Arcane Wisdome Read online

  “Do you like ice-skating?" Lucy asked.

  “Not very much, but I’m just starting out. I like the idea of it, but I don’t know if I like doing it. It’s more work than fun just now." She sighed. “I think my mom’s got dreams of championships in her head and it’ll take her a year or so to get rid of them.”

  Lucy drank more of the tea and looked down at her sandwich and salad. “Do you miss the Geeks?”

  “Oh, sure. But I don’t talk about it much. My parents are afraid I’ll get involved with one of the guys, and that worries them, too." She had more of her sandwich. “You’d think I didn’t know anything about sex.”

  “What do you mean?" Lucy asked, startled.

  “Oh, you know. They heard the talk last fall. A couple of parents called them up to tell them what they had heard. Not that they had the story right, but you know how parents are. So mine are afraid I’ll let myself get carried away, sleep with one of the Geeks and get pregnant, and all their plans will be for nothing. They’re always checking on me, looking at my homework, things like that." She turned toward the tall window next to their table. “If I were to have sex with anyone, it wouldn’t be one of the Geeks, I can tell you that.”

  Baffled at Niki’s sudden burst of confidentiality, Lucy said, “But your parents think you might.”

  “They read all these dazer articles about teens and sex and they panic. They think that the Geeks are sex fiends under their geekiness. Bruce Paxton probably is, and maybe Spencer, but the rest are pretty much okay." She finished one half of her sandwich. “Don’t yours get on you about sex?”

  Lucy shook her head, for the first time wondering why. She forked more salad into her mouth to have a chance to think. “Maybe they aren’t reading the same articles your parents are.”

  “Maybe.”

  “My mom told me a lot about sex when I was a kid,” Lucy went on. “She explained all about it to me before she died."

  “How young were you then?" Niki asked.

  “She started when I was just a little kid, explaining about difference, you know? And told me more as I got older. She didn’t force anything, just took the time to answer my questions. I was nine or ten when she told me about what happens — the mechanics — and told me about precautions to take." She began on her half-sandwich.

  “That’s useful. My parents are real Old World — well, they would be, wouldn’t they? — and they’re sending really mixed messages: be pretty, dress attractively but nothing provocative, do ice-skating instead of computers because more people admire ice-skating, make allowances for others, be feminine, be pleasant, but don’t be alone with boys because they can’t be trusted, don’t cause any gossip, don’t know too much about sex so you won’t be curious about it, don’t let anyone think you know what’s going on with sex — in fact, don’t behave any way but carefully. Be uber-pure." She flapped one of her hands in exasperation. “It’s ozwonked, all of it. Parents, boys, all of it.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Lucy agreed.

  They ate in silence, and only when she got up to leave did Niki speak again. “Tell the Geeks when you see them that I’ll be back when I can.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the tea,” Lucy responded, and took a few minutes alone trying to figure out why Niki had spoken to her.

  * * *

  At Home Depot, Lucy bought the length of doweling and the sandpaper, then walked a block to Walgreens to buy the ribbons and the candles. As she ambled down the sidewalk, she found herself wondering if she should try to do the spell at all. She thought about the way her spell for Ditch Day had turned out: she had what she wanted, but not how she wanted it. All this talk about a sympathy date was vexing, all the more so because it was obviously true. What she had wanted was for Nate Evers to change his mind about taking Catherine and to take her because he realized he liked Lucy better. But she hadn’t stipulated that in the spell, and that had left room for the spell to work in ways she hadn’t intended. She’d have to be more careful about that tonight.

  Lucy paused at the door to Walgreens, almost prepared not to enter, to change her mind about the whole magic thing, but then shrugged. Tonight she would put A Witch’s Hornbook to the test, as she was sure her mother had done. She would be far more specific about what she was asking and the result she intended. That way she could be certain that the spell had been the cause for the result, and not in the way her first spell had misfired.

  She chose three five-inch high pillar candles, one red, one purple-black, and one yellow, then went to the gift-wrapping aisle and bought three lengths of ribbon, red, black, and gold; finally she found a round glass vase that looked as if it could hold more than a quart of water and added it to her purchases. She picked up a DVD at the counter, and checked out.

  Walking the next three blocks to Safeway to buy the food coloring, Lucy tried to make up her mind if she would tell Isadora about any of what she was doing — her next appointment was in two days. She would certainly tell her about Nate Evers asking her to Ditch Day, and the way she felt about it, but she couldn’t decide if she should mention the spell she had done, or the one she would do tonight. Isadora wasn’t the kind of person who would be upset about her doing magic — or Lucy didn’t think she was. Isadora didn’t think the Gothic Geeks were ozwonked — or not that she admitted — but she might not be so understanding about magic spells. It was that doubt that held her back. Maybe she would wait to see what happened with the second spell before she said anything about A Witch’s Hornbook to her. Satisfied with this, Lucy went into Safeway and headed for the cake mixes where the food coloring bottles were kept, next to the frostings. She picked up a Zero Coke at the check-out stand and headed for home, working the sandpaper on one end of the dowel as she went, rounding it, and leaving a bit of sawdust behind her as she covered the remaining mile to the house, running through in her mind all that she planned to do that night.

