nightdog_barks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nightdog_barks) wrote2017-01-31 06:52 pm
nightdog_barks) wrote2017-01-31 06:52 pm
Housefic: Distaff Magic
Okay, so I know we said there's an Epilogue coming for Solstice. This ... isn't it. But it is a prequel. :D
Title: Distaff Magic
Authors:blackmare and nightdog_barks.
Characters: Wilson, House, an OFC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: The relic's as old as the Pyramids: Instructions not included. It and its long-lost ritual may be better left in the past. But pain, even someone else's, can push a man to take his chances.
Author Notes: This is set in the Diviners 'Verse, the same ficverse as Take the Long Way Home and Solstice, in which House is a Doctor of Divination and things are just a little bit different. This story falls between those two -- it is a sequel to Long Way Home and a prequel to Solstice. Cut text is from the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), King James Version.
Intrepid Readers:pwcorgigirl
Take the Long Way Home
Distaff Magic
It's after the Zig Zag Club, after their explorations and experimentations, after auguries and fortunes, after Wilson has moved in, a decision mutually agreed upon without much fanfare simply because it was right --
It's after all this that Wilson decides he has to do something, because House is in pain.
He's not a Doctor of Divination, so it's not like he can throw a sack of beans on the floor and determine a plan of action by rearranging them into ley lines and buffalo horns. Even House, the great genius of his field, can't do it. None can divine for himself, the old proverb goes, and House has proved it true.
Nothing he's tried for his leg has worked well enough, or long enough.
And so it is that Wilson has found himself haunting the second-hand shops, the incense-suffused alchemical emporiums, and the tiny, forgotten bookstores of the old Knickerbocker District in Manhattan. He'll know what he needs -- what House needs -- when he finds it. Which he hopes is soon, because it's not his fault about House's pain, but it is definitely now his problem.
There's so much he hadn't understood until he moved in, so many clues in House's place, in the things he doesn't say, in the way he moves through the rooms. House hides things; he uses dangerous drugs and even more dangerous spells on himself, desperate tactics for a desperate man.
Make that two desperate men, one of whom has resorted to scouring the most ancient and neglected part of the hospital Library, hoping to stumble on a miracle while House is preoccupied with a patient.
He still has nothing, other than red eyes and aching shoulders. On the table before him, a dozen antique volumes lie open, occasionally rustling a page or two in bookish irritation. They can't tell him what he wants to know, and they'd like to go back to the shelf.
"You'll have to wait a few minutes," Wilson says, by way of apology. "I need ... I need to take a walk."
It's not a long walk. He's heading for the Southern Conservatory to see what might be in bloom, but on the way the patterns of the floor tiles seem to shift, creating a path he walks without thinking.
It leads to the door of the shadowy Artifact Reserve.
As if by itself, the cool silver knob turns beneath his fingers.
Four dusty rooms, shadows and light beneath a series of skypanes.
He comes out of his trance with his hands resting atop a dust-filmed, glass-topped case, with a few simple earthenware dishes inside. A drinking cup with an incised pattern; an unadorned shallow plate; a brown bowl painted with what looks at first like abstract decoration, but then resolves itself into words in an ancient, familiar script.
"Hebrew," Wilson says, softly breathing out the word. He unhooks the brass latches on the case, and carefully, carefully lifts the bowl out. Its glazed sides warm at his touch, as if it has stored the heat of a long-ago fire.
In the dimness, he can make out only a few words, and yet a recipe forms inside his mind. Simple, so simple that he thinks there's no way it can work.
It has to.
It's Meryl Streep, Wilson thinks, the moment he sees her, and why shouldn't he think that? The silver hair, the rimless glasses perched on her nose, the world-weary glance of knowledge, plus the fact that he saw the real Meryl Streep just last week at the Shubert, in a revival of Up the Down Staircase. The fact that this Meryl Streep is actually a rabbi only seems to add to the unshakable feeling that he's met her before.
