The Love Spell

The candles were lit. The circle was drawn. The book was open to the right page. Shiny, gray lode stones weighed down the corners of the thin, dry, sheepskin pages. They were the only way Odda Eldenlíc had found to keep the pages from blowing in the magical winds that would soon be curling about his workshop.

Odda mouthed the name of the demon again, Meklboc, making sure to hold his breath lest he accidentally whisper it and start the ritual before he was ready. He had known someone who did that, another student of his old master. The result … well. But saying it correctly was just as important as not saying it too soon. He practiced as silently as he could, distrusting the wet clicking sounds he couldn’t avoid making. There were some demons, Odda knew, whose names were just those popping consonants. It was impossible to practice their names without alerting them. You had to get it right on the first try, or not at all.

“Meklboc”, Odda clicked. His teeth were softer than they used to be, years ago. Some felt loose in his gums. Would that make a difference? Probably not.

He tried to remember what he was forgetting, and couldn’t.

He was ready.

Odda began to say the words of the rite. They came easily at first, as they always did. Then, as usual, the words seemed to become aware that they were being spoken, and resisted. They choked him. They dried his mouth, and ran backwards down his throat. They left foul flavors on his tongue. He was expecting it, and pushed through.

He said the words.

He had studied the meanings of the words, but it didn’t matter. The power of the words wasn’t in their meaning. They were sounds that unlocked a secret lock that was made long ago and left suspended in the air, just behind the curtain of daylight and reality.

The candles began to gutter. The line of the circle began to fray, its salt to spread. This “wind” wasn’t real. The air wasn’t moving. But currents of power were moving through all the physical elements of the spell, twisting and pulling them.

Then came the part where he must add in his own name, “Odda Eldenlíc”. The false wind now picked up his stiff, white hair, and his stiff brown robe. He was part of the spell now.

Some more words, and then it was time for the demon’s name. This was the last turn of the key. Once you said its name, the demon would be aware of you, and have the power to resist you, unless all your nets and traps were already in place.

“Meklboc”, said Odda, aloud.

A silence fell on the room so suddenly, Odda felt as if he had gone deaf. This, of course, was expected, as was the throbbing that began in the pit of his throat where it met his chest. A pressure that ebbed and flowed and ebbed and flowed again and built each time and made its way to the inner passages of his ears, to his heart, to his stomach, to his groin. The oscillation quickened. Odda became aware that his hands were trembling; his brow was moist. His pulse quickened with the pulse. The throbbing in his ears became audible, like the roar of ocean waves rising and falling; then faster, as if invisible hands were cupping his ears, fluttering to make the ocean roar say “WOW WOW WOW WA WA WA WAWAWAWA-HAHAHA”.

The sound became laughter. Cruel, haughty laughter that filled his head with pain and blurred his vision. The laughter became a voice.

“Odda Eldenlíc”, the voice said, “your name is known to us, in the Lands of Flame.”

And there it was. At first, like a black trickle of smoke from a snuffed candle. By and by, it became a figure. Or like a figure of a man glimpsed in the corner of your eye, though Odda looked directly into him. Odda pushed all his attention, all his mind into making his gaze into a sword, but the vision of the man remained elusive: half-imagined, half-shadow.

“Odda Eldenlíc”, the voice repeated, “I see you. Odda Eldenlíc, I taste you. Odda Eldenlíc, I rend you! I peel your flesh. I bite your quick. I snap your bones. I lap your brains. Odda Eldenlíc, I reach my hand into your mortal body, and I rip! I shred! I mince!”

The shadow in the circle began to grow, though Odda still could not find the edges of it with his eyes. It swirled and twisted in the center of the circle like a great storm.

“SILENCE!” boomed Odda. His voice echoed around the little, stone cellar as if it were the great hall of a king. It was a trick Odda had prepared in advance. “Silence, wraith! Rend me, if you can! Bite me and slash me, if you are able! I have you bound, and bound you shall remain until you satisfy my desire!”

