by Sean Stone
“When did you get so wise?” I said and smiled.
“One of us needs to be,” she replied and gave me a cheeky grin back.
“Alright. You’re right. I need to fight it. I’ve let it get the better of me for too long now. I will resist the nasty urges.” I didn’t hold much faith in the words I spoke but I spoke them all the same.
“I’ll help you. I’ll be right by your side the whole time,” she promised.
“I thought you had to stay away from me once we’ve summoned the imp?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Nah. I think that ship’s sailed now. After what we just did.” Her cheeks reddened when she said that. She’d actually made herself blush. “Besides, I know that you’ll do whatever you can to protect me. Even from yourself. Even though you did just try to beat me up.”
“Hey, you started that,” I shot back.
“You threw the first spell,” she said and quite truthfully.
“But I knew it wouldn’t do any real damage,” I hadn’t been in control when I’d done that but I had managed to pull back the attack somewhat. That’s how I knew that with Ashley round the darkness would be easier to control because I would never let it harm her. Not properly.
“Sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night,” she said with a wink. “I’m going to check on Leah and then we need to summon this imp.”
19
Leah was happily playing with Action Men upstairs so when Ashley got back downstairs we got straight to work. Ashley filtered her way through Margie’s library for her aunt’s grimoire which contained the imp names whilst I familiarised myself with the summoning spell. It wasn’t as simple as saying the imp’s name three times. The spoken part of the spell was all in Latin which was exciting. So many spells don’t even require vocalisations and most of the ones that do can be done in normal old English, it was nice to have something with a bit more grandeur to it.
“We need mirrors. Two of them. And do you have any salt?” I said.
“Grab any two mirrors from the house and there’s salt in the kitchen,” Ashley said without looking up.
I grabbed one mirror from the hallway and the other from the dining room. Both were pretty large which was just what I needed. There were going to act as gates to the fairy realm so I assumed they needed to be big enough for a person to get through. I wondered what would happen if Ashley or I attempted to go through the gate once it was open since humans apparently could not go to the fairy realm without an escort. I put the mirrors down in the living room and then returned to the kitchen to grab the salt. Ashley was still scouring through the books when I got back. I placed one mirror in the centre of the living room floor and using magic I fixed the other on the ceiling directly above it.
“Got a marker pen?” I asked. She pointed at the set of drawers by the door. After searching through four drawers I finally found one. I used it to draw a hectogram (also known as a fairy star) on the mirror on the floor. I almost pulled the other one down to replicate the image on that one also before I realised it was unnecessary because it would be reflected from the bottom. I finished off by pouring a generously thick circle of salt around the mirror. Margie said they could be nasty so I had to ensure that it could not get to us. It took Ashley another half an hour before she finally found the list of names Margie had told us about. It was hardly a list, it only had four names on it.
“Rumplesiltskin, Paronskaft, Barbichu and… George?” I read the names allowed puzzling over the last one. “There isn’t an imp called George,” I said in disbelief.
“Why not?” asked Ashley.
“It’s just not feasible. It’s not very impish, is it?”
“I hope that George is the only one that works now. Just to prove you wrong,” Ashley said and poked her tongue at me. “Have you got what we need to bind it?”
“We’re not binding it unless we have to. Your mum said to ask it nicely first,” I said, aware of how silly that sounded.
“Alright then. Let’s do this,” she said confidently. It would only take one of us to perform the spell. Margie had advised that we both be here in case there was trouble.
I started by doing the old concentration thing. Clearing the mind and all that. Once I was in the zone so to speak I charged the mirrors with magic, or at least I tried. It didn’t work.
“I don’t—” I realised my mistake before I was finished and felt my cheeks redden. I took a step forward and kicked a break in the salt circle.
“You idiot,” Ashley mocked.
“Just get ready to mend the circle as soon as the mirrors are spelled,” I said. I tried again and this time the magic flowed into the mirrors. I nodded to Ashley who quickly poured fresh salt over the gap mending the circle. Now came the fun part. I decided to work my way through the list systematically from top to bottom.
