Chapter 19 #2
He chuckled. “You’re currently wearing sweatpants. Your standards are already slipping.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Grab whatever water or snacks you want. We may have to visit places where the locals have built up immunity to certain bacteria, but we have not. You can grab another change of clothes, but be practical, please.”
She laughed. “The designer clothes in my closet won't fit this body. I’ll have to buy a couple of things to replace these horrible sweatpants.”
“One pair of jeans, a pair of shorts, and a couple of safari shirts should do the trick,” he said.
Then he waved a hand over her, murmured a few words under his breath, and she glanced down to discover that she wore a new outfit…
Denim shorts and a tan safari shirt, both with deep pockets.
The jeans and T-shirt, plus a jacket, were folded and sitting on the couch she had vacated.
“Thank you!”
“De rien,” he said with a smile.
“Let’s review,” she said, ticking items off on her fingers as she and Duke stood on the front steps of the library.
“Stone dust from a world-famous pyramid, a flower that smells like death’s armpit, a carnivorous plant, a fossil that refuses to die, a ghost flower, a bleeding tree, and an orchid that costs more than my first car. ”
Duke adjusted his bag. “When you say it like that, it sounds excessive.”
“It is excessive. This is not a spell. This is a bizarre scavenger hunt.”
“If it’s any consolation, I brought the plant from Borneo with me. I was there before Joell called, and I had one on my bedside table.”
“You brought the $5,000.00 orchid with you?”
“Surprise…”
“Wow. I’d kiss you, but I’m not in my right body. I’d be using someone else’s lips.”
He didn’t have a chance to respond. The library vanished from Tennessee, taking them on the first leg of their adventure. They landed in the jungle behind their destination and walked the rest of the way.
Chichén Itzá greeted them with blazing sun, tourists, and a pyramid that radiated power like it knew it was famous.
Victoria shaded her eyes. “So, we’re just stealing dust from one of the Seven Wonders of the World?”
“Borrowing,” Duke corrected. “And it’s not one of the seven wonders, although in my opinion, it should be.”
“Ah, yes. Archaeological borrowing. That always ends well.”
They waited until dusk, when the crowds thinned, and the air shifted. The pyramid seemed to hum, ancient magic woven into every stone.
“Careful,” Duke murmured. “Respect matters here.”
“Don’t worry. We witches always respect natural flora and fauna when we pinch some. Although rocks are neither flora nor fauna…”
Victoria crouched, brushing her fingers along the lowest step. The stone seemed almost alive.
“Relax,” she said softly. “We’re not here to mess anything up. I just need a pinch of your dirt.”
The moment she collected the dust, the ground gave a subtle tremor.
She froze. “Did I just anger a civilization?”
“Possibly.”
“Fantastic.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Au revoir, ancient wonder!” And they left quickly.
Indonesia was worse.
The corpse flower announced itself before they even saw it.
Victoria stopped dead. “Oh no.”
Duke winced. “Yes.”
The smell hit like a physical force.
“Sweet Goddess,” she gagged, covering her nose. “That is not a scent. That is an olfactory attack.”
The massive bloom loomed ahead, obscene and magnificent.
“That’s it,” Duke said.
“That thing looks like it eats witchlets.”
“We have to wait for peak bloom. Which means sitting in the smell.”
Victoria wrapped a scarf around her face. “If I pass out, get me back to the mansion. I don’t want my last memory to be this.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I might not want to.”
“Tell you what… Why don’t we leave this one until last? We can always come back and move it quickly, since we know where it is.”
Victoria leaned as far back as possible. “Good idea. If that leaked in my bag, I’d burn everything in there with it.”
Northern Queensland tried to kill them with humidity first, then bugs and animals.
“Nepenthes Temax,” Duke said, pointing to a spot in the bush.
Victoria eyed the pitcher plant suspiciously. “That looks like it eats things that have names and a heartbeat.”
“Only small animals.”
A bug landed on the lip of the plant. They watched it disappear.
Victoria blinked. “No. Hate it. Hate everything about it.”
They managed to harvest the plant without becoming part of the food chain.
“I’m adding ‘almost eaten by a decorative vase’ to my journal,” she muttered.
After getting it back to the library, Victoria left it on the steps and ran inside to wash off sweat and bug spray.
A short time later, Duke carried in the plant. “We nearly lost the Nepenthes when a goat decided it might be tasty.”
Victoria gasped.
“Don’t worry. I bribed the goat away with a granola bar.”
She let out a relieved chuckle. “Where is the goat now? I want to name it Professor Snackbeard.”
