“Hecate! Hecate, open the door!” he shouted as he tried the handle.
She knew it was not locked but held shut by the actions of the Resurgent Spirit.
“Papa…” She tried to call to him, but was robbed of her words by the smoke. She heard the dean’s voice and more hammering on the door and her father’s increasingly frantic shouts but she could not reply. She could not get to her feet.
Brother Michael was beside her. “My dear child, you must get up. You must!” The poor monk was close to tears of frustration and despair.
Hecate tried to push herself up on part of a fallen bookcase but it was too hot. She withdrew her hand with a gasp. The Mappa Mundi continued to undulate as its inhabitants gave way to rage or panic depending on their character. Through the deepening smoke she saw St. Augustine’s hands raised in prayer. She saw the bear roaring in fear and fury. Then, as she watched through smarting eyes, she saw the great bull at the center of the map turn face out and paw the ground as if about to charge. She had never seen the bull move before. As she felt herself drifting into a faint she recalled that the beast was depicted breathing fire and this amused her, for the last thing she required at that moment was more flames. To her astonishment, she saw that the bull was rapidly growing in size. In seconds it had doubled, then trebled in width, so that soon all other images were hidden behind it. Its huge face filled the entirety of the map. And still it grew bigger and bigger, until all she could see of it were its red flaring nostrils.
Hecate thought then how curious it was that time could stand still in extreme moments. She felt a preternatural calmness descend upon her as she crumpled to the floor. She had no more reserves of strength as the smoke overwhelmed her but she felt neither panic nor fear, only a sad acceptance of her fate.
It was then that the great bull snorted. There was a pause and then the fire-breathing beast inhaled. It was an in-breath of mighty, magical force that drew from the room all the smoke, and all the air, sucking them deep into its vast lungs, more and more until at last there was none left. The flames faltered and died. The fire was suffocated. The deadly smoke removed. All sounds in the room ceased.
Hecate clambered to her feet. Gulping for breath as air returned to the space and the bull diminished, resuming its place on the map. She stumbled through the muddle of shelves and burned paper and singed books.
“Hecate?” Edward rattled the door handle again. “Hecate!”
“It is not locked, Father,” she said, her voice hoarse, her mind still cloudy from lack of air and surfeit of smoke. Her thoughts were jumbled. The fire was out, the room clearing, the spirit had fled. Why, then, was the door still prevented from opening? She rubbed dust from her eyes, blinking as she looked around the room.
She felt rather than heard the movement beside her. She did not dare turn. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the dark mass rising up from the floor, thickening and swelling as it grew to become a looming, pulsing shape between her and the map.
She could hear the dean and her father calling to her and fighting to free the door, but she knew they could not help her. She was trapped in the room with the second Resurgent Spirit, and it was not finished with her yet. To her horror, it twisted so that its attention seemed to shift toward the map. The shadow began to creep over the ancient vellum, seeping into the cracks and crevices, spreading itself to cover the entire surface.
“Leave it alone!” she shouted. “Do not touch that! Your quarrel is with me. Here I stand!”
But the spirit only delved deeper into the map’s corners and grooves, intent on overtaking it completely.
Hecate pulled the book from her dress and held it up.
“You want this, don’t you? Look, here is your precious book. See?”
The being paused in its progress and twisted again. Whether it could see or not Hecate had no way of knowing, but it detected the book, and changed its focus.
“That’s it. Come along now. If you want it, you will have to take it from me,” she said. Her scarf had dropped from her face. She quickly pulled it up again to cover her mouth and nose. She had no holy water left. Nothing with which to attack the vile entity which was slowly moving toward her. She stood motionless. There was nowhere to run to, after all. Nowhere to hide. Her ghostly friends could do no more for her. She must face the spirit alone. She felt it reach toward her, its darkness forming elongated fingers that stretched toward the book, which she drew back close to herself, enticing the spirit forward. At last it was before her, but a hand’s span from her face, looming above and around her, coiling as a snake ready to strike.
But Hekate was the Goddess of Snakes.
Hekate was the Goddess of the Night who lights the way, guarding the threshold, standing sentinel at the crossroads, holding the keys to unlock the door from one world to the next, from the living to the dead.
Hekate was the Queen of the Liminal Realms.
And Hekate had her hounds to protect her.
From behind the spirit, deep within the world of the map, came the sound of barking, growing louder and louder.
“Help me, Queen of Ghosts. I need you now!” she whispered, and heard again the goddess’s voice in her mind. She forced herself to recall again one of the prayers of protection she had written in her notebook.
Let not the darkness prevail! I am a child of the light and hold the hand of the blessed!
She shouted at the spirit then, and when she did so, the voice that came forth was not hers alone. She heard it resonate with a chorus of souls, some known to her, some not, as if her spectral family, sensing her peril, had come to her aid. Above all of these, though, it was her namesake, Goddess of Witches, whose voice she heard most clearly as it reverberated through her.
Hecate raised her voice above the noise in the room. “In the name of the Goddess of the Night, I send you back to Hades. Back to the darkness. Descend to the depths and cross the River Styx. Return to the realm of the dead! Hekate commands you! I command you!” she cried raising her hand, glaring into the swirling body of the spirit. “You do not belong here! Take your foul, heartless soul and slither back to your rightful place!”
She sensed its hesitation and took courage from it, moving forward even as the spirit swayed and undulated. It drifted back and she took another step. It began to resist and thrash about. In its rage it wrenched the book from her hand, flinging it into the pile of fallen shelves and debris. She did not falter but stepped on.
The baying of the hounds increased to a terrible, cacophonous level.
“They are coming for you!” she told the spirit. “Hekate has sent her fearsome dogs and they will drag you to hell!”
Finally the spirit gave in to its fear. It rotated with such speed it caused a whirlwind, snatching up papers and books and loose objects from the room, almost knocking Hecate off her feet. She battled forward, reciting the chant she remembered from Hekate’s book of spells, her words almost drowned out by the snarling and barking of the hounds, whose faces now filled the map, teeth bared, red eyes glaring.
The spirit formed itself into a cloud of locusts, rattling and clicking as they circled the room once more before crashing through one of the rose windows and disappearing out into the night.
The door, no longer ensorcelled, was flung open and her father and Dean Chalmers charged into the room. The dean was paler than some of Hecate’s beloved ghosts. Her father looked as if his heart might break.
“My dearest girl! Are you injured?” he asked, slipping an arm around her shoulders to support her.
The burn on her hand made her wince. She tried to take steadying breaths. The air in the room smelled of smoke and tasted gritty. “The map…!” As soon as she attempted to speak she was stricken by a fit of coughing and had to wait for it to subside.
Edward sought to reassure her. “The map is safe, the fire is out. Hecate, whatever has taken place here?”
The dean spoke up. “The door was not locked, and yet it would not open. We were alerted by the bell being rung. I came from the cloisters and noticed the destruction in the crypt. More tombs have been broken.”
Her father told her, “I had come in search of you. We saw the smoke coming from this direction and could hear you shouting, but, oh my dear child, we could not open that door. I feared we might lose you!”
Hecate struggled to regain her voice. “Thank heavens the map is safe. Oh, the library, look at the mess…”
“Your safety is paramount,” the dean insisted, adding shakily, “Whatever would we have done had you perished?”
