Chapter 4 - Casting a Spell

 
 
   “That woman was the Wind Dancer,” Rana was saying. “That woman was named Meirene. That woman was the Wind Dancer. That woman was evil. That woman was named Meirene.”
   “Stop it, Rana!” Lirael snapped. “You’ve been panicking like that for the last five minutes!”
   “The Festival of the Wind is for a demon[/i]!” Alanis was in tears.
   “No, for a Demon,” Rana corrected, seizing the chance to take refuge in explanation. “Capital-D Demons are much more dangerous. I read it in a book called Swell Foop.”
   “Who cares?!?!” Lirael exploded. “What are we going to do about Sarah?!”
   Rana and Alanis stared at her. “What about Sarah?”
   “Well…the Throne told us to stay away from her!” Lirael blustered.
   “So we will,” Alanis sniffed.
   Lirael stared at her, thunderstruck. “What[/i]?!?! You mean, just give up?!?! What about our vow?!”
   “Oath,” Rana corrected her.
   Smoke exploded from Lirael’s ears. “WHATEVER!!!!”
   Alanis stared, her tears momentarily forgotten. “Wow! I thought that only happened in stories!”
   Fire was ready to start puffing out of Lirael’s ears instead, but she managed to control it. “All RIGHT!!! But we said that we were going to find out about Sarah! Are we going to let the Throne tell us what to do?!?!”
   “Yes,” Alanis said.
   Alanis wilted beneath Lirael’s double-barreled flaming glare of daggers. “OF COURSE WE ARE NOT!!!” Lirael swung around and directed her glare at Rana. “We need to find out why the Throne won’t even let Sarah talk to us!! And I won’t rest until we know!!”
   What could they say to that? Alanis and Rana bowed to the inevitable. “We’ll help, Lirael.”
   “Of course you will!” Lirael struck a pose.
   “Now, how do we find that out?” Rana asked.
   Lirael blinked at her. “Don’t ask me. I don’t know.”
   “Whaddaya mean, ‘You don’t know’?!?!”
   Lirael shrugged. “Hey, I did my part. I got you two back into the spirit of things.”
   It was now Rana’s turn to smoke.
   “Rana, smoking’s bad for you,” Alanis coughed through the heavy cloud that poured from Rana’s ears and immersed the three.
   “So, it’s up to me to get us a plan,” Rana muttered. “Why am I not surprised? Okay, let me think. We know the Throne isn’t on the Plateau. We know it is[/i] in the Sky Tower. So how do we get into the Sky Tower?”
   Unfortunately, the answer was simple. They didn’t. Ordinary Guardian World citizens were only allowed onto the first floor of the Sky Tower. Even Princesses never went past the third floor, and even then only under exceptional circumstances. There were twenty-two floors.
   “We’d have to be Neutralizers,” Alanis said glumly.
   “We might make it in if everybody else was gone,” Lirael offered hopelessly.
   Rana’s eyes suddenly lit up like lanterns. “Or if we had permission!”
   “Permission?” Lirael snorted. “We’ve been through that already. We don’t know where Mr. Kagetsu is, and we don’t know any other Neutralizers. Nobody’s gonna give us permission.”
   “There may be a way,” Rana said, lowering her voice, although there was nobody around to hear her even if she had been speaking normally. “It would be dangerous, because we’re definitely not allowed. And it would be difficult. Very difficult. But it would definitely work. It could get us in there.”
   “What IS it?!” Lirael was ready to burst.
   “We could make ourselves look like Neutralizers.”
   Lirael deflated. “Are you mad? We’d never fool anybody. Unless…”
   “…we used magic,” Rana finished triumphantly.
   “But we can’t use magic!” Alanis protested. “We don’t know how! And we’re definitely not allowed! You know we’re not!”
   “Alanis, are you listening to a word I’m saying?!” Rana expostulated. “I KNOW we’re not allowed! So we’d have to do it in secret!”
   “Ooooh,” Alanis said, impressed.
   “How would we do it?” Lirael asked, lowering her voice as well.
   “I don’t fully know,” Rana said, biting her lip. “Some form of illusion, I should think. But it would have to be very powerful, so the Robes and the Neutralizers couldn’t catch us in it, and that will make it hard.”
   “Can we even do it?” Alanis asked, worried.
   “We’ll have to go to the library and find the most powerful spells we can,” Rana decided. “I don’t know if we can cast them, but we’ve got to try.”
   And without further ado, the little trio trooped off towards the library.
 
