Noel
We spend the rest of the day talking. It’s strange, being around her so much, after having tried my best not to even think of her for four years. But she’s here, and the thought of her is no longer painful. It’s exciting in a breathless, almost giddy way.
It might be because of that that the conversation between us is surprisingly natural, much less awkward than I expected. She keeps the discussion mostly focused on things we’ll need to know if the ritual is actually going to work. Because even though we might still have most of tomorrow for that, that’s very little time if you consider how much time we spent apart.
So we tell each other stories. Events and anecdotes and the grand dramatic scenes of our recent years. She tells me how she got to know Vivienne Mason during an assigned partner research task, and how Vivi made her come out of her shell more. The two are really close friends now. She tells me about all the late nights they spent together studying for tests and then for drama club to nail their performances. She tells me about all their friends, and the strained relationship her parents have, both with each other and with her.
She makes it seem almost like it’s an accident that she’s popular now, which, to be fair, lines up pretty well with what I know of her.
I have much less to tell than her. I suppose she’ll have an easy time being me, considering that I don’t have any friends she has to fool. All she has to worry about with me is my family, my parents and my little brother, and the fact that she might get a little lonely.
She doesn’t really seem worried about that last part, though.
If I’m entirely honest, I still don’t really get why she’s doing this. Sure, she’s doing me a favour, but why would she? It doesn’t make sense, no matter from which angle I look at it.
So I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still wary by the time we pack our stuff and head out for the night.
Chloe showed me the package Ms Weis gave her. She’s already opened it and had a thorough look at the instructions in the old booklet. There are candles, little pouches with suspiciously unlabelled dust inside, pots with salve, and two sets of pristine linen clothes; a dress and a shirt and trousers.
The ritual requires each of us to apply the salve to our bodies and dress up in the clothes corresponding with their body’s gender. It pains me that I have to wear the men’s stuff, but at the same time, I suppose it’s another sign that I’m not being set up to be the laughingstock of the entire school.
The salve smells nice, like tree bark with just a hint of citrus added to the mix. The linen is a little rough against my skin, but I’m not going to complain if this works. Finally, I put on some warmer clothes over the linen outfit, because it’s still winter, and that way at least I’ll make it to the clearing in the woods Chloe has scouted for the ritual.
When I emerge from the bathroom on the ground floor, she’s already waiting, her dress a little loose around her form, pulling on a ski jacket over it. Her legs are still bare, though.
“Aren’t you going to get cold?” I ask, but she just shrugs.
“So are you. We’ll just have to hurry, or maybe do some jumping jacks along the way. It’s only two degrees Celsius, anyway.”
Like that isn’t cold at all. But then she’s told me that she goes for runs regularly, so I suppose she’s got the comparison of what it feels like to go out when it’s even colder than this.
She hands me her Dad’s ski jacket, because my own coat barely keeps me warm during the day, even when I’m wearing proper clothes underneath, then she puts on her gloves and grips the basket with the stuff for the ritual.
The street outside is empty. We don’t meet anybody on our way up to the forest. And then we’re past the treeline, and it’s like the forest swallows even the ever-present sound of the cars in the distance.
We hurry as we climb along the narrow path to the top of the hill. I’d like to say that the exertion helps keep out the cold, but really, all it does is make the inside of my lungs feel frozen over, and my muscles stiff with cold by the time we arrive at the little clearing Chloe mentioned.
There, she has me do actual jumping jacks, because I’m shivering slightly, while she uses the dust from the pouch to draw a circle with an ominous octagon inside. Then she sets up the candles along the circle, lighting them with the matches included in the packet.
Finally, she turns to me, her hair billowing in the wind while the candles are strangely undisturbed, and tells me to take off my jacket and shoes and stand at the centre of the circle.
As soon as I take off the jacket and lay it on the ground by the basket, the wind immediately blows through my clothes as if they weren’t there at all. Chloe does the same, only keeping her phone and the instructions in her hands, so she’ll be able to read the spell.
She’s about to open her mouth to recite the first line, when I finally blurt, “You know you don’t have to do this, right? Like, I wouldn’t think less of you if you wanted to keep your body to yourself. It’s… you made your point that you care about me, and I got it. You don’t have to give up yourself like this.” There’s a taut feeling in my chest as I say the words, but I know that I have to say them. Because while I want her to go through with this, I still have a conscience to speak of. And I know it was her idea, of course, but there’s still a part of me that assumes that she thinks she has to do this, so I will talk to her again.
