Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 The Book of Water, by Medea

   In a basement shop, hidden along a side alley in the old downtown area
of the city, sits a bookstore.  The location is terrible for attracting
passers-by, but the owner, Cassie Stevens, doesn't mind.  It keeps the
tourists away, she says when friends ask why she doesn't move it to
somewhere more favorable.  The store's collection is mostly used and rather
eclectic.  There are sections for literature, history, mythology, and
religion, as well as the occult.  The occult books are what attract most of
her customers, who enjoy being able to pick up an interesting novel to read
at the same time.  You never know what you'll find on the shelves at Onyx
Books.

   The selection is impressive, but the tastes of her customers often
disappoint Cassie.  She keeps a variety of new-agey texts in stock--not
because she likes all of them them, but because they sell.  The same goes
for glossy mass-market spell books that any halfway-knowledgeable person
knows are a joke.  People are forever trying to bring her yet another copy
of _1001 Love Spells and Potions_.  There are already three on the shelf,
and it's a popular book, but not one of the spells work, which might
explain why it always shows up in someone's hands on Saturdays, the store's
buying day.

   For people who are willing to dig a little further for the real stuff,
Onyx also provides a very thorough assortment of more reputable books,
including some of the more rare volumes.  The most rare items that the
store buys tend to remain in Cassie's private library, though.  There are
some things she doesn't want going to the wrong person.

   One particular Saturday in fall, she'd turned down not only two copies
of _1001 Love Spells_ before noon, but also _Animal Spirit Summoning for
Dummies_ and a copy of _Lizard Magic_ that was covered in some sort of
sticky residue.  It was getting late into the afternoon, and Cassie didn't
expect to get much more business before closing.  While she didn't mind
walking around at night in this neighborhood, enough of the customers did,
so she tended to close around dusk, even in the winter.  She had left the
counter to reshelve a few items when the door opened and one more seller
walked in, carrying a large cardboard box.

   The customer was a woman in her forties, wearing dark clothes and
looking very tired.  She set the box down onto the counter with a thud. 
Cassie hurried back over to help her.

   "I want to sell these books," the woman said.

   Cassie opened the box up and started to look.  "Hmm, some good mythology
collections...  we don't buy romance series, but I'll take the tatting
patterns.  Let's see, what else is in here?" She began separating the books
into two piles.  "What's this?" she said, unearthing a small, thick book
with a faded cloth cover.  She opened it up.  The book was hand-written
like a journal, but in German, and her quick glance was enough to tell that
this wasn't an ordinary diary.  "Where did you get this?"

   "All of these belonged to my mother," the woman told her.  "She died
last month, and it's been so hard, sorting through her belongings.  I don't
really care how much you'll pay for the books, I just want to be done with
it."

   "I'm sorry about your loss," Cassie said.  "I'll take these," tapping
the stack with the unlabeled book.  "How does $20 sound?"

   "That's fine."

   "Would you like cash or a check?"

   "Cash."

   Cassie wrote down the purchase, and then pulled a bill from the cash
drawer.  "Just out of curiosity, why did you come here to sell those?  It's
a little out of the way."

   "This was my mother's favorite bookstore.  It seemed like the right
place to go."

   The woman quietly put the money into her purse and left.

   Later, after the store had been locked up and Cassie was sitting alone
in her apartment, which was really just a series of rooms off the back of
the store, she pulled the book out again and began to try to figure out
what it was.  Opening to the first page, she read, "Das Buch des Wassers,
Abschrifterin Margot von Kreuzburg.  Okay, that's The Book of Water,
then..." She looked up Abschrifterin in a translation dictionary, pulled
from a nearby shelf.  "Oh, transcriber.  Hmm, this must be Margot's
handwriting." She turned the page.  "Einleitung.  The introduction?"

   Over the next few hours she worked out a rough idea of the contents of
the book.  The first few sections were dedicated to the discussion of
various sorts of Wassergeister (water spirits), followed by a series of
spells to invoke them, and then descriptions of how the book's author,
whoever that had been originally, had made use of them.  There wasn't
anything to identify the author, or explain Margot's involvement in this.
Cassie wondered if Margot might have been the woman's mother.  She made a
note to look up the name online, and see if it was connected to anything
else that might be relevant.

