Spirits shimmer, spirits sing—
Draw them near on quiet wing.
By petal, breath, and newborn light,
Bind our courts through velvet night.
Fae crown of leaf and ancient ley,
Walk the bridges, show the way.
I read the spell through in my head first, then I whispered it aloud the second time. As I completed the second round, my entire body started to tingle. A jolt of electricity shot through me, making the hairs on my arm stand on end and my scalp prickle.
When a hand touched my shoulder, I leapt up so quickly I banged my knee against the picnic table.
“I’m sorry,” Silas said. “Are you all right?”
“I just didn’t hear you coming, is all.”
“I’ve been standing here for at least half an hour.” Apology rang in Silas’s words. “I didn’t know how to interrupt. You seemed so focused.”
“Half an hour?” I felt like I’d snapped out of a trance and hadn’t yet been able to place my surroundings. My brain felt foggy, like I was digesting the fact that this was the real world, not a page out of the book I’d been immersed in for who knows how long.
“It’s late, Alessia.” Silas gestured toward where some of the dancing had died down. Many of the gnomes were now lounging around bonfires sipping mead and wine, staring up at the moon-drenched sky.
“It is a spell, Silas.” I pointed down at the book. “Look. The moonlight acted like a cypher.”
Silas’s eyebrows knitted together as he stepped closer. “Really?”
I put my finger on the title which very clearly stated that it was a spell. “See?”
Silas was already shaking his head when I drew my finger away. “I hate to break it to you, but that’s gibberish to me.”
“What?” I squinted, but indeed, it was still quite legible to me. “It saysA Spell for the Full Moon.”
“Does it tell you what the spell does?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I can read it to you, if you like, and you could help?”
“No.” Silas’s words came out a sharp bark. “If you incite the spell without knowing what it does, it could be catastrophic.”
I bit down on my lower lip. “Is this a bad time to tell you that I sort of read it to myself already?”
Silas let out a long, slow breath. “Did anything happen?”
“I felt a little tingly, but other than that”—I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers—“nothing.”
“Are there instructions that go along with the spell?” he asked. “Like, collect a frog’s brain or something? Maybe it didn’t activate without the proper procedures and supplies.”
“Maybe. But if there are additional parts to the spell, I don’t see them listed here.”
“It’s solely an incantation?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the gist of it?”
I scanned the spell again. “It talks about unlacing the seams of the midnight sky. It mentions spirits, shimmering, and singing. There’s a line about binding the courts through the night. And then there’s the bit about Fae Queens showing the way.”
