Samantha raced to light the final candle before the matchstick burned her fingers. She made it – a good omen – and set the thick black candle back on the last cardinal point on the chalk circle surrounding her, watching the tiny yellow bud struggle to blossom like the others.
Her hands fidgeted with her blouse and jeans, and she considered again performing the invocation skyclad – naked – as prescribed in the Arcanna. But modesty prevailed, even alone in her own living room at midnight, with the curtains drawn. Besides, since she began studying the magicks, she'd concluded that many of the rules were unnecessary.
She rechecked the required items she'd ‘borrowed' from the coven: silver dagger and cup, incense bowl burning acrid white wisps of mandrake into the air, the Arcanna, open to the appropriate page…
And of course the effigy, hand-sized, crudely-shaped but its lupine features still recognisable, the object soaked in blood, bound with wolf hair and collared with a paper scroll inscribed with the proper runes. It stood on the floor, haunches raised as if ready to pounce on some unsuspecting prey.
Samantha raised the dagger over it as if ready to pounce first, and began the spell, hearing in her mind her translation of the Rhaeto-Romanic words into English. "O Powerful Fenris, son of Loki and Angrboda, bound to the rock of Gioll, I conjure thee on this night and at this hour here, to order firmed affairs with thee. Thee cannot resist the strength of my dreadful summons…"
Her heart triphammered in her chest, driven by more than the fearsome power she already felt coalescing around her. If the coven knew what she was doing, they would immediately expel her, for practice of proscribed, dangerous rites. But if it worked, then she would no longer need those timid little things anymore.
She smiled inwardly as she continued to recite the spell. Six months ago, Samantha Brennan had been a timid little thing herself, a mousey, middle-aged librarian, without family or friend or lover, who got her kicks from crossword competitions and Thursday night bingo at the village hall.
Then Kate had approached her, and eventually revealed herself as the priestess of a coven of witches – actual witches! – who gathered from the surrounding villages. Kate had sensed great potential in Samantha to be another member, and offered to instruct her in the ways of Wicca. And Samantha, in a rare break from her staid nature, eventually accepted.
And Kate had been right: Samantha was powerful, easily mastering charms and protective wards and cures for minor ailments. But she wanted to do more, knew she could do more, and remained discontent by the coven's overcautious attitude to the more potent magicks available to them.
Like the spells in the Arcanna. Samantha remained astounded that those women could be content with easing cramps and making flowers bloom early, when they could be raising elemental forces… "O Fenris, obey my words, or thee will be cursed in the most terrible manner! With thy appearance and the taking of thee, thou will be bound to serve my whims and wills and none others', as I see fit, day or night, forever!"
Of the spirits and forces described in the Arcanna, Fenris, the wolf devourer of Norse myth and representative of untamed power and ferocity, had intrigued her the most. It was more than just her general love of wolves and dogs; if she could harness him, control him, have him at her beck and call, it would be suitable payment for enduring thirty-odd years of mediocrity and impotence against the world. "Come, Fenris! I release thee to appear and serve my will! Appear! APPEAR!"
For a moment, she lost hope.
Then books began sliding off shelves, and the furniture and Persian rug she'd pushed aside to make room for her circle began to tremble, and then shudder as if in a fit. Figurines leapt from the mantelpiece like lemmings, and a wind suddenly whipped up in the enclosed room, extinguishing the candles and making Samantha's chestnut-brown hair rise and shimmy over her head. It should have been pitch black now, but an eldritch bone-white glow bathed the room.
Samantha laughed giddily. Such power! At her command! It was exhilarating!
Sitting before her kneeling form, the effigy began smouldering, but it was another, more heady odour that reached her nostrils, an odour of musk and sweat and fur. And then the wind and light vanished, leaving her in a dishevelled living room, the only light a pale beacon from the full moon outside, visible with the curtains pulled aside from the wind. She held her breath.
And then it padded into view, as if having been hiding behind the settee all along.
It stood before her, a size closer to a bear than a wolf, with a huge head mounted on a thickly-muscled neck, its fur thick and ash with black waves. Its slavering jaw curled in what appeared to a smiling snarl of greeting, its pointed fangs gleaming in the moonlight, and it stared at Samantha with blood-red eyes, the pupils black and slitted. The claws on its massive paws scratched the hardwood floor.
Scratched? It shouldn't have been able to do that. This should just have been an apparition.
