6. Library
After the unsuccessful spell, Electra, Cassandra, and Medea were trying to understand what went wrong and what they had evoked the night before. In the morning, everything seemed a bad dream, but the girls knew it hadn’t been a dream, not even a nightmare. They had done something, and to be more precise, had done something wrong.
While the girls were making breakfast, their cousin Jack, who had once again spent the night outside, returned home. When Uncle Colin came downstairs, Jack was silently eating gruel.
“We need to talk,” he told his son.
Jack gave a nod. Medea put a piece of pie on a plate and passed it to her uncle.
“Thank you, my dear. Girls, did you sleep well last night?”
They exchanged glances. Electra quickly pulled herself together. “Yes, Uncle, we slept well.”
Uncle Colin took a sip of tea. “Did you hear anything?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything.” Medea tried to speak as calmly as she could. “I slept like a log, like a corpse.”
Fearing that her sister would overact, Cassandra stepped on her foot. “Uncle, Aunt will return tomorrow, right?”
“Ah, yes, I received a letter this morning. Andromeda will linger on her trip for several days.”
All four glanced at Colin, waiting for an explanation.
“She’s writing that she doesn’t know when she will return. Maybe in a week.”
“A week?” Cassandra was hoping their aunt would return and help them, as she could stop almost any spell.
“Yes, Cassie, a week,” Electra said, “only a week.”
Cassandra understood her; they had a week to find out themselves what they had done and stop the peril, if there was any.
None of them said another word. They hardly ate anything, as if a lump was stuck in their throats.
Having finished his breakfast, Colin told Jack to come to the study for a talk, and left the room. After he was gone, the girls started talking again.
“And where were you?” Medea asked Jack. “Did you sleep in the woods?”
“Maybe. Is there a difference?”
“Yes,” Electra said, “it was raining yesterday; you couldn’t have slept in the forest.”
“And so what?”
“Wherever you spent the night, Jack, tell me, did you see anything?” asked Cassandra. “Anything strange?”
Jack shrugged. “No, I guess. And what was I supposed to see?”
“Nothing,” Medea said. “Nothing interesting. Finish eating. Uncle is waiting for you.”
Jack grinned. “You want to send me out? Something is happening here, right?”
With clear grey eyes he slowly looked over his cousins, waiting for an answer and not receiving one.
“I see you’re not very happy to see me today,” he said jokingly. “I’ll go to the guillotine.”
“Huh, as if it was me yelling at the top of my voice yesterday.”
Walking behind Cassandra, Jack bowed down and kissed her brow. “But I wasn’t yelling at you,” he said tenderly, and added, “I’ll go to talk to Dad. Don’t plan anything; in an hour or two we’re going to the woods for a hunt.”
“Quickly, to the library,” Electra commanded as soon as Jack left.
All three ran upstairs to the second floor.
The library was huge; one had to make an effort to find the necessary book. High shelves reached the ceiling and covered the two opposite walls of the hall. Rotating globes were perched on the parquet floor, representing different ages and places. Between them stood tables with sand clocks, inkwells, and notepads. Before the single high window stood a large telescope, aimed at the sky.
The girls ran to the shelves, looking for books that might shed light on what had happened. Medea began searching the lower shelves, Cassandra—the upper ones, and Electra went up to the glass bookcase filled with old manuscripts. They searched for about half an hour, but the searches gave no results. There were too many books, and finding something helpful was a hard task. So far, no book provided answers; none of them explained the presence of an intruder during the conjuration.
“Curse and Disease?” Medea asked.
“No, it’s not that,” Electra said.
“Curse and Misfortune?”
“No, Medea, keep searching.”
“Curse and Death?”
“Bite your tongue! It wasn’t a curse, you said yourself there was no curse. Find something else.”
“False Spells!” Cassandra read aloud.
Electra and Medea looked up at her.
“Hurry up, open it and read the first paragraph.”
Standing on the top of the ladder and trying to keep her balance, Cassandra pulled out the book with a red leather cover and opened it. “The title: False Spells. The year: 1793, the authors: Amelia Sfiks, Hertrude Sfiks.”
“Cassie, go ahead, why do we need the authors?” Electra said impatiently.
Cassandra thumbed through the prologue. “I am reading. Listen up! ‘The spells are false when the one who casts the spell does not apply it, but makes it seem that the spell was cast, and as a result the one the spell was allegedly used for, feels the whole impact of the spell.’ Thus, you’re saying that he will be ill, but don’t do anything with him, and he still gets ill,” she explained.
“Autosuggestion,” said Medea. “It’s not what we need.”
“It’s not,” Electra agreed.
Cassandra put the book back. “Spirits of Earth, Spirits of Light, Spirits of Water, do we need anything of this?”
“No, keep searching.”
