Free The Lost Prince by Edward Lazellari Page B

decided to call the event from the previous night, since neither could agree on what it actually was. Michelle thought it was a stroke. Rosemarie insisted it was an epileptic seizure, because they had just studied how to identify one in her health studies class and it matched the symptoms she had looked up on WebMD. The janitor insisted it was bad pork. None of them would ever guess the right of it—not in a million years.
    “What are you doing, Daddy?” asked Allyn’s daughter.
    Allyn surveyed his work, a group of stones about two feet high, standing on end, arranged in concentric circles with an outer diameter of about fifteen feet. Outside the circle was a dirt bank with a concentric outer trough next to it. A heel stone stood at the end of a makeshift avenue that bridged the trough and bank a few feet away from the circle facing east. At the east edge of the trough and bank on the avenue was a slaughter stone. On the north and south ends of the dirt circle were barrows with station stones within. Within the ring he had constructed a circle of blue stone and within that a small U-shaped group of sandstone trilithons surrounding three sides of the center. At the exact center was an altar stone of high iron content, slightly bigger by comparison to the rest of the setup. Allyn didn’t know how to begin to explain it to his family.
    Theo offered an opinion. “It looks like that place in England,” he said. “Stonehedge.”
    “Henge,” said Allyn, grasping upon the observation. He would never question the value of an athletic scholarship again. “Yes, very good. It is a miniature henge,” Allyn confirmed.
    “Like in Spinal Tap, ” Theo added.
    “Why are you building a henge?” asked Rosemarie.
    “To draw energy from a nearby lay line,” Allyn said matter-of-factly. “It’s the pattern of the stones and their elemental content, you see. The henge will draw the flow.”
    “The flow of what?” asked Michelle. An edge had inserted itself to her speech ever since the previous night, not just because of his episode, but because of the things he had said about gods and other universes. Allyn had explained it with the same conviction he preached the Bible on Sundays.
    “This energy I’m drawing, it is the gods’—it is God’s life energy circulating through creation,” Allyn responded. “The power of my blessings comes from this.”
    Michelle’s severe look warned Allyn he could not put off a long and complicated explanation for much longer. Michelle normally bore the aspect of a schoolmarm—she had good posture; her speech came near formal, but often contained a kind word or vital information; her skirts always fell below her knees, her blouse always buttoned to its apex; and though she was by no means a large woman, she was thick in that healthy way that promoted a good image for young women.
    Nevertheless, Allyn returned to his work. He placed tea light candles on each stone of the sacred circle surrounding the center and a votive candle on the altar stone and lit them. On the diminutive altar sat their wooden salad bowl filled with distilled water and next to that their stainless-steel mixing bowl. In the water floated a long piece of quartz tied to a birch twig by a vine. Using a hunting knife, Allyn chipped pieces of roots, seeds, and plants into the metal bowl.
    “What are those?” asked Rosemarie.
    “Althaea root, angelica root, bloodroot, caraway seeds, and star anise. Remember that herb garden I tried to start a few years back? In frustration, I discarded what was left of it in the woods behind the house, and some of them took root. The star anise is from our cupboard.”
    Allyn used the bottom end of a steel ladle as a makeshift pestle and ground the pieces up in the bowl. He emptied a bottle of lavender oil into the bowl.
    “Is that my lavender oil?” Michelle asked. “Lord, Allyn, what are you doing?”
    He cut his palm with a knife and let the blood drip into the bowl. His family