Spliced

Several minutes later, Indi sat cross-legged on top of Wolf’s giant wooden table. She was situated right in the middle of what looked like a massive spider’s web crossed with a pentagram drawn in pig’s blood. Wolf had handed her a smaller jar of blood to touch up the edges she’s scuffed when, out of impatience, she’d entered the circle a little too early. Luckily the middle had fully dried by that point.

She cupped the jar in her hands. It’s sweet smell wafted up and filled her nostrils. She dipped her finger in the viscous dark red fluid. Then she put it in her mouth.

“Oi! That’s not for eating,” chided Wolf.

“Oops, sorry.” Indi ducked her eyes. “It just smelt so good.” She dipped her finger in again and leaned forward to add more blood to one of the lines on the table. As she sat back she caught the scent again and breathed in deeply.

Wolf watched her closely. “I thought you didn’t drink blood?”

Indi opened her eyes. “Animal blood’s okay. I just don’t like to drink blood from people. But this is like really good pig’s blood.” She sniffed it again.

Wolf gave her a sympathetic look and then held out a hand. “Here, I’ll do it.”

Indi handed him the jar. “It is pig’s blood right?”

Wolf nodded, frowned, and then looked at the jar. “Yes.”

“Are you sure? Because that is like really really good pig’s blood? Like extra special or something.”

Wolf took a sniff of it. “Hmm.” He turned the jar around, looking for its label. It should have a label, except there wasn’t one. “Well, it was with the other pig’s blood.”

“It’s not people though right?”

Wolf sniffed it again. “No.” There was definitely the scent of animal blood, besides, he rarely had anything that wasn’t animal. But she was right, it was a weird smell for pig. Goat maybe? Well, they’d used it now, either way it probably didn’t matter.

“It kinda smells like strawberries,” Indi remarked.

“What!” Wolf took another sniff and frowned. “That does not smell like strawberries. That’s more like...” Another sniff.

“Strawberries but kind of savory too,” Indi elaborated.

“Yes, savory makes more sense. It’s gamey. It’s not like strawberries.”

“It’s kind of like strawberries.”

Wolf frowned. “Is that a weird vampire thing? Do you guys actually taste different things?”

“I don’t know. I mean yes probably.”

“Hmm. Because I am not getting strawberries. I mean, I guess there’s some kind of sweetness.”

“Yes, sweetness. Savory sweet like flowers.”

“Yeah, okay flowers or greenery yes, but not strawberries.” He sighed. “I don’t usually spend this long sniffing the blood. Not once it’s out of the animal.”

“Do you... do werewolves ever get that thing where it like overwhelms you for sec?” Indi brought her hands together and twisted her fingers as if she wasn’t sure she should be asking.

Wolf understood what she meant though. “Yes, sometimes, in wolf form, if we’re hunting. You’ll smell something and there will be an overwhelming urge to pursue it, chase it down and bite it. Mature wolves can resist. The young sometimes have trouble. That’s why they’re not allowed to hunt alone.”

“Do you feel it, even for people?”

Wolf might have been annoyed had anyone else asked that question. It was a stereotype, the blood-thirsty out-of-control werewolf, unfortunately one that wasn’t always inaccurate, but it was hardly common, and werewolves killed people no more often than witches did. But he knew Indi wasn’t asking out of ignorance. She was asking because she felt the same way and she wanted to know if he understood.

Wolf nodded. “Sometimes. It’s not a problem for an adult to resist, but we do feel it.”

Indi nodded and was quiet for a bit. She looked down at her hands.

Wolf wasn’t sure what to say but he felt for her. He knew what it was like to fight your own nature.

“Are you ready?” he asked finally.

She looked up and nodded eagerly.

A few minutes later he had her lying down in the middle of the table.

“Are sure about this?” he asked her.

She nodded. “Mm hm.”

“Okay. Spell’s ready,” he said after a few more adjustments.

“You don’t have to recite anything?”

“Nope.”

“What do I do?”

“You sleep.”

“Just, like, fall asleep?”

“Yup.”

“The spell doesn’t make me fall asleep.”

“Nope. The spell for nightmares is different from a spell to put people to sleep. I do have a sleeping potion but I don’t want to make it too hard to wake you up if the dreamweaver does show up so we’re doing this the old fashioned way.”

“And I just have to fall asleep.”

“Yup.”

“On this really hard table?”

Wolf was quiet a moment. He frowned. “Do you want a pillow?”

“Surely most of the time this spell gets cast it’s on unsuspecting enemies or something, so shouldn’t it work on a bed?”

“Yeah, well I didn’t want to get blood and chicken feathers all in the spare bedroom. You know falling asleep would probably help if you weren’t talking so much.”

“Cat doesn’t fall asleep before dreamwalking though. I’ve seen her do that sitting upright.”

“Yeah, but Cat’s a dreamwalker, and you having nightmares is different from you dreamwalking.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, I think so. I don’t know.” Wolf rubbed his face. “Okay fine, we’ll try the dreamwalking infusement. I’m just not sure how the combination is going to work. Mixing magic sometimes has unpredictable results and I don’t know what the bad dreams spell actually does.”

“But it uses dreamwalking magic right?” Indi rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Yeah, but, it’s different. Don’t ask me how. I told you, spells are tricky, unpredictable things. They’re like recipes where nobody actually knows what the ingredients do and the second you mix things you get a whole new thing. Like swapping in milk for butter and ending up with chocolate chip scones instead of cookies.”

“You know I actually did that once.”

“Yes I know.”

Indi chatted on as if she hadn’t heard Wolf. “But I’m pretty sure I know why that happened, and they were still pretty good.”

“Okay, hold this.” Wolf handed her Katrina’s cat charm.

