The Juliet Spell

by Rees, Douglas

  Mom and I kept hoping he’d come back.

  If I could play Juliet, I would give my performance to my mom. I would put it in the program as a dedication and say something nice. In one way, it wouldn’t be much. But in an.other way, it would be gigantic. It would be a way of saying “I love you” in big, fat, Elizabethan letters.

  When I got home, the house was quiet. No surprise there. Mom was working a double shift over at Bannerman and wasn’t supposed to be home until tomorrow morning. But the note on the bulletin board where we communicated with each other was surprising:

  CHILD SUPPORT! Your dad paid up. That means this

  is my last double shift at the hospital for a while. I’ll

  be home tomorrow about seven-thirty. Who knows?

  I might even see you before you go to school. It’d be

  nice to touch base with you again before you graduate.

  Love,

  Mom

  My parents weren’t divorced. If they’d been divorced, things might actually have been better for us. Then at least we’d have had the law on our side when Dad didn’t pay the money he’d promised to help keep me alive. But they were just “separated.” He paid when he paid. Which was some.where between not often and never. And when he did pay, it wasn’t much. But today there was a check on the fridge, and it was big. Almost a whole year’s back cash for the privilege of not seeing me.

  I tried to ignore the pang that gave me, and thought about the good things that the money would mean. A dinner out with Mom to celebrate was one thing for sure. And some new school clothes. And some bills paid off. And Mom working eight hours a day instead of sixteen, at least for a while. Thank you, Daddy, wherever you are. For a few min.utes, I wasn’t thinking about playing/not playing Juliet.

  But then I was again.

  The child support was a sign. When you’re an actor, ev.erything is a sign of something else. Actors are the most su.perstitious people on the planet. And it was obviously a good sign. Anything I did now to move things in my direction would work. That’s what I told myself.

  And it made me think of something else. A whole new obsession. Maybe, if I played Juliet, my dad would come

  home. I mean, I’d tried out, and here was the child sup.port. Therefore, if I got the part, he’d come back. Perfectly logical.

  This is what shrinks like Dad call fantasizing. They will tell you that it is immature and a sign of emotional distress. They will also tell you that it doesn’t work.

  But I had nothing to lose by believing it. And fantasy is only fantasy if it doesn’t work. So I went into my room and got out my spell kit.

  I’d read about spell kits the year before in a book called Spellcraft For the Average Teen. The writer, who called herself Aurora Skye, had written a sort-of cookbook for how to get things you wanted. And I’d put mine together and started using it daily.

  What did I want? I wanted my father to come home. And I’d cast spells for it for over a month, every afternoon when Mom wasn’t home, which was pretty much all of them. They were called drawing spells, because they were supposed to draw the person to you.

  You do not need me to tell you how well they worked. Daddy was still out there somewhere. But now was differ.ent. There was that check. That big check that meant he’d remembered us. Remembered me. So, fantasizing said, it was time. Aurora Skye said it, too. If a spell didn’t work, she wrote over and over again, don’t give up. Keep casting and the spell will work in its own time. Today, right now, I be.lieved it.

  So I got out the cardboard box where I kept the odds and ends you needed to cast spells and flipped open the book to Spells For Success. The chapter had a lot of subheadings: Suc.cess in Love, Success in Sports, Success on Tests, but nothing that specifically said Success in Getting Cast as Juliet. The closest I could come was Success in Becoming Famous.

  First, draw a perfect circle eighteen inches across. (Ev.eryone who’s taken geometry for a day knows there’s no such thing in real life as a perfect circle. This is prob.ably the second-best escape clause anybody ever had for when something magical doesn’t work. The best is, “It must not be time.” But what I had for a circle was a round eighteen-inch piece of glass, a little tabletop I’d gotten at the garden section of a hardware store. It was better than anything I could have drawn.)

  Next, mix . cup Epsom salts and . cup rubbing al.cohol in a baking dish. Form into a volcano shape.

  (This was pretty much the equivalent of bake at 350 de.grees, apparently. Most of the spells started this way.)

