Authors: N. E. Conneely
"Oaks?" Jones rapped the table next to me.
Jerking around I looked at him, "What?"
The corner of his mouth crooked up. "It's lunch time. If I leave you alone much longer you'll forget to eat."
"Oh," I swiveled my wrist around, looking at my watch.
"What do you want for lunch?"
"I don't know. Could you just bring my usual sub back here?" I had enough to do without a food run. Jones had been doing his job. Everything I'd needed was at hand, prepared, and he was finding a solution for anything we didn't have. Jones was coordinating with the rest of the department when he wasn't assisting me.
"Sure, I'll be back in twenty."
"Thanks." I turned back to continue my list.
"Hey, um," He sounded uncharacteristically hesitant. "Sorry about this morning. I don't know what got in to me."
"Don't worry about it. Yesterday was enough to shake anyone. I didn't sleep well either." My brow scrunched, and my mouth pinched. "I don't want you to lose your job. If you need to tattle on me I understand." I smiled enough for him to see I was half teasing.
"I'll work it out. Besides, I'm still counting on your crazy plan." He wagged a finger at me. "It better work."
"Yes, sir." We were both smiling as he left.
I returned to my paper, surprised at the progress I'd made. Looking over the pages I went through each piece of the spell, making notes and changing runes. I had three pages of runes to draw.
It was easy to think of willing spells into being, but that wasn't the way things usually went. Runes were more efficient; they required less energy, focus, and will from the caster. Witches didn't use runes because it was fun to learn a language, but for the benefits.
Bags crinkled behind me. "Food's here." Jones set my bag of food down in front of me.
"Thanks. That was fast." He'd hardly been gone.
He grinned. "You must've been in the zone. It's been twenty minutes."
"Wow. I didn't have a clue."
We didn't talk over lunch; I had plenty to think about. It wasn't like me to lose track of time like this. It wasn't like me to take a pinch of herbs to help me sleep and be restless all night. Jones didn't usually have problems with the job. He'd stuck his neck out for me before without worry. We'd done some dangerous, stupid, and stupidly dangerous things, but not a one of them had given him the edge I'd seen today. If I didn't know better I'd say we'd been spelled.
The thought reverberated. Why would I know better? Most people could be spelled, including witches and hedge-practitioners. Spelling a person was a matter of power and preparation. Even dragons could be spelled. No one did; the fear of being hunted down and eaten by that dragon, or his friends, was a great deterrent. Needing thirty people made it difficult too.
I wasn't difficult to spell, neither was Jones. I wasn't sure how much power it would take to spell me, but Jones would require less. There wasn't a reason in the world we couldn't have been spelled, and more than a few reasons to suspect we had.
"Jones, do you still have a purification circle set up?"
He scrunched his eyes, trying to determine my thoughts. "I think so. Why?"
"We may have been spelled when we tested the troll. No," I said before he could start. "I know what you're thinking, but it makes sense. A reactionary spell could've been placed on the trolls along with the masking spell."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
"Then why do you think we've been spelled?"
"Neither of us normally acts like this. The job seldom worries you. I've never taken herbs to aid my sleep and still been restless. You are always cheerful, hardly ever moody, and never the depressed grump I've been working with today."
"True." He considered, drumming his fingers on the table. "Will the sorcerer know if you remove the spell?"
"I doubt it. If it's reactionary it would be impossible to monitor. If he'd cast it on us in person it would be a different story. I don't think it's a compulsion, more of a fear enhancement, something to disrupt our lives." Besides, if we didn't remove it, we wouldn't know how much the spell had affected us.
"I guess we should get on that. You finished?" He balled up his sandwich wrappings and tossed them into the trash.
"Yup, let's get this done. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can wrap up the rest of this junk."
Jones hauled a piece of veneered plywood off the wall. It was a special chunk of wood, with pure oak covering one side. Essential oils mixed with a dye had been used to paint the protective circle on the paneling. I pulled the oils out before sitting next to the panel. Using the blessed brush I reapplied the oils, carefully tracing the lines.
I finished and motioned to Jones. "In you go. It'll be easier for you to activate the spells for me if a little power is left in them."
Once he was inside, I slowly pushed my power through the oiled lines, activating the spell. A faint glow radiated up from the wood, encapsulating him while it stripped off foreign spells. The cleansing swept over him in pearly lines, bathing him in a lovely glow. A faint sparkle evened out over him, signifying a successful cleansing. The glow from the wood slowly abated. He carefully stepped over the shimmering lines, a subtle glow clinging to his aura.
Huffing out a relieved breath, a smile hovered over his lips. "I didn't realize how worried I was. It pulled something off."
"Good. My turn." I moved onto the spot he'd just occupied, ready to feel the power wash over me.
The feeling from the inside wasn't like the outside view. Sure, you could see the light, but seeing was the least of the experience. I closed my eyes as the lightest touch of sunlight and rainbows flowed around me, leaving peace and joy behind. By the time it was done I'd been washed clean of anything but the most positive energy, and could feel the spell burning off of my aura. For a moment, I was angry that a nasty spell like that had been cast on me, but unable to focus on something so petty, I basked in the little glimpse of heaven.
The feeing abated as the cleansing completed. Oh, I still felt light, joyous, and serene, but it didn't overwhelm everything else. When the glow of power faded away I returned to the room.
I had a lot of respect for the witches who'd created this. It wouldn't remove every harmful or negative spell, but it was a beautiful piece of craft. The witch who'd invented and constructed this deserved every penny of its large price tag. Few spells of this kind were as simple to use.
"You look like a giddy school girl."
"What? Oh, sorry." I smoothed out my shirt, trying to regain composure.
