Catalyst by J R Rain & Matthew S Cox

Author:J R Rain & Matthew S Cox [Rain, J R & Cox, Matthew S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2018-11-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The Opposite of Okay

Few things are as uncomfortable as spending most of an hour-long ride listening to an adult cry and beg like a child. If not for Michelle’s implication that being a woman was a weakness or a ‘condition’ that needed to be cured, I might’ve felt sorry for her.

After dropping her off, I turned around and went all the way back to PA and spent the weekend with my family. Dad took a couple hours on Saturday to teach Eva and me about enchanting. It brought me right back to being a teen again, except that I had actual interest in it now. Seeing the spark of delight in my father’s eyes from us both fascinated in a subject he’s passionate about was worth every moment spent behind the wheel and then some. I brought up that tracking spell I read about. Between the three of us, we come up with the idea of trying to modify it using the mummy’s name as a focus point—though I’m still going to either need a piece of the mummy or an object near and dear to it. Maybe the sarcophagus would count? I mean, the guy did spend a lot of quality time inside it, and I know how I feel about my bed. Hmm.

In the midst of our enchanting ‘lessons,’ we went outside and selected a pair of trees to serve as the portal boundary. Enchanting this side of the Magic Door with Dad’s help took three hours. Sunday night, I drove home with a box of powders and crystals, as well as tons of cell phone pictures of the runes we etched into the trees.

And yeah, I stayed up way too late enchanting my hall closet. Around two in the morning, I finish the last of the etching on the wall, wipe the magical powders from my hands, and take a step back among all the stuff I unpacked from the closet hours ago.

“Il nath eloin aloria saom.”

The back wall of the closet shimmers bright blue for an instant and becomes a hole into the backyard of my parents’ store.

Sweet mama!

Dad got the bright idea to use Nalurin—the Val’nathiri language—for the command phrase. I worked out a line that roughly translates to ‘There’s no place like home.’ Elven grammar’s going to drive me nuts if I ever decide to really learn it. Like, ‘nath’ is roughly equivalent to ‘there is,’ but the ‘il’ is a negation prefix so ‘il nath’ means there isn’t. Aloria means ‘wonderful’ if used by itself, and Dad couldn’t help but remind me of Alor mithriel, or ‘good morning.’ That’s probably a humanization of it since ‘alor’ is derived from ‘wonderful’ so… whatever.

Forgetting myself, I step through the portal and into my parents’ backyard, basking in the nighttime breeze washing over my skin. Being surrounded by trees, my feet in the grass, and nothing between me and the wind is startlingly refreshing. It’s almost as if I can feel the magical energy radiating from the earth and absorbing straight into me.

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