  Place in the cone of the volcano one cube of sugar dyed red. (I had a few left over from last year. They were faded to a sort of brown now, but I wasn’t in a mood to be fussy. They’d been red once.)

  Place the dish in the exact center of the circle. (Ah, yes. There’s that word again. Exact. I lined it up with a ruler on four sides. But how could anything ever be exactly exact?)

  Say the following spell: “Powers that be, harken to me. Send me success in the thing I confess. To the universe proffering, I make this offering.” Then say what it is that you want.

  Light the volcano with an ordinary wooden match that has been blessed by a Practitioner. (A Practitioner

  is what the book calls people who sell stuff for spells. I

  had a box of Practitioner Matches with three left in it.)

  When the alcohol is consumed, a thick crust will be left in the bottom of the dish. The crust is the obstacles in your path burned away. When the dish has cooled, remove this reverently to the trash.

  I set everything out on the kitchen table and said the spell. “Powers that be, harken to me. Send me success in the thing I confess. To the universe proffering, I make this offering. I want to be Juliet. Please, please, please, please, please. Make me Juliet.”

  And I lit the match.

  There was a quiet whoosh and orange flames licked up all over my little volcano. The red cube burned. It was pretty. Very theatrical.

  But it was casting too much light. And for some reason, the light was coming from over my head, like a stage light.

  I jerked my head up and saw a bright white glow hanging about three feet over the table, right over my flame.

  “Aaah?” I said. Or maybe Uuuuuh? Anyway it was some.thing like that.

  And with the bright light came a sound like a low bass note that turned into a sort of rumbling thrill, something like an earthquake.

  Everyone in California knows what you’re supposed to do when a quake hits. You stand in a doorway. And that’s what I did, even though this was no quake and I knew it. I clutched the door frame with both hands while the white light suddenly filled the whole kitchen, so bright I couldn’t see anything. There was a bang, and the light was gone.

  My baking dish was shattered. It lay in two exact halves on the floor. Smoke curled up from each one of them, but there was no crust. They were clean as a pair of very clean whistles.

  But that was not the main thing I noticed. No, the main thing I noticed was the tall young man standing on the table in the middle of my glass round. He was about my age, and for some reason he was dressed in tights and boots and a big poofy shirt like he was supposed to be in a play like, say, Romeo and Juliet.

  He even looked a little like Shakespeare.

  Long hair, a bit of a beard…

  I screamed.

  He smiled, held up one hand, got down on one knee, bowed his head to me and said some words in a language I didn’t understand.

  “Speak English,” I said.

  The boy looked up, shocked. “Ye’re never Helen of Troy,” the boy said, and leapt to his feet.

  “What?” I said.

  “These are never the topless towers of Illium,” the boy said, looking around the kitchen wildly.

  I screamed again, and he, for some reason, crossed him.self, yanked a crucifix out from under his shirt, held it out at me like he thought it was a shield, and shouted, “Doctor D., Doctor D., where are ye?”

  Chapter Two
r />   After those frantic moments, we just stared at each other for a bit.

  Finally, the boy gulped. I could see his cross was trem.bling in his hand. He wasn’t the only one trembling.

  “What ha’ ye done wi’ Doctor D.?”

  “Who the hell are you?” I said.

  “Who in hell are ye?” he asked.

  “What are you doing here? How did you do that? What do you want?” I shrieked.

  I’d cast a spell and it had worked. But it hadn’t worked right. Something was very, very wrong, and I didn’t have a clue what it was, or how to fix it. I was scared, more scared than I’d known I could be.

  “Damned spirit, I charge thee, make Doctor D. appear!” the boy shouted. “By the power of the Cross I command thee!”

  That made me mad. It was like some guy coming to your door trying to sell you his religion. And being scared already, being mad on top of it made me furious.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said again. “What did you just do?”

  “I am friend and follower to Doctor D.,” he said. “Who has power over such as ye. Ye know better than I how I come to be here. Release me and return me to him.”

