Spell Hunter

Shortly after 10 am, when the museum opened on Fridays, a school bus arrived. It had been a relatively normal, calm morning. Alcide picked up a black coffee and piece of baklava from a Greek diner on the same block as his lodgings, which were only a few blocks away from the city’s Natural History Museum. For many years now he made it a habit of a cup of hot coffee and a warm pastry before the final move on a job. That way, he figured, if something went wrong and the job went sideways, at least he had a belly full of coffee and sweets.

He paused at the crosswalk to sip the steaming coffee and watched a yellow school bus swoop into the circular entrance drive to the museum. A gaggle of children piled out of the bus as he was crossing the street, maybe 10 years old, and all dressed in Halloween costumes. All Hallow’s Eve had been chosen months in advance as the day for the job, but he hadn’t considered the possibility of a school field trip on the holiday. He smirked and shook his head, thinking “this might be easier than I thought.”

A newspaper article from the prior summer had run a story on the Georgian era pamphlet that had been recovered. With some sleuthing, he was able to find out that the pamphlet was found as a bookmark in a copy of Keats that was sold for 50 cents at a garage sale. The buyer happened to be a history buff, and knew that the book of poetry could be an original printing. Upon seeing freemason symbols and feeling the age of the paper on the pamphlet within, she immediately contacted the museum. With a delicate cleaning, a press date of October 31, 1820 became visible on the bottom of the cover. To add to the mystique of the item, the entire pamphlet was only about four inches tall by 3 inches wide and was a mere two pages. The first page was something like a Latin poem, but to date no one had been able to translate or decode it, despite efforts from archaeologists and linguistic anthropologists that came to the museum from university departments. The second page was almost entirely blank, save for a tiny freemason embossment on the bottom corner.

If it wasn’t the actual target of this job, it would certainly be the target of another. He had been around long enough and recovered enough spell writs from the era to know one when he saw one, and for one to survive this long could only mean a few things: it was never used because it was deemed unsafe, or it was hidden away because it was too dangerous and was lost and forgotten to the tides of time before the owner had a chance or need to use it. If he didn’t collect the writ, it was only a matter of time before someone else did, and he knew it was best for him to take possession of it before more nefarious wills came across the spell.

Jobs like this were his favorite. The ones that took time and research, required tracking down leads and prying information out of them by creative means of both charisma and intimidation, jobs that had something at the end that could truly be unique, even if dangerous. The spell writ that he was looking for was one that his employer had heard a passing tale about and that they weren’t even sure really existed.

The story went that in the 1790s, as tensions once again mounted between England and France, a particular London based gentleman freemason began dabbling in dark magic. The gentleman had lost his younger soldier brother in a skirmish with the French and had sworn a blood oath of revenge. It was said that after much trial and error, he wrote a single spell writ that if used, could wipe out the majority of the French army in one fell swoop. It was also said that many of his experimental early writs in this pursuit remained in existence today, most of which would be wildly volatile, if they even worked at all.

Though in general the English freemasons at that time were loyal to the crown and rather patriotic, there existed a small faction that was lobbying for peace. That faction went by the “Luxus Paxian Order,” or just “Paxian Order” for short. When the leader of this faction, a powerful spell caster in his own right, found out about the gentleman’s spell of war and ruin, he determined the spell should never be unleashed. So the leader of the Paxian order made a difficult decision, and the group bound the vengeful gentleman’s powers, only able to overtake him with an ambush and several cleverly written spells. The gentleman freemason had grown increasingly suspicious over the preceding years, always worried that a spy from the French spellcasters was tracking him. Less than an hour before the ambush, he had moved more than half of his spell writs to several new safe locations that no spies or betrayers, including the Paxian order, would ever find.

And so, almost 250 years later, the unwieldy and volatile spells were still occasionally turning up. In the last 50 years since the stories had seen a resurgence of popularity about the fabled trove of English freemason war spells, Alcide and his employers had been able to track down every lead and either neutralize or put each spell into safe storage. Most of those Alcide had hunted and captured himself. By their approximation, this one had to be one of the last remaining spells from that particular wizard.

