For as long as the valley spread wide, the river also spread, sparkling clear over its stony bed. The path followed closely, just beyond the thin belt of trees and shrubby growth that hugged its bank, an uneven band of gray stony soil threading through the green. The open grassland off to her right might easily have been any overgrown pasture outside the country town where she had grown up. This was lushly green and knee to waist high as far as she could see, rolling all the way to the ridge that cupped and controlled the quiet land.

At one point she crossed a tributary stream by inching along on the trunk of a fallen tree. The path had forked along the creek bank, with one branch leading down toward a steep, muddy scramble to the water’s edge and the prospect of more wading between that and another messy climb on the other side. The alternative was a newer choice, but had been used by other travelers before her, including at least one who had stopped long enough to make a fire in a ring of stones in the shelter of the tree’s root mass. The tree had been dead for some time. Its rough bark was falling away in patches, revealing silver gray wood etched with dull lines by insects during its long life.

The water in the little stream below her was dingy with mud, and flowing rapidly, as if from a heavy rain somewhere upstream, however the level of the water was nowhere near the line of debris caught in the fibrous roots sticking out from the bank. As she neared the other side, she saw the first sign of other human beings, a wood-handled iron tool, with its rusted blade trapped in the twisted tendrils. A heavy thing to have been carried for any distance. She was tempted to follow the stream toward whatever farm it had come from, but the surety of the path overwhelmed the possibility told by the implement.

The valley narrowed some distance past the creek, and the path rose away from the riverbed to parallel its path higher on the hillside. At one point, through a clearing in the trees, she thought she saw the place where she had come into this place. The rock seemed to rise higher above the water than she had thought.

She was beginning to tire of the climb long before the path turned downward again. Another clear valley spread before her, more narrow than the one she had just left, and almost entirely in the shadow of the tall hills opposite. Sunlight touched the tips of trees growing higher on the hillside, tall and straight and close. With her eyes drawn to the light, she almost missed the dark stone tower standing at the edge of the forest in the distance where the hill bent to touch the river again.

She wanted to run. Common sense told her that there might not even be anyone there, even if she managed to reach the building without breaking her neck with a headlong rush. That was nothing to prevent her from wanting to hurry along the stony path. Once it left the crest, she no longer was able to see beyond the trees in which she walked, and each turn of the trail to avoid some small obstacle seemed to take her her farther and farther from her new and now invisible goal.

When she came out into the clearing at last, it took all of her strength to keep from setting off straight across the uncertain grassland toward the tower, but reason sent her along the cleared path instead, with the knowledge that the longer distance would be faster without the tall grasses that she would have been wading through.

The tower was not so far from the river as it had seemed from her vantage above. She examined it carefully, as she grew closer. Beyond taking care of her footing, there was not much more to do. Not much to see that was different. The same trees, grasses. The same blue sky with only a few small clouds. No animals, at least none large enough to be noticeable. Not even a bird since that single tiny one on the other side of the river. The place was empty. Beautiful, but empty. The building was tall, round, and slender, built of the same gray brown stone as the boulder on which she had begun this ramble. There was a narrow slit of a doorway on the side facing the meadow, but it was in deep shadow, and if it had a door, open or shut, it was impossible for her to see from the distance. High above the doorway, was one single window, unglazed, unshuttered, bare as death.

It was an uninviting structure, almost forbidding. Still, when she saw a thin track leading off the main path in the direction of the tower, she turned onto it.

The path ended at a very low wall built of the same dark, river rounded stones as the tower. There appeared to be not gap or gate, although she walked all the way around the wall and back to opposite the doorway, looking for one. It seemed an absurd thing, the wall, too low to keep out any sort of animal. Even a human without her long legs should have no difficulty stepping over it and into the garden beyond. For there was a garden surrounding the tower, a structured series of beds with aisles paved in fanciful patterns in between their wedges of green or bright color. Some of the garden appeared to be solely for beauty and some, beautifully functional. Roses bordered the kitchen herbs, and the leaf crops grew in shaped beds surrounded by nasturtiums and blue borage. There were ripe blackberries, too, growing on trellises near the back of the garden, just beyond her reach inside the wall.

Supper had been a very long time ago.

Still…

The path ended at the wall. Or did it? There were paved walkways all through the garden, all leading to the flagged circle around the base of the tower. So, any step across the wall was a step onto another path, and this one leading directly to the doorway.

Yet…

It was such a fairy tale building. And she was not from this world. How many times in the grimmest of tales did the hapless young fool come to a bad end from going where he so obviously ought not go. And how many times was that the only way out of the story?

She sat down on the wall where the gate should have been, looked at the shadowed doorway, and at the empty window, and thought.

“Hello.”

She looked around.

“Up here. In the window. What are you doing there?”

That took a moment’s thought. “I’m not exactly sure,” she answered, at last, craning her neck to see where the voice might be coming from, “I believe I am lost.”

The girl in the tower laughed. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t be lost. You’re here.”

“But I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Of course you are. Wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be. It makes perfect sense.”

In a sort of cockeyed, alice in wonderland way. “Can I come inside?”

“You are more than half way in already, so I suppose you can. The question you really want to ask is, ‘may I?’, isn’t that right? Because the two are entirely different.”

“May I come in to your garden?”

“Whatever turned you into such a grump? Of course, you could come into the garden… if it were mine. But it isn’t, so you probably ought to, well you probably ought to get off the wall. If you are seen, it might not be,” she paused, “exactly happy.”

“Oh. Do you think you could come down here and we could talk. It’s a little difficult shouting up like this.”

“I could come down. But down is one thing and out is another entirely. You see, the door is locked.”

“You are a prisoner!”

“No, no, no. I am supposed to be here, silly. It is just the way things are.”

“By that logic, if I came inside the wall, it would be where I was supposed to be because it would be where I would be.”

“How clever you are. You are almost as clever as Sophia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You haven’t done anything.”

“No, I meant something else. It was just a phrase.”

“I knew that. It’s just that so few people stop by to chat that I tend to become a little odd at times. The jailer hardly talks at all, so it’s no fun to play with him, and Sophia is so dreadfully clever and wise.”

“Why does she have you locked away like this?”

“Who knows. I imagine it’s just the way it’s supposed to be. That’s probably what Sophia would say.”

“Did you do something wrong? Did you break some rule or something? I don’t mean to be nosy. I only ask because when you don’t know anything, well, I don’t want the same thing happening to me. You understand.”

The girl laughed as if that were the most outrageously funny thing she had ever heard. It was some time before she could catch her breath, and when she spoke again, she was hiccuping slightly.
“You. (hic) Don’t know anything. That’s so good. I’ll have to tell Sophia the next time she comes to see me.”

“I believe you are being intentionally rude.”

“I believe,” she said pompously, “you are being intentionally stupid.”

“What?” she almost screeched.

“Where do you think you are?” the girl said, in rather dry voice. “And who do you think you are talking to?” She sighed, in a somewhat overly dramatic manner.

