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ROOT MAGIC She Awoke in a Tunnel, Or in What Seemed Like a Tunnel

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ROOT MAGIC She Awoke in a Tunnel, Or in What Seemed Like a Tunnel ROOT MAGIC She awoke in a tunnel, or in what seemed like a tunnel. All she knew at fi rst was that it was very dark. “No, not just dark,” she muttered. “It’s friggin’ cold, too.” Her eyes stung as they tried to adjust to the lack of light, but her long, straight hair was plastered to her face, stray wisps irritat- ing her eyes. She tried to lift a hand to brush her hair back from her face and then remembered they were bound behind her. “Oh, yeah,” she told the darkness. “Well, at least they didn’t gag me.” She tested her legs by trying to stand, but felt tape wrapped tightly around her ankles. “You’re not making this easy, if you’re watching,” she said. The absolute silence that surrounded her made her think that maybe they weren’t watching. Maybe they had done exactly what they said they would do. • • • “Why do you want to study with me, anyway, girl?” Old Man Pardee glared at her, his bushy eyebrows forming a glowering line above his dark brown eyes. “Aren’t your fancy teachers in the city good enough for you? Have you learned everything they can teach you? Or do you think you can come back here with your big city airs and show us pore ol’ mountain folk how to work real magic?” Whatever Aralathienne was expecting when she left Raleigh — where she’d gone off to college, where she’d Awakened and where she’d been recruited by the Mysterium — to return home to the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of the magic of the hills and hollers, she never thought she’d have to plead her case to such a hard man. “I want to learn the magic of my home,” she had told him honestly, “and I want to learn it from the best.” She waited to see if the old conjure man would cut her off. When he didn’t, she took a deep breath and added, “And you’re the best, is what I hear.” • • • She shivered suddenly and her surroundings rushed to the fore. It was more than dark and cold, it was damp, and she felt that it was growing damper — but not as if it were raining. “The water level’s rising,” she thought and felt a wave of panic rush through her body, settling in just above her gut which had somehow risen up to surround her heart. “First things fi rst,” she told herself as she started working her wrists back and forth within the ropes that bound them. At fi rst, she had trouble, for her fi ngertips were numb and stiff. After what seemed like eons, she felt the ropes loosen and give. She shook them from her wrists and swiftly turnedSample to use her newly file freed hands to remove the tape from her legs, which had also gone to sleep from lack of movement. She stood up, intending to stretch her legs and restore some fl exibility to them, but a sharp crack to the top of her head stopped her before she could fully straighten her body. “Ahhh—shit!” It was a tunnel after all. Her fi rst instincts were right. And not a very tall tunnel either. After experimenting, she found that her best course of action was to travel on hands and knees, although the rough stones and dirt of the tunnel fl oor — no, the rough wet stones and ever moistening mud of the tunnel fl oor — would wreak havoc on her knees as well as on the palms of her hands. Again, she strained to see through the darkness, but her eyes wouldn’t adjust. Damn it! She suddenly remembered the salve Old Man Pardee had put on and around her eyes when she complained of a burning sensation she passed off as eyestrain. Almost immediately, she had grown very sleepy and had sunk into the worn but com- fortable sofa in the front room of the old man’s cabin, pulling a quilted coverlet over herself. She must have drifted off to sleep listening to the crackling of the fi re in the hearth. She’d woken up in the tunnel, and now the damn salve was keeping her from focusing properly, keeping her in the dark. “Great, I can’t use my eyes. I’ve got four senses left.” A picture rose in her mind of a bloodhound sniffi ng its way out of the tunnel. She shook her head, trying to clear the image from her mind. “I’m not going to smell my way out of this.” A sound that she had been hearing all along suddenly clarifi ed itself, revealing its nature to her as a steady trickle of water running into the tunnel from somewhere above. “I’m under water,” she whispered aloud, more to hear herself voice the words and crystallize her fear. “Underground and under water, and the water is breaking through.” Again she fought a war with the panic inside her, pushing it aside with her will. At least her magic had taught her that much, that she could focus her will and create results — among them, banishing negative emotions like fear. “Let’s move, legs!” she said, striking out in the direction she was already facing. “Standing still is a bad thing!” A few minutes later, Aralathienne realized that she was literally going nowhere. Whatever the old man had done to her had confounded her sense of direction as well as temporarily (she hoped) blinded her. “Now what?” She sat back on her heels and forced herself to think, noticing, as she did so that the trickle of water now sounded more like a steady rush. “Take stock,” she told herself. Most of the magic she knew as a mage of the Path of Thyrsus and a member of the Mysterium depended either on seeing a target or having a direction. Here, she had neither. “I came here to study the hoodoo tradition, old man!” she said, her voice defi ant despite her misery in the growing damp. “You’re not going to get rid of me this easily.” • • • She tried to remember what she had learned from the old man so far. Despite his reluctance to take on a “city girl,” as he called her, as a student, he’d showed her some of his books, including what he called his “book of remedies,” a small, hand- bound book fi lled with crimped handwriting. The book contained recipes for poultices, instructions for curing diseases in animals and people by transferring the sickness into an object or an animal. Odd rhymes and fragments of ballads made up a good portion of the book, charms to use in all kinds of situations. Somehow, she’d expected more, and she said so. “These are too easy,” she complained to Old Man Pardee after reading through one of the books in an afternoon. He barely glanced at her as he continued carving down a length of cherry wood into what looked like a walking staff. “You’d be wise to larn what’s in there, girlie,” he snapped. “Someday your life could depend on that easy stuff.” • • • “Great,” she muttered, getting used to talking aloud to no one but herself. “What did I read that could possibly help me here?” She put her mind to work swiftly sorting through everything she could remember of the old man’s books. “I’m in a tunnel, under ground — no, make that under water — and I might as well be under the ocean for all the good knowing that will do me.” She made herself relax and clear her mind. Fragments of verses from ballads that had been copied into the old man’s book fl owed through her mind like water. She cast them all aside — most of the ballads ended badly. One song remained, distinctive because of its cheerfulness. Now, she felt it might hold the key to her release, for it spoke of being underground. Gone the iron Sampletouch of cold, winter file time and frost time Seedlings working through the mould, now wake up for lost time The words were from a song called “The Flower Carol” and she remembered her fi rst night with the old man. His son, visiting from the next holler, had brought his guitar and sang after supper. The old man accompanied him on banjo. It was the fi rst inkling she had that she had chosen right by coming back to the mountains to study the magic of the hills. She remembered that song because of its tune, the same tune as the Christmas carol about King Wenceslas. “It’s now or never,” she murmured, and recited the words. The rhyming sounds hung in the air, devoid of power. But thinking back on the evening when Lyle Pardee had sung the song, she remembered feeling something stir in the back of her head, something from the world that used to be — the Supernal World, her Atlantean masters had called it. “It’s a song,” she said to the darkness. “It needs the music.” • • • The old man had grunted his appreciation when she perked up at the song, recognizing the tune. “So, you’ve heard this afore,” he said. She’d nodded. “The tune, we used to sing it at Christmas.” He’d shrugged. “It fi gures,” he muttered while Lyle checked the tuning of his guitar before starting another song. “It’s the tune that carries the meaning,” he said.
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