I called loudly into the mirrors doing my best to pronounce all the Latin words correctly. Rachel had given me a bit of training with the language but not much. “Clamavi ad te, o regain mediocris viventem. Trans, et partitus este ante nos. Praecipio tibi Rumplestiltskin sat forum nobis.”
I waited as patiently as I was able but nothing happened. No-one appeared in the circle.
“I guess Rumplestiltskin isn’t available?” Ashley suggested.
“Must be dead.” I didn’t hide my disappointment. Who doesn’t want to meet a fairy tale character? Rumplestiltskin was my favourite fairy tale as well. I tried the spell again, this time using the name Paronskaft. Again nothing.
“Maybe you need to shout it,” Ashley said. “The fairy world is probably quite far away.”
“Fine,” I said irritably and began again with the next name, this time louder. “Clamavi ad te, o regain mediocris viventem! Trans, et partitus este ante nos! Praecipio tibi Barbichu sat forum nobis!” For a second I thought I felt a slight change in the atmosphere but once again nobody appeared. “See. Nothing. No Paronskaft, no Rumplestiltskin, no Barbichu and I don’t even think George is worth trying,” I said dejectedly.
“Quite right! George is a waste of time he’s been dead for at least a century!” a high-pitched voice said from behind us. We both wheeled around to find an odd little man sitting on top of the antique cabinet by the window. He looked no larger than Panomie but entirely different in appearance. His skin was a grey ashen colour and his massive slanted eyes were amber. He had long ears that pointed backwards from his head. His hair was shimmering silver and hung in scraggly lines down to his ears. He was dressed in weird old fashioned clothing. On his legs he wore a pair of brown breeches. His feet were covered by black pointed shoes complete with golden buckles. He had a shirt the same colour as his eyes with the frilly cuffs they used to have in the olden days. On top of that he wore a red silk waistcoat and on top of that he had a knee length silk purple coat. He looked ridiculous — almost like a miniature Willy Wonka. “As for Paronskaft — never heard of him and the big cheese? You’re saying it wrong.” He spoke in such an animated way, flapping his hands around wildly like a kid on caffeine.
“The big cheese? Rumplestiltskin?” I asked.
“Yep. Not how you pronounce it. You English, you get all the names wrong,” he said gleefully and then chuckled to himself.
“How do you say it?”
“Oh, please.” He flapped his hand in a very camp manner. “I’m hardly going to give you the means to summon the Impen king. I’d never be forgiven. No, no. You’ll have to make do with Barbichu.”
“Why aren’t you in the circle?” Ashley demanded. I hadn’t even registered that he’d appeared outside of the circle.
He looked over at the circle and frowned. “Well, I don’t want to be in the circle. Is it terribly important to you that I be in there?” He hopped down from the cabinet and touched the floor without a sound. He moved to the circle walking almost on his toes with all the grace of a ballet dancer. When he reached the salt he tentatively placed one foot over and then the other. “Better?” he asked, smiling proudly.
; “Yeah, yeah, we get the point. Salt doesn’t confine you,” I said morosely.
“More importantly why do you want to confine me?” The mirth was gone now and he looked really quite menacing.
“Well… in case you got angry,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck nervously. I offered a small smile.
“And why would I get angry?” he smiled again but lacked the humour it had held before. “Oh! Could it be because you summoned me? Yes I think it might be.”
“Well I didn’t know another way to get your attention,” I explained.
“How about this? Don’t. I’m not interested in you or anything you have to say,” he said.
“We need your helping stopping Panomie,” Ashley said. I saw the minuscule flinch in his face at the sound of the name. Or maybe it wasn’t a flinch maybe it was something else. He went to reply but then his eye caught something on the mantle. He trotted over there and plucked up a photo of Margie and some woman.
“Family?” he asked in a peculiar manner.