But she gives a dismissive shake of her head. “Course I know,” she says, her voice a little clipped, and I’m not sure whether it’s because of the cold or because I’m being dumb, or another reason entirely. Even she is visibly stiff now, her whole body tensed up in an effort to keep the cold at bay. “This was my decision to begin with, don’t forget. And anyway, we can just swap back if I can’t deal with it.”
“We’re going to swap back if you end up not liking it, okay?” I insist in spite of myself. “I won’t have you suffer on my behalf.”
The corners of her lips form a stiff smile as she firmly meets my eyes. “Understood. Any other concerns before we start?”
I shake my head as another gust of wind hits us, making the skirt of her dress and her hair billow.
She wets her lips, turning her gaze away from me and at the gilded pages of the instruction booklet. Then she begins to read out the evocation. It’s in Latin, which I don’t understand. But she does. She studied it all throughout elementary and middle school to get the certificate she needs to study medicine later.
Because of course she’s gonna study medicine when she leaves school. With her grades, I just might as well.
Haha.
It does hurt to know that she’s going to have to redo the certificate, but then she doesn’t really seem to struggle with the dead language even now.
Determined, I focus my mind on my surroundings. On the cold in my limbs, in my fingers and in my bare feet as the wind keeps leeching my warmth; on the imploring sound of Chloe’s voice as she recites the ancient text in an attempt to save me.
It is then that I notice that the cold is beginning to let up. It’s only an inkling at first, like my body is beginning to grow slightly numb on the side that faces her. And then that feeling of absence of cold turns slowly but surely into warmth. It’s the beautiful, radiating kind that seeps through my skin, from my face to the tips of my fingers.
And I know, of course, that this isn’t natural. I know that there’s no way this is what standing at night, barely clothed, in a clearing in the woods in winter is supposed to feel like. I know that this has to be part of the magic.
I go completely still, not daring to move even a centimetre as the wind continues to cradle my back. I watch Chloe as her voice grows louder and more emotive, her body language more emphatic, like she is feeling the warmth as well.
But even in the warmth, I don’t feel anything else. I expected to feel some kind of tug at my consciousness. I expected, even, that it would be painful. But it’s not. I feel no changes about myself at all, aside from the warmth.
As Chloe’s incantation comes to a crescendo, a dark premonition falls over my mind like a shadow.
What if it’s not going to work?
Just now, I’d felt so much hope at the feeling of warmth. But nothing is happening, even now. So what if it’s the wrong spell Chloe got? What if she did it wrong, somehow, or if I did, and now it’s going to fail?
Chloe shouts the final line of the evocation and falls silent, staring at me. Her brow furrows just slightly, like the scene before her doesn’t make sense to her.
Another gust of wind hits us, and immediately, I feel the cold slam back into me with full force. I hunch over, hugging my arms around my chest and rubbing my arms to keep at least some of the cold out.
But Chloe doesn’t move. She’s still staring at me.
“We have to try again,” I say finally, my voice taut. I may have been hesitant about allowing Chloe to do this earlier, but it’s different now. I already expected it. I could almost feel the joy of being right again.
But Chloe just stares at me without moving. I’m about to step out of the circle and shake her, when she finally shakes her head.
“It’s not midnight anymore,” she says in a low voice. “We’ll have to try again next full moon.”
A hollow feeling spreads in my chest at the sound of her words. That familiar feeling of being sucked inwards, of losing something important somewhere in the depths of myself.
My face goes slack, and I finally step out of the circle to put the ski jacket on with stiff fingers, before crouching down to tie my shoes. I know I can’t really blame her. It’s the first time she’s doing this, after all, but there’s still a voice at the back of my mind, telling me that she did it intentionally. That this is just an elaborate ruse to make me be friends with her again, so she can use me for… something.
But I know that’s wrong, of course. The look in Chloe’s eyes when I look back up is more than enough to know that. She’s nibbling at her lower lip, still wearing that frown. She looks just like she used to when she was about to cry, back when we were still children.
We make our way back to her house in silence. It’s too cold to talk, and I know that I couldn’t talk if I wanted to right now. My mouth is parched.
Walking through the door to her house feels like stepping into a bath at just the right temperature. The pain of my blood vessels expanding engulfs me as Chloe wraps me in a blanket, making me sit with my back against the fully cranked radiator, a cup of barely drinkable tea in my hand.
Even this goes by without words. We had already discussed it beforehand, placed the blankets by the radiator and pre-heated the water.
I’d prefer to just go upstairs, curl up underneath a blanket and never come out again.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe says quietly, bundled up in a grey blanket next to me. “I should’ve spent more time preparing the evocation.”
I look up. “I felt the magic, you know? It made me all warm and comfortable.”
A wan smile grazes her lips. “Yeah, I felt it, too. It was definitely there, but… I’ll do better next time.”