CHAPTER 13
In Which Evan is Fortunate
ANGIE. A LITTLE EARLIER, BEFORE THE BATTLE.
“Hey, what you up to?” Ryan spoke behind her as Angie dug through her stuff. Over the past few years, she’d half taken over one of the small rooms in Ryan’s basement suite with her stuff, mostly enchanting supplies, art supplies, and clothes, mostly scattered around in paper bags without that much organization. She mostly knew where everything was.
“I gotta do something,” Angie said. “Just in case.” She’d dumped out one of the bags in the corner of the room, and was putting what she needed inside it. Mostly a bunch of candles, mostly white, with one blue and one yellow for the elements of the spirit she wanted to talk to, but some other stuff as well. “I’m not about to lose Evan when I just got Megan back.”
Ryan didn’t respond immediately, but moved as if to start digging through her stuff as well, before pausing and saying, “What do you need?”
“Still need saffron,” she said. “And do you have any ideas for how to substitute for an owl’s feather? I don’t think I have any, and that’s my surest guess as to how to pull this off.”
Ryan had started digging for a couple of seconds when she said saffron, but now he paused, holding a bag with some sort of journal or diary type book in it, frowning down at it. “Owl’s feather? You trying to contact that storm owl?”
“Yeah,” Angie said. “I figured I’d have the most luck with someone I’ve met before, and she gave me a name, unlike all the other spirits I've met. I think she might be the most useful anyway. She’s the biggest and most powerful.”
“You don’t have any owl feathers?” Ryan asked.
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have asked,” Angie said, her tone coming out somewhat crosser than she intended. It was getting late and she was getting tired, which wasn’t ideal for performing a working like this. She should have some owl feathers. It was a stupid oversight.
Ryan sighed. “Let me see what I can do, but you might need to ask a bird or petty spirit or something,” he said, then left the room. As she continued to collect what she needed, she could hear the telltale creaks that the second, third, fifth, and ninth stairs always made when stepped on. The creaking of the old floors was always enough to track others in the house, if you paid attention to it.
But Evan knew where to step to avoid any creaking.
Angie finished gathering what she needed, and proceeded to stride up the stairs, down the hall, through the kitchen, and out through the back door, taking a second to touch the salt frame[1]—for luck or reassurance, she didn’t know. She hadn’t made a point of doing that when she left a house since she was eleven or twelve, but the dumb little childhood ritual brought her a little comfort as she stepped out into the night.
[1] The border of solid salt crystal built, in an easily replaceable manner, into the window and door frames of most structures. Even in humid places like Seattle, where it was extra important that the frames be easily replaceable. The salt irritated Beasts, keeping them from entering buildings easily.
It’s not like she’d never been out after dark before. She stepped out into the darkness, leaving the back door light off so that her eyes could adjust as much as possible. As she stood there, a figure emerged from the deep darkness under the trees, making her jump and back up. Then she realized it was Ryan. He stepped up and held up a feather.
“You found an owl feather in the dark,” Angie said, genuinely surprised. “Right in our backyard. Seriously?”
“Next yard over, but yeah. The power of the bloody cutting edge of software, my dear,” Ryan said, jovially, but at a low volume. They were outside at night, after all.
She shook her head. “It continually surprises me that you keep surprising me.” She leaned forward and kissed him, lingering a moment. Her lips left behind a doofy grin on his face.
She stepped past him and out among the old apple trees that surrounded the Grove and granted the old boarding house its name. The apples, close to but not quite ripe, hung from the trees as simple dark globes in the gloom. The city would probably have someone along to harvest them soon. Above, the sky was dark, stars scattered across its great dome.
The night was very dark.
Next to her, surprising her again, Ryan said, “So how can I help?”
She stopped and looked at him, barely more than a silhouette in the gloom. “Ryan… Ryan I’m sorry, but she reacted weird to you. I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to participate.”
“She just ignored me,” Ryan said. “That’s not that weird.”
“It was weird. And pointed. And, and skittish. And weird. If you really need to be out here, stay on the porch, please.”