“My mum and aunt,” replied Ashley. His eyes gleamed and his dark tongue flicked across his lips.
“Shame if anything happened to them.”
“They’re both already dead,” said Ashley. Oddly his expression only got more gleeful.
“Well then, let me issue a different threat. One that has more oomph.”
The door creaked open and Leah walked in before either of us could stop her. She didn’t even notice Barbichu standing in the centre of the room. She saw me and gave me an apprehensive look. She had seen me kill a man just a few hours ago. “Ashley, when’s dinner I’m starving?” she asked.
“Oh, and who might this be?” Barbichu asked staring intently at Leah. There was a really creepy look in his eye.
“No-one you need to worry about,” Ashley said quickly. “Go back upstairs, dinner’s soon,” she said to Leah.
“What is that?” Leah said in fascination. It wasn’t every day you got to see a real imp.
“How rude!” Barbichu exclaimed, putting his hands on his hips in a dramatic fashion. I was very quickly getting annoyed with his flamboyant demeanour.
“Go upstairs. Now!” Ashley said loudly and Leah stomped out of the room. “Now,” she turned back to Barbichu. “Are you going to help us stop the gnome or not? They are your sworn enemy aren’t they?”
“The only sworn enemies I have are those who directly wrong me and right now that would be the two ignoramuses who summoned me.” He held out his hand and fiery sphere appeared in it. “Now, do you think punishments are in order?” he asked. Once again the playfulness was gone and he was just malicious. I glared at the little creature and lifted my own hand to prepare a spell in response. He raised a finger and stared at me warningly. “Now, now. Do you know nothing about imps? We out-power sorcerers ten to one. You can’t hope to beat me. Not even with all that darkness rattling around inside of you, which I find intriguing by the way.”
“You know?” I said, startled. How could he know?
“I can see it. Feel it. My senses are… acute to these kinds of things.” He closed his fist and the sphere vanished. “I’ll put this down to ignorance and stupidity. No harm done and all that jazz. But summon me again and you will be very sorry.” And with his warning delivered he disappeared. Both mirrors cracked when he left and salt scattered across the room.
20
“Well that was a flop,” I said, still staring at the place Barbichu had been standing just a moment ago.
“Yeah,” said Ashley. “I guess we’ll have to bind him then.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Seriously? He just said if we summoned him again we’d pay and he was holding a fireball when he said it.” Usually I was all for diving in with reckless plans but I didn’t want to put Ashley in direct danger. Not after we’d finally made up. And we made up in style. That was undeniable.
“So if we bind him he won’t be able to make anyone pay. Not unless we tell him to,” she pointed out.
“Margie said—”
“It’s dangerous. Yeah I know. The shit we get up to always is. Come on, Eddie, don’t chicken out. Let’s do this. There’s kids to save.”
I grabbed the binding spell, pulled the ribbon off and unrolled it. “We need…” I said as I read the list of items. “Something made of real gold — that’s what we bind him to. A hematite stone, tiger’s eye stone, white oak ashes, our blood, and two new mirrors.”
“I’ve got the stones,” Ashley said. We went into town to get the rest. Salamander’s had the white oak ashes and we bought two new mirrors and the cheapest gold ring we could find in Argos. We also had to take Leah for lunch because we still hadn’t fed her. Whilst eating she seemed to warm up to me again and it was like I hadn’t killed a man right in front of her.
Once back at the house Leah went back upstairs. This time Ashley told her not to come downstairs for anything. Leah could not walk in on us binding Barbichu. He’d already threatened us.
The new mirrors replaced the old and I redrew the symbol whilst Ashley fetched a small cauldron. She placed it on top of the altar that had once been her mother’s. I stopped myself from sniggering at the fact that Margie had attached wheels to her altar so she could move it around the house. We had positioned it in front of the door facing the mirrors. We were close enough to the door to stop it opening should Leah decide to come down anyway. Ashley had also magically sealed it. We’d made sure we could see the whole room this time so he couldn’t appear behind us.