“I said I didn’t know where I was. I said I was lost at the beginning.” When there was no response from above, she went on, “ and as to who you are, you are an obnoxious child, obviously locked away for your own good to keep sensible people from wringing your neck.”

“You aren’t lost, and you know it. You know exactly where you are. And you know who I am, too. You just haven’t listened to me very much lately.
“This has been a pretty useless little journey for you. There are all sorts of adventures you might have had while you were here if you had just once gotten off that path. It’s really very sad. You might as well go on back if you aren’t going to learn anything while you’re here.”

Everything went black.

At one point she crossed a tributary stream by inching along on the trunk of a fallen tree. The path had forked along the creek bank, with one branch leading down toward a steep, muddy scramble to the water’s edge and the prospect of more wading between that and another messy climb on the other side. The alternative was a newer choice, but had been used by other travelers before her, including at least one who had stopped long enough to make a fire in a ring of stones in the shelter of the tree’s root mass. The tree had been dead for some time. Its rough bark was falling away in patches, revealing silver gray wood etched with dull lines by insects during its long life.

The water in the little stream below her was dingy with mud, and flowing rapidly, as if from a heavy rain somewhere upstream, however the level of the water was nowhere near the line of debris caught in the fibrous roots sticking out from the bank. As she neared the other side, she saw the first sign of other human beings, a wood-handled iron tool, with its rusted blade trapped in the twisted tendrils. A heavy thing to have been carried for any distance. She was tempted to follow the stream toward whatever farm it had come from, but the surety of the path overwhelmed the possibility told by the implement.

The valley narrowed some distance past the creek, and the path rose away from the riverbed to parallel its path higher on the hillside. At one point, through a clearing in the trees, she thought she saw the place where she had come into this place. The rock seemed to rise higher above the water than she had thought.

She was beginning to tire of the climb long before the path turned downward again. Another clear valley spread before her, more narrow than the one she had just left, and almost entirely in the shadow of the tall hills opposite. Sunlight touched the tips of trees growing higher on the hillside, tall and straight and close. With her eyes drawn to the light, she almost missed the dark stone tower standing at the edge of the forest in the distance where the hill bent to touch the river again.

She wanted to run. Common sense told her that there might not even be anyone there, even if she managed to reach the building without breaking her neck with a headlong rush. That was nothing to prevent her from wanting to hurry along the stony path. Once it left the crest, she no longer was able to see beyond the trees in which she walked, and each turn of the trail to avoid some small obstacle seemed to take her her farther and farther from her new and now invisible goal.

When she came out into the clearing at last, it took all of her strength to keep from setting off straight across the uncertain grassland toward the tower, but reason sent her along the cleared path instead, with the knowledge that the longer distance would be faster without the tall grasses that she would have been wading through.

The tower was not so far from the river as it had seemed from her vantage above. She examined it carefully, as she grew closer. Beyond taking care of her footing, there was not much more to do. Not much to see that was different. The same trees, grasses. The same blue sky with only a few small clouds. No animals, at least none large enough to be noticeable. Not even a bird since that single tiny one on the other side of the river. The place was empty. Beautiful, but empty. The building was tall, round, and slender, built of the same gray brown stone as the boulder on which she had begun this ramble. There was a narrow slit of a doorway on the side facing the meadow, but it was in deep shadow, and if it had a door, open or shut, it was impossible for her to see from the distance. High above the doorway, was one single window, unglazed, unshuttered, bare as death.

It was an uninviting structure, almost forbidding. Still, when she saw a thin track leading off the main path in the direction of the tower, she turned onto it.

The path ended at a very low wall built of the same dark, river rounded stones as the tower. There appeared to be not gap or gate, although she walked all the way around the wall and back to opposite the doorway, looking for one. It seemed an absurd thing, the wall, too low to keep out any sort of animal. Even a human without her long legs should have no difficulty stepping over it and into the garden beyond. For there was a garden surrounding the tower, a structured series of beds with aisles paved in fanciful patterns in between their wedges of green or bright color. Some of the garden appeared to be solely for beauty and some, beautifully functional. Roses bordered the kitchen herbs, and the leaf crops grew in shaped beds surrounded by nasturtiums and blue borage. There were ripe blackberries, too, growing on trellises near the back of the garden, just beyond her reach inside the wall.

Supper had been a very long time ago.

Still…

The path ended at the wall. Or did it? There were paved walkways all through the garden, all leading to the flagged circle around the base of the tower. So, any step across the wall was a step onto another path, and this one leading directly to the doorway.

Yet…

It was such a fairy tale building. And she was not from this world. How many times in the grimmest of tales did the hapless young fool come to a bad end from going where he so obviously ought not go. And how many times was that the only way out of the story?

She sat down on the wall where the gate should have been, looked at the shadowed doorway, and at the empty window, and thought.

“Hello.”

She looked around.

“Up here. In the window. What are you doing there?”

That took a moment’s thought. “I’m not exactly sure,” she answered, at last, craning her neck to see where the voice might be coming from, “I believe I am lost.”

The girl in the tower laughed. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t be lost. You’re here.”

“But I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Of course you are. Wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be. It makes perfect sense.”

In a sort of cockeyed, alice in wonderland way. “Can I come inside?”

“You are more than half way in already, so I suppose you can. The question you really want to ask is, ‘may I?’, isn’t that right? Because the two are entirely different.”

“May I come in to your garden?”

“Whatever turned you into such a grump? Of course, you could come into the garden… if it were mine. But it isn’t, so you probably ought to, well you probably ought to get off the wall. If you are seen, it might not be,” she paused, “exactly happy.”

“Oh. Do you think you could come down here and we could talk. It’s a little difficult shouting up like this.”

“I could come down. But down is one thing and out is another entirely. You see, the door is locked.”

“You are a prisoner!”

“No, no, no. I am supposed to be here, silly. It is just the way things are.”

“By that logic, if I came inside the wall, it would be where I was supposed to be because it would be where I would be.”

“How clever you are. You are almost as clever as Sophia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You haven’t done anything.”

“No, I meant something else. It was just a phrase.”

“I knew that. It’s just that so few people stop by to chat that I tend to become a little odd at times. The jailer hardly talks at all, so it’s no fun to play with him, and Sophia is so dreadfully clever and wise.”

“Why does she have you locked away like this?”

“Who knows. I imagine it’s just the way it’s supposed to be. That’s probably what Sophia would say.”

“Did you do something wrong? Did you break some rule or something? I don’t mean to be nosy. I only ask because when you don’t know anything, well, I don’t want the same thing happening to me. You understand.”

The girl laughed as if that were the most outrageously funny thing she had ever heard. It was some time before she could catch her breath, and when she spoke again, she was hiccuping slightly.
“You. (hic) Don’t know anything. That’s so good. I’ll have to tell Sophia the next time she comes to see me.”

