The Author

Chapter Five

            Alice did not realize how far away the river was when she consulted the map. It took them just under two days to make it there and the entire walk almost seemed like a training session. By day, as they walked, Bo taught her Vachnish nouns and verbs, and by night she worked on generating spells. By the end of the first night she had mastered the creation of a campfire. By the end of the second, she had learned a simple locator spell to find food. As night descended on the second day, they sat down in a small clearing to eat their dinner.

            “Ya woþ bene hlaþ[1],” Alice wrote on her envelope, concentrating hard. Faintly, the feeling of fitting together, completion as before, came to her. Ten or twelve reddish orange smoldering spots and three small flames the size of candle flames appeared on the sticks, twigs and dried leaves they had piled up for the fire. Across the fire from her, Bo dropped the results of his hunting, a squirrel and a sparrow, in front of him.

            “That’s much better than this morning! By this time next week you’ll have ‘em roaring up!” Bo said, excitedly, as he stared with wide eyes at the bits of dancing light. Then he took his eyes from the fire to his work. He began to skin the squirrel. Alice looked away since she was not used to seeing her food so… intact before she ate it. She took out the wild strawberries she had gathered and nibbled on them while she waited for the main course. As she chewed she mentally went through the new words she had learned that day. She found that she had little difficulty remembering Vachnish, almost as if it were a part of her.

            “Flusce, wilþ, musc,[2]” Alice was saying under her breath, eyes closed. She pictured each thing in her mind to help her remember.

            “Alice, stop!” Bo said, forcefully. She opened her eyes quickly.

            “What?”

            “Look.”

            He nodded toward her right side. Next to her was a blood red rose that hadn’t been there before. The stalk growing from the ground was black with massive razor sharp thorns. All around it bright green moss was growing, but it was unlike any moss she had ever seen. Tiny tentacles grew from it and snaked up the flower, some snapping on the blade-like thorns, others reaching the scarlet bloom, encircling it and crushing it. Then a leaf fell from the tree above landing on the moss. It was sickly brown and covered in a putrid clear slime which seemed to ooze from its veins. It immediately killed the patch of moss it landed on and the remaining clump stretched its tentacles toward it in order to crush the invader, but the slime killed them instantly and it spread like a disease to the rest of the moss.

            “I don’t understand,” Alice said over her astonishment. “I only said the words ‘flower,’ ‘leaf,’ and ‘moss.’”

            “But you imagined them, too, didn’t you? You must be careful when saying Vachnish words out loud. Concentrating on them too hard at the same time can have nasty side effects.”

            Alice still didn’t understand. She hadn’t felt the clicking into place like she had for her other spells. Her puzzlement was apparent. Bo sighed at this.

        “Okay. Spoken magic exists as well as written. You saw that in the village. However, spoken magic can only be used for evil. It’s evil by nature, you see. Spoken words can be said in the heat of the moment, frivolously, but written words need time and care to craft. So, even with the best of intentions, a spoken spell can turn out bad. Take these three things for instance.” He pointed with a paw at the flower, leaf and moss which was still feebly waving a few tentacles. “I’m sure you envisioned three perfectly healthy plants, but by concentrating on those thoughts so hard while even just whispering their names, you accidentally brought them into being and, well, you saw the rest.”