by Zed Amadeo
Even now, the words were still spinning around my mind. Alejandra had gone through the ritual with me, step by step. What to say. What to expect. Now that I was descending the staircase in almost complete darkness, I began to feel as though nothing could have prepared me for the adventure that was soon to come.
The basement was illuminated only by candles that had been set into the floor, forming a part of the intricate carved design that sprawled out across the entirety of the basement. Fear was beginning to creep into the forefront of my mind, sending my heart into a marathon. I thought back to what Alejandra had told me just before our descent.
“You must trust me,” she had said. “Whatever happens, focus on my eyes.” At that moment she glanced back at me with a knowing smile, and I regained my confidence.
“On your journey,” she had told me, “You will see and feel the impossible. You will be terrified at times, that much is guaranteed. But you will gain powerful knowledge. Your life will never be the same.”
Alejandra sat cross-legged in the middle in one of the sub-circles in the floor’s design. I sat in the sub-circle across from her and mimicked her posture, my companion resting within my lap.
“You’re getting scared,” Alejandra said. I could not look away from her gaze. “Remember what I said before.” I stared into her eyes. She then held out her arms to me, just as she had told me beforehand. I reached out my hands to clasp hers.
“Think about why you have decided to become a witch,” she said. “Think about the circumstances that have brought you to this point in your life.”
I allowed that nearly fatal scene to play out before me. I let myself feel the powerlessness all over again. I thought about all of those times when I had lain in bed one day after another, feeling too horrible to do anything else. I recalled the capstone of watching my sister get attacked in our home and being unable to stop it because of my own fear. Each memory unleashed a little bit of my frustration, culminating in a final, relieving scream.
“Dina,” Alejandra began, before rattling off phrases in the language of magic. I remembered their meaning from our previous run through:
“You agree to undertake this journey to become a witch, with me, Alejandra, as your teacher, for the thirty days and thirty nights of tradition, upon which time you will work toward your first accomplishment as a witch.”
“Na’am,” I answered, nodding my head for extra emphasis. I clumsily attempted to repeat the words as Alejandra had taught them to me, fumbling my way through the unfamiliar sounds of the language until I got to the end.
“You will allow your companion, who has graciously led you to our world, to return to its home realm,” she continued.
“Na’am,” I said.
When I finished, Alejandra released my hands from hers to pick up the knife by her side. Even with my knowledge of what was to come, I still flinched when she sliced her wrist, smearing the blood into little pool below her. I hesitantly held out one of my wrists for her to slit and give my own blood sacrifice. Alejandra mixed my blood in with her own, and the blood began to move on its own, filling and illuminating the complex shapes around us.
Alejandra began reciting more magical phrases. The lights began to dim as Alejandra’s words summoned a new shadow into a circle behind her, bringing with it a strong, impossible gust of wind and plunging us into darkness. All I could do was stare into Alejandra’s eyes, even as I felt as if the wind were about to lift me out of my seat and my head and heart began pounding with fear.
I felt a momentary relief when the wind died down that died as soon as the sound was replaced. Though I could see nothing besides the strange shadow in the room, I heard a noise like a giant creature inhaling and exhaling deeply, each breath coinciding with a subsequent change in the shadow’s shape, until I realized that it somehow must have come from the shadow itself. The more she spoke, the faster the creature began to breath. For one moment, it inhaled and I felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room, only to rush right back in a few moments later, nearly pushing me onto my back.
“Khalas,” Alejandra said. “It is done.” The breathing came to an end. One by one, the candles flickered back into flame. My companion hovered in midair, and even though she had no eyes, I could have sworn that she was looking straight into me. She spread each of her tiny limbs out into a star formation before slowly disappearing from my sight until she was nothing but an afterimage, as if she had only ever existed inside my mind. With that, the only form of relative stability I’d had in recent times was gone from my life.
I remained where I was, heart racing. A new, unknown energy pulsed through my veins as I sat in silence, watching as the smile grew on Alejandra’s face grew. She took my hands into hers once again.
“Congratulations,” she told me. “This moment marks the beginning of your journey toward becoming a witch.”
We emerged from the basement. The energy within me grew stronger, found its way into every part of my being. In that moment, I understood everything that Alejandra had told me. I felt a change coming over me, beginning to devour what remained of my old self.