I hated packing. The longest I’d ever been away from home was the two weeks I spent on the road with my best friends looking for my uncle, and I had barely packed anything then. But at least when you’re in a hurry and not thinking straight, you have an excuse to not pack well.

I’d known about the trip for three weeks now. Sure, Amelia and I would talk about the places we wanted to visit and the foods we wanted to taste for hours to an end, but I hadn’t paid a single thought to what I was supposed to bring with me.

Now, I had exactly six hours before the flight and there were clothes and clutter everywhere except in my brand new suitcase with wheels on the bottom. My room looked like an adolescent witch had gone through a temper tantrum — trust me, I’d know. My uncle, Killian, was already sound asleep. I had convinced him that everything was packed and I didn’t need help, no sir. He probably knew I was lying but he hadn’t let me know.

I was tempted to call Amelia. Uncle Killian had gotten me a hand me down Nokia after the shenanigans last year (“It’s for emergencies only,” he had said in a stern voice) so I didn’t even need to go downstairs to use the phone anymore. Knowing Amelia, though, she was sleeping already. She’s a stress-sleeper.

Charon, however — he’s my other best friend — always stays up late and he had no flight to catch in the morning. I picked his number from my short contacts list (there were five; Home, which was the landline downstairs, Uncle Killian, Charon, Amelia and her brother Dennis’ landline, and me and my uncle’s favourite pizza place) and called. As I had predicted, he answered right away.

“What’s up?” he said. He had a very soothing voice, which was a common factor in his kind. I should probably tell you that Charon is a siren; he’s not a great one, though, because sirens are supposed to be very charming but he suffers from social anxiety. He had also recently developed a taste for human flesh and blood, but that’s not important.

“What the hell are you supposed to pack for a month long vacation?” I asked him as I stared at the chaos surrounding my empty suitcase.

“Clothes, I guess,” Charon said thoughtfully. “Not just summer clothes, in case the weather’s bad.”

“It’s Spain,” I pointed out.

“Spain can have bad weather,” Charon said. It sounded doubtful to me, but considering he had spent a lot time in Greece with his extended family, I didn’t want to start arguing.

“So like… Hoodies?” I said. I picked up the black XL sweatshirt Amelia and I had found at a flea market a couple of months ago. It had Pink Floyd’s logo across the chest, so we’d had a silent three minute fight over it.

“Yeah, throw a couple of those in. Will you have access to a laundromat or anything like that?” I heard shuffling. Charon was probably laying down in bed.

“I think so. And if not, there are spells,” I said.

“Right. Lucky you,” Charon said sarcastically. “Well, in that case you don’t have to pack that much. Just enough for a few outfits and lots of socks and underwear.”

I grabbed every pair of socks and underwear in sight and threw them in with the sweatshirt. I also packed my favourite top; a Kiss shirt, which I assumed had been purchased at their latest world tour. It had mysteriously appeared on my bed last Christmas, smelling like menthol cigarettes and accompanied by a short note from a friend who was supposed to be dead. It was the only time I’d heard from her since I saw her fall off the top of a skyscraper.

“Make sure to put your toiletries in a plastic bag so they don’t spill,” Charon reminded me.

Uncle Killian had handed me a see-through bag with tiny bottles of shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste in it earlier that week. It was collecting dust under my desk, next to a pair of new sandals. I tossed those in as well, and added two more t-shirts into the pile.

“Jesus, it looks full already,” I said. I tried to press everything down a little.

“You need to fold them,” Charon said in a flat tone.

“Jesus,” I repeated. I mentally apologised to my late father, who had been Catholic.

I glanced at the open spell-book I’d been studying earlier. We were such an old family, it was bound to have some sort of packing spell in it, or at least one for folding clothes.

“One minute,” I told Charon and set the Nokia down.

I didn’t know if all spell-books were like this one, but our family’s was incredibly difficult to navigate. There was no table of content; no chapters named “Household Spells”, “Healing” or even “Hexes”. Instead, it was just the initials of whoever had written them; ancestor after ancestor had scribbled their spells by hand in the book over the years, and it was up to me to find what I needed.

I had bought a block of sticky notes from the dollar store to help. I’d marked the pages I wanted to (or had been told to) learn, the ones that looked interesting and the ones that seemed useful. The only pages I hadn’t dared to look at were the ones signed B.M.V. — my mother.

Most of the time I studied the book, it was to familiarise myself with the authors. Uncle Killian had told me that it would be easier to learn once I knew who was who, and I was starting to get his point.

I knew that L.M. (Lucius Monroe, my great-great-great-uncle) had offensive spells and potions. They were complicated, far too advanced for me, but very effective. F.M. specialised in illusions and tricks, manipulating the mind. It sounded cool, but I hadn’t tried any of them yet. They were more of Amelia’s thing.

