BAD SPELLING EXCERPT

 

Chapter 1 - Having a Bad Spell (revised 05/13/08)

Copyright 2008 Marva Dasef

Katya lit the last of the five candles and set it precisely on the final point of the pentagram chalked on the floor.

“Stay right there, Teddy,” she whispered to a little, brown rabbit. “You know the drill.” She put a carrot under his nose, gave him a final pat on the head, then stepped out of the pentagram. He twitched his nose twice and began gnawing on the carrot.

 

Katya checked her spellbook one last time to make sure she had the incantation just right, then put the book down. She completed the spell, “Finitius!” with a dramatic sweep of her arms.

 

Teddy looked up at her with sad, bulging eyes. Katya groaned. The little rabbit had transformed all right . . . sort of. Poor, long-suffering Teddy was now half frog, half rabbit. Green and slimy--that was the good part. The pink nose and long ears--not so good. If she didn’t get this right, she’d be left behind a grade yet again.

Katya flopped down in a chair, staring at her frog-bunny. What had she goofed up this time? The worst were the vowels. Sighing, she opened the spellbook and went over it one more time. Ah, yes, she must have mistaken îgwaz for perßô. She squinted at the runic symbols, trying to discern the difference.

 

The school expected all junior witches to master Transformation of live creatures by the end of the second level. Simple for most, but not for her. She'd never managed to get it right. At sixteen, she should be nearing graduation, not still trying to complete a kiddie spell. All witches finished school at sixteen, no matter how well or poorly they’d done in their classwork. After that, the Elders expected the young spellcasters to apprentice to an adult to learn the finer points of witchcraft. The way she was going, nobody would offer her a job washing dishes, much less an apprenticeship.

Dropping the book on her lap, she grimaced. Runic was a stupid alphabet, she thought for the thousandth time. The glyphs all looked alike to her. Her classmates, however, even her smarty-pants brother, managed just fine. Maybe her brother’s name held some magic. Rune was such a great warlock name. Katya, on the other hand, didn’t sound the slightest bit ‘witchy’.

 

As if the thought had summoned him, her handsome little brother walked through the door.

“I wish you’d just open it like everybody else.” She glared at Rune, who smiled, exposing his longer than average canine teeth. Lately, he’d taken to wearing black jeans and tee-shirts emblazoned with album logos. The one he wore today sported a Finnish album titled Trollhammaren. It looked good with his black hair and dark eyes. Katya thought the outfit much better than the tuxedo and red-lined cape he’d worn for months after seeing an old Bela Lugosi movie.

 

“Hey, Katya, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.”

“Yeah, yeah. But I don’t think you’re so smart to flaunt your evil vampire half,” she said, trying to find some way to tease her talented brother. Lucky for him that his vampire side had magical talents, too. Katya’s all-too-human father, Boris, had no magic at all. A talent for getting lost hunting walruses, then stumbling upon Galdurheim Island accidentally didn’t count.

 

“Come on, Katya. You know vampires aren’t evil; mundanes just don’t get us.”

“Oh, sure. Drinking other people’s blood is all benevolent, right?” Katya rolled her eyes. “Sheesh, give me a break.”
Rune surveyed the pentagram with the frog-rabbit calmly munching the carrot. “Need some help with Teddy?” he asked with a smirk. His smile faded when Katya’s eyes welled with tears.

 

“No! I’ll figure it out. Just . . . just leave me alone.” She turned her attention back to the spellbook, but nothing had changed.

“Sure, Kat, but I came in for a reason.” Rune walked past the pentagram, careful to not step on any of the lines, and headed into the kitchen. He rummaged through the cupboards, then opened the icebox door and, like teenage boys all over the world, stared into it letting the cold air spill into the room.

“Close that. You’re making the room cold!”

“I will when I find what I want.” He reached into the icebox. Katya saw his arm extending, and extending.

