40
Sketch
“I’m sorry, Ammu, but could we try this somewhere else?” Kaitlyn had been staring at the book for what seemed to her like a very long time, but the runes just weren’t coming to her the way they had the night before.
“Is there something we can do to make this space more conducive to the process?” Ammu asked in return.
“No, I guess there isn’t really anything wrong with the room,” she admitted, but her voice sounded dejected, exhausted.
“If there is anything we can do to help you focus more easily here, we will gladly do it, but I am afraid the experiments can not be moved. There are certain safety precautions in place, as well as equipment meant to capture the process.”
Kaitlyn nodded. “I understand. Let me try again.”
She looked back at the drawing, and after several long, awkward minutes—during which Sam looked more and more annoyed and Sketch actually sat down on the floor, threatening to lie down on his side until Mackenzie hurried over and propped the boy up with her leg—Kaitlyn finally nodded.
“I have it,” she said, but she still sounded tired.
“I know you are all sad to see your friend leave,” Ammu said, “but try not to think of the moment in which he left. Try to see him at his gaming convention, with a smile on his face, defeating the competition and earning his position on the professional team. Imagine him happy. It will help your minds to settle and focus.”
In the silver lining category, Mackenzie thought, tired and sad look a lot alike. Rush leaving still sucks, but it’s covering our asses right now.
Kaitlyn nodded at Ammu, trying to look grateful for his help.
“Excellent,” Ammu said encouragingly. “Places then, everyone. Let us begin.”
Kaitlyn took the blue chalk and began to trace the runes on the floor. She wondered how many times she would have to do this before she finally had the pattern memorized, so she could draw the complex figures without an image to prompt her.
“Hey, Gears?” Sam said, breaking her out of her reverie.
“Huh? Sorry, what?”
“Timing, remember? We all have to work together?” Sam sat cross-legged in the circle, watching Kaitlyn draw the runes while Mackenzie was still extracting herself from Sketch, encouraging him to sit up straight without her.
“Oh, gosh! I’m so sorry!”
“That is all right,” Ammu reassured her. “But please, everyone, let us focus as best we can. The summoning will not work if your minds are not attuned to the task. A tremendous amount of knowledge has surely been lost about this process throughout the intervening centuries, but of this much, at least, I am certain.”
Kaitlyn nodded, clearly chagrined, and she sat back on her heels, waiting patiently for Mackenzie to make her way over to the circle.
“Actually,” Mackenzie said, having finally succeeded in getting Sketch to stand back up, “I think Gears can finish drawing the runes first, and then she can trace them over again from the starting point when I come in.” That’s how we did it the first time, remember? She willed the others to understand what she was really saying. When we almost opened the portal right here, the time Ammu doesn’t want them to know about.
“Oh, um… OK,” Sam said. “I… yeah… sorry, Gears. Go ahead. My bad.”
“It is fine,” Ammu interjected gently. “We are all still learning how this works. Together, we will experiment until we are successful, yes?” He smiled at them encouragingly, and they all nodded in return, trying not to look guilty.
Kaitlyn finished drawing the runes on the floor. By the time she was done, Sketch was sitting down again. Mackenzie gave Daniel a meaningful glance, but Daniel was already moving toward him, taking her place to prop Sketch up since Daniel could stand still while he sang. He stepped behind Sketch, who leaned back gratefully against Daniel’s leg, watching the process with drooping eyelids.
“Here,” Mackenzie said, choosing their starting point. “Gears? You ready?”
Kaitlyn took a deep breath and nodded.
“OK, Tick-Tock. Count us in.”
“One… two… one, two, three, four.”
Mackenzie blessed the circle as Kaitlyn drew each rune, but she was as tired as the rest. Given her background in a military family, she knew how to hide things like pain or sadness or sleep deprivation, but she was still performing the ritual more by rote than through any conscious focus. She only hoped it would still work.
Ammu had come clean with them, and Mackenzie had the feeling it had cost him something to do it—that he was taking a real risk by telling them as much as he had. He deserved to share in their success, to get credit for the progress he had obviously made with them, but she just wasn’t sure they could do it in the condition they were in.
Like Mackenzie, Daniel performed his part of the ritual by memory, bouncing his knee once in a while to keep Sketch alert. At the fifth such reminder Sketch glared up at him, but Daniel returned the look with a warning glance of his own, and Sketch grudgingly sat up straighter.
As they neared the end, Sketch finally perked up, the runes on the floor beginning to glow with the same magic he had seen the night before. Sure enough, a pinprick of darkness appeared in the space over Sam’s head as she opened her arms in the air. Slowly, just as it had before, the portal began to expand.
“Yes! There it is!” Ammu said, his voice quiet so as not to startle them but intense, nonetheless, in his excitement.
Daniel continued to sing softly as the portal expanded. It was the size of a golf ball, and then a baseball, and then a softball, and Daniel felt himself starting to get excited despite his exhaustion when Sketch suddenly slammed back into his legs, almost making him lose his balance.
Daniel looked down in confusion. Sketch was scrabbling backward on the floor, trying desperately to get away from the portal, but Daniel’s legs were in his way. He was panicking too much to realize the problem, continuing to shove himself against Daniel’s legs as he started shouting.
“Close it!” he yelled. “CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT!”
The creature on the other side was shoving its way into the portal, but even though it hadn’t yet breached the final barrier, Sketch could already see it in his mind’s eye. Its long, rat-like head was rotting away—what passed for flesh draping in tatters off the muscle and bone underneath. One eye was hanging out of its socket, blackened and dead, while the other glowed red with hatred. It was as large as a full-grown wolf, which was the only thing protecting them for the moment as it clawed and scrabbled at the tight fit, trying to wedge one razor-clawed appendage past its head to help pull itself along.
Sam sat frozen in place, staring at Sketch’s sudden panic, her eyes wide with fear, while Kaitlyn just watched in confusion, a puzzled look on her face, glancing back and forth between the empty portal and Sketch’s obvious terror.
Mackenzie, however, was already moving. As soon as Sketch screamed, she dropped to the floor at the edge of the circle and tried to smear the chalk away with her hand. When that didn’t work, she tore her T-shirt off over her head, wadded it up between her hands, licked the fabric for good measure, and rubbed it viciously across the closest rune. In response, the portal shuddered, shimmered in the air for a moment, and then vanished, just as it had the night before.
Mackenzie stood up, unperturbed by her public disrobing—the sports top she had been wearing under her T-shirt still covered her as much as she was used to anyway while working out in a gym full of soldiers.
“Is everyone OK?” she asked, calmly pulling the chalk-smeared T-shirt back on over her head.
Sketch nodded vigorously, gratefully, his eyes still as large as saucers.
“What was it, Sketch?” Ammu asked, his eyebrows knitted together in obvious concern. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice still shaking, “but that was not a gryphon.”