So for the first hour that Alcide was at the museum, he slowly walked through the installations, casually looking over each and reading the associated placard. About halfway through this initial self-guided tour, he passed by the pamphlet and the book of John Keats poetry inside which it had been found, barely glancing at the book and pamphlet for more than a few seconds. “Oh yes, that is definitely a spell writ,” he thought to himself as he walked to the next exhibit, letting his eyes wander over each of the cameras in the room. Two. One over each door, somewhat placed so the majority of the room was in view between the two of them. What an easy haul this would be. The museum curator hadn’t appraised the pamphlet or book to be of enough value or interest to have any special guards in place – no pressure plate under its case to set off a silent alarm, no motion sensors facing the simple glass case, only one security guard for this entire section of the museum. Two cameras and the guard watching the cameras, if there even was a guard that actively watched them.

At 12:29 pm, most of the other museum patrons were eating lunch in the cafeteria. Since the museum was hosting a field trip, the cafeteria din was a bit louder than usual, full of the joyous shouts of several hundred rowdy kids. At 12:30 pm, the guards left their post for a change of duty. Alcide had found out on his prior visits in the last month that the museum had a very relaxed head of security, which meant that guards typically left their post and spoke with their replacements in the break room for a solid five to ten minutes before restaffing their posts.

Alcide gave the guards a moment to all leave their posts so that he could make the heist during their transition when it would be most likely that the guard watching the camera would be away or distracted. He had a simple cloaking charm that he would use, but the charm often set off enough of an interference disturbance on old CC TV cameras that guards would go double check that the camera hadn’t been tampered with. He walked into the room with the pamphlet, whispering his cloaking charm and covering himself in a reflective sheen that made him all but disappear. As he walked through the room, the faintest wavering of light may give you the impression that something in the corner of your eye moved, but would otherwise be impossible to see. He approached the case holding the spell writ, gently lifted it from the pedestal, and reached for the pamphlet, slipping it into the inner breast pocket of his vest. Before setting the glass case back down, he decided to be a little greedy and take the book of Keats as well. It really did appear to be an original printing, and he would surely appreciate it more than all of the tourists that wandered through the museum barely spending a moment on it.

“Hey, that glass case is moving! There is a ghost in here!”

Alcide whirled, the sudden shock making him lose concentration and dropping the concealment cloak. In the entrance that faced the primary entrance to the museum stood a ruddy faced boy with a bit of chocolate still on his cheek from some cafeteria sweets. The red flush in the boy’s cheeks went pale white as he saw Alcide materialize, holding the glass case in one hand and the book of Keats in the other. At that exact moment, Alcide heard a shuffle behind him. Thinking it would likely be a guard, he turned, ready to either fight or to scramble past the kid to escape. Only there was no one there.

Before Alcide could do anything to protect himself, a heavy thud landed in his stomach, making him double over and drop the glass case. The heavy case hit the assailant directly on the foot, making him lose focus on his cloaking charm. In front of Alcide stood a lean man with a face like a hawk, fixing a gaze on Alcide with one deep brown and one startling green eye. Alcide instantly recognized him as a fellow spell hunter, and his singular green eye was the recognizable trademark of not only a spell hunter, but one of the Matya assassins. So he wasn’t the only one hunting the spell. The Matya assassins were dangerous magic users, marked by their one green eye. To date, no one has been able to figure out exactly who was the one imbuing the Matya with their powers, but the green eye marked someone who had a particularly strong grasp of their own raw magic, and typically could also write spell writs as well as use them.

With a sweeping kick below the knees, Alcide knocked the already off balance assassin off of his feet. He had bought himself time to escape. As he turned towards the door to run, the kid had been replaced by two more men, both of slightly larger builds than the first, both with round faces, and importantly neither had a singular green eye marker. At least these two weren’t the same breed of assassin. Alcide was boxed in, and he hadn’t carried any spell writs with him for this kind of trouble. All of the raw magic he could conjure without spell writs wouldn’t be enough to fend off three fellow spell casters in this close of proximity. He slowly backed up, reaching in his vest pocket. He pulled out the writ and asked the men, “Is this what you’ve come for? Any chance you boys are interested in bargaining?”

It was blatantly clear that they were not looking for any kind of negotiations. In fact, it was becoming clear that they were not only there for the spell, but that they had likely come for him, knocking out two bounties with one job. There was no need to send three men on a job for a simple spell retrieval. “They must have known I’d be here today. Or maybe they’ve been tracking me,” he thought as he cursed the situation. The two bruisers were slowly spreading apart to block any escape, as the assassin drew out a spell writ. Alcide knew it was likely a simple killing curse, something that would drop him quietly and efficiently.