A.G. (Killian’s aunt, Annabelle Guinne) was most likely the one to have the spells I was looking for. The only problem with them, I’d found, was that she didn’t do a step-by-step kind of thing. There were never proper instructions. It tended to be more along the lines of: Collect the ingredients your heart tells you to, utter these words that have no pronunciation written down in parentheses, and hope for the best.

Annabelle was my best bet, though. I hadn’t found anyone else with her variety of basic everyday spells, cryptic as they were.

“Jackpot!” I muttered when I found a chapter titled: The Long Travel in Romania. That was another thing about Annabelle. She never got to the point right away; she liked to ramble, tell a story about each spell. She had used the book like a personal diary. Her entires were interesting to read, but inconvenient when in hurry.

It was on a rainy Sunday evening in late August that Jakob informed me he was heading to Romania to see the infamous Hoia Baciu. I was going with him, of course; there was no question about it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a trip there approved by the Council.

Busy as I was during this time — taking care of my nephew while the rest of the family was in the Americas — I did my best to ease the preparations. Below, I have written a spell to pack in a hurry, as well as a new and improved potion recipe for travel sickness that helped Jakob greatly.

A traveller’s help

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Think in your mind: Where will you go, when will you come, and how will you journey. With great intention, tell your belongings: gefætan sȳferlīċ. These words I have blessed in a way which when uttered by my own blood, will help you gather your gear for travel.

The incantation was a rusty brown colour. Amelia had explained to me that verbal spells became spells with the power of blood; that’s why only family could use the same ones. As per usual, it sent an uncomfortable shiver down my spine.

“You still there?” I asked Charon as I picked the phone back up.

“Yeah. Found anything?” he said.

“I think so. It’s just a bit… vague,” I said. I repeated the instructions back to him. I struggled greatly when it came to the incantation. Old English wasn’t my strong suit; I preferred Latin spells.

“Yeah, that’s why I don’t fuck with your type of magic,” Charon decided promptly.

“You barely fuck with your own type,” I pointed out.

“Touché,” he agreed.

“What do you make of it?” I asked.

“I’m the last person you should be asking. I think you just have to… I don’t know, think about the trip? And then say the incantation,” he said.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I sighed. “Here goes nothing.”

“Good luck.”

I threw the Nokia on my bed and stared at my stuff with what I hoped was great intent. I thought about Spain; the pictures Uncle Killian had shown me of his previous trip to Valencia, the sandy beaches, the architecture… Then I pronounced, the best I could: “Gefætan sȳferlīċ!”

For a brief second nothing happened, and I was sure it hadn’t worked. Then, there was a tremor; like a silent drill that made the room shake and tremble ever so slightly. Something shot just past my ear; it was a rolled up sock, so dusty it had turned grey under my bed.

Suddenly, everything was flying around so fast I had a difficult time dodging; the shoes and books were particularly dangerous. I spotted my precious skateboard head towards a wall at an alarming speed and somehow managed to grab it before impact. The phone was nowhere to be seen; I just heard Charon’s concerned voice go past every now and then.

I couldn’t see my suitcase anymore, not with everything rapidly piling up on top of it. The pile nudged every time another item hit it. I was worried that the noise would wake up Uncle Killian any moment.

“Stop!” I said in a hushed voice, grasping the skateboard that was still trying to commit suicide for some reason.

Everything that was mid-air dropped at once. Luckily there weren’t too many hard or heavy objects in the air; just the Nokia and a couple of books, which thudded when they fell on the floor.

“That didn’t go well, did it?” Charon said when I picked the phone back up.

“No,” I said defeatedly. If the room hadn’t been a complete mess before, it was one for sure now. “I’m gonna be cleaning this up all night.”

“Well, good luck with that. I’m going to sleep,” Charon said happily.

I made a face. “Night,” I told him.

“Night. Call me again before you board tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah. I will.” I hung up.

Something fluttering in the air caught my eye. It was a faded drawing falling from the direction of the spell-book, which had somehow ended up on the highest shelf in the room right above my window. I caught the paper carefully; it was frail like the pages in a bible.

The drawing was of a middle-aged woman sat atop the weirdest tree I’d ever seen. It was formed like a hook; it grew sideways first, then curved up in a way that you could just sit on its lap like it was a bench. The woman wore an expensive looking tweed jacket and skirt combo and high heeled lace-ups despite the forest environment. She had thick round glasses and a sly smile.

I turned the paper. There was text on the other side: Annabelle Guinne by Jakob Kulczycki. Hoia Baciu, 1964.

I’d stopped asking “What are the chances?” long ago. Well, less than a year ago. Either way, I knew that coincidences were rare when it came to magic. Something, whether it was the universe, Magik with a big M, or the ghost of Annabelle, was telling me to read the rest of the chapter I’d started.

