Chương 214: Interlude: The Crones

Seen through the eyes of Zoe Harper Day in the story: 23rd January (Friday) Peter's room became my testing site. I didn't want to do any of that magic stuff anywhere near my mother, not that I felt any good staying near her at all now that she was looking at me as if I had betrayed her trust and all the teachings she had tried to instill in me over the long years of her misery. I realized that I was being harsh about what that baby growing inside me would become to me too—an obstacle, most likely.

Someone requiring so much work, someone whose presence would change my life in ways I would surely curse, and yet, as I said to Sophie and Peaches, a welcome one nonetheless. My mother loved me more than anything in the world despite the burden I had been to her over the years, and I felt the same. The love I felt for someone who wasn't even entirely present in my life was overwhelmingly strong, unlike anything I had ever felt before.

I guess the preaching I was subjected to about "You will know when you are a parent yourself, young lady—the worry never stops!" was indeed something real. But I had some time until he or she would join me, and I wasn't going to spend it being idle. I'd smuggled all the strange files out of EoT, the ones that spoke about ancient techniques and the languages of the universe, and had begun working my way through them.

I didn't know how or where they'd found them, but they spoke about places I'd never heard of before in my life. I was wary of even typing those names into a search engine and looking them up on the internet. There was always the risk of waking up something I wouldn't be able to deal with myself. I guessed it might be true that human civilization had once already risen to power, through magic no less, and had fallen from that high castle straight onto its damned stupid face.

Then started anew, forgetting most of the teachings of the past. Most, but not all. As I'd already found out, a lot of the legends and myths about wizards and witches of old, about using proper ingredients and incantations to bring forth and stir ancient magic, might actually be true.

According to this manual, which read more like a scientific dissertation on the nature of sympathetic magic, a person who wasn't inherently part of any Domain of Magic could still cast spells, so long as they had access to a proper source of Authority. Not influence the world however they wished by bending reality to their will like mages did, but use already established templates to reproduce specific, unchanged effects. The text kept returning to the theory of the universe's memory.

What I managed to derive from it was that whenever something happened in the world, some form of godlike being, the soul of the universe, or maybe the code running behind the fucking scenes, recorded it. Every circumstance. Every condition. Every detail. Everything. And if someone understood how to read those circumstances and recreate them through signs, gestures, words, sounds, paintings, and a myriad of other methods, they could bring the same effect back into existence.

"So basically a mage changing the world with their soulmarks leaves a footprint? A piece of code in the programming of the universe for future use?" Peaches asked after I described my findings to her.

"That's what I think," I replied, taking a solid bite of a carrot while leaning against the wall at the end of the bed.

"You said those ancient people mentioned that anyone could cast spells with Authority. Does that mean I could do it?" She was flipping through the notes I'd printed, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Unfortunately, not alone. In the past, when people believed magic was real, a normal person could do it because the spell would be powered by the Authority of all un-Spirited, as they called mundane unmagical people. The will of the group. The Authority of many. So if you manage to convince enough people that a spell would really happen, that shared belief might be enough to power it, depending on its complexity.

Someone inherently magical, like Peter, could use his own watery Authority to power those spells alone, assuming he knew the proper ritual ingredients. Let's call them ritual ingredients. I think I like that."

"But these texts mention witches and crones too, and wizards. It seems like there's a distinction between them and a ritual enactor, because they're mentioned separately." The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Yes. In the past there were people with Authority for magic but no connection to any Domain of power. Basically people with enough will that it leaked out of them. Without a Domain, though, they'd never be able to influence the world directly and force it to obey. Unless they stumbled into a proper ritual by accident and learned how to recreate it. Or learned it from others. How someone could discover that on their own, I have no idea." I mused while staring at the ceiling.

"You don't? Aren't you one of those people?"

"What?" I waved a hand dismissively.

"I'm a seer. That's different."

"Really? Have you read all of it already?"

"No. Not yet."

"There's a passage here that mentions witches being able to project astral bodies and feel the flow of magic, tune themselves to the melodies of the universe, and learn its language that way. It sounds like they're describing a seer, doesn't it?"

"Fuck." I jolted toward her so quickly I nearly dropped my carrot, then covered my mouth.

"Sorry. Can you show me?" She handed me the page in question.

