The Sword of Straw by Amanda Hemingway Read Free Book Online Page A

to George, whom she had always slightly despised, in a friendly sort of way.
    But far more serious was the Jonas Tyler situation. Of course, he didn’t
know
she liked him—they’d only ever exchanged a few words; she didn’t want him to know, or anyone else—but that was beside the point. She’d seen him twice talking to Ellen Carver, not ordinary talking but the low-voiced, intimate kind of talk that people do when they are close to each other, and Ellen’s friend Sarah said he’d asked Ellen out to a coffee shop. Jason Wicks, already six foot two, went to pubs and terrorized the older villagers of Eade by drinking beer on street corners and throwing the cans into people’s gardens, but Jonas, though he probably drank beer, only did it in the privacy of his own home. Nonetheless, to Hazel a coffee shop represented a possible venue for seduction—the seduction, that is, of Jonas by Ellen, rather than vice versa. She spent her math lessons brooding about it, and went home on the school bus sitting alone, wrapped in silence. Safe in the lair of her bedroom, she fought with frustration and inchoate rage, feeling herself ugly, undesirable, with a brain that wouldn’t work and a body that let her down. She remembered her great-grandmother—Effie Carlow, with her raptor’s eye and witch’s nose, living in an isolated cottage, frightening people, frightening Hazel, drowned in river water after a spell too far.
You, too, have the power…
She didn’t want to be like that, she didn’t want to be old and mad and scary, dabbling in charms and cantrips and other illusions. But the thought of Jonas with Ellen was gall and wormwood to her—it seemed to her, in the blackness of her heart, that she had nothing to lose.
    She got out the bottles she had already selected, Effie’s notebook with its peely cover and scratchy writing, the beeswax candle she had bought the day before. Effie’s notes said nothing about a candle, but Hazel felt it was appropriate. (In
Buffy,
Willow always lit candles when she was doing magic.) She ought to go into the attic—Effie had used the attic sometimes—but the lock was broken and anyway, she had once seen something there she didn’t like. The bedroom was
her
place, private and secure. She wedged a chair under the door handle and cleared the dressing table by dint of shoving things onto the floor, fixing the candle in place in front of the mirror. Then she remembered the matches were in the kitchen and had to unwedge the door to fetch them. Finally, she was ready.
    She had drawn the curtains but it wasn’t dark and the candle flame looked dim and unimpressive, a tiny gleam against the many-colored chaos of her room. The theme music from
Lord of
the Rings
filled the background; she had hoped it would be suitably atmospheric. In fact, atmosphere seemed to be lacking. She read out the words Effie had penned, fortunately in block capitals for clarity, unfortunately in an unknown language with no guidelines as to pronunciation. Words—as far as she could tell—intended to summon a spirit to her assistance. There was something about drawing a circle, setting boundaries to confine the spirit, but the clutter of her bedroom offered little scope for magic circles, and anyway, she looked on this as a trial run, believing nothing would happen. She had faith in science, in Nathan’s alternative universes, but not in magic, despite experience. Not in
her
magic.
    Nothing happened.
    She tried the words again, attempting a French-style pronunciation that seemed to go well with them. Her French wasn’t great, but it was better than her math. Her voice sounded more confident now—if nothing was going to happen, it was safe to be confident about it.
    The candle flame stretched out into a thin spool of brilliance. The room seemed darker, even if it wasn’t. Behind the flame, the mirror clouded. Hazel became aware of her heartbeat, pounding at her ribs. Thought stopped; she couldn’t tear her gaze from