“I believe you are being intentionally rude.”

“I believe,” she said pompously, “you are being intentionally stupid.”

“What?” she almost screeched.

“Where do you think you are?” the girl said, in rather dry voice. “And who do you think you are talking to?” She sighed, in a somewhat overly dramatic manner.

“I said I didn’t know where I was. I said I was lost at the beginning.” When there was no response from above, she went on, “ and as to who you are, you are an obnoxious child, obviously locked away for your own good to keep sensible people from wringing your neck.”

“You aren’t lost, and you know it. You know exactly where you are. And you know who I am, too. You just haven’t listened to me very much lately.
“This has been a pretty useless little journey for you. There are all sorts of adventures you might have had while you were here if you had just once gotten off that path. It’s really very sad. You might as well go on back if you aren’t going to learn anything while you’re here.”

Everything went black.

The darkness had a texture, if no form. It was like a cloud or a fog. A cloud of dark light. The the air was thick with moisture, cool against the skin of her face. She could feel it beading on the hairs of her arms. Her lashes grew heavy from the droplets that formed upon them.

Franticly, she groped about, but there was nothing there to touch, and her wild windmillings only served to make her lose her balance. She stumbled and dropped, painfully, to her hands and knees. Sharp stones cut her palms and bruised her knees. There were tufts of coarse grass growing in hard-packed dirt where she felt nearby. The smell crisp of crushed greenery grew into the dense air from some plant she had damaged in her fall.

She sat in the dirt and tried to gather her senses. The dark seemed to muffle any sounds she made–breathing, stirring, dislodging of stones, any and all–and rebuild them around her until she was the center of a filmy cotton bell of her own noises. The sound of her pulse waxed and waned through it all as she tried to calm herself. She tried to think, to put a label on this place. What was she doing and how was she here? Even the questions were hard to form. The pain from her hands was distracting, a stinging, burning, small and constant reminder of her body.

The anise-like scent of the broken plant was a friend in the darkness. Its strong reality was an anchor. It was a thing, a real thing. In a place, however veiled. It made the gloom less ominous. If she were in a place it was somewhere, and she ought to be able to leave for somewhere else. If one place were not the same as every other wherever this was.

For the first time she strained to see through the darkness. In front of her, there was no difference. She peered into the thick black air to her left and to her right, and could see nothing but more of the same obscurity. Unwilling to move again, and risk another fall, she twisted around to look behind. She blinked, unsure whether what she saw was real or an artifact of her own eyes.

It did not move. There, behind her, somewhere low to the ground was a dim light. She had no way of telling its size or its distance, but it was something that was not darkness. A beacon. A star. A lodestone.

She stumbled toward the light, falling more than once when the uneven footing played her false. For a while, she crawled, but the rough pebbles bit into her hands and the slowness of her progress drove her to her feet again, although she found herself walking in a kind of awkward shuffling crouch, the better keep from tripping. It was slow progress, but it was progress, nonetheless.

In time the glow expanded to fill the area before her. No brighter than before, it seemed like a large, dim doorway of mist. Discrete, and almost tangible. It shed no light into the place where she stood. She could not see her own hands, her own feet, even standing directly before it. She could only stand and stare. It seemed less a light than a hole in the darkness. It was scarcely another place at all, but a barrier, a pale and faceless wall.

Still, she gathered her courage and stepped into it
—to be standing not four feet from the verge of a rather narrow, but deep and briskly flowing river some distance below. The rock on which she stood sloped abruptly toward the water. She felt her right foot begin to slip, and scrambled backward before remembering what had been behind her. There was no sign of the barrier or the darkness.

On this side of the river, the land rose steeply. Where the undergrowth was not heavy, large bare rocks were visible among the trees. On the other side there seemed to be a narrow belt of trees and brush along the river, but more open land beyond. The bank there was lower, and dirt. Just a little downstream a small rivulet entered, and in the eddies there a pair of dragonflies seemed to stand still in the bright afternoon sun.

She felt a touch of something on her left hand, and reached to brush it away. There was nothing there, but the hand showed three clear claw marks across the back. On that wrist was a bracelet that she had never seen before, a heavy silver wire cuff set with a single dark yellow-green stone–chrysoberyl. Cat’s eye. The cat. Somehow the cat had done this to her. Was she really here? Or still back in the apartment, sitting on the floor? Had reality ended the moment she first saw that cat coming out of the shadows on the side of Hamilton Street?

She closed her eyes and imagined herself back in the apartment. The long oak table with its well-aged gouges and nicks, and stains married into its grain was behind her. The door was to her left, and beside it a stack of packages, piled bags from half a dozen different shops. Before her, and to her right, the doorway to the bathroom. Across the room from that, the sofa, chair and the little television on its wheeled stand. She would not allow herself to think of the beings that might or might not be in the room. Instead, she concentrated on her own body, placing it exactly as she remembered being just before whatever it was that had happened.

She tried.

Hard.

And kept trying.

And nothing happened. She was still there beside the blue green river. There was no argent glow about the bracelet. Nothing in the world had changed. Everything was exactly the same, only now there was a slight headache forming between her eyes from the strain of what she had thought might send her back home.

And she was thirsty. The long trek across the black land might have been only within her imagination, but it had been a long, dry imagination, and the sight of all that water, only a few feet away and out of reach, was torture. With some resignation, she turned her back to the stream and prepared to battle her way through the bushes, thorns, and vines that might be concealing a less precipitous way down to the water. And she hoped against hope that here, wherever here was, if there were snakes, they would prefer to run rather than to stand and bite.

She struggled with a small forest of low trees’ twigs and branches in her eyes, wiry snagging briars around her ankles and legs, and thick, stubborn bushes grabbing at her arms. Although it was hot, she was grateful that she had been wearing her heavy, old sweatshirt over the softer cotton blouse. That and the wool trousers were nearly indestructible.

Some time later, but a short distance up the side of the hill, she came to a clearing through which ran a narrow, almost imperceptible, path. If there had been leaves still on the ground, she would not have seen it at all, but rain, following the packed depression, had washed enough away to make it plain. Her only choice, then was which direction to take.

Wisdom, would have her take the direction the river took. Every single thing she had ever read or heard or seen in a movie told her that one ought to move downstream, because, in that direction, eventually, one would find civilization of some sort. In this case, the path that would lead in that direction turned up the hill and away from the water altogether. It might meet it again somewhere farther downstream, but it might have been a path coming to the river from somewhere else. And the lefthand fork turned downhill, not only toward the water, which she wanted, but it seemed to be the easier and the clearer of the two directions.

With no coin in her pocket to toss, she considered the two options and decided on the path of least resistance. She could always turn around and go back the other way after she had had her fill of water, but without water she was going to be uncomfortable at best, and in the long run, much worse. As if to put the seal on her decision, the moment she set foot on the downhill path, a small blue bird appeared and lighted on a branch less than two yards away from her and with no apparent fear. When she came near it, the bird fluttered away down the path to land in another bush beside the trail. This went on for some time, until a few notes from the bushes farther into the undergrowth called it away from her.