Cassandra moved deeper into the library. “Tabula, Tides, Touch, Tracks... No, we can’t find anything this way; we just don’t know what we are looking for! We can’t find the counter measure unless we understand what it was: a vision, a spirit, or something else.”
Medea was thumbing through the twentieth book of spells, but couldn’t find anything useful either. Electra was carefully taking the old manuscripts out of the bookcase, reading their titles and as carefully putting them back. They shouldn’t leave marks on the manuscripts, as it was forbidden to touch them. Some of the manuscripts were so fragile that a careless touch could irreversibly damage them. Uncle Colin had recently started rewriting them, but there were many manuscripts, and rewriting was taking a long time.
The oldest manuscripts were locked in flat glass frames. This was Uncle Colin’s precaution, so that no one would accidentally spoil them. Electra was picking up the frames and reading the notes on the top of the glass. One of the titles especially interested her.
“Wrong Spells.” She looked at her sisters. “I think this might help.”
“Open it, what are you waiting for?”
“It is locked.”
“The lock needs a key,” said Medea.
“Only Aunt has the key,” added Cassandra.
All three sighed and looked at each other.
“And what shall we do? Any ideas?”
“I don’t know, Cassie.” Medea went up to Electra, took the frame from her hands, turned it, and touched the lock. “Shall we break it?”
“Break Uncle’s lock? He’ll notice.”
“We need to find a way to open the frame.” Medea drew her fingers across the flat metal lock in the form of petals.
“Hey, loonies, where are you?”
“That’s Jack,” Medea cried. “Put everything back in its place.”
They quickly put the books back on the shelves. Electra closed the bookcase while Cassandra descended the ladder. When Jack opened the door, all three were standing around a large globe, ostensibly looking at it.
“Going to travel?”
“Perhaps,” said Electra.
“You better tell us, did Uncle have a good talk with you?” Medea asked.
“Couldn’t be better. Don't you want to have a walk in the woods?”
The girls were not in the mood, but they didn’t want to turn down their cousin's offer and have him suspect something. ‘Walki
ng through the woods’ meant hunting nasty forest creatures and practicing archery. The girls went to their room to dress up. In the stable, each saddled their horse, and all four rode to the forest. Their two friends, Hector and Ariadne, were already waiting for them, armed, each on their horse. They all had crossbows and arrows on their backs. After talking briefly about the tactics and safety, six riders rode into the forest for a hunt.
7. Trouble
In the afternoon, the three witches were pulling weeds in the orchard when blacksmith Shay MacGavin, their friend Hector’s father, came to the fence.
“Colin!” he called.
Cassandra raised her head. “Uncle Shay, Uncle Colin is inside.”
“Please call him, Cassie.”
Cassandra hurried into the house; her sisters stopped working and looked at the blacksmith. He seemed worried. A minute later, Uncle Colin and Cassandra came out.
“Shay, why don’t you come in?”
“Colin, I need your help. Something has happened...”
Shay MacGavin switched to a whisper, and Electra and Medea didn’t hear the rest, but Cassandra, standing close to the fence, tried not to miss a word. Uncle Colin turned to his nieces.
“Girls, I have to go with Shay. Jack, look after your sisters,” he told his son, who came out of the stable. “I might not be back until evening.”
“Has anything happened?” Jack asked.
“I hope not,” Colin muttered under his breath, and hastened in the direction of the river.
Left alone, the girls exchanged glances. Electra knew that Cassandra had heard something, but she couldn’t speak in Jack’s presence. Without another word, they went back to work, waiting until Jack returned to the stable.
“Cass, did you hear what he said?”
“Something,” Cassandra whispered, “has happened to Mr. Acks.”
“The woodcutter?” Medea asked.
“Do you know another Mr. Acks?”
“So, what has happened to him?”
“Uncle Shay said he has disappeared. His team of woodcutters went to his house this morning and didn’t find him at home. They questioned everyone nearby, but he’s gone. He said something about an extinguished lamp they had found in the forest.”
“Mysterious Forest? He wouldn’t go there at night.”
“I think so too, but then, where is he?”
“Do you think,” Electra said after a brief pause, “it may be connected with…”
“I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “What if?”
“All because we are very slow in finding what we need.”
“Medea, we have been searching through the shelves for hours and still have found nothing, but not because we are searching slowly, but because there are too many books, and the necessary one is hiding very well. The only thing that might be of help is locked up.”
“Then we must find a way to open it.”
“We should go to the town and find out what has happened,” Electra said. “Poor Mr. Acks. I hope he’s alright.”
“What about Jack? Uncle told him to keep an eye on us. He won’t go away, not even for a moment,” Cassandra said.
“We’ll have to take him with us. Maybe tell him we want to go to the market. It’s noon, the place is crowded. Everyone is chattering, so we might learn something.”
“The best place for the news is not the market, but the post office.”
