Misspelled

Narrator: The final exam. The ultimate test. That moment in time when success or failure is measured by what you accomplish under pressure. Or, in the case of Michaela duLey, what she can accomplish with the help of her lab partner and a single, dangerous spell. There’s only one problem . . . Michaela hasn’t been quite herself lately. She’d better be very careful indeed.

"Careful with that!" Michaela duLey froze, her eyes panic-wide in the dusky air.

Vinx, her lab partner, stiffened at the squawk of admonition and cocked his head, eyeing the beaker of bilious green liquid he held—rather carelessly—in one hand. ‘‘You don’t trust me,’’ he mused, raising a tangled eyebrow at Mickey and gently sloshing the beaker’s contents about.

‘‘I really don’t!’’ Mickey was agog at the notion.

The stuff was becoming vaporous the more Vinx agitated it. Mickey knew how much he enjoyed goading her to elevated flights of nervous tension, but she was in no mood for shenanigans. Besides, they had work to do. She turned the scorch-factor way up on her glower and Vinx relented, stifling whatever nefarious impulses he might have. Contenting himself with a smug chuckle, he deposited the catastrophically explosive substance near the back of the workbench and out of harm’s reach with a delicate flourish.

Mickey watched as faint vaporous swirls of mist settled in the glass, and she wiped a sleeve across her sweating brow. Then she shrugged the tension from her shoulders and turned back to the work at hand, a heavy sigh escaping her lips. They’d been toiling over various final exam projects for the past week and a half, and tonight’s was the last. Mickey was tense to the point of snapping. ‘‘What I wouldn’t give for a nice cold bier just now,’’ the sorceress-in-training pined.

Vinx cocked an ear in her direction, feigning innocence. ‘‘Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, Mick!’’ He tut-tutted. ‘‘You’re not quite dead yet . . .’’

‘‘Pardon?’’ She raised an eyebrow at the apparent non sequitur.

‘‘Nothing . . . nothing . . .’’

It’s wayyy late for this, Mickey groaned inwardly, not prepared to deal with Vinx’s bizarre sense of humor. Not that she wasn’t well acquainted with it—they’d been paired up as study buddies for two semesters in a row—and usually she could handle him just fine. But tonight he was getting on her nerves. She glanced at her watch, but it was a useless gesture. The hands just spun in a slow backward circle, as they always did when she was in the middle of a spell-casting. Something to do with arcane energies or magnetic field generation or dimensional flux yadda yadda. Mickey didn’t quite grasp the specifics, but that didn’t stop her from finding the phenomenon truly irksome. Struggling to keep her cool, she turned back to her lab partner and asked politely, ‘‘Vinx, what’s the thyme?’’

‘‘It’s that greenish-gray aromatic stuff over there— very nice on pork roast.’’

Mickey snarled in frustration and turned back to the work muttering, ‘‘Demented demon spawn . . .’’

‘‘Why, thank you.’’ Vinx bowed very slightly from the waist, an amused grin stretching the scaly, eggplanthued skin across the craggy landscape of his features. In the flaring light of a dozen torches, the red glint of his eyes sparkled with an alien mirth and he picked up the beaker of liquid again, swirling it in the glass. ‘‘You were saying about this?’’

Mickey glared violently. ‘‘Just bee careful. That’s awl.’’

‘‘I’m always careful around bees—allergies, you know. And awls for that matter—got a nasty poke in the thumb once.’’ Rumbles of barely contained demon-giggles bubbled up from deep within his barrel chest, and the membranous wings sprouting from his massive shoulders ruffled slightly with amusement.

Mickey gritted her teeth as the lightbulb finally went on above her head and Vinx’s cryptic banter suddenly made sense after a fashion. She must be doing it again. ‘‘Eye’m doing it again,’’ she sighed, ‘‘aren’t eye?’’

‘‘Yup.’’ Rumble rumble. Ruffle.

‘‘Dammit!’’ The young apprentice threw a delicate pair of sterling silver calipers down on the workbench, seething with frustration. ‘‘This is yore fault.’’

‘‘Umm . . .’’ Vinx held up a single, yellowed talon. ‘‘You were the one doing the incantation, Mick . . .’’

