"Do we have the ingredients?" a strong woman's voice cut across the cold night air. Jennie Larsen wore a thin cotton housedress, but did not shiver.
"One lock of hair from a troubled child. Scalp-flakes from a man who thinks his wife a demon. Sweat from a virgin in the grips of a nightmare. All these things are present, to be mixed together by fire and song. It is a good and auspicious eve." came the reply, a young, wavering, but eager voice.
"Yes, indeed, but what of the blood?" The voice was tense, controlled. Jennie's hair was done in braids of iron-grey that swung as she paced. She was handsome rather than beautiful, bold rather than demure.
"I hoped it would not be necessary." A tender-hearted child's voice, dripping with this world and its sympathies. Her name was Laura.
"Perhaps I overestimated your abilities, child. Or perhaps you do not understand the implications of what we are attempting to do. The tide has turned, and Strangeness is returning to the world."
"I know this, my mistress. I have seen the signs."
"Tell me again what you have seen."
"But I have already told you many times!"
"It is important that you have them in your bones and blood, not just in your mind. They are as much a part of the spell as sweat or hair or even power itself."
"All right," The girl cast her eyes heavenward and recited:
First, a wind that blows without disturbing dry leaves.
Second, a communion of owls, who are normally solitary birds.
Third and finally, senses that sharpen as the moon edges toward fullness.
"And the moon is full now. Tell me of your insight." The older woman was expressionless.
"There is no way but blood," Laura let the harshness of this realization wash over her in a caustic wave. She was not human, she had to stop pretending to be human.
"Correct. And with blood you will return in one month's time."
************
Jennie Larsen is not a witch. However, she knows about herbs and flowers and medicines, as well as how to read the expressions of the moon and smell bits of the future in the breath of the wind. Jennie is never wrong about the weather, but the farmers are reluctant to listen to her, thinking she has the Devil's knowledge. "Let them suffer, then," Jennie always says. She is not cruel, merely fed up with superstition and those who carry fear without understanding why.
Jennie's vision is not like yours or mine. When she looks at a horse, she sees not only the proud head and velvety fur, but all the muscles, organs, and fluids within. She can look at a person and tell him of the disease in his lungs, because she can see his lungs as clearly as she sees his nose.
Jennie sees that the world is ill. There is something happening to its boundaries, those fragile curtains between imagination and reality. People are beginning to dwell in dreams more and more. When the three-year-old down the street has a nightmare, a dark shape goes screaming through the halls borne on shadow wings. This is not supposed to happen. People are dreaming of long-lost friends, only to have those friends show up drenched on their doorstep. Laura was fourteen when the illness took her, and now she is a ghost who eats and drinks and runs like any fourteen-year-old. She is supposed to be dead and silent, yet here she is collecting hair and blood.
The old ways, the magical ways, did not die. They faded into that twilight between fantasy and fact, practiced by a few and wished for by many. The old recipes, the ones that required elements and dried plants and a clear night, fell victim to error. Holy men will tell you that their books are immune to the effects of poor translation, but this is only wishful thinking. Because not everyone who knew the old ways could see like Jennie (though there were a few), the recipes were written down. Spells are older and more robust than anyone's holy book; yet they, still, can be rendered useless by a single mistake whose effects propagate through the years -- until someone comes along with the ability to pull the patterns fresh from nature. To Jennie Larsen, it is painfully obvious that this much sage combined with that much kitten fur can be formed into a pebble-shaped charm you can carry in your pocket that will provide warmth wherever you go.
But why blood, then? And whose blood?
The old ways are neither good nor evil; they are not sentient or moral or kind or cruel. They are a means to an end. They mirror the laws of Laura's realm, the world of ghosts. Blood is required because it is blood...when taken from the living, it retains a measure of life-force that many very powerful spells can benefit from. It is an amplifier, a catalyst of sorts. Jennie Larsen is human, though she is certainly unusual in her abilities. She will use the old ways only in a manner that does not kill. She does not ask for enough blood to drain you dry, just enough to turn the cauldron's bubbling liquid red.
************
Laura handed a small clay jar to Jennie Larsen. It sloshed when she shook it. She removed the lid and saw thick wine-colored liquid inside. "This is very good, child. It ought to be more than enough. Where did you get it?" Jennie seemed relieved.
"I took it from a little boy from the village, when he was playing near the creek. He gave willingly."
"Did he recognize you?" Jennie spoke sharply all of a sudden.
"Yes," Laura stared at her shoes. "He said...he'd dreamed about me. That he knew I was going to ask him for his blood."
"And he was not frightened?"
"He seemed very calm. He said, 'I know you are doing this for a good reason.' A very odd little boy."
"And you did not think this suspicious?"
"I - I suppose I was just relieved at the time."
"Perhaps I should not have trusted a ghost to do a human's work. This is faerie blood!" Jennie spat. She was angry, more so than Laura had ever seen.
Laura burst into tears. "I'm so sorry! I -" she collapsed into racking sobs.
Jennie's rigid face softened. "I am sorry, child. I should not have snapped at you. There might still be a way. The result might not be as stable, but it is better than nothing."
Laura looked up, her face pale and streaked with silver from ghostly tears. "I will do what I can to help."
Jennie drew out a small blade from the folds of her robe, which was a rich shade of cranberry. She cut her own finger at the tip, and let three large drops fall into the clay jar, then mixed the liquid with the blade. "Hold this, please," Jennie handed the jar to Laura. "It is too hot for my flesh."
"It feels cool to me!" Laura's thin white fingers were solid but her spirit's nerves were a twisted, frayed approximation of those she'd borne in life. Steam began to rise out of the little container.
"It is the mixing of the real and the unreal, the human and the fey, that give rise to the energies heating the clay." Jennie's voice was nearly sing-song, held on a rising wind. "If you remember the words I taught you, speak them!"
"The body cools itself with sweat, even when the heat is borne of the mind's fear,"
Jennie put the first ingredient in the cauldron.
"Fair forelock, ignorant of disturbance within the garden."
Laura's voice came strong. Jennie added the bit of child's hair.
"Unclean, you do not trust in love but in the ancient stories!"
Powdery scalp-skin fluttered into the cauldron.
"And in the end, a charm to strengthen all and keep the borders guarded!"
Laura gingerly tipped the little jar of blood over the cauldron's lip, making sure not to spill any on the ground. It hissed and fizzed as it went in.
The two women, one dead and one alive, stood silent for a moment.
"So what happens now?" asked Laura.
"We wait." Jennie sat down heavily on a nearby stump.
************
So was the spell a success? You tell me.
Have you ever experienced something that should not be allowed to exist? Has a shadow from a dream ever followed you out of bed and down the hall?
The barrier works well in daylight hours. Almost too well. We as a species deny the power of magic, yet we cannot see that a spell is no more miraculous than making cookies. Our dreams are mostly intangible when we awaken. The strangeness has been kept at bay, with a single provision thrown in by faerie mischief: there will be leaks. Just to keep us from getting too comfortable.
The Blood Is The Life: A Frightful Halloween Quest
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