“Get back home before you get into trouble.” What goes for a bird goes double for a girl. The bird is where he belongs.

Eventually, the path leveled out alongside a small creek that flowed into the river at a place where it spread wide over a bed of bright smooth stones. She could see the path emerging on the other side of the river and leading off downstream. It stood to reason that she ought to try what must obviously be a ford.

Before anything else, she was going to drink. And not while standing up to her whatever in the river. She knelt on the bank, as close to the edge as she could get, scowling at the mud oozing into the knees of her pants, then realizing what a ridiculous idea it was to try to stay dry when she was about to go wading. She leaned over and cupped her hands for the water. When she touched it, she almost fell in from shock. It was frigid. She sat back on her heels for a moment and looked at the river that she was going to have to cross. Nobody around here ever heard of bridges? This was not going to be at all like a day in the park.

The stones on the bottom were just large enough to be slick, and not quite so big that they would not shift underfoot. The water, although much shallower than it had been where she first saw the river, was still in some places up to her thighs, and it was swift. A halfway intelligent person would have found a good strong stick to cross with. She managed to keep her head above water, but not much more. By the time she crawled out onto the low, muddy bank she was soaked, and she had had her fill of water.

Chilled to the bone, she removed all she dared of her sodden clothing. It took some time to wring the river out of her sweatshirt and socks. After a little consideration, she pulled off her trousers, too, and as swiftly as possible squeezed the worst of the water out of them. They were still wet when she dressed, but they were better, and might dry a little faster. At least it was summer here, and not about to reach the winter solstice.
Wherever here was.

She stuffed one sock to hang from each front pocket, and tied the sweatshirt by the wet arms around her equally wet waist then set off down the path, following the river.

Franticly, she groped about, but there was nothing there to touch, and her wild windmillings only served to make her lose her balance. She stumbled and dropped, painfully, to her hands and knees. Sharp stones cut her palms and bruised her knees. There were tufts of coarse grass growing in hard-packed dirt where she felt nearby. The smell crisp of crushed greenery grew into the dense air from some plant she had damaged in her fall.

She sat in the dirt and tried to gather her senses. The dark seemed to muffle any sounds she made–breathing, stirring, dislodging of stones, any and all–and rebuild them around her until she was the center of a filmy cotton bell of her own noises. The sound of her pulse waxed and waned through it all as she tried to calm herself. She tried to think, to put a label on this place. What was she doing and how was she here? Even the questions were hard to form. The pain from her hands was distracting, a stinging, burning, small and constant reminder of her body.

The anise-like scent of the broken plant was a friend in the darkness. Its strong reality was an anchor. It was a thing, a real thing. In a place, however veiled. It made the gloom less ominous. If she were in a place it was somewhere, and she ought to be able to leave for somewhere else. If one place were not the same as every other wherever this was.

For the first time she strained to see through the darkness. In front of her, there was no difference. She peered into the thick black air to her left and to her right, and could see nothing but more of the same obscurity. Unwilling to move again, and risk another fall, she twisted around to look behind. She blinked, unsure whether what she saw was real or an artifact of her own eyes.

It did not move. There, behind her, somewhere low to the ground was a dim light. She had no way of telling its size or its distance, but it was something that was not darkness. A beacon. A star. A lodestone.

She stumbled toward the light, falling more than once when the uneven footing played her false. For a while, she crawled, but the rough pebbles bit into her hands and the slowness of her progress drove her to her feet again, although she found herself walking in a kind of awkward shuffling crouch, the better keep from tripping. It was slow progress, but it was progress, nonetheless.

In time the glow expanded to fill the area before her. No brighter than before, it seemed like a large, dim doorway of mist. Discrete, and almost tangible. It shed no light into the place where she stood. She could not see her own hands, her own feet, even standing directly before it. She could only stand and stare. It seemed less a light than a hole in the darkness. It was scarcely another place at all, but a barrier, a pale and faceless wall.

Still, she gathered her courage and stepped into it
—to be standing not four feet from the verge of a rather narrow, but deep and briskly flowing river some distance below. The rock on which she stood sloped abruptly toward the water. She felt her right foot begin to slip, and scrambled backward before remembering what had been behind her. There was no sign of the barrier or the darkness.

On this side of the river, the land rose steeply. Where the undergrowth was not heavy, large bare rocks were visible among the trees. On the other side there seemed to be a narrow belt of trees and brush along the river, but more open land beyond. The bank there was lower, and dirt. Just a little downstream a small rivulet entered, and in the eddies there a pair of dragonflies seemed to stand still in the bright afternoon sun.

She felt a touch of something on her left hand, and reached to brush it away. There was nothing there, but the hand showed three clear claw marks across the back. On that wrist was a bracelet that she had never seen before, a heavy silver wire cuff set with a single dark yellow-green stone–chrysoberyl. Cat’s eye. The cat. Somehow the cat had done this to her. Was she really here? Or still back in the apartment, sitting on the floor? Had reality ended the moment she first saw that cat coming out of the shadows on the side of Hamilton Street?

She closed her eyes and imagined herself back in the apartment. The long oak table with its well-aged gouges and nicks, and stains married into its grain was behind her. The door was to her left, and beside it a stack of packages, piled bags from half a dozen different shops. Before her, and to her right, the doorway to the bathroom. Across the room from that, the sofa, chair and the little television on its wheeled stand. She would not allow herself to think of the beings that might or might not be in the room. Instead, she concentrated on her own body, placing it exactly as she remembered being just before whatever it was that had happened.

She tried.

Hard.

And kept trying.

And nothing happened. She was still there beside the blue green river. There was no argent glow about the bracelet. Nothing in the world had changed. Everything was exactly the same, only now there was a slight headache forming between her eyes from the strain of what she had thought might send her back home.

And she was thirsty. The long trek across the black land might have been only within her imagination, but it had been a long, dry imagination, and the sight of all that water, only a few feet away and out of reach, was torture. With some resignation, she turned her back to the stream and prepared to battle her way through the bushes, thorns, and vines that might be concealing a less precipitous way down to the water. And she hoped against hope that here, wherever here was, if there were snakes, they would prefer to run rather than to stand and bite.

She struggled with a small forest of low trees’ twigs and branches in her eyes, wiry snagging briars around her ankles and legs, and thick, stubborn bushes grabbing at her arms. Although it was hot, she was grateful that she had been wearing her heavy, old sweatshirt over the softer cotton blouse. That and the wool trousers were nearly indestructible.

Some time later, but a short distance up the side of the hill, she came to a clearing through which ran a narrow, almost imperceptible, path. If there had been leaves still on the ground, she would not have seen it at all, but rain, following the packed depression, had washed enough away to make it plain. Her only choice, then was which direction to take.

