Page 21 of Witchlore
I hastily flick the page and we watch, captivated, as more words, not spells, spill out across the pages. It’s as if the words are water: they’re soaking through from the spell all the way to the back page and then spreading out in a weird, unsettling revelation.
“It’s a diary section,” Bastian says. “I told you, some grimoires are like journals.”
We flip back through so many different diary entries to where it starts and I read the first entry.
December 31, 1878. Today is my seventeenth birthday. Father has given me the care of the family grimoire. I have decided to use this book to mark my most important moments, to tell the tale of my shifts…
“They were a shapeshifter!” I say. There’s something about the handwriting that’s appealing to me. “You were right!”
I look at Bastian’s face and it is split in a wide, enthusiastic smile.
“No, you were right,” he says. “Now let’s look at this spell properly.”
He flicks back to the resurrection spell page, the tiny writing formed out of blood. Bastian reaches underneath the coffee table to the shelf covered in magazines and pulls out a magnifying glass. I wonder who on earth just has a magnifying glass lying around in their house, like Sherlock Holmes?
“These words are in Latin, I’m pretty sure,” Bastian mutters.
“Okay. Read it.”
“You think I read Latin?” Bastian looks at me in amusement.
“I mean, yeah, you’re rich and cultured and you’re named after a fantasy character—”
“Yeah, and I have access to the internet.” Bastian pulls out his phone. “Let’s look at this.…”
He pulls out a notebook and begins to write things down,muttering to himself as I suck the tip of my finger to get rid of the blood, my tongue full of its metallic taste.
“Okay, I’ve got it.”
He shows me the words he’s written down in his notebook and I read them aloud:
“In Boggart Hole Clough the demon’s name
Kilgrimol bones underneath the waves
Hair of the Black Shuck that stalks holy ground
Earth from the grave of the lost love
Blood of the shifter.
Hand on the stone of the wizard.
“That makes no sense,” I say.
“Yeah, well, maybe my translation isn’t perfect.” Bastian scowls. “Also, it’s an ingredients list, it’s not poetry. This is the secret of the resurrection spell, that it needs tokens and ingredients to work and then”—he points to a tiny fleck of a notation between the fifth and sixth line—“an instruction for the spellcrafting.”
“So the ingredients are…” I squint as I look at it again. “The name of a boggart, a bone from Kilgrimol, hair from the Black Shuck, and dirt from Elizabeth’s grave?”
“And your blood,” Bastian says. “Don’t worry, we only needsomeblood, not all of it. Looking at the equations here, like maybe a pint and a half?”
“A pint and a half?” It’s an astonishing amount of blood for a spell. I learned about this kind of thing in some of my Roman history modules where they used slave blood for spells, but the slaves always died. I look down at my arm and wonder how many pints I have in me. Then I think of the bathroom, of Elizabeth in thecave, and the hair at the back of my neck stands up. I try to push it away but the elation I felt when the blood lock unlocked is rapidly twisting into anxiety.
“The rest is all spellwork, but…”
“Bastian…” He looks up at me as I swallow the taste of my own blood in my mouth. “This isn’t a normal spell, is it?”
“It’s a resurrection spell,” he says slowly. “I mean, what did you expect?”
