Chapter 17: Practitioner (8)

I looked down at the Circle I made.

It felt right.

I knew it would work.  A sensation akin to seeing the right jig-saw piece, just knowing that it’ll fit into that one specific spot.  Finally arriving at an answer that I’ve been struggling with.  That ah-ha moment where the lightbulb goes off in your head.

I checked over the circle, making sure that it was closed.  I played around with symbols, making sure they were in place.  I did it with the same meticulous care that I reserved for SAT scantrons, going back to make sure the circles were perfect.  Basically everything but actually going through with the ritual.

Eventually, I stopped stalling.  Sitting with my legs crossed on the floor only a foot away from the circle…

“Well here goes nothing.”  I cleared my throat, though there was no one around.

It was time to start.  I picked up the piece of paper where I scrawled my first attempt at a summons.

For this particular chant, the book recommended Iambic Pentameter.  Again, more powerful spirits required more complex chanting mechanisms.  But from all that I could see, the magpie didn’t count as one of those.  If anything, the Spirit sounded like a pushover.

“I call you, Spirit.  By my mother’s blood.”

The temperature in the room dropped.  Maybe my imagination.  But the air felt colder.  Sharper somehow, nipping at my cheeks.  Ignoring it, I continued.

“I invoke on old promises, this day.”

The last chant.  I was paraphrasing now, taking the structure outlined in the books and adding my own flavor to it.  Again, it felt right.

“By blood and soil, with fire and wind, I call!”

There was no bright flash of light.  No explosion or a booming voice announcing its presence.  No smoke either.

She came in the quietness.  Like she had been there all along.

Briefly, I tasted leaves on my tongue.  A grassy flavor that made me sputter, accompanied by the spring breeze airing out my bangs.  The scent of mountain air tickled my nostrils.  Faint and gone by the time I noticed.

And I wasn’t alone anymore.

The spirit stood inside the circle, regarding me.

I’d never seen a magpie before.  The only living birds I see in New York City are the flocks of pigeons that crowd every corner and alley.  I’m not sure if they count though.  The next closest thing are chickens.  Not live ones, of course; breaded, deep-fried till they’re finger lickin’ good and then tossed in a bucket.  That’s usually how I like my birds.

So when I saw Blindfold for the first time, I thought he looked pretty cool.

He had this white and black color scheme, similar to a penguin or a go, the asian board game.  Upon a closer look, I realized that the wing-feathers weren’t so much as black as they were lustrous blue, shining with an iridescent hue wherever the candle light hit them.  He was small too, not much bigger than my hand.

But I could tell he was a spirit.  Not in any way that I could see, but in the way that I felt him.  It’s hard to describe to people who haven’t awakened their Third Eye.  But it had to do with the way that I perceive the world around me, and Blindfold stuck out like a sore thumb.  It could have been how he felt less real than the candles, how there were smoky trails left behind him whenever he moved.  And the stronger I tuned into my Third Eye, the opposite became true: he became more real than everything else.  

Whatever it was, my instincts said normal people wouldn't be able to see him.  That I’d succeeded in my summoning; this wasn’t some wild bird.  He was a real spirit.

Of course, there was a strip of cloth over his eyes; a blindfold.  If that kind of anime-cosplay isn’t the deadtell of a spirit, I don’t know what would be.

He got up and looked around.  Well, he craned his head this way and that; not really ‘looking’ per se.  He stalked around the boundaries of the circle, giving a little hop then walkiing.

“Uh, hi.”  I began.

I belatedly realized this whole summoning gig was a lot like a dating app.  The bestiary has all the profiles, you swipe ‘right’ or do the summoning ritual, whatever.  Then you meet face to face.  Except that both the dating profile and the summoning ritual both left you just awkward as you were before.  Whether it was in front of a girl or freshly summoned folktale spirit, your conversational skills remained the same.

Hearing my voice, he turned his head.

“Hello!”  He croaked.  His voice was coarse, exactly what I expected a bird to sound like.

“I prepared something for you.”  I gestured to the salami, and was reminded of the blindfold.  “Next to you.  By your left foot.”

He pecked at it.  And I swear, I don’t care what anyone says, birds have facial expressions.  He scowled at the salami then swallowed it whole anyways.

“Offering accepted!”  He cried again.  “Name! Blindfold!”

“What?”

“Name!”  He shrieked a little louder.  He sounded frustrated.  “Blinfdold!”

I could see this getting annoying real fast.

Eventually I understood what he was getting at.  “Oh, your name is Blindfold?”

“In human tongue! Yes!”

“I’m Jain.”  Then added, “Hallow.  Jain Hallow.”

And the bird-spirit froze.