"This is ... interesting," Rabbi Loew says. She leans forward over her desk, seems about to pick up the brown bowl Wilson has set before her, but pulls her hand back. Sharp blue eyes appraise him from under silver brows. "How did you find me? You're not a member of my congregation."
"Um," Wilson says, but that's not the right answer.
Rabbi Loew waits. Her office is quiet, and aside from the lamp on her desk, dark.
"I ... asked around," Wilson says. "I spoke to the Curator at the Princeton Artifact Reserve."
And half a truth is better than none, isn't it? The rabbi doesn't need to know that he'd also opened the Blue Pages and used a pencil as a makeshift dowsing pointer over the list of names.
However the rabbi takes it, she seems satisfied.
"This is folk magic, my boy," Rabbi Loew says. She shakes her head. "Older than shit, a figure of speech if you'll pardon the Aramaic. The scribes back then? They would not write this kind of incantation in their books. So ... no real instructions for the ritual have survived."
She taps the rim of the brown bowl with one impeccably-manicured fingernail.
"A bowl like this? Only from the vendors of charms and baubles in the low alleys. The books, the scrolls, they were for the priests, the kohanim, not the farmer's wife."
The Rabbi pauses, traces a thumb across the weathered lettering.
"These were for the farrier's daughter. The shepherd's concubine. The cart horse that comes up lame, the lamb struggling to breathe. This is women's magic, the other side of the bed when you get up in the morning and your knees ache." Meryl Streep's eyes are alight with gentle humor. "This is for you?"
"Not ... exactly. It's meant to soothe physical pain, right?"
The rabbi nods. "The old stories say that Saint Spinoza himself availed himself of a spell much like this when he was writing his Ethics."
" ... Saint Spinoza?"
"By Ekumen rites, not Avignon," the rabbi says firmly.
Wilson's head is spinning. "I just need to know," he pleads. "What happens if I don't get it right?"
"Who knows?"
"Who ... what?"
"My boy." Rabbi Loew takes off her glasses and blinks rapidly as if to clear her sight. "My boy. This is old magic. So old, nobody knows. Maybe nothing happens. Maybe ... something." She leans forward. "My grandmother used something like this. Bowl and all; yours is much older, though. She called it a milk stitch. It kept Grandfather from ripping at the seams, she said, but I was a young girl and she had the old ideas. I've never tried it." She puts her glasses back on.
"Good luck."
Well. That's it, then. He's on his own.
Wilson's thanked her and is halfway out the door when --
"Wait," she says.
He doesn't bother trying to talk House into it, because he knows what House will say, and it will be some colorful variant of no way in hell.
Instead, he comes home from the grocery with the fresh, cream-topped milk and the small jar of clover honey tucked inside the same canvas rucksack he always uses. It's not until he kindles a small fire in the household brazier, instead of turning on the stove, that House realizes he's up to something other than dinner.
"Wilson," he demands. "What are you-- "
"Shut up," Wilson says. House doesn't answer, and when Wilson looks again, he sees why. House is preoccupied with (what else) his leg and a bottle of potent cider.
"You'll want to stop drinking that," Wilson says. "I'll have this ready in a few minutes."
He can sense House watching him as he pours in milk with his right hand, and honey with his left, slowly filling the small bowl while reciting the words painted inside it -- one upward-spiraling line at a time, spoken as the milk rises up to cover the inscription. They are, indeed, the sort of words you'd expect a woman to recite for the man she most loved, and if House understands the ancient language, he gives no sign.
Wait, the Rabbi had said. Stir it while you say it. She'd rummaged through items on her shelf until she found a small wooden box, which held a smaller wooden spoon, ornately carved. I don't know if it matters, she said, but this is the one my grandmother used. Don't break it.
When the delicate spoon-handle grows warm, and then hot between his fingers, his instincts tell him it's time. Dazed, much as he was when he found the bowl in that dusty room, he walks to the sofa and takes a seat beside House.