Indi took it and laid back down. She stared up at the wooden rafters on Wolf’s ceiling. Directly above her the ceiling was low but as it got nearer the back shelves it slanted steeply upward, giving more space to the second story alcove. She knew his bedroom was up there, no door or anything, privacy achieved simply by its height. She wondered what it looked like and imagined a bed surrounded by more books. “Now what?” she asked.

“Now you dreamwalk.”

“I just... dreamwalk?”

“Yeah, you just think about about dreamwalking.”

Indi frowned. “That’s not very helpful, Wolf. That’s like telling someone who’s never walked before to just think about walking.”

“Yeah, well, how would you describe how to walk to someone who had never walked before?”

Indi considered it. He had a point but there had to be a trick to it. “I’ve never used an infusement before either.”

“Well, it’s just like using your own powers in a way, apparently.”

“But, I’ve been using my own powers my whole life. That’s like the walking thing again.”

“Just try, think about it, I don’t know.”

“Well, how did you do it when you first tried using magic? I mean, you weren’t born with it so it’s not as intuitive for you. It should be easier to explain.”

Wolf cast his mind back. Back to him and Amanda as kids, barely teenagers, box of magic at their fingertips. They’d found a trunk of items in a cave, half buried in the mud, one extra-dry summer. They’d followed instructions in a book that wasn’t theirs. They’d considered it such fun find. Vials and powders and lockets infused with all sorts of unknown things. It had been easy for Amanda, even before she’d figured out how to master her own magic.

‘You just think about,’ she’d told him, just like he’d told Indi now. But it hadn’t helped then, not till she’d taken his hand in hers, and somehow she’d guided the magic until he’d understood instinctively how to do it. Would that work now? He considered taking Indi’s hand and trying to guide her the same way, but somehow he didn’t think he could achieve even now quite what Amanda had back then.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Indi sat up and looked at him with a frown, like a child who had been denied a toy. “Maybe we should try your sleeping potion then.”

Wolf scowled. “Maybe, you should give it a bit more of a try. You’ve barely focused on it at all. I’m beginning to think you can’t even be quiet for a full minute.”

“I can.”

“Alright, do it then.”

Indi lay back down on the table stubbornly.

Wolf started a timer.

Not even 5 seconds later she said, “Maybe it would be easier if it was dark. There are spells to do that right?”

Wolf didn’t comment until she looked at him and when she did he simply tapped his watch and repeated. “One minute.”

“I can do a minute, I can,” Indi grumbled as she lay there staring at the ceiling but a few seconds later, “What if-”

“I’m not starting the timer until you’re quiet,” Wolf interrupted.

“I was just thinking out loud.”

“Try thinking quietly.” He resisted the urge to laugh. It would definitely not help her concentration.

“Okay, okay. Think quietly, got it. Thinking quietly, starting now!”

After about 10 seconds she sat back up. “Hey, do you think-”

At Wolf’s expression she cut herself off and lay back down again.

Wolf watched her with baited breath.

She was doing a poor job of lying still. Her legs shifted every now and again and her fingers fiddled with the charm. He was starting to think this wasn’t going to work, but then it was probably for the best. He wasn’t sure what they were going to do if she actually managed to draw the dreamweaver here.

She hit 34 seconds this time.

“What if we put some relaxing music on?”

Wolf didn’t reply.

She turned her head to look at him. “Surely it’s been a minute now.”

“37 seconds,” Wolf replied. “Stop trying to force it and just relax.”

“Oh.”

1 second.

2 seconds.

“Okay.”

This time, as the seconds ticked she seemed to calm a little more. Her legs became still, her breathing slowed. Wolf watched as she closed her eyes. And when the little hand ticked past one minute he said nothing.

Indi wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how she even used her own magic. There had been times when she’d tried to shield and just couldn’t and then other times when she just did it instinctively without even thinking about it. Wolf’s last suggestion helped though. Weirdly, it reminded her of the first time she’d achieved sexual bliss with another person, well not that moment specifically, but a little before. She’d been lying on her back then too with a large blond guy named Smudge looking down at her. He’d been older, and one of her brother’s friends. He’d also been her third proper boyfriend, and far more experienced than she, but a total sweetheart, so gentle and kind and cuddly. She’d dated him for some time, until he’d left town to join up with the army or something like that. But she remembered how her first time with him had been initially so awkward and she’d done a lot of giggling and far too much talking until Smudge had smiled and told her to relax. When he’d disappeared between her legs she’d started to worry after awhile that he might be getting bored so she’d told him that he didn’t need to worry about that and he could just stick it in her. But he’d just smiled and told her to relax and that the trick was not trying to force it.

When Wolf had said that same thing, something had clicked in her brain. It made sense she supposed that magic was like sex in a way, since sex was kind of like magic, sort of. Well, okay, maybe that was a stretch but the relaxing part at least did make some sense to her.

She wondered what Smudge was doing now? Where he was? How his life had ended up. She supposed the where didn’t matter too much for Smudge since he’d been a teleporter, not that he could jump across continents. That was too far, but he could do half way across town. She wondered what it would be like to be able to just teleport wherever you wanted. Did Wolf have teleportation infusements she could try? She imagined being able to just teleport into the cinema and catch a free movie. The idea of it gave her a naughty thrill of excitement. Or never having to use doors. If she’d been born a teleporter she totally would have made a secret room with no doors, except then she wouldn’t get to see the sun. Perhaps it would have to have a skylight at least. She thought about just being able to jump outside. She imagined leaping to a mountain top, the sun on her face, the open sky up above, surrounded by trees...

The charm between her fingers started to grow warm.

Indi didn’t notice at first. Not until she felt a cold breeze on her face.

When she opened her eyes she found she was standing upright in the middle of a forest.