The Right Intention

Time seemed to stand still for as long as she willed it, as long as Mara didn’t let any muscle in her body move another inch. Several long minutes had passed as she sat there on her knees, hard gravel imprinting onto her skin through the gaps in her torn tights. The dull soreness shifted to a deep ache she knew would yield bruises, but she still couldn’t bring herself to move, her hands still strained in a claw-like grip though she held nothing in them but the cold night’s damp air. Rain was soon to come. And the stiffening body in front of her would soon be slick and sodden, wreathed by shallow puddles, but not gone. How soon would he start to bloat? She still needed to think, so she hardly breathed, needing more time. Almost lifeless herself, she barely blinked even as stinging tears welled now in her eyes.

When things would unusually backfire, it wouldn’t ever be this bad. Spells could go wrong all the time, of course, but in a way that felt more like a lesson than pure punishment. She used to think this kind of magic was like a smug teacher. Be sure to use the right words, along with the right Intention. Calder had always said it. If you were to wish your crush revealed his feelings to you, sure, he would tell you the next day. But he’d also continue to chatter incessantly for three more days about how the pollen in the air today makes him itch, how much he hates his mother’s coddling, and the word “ointment”. He’d run you away before you even had a chance to get in one word to ask him out. So you’d learn to be more precise in your phrasing, define your motive more clearly until your desire couldn’t possibly be misconstrued. But Mara had learned that magic was like the world. It could be cruel. After a generous season of giving, it won’t hesitate to remind you that it also takes. Get too cocky, and it will strike you down. As it struck her now, by striking him.

There was a plan she’d need to come up with, and fast. It’d have to bar another spell, as her luck was clearly turning, rotting and drying up to shriveled remains like some summer fruit left in a winter cabin. To think everything was once as easy and simple as the first spell she had cast the night before this school year had started, and how that all had led to this, boiled her blood. She was still cocky then, but the world had still listened to her. Magic still bent for her, whichever way she asked. “I need clarity on my future,” she had spoken the words aloud, to no one, in the bedroom of her apartment. She aimed them at the five candles lit before her, whose flames flickered against the presence of her breath. “Point me towards the next step in my fate.” And the magic took its time to work, as it often did, reaching the end of the day before Mara saw it on a wiry-haired girl crossing campus that evening. A heavy backpack was slumped on her curved back, weary from the day, her round glasses winking from light reflected by the streetlamps on the winding walkway. Wired headphones in, the rest of the world far away. Her figure was defined against the bushes and buildings she passed as if there was a filter on her that made her sharp and luminous. She would be part of Mara’s fated journey, that much was certain.

Although Mara didn’t think it’d lead so quickly to the decomposing body before her, his dark eyes open in shock this whole time as if he could see all the way up through the clouds to heaven, where there resided no kind god to come and save him.

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Thalia Geiger is a poet and fiction writer born and raised in Philadelphia. Her work has been published in journals such as Allegory Ridge, Santa Ana River Review, New York Quarterly, Pamplemousse, Toho Publishing’s The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia Anthology, and more. You can catch up with her on her website, thaliageiger.com