It was funny how simple and everyday it seemed, doing what her grandfather had said he wouldn't try because it was too dangerous. Nobody said, "Are we really going through with this?" Nobody kibitzed-not even Michael. They went about it the same way they'd built the pressed-wood stereo cabinet in Tom's bedroom. Michael read the instructions from the journal aloud; the others followed them.
"Two circles, one inside the other. It doesn't say how big they're supposed to be," Michael said. "But leave room for the runes to go in between them."
Jenny sketched the circles freehand on the smooth oak door with a felt pen.
"Okay, now the runes. First, Dagaz. It goes right at the top and it's shaped like this, like an hourglass on its side," he said. Jenny sketched the angular shape at the top of the inner circle. "It says here that Dagaz is like a catalyst. It represents times like twilight and dawn, when things are just changing. It 'operates between light and darkness.'"
Dawn. Jenny thought about the brilliant blue of the Pennsylvania dawn-and about eyes that were just that color. Julian was like Dagaz, she thought. A catalyst, operating between light and darkness. One foot in either world.
"The next one is Thurisaz, the thorn. It goes to the right-no, a little farther down. It's shaped like-look at this. A straight line with a triangle attached to the side. Like a thorn sticking out of a stem."
"There are a lot of fairy tales about thorns," Audrey said grimly. "You get pricked with a thorn or a spindle or a needle and then you die, or go blind, or you sleep forever."
Silently Jenny drew the rune.
"The next one's Gebo. It stands for a lot of things: a gift, sacrifice, death. The yielding up of the spirit. It's shaped like an X, see?"
Sacrifice. Death. A queer shudder went up Jenny's backbone. She stared at the book. It was a straight X, not like the slanted X of the rune Nauthiz, the one that her grandfather had carved on the closet to restrain the Shadow Men.
"See, Jenny?"
She nodded and drew. But the strange feeling didn't go away. A bad feeling-and it was connected with Gebo, somehow. Gebo the rune of sacrifice. Something was going to happen....
Not now. Not right now. In the future.
Michael's voice startled her. "Next is Isa. It's a rune for the power of primal ice. It's just one straight line, up and down."
Jenny tore her mind away from the thought of sacrifice and made herself draw.
"Kenaz, the torch. It's for the power of primal fire, and it's shaped like an angle, see. ..."
"Raidho, for movement, traveling. Like riding a horse. For protection walking between the worlds. It's shaped like an R... ."
"Uruz, the ox ... it's shaped like an upside-down U- "
"I know, Michael." Uruz was the rune on the game box that Julian had sold her. "It's supposed to look like ox horns pointing downward, ready to pierce the veil between the worlds," Jenny said. "Is that the last one?"
"Yeah. Now we carve it."
Carving the runes wasn't as hard as Jenny had expected. The door was good thick wood, but the runes were all straight lines and angles, which was much easier to carve than any rounded shape. Still, there were times when Tom's Swiss Army knife stuck or slipped. Jenny was a little frightened of how sharp it was.
And she was worried about the blood. How was she going to do it? She was scared of razor blades, and a pin was out of the question. If they were going to stain all these runes, they'd need a lot more blood than you could squeeze out of a pinprick.
Don't think about it now. When the time conies, you'll just have to use the knife-and hope you don't cut your finger off.
Just then the problem solved itself. The knife slipped.
"God!"
Jenny felt a flash of something, gone almost too quickly to identify as pain. She dropped the knife, and she could feel her eyes widen as she stared at her hand-wondering in that first second how bad it was.
Not bad. A half-inch gash across the meat of her thumb. The lips of the wound showed white before bright red welled up to obscure them. Blood began to slide down her thumb.
Jenny felt just slightly sick. Seeing inside your skin-even a little way insidewas disconcerting.
"Quick, use it," Michael said. "Don't waste it-that stuff's precious."
The cut was beginning to sting. Jenny looked around for something to use as a pen, then collected the blood on top of one fingernail and began to trace the runes that were already carved. It stained the pale grooves in the wood a clear light red, the color of a teacher's red ballpoint pen.