Just imagine...

You're four, and the coffee table is broken, and the glass top is in pieces all over the floor, and you don't know why you can't move your leg except that it hurts, a lot, and the voices are so loud that they roll over your head like thunder. Then the red and blue lights come, and the
world becomes white and antiseptic.

You're six and quiet, a little girl who never smiles, and the children's favorite playground song is:

You live with an aunt and an uncle who never wanted children, and on weekends, once in a long while, you see your mother at the prison.

You're twelve, shy, awkward, always conscious of the leg that never healed right, dragging it with you wherever you go. No one sings songs any more but today you are home washing your clothes, trying to rinse dirt and spit out of them before your aunt and uncle see them and sigh,
and look sad, and ask you why you can never get on with the other children. In the class photo you are the ghost in the middle row, a round-faced, wistful absence of childhood.

You're fifteen and your best friend Melvin has been gunned down in a convenience store. He's been taken to the hospital and then to the asylum, locked away for the crime of insisting that he is special. You break down in the lunch room, sitting in the little corner where you used to hide with him and eat your food in peace. Soon you are surrounded by a jeering crowd, vicious faces howling "Cry, Janey, cry!" and "Janey misses her little freak friend! Melvin was a freeeeeaaaaakkk!"

You're seventeen and you are in your room. You are always there, hiding from relatives who wait patiently for you to be old enough to send away. You read constantly, fantasy, magic, occult and alchemy, anything that takes you away from where you are. On the night of your
senior prom you read late into the night, trying not to think of Melvin, whose letters from the institution are less coherent every month. You barely notice the smashes as howling teenagers lean out from a passing car and hurl beer bottles at your house.

You're eighteen. You've started college. You've left all of that behind you. No one knows that you are Crazy Jane, Doggy Jane, Ugly Jane. You have a job in the library, keys so that you can stay there as long as you want, and a professor who thinks that your understanding of
alchemical codes makes you fascinating and gifted. It's too much, too good, and you don't know what to do when your roommates ask you to rush Tri-Delta with them. You're confused; this isn't you but you take the plunge, say good bye to Ugly Jane, and rush Tri-Delta. You
swallow the strangeness, the posturing, the vaguely phony smiles, because you're not Ugly Jane any more. You're transformed. You are the Philosopher's Stone, the alchemical rose, the phoenix rising from the ashes of Ugly Jane.

On the last night of your life you go to the Tri-Delta End-of-the-Summer Dog Daze Dance. You can't believe you're doing this; you're terrified about dancing with your bad leg but your roommates assure you that no one will notice as they help you into the first party dress you've ever bought. It's not your style but they picked it with you, newest fashion, just for you, special night. At the dance you hide near the wall, but then something amazing happens. God reaches down and someone asks you to dance, someone handsome and strong and smiling, someone just like them who takes you and glides with you out onto the dance floor, lights and music all around, and your heart leaps up as he leans closer and says...

"Woof."

And then it's everywhere, woofing and barking and howling, fingers pointing, screams of laughter, and shouts of "All hail Queen Dog!" He holds onto your hand, keeping you there in the middle of the floor, forcing you to stay as people throw flowers and handfuls of dog food,
baying and barking and laughing until you tear free at last and stagger away from the jeering faces. Your roommates are holding on to each other, laughing so hard that they can barely stand, being congratulated on finding the Dance Dog for the sorority as you push through the blur of tears and run for the library. Down in the stacks, safe, surrounded by silence and the smell of books, you sleep until morning and go to work. Every Tri-Delt who checks out a book does it with a smirk and a "woof woof," all day, every day, in your classes, at your job, in your room, them, their friends, their dates, their classmates, until your life is one long scream of agony and humiliation.

And then it stops. Down in the stacks, under the library, Ugly Jane has died forever. Ugly Jane has gone away and someone new turns the pages, goes to classes, stamps the books of giggling Tri-Delts and smiles blandly as they woof under their breath. Someone glides serenely through the day, cleans the wet dog food out of her shoes, empties the Milk-Bones out of her bookbag, washes off the whiskers drawn on her face as she sleeps. Deliverance has come in the evening news: Melvin has done what Ugly Jane couldn't. Melvin has shown New Jane the Way. Melvin has freed himself, and so will she. New Jane hammers out the links of a shining chain. She plunges into an ocean of arcana, pumps the knowledge of her mentor and the lore of ages to bring to flower the true and alchemical rose. The sages of old spoke in elaborate riddles; the blue eagle of the alchemist was mercury, the mephitic hydra was sulfur, and the Philosopher's Stone was the key to transmuting the world, not making coin of dross. If this was a code, what else might be? What else but magic itself.

The Heart of a Dragon: mercury and iron, anthracite, diamond and sulfur, equal volumes placed at the points of the pentacle etched in black marble, all more pure and refined than medieval sages could ever have dreamed.

The Three Tears of the Virgin Mary: colloidal silver, colloidal gold, colloidal platinum, tiny particles in solution, laid down the lines of the five-pointed star, dripped slowly into the etchings of the runes and wards.

The Last Rays of the Setting Sun: a burnished sphere of zinc set into the hollow at the center of the pentacle, five straight wires of pure copper leading to the points of the inner pentagram.

The Smallest Coin from Charon's Purse: the tiniest shred imaginable, a sliver of foil, stolen this night from the Governmental Research and Applied Sciences Building: weapons grade plutonium.

As elements fall into place, age-old secrets forsake their modesty and come naked into the light, a thought surfaces in the mind of the person who is no longer Ugly Jane: An amplifier. I am building an amplifier. Conductors. Resistors. Strange but familiar. Zinc... a battery. All it needs now is a weak acid.

The Blood of a Virgin.

Pain. Swift but real, sharp and real in a way that musty books and ancient knowledge never were. Blood spatters the pentacle, dribbles over the sphere of zinc wrapped in its shred of Charon's Coin. She speaks the Word of Summoning -- Daxrathas. Light bursts out, lines
are etched in fire, wards spring up through the air in a burning white cage, and eyes look forth -- powerful, unearthly eyes.

THOU HAST SPOKEN.

A voice of thunder; the sound shakes the universe. Ugly Jane falls screaming into the depths of oblivion; New Jane stands her ground, smiles, holds forth the Contract and looks into the Demon's eyes.

IT SHALL BE DONE.

Power. Unbelievable power. The force of it slamming through New Jane's body lifts her from the ground, stands her hair out in points, crackles from her fingertips in bolts of pure energy. Jane comes Alive at last; the alchemical rose bursts into bloom.

The aftermath leaves her panting -- panting but delighted, feeling a pure mad joy rise in her heart like nothing she has ever known. She laughs, screams aloud in pleasure and power, peals forth a shriek of triumph that splits every window on the campus and echoes through the night like the fall of angels. She arches her back, grabs at the sky, feels the Power flow into her from every quarter and hurls it sizzling into the stacks, pages fountaining around her, a maelstrom frenzy of joy and release. When she is spent she stops, panting laughter, eyes wide and gleaming, grinning at the Demon.

"It is good."

THE PAYMENT.

She pauses, a chill running through her, mind frantically reaching back to the ceremony, the rules, the preparations.

THE BLOOD OF A VIRGIN.

Mutely, she looks down at the pentacle, the drops of blood congealing on the singed and shattered marble. A low chuckle, soft but so deep that it slides through her bones, rises from behind the wards as a hand reaches through, brushes aside the glowing bars that dissolve like smoke in autumn.

AH NO, MORTAL. ALL OF THE BLOOD OF A VIRGIN.

To all things there is a price.
 

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