Wisdom, would have her take the direction the river took. Every single thing she had ever read or heard or seen in a movie told her that one ought to move downstream, because, in that direction, eventually, one would find civilization of some sort. In this case, the path that would lead in that direction turned up the hill and away from the water altogether. It might meet it again somewhere farther downstream, but it might have been a path coming to the river from somewhere else. And the lefthand fork turned downhill, not only toward the water, which she wanted, but it seemed to be the easier and the clearer of the two directions.

With no coin in her pocket to toss, she considered the two options and decided on the path of least resistance. She could always turn around and go back the other way after she had had her fill of water, but without water she was going to be uncomfortable at best, and in the long run, much worse. As if to put the seal on her decision, the moment she set foot on the downhill path, a small blue bird appeared and lighted on a branch less than two yards away from her and with no apparent fear. When she came near it, the bird fluttered away down the path to land in another bush beside the trail. This went on for some time, until a few notes from the bushes farther into the undergrowth called it away from her.

“Get back home before you get into trouble.” What goes for a bird goes double for a girl. The bird is where he belongs.

Eventually, the path leveled out alongside a small creek that flowed into the river at a place where it spread wide over a bed of bright smooth stones. She could see the path emerging on the other side of the river and leading off downstream. It stood to reason that she ought to try what must obviously be a ford.

Before anything else, she was going to drink. And not while standing up to her whatever in the river. She knelt on the bank, as close to the edge as she could get, scowling at the mud oozing into the knees of her pants, then realizing what a ridiculous idea it was to try to stay dry when she was about to go wading. She leaned over and cupped her hands for the water. When she touched it, she almost fell in from shock. It was frigid. She sat back on her heels for a moment and looked at the river that she was going to have to cross. Nobody around here ever heard of bridges? This was not going to be at all like a day in the park.

The stones on the bottom were just large enough to be slick, and not quite so big that they would not shift underfoot. The water, although much shallower than it had been where she first saw the river, was still in some places up to her thighs, and it was swift. A halfway intelligent person would have found a good strong stick to cross with. She managed to keep her head above water, but not much more. By the time she crawled out onto the low, muddy bank she was soaked, and she had had her fill of water.

Chilled to the bone, she removed all she dared of her sodden clothing.  It took some time to wring the river out of her sweatshirt and socks.  After a little consideration, she pulled off her trousers, too, and as swiftly as possible squeezed the worst of the water out of them.  They were still wet when she dressed, but they were better, and might dry a little faster.  At least it was summer here, and not about to reach the winter solstice.
Wherever here was.
She stuffed one sock to hang from each front pocket, and tied the sweatshirt by the wet arms around her equally wet waist then set off down the path, following the river.

Between that thought and the next, between one moment and another, their pleasant tête-à-tête became a council, a meeting, and–oddly–something almost with a party air.

The ghosts, or most of them at any rate, were chattering their opinions of everything that they had seen and heard. Because, of course, they had been there all the while Sophie and Rusty had conversed “alone”. And, of course, Sophie had known it all the while. It was not for secrets that she had wanted then out of sight and out of her mind, but for the sweet psychological distance.

It had worked. Opening the door for Speaker, she felt in command of herself for the first time–she was surprised to realize just how long it had been–since the rug had been pulled out from under her in such a literal way by that ugly notice to vacate the perfect apartment so close to Cedar Square.

Now, she felt almost right again. There was something about having taken action and having something concrete to show for it. She had an apartment now. A car, or the use of one, for as long as she needed it. A few, new, things. She had a friend, it seemed, all out of the blue. And then, there were the soothing rituals of preparation, and the cooking, and the meal. Some time alone with her music might have tied the entire package, but as it stood, she was armored for the coming difficulties.

She offered the Speaker some Cat Chow in a jade green cereal bowl, as an afterthought, and with just a bit of her mood of celebration, she scraped the crispy bits left in the bottom of the pan in which she had cooked the pork onto the top of the dry kibble before setting the pan to soak.

She would have been hard pressed to gain the attention of any of the ghosts. They were all clustered around Rusty, trying to glean any knowledge from him about the process of leaving this dimension that he could possibly have learned in his previous encounter. That was when it sank in. They were, for all that they existed as spirits, inexperienced. However much time they had spent as ghosts, it had not been with an awareness that there was an alternative to their drifting solitude in the midst of all the living.

What was it that had made her their catalyst? Some random sequence of past events that combined to make her who she was at just this point in time? Was one single event the last straw, the red-numbered powerball of chance, without which she would have gone on her way, enjoying her mundane life, blissfully unaware that there was anything more to existence than what she had always seen and heard and touched.

The cat rubbed against her leg, shedding silver hairs into the coarse brown weave of her trousers, for all the world as if her were a perfectly ordinary household pet. she sat down on the floor beside him and scratched his sleek gray head. He settled back on his haunches. When he raised his head, his gold eyes were almost closed to slits.

“It’s an odd existence,” he said, almost as if to himself, “being a cat.” Then he looked at her. Seemed to be looking into her her soul for just one brief moment. “Most of the time, you know, I am a cat. There’s not a thought in my mind beyond the moment. i want to eat or to sleep. Hunt. Or mate.

“It was disturbing enough to feel passion inside another man’s body. Especially considering the differences in our tastes. But that first time when I was attacked by this body’s lust, it’s painful drive to sex–the moment before my death was not so terrifying.”

“Even when you are the cat, You are there. You, the one who is calling himself ‘Speaker’, but who had another name once however long ago it was, you and however many others there are in there. I still don’t understand how there could be so many of you there. I thought reincarnation was different somehow. Not that I understand all that I have heard and read. Things that don’t make much sense tend to just go through my head, and I don’t usually make much effort to stop anything that doesn’t really grab my interest. I guess I should have listened more.”

“I wouldn’t have helped here. This is different. What reincarnation is, I have read the books–several of us were educated men. What we have experienced is not that, nor is it Rebirth. It is only what it is. None of us has changed from one body’s life to the next. Each one persists entire and separate, yet we are connected to each other like a magician’s chain of rings. Within one living being we have life.

“In a way, now, you are the magician for them.” He nodded toward the ghosts, still clustered around Rusty, but arguing among themselves, hashing over what he had been telling them. “You are for all of us,” he said. “With a ‘flash!’ you bring them into the light where they can be seen and hear. They are all but alive again because of you.”

“But they are still dead.”

“They think. They feel. And now, they interact. It may be that they are not breathing flesh, but even that one, the one who was so stricken to learn that she has a soul at all, even she is in the true sense, animated.”

It was true. They were all, even the dark one, Mrs. Slaughter, engaged in a lively discussion. Lively. Like any normal people. “And I am somehow responsible?” she wanted to know.

“Without your presence here and now, they would be as they were before, still wandering, formless, and without the key to the doorway past that existance.”

“Great,” she said, bitterly, as she started to gather her feet under her to rise, “now who’s pulling my strings?”