Drink, he says, and he is not speaking English, but House gets the gist. They pass the bowl between them, several sips for House and one for Wilson, repeat three times, and with each minute Wilson is more and more weary, his strength draining along with the honeyed milk. When it's gone, he sets the bowl carefully aside and rests his hand on House's knee.
I need to sleep, he hears himself say, still not in English. It'll be the last thing he remembers for some time.
"Wilson. Wake up."
"Uh."
"You have to go to work."
"... oh god." He can't remember what day this is, and he's pretty sure that thing prodding his ankle is the end of House's cane, but he feels as if he's made of wet mud. "I ...'m ... am I late?"
"Not yet. You have just enough time to get up, get dressed, and tell me what the hell you did to me."
At that, Wilson's eyes open wide. "House. Are ... are you okay?"
"The question, you do-gooding moron, is are you okay."
"Probably." His quick mental inventory of himself doesn't indicate any trouble, other than the damp patch where he's drooled on the sofa cushion. He stretches -- nothing breaks. "Make me some coffee?"
"Already brewed. I'd ask if cast exhaustion was a normal side effect of that spell," House says, walking into the kitchen, walking without his cane. "But you don't know, do you?"
Wilson sits up, moving carefully, waiting for a wave of aches that never comes. He can hear House pouring and stirring a mug, waiting for an answer.
"No," he admits, "I don't. Odd, how a three-thousand-year-old bowl didn't come with a manual. The tiredness ... seems normal, though."
"Lots of things seem normal. Middle aged cancer specialists, for example."
You walking around with barely a limp, Wilson thinks, ignoring the jab.
House sets the hot mug on the table, beside the empty bowl. "You had no idea what this would do to you."
"Still don't." He sips the coffee and realizes House has sweetened it with a spoonful of the honey Wilson bought. "But if it keeps working, I guess we'll find out."
There wasn't a last time, but Wilson's pretty sure there will be a next time. If the symbols stamped on the outer rim of the bowl mean what he thinks they do, they'll have to repeat this at the Equinox.
He'll be ready.
~ fin
Solstice
Title: Distaff Magic
Authors:
blackmare and nightdog_barks. Characters: Wilson, House, an OFC
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: The relic's as old as the Pyramids: Instructions not included. It and its long-lost ritual may be better left in the past. But pain, even someone else's, can push a man to take his chances.
Author Notes: This is set in the Diviners 'Verse, the same ficverse as Take the Long Way Home and Solstice, in which House is a Doctor of Divination and things are just a little bit different. This story falls between those two -- it is a sequel to Long Way Home and a prequel to Solstice. Cut text is from the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), King James Version.
Intrepid Readers:
pwcorgigirl Take the Long Way Home
Distaff Magic
It's after the Zig Zag Club, after their explorations and experimentations, after auguries and fortunes, after Wilson has moved in, a decision mutually agreed upon without much fanfare simply because it was right --
It's after all this that Wilson decides he has to do something, because House is in pain.
He's not a Doctor of Divination, so it's not like he can throw a sack of beans on the floor and determine a plan of action by rearranging them into ley lines and buffalo horns. Even House, the great genius of his field, can't do it. None can divine for himself, the old proverb goes, and House has proved it true.
Nothing he's tried for his leg has worked well enough, or long enough.
And so it is that Wilson has found himself haunting the second-hand shops, the incense-suffused alchemical emporiums, and the tiny, forgotten bookstores of the old Knickerbocker District in Manhattan. He'll know what he needs -- what House needs -- when he finds it. Which he hopes is soon, because it's not his fault about House's pain, but it is definitely now his problem.
There's so much he hadn't understood until he moved in, so many clues in House's place, in the things he doesn't say, in the way he moves through the rooms. House hides things; he uses dangerous drugs and even more dangerous spells on himself, desperate tactics for a desperate man.
