Chapter 2
I woke up with the thought that I had either had an unbelievable experience or one heck of a dream. Let’s see.
Lying on the floor. Check.
Hurting all over from being thrown across an alley. Check.
(Holding my breath and crossing my fingers) Girl in my bed. NOT!
What a disappointment. The dream of every adolescent male, at least every intelligent one, to rescue a beautiful young sorceress and have her hide out with you, had just evaporated before my eyes.
Then I heard water running in the bathroom. A dark eyed face poked out of the door. “Do you have an extra toothbrush?” the face asked.
Well, what could I say? “Anything for you,” I said, staring at her.
She looked back at me with serious eyes, and I had the feeling that I had said something much weightier than I had known. “Just a toothbrush, for now,” she said. “Oh, and this,” she added, holding up my cross.
“Uh, sure,” I said. “But why do you need it? Doesn’t it make your magic not work or something?”
“He’s still looking for me. He’s using magic, very powerful magic. I don’t know where he got this much power. Oh, actually I do, now that I think about it. That slimy beast. But while he’s using his spell to look for me I can’t use magic or he’ll find me for sure. And if his magic accidentally touches me, he’ll know unless I have this.”
“Like I said, anything for you. But I guess that means you won’t be able to find your mother.”
“Right. I’ll have to wait. But if he has all this power it might take weeks. Can I stay here that long?”
“On one condition.”
“What?”
“That you tell me your name.” It had occurred to me that I didn’t know it, and I intended to at least take that one thing with me if and when she left.
She looked at me all seriousness again. “My name is Clary. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Clary. OK.”
“I mean, really, don’t tell anyone. That’s my name.”
“You mean magical name?”
“Yes, and if people know it, well, it makes things harder for me.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I said.
“Thank you for helping me.”
I went down stairs to try to find some food. I found a note on the kitchen table from my mother. She had gone to her sister’s for the weekend. There was food in the refrigerator. And I wasn’t allowed to have my school friends over.
I generally liked to figure out a way to obey my mother when it was practical. This case, of course, was trivial. Clary was not a school friend; therefore, she was not under the prohibition. If my mother wanted all my friends to not come over, then she would have to say so. Then I would have to think a bit harder to come up with a reason that I wasn’t disobeying her by letting Clary stay.
There was indeed food in the refrigerator. I was a little worried about having Clary come out of my room–someone could see in the house, or someone might come to the door or something. But I took her down and gave her food and showed her around the house. I showed her places she could hide and ways she could get out of the house inconspicuously. She shook her head and said, “If I need them it will probably be too late anyway.”
I said, “Is there any way I can help you look for your mother?”
Clary shook her head. “I doubt it,” she said. “We know how to hide. If we don’t want to be found, nobody will find us. Except maybe someone who steals blood.”
“What?” I asked in surprise.
“Something I should tell you about magic. It’s all about blood. Most of the time we use animal’s blood, birds or mice or some small creature. But human blood is more powerful, especially when it is freely given. But the strongest blood is the blood of your bound relative that you take by murderous force.”
“So that’s why you called the man chasing us a beast.”
“Yes, he got his power by killing our leader, his foster-father and friend. Or so it seemed. But he wanted to be in control, so he killed him, took his blood, and intended to use it to make himself ruler of all of us.”
“What do you do with the blood? Drink it?”
“No, silly, we aren’t vampires. We use the blood to make spells. Some of the spells can store power, so it’s possible to take blood and use it to increase your own power. We are not supposed to steal blood.”
“But you can’t stop someone who does, and he just takes over.”
Her eyes flashed. “We can stop him. Even a mere human like you stopped him. And he will not ‘take over’.”
The phrase “mere human” stung. It hadn’t occurred to me that there was a gulf like that between us. I realized that when Clary found her mother I would not be necessary.
I didn’t notice her staring at me until she said, “I’m sorry. You’re not a ‘mere human’. You risked your life for me.” She smiled. “You even managed to save me.”
I laughed. “Pure luck.”
“No, not pure. Definitely mixed with a lot of courage and a sufficient quantity of quick thinking.”
“I bet you say that to everyone who can see through your invisibility spell.”
“No, I only say that to people who hide me in their attic.” We both laughed. But I knew that she would be leaving at some point. Then I realized that even if she left, she would have opened up a door to me that previously I had not even known existed. And perhaps if I walked through that door on my own, I might find her somewhere on the other side of it. I began to quote half-aloud:
Though I am old with wandering,
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone….
She looked at me in alarm. “Hush! Don’t say that! I don’t know how you know it, but it is a spell of some power. And to say it now would give us away for sure.”
“A spell? It’s just a poem!”
“No, not ‘just’ a poem. Some poems are spells, and most spells are poems. That one is a spell of strong binding. You don’t know what you ask of yourself when you cast it.”
Somewhat chastened, I decided to avoid the more traditional stuff and stick to modern poetry for a while.
… penguin dust … bring me penguin dust….
She assured me that was not part of any spell she knew.