Before she could move further, the cat’s paw flashed onto her hand, claws extended. He stood, muscles tensed as if he were about to pounce. She tried to move, but somehow the force of that one small paw was sufficient to hold her to the floor, as if gravity had multiplied a thousandfold in that one point. His eyes, intent upon her own, had become solid black, and huge. For a split second, looking at him, she felt a sense of vertigo. She closed her eyes and the odd disorientation disapeared almost immediately. The pressure on her hand eased to a feather touch. At that, she breathed a sight of relief and opened her eyes again. To a world gone dark.

The ghosts, or most of them at any rate, were chattering their opinions of everything that they had seen and heard. Because, of course, they had been there all the while Sophie and Rusty had conversed “alone”. And, of course, Sophie had known it all the while. It was not for secrets that she had wanted then out of sight and out of her mind, but for the sweet psychological distance.

It had worked. Opening the door for Speaker, she felt in command of herself for the first time–she was surprised to realize just how long it had been–since the rug had been pulled out from under her in such a literal way by that ugly notice to vacate the perfect apartment so close to Cedar Square.

Now, she felt almost right again. There was something about having taken action and having something concrete to show for it. She had an apartment now. A car, or the use of one, for as long as she needed it. A few, new, things. She had a friend, it seemed, all out of the blue. And then, there were the soothing rituals of preparation, and the cooking, and the meal. Some time alone with her music might have tied the entire package, but as it stood, she was armored for the coming difficulties.

She offered the Speaker some Cat Chow in a jade green cereal bowl, as an afterthought, and with just a bit of her mood of celebration, she scraped the crispy bits left in the bottom of the pan in which she had cooked the pork onto the top of the dry kibble before setting the pan to soak.

She would have been hard pressed to gain the attention of any of the ghosts. They were all clustered around Rusty, trying to glean any knowledge from him about the process of leaving this dimension that he could possibly have learned in his previous encounter. That was when it sank in. They were, for all that they existed as spirits, inexperienced. However much time they had spent as ghosts, it had not been with an awareness that there was an alternative to their drifting solitude in the midst of all the living.

What was it that had made her their catalyst? Some random sequence of past events that combined to make her who she was at just this point in time? Was one single event the last straw, the red-numbered powerball of chance, without which she would have gone on her way, enjoying her mundane life, blissfully unaware that there was anything more to existence than what she had always seen and heard and touched.

The cat rubbed against her leg, shedding silver hairs into the coarse brown weave of her trousers, for all the world as if her were a perfectly ordinary household pet. she sat down on the floor beside him and scratched his sleek gray head. He settled back on his haunches. When he raised his head, his gold eyes were almost closed to slits.

“It’s an odd existence,” he said, almost as if to himself, “being a cat.” Then he looked at her. Seemed to be looking into her her soul for just one brief moment. “Most of the time, you know, I am a cat. There’s not a thought in my mind beyond the moment. i want to eat or to sleep. Hunt. Or mate.

“It was disturbing enough to feel passion inside another man’s body. Especially considering the differences in our tastes. But that first time when I was attacked by this body’s lust, it’s painful drive to sex–the moment before my death was not so terrifying.”

“Even when you are the cat, You are there. You, the one who is calling himself ‘Speaker’, but who had another name once however long ago it was, you and however many others there are in there. I still don’t understand how there could be so many of you there. I thought reincarnation was different somehow. Not that I understand all that I have heard and read. Things that don’t make much sense tend to just go through my head, and I don’t usually make much effort to stop anything that doesn’t really grab my interest. I guess I should have listened more.”

“I wouldn’t have helped here. This is different. What reincarnation is, I have read the books–several of us were educated men. What we have experienced is not that, nor is it Rebirth. It is only what it is. None of us has changed from one body’s life to the next. Each one persists entire and separate, yet we are connected to each other like a magician’s chain of rings. Within one living being we have life.

“In a way, now, you are the magician for them.” He nodded toward the ghosts, still clustered around Rusty, but arguing among themselves, hashing over what he had been telling them. “You are for all of us,” he said. “With a ‘flash!’ you bring them into the light where they can be seen and hear. They are all but alive again because of you.”

“But they are still dead.”

“They think. They feel. And now, they interact. It may be that they are not breathing flesh, but even that one, the one who was so stricken to learn that she has a soul at all, even she is in the true sense, animated.”

It was true. They were all, even the dark one, Mrs. Slaughter, engaged in a lively discussion. Lively. Like any normal people. “And I am somehow responsible?” she wanted to know.

“Without your presence here and now, they would be as they were before, still wandering, formless, and without the key to the doorway past that existance.”

“Great,” she said, bitterly, as she started to gather her feet under her to rise, “now who’s pulling my strings?”

Before she could move further, the cat’s paw flashed onto her hand, claws extended. He stood, muscles tensed as if he were about to pounce. She tried to move, but somehow the force of that one small paw was sufficient to hold her to the floor, as if gravity had multiplied a thousandfold in that one point. His eyes, intent upon her own, had become solid black, and huge. For a split second, looking at him, she felt a sense of vertigo. She closed her eyes and the odd disorientation disapeared almost immediately. The pressure on her hand eased to a feather touch. At that, she breathed a sight of relief and opened her eyes again. To a world gone dark.

This is even now being written for NaNoWrimo 2007.
By the “rules” of NaNo, one does not edit. Not until the month of November is over and gone. Please, therefore, be aware that this is a draft, and a rough one at that. If this were a paper manuscript, it would show the creases, strikethroughs, marginal notes and coffee stains of its true self. This digital format is a little white lie.

Consider this:

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It’s like passing around samples of sputum.__
Vladimir Nabokov

 

CHAPTER NINE

It was from her grandmother, that Sophie learned to cook, the same way she learned reading and playing piano from Tom, it was in the air that surrounded her when she was around them.

Ramona had been an artist in the kitchen, and her recipes were an artists’. She changed and added according to her tastes of the moment, what appealed to her eye in the store, or simply, what was on hand. Watching her putter around, inventing the moment, as she said, was a pleasure. Sophie often did her homework at the kitchen table while her grandmother made supper. The big room with its worn yellow linoleum and ceiling-high white cabinets always had plenty of space for her to spread out with her books and notebooks, yellow pencils and bics. The red plastic radio at the end of the counter would blast away, whatever had seemed to suit Ramona’s mood: sometimes classical, sometimes country and sometimes rock and roll. And they would talk. They talked about school, the weather, problems with Grace or with Tom; they talked about religion, and life, and sex; and, of course, they talked about food.

Having Rusty around while she cooked brought back those afternoons. It had been too long since she had cooked for someone else. To celebrate, to warm the house, she was making what had been one of Grace’s favorite meals that she prepared: The Butter Plate. Everything would be swimming in the stuff. Pork loin piccata, for which she even splurged and bought a good Marsala wine. The tiniest red potatoes in the bin, simply boiled and drenched with butter. Brilliant carrot haystacks, still crisp, sprinkled with a little dill.

