Chapter 3: The Book

I settled cross-legged on my bed and set the heavy tome in front of me. It felt different now, perhaps because I knew the locked office had hidden more than dust and ledgers, or perhaps because my mind had already begun to spin. I lifted the cover.

Handwriting filled the first page to its edges, crowding the margins. No contents, no author, no hint of where it came from. I turned several leaves at once. The entries leapt from topic to topic without warning. Some were in plain English. Others twisted through syllables I had never heard spoken. Diagrams broke up the text: perfect circles, sharp polygons, curling glyphs, and the occasional clumsy sketch of an herb, a beast, a constellation.

I stopped at a page chosen by chance. At the top, in larger script, was a heading: Banishing a Wart. A short laugh escaped me. “That’s it?” The recipe called for dried herbs steeped into tea, a chant, and a careful sip at dusk. It felt absurd, almost childish. I turned on.

The next title read To Make an Enemy Stupid. I scanned the opening lines and slowed. Lunar phases, knots tied in strict sequence, foreign syllables. I flipped faster. Protection, sickness, dreams, storms, fortune, desire, calamity. Every human worry seemed to have its own page. One leaf promised to find lost belongings. Another claimed to silence nightmares. A third offered a way of speaking with the dead. I read that one twice, my stomach tightening, before dismissing it. Grandmother had collected old folklore. Nothing more.

Yet the pages refused to feel like simple superstition. Some looked centuries older than others. Notes crowded the margins in several different hands. Certain spells had been struck through, others amended in fresher ink. Now and then a stray sentence surfaced that belonged to no spell at all. Warnings, not instructions.

On another page, A Spell to Draw Desyre caught my eye. Common kitchen herbs formed the base, but the directions soon veered into candle placement, spoken phrases, and a sequence of precise gestures. Across the bottom margin, in darker, newer ink, someone had added: Do not perform unless thy husband is present. He is a necessary anchor for the magicks.