      *  *  *
 
   The library was incredible. A full seven stories tall, its walls were lined from top to bottom with shelves packed with books. Crammed with books. Bulging with books. Overflowing with books.
   Spiraling staircases offered transport to the next level of knowledge. Ladders slid over the room, going to wherever they were needed. Some Princesses flew twenty feet into the air to reach the top shelves. And that was only half of the books. Every shelf was enchanted with a reversal spell which allowed it to flip around and reveal a new row of books. The library was divided into sections by the floors—Storybooks, Biology, History, Astronomy and Math, Geography and Legends, Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, and Magic—and was Rana’s favorite place in the world.
   Mrs. Lyan, a librarian, stared over her half-moon spectacles at Lirael, Rana, and Alanis as they entered the swinging double doors of the library. “Come to tear through us again?” she asked with mock severity. Though her colleagues had been furious about Rana’s whirlwind searches of the library, Mrs. Lyan felt that it was a good sign that the younger generation was interested in any part of the library, even if it was a little devastating.
   “No,” Alanis said, giving Mrs. Lyan a dazzlingly adorable smile and cranking up her little-girl charms. “We’re looking for a book on illusion.”
   Lirael smacked herself in the face. Rana seemed to have bit something.
   “Illusion?” Mrs. Lyan repeated, firmly quashing the smile that was trying to hover on her face.
   “For my mother,” Lirael interrupted desperately.
   “She needs a scarecrow for her backyard,” Rana added. “The birds are ruining her…er…”
   “Guarderia roots,” Alanis said.
   “Yeah, her…guarderia roots?”
   Guarderia roots produced small white flowers, immense aboveground root systems, and a very pungent and not entirely pleasing odor. The only reason people grew them was if they were absolutely desperate for the flowers, which were a rather powerful spell ingredient—but the smell was so bad that very[/i] few people bothered.
   “I didn’t know your mother grew guarderias,” Mrs. Lyan said, amused. They were clearly up to something.
   “She didn’t,” Lirael said uncomfortably. “Until…a few days ago.”
   “I see,” Mrs. Lyan said. “So you need a scarecrow illusion.”
   “We need a very powerful illusion spell,” Rana jumped in. “She’s got ravens and black cardinals after the…guarderia roots…”
   “A very powerful illusion spell,” Mrs. Lyan repeated, even more amused. They certainly didn’t aim small. Black cardinals were very powerfully magic, and ravens could see through most spells.
   “So could you get it for us?” Lirael pled.
   Even if they had the book, Mrs. Lyan couldn’t see them possibly casting the spells in it. “Certainly,” she agreed, turning to a large oaken box beside her. Three magical runes were inscribed on the lid of the box in reddish gold.
   “What’s that?” Alanis asked, her curiosity aroused.
   Mrs. Lyan didn’t answer. She waved her hand over the box, said, “Level Seven, Legerdemain and Prestidigitation, by Melana Rynetha,” and rapped the box sharply. Then she opened it.
   Inside was a huge book, its cover of faded gold silk. The words Legerdemain and Prestidigitation were inscribed across the gold silk in equally faded silver. Alanis gasped. “Cool!”
   Rana, an old hand at this, reached into the box and lifted the book out. She staggered beneath its weight. Lirael ran forward to help her. In the end, they took one side each and prepared to heave it out of the library.
   “Sign here, please,” Mrs. Lyan said, fighting harder still not to smile as she slid a piece of paper and a golden feather quill at them.
   Alanis looked at her friends, their hands filled with book, and picked up the quill herself. She carefully scrawled Alanis[/b] onto the paper.
   Fire glowed in the words, and a strand of flame reached from the quill and wrapped around Alanis’ hand. Alanis froze as the thread of fire reached for her, but when it touched her, it simply sank into her skin. Alanis’ face flared momentarily the color of fire, and then all trace of fire had disappeared, leaving a look of astonishment on the small girl’s face.
   “A phoenix feather quill,” Mrs. Lyan explained as Alanis touched her hand where the fire had entered her. “So that if you don’t return the book, we can find you.”
   Alanis was too amazed to even hear her.
   “Come on, Alanis!” Rana grunted beneath the heavy book.
   “Yeah, we need to…er…give this to my mom,” Lirael said. “So she can protect her…guarderia roots…”
   Alanis followed them out the door, still halfway into a trance.
      *  *  *