Before the assassin could turn his gaze down at the spell writ in his hand, Alcide opened the pamphlet and read the writing. It was wildly dangerous, and even if it works in halting or killing his attackers, it will likely lead to the loss of his position as a spell hunter. These spells could be dangerous, unpredictable, some unleashing great amounts of destructive energy with little to no ability for the caster to control it. It was but a few words, and finishing the final syllable he expected something grand to happen, perhaps an explosion or a burst of energy outwards from the paper. The three men poised for attack paused, holding their breath as they waited for death to bear down upon them. But instead, Alcide simply disintegrated. They watched as he fell to dust in front of them, falling to the floor in a layer of ash that was so fine the wind from moving feet on the floor dissipated it, leaving no trace of Alcide. The whole encounter took less than 90 seconds. The three men made eye contact, and all whispered concealment charms knowing that the guards would be back any second to investigate the crashing sound from the case and the brief scuffle between the men.

Alcide awoke in an alleyway, nauseas as if he had been drinking swill all night. He blinked away the disorientation, realizing that he was in fact not dead, nor was he in the museum’s marble and concrete art wing. He jumped to his feet and turned to take in his surroundings. The alleyway was hard packed dirt, the buildings that it separated claustrophobically close together. The smell in the air hit him as soon as he fully recovered his faculties and calmed the pounding of his heart in his eardrums. The city hadn’t smelled like that for more than a hundred years, since before cars displaced horses as the main source of locomotive power. Had the spell driven him mad? Had it finally caused all of the years to catch up with him and throw his mind back to some of his younger days?

Slowly tidying himself up and exiting the alleyway, he also realized that his assailants had not followed him on this journey to the past, on his potential descent into madness. He knew that casting that spell was a huge risk, but he did not imagine that it would do this. Without a doubt, Alcide was now in the city he knew in the early 1800s when he was still a young man.

He walked down the street trying to make himself blend in with the other people. He did not want to stand out, and he should not be here. Time travel spells never worked properly, which is why they had been banned for centuries. Yet, someone had tried to write a spell for it, had never used it, and now Alcide’s risk to get him out of trouble had flung him back to some point in the early 1800s. The spell writ was partially destroyed when he cast the spell, leaving a burnt edge where the page that had contained the spell writ had originally been. The second, blank page was still fully intact, and still as blank as before. When he finally spotted a pub, he entered, hoping to get a drink and figure out what to do next. Ordering a dark ale with some bread and cheese to help settle the nausea that was still present from the time jump, he pulled a 20th century coin out of his pocket, softly muttered a cloaking enchantment turning it into a time appropriate galleon, he laid the coin down. It was enough to pay for fares for the rest of the day, and he intended to stay in the pub until he had a better idea of what to do.

After the first mug of the strong, old fashioned ale, two young men entered the pub. The first, maybe 20 years old was rather short and had slightly gaunt cheeks with a deep melancholy behind the eyes. The second was of a lanky build, with a broad smile and a face that looked sun or wind chafed. The men sat down close to Alcide, where he could hear their conversation. The shorter man was morosely complaining about a recent newspaper article.

“Charles, this will ruin any hopes I had! I already don’t have the family name to sell books, and now this will seal my fate.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, John. This is just one review, I’m sure that there will be others with more positive things to say. Your work really is unparalleled, my friend.”

“And Fanny already is keeping me at arm’s length. This failure I call a writing career will lead me to my ruin. My words are but stones, sinking into the sea, seen for a moment and lost to time,” upon finishing his impromptu verse, the small man rattled with a coughing fit.

Alcide rubbed the small, leather bound book in his pocket. The dejected, sickly man sitting next to him was John Keats. Had the spell reached out and grabbed onto anything that it could, finding some remnant of magic as a tether in the book?

“I’m sorry to overhear and interrupt, fellas. I have to say, Mr. Keats, that I could not have disagreed more with what they said about you in the Quarterly Review. Those pompous ratbags wouldn’t know beautiful verse if it was in their morning tea.” Alcide was surprised at how easily the accent of the time came back to him, barely having that heavy, rusty feeling that the tongue usually has when speaking a language or in a particular accent for the first time in decades.

“I appreciate it, sir! And you don’t have to call me mister, John will do well enough.”

Alcide offered to buy the men a round, and began to chat with them. It became apparent that Keats was quite sick, although he seemed not to know, or at least admit it, himself. The night got on, and after several rounds of the ale, Alcide’s accent began slipping. The true poet, being perceptive of every drip of humanity that surrounded him, even on the verge of inebriation, asked from where the accent hailed.

