I stood, my knees stiff, legs feeling like they were covered in cement.I walked around to Lula.“It worked.”
Her eyes went wide.
In my hand, I held a small bundle of wild asters.The flowers were purple with yellow centers, gold shining along the edge of each petal.
“You turned it into wildflowers?”she asked.
“I turned it into something beautiful.Something that reminds me of you.”I gave them to her, and she drew them to face to smell the sweet perfume.
“It feels like flowers,” she said.“It smells like honeysuckle.Asters don’t smell like honeysuckle.”
“I like honeysuckle,” I said.“It reminds me of summer, of us.”
“Transformation,” Card said.“The spell followed what Brogan had in his mind.It won’t ever be a water bottle again.Well, unless you want to cast that spell to change it back.”
“No,” I said, clearing my throat.“Once is enough to prove we can use the lost god spell.That we can use the book.”
“I thought all the spells in the book were big and mean,” Abbi said.
Card made a sound.“None of us can know what the gods were thinking when they put this book together.”
“Raven said they made it on a whim,” I said.“And promptly forgot about it.”
“Which means for some of the gods,” Card said, “it wasn’t important or consequential.So, there might be more spells that won’t automatically destroy.”
“Transformation can be used for evil in the wrong hands,” Lu said.She smelled the asters again.“Or for something simple and beautiful.”
She offered me the flowers, but I shook my head.“They’re for you.”
She smiled and tucked them into her braid.“I love you.”
I cupped her face.“I love you.”
I started coughing and turned my head into my shoulder until the bout passed.
Lu left the circle and took a bottle of water from Abbi.She motioned me out of the protective circle and gave it to me.“Drink.”
I did and it helped soothe my raw throat.I handed the empty bottle out for Abbi to take away, then sat back in the chair.
“Ready to look through the book for a spell that will do more than transform a water bottle into a wildflower?”Card asked.
We entered the circle again and took our seats.I lifted the mirror.“Ready.”
Lu took a breath.“I’m turning the page.”
It took hours.
Each spell needed time to resolve into something I could read, and more time for Card and I to agree on what its purpose might be.Some blasted lightning into the room.Some rattled reality or manifested in star-strewn winds.
But we needed the lost god spells, and Lu couldn’t just thumb through the book to find pages which appeared to be written in plain ink.
The book wouldn’t allow it.
She had to turn each page, wait to see if the spell crackled with magic, or plain ink.
We found two lost god spells.One seemed to summon black holes, the other turned oxygen into diamonds.
We weren’t foolish enough to cast either of them.
