Page 6 of Spelling Disaster

Most of all, I want to know what happens next.

I scour the book page repeatedly and turn to the next to see if there’s anything else written on the subsequent page. There’s nothing except the two paragraphs in the scrawling script.

I close the book slowly and stand there for a long moment breathing, struggling not to freak out.

In all my years, I’ve never seen an ascension ceremony. No one has given me any indication of what to expect, since somehow my birthday will be different from others in the coven. Not like we’re a huge coven, either. Aside from my sister Remi, who’s excluded from coven activities with her lack of magic, there are only two others who are close to my age.

“Come on,” I mutter out loud, flipping back to the right entry in the strange book. “There’s got to be something you can tell me. Something more.”

Right there.

I see a small notation on the bottom right corner of the page.

“If the ascended should wish to keep her light magic,” I say out loud, “she should make an offering to the Horned God. Only he can see the task through.”

The next page has an illustration of the Horned God himself. No, anengraving, of a masked man with large antlers. His features are human underneath the mask but whoever did the engraving made it seem as though the antlers curve right out of his skull. His chest is bare, covered in all sorts of symbols I don’t recognize, and what can only be described as a loincloth covers his lower half.

The lines of his body, the curve of his muscles—the Horned God is all masculinity and feral grace. His shoulders hunch forward slightly as though any second will have him stepping directly out of the page.

I run my finger over the engraving and wince at a sharp flash of pain. The paper cut me! Wincing, I pull back, staring at my index finger and the small hole in the flesh.

A drop of blood wells up from the wound, dropping onto the page, being absorbed as quickly as it appeared.

“Shit.” I stick my finger in my mouth and suck at the wound to keep any more blood from spilling.

Mom has strict rules about sullying the books, her control slipping over so that she expects everyone to keep them in pristine condition. And although I’m not sure where this one came from, if she sees me here, she’ll flip.

Blood is an absolute no-no.

Soon the sting of the wound eases and when I pull my finger from my mouth, the bleeding has stopped.

The air rushes from my lungs and my head tips back on my neck, eyes rolling into my head as a vision sucks me under in my next heartbeat. No time to be afraid. No time to ground myself to understand what’s happening. I’m still gripping the book as I go under and soon even that sensation fades under the rush of the vision.

It unfolds inside my head and I see a dark forest.

The details are crystal clear and the rudeness of the scene, the vividness, scares me. Naked tree limbs reach toward a black sky broken only by the light of the twinkling stars and the outline of the new moon.

I’m not just seeing the forest, I’m inside of it. The pulse of the earth beneath my feet is something tangible, the energy traveling up my legs and nestling somewhere in my core. Night creatures hum and the sky overhead is broken by the flapping of bat wings.

Shapes flicker in and out of reality, slowly solidifying into human men and women dancing around a bonfire. Masks hide the wearers from recognition.

It’s madness.

It’s life and chaos and everything I haven’t been allowed to experience. Fear turns to a ball of lead inside of me, along with another emotion I hardly feel comfortable naming.Desire.

How would it feel to dance with them? To experience such unbridled freedom that it doesn’t matter whether you have clothes on or not? It doesn’t matter what people think of you.

No onewears clothes and their bodies writhe in what I hope is a dance and not some kind of ritual. It’s like no dance I’ve ever seen before though. It’s savage and brutal and intoxicating. They have no mind for anyone else and no heed for what they’re doing outside of their own pleasures.

In the vision, my feet step unerringly toward the bonfire. Its heat and life are a beacon in the darkness as though there’s nothing for me to be afraid of out there.

This forest is mine even though I’ve never been there before.

The monsters are only people out in the open with their breasts and genitals on display. They fling their arms out to their sides and overhead, stomping their bare feet into the moist dirt around the flames.

Full of life, promise.

Magic.

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