‘‘That’s only because somebody was so apocalyptically hungover after yet another pan-dimensional village pillage that he was incapable!’’ Mickey threw her hands in the air. ‘‘Even though ewe gnu perfectly well that eye wood knot bee able too handle that stupid Karnalaquiann dialect myself!’’

‘‘Well, granted, it is somewhat impossible if you only have a single tongue . . .’’

‘‘Rite!’’ Mickey barked. ‘‘Besides—how was eye two no that unduuruu and unndurru were pronounced that differently, anyway?’’

‘‘They’re not.’’ Vinx shrugged a massive, leathery shoulder. ‘‘They’re pronounced exactly the same.’’

‘‘Ewe sea my difficulty.’’

‘‘Clearly . . .’’ Giggle giggle rumble. The demon’s amusement sounded like the beginnings of a rockslide. ‘‘Although I’m not sure sheep are all that fond of the water!’’ Vinx turned away before he lost it completely.

‘‘Bloody mystical homonyms . . .’’ Mickey fumed.

‘‘Homophones, actually.’’ Unable to contain his glee any longer, Vinx collapsed in a large, quivering mess of burbling, boiling guffaws.

‘‘Vinx, it’s bean a weak . . .’’

In Mickey’s defense it had, indeed, ‘‘bean a weak.’’ Off and on, at least. But she was truly sick of the weird looks she kept getting at the bank and in coffee shops whenever the awkward side effects of her botched Karnalaq soothe-spell took hold. Every now and then she would just erupt into bouts of saying one thing and—utterly unintentionally—meaning something else entirely to whomever she was speaking. And, of course, she couldn’t tell when she was doing it. Not, at least, by the sounds she was making. Only by way of blank or puzzled stares. ‘‘Seven daze! When’s it gonna stop?’’

After a long moment of squeezing every ounce of enjoyment out of Mickey’s sound-alike plight had passed, Vinx relented. The demon wiped a tear from his rumpled cheek and reached into the pouch hanging from his belt. ‘‘Here. I’ve been working on this. A pinch of powder up the left nostril ought to do,’’ he said as he poured from a thin, blown-glass vial into the palm of Mickey’s hand.

Mickey sighed and, pinching her right nostril shut, snorted the sparkly purple crystals, trying hard not to sneeze as she felt the tingly snap of synapses rearranging themselves ever so slightly deep within the vault of her skull. ‘‘Huzzah,’’ she cheered blandly, eyeing the demon with mixed scepticism and gratitude. ‘‘I’m cured.’’

‘‘Oops.’’

‘‘ ‘Oops’?’’ Mickey asked warily. ‘‘What ‘oops’?’’

Vinx looked like he was trying really hard not to bust out laughing again. ‘‘When you said ‘cured,’ just now, you meant ‘like bacon.’ ’’

‘‘I did not.’’

‘‘Did. And that is, in fact, a homonym.’’ He popped the cork on the vial again. ‘‘Did I say left nostril or right?’’

‘‘You said ‘left.’ ’’

‘‘As in ‘I left a package at the door.’ ’’ The demon pointed at the novice spell-slinger with moderate triumph. ‘‘See? You’re speaking in homonyms. I should have said ‘right.’ ’’

Mickey ground her teeth and snorted purple crystals again. ‘‘As in—I’m gonna tear your head right off if this doesn’t work?’’

‘‘Ah—see!’’ Vinx slapped his massive palms together, beaming benevolently at his fellow student. ‘‘All better!’’

‘‘Lucky for you.’’

‘‘Now. Where were we?’’

‘‘Still stuck in a cave . . .’’ Mick grumbled, now thoroughly mired in ill-humor. ‘‘Why does anything to do with dark magick always have to be performed in a cave?’’

‘‘Something to do with the dark?’’ Vinx asked dryly as he reached for a small clay pot.

‘‘That is so lame.’’ Mickey rolled an eye at him. ‘‘It’s such a stereotype. Like—evil has to be ugly.’’

‘‘I’m not exactly evil . . .’’ the demon sounded hurt.

‘‘Not you, Vinx. Well, actually, yes—you.’’ Mickey plucked the jar from his taloned grasp. ‘‘Also the entire cheerleading squad at my old high school. All very pretty girls and—here’s the thing—PURE EVIL.’’

