The Death of Jane Lawrence(81)

The wick caught slowly, and the resulting flame was weak, but it held. Jane set the used match aside. Her hands trembled.

Next, she took up the oils. The first, attar of rose, she dabbed on her right wrist as she read from her notes:

“The senses of the human body bring light into darkness, scent into blankness, sound into emptiness, taste into nothingness, touch into the cold of the unmade. Through our senses, we know the world and we are alive.”

The next oil, strong lavender, she placed on her left wrist. “Through the manipulation of the senses, we see the world as a stage upon which the Work can be done.” On her chest she pressed a dab of the essence of lilies. “As the senses are aligned with the unseen, so too, shall we be aligned.”

Had Mrs. Purl thought Jane meant to use those oils as perfume? Had she judged Jane for her frivolity as she spent her husband’s money while he was missing? And now, now that she knew Jane was trying something, did she reinterpret?

Later. Those were thoughts for later.

Jane opened the final bottle, made of familiar dark glass. She pressed a finger of the sticky benzoin compound to her forehead, just between her eyes. The odor was pungent, wrapping itself around her in a spicy, cloying haze.

“By the application of these oils, I align myself by scent to the Work.”

Her head spun. Each note thrummed with potential, stirring in endless depths. She was on the verge of something, something vast, something beckoning.

She could do this. She could build a wall, and more.

In one hand she took up ash, and in her other fist grave dirt, pouring a measure of each into a small bowl she’d taken from the kitchen. She mixed them with a finger, stirring counterclockwise seven times, then pulled her hands away.

Her skin hummed as she watched the ashes darkening fast to black, the water leaching from soil to drier ground. Then she reached in with both hands simultaneously, scooping up just a bit of the loam on each finger, and brought them together, pressing the dirt into every ridge of her fingerprints. “By application of the ash from a long-cold fire and the soil covering a newly dead soul, I align myself by touch to the Work,” she murmured.

The dark of the room pressed in upon her, a living thing. There was something in the room with her, though she could see no ghostly figures, no watching statues. “By the lighting of the candles within the circle, I align myself by sight to the Work. By my words, I align myself by sound to the Work.”

She parted her hands and reached for a pad of moss. She tore it down to size, then held it before her lips. Staring out into the blackness, she said, “By the application of this bog moss to my tongue, I align myself by taste to the Work.”

It was green and fetid against her tongue. Its curling branches pressed against her palette and her teeth, but instead of gagging, she felt her jaw go slack. She could taste individual pockets of bog water and rot, and those soon mixed with her saliva and coated the whole of her mouth.

She did not retch.

There must have been some mind-addling ingredient clinging to the moss. The candle flames grew brighter, her thoughts more expansive. Or, perhaps, it was magic. It was the pageantry, the power, and she felt herself begin to slip, the way she had at Dr. Hunt’s feet.

Either way, drugged or touching the ineffable, she must continue the working. She took a deep breath through her nose and tilted her head back.

I walk the path of the student. I open myself to the fullness of the Work, and commit myself to its challenges. I will neither sleep nor take my pleasures in the lands of the flesh. I will fix my mind only upon the Work, and I will not give in to the temptations of the world beyond. The division between this place and the world outside are the divisions between myself and the world outside. I walk the path of the student.

She focused so hard on the words that they seemed to burn in the air above her. The iron girding creaked. A cool wind tickled her fingers. She spread them, trying to catch the movement, but it was gone.

I surrender control to the Work. I will go whither the Work leads, and only there. I commit myself to the Work. The sigil written below me is the map by which I will reach awakening. I have inscribed the path in true black ink, indelible and thick so that the path cannot be lost.

Before her was a page she had filled with carefully plotted angles, regular polygons inscribed one within the other, meeting perfectly. Dr. Nizamiev’s instructions had called for a sigil, an anchor, but had given only haphazard explanations as to what that meant. It referenced alchemical equations that did not balance and letters of Old Breltainian that she was half certain were drawn upside down, and no order or logic to any of it. But this? This was elegant, and powerful, and it was the strongest anchor she knew of between herself and the seemingly impossible.

As she traced its lines with her fingertips, her spine arched. She felt something moving inside of her, beneath her rib cage, just below her lungs. It squirmed and writhed and tried to force itself upward.

I walk the path of the student, she thought again, bowing low and pressing her forehead to the inked paper, crushing down the slithering inside her. I walk the path of the student.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


THE RIVER GRASS and sprouted grain was as horrid as she’d anticipated, but no more than that, slick and flavorless but gone fast enough. It did nothing to shadow the glow inside of her. She had felt the working’s power, just as she had felt the circle’s. It was all real, and it would work. She wanted to rush upstairs and read through Augustine’s text one more time, pick out spells to test and try, set herself against the door.