“Let’s check,” I said. I walked over to the desk to put the book down, stepping over the dagger. I flipped through it. One page with an image dominating half of it. A symbol was outlined, with arrows suggesting directions for drawing it. A spiral, drawn from the outside in, then a triangle, with one point at the center, all as one motion.
“First workings?”
I heard her flipping through pages as well. “Yeah.”
“Shamanism, movement,” I said.
“You have to spill blood,” she said.
I bent down to get the dagger, hesitated, and then cut the tip of my middle finger.
“Jesus, Blake.”
I drew out the sign on a cup that was being used to hold pens and pencils.
When I looked, I could see the motes floating around and through it.
I gestured, a flick of my hand, and they reacted. The cup jerked about two inches and crashed to the floor.
When I walked back to the mirror, I saw Rose there.
She gestured, and the book she’d chosen didn’t budge.
“Try something smaller?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, quiet, “because it’s not blood. I’m not offering anything worth taking, and there aren’t any spirits here to listen and obey, are there?”
“There are other options, maybe?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, again. “I don’t care anymore.”
“Careful what you say,” I said. “Our word is binding.”
Her voice sounded like it was on the brink of breaking with emotion. “Good night if I don’t run into you before you go to bed. I’m going to take a bit to myself.”
I wanted to say something to console her, but I wasn’t sure what.
“Rose,” I said, but she was already gone. I turned the mirror, following her, and she startled a little, almost stumbling as she nearly walked into a wall.
“What?” She asked, clearly annoyed.
“I’m going to check on the barber again, if that’s okay? I won’t say or do anything. I just think it’s good to check.”
She nodded, mute.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I know you are,” she responded. She smiled back, a tight, joyless expression. “You can’t exactly lie now, can you?”
With that, she stepped out of my field of view.
I shucked off everything, as I’d done before, and opened the door to the tower. This time, I looked, using the sight, keeping my eyes trained on the floor, using only peripheral vision to take in the circle.
It was still empty.
I felt a quavering in my stomach, a kind of fear. He’d seemed so vague, in the books, but now that vague thing, capable of inflicting unspecified horrors on me, it was free?
I stood there, eyes on the floor, thinking.
When he appeared, it was so sudden I very nearly looked out of instinct.
He was crawling out of the shears. Out of the reflective surface, and into the middle of the circle.
A brown-skinned man, his pale hair scraggly and long, inconsistent here and there, more baldness than hair. He was old, wizened, with a potbelly, and spots all over his skin.
I couldn’t get more specific details without looking at him, and I wasn’t about to look.
An old Middle-Eastern or Indian man, malnourished to the point that his stomach was swelling.
He bent down, hauling the shears out of the ground. I could see the painted circle the shears had penetrated disappear, as if it were only a coincidental light effect the shears had cast.
He sat down, his back to me, bony rear end on the hard floor, and then plunged the shears into his leg, like a gardener might stick a shovel in the dirt so it would stay upright for when he needed it.
Barbatorem leaned over, resting one narrow arm in the space between the two arms of the shears, forcing them open and gouging his leg open wider. A foul stench filled the room.
He wasn’t acknowledging me.
Which I was fine with. I eased the door shut, eyes still fixed on the floor.
There was a council meeting to prepare for.
1.x (Pages 1)
February 6th, 1931
These words are my own for me alone and nothing I write here is meant to be binding.
Dear Diary
I am supposed to start with dear diary but daddy is very strict about what I say and how. Daddy said writing this diary would teach me to write better and that is very important but I have to write that at the top of every new part. Daddy said he would never read my diary but if I did not write that part at the top for every new part then he would whup me. I asked how he would know if he never read it and he said he would just know. I believe him.
I was very very very careful when I asked daddy if it would be a bad whupping or a regular whupping and he asked me if I remembered when I got whupped and peed pink. I said yes I did and daddy got a really mean and angry look on his face and said the whupping I got this time would be worse if I did not remember to write that every time. Then he said he was not sure if it would work and I should tell no lies even when I write things down.