The Frost Chronicles : The Secret world of the Marid part 1
24 November 2019
The bills had been piling up again and as her bank account dwindled down she thought back to the Marid’s proposal of the energy exchange. She had not had qualms using the money from the sale earlier because of the urgency of the situation but she did not want to have to resort to what she herself would call money from a criminal activity. She realised she would have to summon him again as she would soon be needing more money. She started drawing the circles again and noticed that she no longer felt the need to draw the protective circle as she had omitted it. She no longer needed for sure the circle with the old blood as she had the Marid’s secret name now but out of her love for patterns she had still drawn the neat inner circle. She lit the candles, sat in the midst of the circles and summoned him by his secret name.
The Marid appeared in front of her, hovering high above her gaze and she had to crane her neck to see the cloudy ends of his frame. He seemed to already know that she was ready to provide life force energy in exchange for the diamonds. He had not been completely honest with her as he did not really need her life force energy but could use the energy from the sun to create what she asked for. He wanted, however, to own more life energy as this would allow him to remain in this world on his own and without having to use his own energy. The Marid usually lived in the the world in between worlds, neither fully within the material world nor fully within the spirit world and it took them a great deal of energy to be able to manifest into our world if they were not summoned. They were like shadows of beings and like slightly incarnate spirits showing alternately some traits of the former or the latter.
The Marid craved the possibility of spending more time in our world but they did not want to renounce their powers to do so. Although they seemed to most humans – who knew of them mainly through local folklore, as invincible and capable of extraordinary feats, they were bound in their world by certain rules which made it impossible for them to endlessly use their powers and manifest items. It was known within the Marid world that the more time they spent in our world without being summoned, the less powers they had and they could even go down to the ranks of ordinary jinns if they were not careful with how they used their energy. When they were summoned however, it was through the combination of either the old blood and the new blood or the combination of their secret name and the new blood together with the incantations that they were drawn into our world effortlessly. Besides, what most people did not realise was that when they summoned a Marid and made a wish, that wish already had a certain level of energy that the Marid would feed on to manifest partially the item of the wish. The remaining portion of energy was used by the Marid as a back up energy source that they called upon when wishing to visit our world without being summoned.
She looked at the Marid and asked him if he could perform his magic and turn her energy into the diamonds that she needed. He wanted to know how many months or years she was willing to give up and she said that she would be happy to start with a year or two if that would give the same amount of diamonds she had got from him last and he confirmed it would. He asked her to move closer to him as he slowly floated down towards her and she walked slowly, not sure whether this would be a painful experience. She felt the Marid float around her and could feel a tightening in her chest and brain simultaneously while she also experienced a sense of something slowly beginning to be sucked out of her. Just as the strange vacuum-like feeling had started, she suddenly felt a push that drew her apart from the Marid and he seemed to almost be torn away from her by some extraordinary force. She looked up dazed by the force of the push that had separated her from the Marid and saw another Marid standing right beside the one she had summoned earlier.
The second Marid was somehow much taller and seemed to be more powerful than the first one who was cowering in front of him. They seemed to be conversing but she could not fully understand what they were saying although the words seemed very familiar to her ears. It was clear that the first Marid seemed to be apologising to the second who seemed to be quite furious. She understood finally that it was because of what had been happening earlier and wondered what concern the second Marid would have if she were to give away a couple of years of her life. Was this Marid a sort of watchdog that did not allow Marids to take energy from humans or was this just generally not allowed and this was the Marid’s parent scolding him for having done something forbidden ? She could not figure out the reason for his anger and just kept staring at them while they argued. She could see that the sort of haze they were made of glowered and changed colours as and when the argument seemed to get heated. In the end, the first Marid seemed to bow down and then disappeared. The second Marid turned towards her now and lifted her up to where his face floated. « Hello daughter » he said in a booming and suddenly familiar voice…
Divenire – Ludovico Einaudi
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