When Katrina opened her eyes she found herself lying in her bed. She could smell soap and someone had dressed her in her summer pajamas. Remembering her mishap with the vase she moved what felt like her arms in front of her with a bolt of fear. Both of her hands were there, as solid as they had ever been. Had it all just been a dream?
But the angle of the light filtering into her room suggested it was much later in the day, maybe even after lunchtime. And when she sat up and looked about the room she realised she wasn’t alone.
Gemma sat on a chair watching her, a book in one hand. She’d obviously been sitting there awhile. She lowered the book to her lap as she noticed Katrina sit up.
“Congratulations you got the day off.”
“W-what happened?” Katrina asked.
“Well, you really royally fucked up this time,” Gemma replied plainly and in an almost bored tone.
Katrina frowned. The last thing she remembered was her arms fading out. No, that wasn’t quite right, there had been more. Her parents had been there, both of them. They’d done a spell, put the vase in a bucket. What had happened after that? Everything else was a blank.
“Where’s mum?” Katrina asked.
“She went to Wolf’s with Lily.”
“And dad?”
“Gone to the port. They’re setting sail today remember?”
Katrina nodded slowly. She did remember that but she still felt a small sting at him leaving without a goodbye, especially given what had happened this morning. She felt that maybe it warranted some special treatment.
Gemma seemed to pick up on her feelings. She was almost as good as their mum at reading people. She explained, “Mum told him you’d be fine and they kind of really need the money now, given mum just killed a unicorn for you.”
“What?” Katrina blinked at that last sentence. “She...”
“And for Lily too I suppose.” Gemma sighed. Then she eyed Katrina carefully. “She told me to watch you and phone if you started fading away again but you’re awake now so I suppose you can phone her yourself if that happens.” Gemma stood up and stretched. She could be harsh sometimes but she did care. Katrina knew that.
Katrina frowned and focused on the practicalities of what that meant. “Does that mean it’s not permanent?” She looked down at her arms with worry.
Gemma shrugged. “Dunno.”
From elsewhere in the house a baby suddenly started crying.
Gemma sighed and turned toward the door. She paused with her hand on the door handle and briefly glanced back. Seeing that Katrina seemed fine, she left to go and deal with Kate.
Left alone, Katrina took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again she half expected her hands to be gone, but they weren’t. She left her bedroom and wandered downstairs, wondering if Gemma had just been making up the part about the unicorn sacrifice, but it wasn’t like Gemma to make stuff up.
Katrina soon found the site in the backyard. The scene had been cleared away and someone had attempted to hose down most of the blood off the grass, but the marks in the dirt were obvious and here and there, even without looking closely a touch of red tinged the earth.
She glanced toward the unicorn paddock wondering which one was missing but other than for transport or the occasional cross-country competition on her own pinto, Katrina didn’t spend a lot of time involved in the farm work, and so it all looked much the same as it had before. She wouldn’t have noticed if one went missing or an extra one turned up. Of all her siblings only Salem was less involved than she. Both of them sometimes even had to be reminded to exercise their own horses. Sometimes Gemma or Bobby did it for them. Still she could feel a sense of sadness in the atmosphere. Perhaps it was just the stillness in the air? Not even the trees were rustling their leaves today.
When she went back inside she noticed the door to the basement lay open. Normally it was closed. Not that they weren’t allowed down there, but someone had obviously been down there and back out in a hurry. Without much else immediate to do, Katrina was drawn down into it. Even now, after all that had happened, her curiosity was overwhelming.
Dust sparkled in the strands of daylight that filtered in through the ground level windows. The basement spanned most of this half of the house. It was filled with junk from even before her parents had moved in here, things from back when it had belonged to her grandfather, before he’d disappeared and Sirius had claimed it. Katrina had never met him and her father very rarely spoke of him. Katrina had never known what her grandfather had been like until her aunt Cat had shown up and unabashedly told her stories of his violence. Apparently the man had been something of a fearsome legend in his day too, playing politics even with aristocrats. Katrina wondered if that was why he’d disappeared. Whatever the reason, he’d left behind some very interesting books and artifacts.