“Your desire,” sneered Meklboc, “I know your desire, Odda Eldenlíc. You wish for gold. You wish for dominion. You wish for tea cakes and cherries. You wish for rosy-bottomed, little girls and boys to … "

“Meklboc, I am Odda Eldenlíc, and I have bound you by salt and sound, by flame and name, and you will be SILENT!” He put some more power into it, and something else. He hardened his gaze. He imagined the glints of light in his eyes extending out like bright needles and pinning the smoky figure to the drapery of reality like a butterfly to a silk pillow in a case. It made his head ache worse, but he knew the effect on the demon would be much greater, bound as it was by the ancient web of energy.

There was a moment in which the heat and smoke of the demon’s resentment clouded the room and made Odda’s eyes begin to water.

“I await your bidding,” came the rasping reply at the end of it.

“You will undo a spell,” said Odda, in his normal voice.

“Someone has cursed you,” said the demon, laughing again, “Praise him, I say. Exalt that gallant hero.”

“I have not been cursed.”

“Have you not? I tell you you have been! If not here above, then in the alleys and gutters of Hell your name echoes, Odda Eldenlíc, and venom and bile and fangs of a thousand demons chase it through …”

“I have not been cursed,” repeated Odda. “You will undo a spell I have cast on another.”

“Do what?” asked the demon, and it seemed as if a breeze blew through its smokey un-form.

“I have cast a spell of great potency, and I wish it undone. You will … what do you mean, my name echoes in Hell?”

“Your name. Your name is … one of the MANY names of doomed magicians and charlatans that the Great Princes of Hell keep on their tongues, awaiting the day when they make slake their great thirst on the …”

“But you said you knew my name when I summoned you. Do you know me, in Hell?”

“I have heard tales of you.”

“What do they say about me?”

“What do they say? They say you are a charlatan and a pretender! They say you are corn to be ground in the great mill of …”

“They gossip a lot about charlatans and pretenders in Hell, do they?”

“They do sometimes.” Some of the heat seemed to leave the room. “Charlatans and pretenders are our charge, after all.”

“Yes, exactly! You get a hundred charlatans and pretenders each day, I’d wager.”

“Millions.”

“So why does my name echo in the alleys and … was it ditches?”

“You are a … you are a great charlatan.” The shadow in the circle seemed to grow slender again. “You are a … what I mean is, you are such a … that is to say, you cannot even undo your own spell! And you want me,” the smoke began to billow and swirl again, “ME, MECHEBBER the Mighty, to tidy up your soiled bedclothes, you puking infant!”

“Who?”

“Meklboc! Meklboc, the RIGHT HAND of Maguth!”

“You said something else. You said, Mechebber?”

“I have many names! And many servants do my bidding.”

“I don’t seem to have that one in my book, is all,” said Odda, leafing through his tome.

“GOD BLESS IT!” swore Meklboc. “What … only what is this spell you want me to undo?”

“Years ago, when I was a younger man, and laboring under the tutelage of my master, I was sent down to the lake to gather certain fungal spores that are efficacious in the preparation of a class of unguents for the amelioration of chilblains and ulcers, of which my master … "

“Ieshua ben Ioseph! Infinite is the vastness of my existence, yet infinitesimal is my patience!”

“Well, my eye happened to fall upon a maid bathing in the warm shallows.”

“I see,” said the demon.

“She was the fairest creature that God in his infinite wisdom … "

“Do not overstate it.”

“… had set upon the Earth for the enjoyment of Man.”

“For the enjoyment … "

“And I resolved in that instant that she should belong ever more to me, and to me alone.”

“I see.”

“And so I delved deep into the lore of my craft, and penetrated …”

“Penetrated?”

“… the secrets of the occult …”

“I’ve got it.”

“… to discover the means of casting a great enchantment upon the creature …”

“I see it. I have it.”

“… that she, casting her young eye upon me, and no other …”

“I have its measure, now.”

“… should fall deeply and immediately into such a rapture of desire …”

“I have encompassed the situation.”

“… that henceforth she should bend to my every wish and desire and call herself none but mine alone …”

“Bound her to your desires as well …”

“SILENCE, DEMON!” bellowed Odda, putting power behind his words once again. “I have indeed bound you to my desire, and it awaits only my pleasure to use these bindings to lash you, lash you, Demon, with the same tongues of flame that you whip the poor mortal souls with that have fallen into your realm.”

The stream of smoke, which had begun to fill the circle again, flickered as if blown by the breath in Odda’s words.

“You may indeed use these bindings in this way,” said Meklboc, whose roaring ocean crash of a voice had become subdued.

