A Realm of Sun and Shadow

Chapter 5

Martha bent over and began laying out everything on the ground as I hovered trying to convince myself she'd just been kidding about blowing us up.

She very carefully began to copy over a symbol from her journal onto the asphalt in chalk. It was a large triangle with a circle around it and a bunch of squiggly type markings along the outside border.

"What does this spell do exactly?" I asked as she finished the drawing and began dropping bits of herbs here and there.

"It's kind of hard to explain," she replied in deep concentration as she poured something that smelled like lavender around the outside of the circle.

Then without pause, she reached over and dipped her fingers in the demon blood like a kid with finger paints.

"Christ," I gagged as the smell wafted in the air and she smudged the blood into the center of the circle.

She grabbed her journal off the ground and came to stand next to me as she read it over to herself.

"Light that and throw it into the middle," she said handing me a lighter from her pocket.

I felt like a complete idiot, but I did as she asked. The wood strips caught fire surprisingly fast and I threw them down a bit more carelessly than I'd intended.

As the small kindling fire sent a bizarre mixture of lavender, cedar, and burning rotting eggs drifting up towards us, Martha produced a small plastic baggy out of her jacket pocket and pulled out a little tuft of fur.

She waited, then at the precise moment quickly threw the fur on top to catch the flicker of flame and jumped back like she'd just lit a firecracker.

I jumped back with her in my own paranoia and we both watched as the fire smoldered down to nothing.

"Come on. Come on," she muttered under her breath.

Martha looked over her spell again, shaking her head. "I don't know why it's not working," she said in frustration.

"What's supposed to happen?" I asked trying to sound supportive versus totally out of my depth or comfort zone.

"The chalk should turn black and the outer ring should catch fire," she said pointing at the spell as though she was a baker dealing with a botched recipe. "Last time it at least caught fire."

I interpreted that to mean: 'nearly burned my apartment down...'

The fire snuffed out, leaving the chalk still very clearly white and the outer ring of oil untouched.

"I can try again," she said before kicking over the spell and moving over to start redrawing the symbol on a new patch of asphalt.

Martha took twice as long this time and slowly made sure every ingredient for her spell was perfect before she handed me another little bunch of dried cedar wood and I waited patiently for my cue.

She reached over and dipped her fingers in the blood one more time to smear it in the middle. To my own surprise, I didn't gag this time.

No part of me actually thought this would work, but my curiosity got the better of me. I always did like solving puzzles.

As she finished up her last few touches I looked over her shoulder to scan the instructions. For some reason, I kept rolling around the last line of the spell in my brain.

The wood from a cedar tree will seal the spell with fire.

Even as I thought it, it seemed totally illogical, but so far nothing else tonight had made any sense. "What if we don't set it on fire?" I posed to Martha.