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Some of it was from her mother’s side of the family too though, things Amanda had acquired over the years or things which her own parents hadn’t wanted cluttering up their much smaller house. The basement was basically it’s own little treasure trove. There was plenty of the mundane too, old tennis rackets, and hiking boots, camping equipment, a patched up scuba tank or two, Bobby’s old saddle from when he was five, a box of poorly done kid’s drawings, either hers or Gemma’s, she couldn’t remember. The more frequently used things sat along the wall that faced the backyard. It was closest to the stairs. This was where Katrina now wandered.
Tins and jars, some well-labelled, some a mystery, all lined the back of a long worktop bench. There was a sink half way down and a clear space nearby for working and mixing things. At least there usually was. It was covered right now with an array of herbs and powders and other things Katrina would rather not have known the origin of, and in the centre of it all lay a book.
She could see from the side that its cover was a vibrant blue. It wasn’t one she recognised. Hesitantly she reached out and placed her hand on the page as a bookmark, then flipped to read the front cover. On the front, in the centre of the cover, surrounded by a square of darker blue was a silver number 8, or perhaps, Katrina thought, as she looked at it some more, it was actually an hour glass. But if so it was one without sand. There was no title on the front, only a name in very small print, one she did not know. She checked the spine and there she found the title:
A Warlock’s Guide, Volume 47: The Sands of Time
She flipped back to the page that had been open. The heading simply read ‘Rewind’ and below that:
A simple spell to undo events within a localised region. The user should be wary that mind, body, and soul are considered as separate entities for the purpose of this spell.
Katrina frowned at the use of the word soul. What did that mean? She continued reading.
Balancing the herbs listed below is essential to direct the magical energy toward the correct focus, with time manipulation of only the body being the simplest to achieve.
The most common usage of this spell is to cure injuries when no healer is available. The user should further be aware that use of this spell for the purpose of memory wiping is prohibited in certain areas. Familiarity with one’s own laws is a exercise left up to the user. AWG takes no responsibility for failure to abide by the local laws or for any mishaps caused by incorrectly following this guide or for not adhering to Good Warlock Practices. It is expected that the bearer of this book is a licensed warlock. If you are not a licensed warlock and have come into possession of this book please hand this book into the nearest Warlock’s guild for a full refund with no questions asked.
“Right, like anyone ever does that,” Katrina muttered to herself with a half-smirk.
The ingredients seemed straightforward enough, as did the incantation. It was the rune that looked difficult, requiring almost perfect circles, and intricate markings at just the right points, and then there was this section:
Blood must be spilled around the circle in an anti-clockwise direction and very specific points (see table below for example calculations based on subject and sacrifice compositions).
It was the most complicated spell Katrina had ever seen. It almost seemed intentionally convoluted. On a piece of paper beside the book, someone had written some notes and calculations. It looked like her mother’s handwriting. There were two lists titled ‘essential components?’ and ‘non-essential’, each of which looked like it contained a subset of the spell ingredients, although not everything was listed. In one corner of the paper written in a messy scrawl were the words ‘time of day?’
There were more notes and some crossing’s out in the book itself, some of it in her mother’s easily readable hand, others in a fancy tiny, swirly, script that she could not read. On another loose sheet of paper was an extra rune with markings and calculated angles.
She flipped through the rest of the book. All of the spells related in some way to the manipulation of time. To Katrina’s great interest there was an entire section devoted to time-based infusements, right before another section about something called ‘Timelocks and other Defensive Magic’. All of the spells in that book were equally as complicated, and the more interesting the spell the more complicated they seemed to get. She hated the way the sacrifices were often written in ‘number of cats’ too. She knew it didn’t have to be cats, any blood would do, indeed witch blood was the most potent, albeit much riskier. Sorcerers often used cat’s blood though. Katrina was sure that was partly what put a lot of people of using blood magics instead of just their own natural born powers. Perhaps that was entirely the point. She wrinkled up her nose in disgust and then sucked in a slow trembling breath as she thought of the unicorn that had saved her own life just this morning.
She flicked back to the spell. There was another warning she had skimmed past before. She read it now.
Users should be warned that while the rewind spell may undo certain things, it does not prevent them from later reoccurring. Particular note should be taken in cases where insufficient blood is shed or where the spell is performed incorrectly, the events may be undone only temporarily and after the equivalent time has passed, things shall be as they were before.
Katrina looked down at her hands. What did that mean? Was she going to disappear again? She looked to the window at the sun that was by now high in the sky. Equivalent time? As in the same amount that had been rewound? How long until she knew if it worked then? How far back had her mother taken them?