The Catalyst
Chapter Five
CRACK! POOF! BOOM!
I waved my hands fiercely, trying to move and disperse the smoke now swirling in angry clouds all around me. As the opaque fog began to clear I noticed the charred, broken bits of my ingredients spread in every direction.
“Crap…wrong again…”
I wiped all the debris from my clothes and started sweeping the excess pieces scattered on the floor into an increasingly large pile to my left. My hand reached back and grabbed yet another of the several random objects I had managed to find in the room. I set what appeared to be a half burnt shoe on the floor in front of me and then placed a few dead leaves I had found curled up in a corner on the balcony around it. I then gently placed a small heart shaped locket I had happened across in the drawer of my grandmother’s desk amongst the other pieces.
Quickly I went to make sure the doors of the balcony were still held open and with a brief glance to the sky, I ran back and kneeled before my pile of what appeared to be a conglomeration of useless junk.
“Ok…”I exhaled with determination.
I attempted reading another incantation I had found in the grimoire in hopes of finding the correct archaic translation for my grandmother’s English written spell. The locket flamed as it had done every time before, the leaves seeming to melt into the deformed footwear. However instead of freezing, as I had guessed the poem was for, the half flame-eaten shoe expanded. I leaned back from the chaos when it suddenly sucked itself into a thin mass and then fizzled up with the leaves as the locket flames enveloped it.
I thrust my fist against the floorboards. “Damn it!” Sighing, I sat down and then fell backward to the floor, covering my face with a tired arm.
“What are you doing?”
My eyes popped open and I turned back on my head to see who was behind me, as though I were standing and looking to the sky. Upside down, while leaning casually against my open balcony doors, stood my midnight intruder, Caleb. Though I was on the floor I could still make out his face, wearing the same smirk I remembered seeing the night before. “What are you doing?” I replied, somewhat sarcastically.
He chuckled lightly and sashayed over to where I was still lying in irritation with myself and leaned over me. “I asked first.”
“Just… shut up.” I rolled my eyes and sat up with my back to Caleb. I heard him step forward and mess with the pile of burnt ashes I had been making. “Stop that…”
“Stop what? I haven’t done anything.” Caleb appeared beside me and gracefully lowered himself to the floor. “But you have obviously got some issues.”
“No I don’t! I just…I just can’t figure out what these spells mean…” I looked to the open book but made my way back to staring sadly at my brand new pile of black residue. “I wish grandmother had made some sort of key to her spell book.” I leaned on my hand, several seconds ticking by in silence.
“They’re not that difficult.”
I had almost forgotten about Caleb, he seemed one to constantly make sure every person around was aware of him, and not hearing his voice made it seem as though I were alone again.
“It is difficult, Caleb. I can’t read this language. Plus I was never very good with finding meaning in poems anyway.”
“You don’t need to find meaning exactly…the words are simply over complicated. Guinn preferred being rather traditional in her homemade works.”
I looked at Caleb while he spoke; I never knew grandmother cared so much for customs…? “Can you understand them?”
“Of course.” He grinned proudly.
I reached for the grimoire and placed it in front of us, keeping the page with the English wording opened. I pointed a finger against the rough, ancient paper directly beneath the words of the small spell I had found and been attempting to decipher.
Frozen.
Drops of red wishes,
Bits of existence yet none that flow,
No breath to have,
Glow of life,
Dance of strength pulsed with text.
Simple answers,
Glean complex regrets.
“I don’t recognize this one; it must have been one of her last.”
I followed his quick moving eyes as he read through the words over and over. “So, do you know what it means?”
“Yes, it’s fairly simple. Permanent though.” He looked about the room several times and then abruptly jumped to his feet.
I watched him as he grabbed the apple I had placed on the desk. He seemed to look it over with great intensity. His violet eyes turned to me as he walked lithely back to where I was sitting.
“Use this.” The apple Caleb held suddenly dropped from above me; looking up I saw his face, a little more serious than I was used to. “Live matter is best for beginners.”
“This isn’t alive…” I turned the apple over in my palm.
“It may no longer be…but technically plants are living matter.”
Caleb’s even toned words were strange to my ears; he was acting very different. It was nice to know he had more than just perverted sly as a setting in his brain.
While he returned to his position next to me, I set the apple on the floor. “Ok, so…now what?”
“I suppose it will be easiest to go line by line.”
“Alright then. Frozen…I assumed that was a title or the purpose of the spell.”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Ok then, drops of red wishes. What is that?”
Caleb took firm hold of my right hand, “Hey…” he slid his finger across my palm and a bleeding cut suddenly appeared out of my skin. “Why did you do that!?”
He shrugged nonchalantly at my question “It’s not my spell.” He moved my hand over the apple and squeezed with great strength, my bones felt like they would break from the force. Despite the pain, I continued to watch curiously as blood seeped from my hand and fell onto the apple, coating it in dark red splotches. “One down.” His grip was released and reasserted itself on a few strands of my hair, which he pulled out with no care for me.
“OW! Stop abusing my body!”
He chuckled with a grin as he dropped the few long hairs onto the blood-covered apple. “Bits of existence, yet none that flow.” He spoke.
I rubbed my head gently as he yet again stood up. “Where are you going? I thought you were helping me?” I turned and followed him with my eyes.
“I am helping you.” He quietly shut the double doors of the balcony. “No breath to have. It means the air around the spell must be stagnant, no wind at all.”