  10

  It was almost midnight before Lucy was able to start casting the spell: her dad and stepmother had been up longer than usual, discussing the latest information from the district attorney’s investigators, and trying to rearrange their schedules to accommodate the district attorney. There had been no anger between her father and Melinda, yet a pervasive worry clung to them, like an invisible fog. But now Lucy was pretty sure they were asleep — she was getting a little sleepy herself — and so she prepared her room, shoving her bed back, taking up the rug, and setting out the marked candles and matches, the broad ribbons that she had knotted after dinner, the glass vase and water, the length of doweling, the food coloring, the bag of salt, and the pages with the quatrains on them in a large font.

  Taking a deep breath, Lucy traced out an eight-foot salt circle around the candles and the rest of her materials, saying:

  “Let that which is hidden

  Be now made plain:

  Let that which is bidden

  Be perfectly done.”

  “That’s a slant-rhyme,” she said aloud, remembering what she had learned in English as she postponed the entrance to the circle that would initiate the spell, which now seemed to be a much more complicated undertaking than it had half an hour ago. Holding her breath, she stepped inside the circle and closed the gap with salt. She looked down at the items at her feet and said:

  “Each of you attain your power

  Serve the spell without surcease

  Fulfill the purpose of the hour

  That lucidity increase.”

  As she picked up the dowel, she felt a cold shiver run up her spine, an uncanny experience that left her with a quickened pulse. She shivered, her whole body prickling as if she were getting a fever. “What a dazer,” she murmured, and the sensation passed quickly; Lucy did her best to ignore it entirely. She tapped the ribbons and the candles with the dowel — she would not think of it as a wand; that was too ozwonked — saying as she did, “The computer belonging to the Gothic Geeks has something wrong with it that’s causing uncontrollable scrolling numbers or letter
s to fill the screen: what is causing the cascade of numbers and letters that prevents the Geeks from doing any of their computer work? Why are they being attacked? Who or what is the source of it? Show me what the problem is and how it is to be solved." She repeated the same words as she touched each of the objects within the salt circle with her dowel, hoping as she did that she had been specific enough to get useful results, and not have it turn out the way her spell to get Nate to invite her to Ditch Day had. She didn’t need another uber-screwed spell.

  Uncertain what to do with her dowel now that she had done the touching, she slid it into her waistband at her side as if she had a scabbard for it, then hunkered down so that she could untie the knots. Following the instructions, she started with the red one.

  “Let this force fuel the quest,

  Bearing the spell with fire.

  Let this force stand the test

  Gaining the spell’s desire.”

  Lucy didn’t think much of the poetry, but kept that opinion to herself, not wanting it to compromise the spell with judgments from English class; she put the red ribbon around the red candle, taking care not to cross the ends, rocked back on her heels, and reached for the black ribbon, working on the knot as she recited the next quatrain:

  “Let this darkness disappear

  Revealing what is hidden

  And no dissembling interfere

  In obeying what is bidden.”

  The room seemed suddenly chilly again, making her fingers stiff and awkward as she fumbled with the ribbon. She wondered if her windows were all closed, but didn’t stop to check. When she had untied the Turk’s Head knot, she wrapped the black ribbon around the purplish-black candle, still feeling cold. She picked up the gold ribbon.

  “Let this illumination show

  All that is demanded

  Clearly limned that I may know

  The whole I have commanded.”

  Outside on the street a siren howled; Lucy jumped in surprise, swearing under her breath as she almost dropped the gold Turk’s Head knot. These kinds of interruptions could ruin a spell; A Witch’s Hornbook had warned about distractions. Lucy determined to take more care as she went on. Her hands shook as she strove to maintain her concentration.

  The howl of a second siren joined the first. “Fire trucks,” said Lucy aloud, and wondered if she should have spoken at all. A faint, searching odor insinuated itself through her room as she lit the red candle; she ignored it and went on:

  “With this force, the way is bright

  Revealing what has been concealed.

  May the power bring to light:

  All that I command revealed.”

  Now a weird kind of sting that was something like an electric shock and something like an under-the-skin itch went up Lucy’s arm as she struck the second match and lit the purple-black candle. What was going on? she wondered, as she read off the next quatrain:

  “Let concealment give way

  Bringing truth for all to see.

  Let no obfuscation stay

  To blight a brilliant clarity.”

  The wick flickered, not taking the flame from the match quickly. Lucy watched intently, worried that the candle might not light properly. What would that do to the spell? The idea was too troublesome to continue to think about it — Lucy pictured her mother in her mind and redoubled her efforts as the little sparks took hold and produced a long, thin flame. Lucy gave a short sigh of relief and turned to the yellow candle, striking a third match.

  “Let revelation now prevail

  All that’s sought be known.

  Let no mystery assail

  What illumination’s shown.”

  A third siren caterwauled along the street outside, accompanied by the whoop of a police escort. This time Lucy did not allow the sounds to interfere with her casting. She’d taken enough chances with it already.

