episode 5: A Spell in the Night

-Ellen-

It wasn’t until we were back in our hotel room having some pizza that I finally got up the courage to ask the question that was preying on me. "So what do you think’s going on with him?" I asked.

Shigeto didn’t hesitate when he answered, confirming my suspicion that he’d been well aware of the changes in Babe, just as I had, that it was plaguing him, just as it did me. "I don’t know, but he’s definitely not behaving normally. It’s more like he’s pretending to be an animal. And he’s not doing a very good job of it," said Shigeto.

“So, what do we do with him?"

"Enrol him in acting school?" suggested Shigeto. I gave him a whack on the arm and he made a show of juggling the slice in his hand.

I laughed and then we both fell silent. I stared out the window and finally asked the real question. The one that we both knew was the only one that mattered, ever since we’d found him in David Andrews’ yard. "What the hell did I do to him?"

Shigeto sighed, "I don’t know, Ellen, but it was far more than we’d planned for. We’ve never had a spell go off on us like that's, not since the beginning. We work hard to make sure things go according to the plan."

A knot twisted in my stomach. He was right, and was rightfully suspicious that my plan had been flawed from the start, that I’d been imprudent, all as a result of the ‘conversation’ that I’d had with Simmons on the first day of the Fair.

_________________________

It was nothing more than a glance in our direction, and a few mutterings to a chap wearing the judge's sash, but still... "Hecate’s bloody crotch," I cursed. Shigeto paused in setting up the stall.

"What was that, Ellen?" He asked, and then waved his hand around, and his voice grew louder. "With all this hubbub, I can barely hear you. Are we in the wrong spot or something?" He stepped back from spreading the straw to double-check the ‘Napier Farm’ sign that had been posted to indicate our place. A hubbub it certainly was, though the appearance of chaos around us was misleading. In truth, it was all rather well organized, especially for a show of this scale.

It was move-in day at the Royal Winter Fair, with crowds of farmers and various livestock milling about, their breaths and gusty lowing misting the mid-morning air — it was cold in here, early November, with the garage doors open as dozens of farmers, worked, gossiped and, of course, engaged in the good-natured griping about the weather and the vagaries of the markets, while the cattle complained at all the disruption in their, otherwise, orderly lives.

Even above this racket, we could still hear the low roar of the Gardiner Expressway just outside the barn. It was one of the main highways into Toronto’s core, and right next to the Fair. I found it oddly soothing, like a homecoming after several years back on the farm — it was good to be back in the city again, though I knew I’d be glad, later, that it was only for a short while.

Our stall was one among over a dozen in a row that was flanked by myriad others to either side of us, all in the process of being filled with that cacophony of livestock, though all of it was, of course, of preeminent quality, the grace notes of centuries of breeding programs around the world. Our little row were the outliers, the hybrids looking for inclusion amongst such august company, along with the associated market value. This was the real reason we were here, trying to convince the world that our approach to farming would yield a better animal.

But there were those that didn’t want our vision to enter the world.

"Simmons," I said, choosing to neglect the invective, "You see him chatting up that judge - he’s going to talk him into giving us a shitty score," I spat. "Even when he knows better, it’s just an old boy’s network, like any other."

"Maybe," Shigeto had answered, "But that same judge gave Babe the once over when we unloaded him, he was definitely impressed." He reached out and gave the object of our conversation a pat. Babe had settled in remarkably well, and looked at Shigeto expectantly, expecting a treat of some sort. He was easily among the largest of the bulls here — and with his pale white hair, also one of the most striking. At least in my opinion.

"Of course he was," I’d said, "But that won’t stop him from backing his friend. I’ve seen it before. He’ll convince himself as much as Simmons does. An Asian dude and a girl running a farm? Pfffft."

Shigeto sighed, "You knew that this was a possibility when we brought him here. Why are you getting so riled?”

"I’m not riled," I snarled. Shigeto just looked at me, waited. I sighed. "Okay, okay, it’s just Simmons. He drives me crazy. Ever since we refused to rent him our land at that shitty rate the last owner had, he’s had it out for us."

"That’s not the only issue," said Shigeto.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, because he found out I was casting spells. For all he knows, I’m just another wannabe hippy."