“I am, originally, from very close to here. Was born in London, but I’ve been traveling the world for some time now, so I suppose my accent has become a bit… muddled. You’ll think I’m loony for this, but really it’s more accurate to say that it’s from a few hundred years from now.”

The poet and his friend glanced at each other and held a long gaze. The taller of the two, Charles, inclined his head slightly, seemingly telling John to go forward with whatever it was he wanted to say.

“Oh, we don’t think you’re crazy. I think we have more in common than you think. I have a story for you, and maybe a few questions when that’s done.”

The two men then proceeded to share their story. Less than two years prior, they had undertaken a journey on foot north to Scotland. John’s family was plagued by consumption, and there were rumors that some sort of druid healers in the highlands, remnants of an ancient cult of magic, had devised a way to treat the disease. John, having concluded his medical training the prior year, decided that with Charles’ help the two could make the trek on foot to seek a cure. They were successful in meeting special healers in the highlands, but none had the cure for consumption, and his hopes dwindled. The healers informed Keats, however, that he had traces of magic in his blood. They told him that if he could learn to write spell writs, there was a chance he could figure out a spell that could stave off the illness. Spells were, after all, the poetry that flows between the parts of the universe that we see. It only made sense that Keats could have been a spell caster.

Alcide then shared some pieces of his life story. He told them of his boyhood, not far from the pub, almost a century further back. He explained his occupation as a spell hunter and regaled a few of the shorter, funnier stories of jobs. When they prodded about his age, he winced and offered, “longevity has its own consequences.”

Feeling sympathetic for the poet that doesn’t know yet that he’s dying, and a little drunk and not altogether convinced that he would be able to travel back home, Alcide offered up a prophecy to Keats. “You said your words would sink like stones in the sea, never to be seen again. They may be less like stones and more like birds in the wind, buffeting a tempest of time with ageless grace. Your name will be writ in water. Keep writing, and when the time comes to make a decision, do not go to Rome.”

Keats stared for a moment, and then sighed. He finished his drink, slammed his mug down, and with a great laugh said, “May words fly free as long as my pen has ink, one whose name is writ in water, until when this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.”

Suddenly the half tattered spell writ in Alcide’s pocket got warm. He pulled it out to see the words that Keats had just used in his cheers written on what was a blank page. “When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.” Before Alcide could say anything, he was again dust, mixing with the coal soot of the fireplace in the corner leaving John Keats flabbergasted at the sight of the incantation.

This time the travel was less jarring. He had a guess at what was about to happen when the spell writ glowed with the new words, and better prepared his mind for a temporal shift. By his estimate, he was knocked out for no more than a minute or two. When he regained consciousness, stomach heavy with the nausea that always accompanies magical travel, he took in his surroundings. He appeared to be a few blocks from the museum where he had been the prior morning, close to his lodgings. It was late at night; the streets were mostly quiet, and the night had that crisp chill that makes itself known late in autumn. Somehow, the volatile spell had thrown him back to his time.

He checked his pocket, and miraculously the spell writ was still inside. It should have burned with the second use. He opened the pamphlet, and now both the first and the second page had text on them, but it was different than the prior use. Alcide realized that when he met Keats, the young man had not yet written the writ that sent him back in time. The visit, their conversation, the line of poetry must have given Keats what he needed to finish the writ. Surely, he had used that knowledge to go back to before he became ill and save himself. Except writs like this, with this sort of power, that relied on this sort of poetry, could only be used once. For it to be in Alcide’s pocket meant that he had the only version that had ever been written.

He rushed back to his hotel and got on his computer. Within a few seconds he confirmed that John Keats still died in Rome on February 23, 1821. That means that even with the warning, and even with figuring out the proper words for the spell, Keats decided to go to Rome fully knowing that he would meet his demise. Had the bit of prophecy that Alcide shared given Keats the peace he needed to write until his abrupt and early end? It also meant that this was not one of the freemason spells that he had been hunting, and it had been a remnant of a desperate attempt to salvage a dying man’s health all along. Reaching into his other pocket, he pulled out and opened the small leather book of poetry. Inside the front cover he found a flowing cursive inscription that said,

“To A,

For showing me there is eternity in our words. I writ my name in water and found the right verses. You’ll make better use of this than me.

-J.K.”