Chapter 4
Hazel looked again from the book, down to the chalk drawn symbol on the floor of the attic room. This was the space where she always felt the most powerful, had in fact been the very spot where she had conjured the flame that accidentally caught the front lawn on fire.
Her pulse was pounding in her ears, from nervousness or excitement she couldn’t tell as she stepped inside the symbol, lining her body up just as the spell demanded. Facing east, feet bare, on either side of the middle symbol, another one of those strange animals that she supposed represented her inner power. She sent out a quick prayer that this would work before kneeling down, grabbing the box of matches, and lighting the purposefully placed candles surrounding her.
She supposed in the days when this spell was written the witch would just conjure the candles alight, but that was far beyond what Hazel could do now. But hopefully not when the spell was over. A spike of fear shot through her as she hefted the heavy book again, but she pushed it down mercilessly. If it was something her grandmother was working on, it wouldn’t be dangerous or harmful. Mira only explored light magic, good magic. Never dark.
Hazel stared out the giant round window that eclipsed the east side of the room, the side she was facing, transfixed by the moon that hung fat and low in the velvet night South Dakota sky, the stars twinkling merrily in the dark. She let one last, fraught moment slide by before turning once more to the words on the page in front of her.
“Invenire lux mea est. Tolle lux mea est.” The unfamiliar words rolled off her tongue awkwardly but as she said them aloud, something happened. It was if she could all of a sudden understand their meaning perfectly, and it echoed loudly through her mind. Find my light. Take my light.
“Tenebris quaerant animan meam, invenient nox illuminatio mea.” Seek my dark, find my night.
“Lunam et stellas gulgebunt occulto. Quarens absconditorum es cognitor, potestatem ultro.” moon and stars shine brightly, hidden. Seeking secrets, power unbidden.
The last of the words swept out into the night, sending the candle flames flickering wildly, dancing to some unheard beat. There was just one more line scrawled at the bottom of the page, as if someone had added it as an afterthought, and she hastily spoke the words, willing with all her might that it would work, that it would truly unlock her most secret powers.
She had barely finished speaking when a bright flash of light filled the room and a deafening clap like thunder had her ears ringing and her hands going up to cover them despite her best efforts to stay in place.
The light grows and grows instead of dissipating and a warmth is coming from it that soon becomes a heat so intense she tries to back away from it only to find herself locked in place. She couldn’t move her feet at all, and from where she was, all she could do was watch wide eyed as the light swirled faster and faster, streaks of red and green and gold and black, the deepest black she had ever seen, all mashed together so that she couldn’t tell one from the other.
Hazel tried to scream, she tried to run away, anything at all to get away from the mass that continued to grow and solidify in front of her, but she couldn’t do either. She couldn’t move, or even speak as the air was sucked out of the room, trapped by the swirling vortex, like a multi colored tornado now in the middle of her attic.
Her panicked thoughts flitted wildly around her head, but she had no answer for what was happening, she had never seen or heard of anything like it, and it definitely didn’t feel as if her own powers had been released. She felt the same as she always did, albeit terrified.
Her violet colored eyes widened even more as shapes begin to emerge, filling the entire space with odd shadows cast at wrong angles as they seemed to step out of the still spinning light. A sound echoed loudly like a train heading straight towards her but then it morphs into what could almost have been the cry of an animal, wounded and scared. The most dangerous kind.
Fear once again floods her as she realizes that she still can’t breathe, the oxygen levels depleted by whatever strange occurrence she had caused with the spell. That’s just perfect, she thought to herself, surprisingly calm all of a sudden, I try to unlock my powers and I end up killing myself.