I picked up the ring.
“Be careful, Eddie,” Ashley said. As if I was going to mess up the spell without her two words of guidance.
“I know,” I said and shook my head. “I’ll make it so that either one of us can control him using the ring. That way if anything happens to me you can take over.” The ring wouldn’t fit her but she could hold it or put it on a chain around her neck.
I spelled the ring to take on the properties of everything I put in the bowl. “Let’s start with the painful bit,” I said. I lifted the ceremonial athame from the altar and cut my palm. Once my blood was covering the ring I healed my wound and handed Ashley the athame to do the same. She hissed at the pain, obviously she wasn’t as used to slicing open her hand as I was. She healed herself and then placed the athame down. I took the tiger’s eye and she took the hematite. We enclosed the stones in our hands and magically heated them. It took a while but once I could feel the stones turning to liquid I dropped the thick fluid into the cauldron. Ashley did the same. With a twirl of my finger the contents of the cauldron began to mix itself around and it glowed dimly as the ring absorbed it. Next I tipped the white oak ashes in and let the ring do its work. As I’m sure you’ve realised by now in spells like this one a good sign that it’s ready is when the object glows very brightly, so by the time the ring was providing enough light to fill the room I knew it was ready. Next came the hard part. Binding Barbichu. We needed to time it perfectly. If we summoned him and then started the binding he’d know what we were up to and kill us. However, he needed to be present in order to bind him to the ring. We’d planned it so I’d start the binding spell just after Ashley started summoning him, that way he wouldn’t have time to stop us.
“Ready?” Ashley asked and I nodded. She began reciting the spell. I quite quickly realised my mistake. The binding spell was a lot longer than the summoning spell. I started as soon as I realised and spoke the words as quickly as I dared. One wrong word and the whole spell would fail.
“Adiuro te imp qui Barbichu nomen huic inaurem auream unam. Qurom voluntatem tacitorum perspicis sanguinis continetur in hoc anulum.” I was only half way through when Barbichu appeared. He popped up by the window this time and he was not in the least bit amused. Despite my better judgement I froze and stared at him in horror.
“This had better be your idea of a very lame joke,” he warned. He looked like he was about to murder us. Then Ashley surprised me by bringing the bookcase down on him.
“Carry
on!” she yelled. Barbichu had teleported just in time and was now next to the mirrors. Ashley started throwing magical attacks at him which he dodged as he made his way towards me.
“Mente corpus spiritus erit tis imperare met!” He was almost on me and I had nowhere to back up to. He conjured that fiery sphere again. I conjured up a shield but I wasn’t certain it would hold against an imp. He said he was ten times more powerful than me.
“Neque copia neque nocere annulum tenetem!” He threw the sphere. My shield blocked it but it smashed my shield apart. He drew another sphere. Ashley ran at him but he knocked her down with a blast of magic.
“Etiam in mortem!” I screamed and Barbichu froze literally a second before he launched the next fire ball at me. I hadn’t felt anything to confirm the spell was complete but Barbichu freezing was a good indication.
“You little aitvarus,” he said and stamped his foot. I took that to mean the binding had worked. I wasn’t happy about being called a snot fairy, though.
Ashley was back on her feet and panting from the fight.
“Sorry,” I told the imp. “But we really need your help.” I saw his eyes flick to the cauldron and I quickly snatched up the ring before he could stop me. “Forget it, little guy,” I said and slipped the ring onto my third finger.
“I am going to peel the flesh from your body and wear it as a cape,” he said in a quiet but still very high voice.
“I’ll make sure I never release you then,” I said and walked past him to sit on the sofa. “Have a seat,” I said and pointed at the armchair which had not been Margie’s favourite seat. Imagine if I’d put an imp in Ashley’s mum’s chair. Barbichu kissed his teeth before crossing the room and plonking himself into the chair. Ashley came and sat with me. She was still nervous despite the binding. “Look, Barbie—”