Book

Sam watched Sol blink a few times before clarity returned to his eyes and worry swept across his face. “Are you okay?” Sol asked, pursing his lips, and looking worried.

Sam couldn’t help but be dumbstruck from the sudden change of mood when he had looked like he had been desperately fighting to withstand his pain a few seconds ago. “Yes, Sol, I’m fine. But what happened to you? One moment we were watching the ritual and then the next you were hunched over, and your eyes…” she trailed off, thinking about Sol’s pain, which he now appeared to be completely unaware of.

“What do you remember?” Sam asked urgently, while Sol appeared to be collecting his thoughts. For just a moment before he responded, panic built in the back of her mind. What if he had lost everything again? What if now he was once again meeting her for the first time once again in these woods?

But with the same clarity of all the other times they talked to each other he said, “The last thing I remember is you completed the ritual and the giant beam shot up into the sky, that’s it.” The worries that ran through her mind started to fade as her panic turned into curiosity when she heard his clear recollection.

Sol seemed to catch on to Sam’s worry, “Do you think what happened could be related to how I lost my memory?”

That was a good point. Why wouldn’t two anomalous events be related? “I’m not sure… what’s the earliest thing that you can remember?”

“I was wandering around the woods alone before you found me.”

“Well, that’s all you ever remembered before…” Sam trailed off, still not entirely convinced that the reaction to the ritual and his memory were unrelated. What if he had been walking through these back woods and had a reaction like this to the ritual she had performed that day? Could she be the reason for his memory loss?

Sol, however, did not appear to be nearly as worried about his memory loss. “What did you say about my eyes?”

“They were glowing bright orange, almost like the core crystals when I crushed them. I think you might have been having an adverse reaction to the ritual, but I’ve never heard of anything like that before.” Sam crouched down and put her face a foot away from his to scrutinize his irises. As far as she could tell, they were the exact same shade of gold as before the ritual.

“Has something like this ever happened before?” he asked, touching his head where his hat would have sat, but it had fallen from his head while he curled over in a trance.

“Not that I know of?” Sam said as she leaned over and picked up his hat, handing it to him as she stood up. “I’ll need to do some research. I have a few books at my desk I can look through, but I don’t recall anything like this. People can be allergic to reagents, but I don’t think that presents anything like this.”

“Really, I don’t want you to worry too much about it, you’ve already got so much on your plate.”

“Just a bit of reading. If nothing else, I’m curious what happened.” Sam tried to ignore his concern over her schedule, but he was right. She did have many things to do. With the forest growing at a breakneck pace, the trail and the clearing needed to be maintained, not to mention the fertilization ritual she needed to prepare and perform.

As Sam was thinking about the substantial list of things she needed to do, she noticed the brightest stars starting to peek through the deep blue sky. Near the horizon, the top edge of the ring opening, which had now grown to be very wide, took on an orange hue from the sun shining behind it. Her productive window for today was at an end.

Sam quickly packed her equipment, and her and Sol started off towards Shoehorn. She walked mostly silently, and she thought about those glowing irises and the pained, stiff expression that had been on his face.

~

Sam sat at her desk with textbooks stacked in front of her, many of whose spines had not been opened since the corresponding college class she had bought them for. Sol was already asleep on his pile of blankets, which was less a neat stack imitating a mattress and more a loose heap of fabric, but he once again proved that he could be comfortable pretty much anywhere.

‘History of Rituals Volume 12’ was currently open in front of her, its pages pulsing warmly to the flickering of the candle she had set next to it on the desk. She was reading intently and taking notes in her journal. It turned out to was possible for someone to be allergic to a particular reagent or another. The section detailing reactions to nickel was particularly interesting.

In pe. 687 doctors Alfred Jones and Alexandra Hugh discovered the adverse effects of nickel when used as a binding agent in mass rituals. While the initial testing of nickels proved promising results as an effective binding agent for declouding rituals, after being approved for use in a single test region, 13 residents of a town of 6,000 reported extreme eye and skin irritation, which lead to scarring. Some individuals reported a silver like residue in their eyes, indicating that the nickel may have penetrated and solubilized in the patient’s cornea, resulting in blurred vision. Use of nickel as a binding reagent in aerorituals was recommended to be discontinued immediately. Nickel has not been used as a binding reagent since.

It wasn’t what Sam was looking for. The eye color change is what caught her eye at first, but the way it was described didn’t sound like what she had seen. Sol’s eyes had looked energetic and magical, whereas the Nickel in the cornea sounded more like a muddied contamination. In addition, that had been almost fifty years ago, meaning nickel hadn’t been used as a binding agent for a long time. Maybe the current binding reagent she used could have caused a similar reaction to Sol?

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She skimmed through the rest of the book but couldn’t find anything of use. She closed ‘History of Rituals’ and reached for the next book on the stack, ‘Practical Reagents Volume 6’, a dated volume she had bought from a used books store while in school. The old book’s spine groaned as she opened it, as if wishing it could retire. She looked up all the different ingredients she had used for the ritual, and any adverse side effects they could cause, but came up with nothing. Then she closed that book as well and stacked it to the side. She closed her eyes, and leaned forward into the desk, putting her head in her hands to think.