Ryan looked disappointed, but he did as she asked and returned to the porch. Angie didn’t have time to worry about him.
She settled in a clear enough area of the backyard, under the trees, and started setting up her supplies. One by one, she drove white candles into the ground in a circle around her, ten of them, one at each point of a platonic clock with the twelve o’clock aimed north. However, at three o’clock, due east, she placed a yellow candle, for the thaumaturgic element of air, and at nine o’clock, due west, she placed a blue candle, for water.
Once the candles were arranged to her satisfaction, she knelt in the center of the circle, facing north. She held a thirteenth candle—a kindling candle, longer and more slender than the others. With a lighter (matches were better, but she was in a hurry) she lit the kindling candle, and one-by-one, she used it to start lighting the circle, starting with the northernmost candle and continuing clockwise. The yellow and blue candles flared up brighter than the others when she lit them, and stayed brighter, despite being of an identical size to the white candles.
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Angie lit the last candle. They had improved the gloom in the yard a surprising amount, she noted. She rose to her feet in one smooth motion, stepping out of the circle southwards and turning around to face it. Then she knelt to reach into the bag that she’d brought with her. She dug around a bit to pull out a small copper chalice, a white cloth, and another candle, cream-silver in color. She paused, looking at the items remaining in the bag.
“Shit,” Angie said, looking up at Ryan on the porch. “Can you hear me?”
He nodded and came to his feet, light stepping across the yard her way. “I forgot to grab something of Evan’s to give her to track him. Can you get something for me?”
“Sure,” Ryan replied. “Hair if I can find it?”
“Hair or nail clipping,” Angie replied. “Or something from his gun cleaning kit would work in a pinch, I think. He spends a lot of time with that. Or a photo, I guess.”
He headed back inside, and Angie turned and spread out the cloth outside the circle on the south side. She placed the chalice in the center of the cloth and the candle to the chalice’s eleven o’clock. She pulled her remaining supplies out of the bag and arranged them along the east edge of the cloth. Then she settled herself into a cross-legged position just to the south of the cloth and chalice. She leaned forward and lit the kindling candle using the six o’clock candle of the circle, then used it to light the altar candle, before blowing the kindler out again.
Angie sat back and sighed, before starting to take slow, even breaths. She needed to center herself if she was going to pull this off. She couldn’t let the gnawing fear for Evan, or the simmering rage at him, make her rush and fuck things up. The owl might be offended by too sloppy a call.
Angie watched the flame of the altar candle and started murmuring a simple nonsense chant that she had made up when she was a kid, babbling for fun. She’d just liked the sound of it, she supposed, because she’d used to sing it to herself a lot when she was alone. Now, it served as a useful tool for driving other concerns out of her mind. “Sheh re shoh rah ti queh teh quah, an ro on reev int lo ent leave.” Enunciating clearly each sound’s difference from its fellows made it a tongue twister, and concentrating on saying it quickly and clearly, on the purely physical sensation of forming the gibberish with her mouth and tongue, served as both a vocal warm up and helped her get her head clear for the actual chanting.
As she repeated the phrase, the sing-song rhythm of it filling up her mind, Ryan came back out of the house. As he approached, he said, “Evan really needs to vacuum those—oh, sorry.” This last he said at a lower volume. “Hair,” he added, stepping around her and setting a small sealed baggie with a dozen or so little hairs inside, almost invisible in the shadows of the candlelit night, down with the rest of her supplies on the east edge of the cloth.
“Thanks,” she replied, interjecting it between two repetitions of the chant. She noted Ryan retreat without further words, and settle himself on the porch steps, his phone out and aimed her way. Gathering data, no doubt. Angie paid him no more mind.
Angie murmured for another minute or so, then ceased. She reached out, taking up the feather Ryan had brought her and placing it in the chalice. Then she put in the saffron—a pretty good all-round gift for spirits anywhere saffron doesn’t grow. Lastly, a piece of paper cut into a hopefully perfect pentagon, an Aklo[1] sigil painted upon it. As she placed these items—the link, offering, and focus for power, respectively—she worked out how to phrase and correctly conjugate her request in Naacal.
