Secret Novel Chapter 24: Fluffy Ears (Patreon)

Over the last few weeks of learning magic, Madeline had often neglected her daily routine that she had established before drinking the tea. Now she was finally getting back into it. Her Garden was important and maintaining it was crucial to both her survival and learning magic, so now she spent her mornings weeding and picking up fallen fruit. Once that was done, often with a fresh piece of fruit serving as a pre-breakfast snack, she would go out and check her traps. Though at first they had been poorly made, her traps were a lot better thanks to her new home full of resources and a library full of information. They didn’t break like her old ones, and she even learned how to use magic to hide her scent on them which would greatly increase her odds of getting some much needed meat. When she was first setting up traps she had done it solely in her Garden, but now she had branched out into the forest out back.

There were parts of her that worried about running into mages in the forest, but from her small explorations there weren’t any doorways to the Maze close by. The closest she found was roughly an hour's walk away, and Madeline had a strange feeling that mages wouldn’t like being in the forest. Not that she felt much better to be honest. It still scared her at times. That daunting feeling of how large and old the forest was. What creatures and beings lived inside. She would have to look that up in her books some time soon, when she found some spare time outside of progressing in her lessons. It could be very useful.

Walking over to one of the traps she set, Madeline sighed sadly. The trap had work, which normally would be good, but not with this kill. She had made the trap small to try and catch rabbits, but apparently young foxes were small enough to get caught in them as well. Of course the intention of her traps was to kill so she could have meat, but she felt bad at killing such a young small thing. If she had to guess it was barely out of being a kit… With more care than she would normally give a rabbit, Madeline pulled the fox from the snare. Was it okay for her to eat fox? She had seen some butchers sell the meat back in Lexford so it must be fine to eat. Though she did recall someone once saying the meat was quite tough. Even knowing she could eat it, it felt wrong to eat such a young fox, even if it was good fresh meat. A thought flashed through her mind. She had seen something about foxes in the tome, and if she recalled it correctly it was a ritual. Taking the fox with her, she started on her way back home.

Madeline had resigned herself to summoning a beyonder for their eye, and in a little over a week since she had decided that she had done a lot of research. The ritual required to summon a beyonder was a very advanced and difficult one, especially if you wanted to summon one from one of the ‘nice’ houses. If you wanted to just summon any old beyonder there was a massive grab bag of different kinds of beyonders, and the amount Madeline had looked up was mind boggling. With her current abilities she shouldn’t be able to summon a beyonder, especially one from a better house, and that frustrated her. Both in a sense that she wasn’t strong enough yet, and that an eye would be so helpful to her. While looking all this up and glancing at other rituals, Madeline found one that was meant to help increase the power and energy of a place during a solstice. A solstice like the winter one coming up in a week and a half. Now yes, she should probably do the solstice ritual for her Garden, but she wondered: could she use the solstice ritual to power the summoning ritual? After many long late nights of digging through book after book, Madeline had come up with an answer. Maybe. There wasn’t any specific book that told her combining rituals could work like that, but through checking all the mechanics it did seem possible. Theoretically of course, but why not try and make the theoretical possible.

Of course if she did manage to summon a beyonder, there was the need to figure out what she could trade for the eye. She did find that in some of the mage's books, that solely referred to beyonders as demons, that there were ways of trapping and ‘chaining’ a beyonder to do your bidding and will without having to give something in return. However, that idea didn’t sit right with Madeline. Forcing someone to do something against their will was always wrong, even if that person was a beyonder. Also, she wouldn’t be powerful enough to attempt anything like that to begin with, so a trade was needed. Through her readings Madeline had found a section on things beyonders like and would be willing to trade for. Souls were at the top, but there was no way Madeline would give that up. There were many other things, all of varying values, but Madeline honestly didn’t have much to her name, even if she did own a massive Garden and home with more things than she ever had before. It would feel wrong to trade something that had once belonged to Eda and left to her, even if it was all hers now.

There was one possible thing that Madeline did have and could trade as something a beyonder would highly covet. It was nearly common knowledge that it was something they all wanted thanks to stories told in the dark. Madeline could trade her virginity for an eye… The thought made her shiver with disgust, both because she would be having sex with a beyonder, and she would be having sex with that still attached down there. Apparently that was one of the later things to change with her potions and since she had only been on them for two weeks, that definitely hadn’t changed.