 

She mumbled, “Showoff.” The icebox didn’t have a back. It opened into the glacier looming over the Wiccan village.

Galdurheim Village, protected by permanent glamours, basked in eternal spring, with seasons discernible only by slight variations in temperature. The island, not much more than a frozen chunk of glacier, stuck out of the Barents Sea. Only two small areas of bare ground stuck out of the ice, and the walrus harems that made Galdurheim home crowded both.

 

Katya shook her head to clear her thoughts, then went over the transformation spell again. She walked around the pentagram, enunciating each word carefully. When she returned to the first point, she delivered the final line of the spell with a flourish, confident that, this time, she must have it right.

Her brother’s guffaws echoed off the walls through the thick green smoke now filling the room. Glancing through the green haze, she saw Rune casting a spell one-handed to banish the smoke, while he chewed on a sandwich held in the other. Damn him! Spelling was so easy for him and so hard for her. It just wasn’t fair.

 

The smoke cleared, and she groaned. Poor Teddy, now nothing more than a slimy, green mess spread out over the room, splashed on the walls, and oozing under her feet. The only recognizable part left of her pet was the twitching nose in the center of the pentagram.

“Oh, no! Teddy . . . I’m so sorry,” she cried.

 

Rune strolled over to her, avoiding the green goo, and patted her on the back. “Now, now. Let brother make it all better.” Without even pronouncing a spell, Rune waved his hands in an intricate pattern. Another puff of smoke and Teddy, his rabbity self again, sat in the center of the pentagram.

“Hey, Katya,” Rune said, “maybe you’d better stick with messing up inanimate things instead of exploding Teddy all over the room.” He took another bite of sandwich.

 

Katya balled her fists and scowled. Through gritted teeth, she murmured, “Thanks, but you know our homework was for live transformations.” She picked up the spellbook and slammed it shut. Stomping over to the fireplace, she plopped on the hearth and grabbed the needlepoint ring from the sewing box.

“Maybe this is all I’m good for,” she said with a snarl, then promptly pricked her finger on the needle. She gasped, jammed her bleeding finger into her pocket and looked up at her brother. Too late. His eyes glowed red; his already long canines now hooked down over his bottom lip, the sharp tips glinting in the firelight.

 

Rune lunged at Katya and she squawked. “Rune! Cut it out! Get a grip!”

Shoving him back with one hand, she jumped up and ran for the door. She felt Rune’s breath on her neck and closed her eyes, waiting for the pain of his fangs biting into her skin. Instead, she felt a hard breeze blow through the now open door.

 

Rune’s hot breath was gone. She opened her eyes to see Aunt Thordis standing in the doorway, hands on hips, glowering at her. The older witch’s glance went to the hearth where the sewing kit stood open.

“Can’t you even sew without causing trouble, young lady?” her aunt said. “You’ll be the death of me yet.” Thordis, the head witch of Galdurheim, was dressed in the traditional Fifteenth Century garb she wore to preside over the Witches’ Council. When she removed her black cape and tossed it away, the cloak sped toward the hook next to the door, carefully draping itself to avoid wrinkling.

 

Katya looked over her shoulder to see Rune picking himself up from the floor. He gave her a sheepish grin, his teeth and eyes returning to normal. At least, normal for him.

“It wasn’t my fault, Aunt Thordis! Why blame me when Rune can’t control his vampire side?”

 

“You pricked your own finger, I presume?”

Katya hung her head, knowing she was not going to win this argument.

 

“Yeah. Whatever,” Katya mumbled, and slumped back to the hearth. She picked a rag out of the sewing kit and wiped the last bit of blood from her finger. It wasn’t even a lot of blood, but that didn’t matter. A single red corpuscle was enough to trigger Rune’s vampire side. True, he never bit very hard, but she always had to ask somebody for a healing spell. Besides, his bites hurt, even if he didn’t draw a lot of blood. That was about the only thing that kept Rune from being the perfect warlock.