‘I will draw on the elements of earth and nature, to power the link which is already established by the curse.’
‘I don’t have to wear dirt, and drink the creek again, do I?’ he asks distastefully.
Jillian spins me a startled look; heat tears up my spine. ‘You tried a cleansing spell, Kate?’
I play with a fold in my full skirt. ‘It was better than contemplating suicide.’
Jillian’s eyebrows lift almost to her hairline as her eyes shift to Jarrod.
‘Let’s not get into that,’ he mumbles.
‘Do you have any more questions?’ Jillian asks softly. We shake our heads. ‘Then let’s begin by learning the words you’ll need to recite when ready to return home. They shouldn’t be too hard to remember.’ She takes a deep breath and says, ‘“Ad silvam redire”.’
It’s Latin.
‘It just means, “Return to the forest”,’ Jillian explains. ‘But the amulets must be together as one, or it won’t work.’
We repeat the short chant several times, until Jillian is happy the words are carved into our brains.
‘Good,’ she says, pleased with our progress. ‘Now I want you to start breathing slowly and deeply.’
We remain quiet and still, breathing as Jillian requests, deeply from our abdomens. Jarrod takes my hand into his. It’s cold yet steady. ‘See you in the borderlands of England,’ he whispers. ‘And I hope those Scots are behaving themselves.’
I nod, and try not to think about neighbourhood squabbles or what period in history we are entering. Unconsciously my mouth moves with Jillian’s words. She calls on the elements individually to work their magic, starting with air and earth, ending with the circle of fire surrounding us. There is power in her voice and deep emotion.
She follows this with a few specially selected ancient words. As she murmurs the enchantment, the short white candles explode into screaming blue flames, leaping and thrusting into the air as high as our bodies. Heat and energy tear at me, dance through me, fighting a battle with every one of my cells.
I cling to Jarrod as blue fire swirls around us, knowing at this moment that Jillian’s spell will work.
A crushing feeling starts in my head. My hands begin shaking uncontrollably, quickly spreading. Jarrod’s body is also shaking; his grip on my arms punishing. My nails dig into his back.
Something is happening really fast now. The crushing in my head grows with such intensity I think my mind is going to explode. I lean right into Jarrod’s chest, his head comes down over the top of mine, shaking violently. Then a pulling starts, almost gently at first, as if my body is turning liquid and someone is sucking me upwards, into a spinning rainbow chasm. The pace accelerates, and with it the colours. They become vivid, almost blinding in strength, obscure in pattern. Colour becomes my world. It is everywhere. Floating. Swirling. Spinning. My body seems to stretch beyond the norm of what blood, bones and tissue are supposedly capable of doing. A thought occurs that I will never live through this. It saddens me.
It is the last thought I have.
Part Two
Journey
Kate
Twenty Leagues South of the Border of Scotland with England
The Village of Thorntyne, 1252
Everything aches. From my toes to the very roots of my hair. My head particularly feels as if it exploded and was frantically put back together, with the bits not quite matching. I’m lying on my back, skirts hitched up to my thighs, small rocks poking into my back. Stunned, I tenderly run fingers over my face to check the condition of my head. It is, apparently, all there.
‘K-kate?’
I hear Jarrod through the fog in my slowly reawakening brain, but it’s a distant sound. I lift my head and open my eyes. Night is descending, but it’s only a guess. I’m totally disoriented.
I remember now what happened. Jillian linked us, through the curse, with the past. For a second my heart stops. It must have worked!
Sitting up, I look eagerly around and can hardly believe what I see. For one thing the rainforest is nowhere! I’m sitting on a road that is really no more than a worn dirt track. One end disappears into woodland for a while, but I pick it up again as the landscape starts rising towards a headland in the distance. There are buildings that look like they might be made of stone taking up the whole top point. Could it be a castle? I wonder at this in awe.
Peering at this landscape I make out two peaks with an ocean beyond. I can smell it. There’s a mist coming in, and it’s salty on my lips. The second peak of this strange-looking landscape stretches away across to another jutting headland, and it too has a building on it, but it’s getting too dark to make out any features.