"Here, look." She pointed at the proper passage, and I began reading.

"Maybe people like you are how those ancient people learned to cast magic and codify it. Write it down in books of power. You also have enough Authority to cast those spells yourself, right?"

"I think so," I munched on the carrot.

"Let's try it. Sympathetic magic is about what exactly?"

"It's described as something based on similarities between people and objects. It works through imitation, correspondence, and connection."

"Which means what?" She kept looking through the notes.

"I don't know. Let's find out."

"Let's read it again. Make sure we have everything right." Peaches opened the Excel file we'd prepared while I went through the ritual inventory.

"Sure, go ahead."

"An effigy representing a target, one." Her voice was methodical.

"Here." I pointed at the Barbie doll lying on the floor taken straight from Sophie's room.

"I don't like it." Sophie crossed her arms over her chest.

"That's a voodoo thing, isn't it?" The doll she'd given us looked just like her. It was a custom-made gift from her father when she was younger.

"Not going to lie, Soph. It reads just like voodoo."

"Can we go through the list?" Peaches turned away from the screen and looked at each of us. We nodded.

"Part of the person the effigy represents, one."

"Here." I pointed at Sophie's hair. It lay on a piece of paper.

"Source of yellow light, one."

"We have it." Sophie pointed at a lamp fitted with a yellow light bulb.

"Words meant to connect to the target, one verse."

"Written down." I glanced at the same sheet of paper the hair rested on.

"Source of Authority, one."

"Here I am." I took a deep breath and reached for the hair.

"Now combining everything for a proper spell."

"Sophie, get out of the room." Peaches turned toward her. Soph wrinkled her chin by pressing her lips together, sighed, and walked out, closing the door behind her. I picked up the strand and placed it among the doll's artificial hair. Peaches dropped to the floor beside me and pointed the lamp's beam on the doll while I picked up the paper, grunted once, and began reading, focusing my will on making the spell work.

"Woman of many talents and beauty, that feels just slightly out of time. Grey eyes and golden hair. Loves all things green, including plants and money. Sophie DeLonge." I read the words aloud while trying to focus on Sophie's location according to the instructions written in the ancient text.

"Nothing happens," I told Peaches. I exhaled, dissatisfied and looked at the doll lying before me, focusing on its representation of Sophie's eyes. The very next moment, I felt a stir within my soul. It was similar to what happened when I tried to understand the nature of magical things within Ideworld. Next, I was looking at the wall of plants in the apartment's common room. The vines climbed upward in their usual unruly fashion, and the flowers peeking through them fought for space. I looked down and saw knees.

Not my knees. Then I placed my hands on them. Not my hands. The actions weren't mine either, nor was the view I was seeing. One heartbeat later, I was back in Peter's room, staring at the doll.

"Nothing?" Peaches asked.

"It seemed to me like your eyes were shining a little."

"Peaches, my lovely friend." I turned toward her with a smile.

"I am a wizard now."

"You are?" The door swung open as Sophie walked back inside.

"I felt a strange tingling a moment ago, as if my head wasn't entirely mine, but it passed."

"Yeah, the spell worked. I could see the world through your eyes for a few moments."

"What!? This is huge!" Sophie shouted.

"Like reality-breaking huge."

"Maybe. I bet more people know about it than we realize. It was, in essence, a voodoo ritual, like you said. Probably passed down through generations since its inception, and people who actually possess some Authority can repeat it without understanding the underlying rules."

"That only means we've got to scour the internet and every book we can find for known occult rituals and see if we can recreate them. Write our own book of magic." Peaches tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"Do we tell the mages?"

"You mean Nick and Alexa?" Sophie sat down on the bed.

"And Peter when he comes back."

"No," I answered.

"Not yet. They all make their decisions without much regard for our opinions on the subject. I say we keep this between the three of us for now. Make that book you mentioned, try different rituals, and only come out with it once all of us are proper witches."

"All of us?" Peaches moved a few inches closer. Sophie held her necklace in a closed fist. She didn't like that I'd asked for secrecy, but knowing her, she'd respect it anyway.

"Weren't you saying we have too little Authority?"

"We'll find a way. I, for one, believe in you guys." I smiled.

"And belief is how Authority gets granted, right?"