these pages are made from the skin of human alemflu, is the fact that this ink doesn’t look like ink. Dark brown with a reddish base to it. Very aged. And very distinct. I’ve seen this a couple times before in other texts I’ve studied. Mostly from ancient China, like the Dunhuang manuscript collections. In fact, one such 17th century record written in this kind of ink stated something like, the root cause of involving this blood writing involves reverence to beginningless birth and death, but none is deeper than the very magic of the body. Or, perception of the body. I’m not sure.
Blood. Blood that browned with age.
Still, whose blood this is, I don’t know. The writer’s? A victim’s? The least likely is that it’s animal blood—considering the composition of the cover and pages.
I start to turn each page of the book, looking through the spells. Most of them don’t look much different from the spells and information I wrote into my own grimoire. Ingredients, details on herbs, minerals, stones, and such. Small spells, historical events. Some sections even read more like journal entries.
Then, the notes—the text—start to shift in nature. Not the literal words changing, but I notice small blood spells, like nightmare curses and revenge hexes slipping in here and there about halfway through the book. Different sets of handwriting as family members and owners of the book contributed to the collection. Those small hexes then begin to escalate. The spells require more blood, willing or unwilling, and even animal sacrifices. More extensive and definitely more grotesque than Christian animal sacrifices of the bible.
And then, I start to see the Four Evils. The first of which is violation. Ovátren.
The image on the page is one of a demon gripping a woman. His claws burrow into her fleshy thighs. While the painting is aged, as well as the page itself, the chilled feeling that comes over me is jarring. Hellish. The violation curse. One rarely placed on young hexen men and women by their elders for disobedience. Like the tás, outlawed. Typically, it assured that the individual would forever experience the horrific fear of being violated—raped—whenever they considered disobedience. Conditioned into conformity.
Ruhmactír flashes in my mind and my pulse quickens. Sickness rolls in my stomach.
I quickly turn the page and move on.
Folsadur. The curse of infliction. Or torture.
Bása tás. Instant death. One I’m much too familiar with.
And then I find the hex I want. Actuve.
The second I turn the page, my pulse thrums, and I hear the lake water lapping against the grassy edge. The wind picks up heavily as I look over the ingredients, the words of the spell, and the artwork on the page. Directly below it is another spell, a reversal spell for the actuve. The Ejection.
The spell details the incantation, even down to the . . . I pause, reading over the text. “Fieth ere sagnu a ceno ere verdna. Four of the same,” I whisper, my voice trailing off. “Coll, it’s possible.”
The wind beats against me, blowing so heavily, I can’t see through my own raging hair. I look up, pulling my strands back, and freeze. As the weather and nature respond to my escalating elation, I see a figure across the water. A woman. Dressed in a pale, woad-blue smock. Her black hair churns and whirls around her head, tossed with the wind. Every once in a while, the gale parts her hair just right and the first time it does, a pair of black irises so focused they figuratively scorch, drill into me.
Fear leaps inside my mind and I jump from my seated position, recognizing that sharply gaunt face. Hellia Morrigan. I’d know that face anywhere. I’ve seen it so often when I close my eyes. In my memories of that day, I saw her dead body sprawled on the ground at Woden’s feet.
My eyes flick to the grimoire on the ground and the world stills. Considering the spells in her grimoire, I don’t blame Woden for killing her.
“Sturfa,” I hiss. The clouds above shift into a thick black clash of ferocity. Lightning collides with the surface of the lake as the sky rips apart and rain pours down.
My hair whips and clings to my face as I call down another bolt of lightning. This time, it hits directly in front of the woman on the lake.
She simply sneers.
“Churraick,” I yell, holding out my hand. The implosion spell should have hit its target, but the water mere feet behind her is the only thing that sucks down into a shallow whirlpool and explodes from the inside out. Hellia doesn’t even react. I pant, lowering my arm as she takes three slow steps across the water.
“Lochel! Mide a lytreat!” I scream. Again, it doesn’t work. A simple bolt of lightning cracks down from the sky and collides with the lake sending out ripples of shock across the surface. Hellia simply raises a hand, directing her palm toward me. That same shade of woad paints her hands. Runes and patterns lace around her arm, trailing down her skin and coats her fingertips as if each one was dipped directly into pools of blue paint.
With her hand raised, she casts a spell.
What results is the most painful, agonizing feeling I’ve ever experienced. Like a drill grinding through my face, into my skull, and attempting to pierce through my brain.
I collapse to my knees, gripping the mud and grass underneath me. My hold on the weather
releases and the rain begins to disperse, but not the pain. Not the fear. I raise my head to look up at her. She still slowly walks closer, and closer. When she raises her other hand, a second drill starts to burrow into my head.
Unintelligible cries of pain, broken words, explode from my mouth, but I can’t even tell which ones they are. The pain is so intense, I may have even just made up new words.
I whisper a spell for strength in the hope it’ll help me cope with the pain that feels like a hot poker being shoved through my eye socket. My own spell is enough to numb the effect and allow me to stagger to my feet. Mud drips off my hands, shins, and knees. I lift my filthy, mud-soaked hand and trigger the lightning once more. A burning bolt pierces the lake, right through Hellia, accompanied by a sharp crack through the sky. The woman steps back, her own arms limp. I can tell she’s getting tired—if dead hexens can even get tired—but she still forces a smile.
“Bitch,” I whisper under my breath. None of the spells I cast work on her. But something is still wearing her down. Perhaps her own expenditure of magic. If I only have to keep her busy, I’ll gladly do it.
“Teand komce. Teand adlyen.” I wave my hand over the water and push into the air. The lake explodes into a shimmering, angry wall in front of her. Hellia stops, her wavy form watching me from the other side.
Bidding the weather once more, I pull down on the wind around us, driving it toward the lake. The force of it is enough to knock me off balance to the left. My hair slaps my face, my clothing suctioning at my body. With another hand I connect to the water with my elemental magic again and build up a wall behind her that grows like an unseen tidal wave. It crashes down on Hellia and collides with the partition between us. Pushing against the air, I force the wall of water to fall backward, taking her on from the front. When the water collapses, Hellia still stands above the lake, dry, untouched. But she’s hunched. Drained.
Her hand raises again, attempting to drill into my head. Why, I don’t care. All I know is that it’s wearing her out.