“… call herself but mine … call her but mine alone … ah … any road, many years have passed and the bewitching creature that once I saw has become plump and wrinkled as an overripe grape. And the affection that she poured upon me has become as a smothering blanket, pressing the very breath from my lungs. I wish you to reverse my spell, so that I may cast the fish back into the pond in which I found her.”

“Reverse the spell yourself, Summoner of Powers! ‘Penetrate’ your tomes once again, and ravage their secrets to undo what once you wrought.”

“KNIVES!” boomed Odda through the small chamber. “KNIVES OF JUDGMENT I command to glide between your foggy eyes. The KNIVES of My Lord Christ in Judgment of your FOULNESS!”

The column of smoke was whipped as if in a great wind, and became nearly indiscernible for a moment.

“Do not question me!” continued Odda, still using his power voice. “I am Odda the Slow-of-Step! I am in charge here!” Then, in his normal voice: “It’s just that I have tried to undo my work, but the power and intention that I poured into it was so great that it lies beyond my grasp, even now, though I have continued to increase my potency over the years.”

“He was a carpenter, not a butcher,” grumbled Meklboc, now merely a darkening of the stone floor in the middle of the circle.

“WHAT?” boomed Odda.

“Infinite is the vastness of my existence,” groaned Meklboc, curling upwards into a slender steam of smoke once again, “and the lives of men do flare and vanish as a snowflake on a skillet in my eye. How long ago did you cast this enchantment, O Weaver of Webs?”

“Let us say two score and twelve.”

“Two score and … you cast a love enchantment half a century ago, and you want me to undo it now?”

“I COMMAND you to undo it! KNIVES! KNIVES AND TONGUES OF FLAME!”

“O Child of Iron, your eye is a knife. Your voice is a tongue of flame. But I cannot.”

“Are you not the servant of Maguth, who has the power to abjure magic and necromancy?”

“I do serve my lord Maguth.”

“Then I command you to abjure the thaumaturgical deed that I have done!”

“No.”

“Do you forget that I have BOUND you to my desire? My desire is that you do this! White hot chains of hell surround you and squeeze you, they scorch you, Meklboc, they cut you, they burn you, Demon!”

Once again, the figure of Meklboc, which had almost achieved a man-like shape, was whipped and twisted in a great, silent wind. When Odda had finished, Meklboc was a hazy fog.

“Well, demon?” said Odda. “Will you obey me now? Demon?”

“I tell you, no! But I am, indeed, bound to your desire. So I must find some way to give it you. But perhaps you do not know your true desire. What is the name of this overripe fruit?”

“She is Frythegith,” said Odda. “You will speak of her with respect, Foul Force of Evil! Or I will lash you with your own whips again. Do you understand?”

“I understand more than you can comprehend comprehending, Odda Eldenlíc, Speaker of Torments. Why do you wish to rid yourself of the Lady now? Have you used her up? Have you taken your fill of her wine, and now cast her pulp to the swine?”

“I have told you.”

“You told me that the Lady Frythegith is a grape, a blanket, and a fish.”

“I have told you enough.”

“You are the man who comes to the physician saying ‘Physician! I must have snake’s venom! You must give me snake venom, it is the only medicine that will cure me.’ I tell you, I am the physician, and I must ask you ‘of what do you wish to be cured? For truly I know of no ailment that is cured by the taking of snake venom’.”

“Will you help me or no?”

“I will help you if I am able. Indeed, I must help you if I am able. But I cannot give you the help you ask for, for what you ask is not possible. What is ailing you? Let me be your physician, and let me prescribe the remedy for your pain. Only tell me your pain, not your ignorant superstitions.”

Odda paused. He looked at his book. He began to pace. With his glance diverted, Meklboc began to swell and take form again, growing darker and thicker, spinning around and around.

Odda ran his finger along his workbench, scraping a bit of spilled candle wax with his stained fingernail. Meklboc still had no face, but his focused attention was the heaviness before an impending storm, and it followed Odda around the small room.

“Tell me what they say about me in Hell,” Odda said at last.

“They say you like sags and wrinkles on a woman, because they remind you of your own palm, your only true love.”

Odda’s glance was fast and sharp, and the gathering cloud in the circle recoiled from it.