While Rusty rummaged through their afternoon’s purchases and began transforming the living room to something bright and warm, she unpacked the little Japanese mandoline. Inside the cheerful-looking box with its bright pictures and sharp, black characters, was a rather flimsy-looking bird of a tool. She wondered how someone would react to the thing if they had no experience. If there were instructions, they were on the box, they were in Japanese. It was a far cry from the beautiful Bron that Tom had bought Ramona. It was her peace offering when he came back from taking Jake Hartley’s place on his New York gig when Jake cracked his wrist at the last minute. That, after he had promised no more road trips. It sat untouched for a month, in all its stainless splendor before she relented.

Sophie’s little slicer was nothing like that professional-grade tool, but it was fun to play with, and in no time she had far more perfect carrot matchsticks than she could possibly use. She decided, in that case, to make more. Maybe mash them up and turn them into pudding. She could almost taste it, spiced with nutmeg and studded with raisins and walnuts. But that would be for another day, and the carrots would keep.

While she was occupied in the kitchen, Rusty went downstairs to the car. Somehow he managed to wrangle both the table in its box and the folded wooden screen back up the steps single handed.

“We poets are a hardy breed,” he said when she seemed stunned.

“Are you published?” Sophie asked him later, over the supper table. It was a good meal. Grace would have loved it. And Ramona would have been proud of her ‘Kiddo’.

“You might call me more of a performance artist,” Rusty said. I know you’ve never been to Songstage or kifiko, or I would have seen you. That’s where I usually–I won’t say ‘read’ because what I do is a little different, but it’s like that. Perform.”

He would have noticed her because she stood head and shoulders above most other women. Sophie didn’t bother to say what first came into her mind; there was no need, it served no good purpose. “Songstage, I’ve heard of. What’s Kifiko?”

“A sort of multilingual pun, which tells you how self-consciously literary it is. If i understand it correctly, kifiko is the Swahili word for the ’stages of a journey’–both the beginning and the end. The ownership is all about Swahili. Very roots-aware. Still, it’s a nice little place, and the sound system is good. Their whole emphasis is on the recitative art, and in that case, it doesn’t matter if your mama was black brown or irish red, for which I am extremely grateful. They are a most appreciative group. And they feed the performers. It is not your average coffee house. They do have some people there who understand that the mind does not live on the word alone.

“They break down and have little bit of jazz now and then, usually on Sunday afternoons, but the room is really too small for anything with any brass to it. You would like it there, I believe.”

She finally asked him what she had been wondering about for some time. “You are a poet. But what do you do for a living? I mean, I might say that I am a novelist, or a songwriter, if I wanted to stretch things. What I do is no the same. I’m a waitress and, when I am working for real money, it is all in codes. As soon as I can get an internet connection up and running from here, I can get some freelance web design work. That’s me. What do you do?”

He looked at her for a moment before he said anything. While he was simply sitting there, saying nothing, though, the man across the table from Sophie changed.

When he answered her, he spoke more slowly, and almost softly. “I’m not working right now,” he said. “A while ago, quite a while, now, I had a breakdown. I’m not ready to go back yet. I was finishing my residency. There was a lot of pressure over that and over some other things at the same time. My personal life was a wreck. All at once everything got to be too much for me, and I just shut down.

“When I started seeing the ghosts, I thought it was because I was… just over the bend.”

Sophie waited.

“Compared to you, I suppose, I was fortunate that there were only two. On the other hand, one of mine was asking me to get revenge for her. She came to me, to this blithering shell of a human being, and told me she wanted me to kill someone for her.”

“Oh, no! You. You didn’t, of course. Did you?”

He laughed, something of the brittle edge returning. “No, I did what any sane person in the middle of a breakdown would do. I went on with my breakdown and ignored her along with anyone else who wasn’t me myself and I.

“Eventually–her name was Eleanor–she and Sonny both started feeling a little sorry for me. Irritated, frustrated that I was all they had to work with, but sad for me and the mess that I was making of what ought to have been a perfectly good life. She said that in almost so many words.

“They helped me in the end. And then I was able to help them move on, too.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“I didn’t have to kill anybody. It was what she needed that moved her on, not what she wanted. We need to remember that with your lot. She didn’t need revenge. She didn’t even need justice. It was something a lot more difficult and a lot simpler than that. She had to accept what had happened to her.

“When that happened, she just, for a moment got this glow–of comprehension, I suppose. And she smiled. Then she was just gone.”

“What about the other one?”

“I wrote an anonymous letter to his girlfriend, saying that I was a psychic and that he had sent a message to her that it wasn’t hidden in the back yard, so she could stop digging, and ought to open the boxes of books in the attic, instead.”

“It?”

“Sonny was an embezzler. He never had a chance to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. I think that if I were going to be a crook, I’d probably do just as bad a job of it. I want some instant gratification.”

Laughing, Sophie wondered just how much more there was to the man than there appeared. How much there was to everyone, for that matter. Was the Renta-Wrek man a secret anarchist? Did the preacher who always ordered an omelet and a salad for lunch go back home and beat his wife? And what did people think Sophie ought to be that she was not?

She made coffee for them with the french press that was on sale at Linens, Inc. For such a well equipped kitchen, there had been some huge holes. While there was a four slice toaster, there was no coffee pot, not even an old range-top percolator. With all the pots and pans, one sad omission was a tea kettle. Unnecessary, granted, but something always nice to have. She had one now–chrome and black, with a flip-top whistle over its spout. And sooner, rather than later, she was going to have to spring for a small microwave. There were too many times when she simply did not want to bother to cook something just for herself, and heating the oven to 375 for forty five minutes for just one little frozen dinner was about as wasteful as a person could get.

Rusty moved into the living room with his coffee. “I wonder how much longer we get,” he said, settling back onto the newly-slip covered sofa. A warm, soft brown. The simple geometric print pillows in gold and greens were a bright, clean accent.

“They’re probably standing right here and have been all along, only we can’t see them. I know Raymond does that. Just waits for his moment.” She sighed. “I guess. I guess, shit. I’ll go let the cat in. The rest of you can do your trick.”

It was from her grandmother, that Sophie learned to cook, the same way she learned reading and playing piano from Tom, it was in the air that surrounded her when she was around them.

Ramona had been an artist in the kitchen, and her recipes were an artists’. She changed and added according to her tastes of the moment, what appealed to her eye in the store, or simply, what was on hand. Watching her putter around, inventing the moment, as she said, was a pleasure. Sophie often did her homework at the kitchen table while her grandmother made supper. The big room with its worn yellow linoleum and ceiling-high white cabinets always had plenty of space for her to spread out with her books and notebooks, yellow pencils and bics. The red plastic radio at the end of the counter would blast away, whatever had seemed to suit Ramona’s mood: sometimes classical, sometimes country and sometimes rock and roll. And they would talk. They talked about school, the weather, problems with Grace or with Tom; they talked about religion, and life, and sex; and, of course, they talked about food.