  “Get out of here,” I said. “Go back where you came from.”

  “Summon Doctor D., or send me back,” the boy said. “I’ll not leave this circle.”

  “Shut up and get off the table,” I said, and my voice was so tough even I was scared of it. “Get off right now. It wob.bles.”

  “Ha, ha. Ye’d like that very well,” the boy sneered. “Ye know well ye cannot hurt me so long as I remain within me circle.”

  “It’s my circle,” I said.

  “It is?” He looked down, and saw my round tabletop. “Oh, God, I am truly lost. Saint Mary, help me now.”

  “If you don’t shut up and get off my table and get out of here, I’m calling 911,” I said, pulling out my cell phone.

  He cringed when he saw it.

  “No hellish engine shall conjure me from this spot,” he said. “Fetch ye Doctor D. at once, devil thing.” He waved his cross around some more.

  I punched in 911.

  “All of our lines are busy now,” a so-friendly recording told me. “Please wait and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Doctor D.! Doctor D.!” the boy shouted. “Come ye to me.”

  “The cops are coming,” I said, waving my cell phone. “I just said ‘shit’ because I’m excited.”

  “Doctor D.!”

  Then I had a wild idea. Before Dad went off to develop himself, he used to work out of the house. Maybe this guy was some new kind of crazy, and had come looking for him. This wouldn’t explain little things, like how he got here out of thin air, but like I said, it was a wild idea.

  “Are you looking for my dad?” I said. “He’s a doctor, but he’s gone. He left us. But nobody calls him Doctor D.”

  “Nay, ye evil wight, I call on Doctor John Dee—John Dee, the greatest man in England. What have ye done with him?”

  I held the phone to my ear.

  “—your call will be answered—”

  A weird cold calm came over me. Whatever was going on, this guy was more frightened of it than I was. I could take control of this situation if I could get control of myself. Treat him like Dad would have: like a patient. Even if he wasn’t crazy, the situation was.

  “If you get down off the table and sit down at it and calm down a little, I’ll put the phone away and try to help you,” I said. “Otherwise, you can explain it to the cops when they get here.”

  “If ye are not a demon, give me a sign,” the boy said.

  “What kind of a sign do you want?”

  “Ye must say the Lord’s Prayer.”

  “I’m not going to pray,” I said.

  “Aha! I knew ye were a servant of the evil one! Help me, Doctor Dee, help me!”

  “Oh, all right, damn it. One line. Okay?” I tried to re.member Sunday school, but I’d only gone about six times and I hadn’t really liked it. Then I recalled something… “‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ Now get the fuck down.”

  The boy looked really confused now. “Ye said the words,” he said. “Ye said the words and did not burst into flames.”

  “Yessss… Now get down. And sit down over there.”

  “If ye are not a demon, are ye an angel?” the boy asked.

  “No,” I said. “Get down.”

  “Then are ye a fairy?”

  “Not even close. Get down. That table really does have a weak leg. I’m not kidding.”

  “Return Doctor Dee and I will,” the boy said.

  “I don’t know where he is,” I replied. “You’re the only one here besides me, and you shouldn’t be. But if you’ll start calming down I’ll try to help you.”

  “Tell me first what manner of creature ye be. Tell me truly by the power of the Cross.”

  “I’m just a girl who doesn’t like people breaking into her house and pitching their religion at her,” I said. “Especially when they erupt out of thin air.”

  “A girl? Nay, wench. Ye are like no girl on earth. Ye dress in pants like a Tartary savage, ye’er arms are bare as sticks. Ye’er hair is shorter than mine own. Ye speak strange words in an unknown accent. And ye’ve a—a conjuring thing there in ye’er hand to summon— Copse, ye’er familiar, I doubt not. Tell me what ye truly are.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said, trying for calm again. “Why don’t you get down off the table and sit over there in the corner and tell me what you think is going on? ’Cause I don’t have a clue.”

  “I’ll not—ye are Queen Mab, or one of her servants.”

