The Spell Book Under the Floorboard

The argument started, as most arguments between Asha and her younger brother Rowan did, over something small.

Rowan had borrowed her coloured pencils without asking. Again. He had used the good ones, the ones she kept sharpened, and had left them scattered across his desk in various states of bluntness with the caps off. The red one was missing entirely.

Asha was twelve and Rowan was nine and the gap between twelve and nine felt, on days like this, like a very large distance indeed.

She said things she did not mean. Rowan said things back that he did not mean either. Their mother called up the stairs for them to stop and they both went quiet but the quiet was the cold kind, the kind that sits in a room like weather.

Asha went to her room and shut the door harder than she needed to and sat on her bed feeling the particular mix of angry and guilty that comes from winning an argument in a way that does not feel like winning at all.

She would have stayed there feeling sorry for herself for the rest of the evening, except that she put her foot down wrong getting up and the floorboard under her bed gave way slightly, the way it had been threatening to for months, and when she looked down she saw that it had come up at one end.

She got down on her knees and lifted the loose board properly.

Underneath was a small space, dry and dark, and in the space was a book.

It was not a large book. It was about the size of a school exercise book, with a dark cover that had no title on it and pages that were thicker than normal paper, slightly yellowed at the edges. She lifted it out carefully. It was light, lighter than it should have been for how solid it felt.

She opened it to the first page.

The paper inside smelled of something old and dry, not unpleasant, like the inside of a very old cupboard that has been kept clean. She turned the pages carefully, feeling the slight roughness of the thick paper under her fingertips.

The writing inside was handwritten in ink that had faded to a brownish colour, small and neat and very even. At the top of the first page were three words that made Asha sit back on her heels.

The words were: Handle with care.

Below that, in slightly larger letters: A collection of spoken spells. These words, once said aloud, take effect immediately. Read silently. Do not speak the words unless you intend them.

Asha looked at the book for a long time.

Then she turned to the next page.

Most of the spells were small things. A spell to find lost objects. A spell to make plants grow faster. A spell to keep rain off you while walking. They were written clearly, the words in a slightly different ink from the explanations, as if whoever had written the book had been careful to make the spells themselves stand out.

She read carefully and silently, the way the book had told her to.

She got to page fourteen before she found the one that made her stop.

It was titled: A spell for silence between two people. Below the title it said: Use only with great care. This spell causes two people to be unable to speak to each other until the condition is met. Condition: both must wish to break the silence at the same time.

Asha stared at the page.

She thought about Rowan, three doors down, probably still cross, probably not going to apologise first because he never apologised first, and neither did she, and they would both be cold and quiet at dinner and it would be awful.

She did not mean to say the words. She was only reading them, moving her lips slightly the way she sometimes did when she was concentrating.

But she said them.

All six of them, quietly, in her empty room with the floorboard up and the book in her hands.

And then from down the hall she heard Rowan try to call something to her and stop. And try again and stop. And the silence that followed was a different kind of silence from all the silences before it.