   Of course, as soon as they had left the library, they did not head for Lirael’s house. They turned around and headed into the woods behind the library. Lirael had to kick Alanis around to get her to turn in the right direction—the phoenix feather quill hadn’t burned her skin, but it seemed to have turned her mind to cinders. Fortunately, Alanis revived after the kicking and followed her friends into the forest.
   This forest was larger, darker, and completely separate from the friendly forest between Lirael’s house and the Wind Canyon. They weren’t supposed to go there, strictly speaking, but nobody ventured into the forest if they could help it, so they were unlikely to be disturbed there.
   Rana dropped her end of the book with a sigh. “Whoof! Too heavy!”
   Lirael dropped her own end with a similar sigh. “I’ll say.”
   Alanis dragged the cover open to the first page. The title, which not even Rana could pronounce, was repeated here, above a picture of a chimera, a beast which was part goat, part dragon, and part lion, and fiercer than all three put together.
   “The chimera is the symbol of illusion,” Rana explained importantly as Alanis turned the page.
   The table of contents now stared up at them. Rana ran her finger down the chapters. “Let’s see. We have effective ways to use illusion, illusional weapons, illusional traps, conjuring beasts…ah, here we are. Disguising oneself or others, page 387.”
   Alanis had just reached for the page when Rana stopped her. “Don’t worry, there’s an easier way to do it.” Rana stared very hard at the book and said, in a loud, clear voice, “Page 387.”
   The book shivered slightly. Then the pages flipped forward at record speed, landing directly on page 387. Alanis was looking flabbergasted again. Rana ignored her and started to read.
   “‘Disguising oneself is a difficult piece of magic…blah blah blah…detail is excruciatingly important… yadda yadda yadda…convincing illusions are very difficult…etc., etc., etc.…ah, now they go into the actual spellcasting.”
   “What do we do?” Lirael asked, her heart speeding up.
   “Wait for me to finish reading,” Rana said absentmindedly. “Pentacle…cups…circle…”
   Rana fell to reading in fierce silence. Alanis and Lirael waited with bated breath.
   Then Rana fell back with a sigh and rubbed her eyes.
   “Can we do it?” Lirael asked eagerly.
   “I don’t know,” Rana said, sounding very tired. “The ingredients we’ll need will be simple enough… you’ve got silver goblets, don’t you, Alanis? And your mother has a sapphire brooch, doesn’t she, Lirael? But the magical power needed will be very hard to come by. We don’t have any Partners to brace us, and we don’t know our elements or even our objects of power.”
   “But there are three of us!” Alanis said excitedly.
   “I know, but even then, this is our first spell. I don’t know how much magical power we’ve got between us.” Rana rubbed her eyes again. “I guess the first thing to do is gather the ingredients.”
   “What about the book?” Lirael asked, staring at the great volume.
   “We’ll have to leave it here,” Rana said. “I can’t see us dragging this thing around, can you?”
   Finding a place to hide it proved to be easier than they had thought. A nearby tree with foliage that drooped all the way to the ground and thick moss around the roots proved to be just the thing. Lirael dragged the book into the moss, where it sunk just out of sight, and drew the hanging branches around the area to offer more secrecy to the book’s hiding place.
   “We’ll need five silver goblets, a sapphire stone, lots of rose petal essence, and some crystal dust,” Rana said as they left the fringes of the forest. “Alanis has silver goblets—I know, I’ve seen them—and I have plenty of rose petal essence. But Lirael’s mom has the only sapphire brooch I know of, and crystal dust won’t come cheap.”
   “How will we get them?” Alanis asked.
   “I think,” Rana said, “that it’s time for a little borrowing without asking.”
   “Sorry?”
   “We’re going to have to steal them both, Alanis,” Lirael said. “But, er…Rana, about the brooch…we are gonna return it, right? Mom will kill me if we don’t.”
   “Of course we’re going to return the brooch,” Rana assured her. “But the dust is going to be difficult. You know the jewel store has magical wards set all around it to stop thieves from getting out with their stuff.”
   “So how are we gonna get it?” Alanis asked.
   “We’ll have to ‘accidentally’ get some on us and just walk out,” Lirael said.
   “We can’t just brush our fingers in the jar,” Rana said. “The wards will catch us. No, we’re going to be crafty about this.”
   “I got it,” Alanis said, a mischievous light dancing in her eyes. “I’ll…”
 