Sam could hear the quiet sound of Sol breathing behind her, fast asleep. In contrast to Sam, he seemed to be almost completely unbothered by the whole ordeal. “Well, I guess we can see if it happens again next time,” he had said before going to sleep. Sam wasn’t sure if he was genuinely unbothered, or if he was trying to shake off the attention and get her to go to bed instead of worrying about him. Either way, he seemed to want to have a sense of normalcy.

Sam understood that, but was rather more risk averse. She didn’t think Sol should be near the ritual site until she figured out what caused the reaction, even if Sol wanted to insist that he was fine.

She couldn’t stop seeing those orange eyes. That familiar orange she had seen every time she crushed a core crystal for a ritual. There must be something with the core crystals, what else could it be? But everything she knew about them was that they were one of the purest energy sources available, and overwhelmingly regarded as safe. The only precautions mentioned in her research were from its explosive tendencies and its potential to heat and light its surroundings on fire while it released energy. Every source sited them as chemically inert.

She took her stack of books and put them neatly back into the cabinet beside her desk. She would need to do research from more sources. She had no idea when she would be able to find the time to go to the library in Mosel amidst her busy week that was laid out in front of her. But now, tired, under the flickering candlelight and behind drooping eyelids, she decided that sounded like tomorrow’s problem. She snuffed her candle and climbed into bed.

~

Sam woke up late the next day. The sun had already long risen by the time she got up, and Sol had already gone downstairs. Tomorrow’s problem was now today’s problem, and it was hitting her in the face with a feeling of responsibility. She took a moment to stare up at the ceiling, then got up, rushed through her morning routine, and went downstairs.

Sol was sitting at a barstool, and waved when she came down the stairs.

“Good morning,” Sam said, and approached his seat to see that he had a couple of things sitting out in front of him on the bar top. A potato and a small cut of meat: The ingredients Sam had used to heal his wound the previous day. He didn’t look harmed when she looked over him quickly. “So…” she a slight suspicion play in her voice before continuing. “What are you planning today?”

“I’m going to give the bike another go, I think.” He looked quite proud, and Sam appreciated his stick-to-itiveness. “I also thought I could help you out with whatever you were doing today, if you want.”

“That would be awesome, Sol, thank you.” Sam said genuinely. “By the way, have you seen Mo?” she asked curiously, noticing the vacancy in his usual spot behind the bar.

“Yes, actually. He said he needed to make a run to Mosel today, and that he would be back late. He also said you’d need to fend for yourself for food today.”

Sam nodded and walked behind the bar into the kitchen to make herself something to eat. She picked out some eggs and quickly fried them for her and Sol to have a quick breakfast.

~

Sam looked out the window occasionally to watch Sol practice riding his bike while she prepared her reagents for that night’s ritual.

Sol didn’t end up needing those first aid ingredients. He fell a couple times but had a much better grasp over his balance and managed to catch himself without getting hurt. His progress was fast, and after some time practicing, he was able to ride around the dirt roads before long at all. Soon she would feel confident in his ability to make the trip over to Applewood and even all the way to Mosel. Looking satisfied, Sol put up his bike on the rack, and came upstairs to tell Sam that he would be happy to help her out for the rest of the day.

“Great, I’ll be just a minute to finish up.” Sam packed away all the ingredients she had already prepared and closed her ritualist’s book. She could finish the rest of her preparations later.

Sam led Sol downstairs and out the back door to a wooden chest that held the various tools they would need for maintaining the forest trails. She handed him a pair a limb trimmers and took another pair for her to use, as well as a sickle for cutting back the grass. She took a couple minutes to hone the blade before they went out to ensure for easy work. They walked to the entrance of the forest trail at the end of the row of farmhouses where she showed him how he could use the trimmers to prune the branches that jutted in the path of the trail.

After Sol got the hang of what he was doing, they both began working to clear the trail that was even more overgrown than it had been yesterday. At this point it had become difficult to traverse. Sam pushed herself, and was working quite a sweat, knowing that if she wanted to go to the Library in Mosel to do research tomorrow, she would need to finish clearing out this trail today.

Many hours of work followed, and Sol was able to help her get a significant portion of the trail cleared. But in the late afternoon, Sam realized that she would need to stop and prepare for the evening’s fertilization ritual. Disappointed, she approached Sol and told him she probably wouldn’t be able to do the research tomorrow, and that she would probably be able to do it the day afterwards at the earliest.

“Hmm,” Sol took a moment and was clearly debating something. “What if I stayed here and finished clearing the trail tomorrow while you went to Mosel to do the things you wanted?”

Sam thought about it for a moment, before stopping herself short. “I can’t ask you to do that Sol, clearing this thing out is my responsibility.”

“Well, you’re not asking me, I’m offering.” He said with a smile. “Besides, I also want to know what happened to me, and I would like to go watch you do more rituals again soon too. Unless you’ve changed your mind, and you think it’s safe?”

Sam squinted at him suspiciously. “Alright. Thank you, Sol.” At that, Sam went to prepare for that night’s ritual.