Vinx nodded appreciatively.

‘‘Yah. You would’ve like them.’’ Mickey peered at the pot, looking for a label of some kind. That would, of course, be way too easy. ‘‘Seriously, man. Uh— demon. I was under the impression that warding-amulet spells were pretty straightforward. Why was the Conclave being all dire and cryptic with this assignment?’’

‘‘Perhaps they’re just encouraging us to stretch a bit. This is your final project, after all. And, contrary to your middle-of-the-road approach, I happen to think that even the simplest spells can be interesting if you use a little imagination, Mick.’’

‘‘Like last week’s transmogrification?’’ She pegged him with a sharp gaze.

‘‘What was wrong with that?’’ Vinx shrugged innocently.

‘‘Dragon was not on the approved list of morph targets, you maniac.’’

‘‘Oh, fine. Go ahead,’’ he huffed. ‘‘Be boring. Turn yourself into a hedgehog again, my little kitchen witch. And then I’ll barbeque you with my mighty dragon’s breath!’’

‘‘You are such a drama queen.’’ Mickey turned the pot around and around.

‘‘It would be one less student in the class for me to go up against on a bell curve . . .’’

‘‘You wouldn’t.’’ She knew that not every student would advance to the next level of training. There would be cuts. Elimination. A figure of speech, hopefully. But, on the other hand, Vinx might be taking this competition thing a little too much to heart. Wherever his was. Whatever his was . . . Mickey shifted uncomfortably under the demonic gaze. ‘‘Vinx?’’

‘‘Oh, I’m joking!’’

Of course he was. Mickey reined in her apprehension and told herself she was just being silly. After all, Vinx could hardly gaze at her in a way that was undemonic . . .

‘‘Cheer up, Mick.’’ Vinx’s expression shifted mercurially, and he grinned a lopsided grin. ‘‘This project is, after all, the kind of casting you’re fond of—a protective spell to ward against the blackest of sorceries.’’

‘‘Sure it is,’’ Mickey sighed, surveying the staggering array of toxic and otherwise injurious articles arranged on the table. ‘‘Only that it just happens to employ deadly poisons and other noxious substances in the process. Really, I’m tickled.’’ She already decided against all of the assorted weaponry—it wasn’t her style. Too much collateral mess. Toxins were just that much tidier, she thought as she unstoppered the clay pot and wrinkled up her nose, sniffing with great caution at the contents. The odor was pungent—sharp and bitter. ‘‘Wormwood. Isn’t that the stuff in absinthe? ’’

‘‘Makes the heart grow fonder . . .’’ Vinx fluttered his wiry eyelashes.

‘‘That was terrible,’’ Mickey groaned and resealed the pot.

‘‘And the mind go wander . . .’’

‘‘Stop it.’’

‘‘Sorry.’’ He stifled another rumble.

Mickey put the wormwood aside. Mild hallucinogenic properties notwithstanding, that darling of the Victorian artiste wouldn’t do. It might be the bitterest herb known, but it was hardly lethal. Next.

Vinx nodded silent approval as she rejected the ‘‘greene faerie’’ and handed her the next item on the table—a small bunch of leaves, stems dotted with white berries, tied neatly with a silver wire.

‘‘Mistletoe,’’ Mickey correctly identified the bit of shrubbery.

‘‘For the kissing thereunder.’’ Demon lips twisting, Vinx puckered up into a grotesque parody of kissyface and dangled the foliage over his head.

Mickey shuddered. ‘‘I will exact a terrible revenge, you know.’’

‘‘Sorry.’’ Vinx appeared instantly contrite. ‘‘Truly.’’

Mickey wasn’t fooled for a second. She also wasn’t buying those wares. She waved off the mistletoe. To be sure, there were rare cases where the ingestion of mistletoe had caused cardiac collapse, but usually only with preexisting conditions, and you had to have eaten an awful lot of the stuff. Mostly though, ingesting mistletoe usually just resulted in some unfortunate intestinal discomfort. It was not, in and of itself, lethal. And lethal was what Mickey needed. She must choose her spell-cipher carefully.