Having Rusty around while she cooked brought back those afternoons. It had been too long since she had cooked for someone else. To celebrate, to warm the house, she was making what had been one of Grace’s favorite meals that she prepared: The Butter Plate. Everything would be swimming in the stuff. Pork loin piccata, for which she even splurged and bought a good Marsala wine. The tiniest red potatoes in the bin, simply boiled and drenched with butter. Brilliant carrot haystacks, still crisp, sprinkled with a little dill.

While Rusty rummaged through their afternoon’s purchases and began transforming the living room to something bright and warm, she unpacked the little Japanese mandoline. Inside the cheerful-looking box with its bright pictures and sharp, black characters, was a rather flimsy-looking bird of a tool. She wondered how someone would react to the thing if they had no experience. If there were instructions, they were on the box, they were in Japanese. It was a far cry from the beautiful Bron that Tom had bought Ramona. It was her peace offering when he came back from taking Jake Hartley’s place on his New York gig when Jake cracked his wrist at the last minute. That, after he had promised no more road trips. It sat untouched for a month, in all its stainless splendor before she relented.

Sophie’s little slicer was nothing like that professional-grade tool, but it was fun to play with, and in no time she had far more perfect carrot matchsticks than she could possibly use. She decided, in that case, to make more. Maybe mash them up and turn them into pudding. She could almost taste it, spiced with nutmeg and studded with raisins and walnuts. But that would be for another day, and the carrots would keep.

While she was occupied in the kitchen, Rusty went downstairs to the car. Somehow he managed to wrangle both the table in its box and the folded wooden screen back up the steps single handed.

“We poets are a hardy breed,” he said when she seemed stunned.

“Are you published?” Sophie asked him later, over the supper table. It was a good meal. Grace would have loved it. And Ramona would have been proud of her ‘Kiddo’.

“You might call me more of a performance artist,” Rusty said. I know you’ve never been to Songstage or kifiko, or I would have seen you. That’s where I usually–I won’t say ‘read’ because what I do is a little different, but it’s like that. Perform.”

He would have noticed her because she stood head and shoulders above most other women. Sophie didn’t bother to say what first came into her mind; there was no need, it served no good purpose. “Songstage, I’ve heard of. What’s Kifiko?”

“A sort of multilingual pun, which tells you how self-consciously literary it is. If i understand it correctly, kifiko is the Swahili word for the ‘stages of a journey’–both the beginning and the end. The ownership is all about Swahili. Very roots-aware. Still, it’s a nice little place, and the sound system is good. Their whole emphasis is on the recitative art, and in that case, it doesn’t matter if your mama was black brown or irish red, for which I am extremely grateful. They are a most appreciative group. And they feed the performers. It is not your average coffee house. They do have some people there who understand that the mind does not live on the word alone.

“They break down and have little bit of jazz now and then, usually on Sunday afternoons, but the room is really too small for anything with any brass to it. You would like it there, I believe.”

She finally asked him what she had been wondering about for some time. “You are a poet. But what do you do for a living? I mean, I might say that I am a novelist, or a songwriter, if I wanted to stretch things. What I do is no the same. I’m a waitress and, when I am working for real money, it is all in codes. As soon as I can get an internet connection up and running from here, I can get some freelance web design work. That’s me. What do you do?”

He looked at her for a moment before he said anything. While he was simply sitting there, saying nothing, though, the man across the table from Sophie changed.

When he answered her, he spoke more slowly, and almost softly. “I’m not working right now,” he said. “A while ago, quite a while, now, I had a breakdown. I’m not ready to go back yet. I was finishing my residency. There was a lot of pressure over that and over some other things at the same time. My personal life was a wreck. All at once everything got to be too much for me, and I just shut down.

“When I started seeing the ghosts, I thought it was because I was… just over the bend.”

Sophie waited.

“Compared to you, I suppose, I was fortunate that there were only two. On the other hand, one of mine was asking me to get revenge for her. She came to me, to this blithering shell of a human being, and told me she wanted me to kill someone for her.”

“Oh, no! You. You didn’t, of course. Did you?”

He laughed, something of the brittle edge returning. “No, I did what any sane person in the middle of a breakdown would do. I went on with my breakdown and ignored her along with anyone else who wasn’t me myself and I.

“Eventually–her name was Eleanor–she and Sonny both started feeling a little sorry for me. Irritated, frustrated that I was all they had to work with, but sad for me and the mess that I was making of what ought to have been a perfectly good life. She said that in almost so many words.

“They helped me in the end. And then I was able to help them move on, too.”

“You didn’t have to…”

“I didn’t have to kill anybody. It was what she needed that moved her on, not what she wanted. We need to remember that with your lot. She didn’t need revenge. She didn’t even need justice. It was something a lot more difficult and a lot simpler than that. She had to accept what had happened to her.

“When that happened, she just, for a moment got this glow–of comprehension, I suppose. And she smiled. Then she was just gone.”

“What about the other one?”

“I wrote an anonymous letter to his girlfriend, saying that I was a psychic and that he had sent a message to her that it wasn’t hidden in the back yard, so she could stop digging, and ought to open the boxes of books in the attic, instead.”

“It?”

“Sonny was an embezzler. He never had a chance to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. I think that if I were going to be a crook, I’d probably do just as bad a job of it. I want some instant gratification.”

Laughing, Sophie wondered just how much more there was to the man than there appeared. How much there was to everyone, for that matter. Was the Renta-Wrek man a secret anarchist? Did the preacher who always ordered an omelet and a salad for lunch go back home and beat his wife? And what did people think Sophie ought to be that she was not?

She made coffee for them with the french press that was on sale at Linens, Inc. For such a well equipped kitchen, there had been some huge holes. While there was a four slice toaster, there was no coffee pot, not even an old range-top percolator. With all the pots and pans, one sad omission was a tea kettle. Unnecessary, granted, but something always nice to have. She had one now–chrome and black, with a flip-top whistle over its spout. And sooner, rather than later, she was going to have to spring for a small microwave. There were too many times when she simply did not want to bother to cook something just for herself, and heating the oven to 375 for forty five minutes for just one little frozen dinner was about as wasteful as a person could get.

Rusty moved into the living room with his coffee. “I wonder how much longer we get,” he said, settling back onto the newly-slip covered sofa. A warm, soft brown. The simple geometric print pillows in gold and greens were a bright, clean accent.

“They’re probably standing right here and have been all along, only we can’t see them. I know Raymond does that. Just waits for his moment.” She sighed. “I guess. I guess, shit. I’ll go let the cat in. The rest of you can do your trick.”

There is a power in the beginning of things and there is a power in endings. At the point where the two are alongside, never touching, there are infinite possibilities. In that space of time that does not exist, but which is beyond measure, the inconceivable may reach fruition, and dreams walk the earth.