Mom said I have to be patient, that magical abilities manifest later in some people. For years I believed I might’ve been a late bloomer, that maybe as I got older my latent talents would finally show up. Instead, all puberty has given me is monthly cramps and gender dysphoria. No magic, not now—probably not ever.
“What if we don’t summon it then?” I’m not giving up, not yet. “We wait for it to appear again and then we trap it. Does that sound better?”
“You sure it’ll turn up again?” Morgan’s voice loses its flinty edge.
“No, but if you don’t want to summon it, what else can we do? In the meantime something terrible might be happening to Natalie, but I guess we just have to wait because…because— You’re too scared to help me! I manage to bite back that last part. Morgan is right to be wary even if it’s infuriating.
“I know you care about her, but messing with this kind of stuff is dangerous,” he says, and I know he’s right about that too. Not that it helps.
“I have to do something.” I swat a tear off my face.
Morgan takes a deep breath and pulls his hands out of his pockets. “Let me see the book.”
I hand it over, watching nervously while he fans through the pages filled with runes.
Every element has five basic runes, which can be combined for different spells. When combined, the runes become sigils. Every element has combat runes too, but only battle mages are allowed to use those. Still, combining the basic runes in clever ways can create any number of sigils for any number of purposes. And with Morgan’s ability to combine runes across elements, the sigil potential is near infinite.
After a minute, Morgan finds what he’s looking for.
“I’ll give this a shot, but for the real thing we’ll have to have a warded jar.” He kicks aside rotting leaves, smoothing the damp earth with his foot.
I pass him a stick and he grumbles a thank-you as he begins carving a circular sigil into the ground. It’s made up of four runes: ansuz, jera, dagaz, and eiwaz—one for each element. Together, we measure the angles, squinting along the radius of our spell circle and pacing out the circumference until we’re sure it’s perfect.
“I should warn you,” Morgan says softly, “this is going to need a bucketload of energy.”
“There’s plenty in the forest.” What we’re about to do definitely doesn’t count as a “frivolity.”
“It’s still a lot for me to handle by myself. It would be better if I had help.”
It takes me a minute to realize what he’s trying to say. “I do not want Sini and the others involved. Don’t you have friends who could help us?”