How to Contrive your own Grimoire

How to Contrive your own Grimoire - Emma Hall (American Heritage Academy, Eighth Grade)

The serene light of the radiant sunrise rose over the swampy valley bathing the quaint cottage nestled in its arms in warm light. In the new rays of the day; an unusual witch sat at her cauldron, the scent of scalded potions and equally diminished hope lingering in the air. Try as she might, her potions never functioned as they should have. Her days once filled with hope had fallen into months and despair. Time had torn great chasms in the witch’s life leaving her no room to reminisce on anything, but her forsaken and ill-fated quest of creating mystical concoctions.

“Now, now, Clementine. Let’s try again,” Brotheen her talking ladle encourages, ever the optimist. “The Beastie potion didn't have nearly as big of an explosion that time,” the spoon reasoned.

But Clementine just groaned and buried her face in her hands. Clementine thought herself an awful witch. She had been trying for years to procure curses and potions, but to no avail. Clementine did not even look like a witch with brown eyes and hair with its color straddling between blond and brown. Her home was beautiful and her name equally so, much to her shame. Adding the perfect hex to her glorious heap of humiliation, her henchman was a soup ladle, not a crow or even a broomstick, a soup ladle.

The next day as the young witch was half-heartedly dicing up eel eyeballs as she muttered about the task at hand  and muttering despondently to herself, Brotheen had decided that he had enough.

“It’s official Clemie, I have sent a message for your mother! I cannot allow you to sulk any longer and if there is anyone who can put you in the right spirits it’s her,” declared the floating utensil.

“Princes and frogs, you didn't!” Fuming Clementine stood and stalked up to the spoon. “I told you not to say anything and you promised you wouldn't! She is going to be so disappointed in me,” ranted the young woman, who had begun to anxiously pace the length of the cottage. 

“Oh, come to Clemie,” responded Brotheen, moving The Agnestina Grimoire of witchcraft that Clementine had been reading from, aside. “Just because your potions aren't working when you follow this old thing,” the spoon said, tapping the leather book, “doesn't mean there are no other options.”

“Yes, it does,” she wailed.

“No it doesn't ! Just because you fail at one thing doesn’t mean there isn't another course of action,” proclaimed the spoon.

But the witch ignored the wise counsel and went back to chopping. Not long after a storm approached, filling the sky with dark shapes and casting an ominous shadow across the verdant valley. 

“BOOM!”

The sound of thunder rips through the witch’s senses. This deafening sound would have been so out of place that it would have struck unease into the hearts of even the most hardened of people. The ladle looked out the window with glee, Clementine just rolled her eyes, and dumped her ingredients into the blackened cauldron.

There is a thud on the doorstep. A clack of heeled shoes and the rustling of a heavy cloak and fine broomstick. Then, the door slams open with a bang and an ancient phrase, a terrifying climax indeed.

 The frustrated witch doesn't even look up as she says, “Hello, Mother.” 

Circe, Clementine’s mother stayed for several weeks. Despite the original dread this had caused Clementine, her mother was not disappointed in her. No, she was determined to remedy the issue entirely.

“Mushroom, have you tried using Rebecca Nurse’s Salem Witch Coven Grimoire? It has a much more subtle approach to witchcraft,” and so they tried it. 

Together they tried a lot of solutions. Circe was resolved not to give up until her precious, little toadstool could pull off any spell she wished. They tried meditations, self-help books, and so many different grimoires. Clementine didn't even realize so many existed. There was The European Book of Maleficium, The Sacred Witch of Endor’s Book, The Kashaph Grimoire, Queen Elizabeth I’s Grimoire, and countless more. 

But, alas none of these worked.

“Clemie, darkling,” entreated her mother, “I know it’s hard, but there are still lots of other options,” she told Clementine after the last hex they tried from The European Book of Maleficium had turned the chair she had been bewitching into bubbling magenta slime.

“But mother, what do I do?” exclaimed Clementine.

“How about you create your own instructions? Your own grimoire,” suggested Circe.  “You know  all of the people who wrote those grimoires had to make their own way of doing witchcraft.”

“What!? Don’t tell me you don’t think I’m a failure, too!”

“Oh, stop whining! Those people were failures too, they had to do things differently! Just because you don't follow someone else’s footsteps to success doesn't mean you can’t find your own way,” then waving her hand to clean up the slime on the floor she continued, “Try it, okay?”

Clementine nodded. The next day her mother left. And Clementine had made up her mind to try what her mother suggested and purchased a maroon leather book. She failed spectacularly at first when she tried to create a Beastie potion. But then she tried again, and again and each time she improved. She and Brotheen were thrilled as they began to see their hard work pay off.

Clementine wrote down her ingredients and tips, her tidy scrawl filling the pages as she contrived her own grimoire and own path to success and contentment. 

After all, you cannot find instructions to achieve success. No, you have to write your grimoire. You have to find your own way to success.