Apart from assisting her with show rehearsals, my first week working for Lady Beth consisted of mundane tasks. Picking up dry cleaning, delivering packages, and taking notes. That’s how my summer was spent. I might as well have gotten an actual job. At least then I might have been paid. I stuck through it despite my boredom and irritation. If not for myself, then I guess I did it so BJ could have someone to turn to who was going through the same process. Sure, I wanted the cure, but jumping through hoops to get it was not my style. It wasn’t until week two that we got into actual magic.
It was a Tuesday. Rather than meeting in Beth’s usual office backstage, we gathered in a room on the second floor across from the entrance to the theater’s upper-level seating. It was a larger room but felt like a sort of storage area because of all the random props and junk lying around.
“Before a spell is sold, it goes through a process. The first step is the creation of a new spell. Then, that spell must be tested to ensure its effects are consistent. At the end of the cycle, we do what is called a binding,” Beth said as we stood in the dimly lit room, and I tried to understand the change in scenery.
“A binding?” I asked.
“A binding is when you take a spell and force it to work under a simpler set of words. Doing this means you won’t have to perform an entire ritual or read a page of incantation to perform a spell each time you use it. You’ll simply need the words or phrases you’ve bound it to. The public only knows bound spells. Most people can’t begin to comprehend a full spell, so we sell them what’s essentially a shorthand simple enough a baby could recite it,” she added.
She walked away from me to collect something from a table across the room, and that gave me a moment to take in the sights. There were posters of Matt and Beth on the walls. I deduced that most of the props I saw probably belonged to them from back in their days of working directly together. Beth looked so young in person, about as young as those posters made her appear. It was suspicious when I considered how old she must have been. Beth spent 15 years working as an assistant to Matt. It was admirable seeing her at a point in her life and career that allowed her to have her own assistant. That being said, she could have done better than me, a person who didn’t have an interest in being there in the first place.
“Today, you’ll create a new spell,” she said.
“So no dry cleaning,” I joked.
“Depends on how quickly you catch on.”
“What do I have to do?” I asked as she walked back to me.
“Before we start, I have a gift for you,” she said, handing me a small box.
It was odd receiving a gift from someone I didn’t feel I had a personal relationship with. The way Beth treated me was, at times, annoying, but I always thought she was a professional just doing her job. A gift felt like more than a gift.
“Every magician needs protective gear to assure we don’t hurt ourselves. My dress acts as my protective gear. Matt has his top hat. I thought these would look nice on you,” she added.
I opened the small silk box. On the inside was a pair of fingerless black leather gloves. They looked expensive.
“They won’t stop spells cast by another person, and they won’t stop the spells that you purposely cast on yourself, but they will keep you from blowing up accidentally,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said as I put on the gloves.
They seemed to be a perfect fit. I’m sure they resized to fit my hands exactly. The leather felt natural, like I’d always known it to be part of my hands.
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“Today, you’ll be required to perform a new spell capable of fulfilling a single task,” Beth said as she took a step away from me.
I didn’t think anything about the small motion.
“What kind of task?” I asked.
“It’s very simple,” she said with a grin before continuing to say, “get out of this room.”
“What?” I asked, confused until she disappeared.
“You’re screwing with me, right?” I spoke to myself, believing she could still hear my voice.
I walked over to the door and found that it couldn’t be opened regardless of my standing on the side with access to the lock. I banged on the door for a moment, annoyed more than anything.
I was curious about her decision to meet in a different room than usual. Had I been stuck in her office, the first thing I might have looked for would have been the cure.
All I had were the things in my backpack to assist my escape. Unfortunately, I lacked a sledgehammer or ax, but I had my notebook. With notes on how to go about crafting spells, I seemed to have two choices. Wait to be let out or use magic.
Every spell needed four things in order to work:
- An old source of power to be called on to fuel the spell.
- An activation word to direct a spell toward a specific effect, which was basically any adjective that made sense.
- The actual command, which was typically the hardest part of a spell, spanning anywhere from a few words to several long pages of strictly thought out semantics.
- And finally, for most spells to come together and have any power at all, they had to be written on enchanted paper. Without holding or touching the written form of a spell in some way, saying it aloud would do nothing. Even though there were exceptions and slightly different rules for handicap spells that I hadn't learned yet, I knew they had to be written and touched to work too.
I was hesitant. I helped BJ with her original spells all the time, but the last spell I wrote on my own made me a rabbit. After almost an hour of waiting to be released, I realized I had to free myself or remain trapped, for God only knew how long. I could hear through the walls. Beth was starting a rehearsal for her show without me. On the one hand, I was glad to miss out on playing assistant, but on the other, it meant she wasn’t about to save me. With no books to help me either, I had to work that much harder.
I had to find something old to use as the power in my spell. A few things came to mind, like the high school or my dad’s car, but I settled on the Dead Woods. It was definitely old enough. Activation words were easy to come up with. Simple words like ignite, run, freeze, or blow usually worked, and the more dynamic the word, the stronger the effect. Though finding the right activation word could be tricky, the hard part was the command.
In the end, I came up with “Dead Wood, ignite, burn solid wood.”
Despite its affordability, I had only a few sheets of enchanted paper in my bag at the time. If my spell didn’t work, I’d have to try another. A single sheet of enchanted paper could only hold a single spell. With four sheets available, I lacked the luxury of making too many mistakes. Most original spells had page long command sections, so I didn’t feel confident about the command in my first attempt being shorter than five words. I figured the best approach was to keep things simple and avoid overthinking the problem.
Either way, I had to start somewhere. I had to try something. My hope was for the door to burn down after reciting the words. At its best, my initial attempt succeeded in increasing the room's temperature. I was still trapped, even though it felt like a fireplace was on full blast.
I tried a different spell, “Dead Woods, blow, destroy walls of barrier.”
My goal was for a powerful wind to bring down the walls. What I got were strong winds that levitated my body off the floor. Admittedly, it was cool. I had unintentionally invented a flying spell, but got stuck without a way to land. Once the wind died down, I fell from the ceiling and face planted on the dusty wood floor.
Semantics was something I absolutely hated, and because of that, magic had no love for me. Nevertheless, I had only two attempts remaining. My third try was a dud. Putting words together on enchanted paper couldn’t guarantee something would happen. Regardless of its effectiveness, I wasted another sheet of paper, leaving me with one final opportunity.
Clearly, my “keep it simple” approach wasn’t working. If I wanted a spell to actually free myself, I’d need to craft something more specific and detailed. I spent a few hours writing out the most carefully worded full-page command I could think of. I put the effort in, but I was doubtful as to what all I’d get out.
I said the words with my eyes closed, too afraid to look at the results until I heard a sound that begged me to watch. The wood floor began to crumble, and as I stood at its center, I felt my weight becoming too much for it to bear. I held my breath, trying to stay light on my feet. Like sand, the wood panels fell away, and I, along with a room full of props, fell just the same. I fell from the second floor down into the first-floor seats of the main theater. It wasn’t the worst fall I’d ever taken, but the sound I made when the seats finally broke my fall was memorable enough. Standing up, I noticed Beth looking my way, utterly speechless.