Page 11 of Spelling Disaster

Why don’t they see me drowning?

The others press closer in a ring around me, their bodies blocking my vision. There are too many hands. Too many cloaks to see past. The one over me is stifling and hot even with the crisp chill of this early October day.

I can’t breathe.

“Mom, the vision,” I try to call out, willing her to hear me no matter where she is now.

The ticking is loud enough that I feel like I’m screaming to be heard.

“In my vision I saw a bonfire, and a horned god. There were people dancing and I’ve never seen the book before!” I rush to get it out, hoping and praying someone will understand and stop this.

A sense of foreboding hits me hard enough to make me choke.

The sound of the beating heart is louder, closer.

Is it my fear? Is it nerves? Is it selfishness because I really don’t want to give up my magic? Or is it the damn book, thrumming from within the library’s walls and unconfined by logic or physics?

“Focus on the ceremony. You’re supposed to be here, Yasmine. There is nothing to worry about.” Mom’s voice comes through, strange and dreamy. The tone is completely unlike her. “This is your destiny! Only you can ascend.”

“Only you,” the coven repeats in perfectly ordered unison.

“Things are going as planned.” And she’s still ignoring me and insisting things are fine. “Stop worrying. You will not ruin this ascension,” Mom continues.

The tone sounds like her a bit more, though, always chastising me.

I jerk to the right, hearing her like she’s next to my ear, only she’s not there. She’s nowhere and when I break away from the hands holding me, they reach, grab, tighten and hold.

I shake my head and dig my heels into the ground. The person behind me practically shoves me toward the man waiting in the center of the clearing. Our High Priest, Eli.

He nods reassuringly at me while the members of the coven take a step in the opposite direction. A sweet faced, round cheeked man in his mid-fifties, he came to our coven over a decade ago to take the place of our last high priest. He and Lark aren’t a couple in any romantic sense, although they embody the archetypal divine masculine and feminine.

“Welcome, Yasmine,” he says.

The coven circles and begins to chant low under their breath, words of welcome to lay the foundation for the ceremony.

“This isn’t right. Something happened to me in the library. I don’t want to do this,” I tell Eli. My chest tightens to the point of pain and my stomach drops between my feet. I turn to whoever will listen at this point.

The witch to my right has her eyes closed, lost to her chant, the Latin syllables flowing freely. The fog remains trapped around the outside of the sacred circle, flickering like gray flame.

“Please,” I sob. “Please. We have to stop. This isn’t right!”

Between the ticking beat and their chant, timed perfectly with the rhythm, I’m going out of my mind. My head aches.

I grab my ears, knees shaking hard enough to send me teetering sideways. They don’t hear my warning, no one does. Something is coming and they’re too caught up in their chanting frenzy to listen.

They seriously have to stop.

My lungs seize, throat swelling until I’m struggling for air.

“This is how it’s meant to be, Yas,” Mom continues. “It’s your birthday. You will ascend.”

Like it being my birthday makes any kind of difference. No one will listen to me even though we’re all going to be affected. I know it, just as I know the heartbeat is a countdown to whatever bad thing is about to crash down on our heads.

We’re all waiting to be driven under and accept our fate blindly.

Eli holds his hands out on either side of my head as Lark steps around to my side with her hands on my shoulders.

“We welcome the chosen,” the two of them chant.

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