Eric dug a hole under a pear tree at the back of the small terrace garden.The rain continued to fall, harder now, soaking the ground and softening the earth. Puddles formed on the patio and then spread outwards, joining together.
Eddie meant to clear out the drain three years ago, but one day during a particularly heavy rainstorm she opened the backdoor and Daisy shot out, then spun in circles splashing in the the pool of water and barking happily. Tail wagging, the bouncing puppy would run in fast circles around the short perimeter of the back yard, speeding up as she hit the water, and soaking Eddie as she laughed, watching the scene unfold before her. This became a regular sight whenever it rained until one day Daisy slipped on the wet grass and hit a large terracotta plant pot that Eddie saved up for months to buy. Daisy seemed completely unhurt, but the plant pot went, and the blocked drain stayed. It’s funny how much loving someone changes you without you even realising it.
By the time Eric finished digging, the sun was starting to set. Eddie sniffed thickly as she smoothed down Daisy’s soft fur and wrapped her up in her favourite blanket, silently promising to see her again soon. Pippa removed her collar and passed it to Eddie, before the three of them lay her in the grave and covered her over.
Freezing pellets splashed around them as they stood, holding onto each other. Eddie cleared her throat as she felt her eyes stinging with unshed tears, and told herself it would be only a few hours before she saw Daisy again. She didn’t let go of the collar. In her periphery, Pippa wiped her eyes and Eric looked grim as he stared down at the grave. The rain fell around them, and after a few moments of somber stillness, Eddie tugged on their arms.
“Come on, lets get out of the rain.”
The three of them headed inside, water dripping from their coats onto the vinyl floor. After locking the French doors, she turned to her friends. Time to get rid of them so the real work could begin.
“Thanks for everything guys, I couldn’t have made it through today without you. I think I’m going to head to bed. ”
“Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?” Pippa looked at her with concern, taking her hand. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
“No, I’ll be fine - really, I think I just need to sleep now. You go home and I’ll speak to you in the morning.”
Pippa looked like she was about to argue but Eric threw an arm around her shoulders, pulling her away. “Sleep sounds like an excellent idea. You go get ready for bed and we’ll tidy up downstairs.”
Deciding she couldn’t push back anymore without arousing suspicion, Eddie headed upstairs and changed into her pyjamas - an oversized white t-shirt with a picture of a hot dog on it and a slogan that said You’re on to a Wiener! and a pair of pink stripy shorts - then brushed her teeth, before heading back down to Eric and Pippa. They had finished tidying up and had turned all the lights off apart from one lamp which was on a timer and turned off automatically at 11 pm every evening, and moved into the hallway. She gave them each a tight hug.
“We’ll call you first thing, okay?”
She nodded, eager for them to leave, and feeling a bit emotional. It had been a long day after all. As Pippa released her she said again, “I’m worried about you Eddie, we really can stay the night, it’s not a bother.”
“Honestly I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.” She tried to give a reassuring smile but Pippa didn’t look convinced. Before she could protest further however, Eddie walked down the hallway to the front door and ushered them through it. Her friends stepped out into the night, the rain having finally stopped, and turned to look down at her with concerned expressions, silhouetted in the glow from the lamppost.
“Talk soon, bye!” Eddie said, already shutting the door on them.
“Love you, night night.” Came Eric’s reply.
The door clicked shut and Eddie could hear Pippa’s muffled voice as she talked agitatedly with Eric, clearly not happy at leaving Eddie alone. Eddie couldn’t blame her for being worried, after she split with Josh she’d been so miserable that Pippa and Eric took turns to stay in her house for a week, and this was far worse than a long overdue break-up.
Eventually they left, crossing the street to Eric’s car. Through the window, Eddie watched them drive down the street and turn the corner, disappearing from view. As soon as they were gone she sprinted to her rucksack and pulled out the spellbook, then brought it to the dining table. Praying that it would unlock again, she patted the cover and spoke to it.
