Prologue:
Books of Shadow
Books are odd things.
Often lauded as the greatest expression of human achievement, their importance is also derided by the ignorant who believe no stain upon civilization can be forgotten so long as it is recorded in the pages of a book. A book is a different thing to different people. For some, it expands the mind to boundaries beyond comprehension, or seal it off irrevocably through content and dogma. Throughout the ages, the power of the written word has become almost mythical and for its value to history, it can be no other way. When ink sinks into parchment, preserved for the ages, civlisation is gifted with immortality.
There are also books held sacred and hidden in dark places where those who do not know the proper forms, are forbidden to consult the secrets kept in the yellowed pages. Through time and mystery, these are kept secreted away from men by its authors, for reasons inexplicable to all but themselves. Such books contain secrets best forgotten by all and yet from time to time, they surface long enough to fall into the hands of those who have no idea what it is they have stumbled upon.
Like Books of Shadow.
Sometimes known as Grimoires, the secrets contained within speak of things incredible and yet terrifying. They are not merely recordings of past times but are instead gateways to the worlds hidden within the mists, known only to the select few who are able to cross its threshold. They exist as windows to forbidden knowledge, best forgotten by those who are unable to appreciate reality is soft and translucent, not at all the hard, immovable things everyone believes it to be. Reality can bend as easily as light might do so on a sheet of glass. It takes skill to understand what is contained within a Grimoire. Certainly, its authors understood that and riddled their writings with cryptic and fanciful words, designed to addle the minds of the uninformed and yet accessible to those who knew the craft.
The Grimoire that travelled from the old continent to the New World certainly had as auspicious a pedigree as any written throughout the ages. Its author was a genuine practitioner of the craft, a man who was a mage in every sense of the word. Written in the time before Christianity paralyzed the world and made anything it did not understand a sin, the Grimoire held the knowledge of the craft from its more basic spells to grandiose enchantments that could see the heavens shake upon conjuring. It fell into the hands of many owners, some good, some bad, some who sought to learn and some who sought to abuse. The Grimoire itself held no malevolence or enlightenment, it simply was what it was.
For most of its existence in the new world, it was considered little more than a family heirloom, an oddity to be kept in a box in someone's attic, never considered further beyond the fact that it was there. It sat within its confines, a benign power awaiting release by those who had no idea of what its pages contained, what those words written in old script was meant to signify. It was not to say it never reached the hands of those who knew exactly what it was and exploited the forbidden writings trapped within its pages. During those occasions, there were usually terrible consequences for those who sought to dabble in the arcane especially when non-believers, usually puritanical Christians, learned of these attempts. Death and destruction usually followed, leaving a stain of violence that left neither side unscathed. Eventually, the Grimoire fell into the hands of a pastor who knew what it was but could never bring himself to destroy it.
The book knew how to protect itself.
Being a man of the cloth who felt it a mortal sin to even possess such a thing, he could never understand why the resolve to rid himself of it never came and so it remained locked in a trunk, forgotten. It remained in the pastor's keeping who never told anyone of its existence and the trunk continued to gather dust over the years, keeping its greatest secret locked inside its wooden confines. It remained anonymous as long as the house was occupied by the pastor's kin, unseen and lost as the generations continued to thrive with the years until finally one day, a widow wishing to make a new start in a new place, chose to sell up and move away.
The woman, who was in herself as unique a specimen as the Grimoire she unknowingly had in her possession, surveyed the attic where the trunk was hidden for so long and at last noticed this relic from her family's history. With a girl child beside her, she managed to open the rusted lock keeping the box sealed and released air that had been locked away for more than a century.
The woman, scholar that she was, saw it as a book of spells from a time when people were foolish enough to believe in such superstition. She examined it with mild interest, her fascination lasting no longer than the realization it had been in her family's possession for a long time and she would not be the one to discard it. It was an oddity to her at best and she tucked it away with the rest of the possessions to make the exodus with her into a new life.
However, the girl child found the book to be more than just a bit of curiosity. As her small fingers scanned the pages before her, she found her mind expanding to the idea of nothing being set in stone as she believed. Her mother had always said the world was an arena of unlimited possibilities and until she read the first lines in the Grimoire, had no idea how true that could be.
She scoured its pages with youthful eagerness, unaware what she was learning had power to change her irrevocably, caring only that a new world had opened up for her and it was a world through which only she had passage. Her mother saw no reason to discourage her, but she did make an attempt to explain what was in those old pages of faded ink was not real and merely a collection of old wives tales. Never one to impede her child's desire to learn anything, she allowed the girl freedom to explore this interest. However she was mindful of how the more Christian members of the community might react to this, and offered the child a hint of warning regarding to whom she should exposed this new hobby. Besides, she had greater things to concern herself with at the present time than her daughter's extra curricular interests.
With a husband not long in the ground and the town they resided offering nothing but sad memories of a life now gone forever, she made the decision to leave. Finding a position in her line of work was never difficult but finding a place was. She was not a conventional woman in any sense of the word. She loved life and she loved living it to its fullest. Her husband understood that and until the fever took him away forever, she never had any reason to evaluate how she lived. He accommodated her eccentricities just as she now tolerated her young daughter's fascination with the strange book she had found. However, while he always played the stabilizing influence in their family, she found it disconcerting the role now fell to her and the decision to leave was based much on that reason.
It was no easy thing leaving behind all she knew but then nothing ever was. As the winter arrived, it was a symbolic ending not only to the year that had been but also to the life lived in a town quickly sliding into the cobwebs of yesteryear. As everything treasured was loaded into their wagon to make the journey with them, she and her daughter left their entire world behind and embarked on a journey into the unknown.
Almost as unknown as what was contained in the Grimoire that went with them.