“Fehu. Power, wealth, creativity. Associated with the nature god Freyr. Red. Fire . . .”
Sally stirred awake, leaning back against the rough bark of a tree. Talking in her sleep again, cataloging the runes. It took a few seconds to understand why she couldn’t move her arms. Baron, purring loudly in her lap, was nestled firmly on top of her hands.
Gently, Sally tried pulling her right hand out from beneath her plump kitty, but Baron lazily adjusted his body to follow her movement, as if deliberately trying to keep her hands trapped.
Sally closed her eyes and groaned. “Come on, Barry. I really don’t have time for this.”
She tried yanking her left hand free. Baron pricked his claws through her clothing as a warning.
Sally gritted her teeth. “Baron!”
She forcibly removed the cat from her lap, even though he dug into the flesh of her palms and thighs with his claws and growled a low, yowling complaint as he was dislodged. Baron immediately tried climbing back into her lap. Sally waved a warning finger in his face.
“Nuh-uh. Get over it.
Sally stretched her slender arms over her head, and silently cursed herself—again—for falling asleep during her spell-working. Baron sat next to her, his tail twitching.
Her parents had finally left the house just after 7:30 a.m. Sally had complained to her mother of vague nausea and fatigue to secure yet another sick day from school—her fourth in a row—and privately thanked Odin and his kin when her parents hadn’t insisted on taking her to the doctor. It had been a few days since Sally had last looked in the mirror, but she guessed her appearance was genuinely haggard after so many late nights lighting candles and casting spells.
Minutes after her parents’ departure, Sally packed up her books, candles, rune stones, and rabbit skins and headed for the back yard. Working magick under an open sky, with her altar spread out on the frosted grass instead of the carpet, was a refreshing change after holing up in her bedroom all night. The eight-foot privacy fence prevented the prying eyes of curious neighbors—plus Portland’s crisp, clean air helped keep her energy up for the work remaining.
Instead, she’d fallen asleep beneath the apple tree.
“At least the apple is sacred to Iduna, keeper of the Grove of Immortality,” Sally grumbled to Baron, trying to weave her unintentional nap into the larger cloth of her work. It was a stretch.
“For the love of the gods,” Sally cursed under her breath when she checked her watch. 8:53 a.m. The sting of panic rushed into her chest. Less than four minutes until the next working! Did she have everything assembled? She glanced down at the altar space she’d created beside her on the grass, where polished rune stones lay on the uneven oblong of white rabbit fur in a triangular arrangement from her last spellcasting at 8:02 a.m. exactly.
She breathed a sigh of relief. The triangle of stones Sally had laid out still held their pattern of banishing any malignant energies that might interfere with Odin’s Return. Nothing had been disturbed.
She read over the notes in her Book of Shadows and rubbed the burnt tip of her thumb. The sign of the ox horns would no doubt be visible for years to come, but as far as scars went, the potent rune of generative power and determination wasn’t a bad one.
Following the directions she’d written out in meticulous detail, Sally reached for a pair of white chime candles and planted them in the ground on either side of the rabbit fur. She was about to strike a match when Baron sidled up beside the altar, settled his front paws precariously close to the runes Isa and Teiwaz, and began huffing and hacking as he crouched low over the sacred space.
“Baron!” Sally shrieked as she grabbed the cat and tossed him a few feet away. The cat’s low-hanging belly quivered on his ungainly landing. He turned and sneezed at her.
“Baron, I won’t have you ruining my work! Keep your heretical hairballs to yourself.”
Sally swore the cat scowled at her. She made a face back at him.
Sally lit the two candles and closed her eyes. Her open hands hovered over the runes.
“Father Odin, accept this humble shield and further this protection for such magick and its kin.” She opened one eye and glared at Baron. “And keep grumpy and meddlesome kitties away from my runes.”
Unfazed, the cat settled down on top of Sally’s copy of Stuart Kleinhaber’s Rhythms of the Runes: Modern Magick from Ways of Old, which lay open on the damp grass.
After another time check, Sally grabbed a trio of fresh candles and planted them in a tight triangle to the right of her work space. She lit each in turn—first blue, then green, then white. Then she tapped her right index finger three times on the tiny bit of empty space between them.
Turning her attention to the runes, she poured the unused stones into the middle of the rabbit skin, then pulled the other pieces of polished hematite out of their triangle pattern into the center pile.
Sally reached into a cardboard shoebox by her side and pulled out a bottle of clear liquid. She held it up to the morning light and gently shook its contents.
“Rainwater,” she commented to Baron. “Unfiltered. Collected at the last Full Moon.”
Baron yawned.
Sally uncapped the bottle and poured out the water in a slow, clockwise circle around her furry altar. “Water is life and sustenance. Water allows magick to flow.”
Sally tossed the empty bottle back into the box. “Kind of WD-40 for spell-work, Barry.”
Baron closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
She next pulled out a large pine cone and held it up with reverence. “From the Sitka Spruce. The closest thing I could think of to the legendary World Tree.” She looked up at the clouds overhead, feeling a bit silly and self-conscious that the gods might actually be listening. “Accept this poor substitute for the Yggdrasil, which keeps the Cosmos anchored in existence. Let this pine cone hook my spell into the deepest fabric of reality, touching everything.”
Sally rested the pine cone at the apex of her triangle of runes. Baron perked up when she retrieved a silver-gray feather from the shoebox.
“I call to Odin’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn. Carry my message to the Norse gods—to Odin himself, Frigga, Freya, all the members of the Old Lodge. Tell them the world still needs them.” Sally closed her eyes and held the feather’s base tightly in her right hand. “We need them now more than ever.”
Baron crept forward and batted a paw at the feather.
“Baron!” Sally’s eyes flew open in a scowl. “Not. A. Toy.”
But Baron was mesmerized by the silver feather in her grasp. He couldn’t take his hazel eyes off it. Laughing, Sally waved the feather in the air out of his reach, taunting him. “Technically not from a raven. Pigeon, but I think it will be okay.”
Not able to get anywhere near his intended prey, Baron gave up on the feather and sharpened his claws on the bark of the tree instead. Sally paused to smooth out the feather’s barbs before laying it down in the center of the altar. She double-checked her notes, then consulted her watch.
“Okay, Barry. We’ll let this sit for a few minutes, then pack up and head over to meet Opal.”
The cat lazily glanced at Sally’s altar where the polished hematite rune stones glinted in the sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds. Sally pulled her Book of Shadows into her lap and started paging through her notes. Baron sniffed at the leather-bound journal, then padded across the grass to the rabbit skin. In a single, silent motion, Baron knocked over the pine cone, broke the line of runes and snapped the feather up in his mouth.
Sally gasped aloud. Baron froze.
“Barry!” Sally hissed in a tense squeal. “What are you doing?”
She tried to grab him, but Baron was surprisingly spry for an overweight feline. He sprinted just out of her reach, then spat out the feather as he sat down and started cleaning himself.
“Baron Jaspurr Von Pussington!”
With a labored sigh, the cat stopped his licking and looked up at her. Sally snatched up the feath
er—now soggy with cat saliva and suffering a broken shaft—before the cat could pick it up again. She tried straightening the feather and drying it off on her sleeve, but it was no use.
“For crying out loud, Baron.” She dropped the useless feather into her lap and reached over her altar to prop up the pine cone and repair the line of runes. “We’ll just have to hope your little stunt didn’t cause any permanent damage.”
Baron lay down in the grass and resumed his bath.
“You can’t mess around with this stuff you know.” She picked up the broken feather and turned it between her fingers. “One little mistake and . . . BLAMMO.”