Enter Three Witches Read Online Free PDF

greenish incense pellets from a tall glass jar. These she placed in the brass thurible that stood on a black table in the center of the room. Then she looked at it long and hard. A thin column of smoke began to rise straight up, then to waver and curl among the shadows above her head. There was a faint, woodland smell of wild strawberries, perhaps, and of something not quite so nice, like toadstools or the undersides of rotting logs.
    Returning to the cupboard, Miranda took out a long, thin object wrapped in silk. Carefully she withdrew a black-handled knife inlaid with runes, her athamé or witch’s knife. She sprinkled it with salt water from the chalice that stood beside the thurible and then passed it through the low flame. Now with the purified athamé she traced a triangle around the table and made the sign of the cross three times in the air. After lighting two more candles with a match, she sat down with her back to the window and stared into the gilt mirror that stood behind the thurible. She saw her pale face and halo of fair hair reflected against the streaming window glass, and beyond, the vague forms of wind-tossed branches. The candles flickered, and the vision swam in the growing veil of smoke.
    “Better,” Miranda murmured. “O spirits of the air, I grow bored; I grow stale. Show me there’s more to life than dull housewifery!” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again to stare into the mirror. A faint line of blue fire began to play around its frame, and the surface clouded over. Miranda felt her head throb. Then suddenly the mirror grew clear again. As she stared, she lost all awareness of the surrounding room. Slowly, through smoke and wavering flame, through water and leafy branches, a towering figure formed and hovered over the brownstones of West Eighty-fourth Street. Menacing, beautiful—as real as fear, as insubstantial as a dream—it loomed outside Miranda’s window, an answer to her longings and also a very considerable fright.
    But she would never know what the spirit she had summoned might portend; the spell was broken by the arrival of her only son—the banging door, the joyful barking of the dog. Suddenly she was only a rather beautiful woman gazing into a mirror in an absurdly smoke-filled room on a rainy afternoon.
    “O great and holy spirit, I license thee to depart into thy proper place, and be there peace between us evermore by Satandar and Asentacer. So mote it be!” Miranda muttered all in one breath, for she knew the risk of failing to give a spirit permission to leave, even when it might seem to have already done so. She turned and stared out the window at gray rain clouds now darkening ominously into night. Ominous they might be, she thought, but still just clouds. “I’ll try that one again,” she said, as Bren knocked and entered without waiting for a reply. Shadow was at his heels, bouncing and nudging with his shaggy head.
    “Hi, Mom. What will you try again?” Bren said. “Ugh, what a smell. Sit, Shadow. You have to be good in here.”
    “Hi, sweet,” Miranda said, blowing him a kiss. “You’re right, it’s a horrid smell. I won’t use that one again.” She opened the window a few inches, and the heavy, green smoke began to creep out into the rainy dusk.
    “So what were you up to?” Bren asked. He was wandering around the room, picking things up and putting them down, peering idly at the symbols and calculations on his mother’s desk.
    “Oh, just a little conjuring and summoning,” Miranda said. “I was so bored with those spells for Mrs. Goodrich, and besides, I need a frog.”
    “All out of frogs?” Bren asked. He looked into the terrarium next to the desk and saw that although there were a number of hopping and crawling things, it was innocent of frogs. “You’ll have to think of a substitute.”
    “You know I can’t do that,” Miranda said. “It’s not like using honey instead of sugar. Frogs are basic, even if they’re