"And that’s part of the problem, the fact that you’re not. His family and yours have history, as much as you might like to forget it. He didn’t like it when we bought back your family’s farm, and he doesn’t like that we seem to have made it a successful business. It’s a repudiation of his entire concept of farming."

"I think you’re being melodramatic."

Shigeto smiled, "No, but he is. A lot of people don’t care for change, you know that. He’s just a little more hotheaded than most."

"I say ‘pish-posh’, to that, at the very least. Well, I won’t stand by and let them pass Babe over because they let Simmons talk them into it. I want to make them see him, regardless of what Simmons says."

"‘Pish-posh’, really?" Shigeto shook his head sadly, gaze downwards. But I could see his smile.

I opened my mouth to object to his mockery, but he waved a hand to cut me off. "How?" He continued. "Some sort of glamour? I don’t think that would qualify as particularly fair."

"No," I said, "It’s nothing we haven’t talked about before. About accelerating our breeding program a little more."

Shigeto gave me a hard look. "It’s what you’ve talked about before, Ellen. I was never a fan. Our earlier experiments on this bloodline and they didn’t really seem to do anything but make them act odd for a few weeks. I can’t say I’m keen on explaining a bull whose eyes change colour. Do you really want to risk something like that right before the judges have a look at him?"

I felt my temper flare. “Really, Shigeto? Do you truly believe that? That Simmons isn’t already working the old boy’s network? We need to rattle the judges, shake them out of their complacency."

"Jesus, Ellen, what are you thinking? We’re not at home. We don’t have the farm to help support the spell. Nor do we have all of our gear to ensure that all the details are just so. Anything we do will be risky."

"Sure, sure, if we were going to do someone big, yeah. But I just want to do something small. Something to make him shine. I want to…" I hesitated, skipping past the word summon. Given previous experiences, Shigeto might have objected, and said, "ahhh, invoke his full potential. To make his uniqueness hit them in the face."

"And if his uniqueness isn’t something that impresses them, if they disagree with what we’ve tried to do here?

I shrugged, "Then so be it. I just want to make sure that they see him - that they’re surprised into a genuine evaluation."

This was a blatant lie, Babe was shoulders above any other bull I’d ever seen. Any disagreement was absurd. Still, I wanted to sound reasonable.

"Isn’t that all we want?"

Shigeto looked at me, like he always did when my arguments had that lawyerly tinge to them, that sense of, ‘we’re all reasonable here, aren’t we?’, but when I saw him glance in the direction that Simmons had gone, then back at Babe, I knew I had won. Shigeto wanted this as much, maybe more, than I did. If we were really going to make a go of the farm, we needed more revenue streams, and organic beef was a good bet. A win here would set the stage for that.

"Okay," said Shigeto.

We did the spell that night, while the security guard was hunched sleepily over his sandwich. It was around three in the morning, and we took care to be quiet — aided, of course, by a little glamour spell. This was just as well, as the circle was complex. I was concentrating on getting everything just right when Shigeto’s voice broke my concentration.

"Ellen," he said, his voice low, "you said this was a simple spell."

Damn the man, he was too perceptive by half. "Well, sure,” I said, "technically it is."

Which was true. Any summoning was simple. Ensuring that whatever arrived didn’t do something horrible? That was complicated. Not that this was a summoning summoning. I was just bringing forth Babe’s full potential. It should just make him more of what he already was; an exceptional bull.

"I just didn’t want to have any chanting, you know?" I said, "Why stress the glamour?" Then smirked at him, "I figured you wouldn’t be so keen if I started singing the words of the spell, given that we were trying to keep quiet. So I spent the day in High Park startling the dog-walkers."

"For heaven’s sake, Ellen," Shigeto’s voice was stern, but I could see the smile at the corners of his lips, "You could’ve been arrested."

"Oh no worries, my love, I dressed like a homeless lady so no-one would disturb me."

"So what, you went shopping for crappy clothes, then?"

I laughed. Quietly. "No, I just wore some of my older work clothes; throw a skirt over it and between the mismatched layers and the faint smell of cow shit, it did the trick.”

He shook his head, "I married a bag-lady. Who knew?"

