'THE FORGOTTEN SPELL BOOK"
It was hidden in the dusty attic, wedged between stacks of yellowed paper and brittle, cracked leather covers. The old house had been my grandmother’s, and now it was mine to clean out. I was rummaging through old boxes when I found it—a book, larger than any I’d seen, with a cover faded to a deep, weathered gray. Gold letters, faint but still shimmering, spelled out “The Arcane Arts” in curling script. It was a spellbook, though I hadn’t thought such things could exist outside of fairytales.
The spellbook felt alive in my hands, the pages crackling with a strange energy as I opened it. Each page was inked with symbols and words that I couldn’t fully understand, diagrams of things I’d only seen in stories: potions and curses, spells for protection, charms for love, enchantments to reveal hidden things. Some were in a language that felt ancient, familiar yet foreign, with characters I’d never seen before. Others had notes in the margins, scrawled in handwriting I recognized from letters my grandmother used to send me.
Why had she hidden this book? What had she been practicing, studying? I knew my grandmother as a quiet, gentle woman with a knack for gardening and a talent for storytelling, but nothing in my memory of her hinted at magic. Yet, here was the proof, with her careful handwriting alongside spells for bending light, for creating illusions, for bringing warmth to the coldest night.
Intrigued, I flipped through the pages until one spell caught my eye. It was titled “To Reveal That Which is Hidden.” The spell was simple, involving only a candle, a mirror, and a few words written in a looping script that looked almost like her handwriting. My hands shook with both excitement and doubt. I wasn’t sure if I truly believed in magic, but the idea of trying, of stepping into a part of my grandmother’s world, was too alluring to resist.
That night, as the house settled into silence, I followed the instructions exactly, placing the candle beside the mirror, speaking the words just as they were written. For a moment, nothing happened. But then, in the flickering candlelight, I saw movement—a faint shimmer in the mirror, shapes beginning to form. The image grew clearer until I saw a room that looked like a memory, a shadow of a place I knew well.
It was my grandmother’s garden, glowing with colors I hadn’t seen since she’d passed. There, in the mirror’s glass, I saw her, young and vibrant, humming a tune as she worked among the flowers. She looked up as though she could see me, a knowing smile on her face, her eyes twinkling with a secret she had always kept close.
The vision faded, but the warmth remained, filling the room with her presence, her love, as if she’d left that spellbook behind just for me, a bridge between her world and mine. I closed the book, my heart full of wonder and gratitude.
The spellbook was no longer just a forgotten relic; it was her legacy, her gift, a reminder of magic hidden in the ordinary, waiting to be rediscovered. And now, whenever I open it, I feel her close, a guardian guiding me on a path I’d never expected to walk. In that forgotten spellbook, I found more than spells—I found a piece of my grandmother, a piece of myself, and a glimpse of the magic she’d left behind.