The whole idea behind this particular spell-casting was to create something protective out of something destructive—to render something lethal harmless by releasing its killing spirit and capturing that essence in the amulet. Harnessing deadly power to protect against deadly power. Or something like that . . .

Mickey ran her fingertip along a line of spidery calligraphy on the weathered page of the ancient spell book. Her eyes were stinging and there was an itchiness in her sinuses that was either an oncoming cold or—and this was probably a good deal more likely— she was allergic to one or more of the ingredients in Vinx’s purple whammy-dust. Great. Just what she needed—another distraction. She pushed aside the sense of discomfort and furrowed her brow with renewed concentration. She really hoped she could nail this amulet spell, mostly because if she didn’t, there was no way she could pull her sagging grades out of the fire. The Conclave would fail her. And that was not a prospect that rewarded protracted mulling. Mickey scrunched up her nose, snuffled fiercely, increased brow-furrow depth by 10 percent, and calmly asked her demon helpmate to hand her the next candidate ingredient.

Vinx removed the glass cover from a small platter and passed the dish over with a flourish. It contained, at first glance, a small bundled sheaf of innocent un-winnowed barley heads. Except that, upon closer inspection, the bearded grain appeared to be covered with a faintly iridescent, grayish slime that resembled snail trails. Even Mickey could recognize that.

‘‘Ergot!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Jeezus, Vinx!’’

‘‘Yessss . . .’’ Vinx had earned an A++ last semester in poisons—they were a passion of his—and he positively beamed at the stuff in the dish. Like the proud owner of a darling new puppy. ‘‘In the proper proportions—’’

‘‘In the proper proportions,’’ Mick interrupted with a squeal, ‘‘it can cause convulsions, hallucinations, extreme fiery pain in the extremities and—if you’re really lucky prior to it killing you horribly—gangrene!’’ She stared in horrid fascination at the harmless looking stuff.

‘‘Oh, yesss,’’ the demon hissed gleefully. ‘‘Marvelous, isn’t it?’’

Okay. Granted, she needed something lethal. Not necessarily lethal and violently, devastatingly painful! Ergot was out. Not in the least because if this spell were performed incorrectly, instead of providing a charm to ward off death, the enchantment would often turn and inflict death upon the hapless practitioner by whatever means naturally employed by the cipher element. Mickey had, on more than one occasion, overheard the more advanced students telling horror stories about such cases. And, frankly, gangrene?

No. Ergot was definitely out.

The young sorceress shook herself out of a gruesome reverie and looked over at her lab partner. Vinx was staring at her from under the shadowy escarpment of his browridge, his expression unreadable.

‘‘You’re learning, Mick. Quickly and well.’’

She ignored the uncharacteristic praise and turned back to the table, picking up a carved wooden box with a brass identifying tag. ‘‘So tell me, Vinx, just what are the proper proportions for—’’ she translated from the Latin automatically ‘‘—Destroying Angel? Sounds delightful. What is that, exactly?’’

‘‘What does it look like?’’

She lifted the lid and peered inside. A fecund, peaty smell assaulted her nostrils. The box was half full of soil from which sprouted a solitary occupant.

‘‘A mushroom, Vinx?’’ Mickey said, raising an eyebrow. ‘‘An armed and dangerous side dish? I’m terrified. Truly.’’

‘‘Would you care to test that theory?’’ Vinx leaned closer, fetid demon breath undisguised by the handful of catmint he’d filched from the stores of herbs and had been munching on idly.

Mickey blinked, eyes and nasal passages burning. ‘‘Uhh . . . I don’t like mushrooms.’’

‘‘Then you have nothing to fear. It isn’t a mushroom. Not really.’’ Vinx plucked it out of the dark soil and held it up to the light of a torch.

‘‘It looks like one.’’

‘‘That is its power.’’

Terrific, Mickey thought. Fungi power. Shazam!

‘‘It masquerades as one thing when it is, in reality, something quite different,’’ Vinx continued on casually. Conversationally.

And yet there was something in the tone of his voice that made the pit of Mickey’s stomach all squirmy. She tilted her chin up so that she could look him square in his glowy red eyes. ‘‘You don’t say.’’