“Hello Book, it’s me again, er, Eddie. Could you open up please?”
The talons came to life at once, unclasping as they had done before. She was still stunned by the instant way it recognised her. She quickly scanned through the pages, skim-reading the titles at the top of each page. Eventually she found a section of spells that looked promising: it was titled Interaction with Life Forces. She scanned the first spell (Part 1 - Rejuvenation) which had a drawing of an open palm, fingers straight, circling the face once before resting on the breastbone. The incantation was “Recipero”.
Rejuvenation, that could be exactly what she needed. She opened the French doors, shivering as a cold gust blew into the room. She concentrated hard, before shouting “Salire!” into the wind. Just as she’d envisioned, the mound of earth crumbled as Daisy’s body rose from the ground and gently floated towards the living room. Eddie set her down gently on the other end of the table and carefully unwrapped the blanket. Despite its protection, her coat was stained dark with wet mud. She shivered again, goosebumps rising on her arms.
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Barely registering it as a thought, she waved a hand at the open doorway and the door slammed shut. Interesting…she hadn’t had to use an incantation for that, maybe she was better at magic than she realised. Feeling spurred on, she stood over Daisy and copied the spell for rejuvenation.
Eddie waived her hand around Daisy’s still head before pressing it approximately to where she thought her heart was. She spoke the incantation, feeling the now familiar rush of power rise up to meet a new challenge. All at once the mud entirely disappeared from Daisy’s fur. It was restored to a smooth and silky state, without a speck of dirt on it. Even the rainwater had vanished leaving her body dry and slightly warmed, as if she had been asleep in the sun. Daisy’s fur was the cleanest she had seen in months, it was like she had just come back from the groomers after a shampoo and blow-dry.
Eddie ran her hand through the sleek coat and held her breath, waiting, but Daisy didn’t move. There was no steady rise and fall of her chest underneath her palm. No heartbeat. It seemed the rejuvenation spell wasn’t quite what she was looking for. Trying not to be too disheartened, she returned to the spellbook and read the next page.
Part 2 - Resusitation
Sounds promising, she thought to herself. This time, the drawing of the hands formed a more complex shape. The thumb tips were touching and the index and middle fingers extended, with the right hand crossed over at the left at the knuckles. Arrows indicated a pressing down motion in the air, over the chest. She moved around to the side of the table again and leaned over, stretching out her arms.
“Eripio!”
She uttered the spell, pressing down and up sharply with her hands. Daisy’s body jerked once, paws twitching, then lay still. She checked again for breathing or a heartbeat, but she found none. Frustrated, Eddie tried a few more times, but she only got the same reaction as the first attempt. It seemed as though resuscitation only worked on the living.
Her mood was rapidly dropping and she returned to the book, sighing, then turned over the page. The next spell described was “Sano”, a healing spell. The description showed in great detail a gaping shoulder wound knitting together, a broken arm straightening out with the bone sliding back in through the pierced skin, and an inflamed toe returning to a normal size and colour.
Deciding that mending Daisy’s body would be a good first step towards bringing her back from the dead, Eddie moved over to her, resting her palms on her back. She wasn’t sure where exactly to concentrate the healing magic, the instructions showed palms encircling each wound while uttering the incantation, but she figured that she could keep moving around until Daisy’s body was fully healed.
Ten minutes later and Eddie had covered the entirety of Daisy’s body, down to a small scratch on her front paw. She was fully restored. After inspecting her mouth, it seemed as though the rejuvenation spell did more than clean Daisy’s coat, as her teeth were now a sparkling white too.
Eddie started to feel rather drained, with a dull headache forming behind her eyes. Not to mention the sickness building in her stomach, like the kind you get when you’re starving. She pushed her feelings down trying her best to ignore them, and attempted to resuscitate Daisy with magic again, but to no avail.