"Everyone but you, my dear," and I gave him a kiss. "It was worth it, though. I’ve imbued the chalk with the words of the spell, so that it just needs a simple spoken trigger." I held up my plastic organizer box, each compartment labelled and holding pieces of chalk. Most were white, though a few had colour. My other ingredients were in an old-fashioned makeup box that I always carried with me. It was filled with a variety of accoutrements and ingredients for spell-work. My portable, I called it. Other practitioners often used a tackle box, but I liked the more stylish case. I’d gotten it second hand, back when I was a lawyer. I didn’t have any use in mind, for it was before I’d begun to do any castings. Certainly I didn’t wear makeup then. It set expectations that I actively tried to discourage.

"That’s a great idea, something that might make your castings back home easier." But then his eyes narrowed as I saw him take in the number of compartments. "Still, that’s a lot. How complicated is this casting?"

"I’m just being cautious. He is our Babe."

Shigeto gave me a hard look, and glanced over at the guard, then Babe, then back at me. He knew that the truth I told wasn’t a complete one, but for all his talk of being reasonable and accommodating, he had a stubborn streak at least as wide as mine. He just didn’t have my temper and, as he was fond of lecturing me about, I had a certain recklessness.

"Fine," he said. I was sure that there would be a follow up conversation, but he’d be on shaky ground, since he didn’t stop me now. He could have. I would have abided his judgement simply because I trusted it.

I went back to my work, careful to keep my face down, my hair obscuring my smile. Finally, it was done. Babe was sleepy when we herded him, carefully, into the circle. I’d spelled the chalk to maintain its integrity, even if something fell on it. Cattle were prone to taking a shit at inappropriate times. Still, I was careful to brush away any straw that might have altered any of the sigils or shapes in the circle. I went round, carefully, to make sure that the circle was intact and then knelt outside of it, clearing my mind while Shigeto lit the candles. We performed the invocations to the cardinal directions together, as he did so. I knew he was concerned then. He usually let me do this myself, but he knew something was up. It would give him a loose connection to the spell, but not be bound to it, so he’d know if something was going sideways. I was both grateful and irritated.

I had drawn the larger circle for Babe, and a smaller one around me with a connection between the two of these. To start it all, I licked my thumb, and then pressed it to the connection, and I spoke, "Incipiam."

Let it begin.

I always liked Latin for my spells. The vocabulary and grammar were complete, but it still had some flexibility. It was less prone to have multiple, and potentially problematic, meanings for some words. An excellent balance between flexibility and precision.

All my plans and rationalizations meant shit when the spell kicked in; there was an immense undertow from… somewhere. I struggled to regain control of the spell, striving to keep what must be a hostile intelligence from hijacking an element of the spell that I had not controlled for. I focussed on centreing the origin and end of the spell on Babe, and it got worse.

"Goddess’ Blood," I thought to myself. "It’s Babe."

It was as though my casting had unearthed an immense structure, ancient and powerful. The words on the edifice faded, but the building was still strong. Long dead traditions struggled to speak through me, to follow in the old paths and thus find new life; but I neither knew where they led, nor did I wish to follow them. As Shigeto often told me, I was stubborn. I kept to the letter of my spell, using the energy of my spiralling fear rather than succumbing to it. As I worked, so did this other force, seeking to scour me free of my grounding, so that it might work its will. But this was familiar. I’d experienced this many times before, in my law practice, when my opponents had attacked me, rather than addressing the facts of the case. So I responded as I had then, with iron discipline, focussing on the details of the casting, just as I had drilled into the minutiae of my legal briefs. The ancient power tried, then, to uproot even that knowledge, to strip my mind clean, but I just smiled and gave it forth willingly, knowing that knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied. I launched into a seemingly eternal lecture as I strove to bury the words it wanted me to speak under the entirety of my expertise in Canadian case law, my years of experience in corporate litigation, all while I chanted my will into reality. There was a strange dichotomy in my mind, but one that felt unexpectedly natural, like singing a round but with two different songs. I lost track of time then, caught in an endless moment of staving off that old, buried magic and keeping my intent clear.

I didn’t remember the end of the spell, but I did remember Shigeto calling my name, breaking the circle, scattering the offerings, and the spell collapsing. I remember staring at Babe, glowing, surrounded by visions of Crete, of temples and a palace, not as I’d seen them, as ruins, but filled with women moving about with great purpose and passion, women speaking in the halls of power and in the ceremonies of the island, and at the centre of these, a Bull. Then blackness.   