He grinned and, shrugging, plunked the thing back into the soil of its box. ‘‘The only visible disparity between this—you might call it a toadstool—and what you might call a mushroom is a slight variation in the color of its gills. And it is very slight.’’

‘‘So?’’

‘‘So the one goes very nicely with a steak, sautéed in a little butter. Maybe a touch of garlic.’’

‘‘And?’’

‘‘And the other causes hypertoxemia in the kidneys and liver. Extreme abdominal pain. Death within forty-eight hours of consumption.’’ Demon eyes glittered coldly.

‘‘Right.’’ Mickey slammed shut the lid on the box and put it up on a shelf. A high shelf. Hypertoxemia? Higher than the ergot shelf. She turned back to the table. ‘‘This is the last one,’’ she said, poking at another bunch of twigs, this time labeled with a small, white tag with the words Taxus baccata written on it in careful, somewhat childish block letters.

‘‘Ah, a branch of the wondrous yew.’’ Vinx scooped up the shrubby, dark green bough festooned with bright red berries. He looked as though he was about to wax positively rhapsodic, so Mickey figured this stuff must be particularly dangerous. More particularly dangerous. If that was possible . . .

‘‘That’s lethal?’’ she asked, sceptical. ‘‘It looks like a Christmas decoration.’’

‘‘Bite your tongue!’’ Vinx actually shuddered at the word ‘Christmas.’ ‘‘This is yew! It is a symbol of immortality. It is sacred to the Druids. It is highly toxic in leaf, bark, and stem!’’ His expression actually got a little misty at that point. ‘‘Nary an inch of this little tree that won’t kill you! It’s one of my personal favorites. If you couldn’t dispatch a man with the poison of the yew seeds or tea made from yew bark, you could always dip an arrow in yew sap and shoot him with a yew bow. So versatile in its lethality!’’

‘‘Ohhh, yah. I remember now.’’ Mickey frowned, recalling details from her spell tome cram session of the previous night. ‘‘And death from yew poisoning is almost always asymptomatic: sudden and without warning.’’

‘‘Such elegant efficiency, Mick!’’ Vinx cooed. ‘‘Use this one. For me? Please?’’

‘‘Gah!’’ Mickey shuddered. ‘‘All right, all right. Yew it is. Just quit with the kitten face, will ya?’’

‘‘Oh, goody!’’ The demon clapped his meaty mitts together like a little girl at a birthday party who’d just gotten a pony.

Mickey plucked up the branch and placed it a shallow bronze dish. ‘‘Is the circle ready?’’

‘‘Drawn from the finest sea salt and bonemeal.’’

‘‘Why do you always have to make it sound like you’re baking cookies when you spell-cast?’’ Mickey sniffed, her head feeling stuffy.

‘‘Would you rather have me intone gravely and with menace?’’

‘‘Uh . . . no. Actually. Cookies are good.’’ She put the dish down in the center of the circle. The pressure in her sinuses was actually becoming painful. Concentrate, dammit! Mickey admonished herself sternly. She took up the beaker of green liquid, the medium used for all student spells; it was a brew of mystic and highly secret substances, ladled out in carefully controlled portions by the Conclave Grande Sorciere at the beginning of term. The stuff smoked and hissed a little as she poured enough into the dish to cover the shrubbery. For all the dire warnings that accompanied the use of the beaker’s contents, Mickey had always had a sneaking suspicion that it was probably nothing more than the magical equivalent of Pop Rocks and Mountain Dew, meant to scare the apprentices into cautious behavior when spell-casting (it was a theory she kept to herself).

Over in the corner of the cavern, Vinx lounged casually against the wall, watching.

Mickey drew the amulet receptacle from an inside pocket of her robe and held it over the dish of yew. It was beautiful—a rainbow-colored empty glass bulb about the size of a Victorian locket, hung from a delicate, box-link silver chain. She carefully filled it with more of the chartreuse liquid and, leaving it unstoppered, placed the amulet around her neck.

Then she stood and prepared to speak the enchantment.

