Juniper
“Do we have everything?” Levi asked, glancing across the crackling fire at Rainier.
It had been a full day, and Rainier had apparently been scrambling to procure all the needed supplies.
Now, it was nearing midnight, and the three of us were tucked away some distance from Hidden Grove.
Levi and I hadn’t spoken much since I’d confronted him about the necklace.
I’d been too emotional, angry, and confused, so we’d only exchanged short words to plan this.
I felt a little guilty that Rainier was the middleman.
He was doing a decent job of staying professional and calm, but I could tell he was annoyed with the both of us.
“Yeah, I’ve got it all,” Rainier said absently as he read from an old piece of paper. “Stephen got the last ingredient we needed.”
“Whose Stephen?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood with banal conversation.
“He’s a shifter,” Levi explained. “A lone wolf, who’s happy like that.
He travels around to other packs and towns, doing odd jobs and trading.
I offered him a place here, but he prefers the open road.
He’s an honorary pack member, though, and one of the only people outside Hidden Grove who knows of our location and size. ”
“Interesting,” I said. “What was the last ingredient?”
Rainier glanced up from the paper and gave me a sheepish smile. “Uh, kinda complicated. You’ll see in a minute.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Glancing around, I tried to figure out exactly what was going to happen.
Rainier had two small stones roughly the size of ping pong balls sitting before him.
One looked like white quartz, and the other was reddish, like a ruby with golden impurities running through it.
Next to the stones was a small knife, and a wooden bowl filled with a few powders of different colors. Around us, he’d poured a salt ring.
“Okay,” Rainier said at last, pulling a small, plastic baggie from his jacket pocket. “This is one of the last things we need.”
The baggie held two shriveled and desiccated mushrooms. They were a strange white, gray, and blue color. An uneasy feeling swirled in my stomach.
“Uh, is that what I think it is?” I asked a little incredulously.
Rainier shrugged. “Psilocybin is a powerful magical compound.”
“Magic mushrooms?” Levi asked, gaping at his friend as though he’d lost his mind. “Seriously?”
“Hey, man,” Rainier said. “You two wanted magic, and you’re getting magic. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? This is what Stephen got for me. Thankfully, he’s a bit of a psychonaut and had some already, otherwise, we’d have had to wait a while.”
Rainier tossed some of the dried mushrooms into the wooden bowl with the other ingredients.
“What else is in there?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
Rainier used a small spoon to begin crushing the ingredients together into a fine powder.
“There are a few other psychoactive compounds that grow nearby. Jimsonweed and morning glory seeds, for one. There are some other things on this list, but I have no idea why they’re in there.
Dried spruce needles, juniper berries, stuff like that.
And cinnamon. I think that’s to make this more flammable. ”
I swallowed hard as I watched him work, praying he was getting this right. Once he was done making the powder, he poured the contents into a tiny metal pot and handed Levi the paper.
“On the bottom is a small paragraph,” Rainier explained. “I need you to begin repeating those words. It’s an incantation that—I guess—creates some sort of magical bubble around us and will help open June’s mind to any residual souls residing within her.”
“I don’t even know these words,” Levi said. “It looks like gibberish.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rainier said, as he picked up the knife. “Just start saying them. The language is ancient. All that matters is that the words are said out loud.”
Levi sighed and began to recite the words. He was right, they did sound like gibberish. I barely heard them, though, since all my concentration was focused on the blade in Rainier’s palm. He beckoned me to give him my hand.
With only a minimal amount of hesitation, I extended my arm, and he took my wrist gently in his fingers and rested the tip of the blade against the heavy pad at the base of my palm.
“This is going to sting a bit,” he said, grimacing apologetically.
“Do it,” I said, giving him a nod.
Rainier dragged the blade across my flesh, creating an inch-long cut. I hissed from the pain as my blood dripped into the small pot with the other ingredients.
Rainier handed me a handkerchief as he put the pot on the outer embers of the fire. “Put that on your hand to stop the bleeding.”
I had the disconcerting feeling of being in a soundproofed room. Levi’s voice grew strangely distant and quieter, almost like I was being lulled to sleep. I blinked and shook my head.
“Here,” Rainier said, handing me the two stones. “Hold the white in your left and the red in your right.”
I curled my fingers around the stones, my body heat warming them. “What now?” I said, my heart beating rapidly.