“Ancum,” I said pointedly at the book. It was the first spell I had ever learned. I couldn’t make my possessions come to me from miles away — or even feet away — like Uncle Killian could, but it was useful when I couldn’t reach something that was high up.

The book fell towards me, and I caught it in my arms clumsily. (It was heavy, okay?) I sat down on the floor and found the chapter I had started reading to find the packing spell.

The locals were wary. They warned us many times of the tales they had heard of the forest; the disappearings, the ghosts, the devil even. We didn’t tell them that we knew. We were just daring tourists who wanted some action in our lives.

Our guide was one Nicoleta Iliescu. Ms. Iliescu was quite young, only 24, but the representative the Council had sent us (Mr. Fateh Mehra, who had also accompanied us on a previous endeavour in China) convinced us that she was very capable.

So, we were a party of four. A fine number, though a tad smaller than Jakob would have liked. He had heard all sorts of ghost stories from friends who had visited the forest, you see. I told him: “Jakob, my dear friend, you have not to worry because I am with you. A ghost would have to be quite silly to mess with you while I’m around.”

The hike was pleasant. Jakob, who had made merry of my choice in clothing that morning, sweated the worst, but even he had little trouble. Ms. Iliescu’s charms were much help, in fairness. I would assume that those without Magik’s blessings have a harder time in terrains such as Hoia Baciu’s.

The energy in the forest was truly something incredible. I have never felt anything like it. Ancient magic simply oozed out of the curved trees and the rich soil, of which I took two samples to use in my garden. But it was not all ancient. There was something new as well; something different that hid itself so well that many would miss it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, at least not on the first day.

If there were any spirits, they didn’t show themselves to us. To this day I wonder if there were any at all. What the locals believed to be ghosts, well, I believe there was something darker. Ghosts are, after all, quite mellow as long as you leave them be.

Jakob suggested we set up camp at the large clearing most explorers flock to, but Ms. Iliescu was sternly against it. “We can do whatever else there, but not fall asleep. It is a bad place to let your guard down,” she told us.

I understood what she meant the moment we set foot in that place. While the rest of the forest had been so full and alive with magic, this clearing was — in lack of a better word — dead. Or at least it pretended to be.

Ms. Iliescu and I worked together to create a protection spell. “There is no use for old spells here,” she explained. “You need to use something they haven’t seen.” So, while this spell may not be usable in Hoia Baciu again, I am sure it will prove to be beneficial in other situations.

For a night on which you cannot see

When you’re not quite sure what it is you need to protect yourself from, just that it is far more powerful, wiser or in bigger numbers than you, there is no point in barriers or shields. You need to hide yourself. Crush dill, holly, parsley and ferula between your teeth, making a paste. Spread it onto your skin and say as quietly as you can: Ascunde. Repeat this word three times, or until you feel the paste grow icy cold. This will protect you until the safety of the rising sun.

This spell protected us for the night, but I was not able to sleep peacefully. While I knew I was safe, I felt something watch us. Curiously, like a potential prey. Whatever it was, it didn’t approach us.

In the morning we were approached by a fellow traveler. He never told us what he was, so it is safe to assume he was not a human or a witch. He had been wandering in the forest for several days looking for a story to tell his family, but nothing particularly interesting had happened to him aside from cold spots, whispers and odd energy, which we had all experienced the first day and jotted down as your typical spiritual activity.

We wished the fella luck and moved on with our research. We returned to the clearing, which was as menacing as ever even in daylight. I had been hoping to gather herbs, but nothing grew there. The soil, which was so healthy in the rest of the forest, was completely dead in the clearing.

“There is something here that takes all energy. There’s not enough for anything to grow,” Ms. Iliescu explained vaguely.

“Is it some sort of a demonic presence?” Fateh asked.

“Something like that, though nothing as religious as a demon,” I told him, and Ms. Iliescu agreed. It’s a common misconception.

Ms. Iliescu explained that after decades of research, the only explanation her people had come up with was that the clearing was a site for necromancy. Not just a one time thing either, but a ritual site. There aren’t many places like that left in the world, and the ones that do exist have been purified long ago or are under the watchful eye of the Council.

But this place, Ms. Iliescu explained, wouldn’t budge. No matter what they tried, the dark, dead presence stayed.

At the end of the day, we weren’t able to gather much from Hoia Baciu. Some samples, some folklore, incorporeal whispers in the wind, but no evidence of whatever had once happened — or was still happening — in the forest. It was disappointing, to say the very least, but an experience of a lifetime nevertheless.

The chapter ended there, which was a disappointment. Maybe it had been a coincidence after all. Just in case, though, I grabbed a sticky note to slap onto the page and scribbled down: Annabelle Guinne; Hoia Baciu Forest.