Sorcery for Beginners
Chapter 1.
"Crap!" Chris kicked a rock into the street, while he watched the school bus drive away. This made the third time this month he had missed the bus home. He began walking; there was nothing else to do. He might as well go look through the bookstore in town before continuing home.
As he entered the store, he noticed that the book displays for Halloween had already been set up. He walked toward the mystery section where he thought that he might find the new Janet Evanovich. Walking past the display his school bag started to slip off his shoulder. Shifting his body to catch it, he bumped the table holding a cauldron full of books on magic.
"Slap!" A book had fallen out of the cauldron onto the floor. Without paying any attention to it, he bended down to pick the book up. Putting the book back into the cauldron the title jumped out at him "Hexes, Spells, and Wards" by Abrigal SilverLock.
That is what he needed! With no further thought on the matter, he turned and moved quickly to the register.
"Do you have a Reward Card?" The cashier asked putting the book into a plastic sack.
"Yes, sorry here it is..." Chris pulls the card from his wallet with the money for the book.
"Thanks you." She ran the card under the bar code reader. "You get a 20% discount on that book, which makes it $4.74." Handing back the change, card, and his sack she smiled at him.
Leaving the store, Chris pulled the book from the sack, opening it to read as he finished his walk home. Why did he think he needed this book? Just one more thing being weird, a lot of that had been happening lately, He had been having an amazing run of bad luck. Nothing major, just a lot of little thing, like the missed bus, forgetting his homework on his desk at home.
He remembered earlier that day at school. He had tripped as he was leaving the math class dropping his books all over the hallway. Squatting down to pick up the books, he bumped the new girl in class.
"Watch out!" She flailed around with her arms, trying to catch her balance.
Standing up quickly, "Oh, I'm sorry!" He reached out to steady her.
"Bam!" He knocked her into one of the lockers in the wall of the hallway.
"What the heck is wrong with you?" Rubbing her shoulder, which had hit the locker?
Backing away, Chris foot came down on one of his books, "Whalup!" Down he went on his rump. Looking up he saw the girl slowly sliding down the row of locker away from him.
"You're jinxed! You need to get that hex off of you!" Quickly she turned and was gone.
That was it! Must have been my subconscious, seeing the book title and her saying that I had a hex on me. Darn, there was of course no such thing as hexes. What a waste of money.
He looked at the index page as he continued walking, humm…
****
Entering his house, he wandered into the kitchen. "What's for supper?" Chris opened the refrigerator looking for something to nibble on.
"Out of there! Now! We got pot roast tonight" His mother, Martha, reached around him to pull out some orange juice. "You can have a glass of this; your Dad will be home soon."
"Thanks mom." He scrambled up the staircase to his room. Finishing his glass of juice, he set it down on his desk where he placed his school bag next to it. Then falling onto the bed he opened the book to the last page he had read.
"Let see now, humm..."
*****
"Did you miss your bus again?" Martha looked at him as she sipped her coffee.
"Yeah." He finished cleaning off his plate. "Some new girl at school said I was jinxed"
"Darling, you're not jinxed." His mother frowned at his dad.
"Well there are just so many things going wrong! I guess I could say I'm lucky that I have not been seriously injured yet!" Emphasizing this he waved his hands around.
"Son, I have to admit you are really having a bad streak of luck. However, it will change. I think most of it is just a lack of paying attention to the thing around you." Jack, his dad grinned at him. "Maybe paying a little less attention to thing like a new girl would help."
"That's not it! This was the first time she even looked at me."
"I see. But this time you got her attention!" His dad began to laugh.
"Well I've got a book to read, so I'm gone for the night." Ignoring his dad Chris headed back upstairs.
He picked up the book he had been reading. This was somewhat interesting, even made a little sense. Humm wonder what her name is.
A couple of hours later he left his house with an unopened box of salt he had found in the pantry. He stood still for a minute waiting for his mom or dad to show up and ask what he was doing. The night was not quiet; the wind was rustling through the trees branches. Over at the Norwood's house he could hear their dog whining.
Finally, he opened the box of salt. Walking clockwise around his house sprinkling some salt across every opening, to the house, he could find. Mumbling the spell from the book, he circled the house three times while visualizing a stone fence reaching to the sky all around the house. He actually felt silly at first but by the time, he made the third circle it no longer seems to be amusing. The night had become very quiet, the wind had stilled, and the dog across the street was no longer whining. The moon was hiding her face. He had begun to shiver.
He had one more thing he wanted to try tonight. He entered his house and went into the garage; digging around the tools, he found a couple of ten-penny nails. As quietly as he could he used a hammer with the vise to beat both nails into horseshoe shape. Making sure that he mumbled another spell from the book, again visualizing a field surrounding both nails. If this works, the nails would shield the bearer from ill will and bad luck.
He could practically see it in his mind a field like the one they studied in science, a magnetic one slowly moving outward from the horseshoe shaped nails. The fields constantly expanding until he was fully enclosed within them. With the final blow there seem to be a flash of light from where he hit the nail.
Holding one in each hand he felt a tingling flow over his body, shivering again he quickly put everything back and went to his bedroom.
Sitting on his bed, he examined both nails; he could not see anything other than their shape that was different from any other nail. He stood and reached for his wallet where he places one of the nails in a snap pocket. Going to his closet he put the other in an inside pocket of his jacket.
Well if that was magic, it was not very impressive. He remembered what he had read in the very front of the book. 'Do what you wish, but do no harm to another. The tri-fold rule is all casting will be returned three times.' That was kind scary. If that was so, then all the cases of witches curdling milk, drying up cows, and all such no wonder they all appeared as old broken down crones, they were probably only healthy young ladies on who the curses triple back on them,
"Ha! Ha!" He laughed aloud at that thought. He put the spell book into his school bag, as he got ready to go to bed.