“Right!” Medea cried. “Old Prizzi has probably started her broadcast. If you want to find out anything, then she’s the best way.”
“I’ll ask Jack to take us to the post office.” Electra went to the stable. Jack didn’t want to leave the house, but after some persuasion, he agreed to take his cousins to the post office once he finished feeding the horses. If his father told him to look after the girls, he meant that Jack should be near them all the time.
They rode in the carriage. Jack was sitting in the front with the reins in his hands and keeping silent, while the girls sat behind him and whispered the whole way. On the road, they saw Mr. Gardiner, who raised his hat in greeting. They met butcher Hobkins and his son, and good-natured Mrs. McKennit passed nearby. Women with children walked before them. Noticing the carriage and its passengers, they hurriedly crossed the road and looked back for a while. Then one of the sheriff’s officers appeared and, passing by the carriage, spat under its wheels. Jack pressed his lips together to suppress his anger. If not for his parents’ ban, he wouldn’t let the officer get away with it.
When the carriage reached the post office, the weather changed. The recently shining sun disappeared behind grey clouds, and a sudden wind picked up the leaves and dust, whirling them around. Medea closed her eyes and lifted her hand towards the swirl of dust. The wind changed its direction and left their carriage.
“Medea, what are you doing?” Electra reproached her. “Have you forgotten where we are?”
“So what, shall I get blinded by the dust?”
“Don’t do that again, alright?”
“Alright,” she snorted. “You could’ve thanked me.”
“Electra, will you take long?” Jack asked.
“No,” Cassandra said instead of her sister, “we’ll be back soon.”
“Huh, all three of you are waiting for a letter?”
“Letters!” Medea said. “We write a lot.”
They got out of the carriage and headed to the post office. In an arbor not far away, indefatigable Miss Prizzi was chattering with her companions.
When the girls reached the post office, Cassandra went inside so that Jack wouldn’t suspect anything, while Electra and Medea sat on a bench near the arbor and strained their ears to catch anything important. The conversation was the same as three days ago, and again Miss Prizzi was raising her tone of voice when she wanted to prove something.
“We have already discussed this on Wednesday, Teresa. You were not here, and you should not try to convince me of the opposite. The Van Dykes’ wedding day was in June. I remember the date, June 25th, because it is the same day as long-gone Samuel O’Leary’s birthday, and I can never confuse that date, for I was his governess for so many years.”
Miss Prizzi noticed the girls and called them out. Some of her companions frowned, the others muttered something unpleasant.
“Cassandra, my dear child, come over here,” the old woman said.
“I’m Electra, actually.”
“Electra, Cassandra, who cares? Anyway, you look so much alike.” She held out her hand; Electra had to give hers in response.
“How pretty you have become since I saw you last. It has been a while.”
“We met last week.” Medea didn’t miss the chance to mock old Prizzi.
“Is that true?” Miss Prizzi’s eyes widened. “I had totally forgotten about that! How is your aunt, has she returned yet?”
“Not yet.”
“And your uncle, how is he?”
“He’s fine, thank you.” Electra tried to be polite, even though she disliked the old woman.
“Well done by Colin, how quickly he found Acks.” Miss Prizzi turned to her friends. “When I heard that Acks was gone, I said, ‘Call Colin, he’s the only person in the whole town who will find him before trouble occurs.’”
Electra and Medea exchanged glances.
“Miss Prizzi, what happened to the woodcutter?”
“Have you not heard?” Old Prizzi pursed her lips, looked at the girls, then at her companions, and again back at the girls. “He got lost in the woods, vanished without a trace. All that was left of him was the lamp. I said, ‘Colin is the only one who will find him.’ After all, the traces led into the forest, into its depths. Who else would go there if not Colin? Poor man, he was probably tired by the time he found him.”
“Miss Prizzi, where is Mr. Acks now?”
“He was taken home to rest. They say he has lost his mind. Poor Colin. It must have been hard to drag a half-witted Acks through the forest.”
“Why do you call him ha
lf-witted? That’s Mr. Acks, everyone is friends with him!”
“Well, I was not the first to call him that!” The old woman looked at her friends for their support. Her loyal companion Teresa Price championed her instantly.
“Noemia is telling the truth. Everyone who saw him can confirm that he acted like a madman.”
“Yes, yes,” continued Miss Prizzi, “he was talking about his late wife, peace be upon her, whom he had allegedly met in the woods. What is he if not crazy?”
The girls looked at each other again. They had heard enough, and found Noemia Prizzi’s presence too unpleasant to bear it for another minute. Wishing everyone in the arbor a good day, they moved away, ignoring the whispers behind their backs. Electra and Medea entered the post office, where Cassandra was waiting for them. Some minutes later, the three girls returned to the carriage.
“What happened?” Jack asked.
“Nothing,” Medea said coldly. “There were no letters.”