The thing about casting, Mickey always thought, was that to the untrained eye it looked so damned easy. A few ingredients, a couple of muttered phrases, and whammo!—instant spell. Except that everything important that took place in a casting really went on behind the scenes—in the spell-caster’s mind and heart. Even in her or his soul for some spells. That was the hard part. The words? They were more of a focus for the power. A lens used to capture the picture. Which was why spell chants could come off as a little . . . dull. And that was the reason so many sorcerers spoke their spells in Latin. Or ancient Greek or Gaelic. Mickey even knew one hotshot who did all his casting in Toltec—and he was from Winnipeg! Contrarian that she was, Mickey did all of hers in plain ol’ English. With really simple rhymes. Because— hey—just ’cause they were the easy part, it didn’t meant you couldn’t seriously screw ’em up.

She took a deep breath.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Vinx lean forward.

‘‘Fire burn bright!’’ she began.

‘‘Flame burn true!’’ She wished her nose would stop itching.

‘‘Keep me from harm’’—Oh, God! Not now—the sound of her sneeze echoed off the cavern roof, and a cloud of sparkly purple danced before her eyes. There was a tingling in her skull, but she pushed on, desperate to finish the chant—‘‘Ashes of you!’’

And Vinx burst instantly into flame.

Mickey was still standing there, stunned, when the air shimmered, and the Conclave Elders appeared to grade her on her project results.

The letters appeared before her eyes in a silvery burst of light.

A++ across the board.

What? she thought. I just flambéed my lab partner! How is that a good thing?

‘‘A clever ruse, Michaela,’’ Chya, her primary instructor was saying, his voice pitched so that the other sorcerers could plainly hear. ‘‘Using a Karnalaq curse to alter the meaning of your chant.’’

‘‘Wha—?’’ Mickey murmured numbly.

‘‘The other Elders were not sure that you would recognize your fellow student as the most deadly cipher in the room—and therefore the most useful for your warding amulet.’’ Chya bent low and scooped up the branch in the dish, from which the red berries were beginning to drop. ‘‘Nor were they certain that you would deduce that the demon had substituted a harmless, costumed evergreen for the Taxus baccata, meaning to destroy you utterly after you had spell-cast a useless warding amulet. Which, of course, would have earned him the A++.’’

‘‘He wha—?’’

‘‘I, of course, never doubted you for a second.’’ Chya’s black eyes glittered in the torchlight. Mickey could have sworn that he winked at her. ‘‘Congratulations, First Apprentice duLey. Enjoy your summer break!"

And then they were gone.

Mickey stumbled out of the circle and over to the pile of smoking, aubergine ash that had been her study buddy. ‘‘Demented demon spawn,’’ she said, shaking her head half in anger, half in sadness. Of all the dirty, rotten . . .

But then, out of the corner of her eye, off to one side of the worktable, she spotted the leather pouch that Vinx had always worn on his belt. She picked it up and opened it. Inside was the vial of purple crystals and a tiny scroll of parchment. She unrolled it and read the block-lettered script:

Mick ~ Congratulations!

I hope they gave you an A++.

Here is the rest of the ex-Karnalaq.

Use it sparingly . . . who ‘‘nose’’ when you might need it again!

Cheers,

Vinx’ythnial Warburton-Smythe III

With a tear in her eye (just one, mind you—were the situation reversed, he would have killed her horribly, after all), Mickey knelt and carefully scooped up a bit of what was left of her lab partner and added it to the glass amulet hanging around her neck, stoppering it tightly. Then she poured a pinch of Vinx’s purple powder into the palm of her hand and, as she felt the familiar tingling snap in her head, Mickey could almost swear that the amulet on her breast bubbled with the faint echoes of a deep, rumbling laughter . . .

Narrator: Competition can be a healthy thing— for the winner. Fortunately for Michaela duLey, a misspell was exactly what she needed.

LESLEY D. LIVINGSTON is a writer and actor living in Toronto, Canada. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian literature and Shakespeare. For over fifteen years she has appeared in lead roles on Toronto stages, chiefly as a principal member of Tempest Theatre Group. Fans of Canada’s nationally broadcast SPACE Channel may remember her as the SpaceBar’s Waitron-9000, a holographic barmaid with an encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure B-MOVIE trivia. Lesley’s short fiction has appeared in On Spec magazine, and her debut novel Wondrous Strange, a young adult fantasy, is soon to be published. She is thrilled to be a part of the Misspelled crew.