_________________________

I woke in our hotel room. It was dark, with light leaking around the edges of the tightly drawn drapes. I was exhausted, still, but thirsty. I stumbled to the sink, poured a glass of water and leaned there, drinking, as I pondered what had happened. Had I made a mistake, had I opened a way for something else to enter Babe? I shook my head. It couldn’t be. It just didn’t feel like that. Rather, it seemed that the energy of my spell had brought something latent in Babe to the surface. Some residue of ancient magic, like a palimpsest — an old manuscript where the ink had been scrubbed clean and written over — but something in my spell had brought that old ‘ink’ to the surface. I shook my head. Perhaps the breeding program and the spells I’d cast on his predecessors had more impact than I’d thought — because at the time, all of those spells had appeared to be failures.

There was nothing to do about it but see what damage had been done. I grabbed my phone. Where are you? I typed.

With Babe, came the reply. How are you? I’m mad at you. That spell was dangerous.

I ignored his last comment. How’s he looking?

Come see.

I stopped by the coffee shop on the way down, getting a Red Eye to brace me for what I’d find. When I got there, Shigeto was chatting with the guys at the next stall. Shigeto gave me a sidelong glance that did not bode well for my peace of mind. He was still angry and worried, which meant that the spell had been even scarier from the outside. Yet, when I went to look at him, Babe was, well, Babe. Whatever the spell had done to him had mostly faded into the mundane. But he drew the eye in ways he hadn’t before. There was a gloss to his coat that reminded me of the shine in the vision of the spell’s aftermath. As I continued to stare, sipping my coffee, he seemed to become restive. He’d always been bright for a bull, but still cattle. Now he seemed more… aware. As though he didn’t care for the scrutiny, that it made him tense, or, perhaps, self-conscious. Which could very well be how he might react if possessed. But when I closed my eyes and reached out, it was just Babe. The aura was the same, brighter, more complex, more human even, but still a bull and still Babe. I frowned and pushed harder, extending my aura onto his, seeking, and he made a noise, but I didn’t let it distract me. There was a sense of shock at the intrusion, not surprising, most creatures didn’t care for this. In the end, he seemed, well, like himself. I’d calved him, knew his sire and dam. I’d pulled something out of this great white bull, but whatever it was, it had worked. He was fully, as far as I could tell, himself. Still… I frowned. It was like there was an echo in his mind. As though I was viewing him through a faceted prism to see partial reflections, but each one subtly different. There were too many to examine minutely, but each vision of him was still, essentially, Babe.

I pulled back and opened my eyes and Babe looked at me accusingly. I gave him a sheepish smile and stroked him. "Sorry, boy, I just had to know," and he calmed at the words.

Then Shigeto came into the pen, sidled around the bulk of him, up next to me. "What’s going on, Ellen? I felt you doing something back here."

"Just seeing what the spell did," I said. "It seemed more dramatic last night."

Shigeto frowned at me, "It was a damn sight more dramatic last night, especially when I had to pretty much carry you back to the hotel."

I suppressed a sigh. I was in for a lecture. Shigeto was pissed. Scared pissed – my collapse had been, well… to say unexpected was a vast understatement. I took a sip of my coffee, reached out to cup his face with my hand, "I’m fine. I just tapped into something unexpected. I’ve been thinking about it. We put a lot of energy into Babe’s parents. Those spells had a purpose, after all. I must have triggered their power last night."

"Jesus, it scared me. What was up with all that mumbling about Crete?"

"I don’t know. Maybe we connected to a latent power in his bloodline that ran even further back than the spells I used. I had been inspired by what I’d seen there, perhaps more than I thought. Some ancient power may have been trying to bootstrap itself back into life." I shrugged, patted Babe’s side. "Whatever it is, he still feels like Babe. He’s just more."

"Which is what we wanted."

I smiled, "That it is." I still got the lecture, but Shigeto had been as fascinated by the change as I, commenting that our not-so-little bull had been watching him all day.

Then had come the incident with Simmons, and Babe’s escape on the night of the gala. Whatever we’d done, Babe had changed. A part of me still wondered if I had summoned something, but whatever it was, it still seemed to be Babe through and through. Something had happened, but nothing bad had happened, had it?