Make that two desperate men, one of whom has resorted to scouring the most ancient and neglected part of the hospital Library, hoping to stumble on a miracle while House is preoccupied with a patient.
He still has nothing, other than red eyes and aching shoulders. On the table before him, a dozen antique volumes lie open, occasionally rustling a page or two in bookish irritation. They can't tell him what he wants to know, and they'd like to go back to the shelf.
"You'll have to wait a few minutes," Wilson says, by way of apology. "I need ... I need to take a walk."
It's not a long walk. He's heading for the Southern Conservatory to see what might be in bloom, but on the way the patterns of the floor tiles seem to shift, creating a path he walks without thinking.
It leads to the door of the shadowy Artifact Reserve.
As if by itself, the cool silver knob turns beneath his fingers.
Four dusty rooms, shadows and light beneath a series of skypanes.
He comes out of his trance with his hands resting atop a dust-filmed, glass-topped case, with a few simple earthenware dishes inside. A drinking cup with an incised pattern; an unadorned shallow plate; a brown bowl painted with what looks at first like abstract decoration, but then resolves itself into words in an ancient, familiar script.
"Hebrew," Wilson says, softly breathing out the word. He unhooks the brass latches on the case, and carefully, carefully lifts the bowl out. Its glazed sides warm at his touch, as if it has stored the heat of a long-ago fire.
In the dimness, he can make out only a few words, and yet a recipe forms inside his mind. Simple, so simple that he thinks there's no way it can work.
It has to.
It's Meryl Streep, Wilson thinks, the moment he sees her, and why shouldn't he think that? The silver hair, the rimless glasses perched on her nose, the world-weary glance of knowledge, plus the fact that he saw the real Meryl Streep just last week at the Shubert, in a revival of Up the Down Staircase. The fact that this Meryl Streep is actually a rabbi only seems to add to the unshakable feeling that he's met her before.
"This is ... interesting," Rabbi Loew says. She leans forward over her desk, seems about to pick up the brown bowl Wilson has set before her, but pulls her hand back. Sharp blue eyes appraise him from under silver brows. "How did you find me? You're not a member of my congregation."
"Um," Wilson says, but that's not the right answer.
Rabbi Loew waits. Her office is quiet, and aside from the lamp on her desk, dark.
"I ... asked around," Wilson says. "I spoke to the Curator at the Princeton Artifact Reserve."
And half a truth is better than none, isn't it? The rabbi doesn't need to know that he'd also opened the Blue Pages and used a pencil as a makeshift dowsing pointer over the list of names.
However the rabbi takes it, she seems satisfied.
"This is folk magic, my boy," Rabbi Loew says. She shakes her head. "Older than shit, a figure of speech if you'll pardon the Aramaic. The scribes back then? They would not write this kind of incantation in their books. So ... no real instructions for the ritual have survived."
She taps the rim of the brown bowl with one impeccably-manicured fingernail.
"A bowl like this? Only from the vendors of charms and baubles in the low alleys. The books, the scrolls, they were for the priests, the kohanim, not the farmer's wife."
The Rabbi pauses, traces a thumb across the weathered lettering.
"These were for the farrier's daughter. The shepherd's concubine. The cart horse that comes up lame, the lamb struggling to breathe. This is women's magic, the other side of the bed when you get up in the morning and your knees ache." Meryl Streep's eyes are alight with gentle humor. "This is for you?"
"Not ... exactly. It's meant to soothe physical pain, right?"
The rabbi nods. "The old stories say that Saint Spinoza himself availed himself of a spell much like this when he was writing his Ethics."
" ... Saint Spinoza?"
"By Ekumen rites, not Avignon," the rabbi says firmly.
Wilson's head is spinning. "I just need to know," he pleads. "What happens if I don't get it right?"
"Who knows?"
"Who ... what?"
