The Spirit of Summoning

This story was performed on April 19, 2018 as part of a duo with a fellow writer at Alameda Shorts (Theme: “Shape”), presented by To Live and Write at Books, Inc. Our intertwined pieces were surprisingly effective, considering my partner writes memoir and I write fantasy. I have pulled out my piece here as a standalone story.

 

Five black candles in hand, I slid the deadbolt home, locking myself inside the topmost chamber of the tower.

It was my first solo summoning after completion of my apprenticeship. I had learned much from my master, but to progress further I knew I must seek knowledge beyond the mundane sphere.

My master was a strict traditionalist. Control and precision were everything to him. I respected his wisdom, but chafed against his didactic constraints. For years I toiled under his yoke, caught in a struggle between my desire for his approval and my hunger for the wild, forbidden magic he refused to teach me.

Now, I was free to explore and experiment as I chose. I sought out new texts, written by radical thinkers from faraway lands. Their ideas fed my restless spirit; they called me like a wolf calls to its mate under the full moon. My master would have had an apoplexy at the thought of trying any of them.

As I paged through a particularly scandalous volume in the solitude of my chamber, his stern voice echoed through my memory, stirring up the sediments of old uncertainty.

I laid it aside. After all, summoning a creature of pure chaos magic from the Nether Realm is a tricky thing at best, and deadly at worst. So that first time, I clung to the familiar.

At the most portentous time, the fifth hour of the fifth month, I donned my ceremonial robes, woven with protective runes, and secured the chamber.

I carefully measured and drew the prescribed shapes onto the stone floor: the circle of containment, the pentagram of binding, the star of power.

I placed the black candles precisely at the five points of the star, wrote the runes of summoning, and spoke the incantation in the harsh demon tongue whose sharp consonants scraped my throat raw.

When the sour smoke cleared, I stared in disbelief. There it sat, in the center of the circle, its pitted yellow skin glistening in the candlelight, mocking me.

A lemon.

Not a demon, but a lemon. A tiny orthographical error had rendered my first effort fruitless. Well, I had one fruit. Mostly I had a raw, scratchy throat from shouting in Old High Kzyvlyxick. I had to rest, regroup, brew some tea—with honey and lemon for my scratchy throat. It was a perfectly good lemon.

I questioned whether I had not put enough of myself into that first summoning. Although time-tested by the finest minds in magical study, many of the traditional elements in the ritual seemed arbitrary, and their application felt forced, unnatural.

In subsequent attempts I allowed myself free rein to birth new ideas and made changes to the ritual: I lit thirty red candles, instead of five black ones. I enlarged the circle, drew the pentagram outside it, added multiple stars of power.

I shucked the useless, itchy, heavy robes that tangled in my legs on the stairs.

Most importantly, I learned to build upon the foundation of my master’s teachings in a way that felt true to myself. Eventually, seeking a closer connection with the elements, I left my dark, drafty tower entirely.

Through years of trial and error, near-misses and singed eyebrows, I’ve summoned many demons to my circle: creatures of slime or fur, skin or scale, tail or tentacle, each a unique source of arcane power and knowledge.

My favorite? A beautiful, potent being of nearly human aspect, with spiraling, recurvate horns and delphinium-blue feathered wings.

Unlike the others, he gave in to curiosity and stuck around.

He still hasn’t left. He, too, likes his tea with honey and lemon.

The longer he stays, the more I understand my master’s need for strict control and precision, especially in dealing with magical creatures.

I understand it, but I don’t always apply it.

Nowadays, whether for a summoning or the sheer pleasure of it, most full moons find me in the woods near the tower, the light of a raging bonfire playing across the symbols painted onto my naked skin. I need no pentagram, and I draw no circle; instead, I become the circle, dancing widdershins around the fire faster and faster, feeling the magic gather in the earth beneath my bare feet, half-drunk from the freedom of it. I sing the incantation in Ancient Sylphin, its liquid consonants cool and sweet as the words pour out of my throat and ascend in joyful descant up to the stars of power in the midnight sky.

And my blue-feathered friend dances with me.