   One of the descriptions towards the end caught her attention.  It
sounded like the author had a rather trippy experience involving something
called Heissfluss.  The text described the feeling of loss of physical
boundaries, some kind of melting, and the tactile experience of interacting
with physical objects.  She wasn't entirely sure if she understood the tone
of the description, but it sounded rather erotic.  Cassie hadn't heard of
anything quite like this.

   Onyx Books stays closed on Sundays, leaving plenty of time for a little
research.  She started with a Google search on "Margot von Kreuzburg".  The
only result was an obituary, dated October 3rd.  It seemed that the guess
about this being the deceased mother was correct.  Then she checked the
occult literature indices for references to the book or the spirits
mentioned in it.  _Das Buch des Wassers_ wasn't listed anywhere, nor was
the English translation of the title.  She had a little more luck with some
of the spirits.  A few of them were mentioned in passing as part of the
myriad assortment of minor naiads.  They all sounded pretty harmless.  No
Heissfluss, though.

   She was reluctant to try a new spell without more information, knowing
far too many stories of people who had gotten killed (or worse) by assuming
that something was harmless when it wasn't.  On the other hand, the spell
was almost certainly only perception magic, since actually changing form
requires considerable power and skill--and her curiosity was eating at her.
She wanted to see what this was like.

   Cassie managed to hold off until after dinner, but finally she gave in
and decided to try it out.  Checking the book for directions, she set a
large bowl on the kitchen floor and filled it with water, then added a few
drops of cinnamon oil.  She sat down in front of it, reciting the
protection spell she always used before doing magic, "Emitte Spiritum tuum,
Domine, et custodi me." Then she read out loud:

   Kommen Sie, Heissfluss, Wassergeist.

   Schenken Sie mir Ihrer Gegenwart

   und bezaubern Sie mich mit Ihrer Begabung,

   von nun bis Mittersnacht.  She set the book down and plunged her hand
into the bowl.  Suddenly everything seemed to dissolve, and she couldn't
see anything.

   It felt a lot like she had turned into a puddle on the floor, which
didn't seem terribly exciting.  Then she noticed a tingling feeling,
somewhere around where her toes should be.  Out of reflex, she tried to
move her foot, and noticed that it changed the feeling.  "Maybe I can ooze
around on the floor a little." She pictured herself trying to move in
different directions, and discovered that doing so made it feel like her
skin was being brushed gently with something soft.  "Ooh.  I like that."

   She tried different things to see how it would feel, like rolling in one
direction or rocking back and forth.  It all produced a similarly pleasant
sensation.  The more she moved, the more the feeling spread beyond the
surface and permeated her.  She was starting to understand the description
in the book.  It was a lot like turning into an amorphous sex organ, if
such a thing could exist.  Her sense of physical self was dissolving,
making her feel less like a discrete entity and more like she was in some
kind of erotic limbo.  She continued to wiggle in different ways, letting
the feeling wash through her.

   Soon she was aroused to the point where she would normally be sighing
and gasping, if the spell hadn't oddly removed the feeling of breathing. 
The sensations felt wonderful, and she pulsed, reaching for that last bit
of stimulation that would push her over the edge, feeling her climax build,
focusing only on getting there--and then it happened like a waterfall,
rushing through her and holding--until finally she relaxed, resting in the
pleasant aftermath.

   Afterwards she must have dozed off, because there was nothing else until
she became aware of being back in her body and sitting on the floor, one
hand pruny from being in the bowl of water all night.  She looked up at the
clock on the wall, which read 12:01.  "My, that was some spell," she said
to herself, smiling.  Cassie cleaned up and put the book away for another
day, and then went to bed.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Notes:

   The German incantation translates to:

   Come, Heissfluss, water spirit

   Give me your presence

   And enchant me with your gift

   From now through midnight

   Heiss means hot in German (and has strong sexual connotations if you're
not careful about how you use it), and Fluss is the word for river, flow,
and flux.  So the spirit is named Hot River or Hot Flux, something of that
sort.

   The protection spell should translate to 'send out your spirit, Lord,
and keep me safe'.  Thanks to oosh for help with the Latin.