  Mab, I thought. Queen of the fairies. Mercutio talks about her in Romeo and Juliet. He thinks I’m her?

  Then the table collapsed. The boy fell backwards, my little round tabletop flew out from under his feet, and his head hit the wall.

  “Ow! Blessed Saint Mary, save me now,” he yelped.

  “Damn it, I told you that leg was weak,” I said.

  “Don’t turn me into anything,” the boy begged. “I im.plore you, spirit, or fairy, or whatever thing ye be, have mercy on a poor lost soul.”

  I put the cell phone to my ear again.

  “—in the order it was received—”

  The boy was cowering in the corner now.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen,” he said, crossing himself a couple of times.

  Well, at least I had him off the table and into the corner.

  “Sit. Stay,” I commanded, like he was a dog, and pointed the phone at him.

  He whimpered and drew his knees up to his chest.

  One of the things Dad always said about dealing with crazy people was that, before you could help them, you had to find out what reality they were living in.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll have mercy on you, I promise.”

  “Swear you will not turn me into a toad or other loath.some creature,” the boy said.

  “I swear not to turn you into anything. Now, my name’s Miranda. What’s yours?”

  “Edmund’s me name.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Now, where are you from, Edmund? And how did you get here?” My voice was getting calmer. Almost like Dad’s shrink voice. He would have been proud of me.

  “London,” he said. “Though as ye can tell from me ac.cent I’m not born there.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t have known that,” I said. “Where are you from originally?”

  “Warwickshire, of course.”

  “Okay. And who’s this Doctor Dee?”

  “As I told ye, Doctor John Dee is the greatest man in En.gland. A mighty mind that knows everything, a valiant heart that dares everything, even the darkest depths of knowledge. Cousin of the queen, friend of all the greats of England. Ye must know of him!”

  “Nope. Never heard of him,” I said, kind of amazed he expected me to know some gu
y half-across the world. “But go on. Tell me what he has to do with you.”

  “We were in his secret rooms in Cheapside…. Doctor Dee was casting a spell. A necromancy.” He crossed himself again. “Greatly have we offended. Thus am I punished. Oh, my God, have mercy.”

  “Just get back to your story,” I said slowly and calmly. “What’s a necro—what you said?”

  “We meant to raise the ghost of Helen of Troy,” he said. “For Doctor Dee, necromancy remains the last great thing undone. He wished to question her about the Iliad. To know how truly it depicted the battles. For me—fool that I am, I wanted to see Helen. To see ‘the face that launched a thou.sand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium.’ ’Twas why I addressed ye in Greek at first.”

  I was actually calming down a little. And because I was, my legs started shaking really bad. “Edmund, I’m going to sit down now. Don’t be afraid.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I sat down beside the broken table. That felt better.

  There’s a quick test they give you to find out if you’re crazy or not. If you’re ever taken to the hospital unconscious they’ll give it to you when you wake up. Here it goes.

  “Edmund, I’m going to ask you five questions. Real easy ones, okay?”

  “What means ‘okay’?”

  “Okay? It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, it means a lot of things. It just means okay, okay?”

  “I’ll not answer any more questions of yours, save you

  answer as many questions of mine,” he said. “Okay,” I said. “In this case, that means ‘yes.’ Okay?” “Yes. Okay.” “First question. What’s your name?” “Edmund Shakeshaft,” he said. “Almost like the writer.” “Writer?” he said, as if he didn’t know the word. “Never mind. You’re Edmund Shakeshaft. Fine. Second

  question. What country is this?” “I’ve never a notion,” Edmund said. “What country is

  this?” I decided to tell him. “The United States of America.” “The what of America?” “Let’s go on,” I said. “You can ask your questions next.

  Third question. What year is this?” “1597.” “Fourth question. What day is this?” “’Tis the Ides of March,” he said. “Which is what day of what month?” I said. “’Tis March the fifteent’, o’course, or a day on either side.” Maybe it was the Ides of March where he’d been, but here