“Does that mean we can’t breathe either?”
“Yes, but only when we begin the incantation.”
I had all this time been watching Caleb move all over the room doing this and that and it was slowly dawning on me that perhaps Caleb wasn’t as bad as I had first thought. After all, if grandmother was close with him he must have something redeeming about him; idiots always put her off.
“Now for the Glow of Life.” Caleb opened his hand up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. I watched with interest, first at his hand then his face. He opened his mouth and began quickly forming words; however I didn’t hear anything, which deepened my attention in what he was doing.
Suddenly an intensely bright orb of light ripped itself into existence a few inches from the bedroom ceiling. I had to shield my eyes from the blaze; the small sphere looked exactly like a miniature sun.
“Hmm, not my best.” Caleb lowered his hand and turned back to me.
I quirked my brow at him “Do you make a habit of creating small suns or something? Because…that’s just weird.”
He laughed loudly at me.
I narrowed my eyes and then stuck out my tongue, which seemed to be my favorite expression of annoyance lately. “Well whatever. Now what do we do?”
“Not me, you.”
“But I can’t read this?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how to pronounce everything.”
I sighed lightly and bit my lip. “Ok, but what does this line even mean? ‘Dance of Strength Pulsed with Text.’”
“It appears that Guinn tried to add hand motions to the incantation. HA, I swear she only did that to piss off whoever read this.” He chuckled a little.
“What? Why?”
“Sometimes she added things like that simply to irritate some of the other lower class witches in town. They always snuck peaks in her grimoire when she brought it into town and wasn’t looking.”
“There is a town here!?”
“Well, duh. Did you just think this world was an out of place, fucking castle in the middle of an abandoned forest?”
“Sort of…grandmother never really told me many things about other places. She rarely mentioned other people besides The Immortal.”
Caleb’s face ruffled in anger for a brief moment before he took my hand and quickly sliced it once again as he ran his finger’s edge against my palm. The same palm he had cut earlier, though strangely the prior cut was gone.
“AH, What the HELL!?” I tried to pull my hand from him but he held it exact and in place.
“I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. She doesn’t actually want you to do motions to the text, she wants two more drops of blood added, one before and one after you read the spell.”
My face softened in mild shock and confusion. “How do you know that?”
“Guinn and I were very close; I know a lot of things about her.”
His face seemed blank as he moved my hand over the apple and squeezed it, however this time his grip felt weaker than his earlier bone crushing one. I winced slightly from the pain and chewed on the inside of my lip while watching drops of blood fall back to coat the already clotting blood from before.
“Caleb…are…are you alright?” He gave my hand back and I rubbed it gently, until I noticed the still bleeding abrasion begin to suture itself up.
“Yes, I’m fine. Here read these words, I wrote each to suit the way they would be pronounced.” He sat a piece of paper in front of me with characters written on them almost as though they had been typed.
“How did you..?” I pointed to the parchment in front of me.
“Magic, Jade.”
“Duh, sorry.” I shook my head briefly and then nodded. “So I simply read this over the apple, and what, it will freeze?”
“Should, just make sure you don’t mess up. One screwed up word alters the entire thing.”
“Thanks for the confidence.” I scoffed.
“Sure, anything to help.” He smirked sarcastically.
“Ugh, well hush up. Oh, and don’t breath, remember, I’m about to start.”
I took a deep breath and started to read the few lines of the ritual.
“Glayceealis,
Occoombow of rootilus vota,
Secooi of veeta eteeamnoonc noolloos oot permoveeo,
Hawd spearitus habayo,
Tripoodeeo of veares comotus per lacoona.
Simplex refero,
Mico ooniversa desiderium.”
Before I let myself take a breath, I moved my hand over the apple and allowed the last remaining drop of blood from my nearly healed wound to slip onto the fruit. Suddenly the clotted blood surrounding the red skinned apple began to fizz slightly, followed by small quick exploding bubbles which turned over on themselves, freezing instantly once popped. The splatters combined to make a solid layer of ice, however after a few moments in the makeshift sun the ice slid off the once blood covered skin, revealing a perfectly crystallized apple.
“Oh my gosh.” I lifted the fruit carefully and watched it gleam in the mini sun’s rays. “This is amazing…I can’t believe I did this!”
“Technically, we did this, since you couldn’t figure out the text.” Caleb poked a finger against my forehead.
I groaned at him as I stood to go place the apple beside the peach I also had sitting on the old desk.
“Well, as I read from the paper I realized that I actually did know what that is. The writing is Latin. I wasn’t able to notice it because I never actually took the class at school, my friend did, and she always joked around by reciting it exactly as it was spelled. Because, of course, as no one really knows how it is pronounced, they can’t know whether the idea they have for its pronunciation is correct or not.” I laughed mildly as I came back to stand beside Caleb.
“Yeah, that’s not funny.”
“Well, we thought it was.”
“Ok..well, now I’m going to go and not be here with your ‘Latin’.” He stood up and started backing towards the door, giving me sarcastic air quotes as he said Latin.
I frowned at his annoying behavior. “Sometimes I wonder whatever possessed me not to knock you out when you first snuck into my room.”
“Because I’m sexy.”
“Get out!”
He laughed at my command and continued to do so as he leapt from the balcony and away from the tower.
All I could do was sigh as I rolled my eyes.