She couldn’t believe how badly this was going. Dejected at her repeated failures, Eddie thumbed the corner of the pages sadly. She had tried everything she could find and none of it worked. What if she couldn’t do it, what if she never got to see her again? She started to cry when a sudden thought came to her. Maybe she missed a spell when she scanned through earlier, or a potion perhaps. Asking the book had worked before, why not now? She swallowed down her rising despair.
“Book? If you can hear me, please help, I need to bring someone back.”
Just as before, the spellbook was listening. One by one the pages pulled themselves from her hands, gently turning over and over until they lay open at the very back of the book, where on a modern-looking piece of lined paper was a long, complex, handwritten spell. There was no title on this page, hence why she had missed it the first time around.
She got to work immediately, checking and rechecking the page to make sure she followed the instructions exactly. It was a good thing she replaced her kilogram carton of table salt last week, she thought, as she used it to draw out a large pentagram within a circle on the vinyl floor. The spell also required the circle to be ringed by swirling runes, which took her nearly an hour to complete.
At last she sat back on her heels and brushed her curly hair out of her face with shaking hands. Her drawing matched the one in the book exactly. She left the nearly empty carton of salt on the floor and stood, reaching up to stretch out her back, and read the next part of the spell again.
Candles had to be placed at every intersection, and dotted around the edge of the circle. Luckily Eddie had a packet of 100 tea lights under her stairs that she’d slowly been using in her pumpkins every halloween. After retrieving them, she poured them out onto the table and set about putting them carefully into position.
Finally, there was only one last requirement for the spell. Blood. She needed her own blood, and…“Demon blood! How am I supposed to get some of that? Hey Book, any ideas?” She asked, not expecting a response. She was grumpy having got this far into the spell without any issues and what little hope she had garnered back was now fading. The book bent its page back to reveal one more piece of paper, smaller than the rest, tucked away. The paper was soaked in very suspicious looking rust-coloured liquid. It was dry to the touch, but that did little to make Eddie feel any better.
She ripped the page from the book and placed it carefully in the centre of the pentagram, then grabbed a knife from the rack for the final component of the spell. Before she could change her mind, she brought it across her inner forearm in one quick movement. The pain was horrible, but she fought through it and dripped her blood onto the piece of paper she had just laid on the floor. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and started to feel light-headed as the blood trickled down her arm.
When the paper was covered, she rested her hand over the cut and muttered Sano. In seconds, the wound healed over and disappeared, along with the pain. It helped, but her headache had now intensified and she was eager to get this over with.
She checked her creation one last time against the book, making sure everything matched exactly. Then she held her arms up, as directed, and reached down into her well of power. Reading the script at the end of the page, she spoke out loud, reciting several lines of ancient language. She could feel the pull of her power, and repeated them again, infusing her voice with her magic. Her fingers started to tingle and her eyesight dimmed, she felt like she was going to pass out.
Eddie held on, something telling her that just one more attempt would be enough. Finally, she recited the spell a third time, her whole body shaking with effort.
As she breathed the last word, the fire from the candles split off and spread through the salt lines, burning brighter and brighter, illuminating her pained expression. Then, in the blink of an eye, it extinguished, turning the white salt black.
In the soft glow of the lamp, Eddie watched in horror as dark flames appeared from the blood in the centre of the pentagram, licking their way outwards across the floor. They danced as they spread to the boundary line, transforming the entire circle into undulating darkness.
The fire rose higher and higher, past her waist, then her shoulders. The heat coming from the circle was stifling. Eddie coughed, backing up a few paces and shielded her face from the burning hot air.
All at once, the black flames died, revealing an enormous figure towering over her. It was a man, but there was no way he could be human.
He seemed more like a furious god, his electric blue eyes glowing with hatred as he stared down at her. In his large hand he brandished a wicked looking dagger and he stood poised, ready to fight.
What the hell?
The man snarled, his lip curling.
Eddie swayed on her feet as a wave of exhaustion hit her and, her magic completely spent, she finally succumbed to it. As she collapsed to the floor she vaguely registered a burning sensation in her arm, right where she had cut herself earlier.
Then, her mind went blank.