Read The Night of the Solstice for Free Online Page B

to be the largest book they had ever seen, with pages made of parchment illuminated with tracery, and it was open to a page thickly covered with elegant, intricate writing. The problem was they couldn’t read the writing.
    â€œLatin?” said Alys doubtfully, once they had carried the book between them to the kitchen table where there was light. The script was fine and beautiful but so crowded together it was impossible to distinguish individual words.
    â€œWhy Latin?” said Charles. “If you want old, there’s plenty of languages older than that. It could be, uh, Greek, or Babylonian, or Egyptian hieroglyphs.”
    Claudia was dismayed. “You mean we can’t do the spell?”
    They all stared at the book unhappily.
    â€œI hate to say this,” said Charles, “but those letters don’t even look like our alphabet to me.”
    â€œI know,” said Alys. “Well, maybe it
is
Greek. Or Russian. Russian’s in another alphabet, Cyrillic or something, isn’t it, Janie? Janie?”
    Janie had been gazing at the writing as intently as the others, but now she gave a little start and blinked. “It’s not Cyrillic,” she murmured and abruptly got up and went to stand by the window.
    Alys gave her an exasperated glare and returned to the page. The words didn’t look Greek to her; they looked even stranger, more alien and unreadable. Yet they also had an air of mocking familiarity, and she felt she would be able to read them if she only looked at them the right way.
    â€œWhat we need,” said Charles lugubriously, “is a what-do-you-call-it, a person who studies languages.”
    â€œUm.” Alys’s eyes hurt from staring. When she absently raised her head to blink at him, something caught her attention. “What on earth did you do to your T-shirt?”
    â€œTurned it inside out. You said …”
    â€œI know. But I can still read the slogan.”
    Charles tucked his chin under to look. “You can?”
    â€œYes.” The black letters were plainly visible through the thin white cotton. “It’s just backward—” Alys broke off, her eyes widening. “Backward!” she exclaimed, snapping her head down to look at the page. “Backward!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s English! The spell! It’s English
backward
!”
    â€œNot backward,” said Janie quietly, turning. “It’s reversed. A mirror image.”
    Alys stared at her in disbelief. When she spoke, her voice matched Janie’s quiet tone. “So you knew that, Janie.
Why
didn’t you tell us?”
    â€œBecause,” said Janie, holding her gaze, “I have some very serious reservations about this whole business.”
    Charles and Claudia were bent over the grimoire, Charles trying to spell out the turned-around letters which ran from right to left. “‘For … the … uh … T-r-a-v … For the Travels …’”
    â€œâ€˜For the Traversal of the Mirrors,’” said Janie, still engaged in a stare-down with Alys.
    â€œHey, that’s right! This is the one!” Charles began spelling out the next line, but Alys interrupted him. “We need a mirror, so we can look at the reflection of this writing in it. Claude, try to find a small one; I’ll get a pencil.”
    Halfway through copying the spell Alys stopped and stared, checking her writing several times against the mirror reflection. The grim look did not leave her face even when she finished the copying and put down the pencil.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” said Charles.
    â€œYou’ll see. Read it.”
    Charles took the sheet of paper covered with Alys’s own neat round handwriting, and read:
    â€œFor the Traversal of the Mirrors. Be drest in pure virgyn garments fromme head to heel, and girt with a red girdel of pleached corde, and shodde in blue. Take each ingredient belowe, and put it