For the next two weeks I was in a kind of heaven. I went to school but my mind was hardly there. It was back in my room with a dark-eyed, dark-haired sorceress. I walked around floating six inches off the ground. I actually stopped causing trouble in school–I loved everyone because of her. The principal stopped me in the hall and asked me if everything was all right, since he hadn’t seen me for a while. I don’t remember what I told him but I do remember that he got a kind of knowing look on his face and said, “Good luck, Jeremy.”
Of course it had to end. One day when I came home my room was empty. I was disappointed that she hadn’t even waited to say good bye. But then I saw my cross floating in the air, hanging by its gold chain on nothing. “Take this,” a voice said. “But don’t try to see me when you hold it. It messes up the spell.”
Suddenly she was there in front of me.
She told me that she had sensed a sudden release of the searching spell, not a clean, gradual drawing down of its power but a kind of snapping as if its source had just all at once run out of gas. She had then tried to reach her mother. So far, no luck.
“I don’t think I have enough power,” she said.
“Can you get more power?” I asked.
“Well, yes,” she said hesitantly, not looking at my eyes. I knew what she needed.
“You can have my blood,” I said. “But I faint when I get shots.”
“You do? That means something, you know. It means that something goes out when you bleed. I’ll bet your blood is very potent.”
Great, I thought. The one thing I had a hard time with, that was the one thing I was particularly good for. Oh well. I held my hand out and closed my eyes. There was a brief sting and I fainted.
When I woke up a few minutes later, she was talking to someone I couldn’t see. I could hear her words, but not those of the other person. But she was getting directions.
Then there seemed to be an argument about whether to bring me. Clary wanted me to come but the other person apparently disagreed.
Then Clary turned red and said loudly, “I most certainly did not! How would I be doing magic if I had? I didn’t even kiss him.”
Then I turned red. Finally the conversation seemed to end. Clary looked at me and said, “I have to go. And you can’t come along.”
“I know,” I replied. “Will I see you again?”
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “I hope…I think so. I told you my name. I didn’t tell her that I did that. She would have been really mad if she found out. Ha! Kissing you! That’s nothing compared to telling you my name.”
“Gee, I’ve always thought that first you tell someone your name, then you kiss them.”
“Well, I guess that’s what you mere humans think.” She said this with sad eyes that belied the humor in her voice. “I’ll be going now. Thank you. Don’t….”
“Don’t what?” I asked.
“Forget me,” she said as she walked out the door.
Well, if I was good the past two weeks Clary was hiding in my room, it was like I had been saving it up for when she left. The first day back in school I wound up in the principal’s office. “Didn’t work out, huh?” he said. “She had to move away,” I replied. “Well, you know where the reading matter is,” he said and went back to his paperwork.
Apart from treating school like my own personal scratching post, I was also rather terse with my mother. She had sensed something going on, and now that it was over she seemed secretly glad. I realized that she had been jealous of my invisible (to her) friend.
Now she was taking her jealousy out on me, with subtle barbs about girls. Finally I went over to her, my face about two inches away from hers. “Stop it, mom,” I said, with a kind of deadly quietness. She scowled and walked away. But she did stop it. What a life, when the very people you are supposed to be able to turn to when you are hurt use your hurts to hurt you more.
After a couple days of this I decided that I was going to die if I didn’t do something about it. So I went to a book store and tried to find something about magic. It turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. There was very little about the use of blood in magic. I figured that the real information would at least have something about that, and almost nothing did. Until I found a hint in one book that led me to another, and that to another. Finally I started to make progress–not actually doing magic yet but finding information about it that was–or seemed–real.
In the midst of this, I got a call. It was from my dad. “Hi, son, can I come by?”
“Of course, dad. Any time.”
“Well, it’s not really for me. It’s for Sarah.” Sarah was the great aunt that had given me the cross. Suddenly a strange, inexplicable wave of guilt passed over me, and I felt reluctant to see her. Then my dad continued, “She’s a bit batty, I know, but she’s been insisting on seeing you for a while now. Finally I decided to bring her. But if you don’t want to see her, just let me know.”
“Dad, I’d love to see her,” and I realized that, once past the guilt, I really did want to see her.
“OK, son, but if she makes it too hard on you…” he said.
“Don’t worry. She’s a wonderful old grandma, and she will only do me good.” I didn’t know why I was saying this. Ordinarily my dad was glad to get two or three syllables out of me. But Great Aunt Sarah…maybe she was the connection I was seeking.
A while later, there was a knock on the door. My mother had left for the afternoon, as she always did when my dad came around. But it wasn’t my dad, it was Sarah.
“Yours is not the way of taking blood,” she said. “Yours is the way of the cross.”
Well, that was certainly getting down to business. But I wasn’t quite ready to make it easy on her. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know what I mean. Where is it?”
Suddenly the wave of guilt passed over me again, and I knew why. I had left the cross rattling around in a dresser ever since Clary had left. “I’ll get it,” I replied.