“Handy.” I reply, and I’m actually looking forward to discovering if they really work. If they do I might just have to commandeer them, I’m always losing little things like keys and jewellery. Thinking this, I put my hand in my pocket and pull out my dad’s watch, before placing it down with the rest of Rita’s spell ingredients.
Rita nods and then begins stirring in the herbs. Into her spell bowl she adds, calling each one out in turn, hyacinth, jasmine, lotus, sandalwood and tamarisk. Lastly, she picks up some yellow flowers with green leaves on the ends.
“These,” says Rita, holding up the flowers to give me a proper look at them, “are cowslip, they are the most potent herb you can use when you want to find something that is lost. You need to concentrate now Tegan, because once I drop them in, the process will begin.”
I look over to Finn, who’s standing nearby with Wolf by his side, quietly watching us. Then I turn back to Rita and reply seriously, “Sure, you’ve got my undivided attention.”
“Good,” she answers, before throwing the cowslip into the bowl. The three of us take each other’s hands and instinctively I close my eyes and clear my mind without Rita needing to tell me. All of a sudden, casting spells seems like the most natural thing in the world to me.
Both Rita and Alvie let go of my hands then, and I open my eyes to find Rita holding the pen and paper out to me. Hesitantly, I take them from her. “I want you to think of a time in the past when you shared a moment with your dad, a time when you felt close to him. Once you have the scene in your head, keep your eyes closed and write his full name out onto the paper, then fold it in half and throw it into the bowl.”
I close my eyes again, the pen and paper gripped firmly in my hands. Various memories present themselves, but the one I choose is particularly emotional. It happened when I was seventeen. It was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I walked into my dad’s room to find him staring at a photo of her, tears streaming down his face. Even though I couldn’t understand his grief, because I’d never known her properly, I ran to him and hugged him tightly. I keep that moment in my mind’s eye, as I press the paper out flat on my thigh, lift the pen, and scribble down the name Martin Frederick Stolle.
I fold it in half once I’m done, open my eyes, and throw it into the water just like Rita told me to. Rita has a serene look on her face, which is unusual in itself. I’ve never seen her calm other than when she’s casting a spell. It’s like she becomes this whole other person. Someone serious and powerful.
She picks up my dad’s watch and throws it into the water. Then she lifts two fingers and begins to stir a clockwise circle into the concoction in the bowl. She does this six times before quickly taking mine and Alvie’s hands again. The concoction continues to swirl, even after she’s stopped stirring it. It actually begins to speed up, and becomes more and more rapid before it evens out and a picture formulates in the liquid. The water is now eerily calm, at first all I can see is white, then I begin to make out the form of my dad, sitting on a thin mattress with pale sheets that reminds me of a hospital bed.
The room he’s sitting in is cold and sterile, no unnecessary furnishings in sight. I stare at his face, but he doesn’t look scared or angry, he just looks resigned. As though he’s been held in this place for so long that he no longer has the energy to fight against it. A cold sweat trickles down my neck, as I wonder if he’s been there for the whole year and a half since he went missing. He might be entirely institutionalised with the whole thing by now.
Then he stands up and goes to peer out a tiny window, but all you can see is light because the view has been blocked out with white paint and metal bars. Damn, if we could have seen the view it might have been easier to determine where in the city he might be.
He lets out a weary sigh, then he turns around and paces over to the door. He knocks on it three times, and a moment later a thin frosted glass window, no more than two inches high and three wide, slides open. A face is on the other side of it, but all you can see is the mouth.
It’s definitely a male mouth, and slightly older judging from the set wrinkles around the lips. Those lips are strangely familiar, but my brain just can’t seem to place them. I must be imagining it, my desperation to know who is keeping my dad prisoner is making me think I recognise his captor, when really I’m clueless.
“I need to use the bathroom,” says my dad to the faceless man on the other side of the hole in the door. The mouth opens, and is just about to respond. My heart lifts, because if I hear the voice then
maybe I’ll be able to remember if I really do know who that mouth belongs to. But just before the words come, the image in Rita’s spell bowl dissolves. A loud F word comes tumbling out of Rita, and I think in my head, my sentiments exactly.
“We need to get the image back,” I tell her frantically. But she only shakes her head.
“I can’t do it again Tegan, as much as I’d like to. I’m all tapped out for the day and I don’t have enough ingredients left either.”
I curse quietly, and now Finn comes to sit with the three of us. “I didn’t recognise that place,” he tells us, “whoever’s keeping him was clever enough to block out the view.”
Nerves are still thrumming through my body, because now I know that my dad really is being kept by some unknown captor. He hadn’t decided to up and retire to the Bahamas, as much as I wish he had.
Rita shrugs, she’s currently fishing my dad’s broken watch out of her spell bowl. She shakes the liquid from it and picks away a few stray leaves that have stuck to it.
“We still have the dowsing rods,” says Alvie, trying to add a bit of hope to a hopeless situation.
I look to him. “Okay, what do I need to do with them?”
Rita picks them up and runs them through the concoction in the bowl before handing them over to me. Little drops of liquid run off the thin metal. She stands up and motions for me to follow her. Then she places the watch down onto the ground and hands me the rods. I grip the handles in each of my hands, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a strange rush go through me the moment my hands made contact with their carved surface.
Rita tells me to hold them straight out above the watch and to visualise my father in my mind. I do as she says. Nothing happens for a moment, but then I feel a dragging sensation coming directly from the rods. I allow my body to turn with the motion of them and they drag me around, causing me to spin in a circle several times, becoming faster and faster. The pull is so strong, I couldn’t resist it if I tried. I feel myself getting dizzy, and I lose my sense of orientation. I open my eyes, and the world turns upside down in my fuzzy spinning vision.
Then when I look at the rods I notice that they are sparkling, like those sparklers your parents give you when you’re a kid at Halloween. Suddenly, the spinning stops and the rods seem to have a selected a particular direction. I’m definitely not prepared for what happens next. The rods pull me forward, with all the strength of a tornado, and my body propels forward. My legs have no other option but to run and sweat breaks out on my forehead as I realise I’m getting dangerously close to the edge of the building.
I can hear Rita and Alvie call out in fright, yelling at me to let go of the rods, but it feels as though my hands are glued to the handles. I’m almost at the edge now, four, three, two, one foot away and then I slam into the low rise wall. The upper half of my body hangs off it as the rods do their best to pull me over. I’m not balanced though, and more of me is off the roof than on. I try not to look down, but it’s no use, my traitorous eyes glance at the world below me and fear clenches in my gut. I’m so close to hurtling over a precipice that promises nothing but death.
The next thing I know I’m being pulled back onto the roof, both by the waist and by the leg. Finn has his arms wrapped around me and Wolf has the end of my jeans in his mouth, helping Finn to rescue me from falling. I fall back on top of Finn and quickly crawl over onto the safety of the roof. My hands clutch my chest, where my heart is thumping loudly against my rib cage.
“Jesus!” Rita shouts. “I thought you were done for there for a second.”
“That’s you and me both,” I tell her, wiping the sweat off my forehead. Alvie rushes over to give me a big hug, squeezing me tightly. Wolf is whining and licking me on the hand. I pet him on his soft, thick fur and the feel of his lovely coat relaxes me. It’s at this moment that I realise I’d finally managed to let go of the dowsing rods. They lie innocently by my feet, and I scowl at them in anger, those bloody things almost killed me.
“Well,” I say finally, looking at Rita, “did that fucking episode achieve anything?”