Darkness Be My Hero

Destroying and unbinding

Waiting for Ruby and Mr and Mrs Findley to leave seemed to take forever. The cold morning breeze wisped through Clary’s hair like an invisible current, goose bumps rising on her skin. She crouched concealed by a clump of bushes and a tall tree trunk in the mansions garden.

Clary had told her mum she was going to meet a friend for an early morning workout and afterwards she was going to the library. This was partly true because the monstrous hill up to the mansion was a whole marathon itself. She had been a bit hesitant at first but Clary had soon convinced her.

Clary had been waiting about 20 minutes before the Findley family’s car drove off, down the hill leaving a cloud of dust and dirt behind them. Sophia was waving and smiling until she was out of eyesight, then signalled for Clary to reveal herself from her hiding place.

The plan had been simple. Find the book; which Sophia had been sure was placed in the attic, tear out the page and burn it. Clary hoped it would be like in the Disney movies, where the hero saved the day and everything was all back to normal and then they all ran off into the sunset like happy children. But Clary knew that this wasn’t the case. More like a horror. Disney seemed like an impossible hope that slowly flew away, out of Clarys reach.

They made their way inside and quickly got to work.

The attic wasn’t what Clary expected. In her mind she imagined piled cardboard boxes with spider webs strewn across the room and for it to smell of dust and rats. But instead it was quite different.

The attic lead off the top of one of the studies. It was a fairly decent size. A few spider webs hung from the rafters but otherwise it was quite clean. But that wasn’t what was strange. Lining the walls were cupboards filled with all different things. Clary inspected one and found a box of old photos. A happy couple featured in most of them. But as she walked through the attic she noticed that there were boxes spread across the floor like they had never been put away. One box was open in the centre of the mess. Sophia and Clary shared a look then went to investigate.

Inside the open box was a stack of neatly placed books. Behind Clary, Sophia stifled a gasp and pointed a finger at one of the books on the top of the pile.

“There it is, The Elders of Time!”

Clary stared at the book like it was a priceless artefact. Sophia bent down on her knees and picked the book up slowly then walked over to a small table that sat in one of the corners, covered in dust. Clary followed and Sophia opened the book. Its pages were aged and tinted yellow. Sophia flipped through the pages as if she knew exactly where the enchantment was printed. She stopped halfway through the book placed a finger on a paragraph of writing.

Clary stared at her in astonishment. “How did you know where that was exactly?”

Sophia blushed “After you left the library the other day I did some research of my own.”

“Oh wow” Clary stepped forward and scanned her eyes over the page reading the enchantment.

“Eyus nam tout bacur woama hammay alexu elli meaga bobbut caucut”

“Is that even English?” Clary asked puzzled.

“Haha no, it’s Persian I think.” Sophia laughed.

 ”Oh, so now what do we do?”

“We take this page,” Sophia said tearing out the page from the aged book “Then we burn it.”

“Okay, where do we burn it?” They hadn’t thought about this part yet.

“In the fireplace downstairs, I’ll get a knife and matches and I’ll meet you downstairs. Okay?”