    *  *  *
 
   Rana stood ready at the door. Lirael was examining a box of witch hazel. Alanis wandered closer to the jar of crystal dust.
   Ready…[/i]Lirael thought, watching Alanis’ progress out of the corner of her eye. Three…two…one.[/i]
   Just as Alanis walked beneath the jar, Rana pointed and hissed something.
   The jar began to tip. But then it halted, and slowly shifted back.
   Lirael supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. Telekinesis was easy, even for little girls who had never cast a spell before in their life, but the store was specially warded to prevent exactly what they were trying to do now. However, that didn’t stop Lirael from getting mad. She pointed at the jar. “Move[/i]!” she whisper-cried.
   The jar reversed direction again and tilted towards Alanis. Alanis, realizing something was wrong with their plan, paused and bent down, pretending to tie her shoe.
   Then the charms of the store rebelled. The jar reversed direction yet again and wobbled back into place.
   Lirael and Rana looked at each other, then glared at the jar and pointed. “MOVE!” they whispered fiercely.
   The jar tilted, wobbled, shook, and suddenly flew off the shelf and smashed over Alanis’ head.
   Lirael and Rana screamed. Alanis sneezed and sat down hard as finely powdered crystal blew up in a cloud around her. The small silver-haired girl was abruptly transformed into a crystal snowman, or girl, or whatever.
   “Oh my goodness!” The clerk came running around the counter. Most of the customers ran over as well. “What happened?”
   “She just bent over to tie her shoe, and CRACK!” Lirael cried, torn between triumph at their success and horror that she had just cracked her best friend over the head with a jar of crystal dust.
   “I…should like to go home,” Alanis said, very dizzy but remembering their plan.
   “Oh yes,” the clerk said, unsure whether to deal with the girl or the dust first. “Well…” He clapped his hands and beckoned. Crystal dust rose in a great sparkling cloud and settled into a pile in the clerk’s hands. Then the jar rose up and put itself back together. The clerk poured the dust back into the jar, and the lid clapped back on. The jar drifted back up onto the shelf.
   “Should I walk you home?” the clerk asked anxiously as Alanis wandered dizzily towards the door and almost collided with the front window instead.
   “Thank you, sir, but I think we can do it,” Rana said, grabbing one of Alanis’ arms.
   Lirael took the other, and the three of them turned sideways and went out the door.
 
      *  *  *
 
   Less determined four-year olds than Lirael, Rana, and Alanis might have given up then. However, Alanis had managed to collect quite a stash of crystal dust in her hair, socks, and pockets that the man’s spell hadn’t collected, and Lirael and Rana merely fluttered around her briefly, assuring themselves she was relatively uninjured, before trooping off with untarnished enthusiasm to Lirael’s house to relieve her mother of her brooch.
   They were in luck. After a brief and potentially fatal climb up the gloriant-flower trellis into Lirael’s mother’s room, they could hear her cooking something downstairs. Sweet and savory aromas filled the small room, but little else. The brooch was glittering in plain sight on the vanity table. Rana slipped it into a pocket, and they climbed down again and rushed over to Alanis’ house to borrow the goblets.
   Ten minutes later they were at Rana’s house, filling the goblets carefully with rose petal essence. Rana’s father happened to be home, which was a real stroke of luck. Rana’s father was extremely absentminded and saw nothing wrong with his daughter and her friends filling five cups with a magical ingredient. He might even forget that he let them have it by the next day, as they wouldn’t be bringing it back.
   In fact, the gathering of the ingredients was so easy that, as they were sloshing back towards the woods, trying not to spill too much, they were torn between believing the spell would be just as easy, or that it would be twice as difficult because of the good luck they were having now.
   It would turn out to be the latter.
 
      *  *  *
 
   Once more safely hidden in the edge of the woods, Lirael hauled out Legerdemain and Prestidigitation and Rana again proclaimed, “Page 387.”
   Using a large stick, Lirael drew a somewhat wobbly circle and filled it with a five-pointed star. Alanis moved a goblet brimming with rose petal essence to each point of the pentacle and sprinkled a bit of crystal dust in each cup. Rana drew some very complicated signs around the sapphire brooch, which Lirael had placed carefully—very carefully—in the center of the pentacle. Then Rana stood to the north, Lirael to the southwest, and Alanis to the southeast as Rana recited the incantation inscribed in the book.
   “Omtera sintae iuntukoto. Azaraka aopsi fjasd oais jyfgas koawas youre. Akane orenji kiiro midori aoi murasaki rose rougeu! Yord, kirame ku yume chaili!”
   Magic filled her voice as she called the last three words. “Velas toua kinatai!”
   There was a curious shiver in the air, and all three girls felt a sudden wrench[/i] inside of them. The spell was snatching at something inside of them, something that did not want to come out. It was not ready. But the spell grabbed at it, and fought. Then, with a sickening bloody riiip[/i], the thing came out.
   Lirael was effused in darkness. Rana was dissolving into golden flower petals. Alanis was blowing away. Their magic roared around the clearing. The goblets tipped over and spilled rose petal essence over the pentacle, which burned the ground like acid. The pentacle exploded. The signs around the sapphire brooch were blasted away, and the brooch shattered.
   Lirael could just barely see, through the darkness surrounding her, a dark figure coming closer.
   Amid the golden petals, Rana saw flashes of a white figure coming closer.
   Alanis could feel, rather than see, an invisible figure coming closer.
   Then there was a blinding flash of silver light. The darkness, the flowers, and the wind vanished, and with a whirling, nauseating, flipping spin, Lirael, Rana, and Alanis found themselves in a peaceful glade.
   But they were not alone. Four other figures stood with them.
 

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