He snorted. “I think we should go. There’s only so much sunburn and so many mosquito bites I can handle without hazard pay.”
Africa was quieter. Older. The Welwitschia sat in the desert like it had been there since the beginning of time and had no intention of leaving.
Victoria approached slowly. “This thing feels… important.”
“It’s one of the oldest living plants on Earth,” Duke said.
The air felt heavy, reverent.
Victoria knelt. “We’re not here to hurt you,” she murmured. “Just to borrow a little.”
The plant didn’t react, but the wind shifted, warm and approving.
Duke raised a brow. “Did it just agree?”
“Obviously. It likes me.” Under her breath, she mumbled, “Thank goodness something does.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing.” She collected the sample and placed it in the tote bag.
Socotra was something else entirely. The Dragon’s Blood Tree stood like an umbrella from another world, its red sap glistening like it had hemophilia and wasn’t as lucky as Ezra, the Mage who helped Sahara—carefully.
Victoria stared. “It’s bleeding.”
“It’s resin,” Duke said.
“It’s bleeding resin.”
They collected it carefully.
The red liquid stained her fingers.
Victoria held them up. “If I start craving villagers, you’re responsible.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
That night, back at camp, every ingredient they’d gathered so far was laid out between them. Victoria leaned back and stared at the sky.
“We’re almost done,” she said.
Duke nodded. “We are.”
She glanced at the collection. “If this spell doesn’t work, I’m going to have a very strong word with the universe.”
Then she looked at him.
And for a second, it wasn’t about the spell; or the ingredients; or getting her body back.
It was about the fact that somewhere between a death-flower, a carnivorous plant, and a bleeding tree, she’d found someone she trusted.
Victoria was amazed by the vast amount of knowledge she and Duke were gaining. Every night, she entered what she’d learned in her journal. Perhaps she could pay back Duke’s kindness with a new volume to add to the library. She was, after all, a writer.
On this last night, around the campfire, Victoria and Duke decided to share a little more about their personal lives growing up. Victoria began the discussion by asking, “So both of your parents… Are they magical?”
“Yes,” Duke hesitated, then cleared his throat and launched into his story.
“I was not aware of it when I was very young. I was maybe six or seven years old when I first noticed something different about my parents than other kids’ parents or families.
When I asked Mom and Dad about it, they sat me down and explained—or tried to—that we were given a gift, and that it was a rare gift, not to be shared with anyone since other people might be jealous of our having it. ”
“And did you understand at such an early age about magic? Did they tell you all it could do?”
“Yes and no. I saw glimpses of their abilities when they didn't know I was watching. I remember catching my father wanting a certain book, but being too comfortable to get up, and so he just held up his hand, and the book came to him!”
Victoria's eyebrows shot up. “And did you wonder if that was normal at that time?”
“I didn't until I tried it, and nothing happened. I wasn't instructed yet, so I didn't know what was wrong. Maybe I didn't have the special gift, or I needed some sort of secret that would help me use it.”
Victoria poked at the fire with a long branch, then broke it in half and threw both smaller branches into the blaze, causing some pops and sparks in the fire.
“What about you?” Duke asked.
Victoria shrugged one shoulder. “I was raised by my father, for the most part.
We had a mundane nanny, so I didn't know about magic for quite a while. My father owned a helicopter tourism business just outside of Montréal. He taught me to fly helicopters as soon as it was legal. To me, that was magic enough.”
“You've been flying helicopters for quite a while, then.” Duke stared at her in admiration.
“Yes, I had my private license at the age of seventeen. I spent a lot of time learning how to crash in my teens.”
Duke leaned back and stared at her, open-mouthed.
Victoria chuckled. “When I say he taught me to crash, I mean he taught me how to auto-rotate. If a helicopter’s engine cuts out or if you need to land fast and safely, you can cut the engine.
The helicopter will start to fall, but the air will turn the rotors the opposite way and slow it down, therefore not harming the expensive helicopter or the lives inside it. ”
Duke bumped her arm playfully. “So, you were just joking around… You didn't really crash helicopters, did you?”
Victoria grinned toward the fire; her face illuminated in flickering orange light.
“Well, only once, when it wasn't on purpose. At age eighteen, I had my commercial license, and I was heading out to pick up a passenger. My father thought I was trained well enough to do it on my own. Everything was fine except that I had a cold, and I had to sneeze at the wrong moment.”
Duke let out a guffaw. “Are you telling me that a sneeze caused you to crash a helicopter?”