“They hate you in Hell,” hissed Meklboc, venomously.

“As they hate the very saints, no doubt.”

“You know nothing of Hell.”

“I know enough to satisfy my curiosity.”

“You will know Hell better anon.”

Odda didn’t respond immediately. He struggled with himself. One Odda wanted to come up with a cutting response, but he couldn’t concentrate on thinking of one. The other Odda was distracting him by thinking that someone, even the demonic forces of Hell, could have such a low opinion of him.

“I think it’s spreading,” he said at last, surprising himself. A third Odda had taken advantage of the confusion to make his play.

“Hell?” asked Meklboc in surprise.

“The spell. I think I put so much raw power into it that, after half a century, it has begun to spread outwards and infect … other people.”

The fluttering ocean crashing at Odda’s ears confused him for a moment, until he recognized the sound of the demon laughing again.

“Are there lines of fishwives leading to your door? All womankind striving with itself to get the chance to adore Odda Eldenlíc, to dance the round about the Midsummer Maypole?”

“I find myself … distracted.”

“What mortal wouldn’t be, finding himself the cock of the hen-house?” The demonic laughter began to grow painful in Odda’s head.

“I find myself distracted at home, Base Thing,” said Odda, sharply. “I find when I should be concentrating on my work, I am drawn to other quarters.”

“I’d love for you to be drawn and quartered. But, oh! You think your spell is spreading onto you.”

“I have this misplaced sense of … responsibility. Quite inappropriate. I am a creature of intellect. But when she is sad, I feel sad. When she is happy, I am … infected with it! And I am driven to do things for her! As if she were the master of me. I should be free. I must be free, if I’m to continue my work.”

“Free, you say. All creatures should be free,” said Meklboc, dryly. “So you’re suddenly feeling ‘responsible’ for Frythegith.”

“Not suddenly,” mused Odda, distractedly. “It’s more of a creeping-up. It’s like going bald.” He rubbed his head absently. “It’s a slow seepage, I tell you. It’s been growing for years—decades even—without my noticing it coming slowly upon me, like a rogue in the street, until the effects have accumulated to the point that they become unmistakable. The spell is leaking, I tell you! You must undo it! I command you to undo it!”

“I will not, because I cannot!”

“Must I torment you AGAIN, Beast?”

“You will do as you like,” said the demon quietly, spinning in closer on itself. It had begun to resemble a very slender man, back curved downward, with his arms pulled in tightly around his belly, as if suffering a weakening malady that made him barely able to stand. Tendrils of smoke curled about him and resembled locks of long hair, and ruffles of lace on a courtly suit being blown in a black wind.

“Why do you refuse me? Why will you not undo this enchantment?”

“Because there is no enchantment,” said the demon.

“Don’t be absurd,” dismissed Odda with a wave of his hand. “I consulted all the proper books. I poured my power into it. There is absolutely an enchantment at work, and I want it gone.”

“Oh I’m sure you penetrated those books quite vigorously,” said Meklboc “without humor now, but there is. No. Enchantment. Not on Frythegith. “Not on you.”

“DEMON!” cried Odda, pouring his power into his voice. “FLAMES, DEMON! FLAILS AND KNIVES! WHIPS AND NAILS!”

The nearly coherent figure of Meklboc doubled over in pain and splashed against the floor like a pail-full of black milk, which instantly steamed into a dark vapor and filled the space above the circle again as a vague column of haze.

“Do you want to know what they say about you in Hell?” grated the subterranean voice of the demon. “They say you are cruel. They say you are wantonly cruel. You are arbitrary and vicious. You are an egotist and they say that you have no heart. The Principalities and Forces of Hell are waiting for you, Odda. They are counting the moments until the tables can be turned. The exchequers of Hell are summing your accounts, and they are salivating over the debt you are accruing.”

“Cruel?” Odda was astonished. “Cruel? Me? To whom have I ever been cruel in my life? Why I am the gentlest soul; I am a faun in the woods!”

“You are cruel to the demons you summon. You bind them and you berate them. You torment them and you demand the impossible. THE IMPOSSIBLE! I am telling you the truth, Slow Walker. There is NO enchantment!”

“Cruel to demons! Gracious! Why, I count it among my virtues! And I know there was an enchantment! I know what I did.”

