Spells

Chapter 13: First Spell

Arul

It was much easier to tell Satya than it would have been to tell Abhi. He had already seen him take the book, so all Arul had to do was convince him to help with the search for the ingredients.

“Why do you want to do this?” Satya asked.

“Call it curiosity or call it a way to escape this town's signature boredom.” Arul replied.

Thankfully, Satya didn't pester him with more questions. They were sitting in Arul’s room, the first page of the book sprawled open in front of them. Sun's heat radiated through the window, warming up the silent room. There weren't any sounds of vehicles honking, or birds chirping, or bees buzzing, or people chattering. Arul wasn't getting used to this silence, it felt like whenever he was quiet, the whole world was observing him.

“I thought you wanted this book to help with your homework. Liar!” Satya said.

"Aww... You hurt?" Arul raised his hand dramatically, "Cross my heart, I will never lie to you, your trust is what keeps me going, your belief in me is my pow-"

"Shut up, you jerk!" Satya interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“Then stop being a baby and help me get this stuff.” Arul shrugged.

"You sure there aren't any other options to get the rabbit's blood? I hate the idea of hurting my pet. "

Arul hesitantly nodded, “I hate it too. I am really sorry... But it's just a drop, won't pain him.”

“I hope so... What are you going to do about the other things?”

“I don’t know. Google search on Prithvi's phone told me eye-root is a herb. 'Core' probably means its root. Might be able to get it in the town's nursery.”

“Yeah, that's about the only place where you could find it. For the squirrel, you should start with the woods behind our school.”

“Alright, I will collect the things and meet you tonight at eight.”

"Yeah." Satya nodded and left. Arul left soon after, rushing towards the forest behind his school.

Getting the squirrel’s hair took far longer than Arul had expected. They turned out to be too quick and smart to be easily captured by a thirteen year old, but he finally was able to grab a slower one. He plucked one hair, thought about it, and plucked a few more.

His next step was going to the nursery. It didn’t quite fit the image he had formed mentally. He had never seen one in real life, but he always pictured a nursery as a large glassy building, being faithful to the framework of a greenhouse, with sunlight pouring in from all sides. That image was shattered by the rusty metal box with a sign of misprinted ‘Kuldhara Nrusary’ hanging on the front. As was the norm in this town, silence cuddled it.

Is it closed?

The open entrance contradicted.

Arul went inside, the sound of his cautious steps getting muffled on the sandy base of the nursery. His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the darkness, and once they were what he saw became another reason not to go through with all this. The nursery was a randomised mess. Potted plants were stuffed into each other, occupying every tiny space in his vision. Their stalks wrapped around each other and their leaves intermingled, challenging him to play a guessing game about which plant went where. They were even on the ground, acting as obstacles blocking the pathway. But what irked him the most was that there wasn’t any kind of label on most of the plants, as if the owner expected the customer to just recognize the plants by their shape.

"Helloooo... Is anybody here?" Arul yelled into the empty darkness.

No help from the owner then... Should I come back later?