It stopped bobbing back and forth, turning completely still like a statue.  I read somewhere that animals do that when they’re scared.  Something about adapting, because predators have dynamic vision.  Don’t quote me on it.  I learned everything from those free magazines at school.  You know the one, with the yellow highlights.

“Oh no.”  The bird repeated itself.  “Oh no! No no no no no nonononono!”

“Whoa, slow down there buddy.”  I said.

He started pacing around the circle.  “No! Going to be in so much trouble! Blindfold going to be in trouble!”

“Hey, wait.  What do you mean–”

“No! Not supposed to talk to Hallow!”  Blindfold crowed then stopped in place, as if realizing what he just said.

What?

Not supposed to talk to me?  I got a bad feeling.

“Hey, calm down.”  I said but he wasn’t listening.  

“Nonononono!”  He wailed.

Eventually, I reached over for another piece of salami and tossed it over the circle, careful not to break it.  As long as nothing living from outside the circle entered, it wouldn’t break.

While Blindfold was gulping down the salami, I spoke.

“I’m not going to do anything to get you in trouble.  I just want to talk, ok?”

Blindfold didn’t reply, but I could sense the weight of his attention in my general direction.  Eventually he nodded.

I already ruled out Blindfold as a potential partner.  Not even a Familiar, but even as the pseudo advisor.  For the lack of a better word, he was too much of a birdbrain for what I needed.  It didn’t feel right.

But it did feel right for me to ask him some questions.

“Who’s going to get you into trouble?”

“You! Hallow! Cursed Blood!”  He belched.

Besides being offensive, he was just plain rude.  And Holy Hebeejesus, he was loud.

It was nice having someone else –Do spirits count as someone else?– in the RV with me.  But his constant blaring was bound to attract attention.  My eyes darted over to the windows where the shades were shut and I realized that in my fear, I’d done the exact opposite of what I should be doing: keeping an eye on the malevolent spirits that were skulking outside.

“I meant, did someone tell you not to talk to me?”

“Not supposed to say! Not supposed to say!”

I threw in another piece of salami.  “Huh, really?  And would you mind speaking in whispers?”

“LIKE THIS?!”  He cried out.

Another furtive glance at the windows.  He actually screamed it.  Either he knew that I didn’t want him to make loud noises and was trying to get out of this summoning earlier than I wanted, or he was just that way.  Both were bad.  One was worse than the other.

“Ok.  Indoor voices.”  I said, “Please.  You said you’re not supposed to talk to me.  Why is that?”

Instead of throwing it in right away, I dangled the salami just outside the circle.  It worked, his voice was slightly quieter.  I threw it his way.

“Great flocks warned not to talk to Hallow! Hallow bad! Bad Hallow!”

“Great flocks?”

“Pheasants! Magpies! Swallows! All great flocks warned!”

“So it’s not just you that was warned?”  I asked, already knowing the answer deep in my gut.  Shit.  

“All!”

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

“Who?  Who told you guys?”

“The–”  He clammed up again, pacing around the circle.  Restless and nervous, he kept bobbing his body.  “Not telling! Not telling!”

The answer was right there in front of me.  But I had to know.

“...Was it the Ryus?”

He didn’t answer.

The bad feeling in my gut solidified into something real.

“Fuck.”  I spat, turning towards the bookshelf and reaching for… I didn’t know what I was reaching for.

Blindfold wasn’t the bright magpie in the flock, but he was smart enough to know that I figured it out.  He went livid inside the circle, crying out in shame.

“Not me! Wasn’t me!”

“Shhh.”  But I was too busy thinking.

This changed a lot of things.

If Blindfold was telling the truth, or wasn’t mistaken, it looked like the families had a way to keep spirits from helping me.  Like some sick playground drama, where they could point at me and say to the other kids, ‘Don’t play with Jain, he smells bad’ (which actually happened to me once).

It was so childish, I almost wanted to laugh.  Almost.  But I knew that’s how adults dealt with things.  They didn’t go around punching people they hated.  Adults were much more subtle than that.  They manipulated the teachers into favoring certain kids, while ignoring others.  They spoke behind your back to other parents, so that their kids in turn would avoid you like the plague.

Because adults know the one thing that hurts the most to anyone: Isolation.

Especially to an orphan.

It was so obvious.  They knew that I wasn’t a practitioner, they had said so in the conference room in front of Emyrith.  And I’d given it to them.   They knew my parents too and could surmise what type of knowledge the two could have left me.  Which meant that they could predict my actions to some degree.  The first thing I needed was a quick way to gather knowledge, which meant I needed help.  For someone like me, without any connections in the magical world, it was obvious where the direction of my thoughts would go.

Spirits.

They’d cut me off from the one thing I needed.