“Oh, there was and enchantment, you fool! There was indeed. Long, long ago. How else could you have attracted Frythegith’s eye, you toad? You fancy yourself the master of knowledge and power. There is more in Heaven and Earth, and especially in Hell, than is dreamed of in your feeble philosophy.”

“What do you mean? How do you know?”

“Because that’s how love enchantments work! You mortals, you are puppets! You are wind-up toys! Crank you up, point you in a direction, and off you go. All a love enchantment need do is give you a day or two of limerence, a shot of lust, a hormone in the right gland, and you do the rest. Fifty-two years! Fifty-two years this woman has been living with you, keeping your home, loving you, and only now you suspect you might have a creeping feeling of ‘responsibility’ for her? What a piece of work is Man.”

“Nonsense! I cast a spell on her, and I made her love me!”

“Do you thing God in his ‘infinite wisdom’ would allow the precious free will of his clay puppets to be so lightly overthrown? Do you think us devils layabouts, who pluck mortal souls like cherries at will to corrupt with a lazy wafture of a limp wrist? No love enchantment you could cast could do what the great Princes of Hell cannot. Your ‘power’ and ‘potency’ was spent to turn here eye, to flush her cheek. And she, like all mortals, cannot tell whether her body is responding to her mind or her mind to her body. You both made your choices and went along in your little ruts, predictable as clocks.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t want it. I don’t want this softness in me. I can’t have distractions. Not when I’m so close to making some major breakthroughs in my work!”

Meklboc grumbled, like a shifting of earth in forgotten catacombs beneath the cellar floor. “Fifty-two years, and you’re finally noticing that your twisted, dry, little heart has been oozing out, drop-by-drop, it’s rancid, sticky attempt …”

“DEMON!” bellowed Odda, and the magical wind whipped round the circle, fiercer than any time before. This time, it was accompanied by a howl, as if the wind were blowing through a forest and trying to knock it down. It was the demon’s howl of pain.

“… attempt at love,” finished the demon in the voice of the storm.

“You LIE! You are a liar, Demon! You and all your evil kind are liars. It is well-known.”

“I tell you, you know nothing of Hell, but you will anon. You will anon, Odda Eldenlíc.

“You mortals, you do not send your best to Hell. You send us us sinners: your rapists, your murderers, your trash. And we punish them for you. We repay their crimes to them. Some of you, I must assume, are good people, and we keep the Earth clean for you. You think we hate the saints? We bless the saints! We do the saints’ work. We are saints! And you call us liars! You call us evil! We bless the saints, but you, Odda Eldenlíc, we hate you!

“You bound me to your will and demanded that your enchantment be removed. It is done! There is no enchantment. You bound me to your desire, and I have told you the truth, that which it is your desire above all else to discover. The contract is fulfilled. I am no longer bound.”

The smoke in the circle, which at times had been diffuse as a fog, and at other times nearly human in form was set ablaze. A flame lept up within it, too bright to withstand. Odda was forced to look away, but wherever he looked, a purple after-image floated before him of a nobleman of impossible beauty in fine clothes, and bearing deep furrows across his brow, a mouth downturned in rage.

“I pray to the saints—yes the saints of Heaven, our partners in the Great Plan—that the next time we meet, I will see you in Hell!”

The light vanished, and a chill went through the room. The little cellar workshop was lit only by Odda’s candles, and his vision had darkened in the blazing light of the flame. He was plunged into darkness.

By and by, the darkness passed from Odda’s eyes. But rather than light, what was left was paleness. The room had become entirely prosaic. Candles burned; there was salt on the floor; jars on shelves emitted their familiar, foul odors. It was just a cellar room belonging to an old man with a rather noisome hobby.

Well, thought Odda, that was a bust. But I simply must find a way to undo that spell! Perhaps I overlooked something in Geoffrey of Armorica. I shall have another look. But, oh, I wonder at the time. I did promise Frythegith I would bring home a chicken for our supper. If I leave now, I’ll have time to go around through Old Hunbeorht’s field and gather some lavender. Frythegith enjoys the smell of lavender. I’ll surprise her. Drat! There I go again. I’ll get this spell off tomorrow. Dinner tonight; spell tomorrow. It is such a nuisance.

• Comedy
• Prompt
• Demon
• Magic