Once back in the garden, Madeline went searching for the ritual involving a fox. It would hopefully be good practice for the bigger ritual she would eventually do. She should have been doing more rituals to practice, but most of them were more advanced than what she felt ready for. Still she needed to get some practice and experience for the solstice. Eventually she flipped to the right page in Eda’s tome and found the ritual she was looking for. A ritual for giving one the hearing of a fox. That in and of itself could be useful in the Maze, too. There were also two sections to this page: one that was a version of the ritual with temporary results and another that was permanent. The only personal note left by Eda was a small thing by the permanent ritual that read ‘not fashionable’. Not really sure what that meant, Madeline read through both as she thought about which to do. The permanent one was more complicated and she should practice something more complicated, and having permanent better hearing didn’t sound like a bad idea at all. Having both better hearing and a beyonder’s eyes would make her a master of navigating the Maze undetected.

Madeline spent around an hour gathering all the stuff she would need before bringing it all over to the stone by the pond. Setting up wasn’t as difficult as she thought it might be but she still took her time making sure everything was set up correctly. A circle of plant stems, twigs, crushed flowers and vines laid around the fox in the center in intricate patterns. The fox itself was laid down to look like it was sleeping instead of dead, which for some reason didn’t make Madeline feel very good about all this. Still, she was here now and ready to start the ritual. Reading over the tome one last time, she made sure she had memorized the chant she needed. There was actually no magic in the words she had to use but the words were there to help guide her magic instead. Madeline wondered if that was the same for the mages.

A little nervous, Madeline knelt down at the edge of the circle and closed her eyes. With focus, she reached out with her magic to touch each of the items before her, then she began her chant. It was quiet since there was no need to be loud, and it wasn’t long either. It was an interesting feeling as the words guided her magic without input from her focused attention to do so. Even with her eyes closed, she could tell the circle before her was glowing in a way that almost looked like it was dancing behind her closed eyes. Then the chant finished and she opened her eyes. The light before her started to fade and she was worried that she had done something wrong.

Then excruciating pain wracked her head.

Screaming out from pain so intense that her vision turned white, Madeline clutched the sides of her head. The pain didn’t stop, or ease up, in fact it got so much worse. So bad in fact that Madeline’s mind and body shut down, causing her to fall to the ground.

~~~

Madeline groaned awake slowly. It was colder now, much colder than it had been when she started the ritual, and when she started to open her eyes she found it also to be darker. Aside from the darker skies and colder temperature, the first thing Madeline truly noticed as she laid on the stone was the smell of her Garden. The scent of flowers bombarded her in a way that was both far too much but strangely distinguishable. Then the songs of birds overhead were louder, as if the birds were but a few feet away from her.

With her head still throbbing ever so slightly, Madeline pushed herself up. In doing so something on her head shifted unnaturally. Then it flicked. Still confused and groggy from everything, she reached up to feel what was on her head. What she felt was soft and fluffy, and whatever it was tried to flick away, but doing so hurt. Not her hand, but the thing on top of her head hurt because she was holding onto it. Her eyes went wide as she froze in place. Letting go of what was on her head, she felt that it was large, pointed and moving.

Suddenly she was scrambling towards the edge of the stone to look into the pond. With a scared expression on her face, Madeline looked at her reflection and found that it was mostly the same except the large black animal ears that sat on the top of her head. Or would calling them fox ears be the most accurate? Though unlike the fox with its orange fur, these ears were the same black as her hair with a lighter gray color on the inside. With shaky hands, she once again reached up and grabbed both ears. Each tried to flick away and she of course felt it. Then she pulled and felt them stretch painfully. They were attached to her head. Letting go, which caused her new ears to flick again not being used to stimulation, she ran her hands down the side of her head to where her normal ears were. She was a little surprised to find that the fox ears went down further than she expected, and extremely surprised to find that she no longer had human ears. Where they once were was just flat skin.

“What the hell…”

The sound of a bird fluttering away on the other side of the garden caused her ears to move to face the direction. The feeling was so strange but also natural. Then when the bird was gone, the ears turned back to face forward. They were so large… There was no way she could ever hide these. Something else caught her eyes that changed about her. The bottom side and edges of her nose were now black just like a foxes. Gently touching it, she found the black part to be cold and wet, but she could also smell all the plants she had touched today on her fingers. What the hell had she done to herself?

[If you can't tell, I really love foxes. I don't feel ashamed about giving characters I love fox ears. I would love to have fox ears.]