Rainier lifted the pot, which was smoking slightly, then used the tip of the knife to pick up one of the glowing embers and held it at the lip of the container.
“You’ll want to take a very deep breath of this and hold it. Do you understand?” he said. “The instructions were very clear. You have to hold your breath, until the ritual reaches its apex.”
“How will I know when I can breathe out?” I asked, my voice shaking, my hands clenching tightly around the stones.
He grinned ruefully. “Oh, you’ll know,” he said, then tipped the ember into the vessel. “I want you to think very hard about Naphele. Imagine her face from that painting. Ask her to reveal herself. That should create a gateway for her to speak to us through these stones.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes. When I had Naphele’s face locked in my mind, I looked at Rainier and nodded.
A thick, billowing cloud of smoke had begun rising from the rim of the pot. Rainier put the container below my nose. I leaned forward, inhaling deeply. The smoke smelled awful, like sulfur, burnt metal, and rancid fungus, but I filled my lungs and sat back.
Levi continued chanting, shooting me worried glances every few seconds or so. I wanted to tell him I was all right, but I had to hold my breath. Nothing was happening. Had Rainier gotten the recipe wrong?
Just as I was about to exhale and ask if something wasn’t working, the entire world seemed to turn into a tunnel.
My peripheral vision went black, and all I could see was Rainier, Levi, and the flickering fire.
Then, as though I was on a rollercoaster going a hundred miles an hour in reverse, I slid away from myself and began to fall.
My sense of space vanished, and instead of falling backward, I was falling down.
Involuntarily, I exhaled, letting the smoke billow from my lungs.
At the exact moment I released it, a blinding light flashed before my eyes, like lightning striking three inches in front of my nose.
I clenched my eyes shut, still feeling like I was falling, my terror making me panic.
I stood in a clearing. A jumble of tangled bushes ran along a fence beside me, and a woman walked next to me.
As I watched her, she bent and plucked a yellowish-white flower, lifting it to her nose.
I knew that flower. I’d seen it blooming around Idlewild in the summer.
A primrose. Tucking it behind her ear, she walked along, picking elderberries from the shrubs and putting them in the basket hanging from her arm.
Glancing around, I realized we were on the outskirts of Idlewild.
What was I doing here?
“Excuse me?” I said, but either the woman didn’t hear me, or she was ignoring me.
“Hey there, beautiful.”
A smile formed on my lips as I turned. That voice was familiar, though it sounded less weary than usual. Levi strode up to me, his shirt tossed over his shoulder, his muscles bulging and covered in sweat and sawdust.
My smile faded. He wasn’t walking toward me, but to the other woman.
“Well, hello there. I thought you were working all day?”
He took her hand. “I thought we could have lunch together.” He pulled her against his chest and kissed her, long and hard, moaning slightly. I still couldn’t make out her face, but she had to be Naphele.
“That sounds good,” she murmured as he pulled away.
“Yeah?” He cocked an eyebrow, his lips curling into a mischievous smile. “Maybe after we eat, we can have a little dessert?”
“You know, I think I could be persuaded,” she said with a giggle.
He led her away from the berry bushes toward town and away from me. A pit formed in my stomach as I watched them walk away together. Left behind and forgotten.
If I was her reincarnation, shouldn’t I have been seeing all this from her point of view? Why was I standing apart? I closed my eyes, trying to focus, to think. When I opened them—
“Here, this is for you,” Levi said, holding a necklace out toward the woman beside me. This time, her face was in full view. Naphele.
She gasped in delight at the sight of it. I recognized it. It was the necklace Levi had given me.
“It’s beautiful,” Naphele said as Levi stepped behind her and put it on for her.
“Levi, where did you get this?” she asked, touching the silver pendant gently.
“Don’t worry about that. You’re worth it.” He ran his thumb lovingly across the other woman’s cheek. “You’re my everything. I love you, you know that?”
A faint pang of jealousy ran through me at his words, spoken to another woman while I stood right there.
I reached forward, trying to touch him, but my hand swept right through, as though he was made of mist. No, that wasn’t right.
It was more like I was made of mist, not him.
I was simply a bystander, watching rather than experiencing this.
“I love you, too,” Naphele said, and reached forward, taking his face in her hands and kissing him.