The book Alison was currently reading—or perhaps skimming, since the language was so difficult to grasp—was a grimoire from roughly four centuries earlier, the time when the doll was popular. It had been copied from an even earlier manuscript and unfortunately had not been fully translated into even early Modern Loegrian.
The pages were illuminated with painted images varying from the ornamental to the macabre, lovely floral patterns on one page and then dark, demonic shapes on the next. The magic within its pages all seemed to involve strange herbs and animal parts mixed together under various phases on the moon, long continuous pages of instructions with little rhyme or reason.
Perhaps it was for this reason that one page in particular stood out to Alison.
It reminded her of the pamphlet they’d made. Each of the poems she’d written had appeared with an accompanying illustration by Weyland, and that was exactly how this page looked as well: like poetry.
Poetry.
“Wait,” said Alison. Everyone looked up at her as if they weren’t sure what they were meant to be waiting on. “To quieten an curse.I think this may be it. Oh Gods, how could I be so stupid! The answer was poetry all along.”
“Come again?” said Idris.
“I’m not sure what the rest of this says, but I think it’s a spell of some kind. Some of these old spells are just poems. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It’s the piece that has been missing from my magic. The reason I can’t do it consistently. You don’t need it, but I do. I need poetry.”
“Let me see that,” said Professor Marin. She had been sitting some distance away from the fire but still within earshot. “This is not my mother tongue, but I can still recall it.” She read from the book in a strange accent:
To quieten an curse, speke þese lynes þries:
Breke þyn bonde, breke þyn chayne,
Leve till oonly goode remayne,
Bi lighte o moone & fyre o sunne,
Lete us ende what hast ybigun.
“Can you understand it?” asked Alison.
“Can I see the journal? I can write down what it means.”
To quiet a curse, speak these lines thrice:
Break thy bond, break thy chain,
Leave ‘til only good remains,
By light of moon and fire of sun,
Let us end what has begun.
“It doesn’t sound like much to go on,” said Idris. “We’ve never needed words to do our magic. But maybe this magic is different.”
“Could you try it?” asked Rinka. “On the locket, maybe?”
“Perhaps the ring instead,” said Idris. “We don’t know what the locket does, and that ring is more trouble than it’s worth.”
“I’m willing to give it a go,” said Alison.
Idris rose to retrieve the ring, taking the secret passage back to his closet.
“What do you think about trying it outside?” asked Keir. “By light of moon and fire of sun.Maybe you need one or the other.”
“Maybe both,” said Alison. “Although I suppose they’re nearly the same thing. It’s cold out there, but I’m sure the library would prefer it if we didn’t try it here.”
The library dropped a book in response:The Beauty of the Great Outdoors.
“Message received,” said Alison.