[1] An ancient language of mystic power, believed by the wizards to have been taught to mortals by the Powers Above. One of four used by mages throughout the world for mystical workings, along with Atlanteic, Naacal, and Old Faelish.
[2] The language of ancient Mu, now a language of power.
Then, the last step. Angie picked up a twig from an alder tree—its gray bark a dark shadow in the candlelight, smooth beneath her fingertips—which she hoped still lived. She supposed there was always the chance it had died in the summer heat, but at least there hadn’t been any crazy storms that year that made it more likely. If this didn’t work, she’d have to check to see if that tree had fallen later, and panic now.
She inserted the end of the twig into the flame of the altar candle, watched as it charred and then lit. As she did, she began chanting her request, which, translated into the Common tongue, was, “Mistress Rhodorendron[1] Rainflipper, I request your wise counsel and assistance regarding an urgent matter. Please hear my call and, if you can, attend me at your earliest convenience.” She hoped this would be sufficient. Spirits seemed to like her, particularly this one, so she had high hopes. Her Aklo wasn’t very good yet, and she didn’t think she’d be able to manage something more complicated and sycophantic.
[1] "It's not Rhododendron, it's Rhodorendron," Mst. Rainflipper said when they met.
As Angie chanted the request again, she placed the burning end of the twig down into the chalice, touching it to the paper with the rune on it. Flames flared up from the mouth of the chalice in an instant, expanding so fast it was almost a small explosion, far more than all the items in the cup could have possibly fueled. The flames burned hot and bright, the regular reds and oranges of the fire shot through with unnatural streaks of green of the same shade as Angie’s eyes. Angie felt relief shoot through her like electricity. Looked like this was working.
Angie continued chanting for several more repetitions, as the flames burned bright and disconcertingly high, nearly as tall again as the chalice itself. They cast stark light across the trees, glinting off the apples, and casting the shadows of the trees into far deeper darkness.
Then, in a heartbeat, the flames died completely, leaving just the candlelight. Thick gray smoke started billowing out of the mouth of the chalice, far more than the contents could justify. Impossible in its speed, within a handful of heartbeats, the smoke seemed to be filling the area, thickening around her—it already made it hard to see anything past the circle of candlelight, obscuring Ryan and the house almost completely.
Only it didn’t smell like smoke. It smelled like mist and ozone, and brought with it a sense of foreboding, like the air before a summer storm—one of those days when the clouds looked bruised and yellow and the light was flat and strange, and you knew in an hour rain was going to be hammering everything and the wind would be trying to pull down trees for fun. The smoke, or mist—no, the storm cloud—condensed further, until it was so thick she could barely see the candles at the north edge of the ritual circle.
Then the wind came, tearing out of the north, rising from stillness to powerful enough to bend her back like a willow tree, even sitting cross-legged as she was, forcing her to squint. It tore through the surrounding cloud, ripping it away in moments. Apples pattered out of the trees like rain.
The altar cloth, though, stayed unruffled, and every candle stayed upright and lit, for all they flickered wildly. A twisted shape emerged from the darkness, bouncing and rolling straight at her, bounding right over the candles and landing in the center of the circle. She flinched, anticipating that the next bounce would smash it into her face.
Then in an instant the wind too was gone. She opened her eyes to find a huge owl, two meters tall, standing on a hefty, gnarled branch in the center of the circle. She realized that the tree branch was the shape that had bounced out of the darkness, that it should have scattered her candles like bowling pins and slammed right into her. Which would have been a really unpleasant experience.
Instead, there was the owl. She didn’t look like any regular species of owl, but a sort of amalgam of a number of local species—a face like a barn owl, white with a dark border around the face—the long feathered tufts of a long-eared owl—the coat pattern like that of a spotted owl, brown with dappled white spots. Disconcertingly, it had four eyes, two glowing yellow owl eyes, and above them two narrow eyes with a pearlescent gray glow to them, occasionally crackling over with sparking blue.
The owl opened her beak, and, in a voice most people would probably find disconcerting, said, “Whooooooooo calls me? Whooooo?”