"It's fine. It feels damn spectacular." He grinned, the look I was used to seeing on his face, where his eyes crinkled, and his dimples appeared. "Did you feel anything other than the cleansing? I didn't."
"It wasn't much of a spell, just a fear and confusion web. It felt crude, and it burned off quickly." I would've been scared if the sorcerer had managed to place a complex reactive compulsion on the trolls along with the other spells. This was more on par with the power level I'd felt from the previous spells.
"Is that good news or bad news?"
"I hope it's good news." It was about time for good news.
"Do you want to work on the parking lot? I've already had a rookie fix the lights."
"Good. Is everything prepared?" Jones nodded. "Let's go do it." I plucked sheets of runes and drawings off the table.
As we were walking out, he casually mentioned, "I wanted to tell you over lunch but I forgot. Carls took a vacation day. He left written," he wagged his eyebrows, "orders that he wasn't to be disturbed for any reason. Chief Deputy Hammer is taking care of those other pesky details for us."
"Really?" Suppressing snickers, I spit out, "We're in luck."
"Yup, all we have to do is get this done on time."
"Then we need to hurry." I picked up the pace.
One of the benefits of never relying on luck was that when it did grace you with its presence, you were properly thankful. I had a back-up plan in case luck was fickle. Carls being out of contact was perfect, but if we didn't get the timing right it wouldn't matter.
In the parking lot, we spread out the supplies. It wasn't an elegant plan, but it should do the trick. The difficult part of trapping most sorcerers was their intelligence. Somehow they missed the normal bell curve distribution of intellect. They were always on the upper end. My theory was only the smart ones survived summoning and bargaining with an evil spirit without accidentally feeding themselves to the demon. Making bargains with evil critters had a built-in weeding out process; the stupid ones were food.
The real problem with their intelligence was their annoying ability to predict what someone would do to catch them, and they had a sixth sense about traps. You seldom read stories where the evil sorcerer walks into the trap, screaming "No!" as he's contained or killed. Nope. The heroes (why were there so seldom heroines?) were tricked by their own trick, had to fight an epic battle, and wait for the fatal error, before they could capture the bad guy (or girl, there was a surplus of bad girls in fables).
I had a plan, which statistics showed put me in moral peril, and I wanted the bad guy, or guys, to walk right into a trap. At this point, the odds were in favor of me being the stupid person before the real hero shows up. I didn't want to be that girl—you know . . . the dead one.
Elron
"I want to leave it."
"You can't. I told Michelle you would fix her bathroom." Landa glared up at me.
"I'll tell her I couldn't."
Her eyes narrowed. "That would be a lie, and elves don't lie."
My answer was quiet, serious. "Are you sure I'm lying?"
She squirmed, not wanting to answer. "No."
"Then it isn't a lie."
"But, I'm fairly sure I can bully you in to doing something about the flower. Did you know the flower would grow?"
I blew out a sigh. "No. I've never seen one do that. I want to ask her what she did, and try to culture the darn thing. I'd also like to torment her a bit."
"Fine." She sneered before stalking off, but I knew it was mostly for show. "But don't expect me to defend you!"
"Would never dream of it," I muttered as I retreated to my room, sad that I'd upset her. She was one of the few true friends I still had. Being a hermit for hundreds of years tended to reduce the number of people who considered you a friend, even among the long lived races.
If she'd let me in the bathroom, I'd have been able to work on the flower without Michelle being here, but Michelle didn't want me in her room. Landa told Michelle she'd fix it, but when she hadn't been able to, she'd asked me. Something about the satyr had set the two of them off. No uninvited guests in Michelle's room for any reason. If she wasn't there to invite them, she didn't want them in her room. Landa wasn't budging on that point.
I'd intended it as a gift, a simple gesture of kindness and understanding. Wanting to apologize for needling her at every turn, I'd done the only thing I knew to do: give a simple gift. Something that would show my caring if my words couldn't.
A simple offering had morphed in to a sea of contention. My simple gift shouldn't have taken over her bathroom. It was a cut flower, nothing more. Growing hadn't been anticipated. Sheer arrogance on my part, the belief that everything was predictable after all this time. How wrong I'd been.
I would fix things . . . somehow.
Sliding open a window, I tossed my legs over the wall. The night air embraced me, steadied me. The lodge was the first place to quite the yearning in my soul. For years, I'd felt the need to do more with my life. It was the Call: a force pushing me to find my place in the world. Some elves considered it a dance with death, as the Called often lived a dangerous life. Other elves never found what called them.
Elves who found their calling were people of history. Those who were still alive were honored, the deceased remembered in stories. I was never sure if I admired them or not. It wasn't the easy, peaceful life I'd dreamed of, but it was a life spent on things bigger than myself.
When I first heard the Call, a nagging feeling that I was needed in the world, I tried to ignore the urge. Hoping it would fade, I pretended to be happy, but the longer I clung to my stable life, the more forceful the Call felt. Before long, I knew I had to act. Preparing to join the modern world had given me a measure of relief, as the Call faded when I was on the correct path. Knowing something, or someone, was calling me wasn't as shocking as finding it in the first place I looked.
I'd never pictured my life any way but with my wife. The dreams of our life died with her. With this new dream, I wasn't sure if I was excited or afraid. This had never been my dream, not that anyone dreamed of being called.
The woods whispered, reminding me of the many paths life could take. I was choosing to follow the Call, and it wanted me at the lodge. I wasn't sure what was pulling me to this place; events, people, or both, but I would find out.
I'd talked to an elven hero before. I'd tried to behave like he was normal, like any other elf. At the time, I'd thought he didn't get much of that; later he thanked me. For many years, I'd been proud that I'd refrained from pestering him with questions. Now, I found myself wishing I'd asked questions about how he'd felt when he was called. Did he live differently knowing there was adventure ahead?