  An ambulance ululated by, occasionally changing to a rattling blare to move cars ahead of it.

  It took all of Lucy’s self-discipline to move on to the next step of the spell. In spite of all her efforts, she was rattled and had again permitted her attention to slip. She moved the glass vase to the center of the three burning candles, set it down carefully so that none of the water would spill; she pulled her dowel from her waistband and tapped the vase once.

  “I charge you to let me see

  The whole of what I require

  I charge you — let vision be

  To inform me, and inspire.”

  She fumbled with the cap on the bottle; a single blue drop landed on the floor, making a mask-shaped spatter. Lucy ran her finger around the mouth of the little bottle to stop any further drips. When she was certain there would be no more of them she emptied the bottle into the glass vase of water and leaned forward to watch the dye move through the water. The bowed sides of the vase magnified the complex patterns and whorls the blue coloring made as it began to mix with the water, moving steadily as the heavy dye slid toward the bottom of the vase.

  Lucy stared, and thought she saw a figure of a person with a map or chart before him/her. This vanished and was replaced by a long trailing twist of dye that moved like a snake. Lucy flinched, recalling her mother’s death. Blinking against tears, she assumed she could see three heads bowed over something round, which gave way to a thing like a hand that looked as if it might reach through the glass and grab her by the throat.

  With a squeak of dismay Lucy pulled back from the vase, dropping the dowel as she did. She managed to stay inside the circle of salt, but it took her a couple of deep breaths before she was able to approach the vase again, and by then the water looked almost black. Wasn’t she supposed to get outside the circle to scry? Why had the images come before she could leave the salt circle? She recalled the warning that if the thing hidden was concealed by magic, that the spell could go wrong. Is that what happened?

  On impulse, she used the dowel and broke the circle, moving outside its perimeter, where she sat and stared at the water in the vase, trying to see images in the inky liquid. Nothing more seemed to form within it; if possible, the water got darker. Finally, after almost twenty minutes, she sighed and got her whisk-broom. When she had all the salt in a large plastic bag, she took the ribbons and braided them together, blew out the candles and said, tapping each of the objects with her dowel:

  “Power, darkness, revealing light

  Now once again unite.

  Ribbons, candles, water-stain

  Be as you have been again.”

  A faint, popping sound, like her ears clearing while climbing, intruded on her activities, and Lucy felt an abrupt chill, followed by a hint of a headache, which she attributed to the lateness of the hour. With that to spur her on, she completed her cleanup, put her dowel in the drawer with her socks, and pulled on a fleece hoodie to keep her warm as she went to dispose of the candles, the ribbons, and the vase filled with murky-blue water.

  11

  When Lucy returned from disposing of the paraphernalia, she was too tired to sleep. She sat up for another hour trying to remember everything she had seen in the water; she opened her notebook and strove to bring it all back and to write it down before it all faded the way dreams did, a task that turned out to be much harder than she had anticipated. Finally, a little after three in the morning, she put her rug back in position, moved her bed, undressed, and did her best to fall asleep.

  Her mind wouldn’t cooperate. Renewed visions of figures forming in the dyed water dazzled the inside of her eyelids, making her restless, and prodding her awake an hour after she had turned off her lights. With an aggravated sigh, she sat up in bed, more annoyed than frightened, and resumed her task of remembering what she had seen. Try as she would, she couldn’t bring any of her recollections into sharp focus, and eventually she fell into an uneasy doze that lasted until her alarm rang.

  This morning she dressed quickly, pulling on her black jeans and cowl-neck top in shades of shadowy violet and brilliant turquoise. She ran her b
rush through her hair, put on a little lip-gloss, and shook her head in dismay at the circles under her eyes. On impulse she took her mother’s moonstone ring from its place in the locked drawer in her closet, went to the bathroom and worked it onto her finger. After last night’s spells, Lucy needed something of her mother with her. Nodding in self-approval, she picked up her books and backpack, and her flute-case for band practice that afternoon, and hurried down for breakfast, where she found Melinda and her father making waffles and in deep discussion with Jason and Jacob about their coming birthday.

  “ ... still want to go camping in the Sierra,” Jason was saying.

  “Maybe at Lake Almanor,” seconded Jacob. “We could go up to Lassen." He grinned in anticipation of visiting that volcano.

  “I said we’ll try,” their father told them. “With this legal thing going on, your stepmother and I may have to stay closer to home.”

  “You could go, Jared, you and the kids,” Melinda said. “You don’t have to be here for me.”

  “But it’s our birthday,” Jacob protested.

  “It wouldn’t be any fun without you,” Jason exclaimed, as he held out his plate for the waffles fresh out of the iron.

  “Morning,” said Lucy as she sat down between Jason and Melinda.

  “You had a late night,” said Melinda without seeming upset about it.

  “Un-huh,” Lucy replied but didn’t elaborate.

  “Studying hard?" her father asked.

  “Pretty hard,” said Lucy. “I’ve got a project I’m working on.”

  “What’s on your plate for today?" he wanted to know.

  “It’s Thursday. Band practice today,” Melinda went on with an encouraging smile. “What time do you think you’ll be home?”