01_-_The_Alchemyst

murmuring archaic spells, divulging a lifetime of knowledge in the space of
heartbeats and breaths.
“This is not a spiderweb,” Dora explained to a stunned and silent
Flamel, noticing that he was leaning forward, staring intently at the webs
spinning around Sophie’s arms. “It is concentrated air mixed with my own
aura. All my knowledge, my experience, even my lore is gathered in this web
of air. Once it touches Sophie’s skin, she will begin to absorb that
knowledge.”
Sophie breathed deeply, drawing the wood-scented air deep into her
lungs. Images flashed impossibly fast in her head, times and places long past,
cyclopean walls of stone, ships of solid gold, dinosaurs and dragons, a city
carved into a mountain of ice and faces…hundreds, thousands of faces, from
every race of mankind, from every time period, human and half human,
werebeast and monster. She was seeing everyone the Witch of Endor had
ever seen.
“The Egyptians got it wrong,” Dora continued, her hands now moving
too fast for Flamel to see. “They wrapped the dead,” she continued. “They
did not realize I wrapped the living. There was a time when I put a little of
myself into my followers and sent them out into the world to teach in my
name. Obviously someone saw this process in the ancient past and tried to
copy it.”
Sophie suddenly saw a dozen people wrapped up like her, and a
younger-looking Dora moving among them, dressed in a costume from
ancient Babylon. Somehow Sophie understood that these were the priests and
priestesses in the cult that worshipped the Witch. Dora was passing on a
little of her knowledge to them so that they could go out into the world and
teach others.
The white weblike air now flowed down Sophie’s legs, binding them
together. Unconsciously, she brought her hands up across her chest, right hand
on her left shoulder, left hand on her right shoulder. The Witch nodded
approvingly.
Sophie closed her eyes and saw clouds. Without knowing how, she
knew their names: cirrus, cirrocumulus, altostratus and stratocumulus,