"My boy." Rabbi Loew takes off her glasses and blinks rapidly as if to clear her sight. "My boy. This is old magic. So old, nobody knows. Maybe nothing happens. Maybe ... something." She leans forward. "My grandmother used something like this. Bowl and all; yours is much older, though. She called it a milk stitch. It kept Grandfather from ripping at the seams, she said, but I was a young girl and she had the old ideas. I've never tried it." She puts her glasses back on.
"Good luck."
Well. That's it, then. He's on his own.
Wilson's thanked her and is halfway out the door when --
"Wait," she says.
He doesn't bother trying to talk House into it, because he knows what House will say, and it will be some colorful variant of no way in hell.
Instead, he comes home from the grocery with the fresh, cream-topped milk and the small jar of clover honey tucked inside the same canvas rucksack he always uses. It's not until he kindles a small fire in the household brazier, instead of turning on the stove, that House realizes he's up to something other than dinner.
"Wilson," he demands. "What are you-- "
"Shut up," Wilson says. House doesn't answer, and when Wilson looks again, he sees why. House is preoccupied with (what else) his leg and a bottle of potent cider.
"You'll want to stop drinking that," Wilson says. "I'll have this ready in a few minutes."
He can sense House watching him as he pours in milk with his right hand, and honey with his left, slowly filling the small bowl while reciting the words painted inside it -- one upward-spiraling line at a time, spoken as the milk rises up to cover the inscription. They are, indeed, the sort of words you'd expect a woman to recite for the man she most loved, and if House understands the ancient language, he gives no sign.
Wait, the Rabbi had said. Stir it while you say it. She'd rummaged through items on her shelf until she found a small wooden box, which held a smaller wooden spoon, ornately carved. I don't know if it matters, she said, but this is the one my grandmother used. Don't break it.
When the delicate spoon-handle grows warm, and then hot between his fingers, his instincts tell him it's time. Dazed, much as he was when he found the bowl in that dusty room, he walks to the sofa and takes a seat beside House.
Drink, he says, and he is not speaking English, but House gets the gist. They pass the bowl between them, several sips for House and one for Wilson, repeat three times, and with each minute Wilson is more and more weary, his strength draining along with the honeyed milk. When it's gone, he sets the bowl carefully aside and rests his hand on House's knee.
I need to sleep, he hears himself say, still not in English. It'll be the last thing he remembers for some time.
"Wilson. Wake up."
"Uh."
"You have to go to work."
"... oh god." He can't remember what day this is, and he's pretty sure that thing prodding his ankle is the end of House's cane, but he feels as if he's made of wet mud. "I ...'m ... am I late?"
"Not yet. You have just enough time to get up, get dressed, and tell me what the hell you did to me."
At that, Wilson's eyes open wide. "House. Are ... are you okay?"
"The question, you do-gooding moron, is are you okay."
"Probably." His quick mental inventory of himself doesn't indicate any trouble, other than the damp patch where he's drooled on the sofa cushion. He stretches -- nothing breaks. "Make me some coffee?"
"Already brewed. I'd ask if cast exhaustion was a normal side effect of that spell," House says, walking into the kitchen, walking without his cane. "But you don't know, do you?"
Wilson sits up, moving carefully, waiting for a wave of aches that never comes. He can hear House pouring and stirring a mug, waiting for an answer.
"No," he admits, "I don't. Odd, how a three-thousand-year-old bowl didn't come with a manual. The tiredness ... seems normal, though."
"Lots of things seem normal. Middle aged cancer specialists, for example."
You walking around with barely a limp, Wilson thinks, ignoring the jab.
House sets the hot mug on the table, beside the empty bowl. "You had no idea what this would do to you."
"Still don't." He sips the coffee and realizes House has sweetened it with a spoonful of the honey Wilson bought. "But if it keeps working, I guess we'll find out."
There wasn't a last time, but Wilson's pretty sure there will be a next time. If the symbols stamped on the outer rim of the bowl mean what he thinks they do, they'll have to repeat this at the Equinox.
He'll be ready.
~ fin
Solstice