Translation of my fourth log...Spell to speed the processes of growth...Anatomy of the Tarreza...how to communicate with Tarrezas and similar beasts...Is witchcraft compatible with religion? Essay...spell to defeat Tarreza...list of poultices...New spell involving bills of Gavia immer and Gavia adamsii?...translation of my fifth log...
Allina flipped past all of these entries. She was searching for something, though she didn't know what.
Uses of mandrake...translation of my sixth log...Juana's transformation spell.
That was it, thought Allina. She wanted to see how to transform herself, or perhaps other things.
Juana's transformation spell
My old friend Juana (before her murder, that is) invented a spell to transform herself into any variety of living creature. The page attached is from one of her notebooks (which I found at her home after her death).
Below the writing was a piece of paper glued into the journal. On it was writing in two different scripts. Someone, surely Juana, had written in pencil with crabbed, capital letters. Even if Allina had been able to understand Spanish, which it was written in, the writing was still illegible.
But squeezed into the margins of the paper was writing in Alejandra's spidery cursive. It was a legible translation.
Transformation.
To transform herself a witch needs:
Mandrake root, 3 (must remove heart of mandrake before collection). Feather plucked from a bird in flight, 1. Seabrine, as much as you estimate. Also the true tooth of the animal the witch will be, 1.
How to find the true tooth: First find the animal. Feed it seabrine. This makes the animal reveal its true mouth (usually near stomach, sometimes on top of head). Break off the tooth which doesn't hurt the animal as the tooth will regrow.
Take cauldron to a dark room and light a blackfire beneath it. Mash the true tooth into a powder. Mix it with seabrine in a bowl, throw in cauldron. Burn 3 mandrake roots to cinders. Add cinders to cauldron. Add feather to cauldron. When liquid turns yellow, the witch must pour it in her ear, and imply the animal's true name.
Allina read the spell, then read it over again. She barely understood half of it. Perhaps I should try something else, she thought, but then a skittering sound distracted her.
She looked to the sound's source: the curtained doorway. A mouse, it had to be, slipped underneath the immovable curtain into the back room.
Were I a mouse, thought Allina, I could go under the doorway and find out what happened to Ms. Coleman. No—Alejandra. She could be the little mouse-girl that the old librarian always called her.
Mouth in a determined line, Allina set out to find the items on the list.
YOU ARE READING
The Library
FantasyA young girl meets a favorite guest every Saturday at the library. She discovers an old book, and begins to wonder if the guest is who she says she is.
