It’s like they are not here. Like they never were here.

But they have to be. First, because they were here just yesterday. And second, because I still don’t know what to do with Michael and dinner at the house is an hour away.

I pry my wet pants from my leg. It’s no easy feat: they are nearly suctioned to me. The water line is lower than yesterday, but the creek itself is thick and murky. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are leaches under my jeans. But I can’t think about that right now. I need to find Bea, or Jake, and they have simply vanished. Along with the shack and all the junk that litters the property.

“Bea? Jake?” I whisper, as loud as a whispering voice can project. I want to show my respect for their hiding out, but I also want to talk to them. Need to talk to them. Now.

I’m kicking myself for not asking when I could return. And for not remembering the way to the shack. But really, it was right here yesterday.

I also recall Jake saying Bea is deaf, or has some kind of selective hearing. So what am I to do? Just wander around?

“What do you want?” a voice behind me says, making me jump clean out of my skin.

I turn to be face to face with the stealth queen herself.

“You scared me,” I say to Bea.

“You didn’t announce yourself,” she accuses. “When you come, do it the way you did yesterday. Slowly, with your palms out, so we can smell you.”

I want to ask why she can’t just smell me all over, but don’t dare. She doesn’t look like she is in the mood and I’m sure I’ve disrupted her day.

“I’m sorry to come again so soon. But I have to tell you something, and ask you something, because Anna didn’t really tell me what to do, and….”
“You saw her today?” Bea interrupts.

“I went in to tell her about meeting you.”

“How is she?” she says, seeming more concerned that I would expect.

“She’s good. I mean, about the same.”

“Her energy was low for several hours today around lunchtime.”

“Oh, that. I took her medicine bag when I went to lunch with…”

“You what?” Bea growls. I mean, really, truly growls. Like an animal.

“I didn’t know it was the wrong thing to do. A nurse was going to see it so I just put it in my pocket as I was leaving. But wait—how did you know?”

“We are in constant communication,” she says, turning to go deeper into the woods. She indicates that I follow her with a strong wave. Within ten seconds, we’re on her property again, standing next to a fire pit, with the shack just a stone’s throw away.

I’d swear I walked right here just a few minutes ago. But magic is magic, so…

I stop in my tracks. I’d scream, but my mouth won’t move.

Of all the things I’ve seen with these people so far, this is the most outrageous.

“What’s that?” I finally manage to ask, quiet so as not to disturb the…the…

“That’s Jake,” she says, pointing toward the spotted leopard.

It can’t be. But it is. A real, live, living, breathing leopard. Good sized one. Meaty.

I don’t dare get closer, so I laser focus my eyes to get a better look. I mean, this is the real thing. What it’s doing in Maryland, I have no idea. The biggest cats I know of here are bobcats, unless I’ve got my geography wrong.

On detailed look, I see it is sort of deformed. So maybe a pet? A kickback from the zoo?
“What’s wrong with it?” I ask.

“I told you. It’s not an ‘it.’ It’s Jake.”

“You turned Jake into a leopard?”

“Of course not. He did it himself. What good is it if I do it for him?”

She has to be kidding. I mean, she just has to be.

I slowly move toward the animal, close enough to see the breath laboring in and out of it, and smell it’s husky scent. Far more potent that me in my mud-caked pants. I look more closely at the animal’s deformed legs. The front right and the hind left are withered. On the right side, which I can see better with the way it is sitting, I see the bone is drawn up into the ribs and there is hardly a paw. More like a flipper.

“What’s wrong with it…him?” I ask again.

“He’s not very good at it yet,” the old lady explains, like that should be obvious to anyone.

I take another step, but “Jake” bares his teeth at me and growls—not unlike Bea was growling at me just moments ago.

This is their magic? Turning into animals? The spinning of spoons and the breaking of bowls was plenty miraculous enough for me. I take another step forward, thinking if I go slow it will let me approach.

“I wouldn’t get too close,” she warns. “He doesn’t know he’s Jake right now. He’ll do what leopards do, if he feels threatened.”

“Can you do this, too?” I ask, thinking things could get pretty wild, if not outright dangerous, if she can. Especially if she doesn’t know when she’s doing it. I recall Jake saying she was good intentioned, but not always herself. This would certainly qualify as not herself.

“Depends what you mean,” she says, starting to gather wood, like this is nothing special. Just what they were doing this afternoon. “Can I turn into a spotted leopard? Not at all.”

I feel a deep sigh of relief and start to gather wood along with her, but my hands are shaking so hard, it’s not easy to grasp even the larger sticks.

I try to make sense of it. It’s just so crazy. I mean, how can you take it seriously? But there is a spotted leopard in easy pouncing distance from me right this very moment. How can you not take it seriously?

“My true nature is akin to the black panther,” she goes on. “That’s what I shapeshift into.”

I look at her like she must be joking. Like she has to be pulling one over on me. But then I look into her eyes and see a flash of something. Something dark. It’s like she showing me a side of her that is so primal, so animal like, so that I will have no choice but to take her at her word.

“And Anna?” I have to ask.

Bea shrugs. “I don’t know if she can shapeshift at all anymore.”

“She shapeshifted time today,” I say. “That’s what she called it. She made more than half an hour be only five minutes. My own watch turned back.”

Bea raises her eyes and nods as if she is pleased to hear it.

“But I thought you said you were in constant communication, so wouldn’t you know that?”

“Our energy is connected,” she offers. “But I can’t get details. That’s where you come in, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know where I come in,” I say, honestly.

I want to ask if I’m going to be able to turn into something as well, if I learn the magic. But I’m afraid of the answer.

Suddenly, the great cat begins to move, standing shaky, then limping himself off into the woods.

“It’s not good to show how it’s done,” Bea offers in explanation, though it explains almost nothing.

“So, Anna, what is she. I mean, if she could shapeshift?”

“A mountain lion, through and through. I’d think you could see that about her.”

I can’t even begin to know what to say to that.

“It’s hard to know what you’ll become, once you learn,” she continues, turning toward her fire pit and dousing the pile with lighter fluid. I guess I expected her to use two sticks rubbed together. More and more I realize I’m not going to know what to expect from any of these people.

Within minutes, there is a great blaze. I wonder about others seeing it and finding her here. Then I remember I just spent a decent amount of time looking for this whole place, only to find it was right where I recall it having been.

“I know you are wondering,” she continues, feeding the fire and talking over her shoulder, “So I’ll tell you right off. Yes, you’re meant to learn to shapeshift. That doesn’t mean you can do it. But you are meant to be taught and to try. Don’t know what you’ll shapeshift into, either. That’s for magic to reveal, when the time comes.”

She turns toward me to look me over. “I would say you’re not likely from the cat family. You can sniff our your own kind even before the magic is learned. You don’t smell like a cat.”

I’m thinking I smell like dead fish, but don’t say so. “Is it hard to learn?”

“Sure,” she says. “And there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed. You see the trouble Jake is having and he’s been at it quite a while. Now, tell me what you’re here for so I can get back to my own life. Hardly a moment’s peace, with a visitor two days in a row.”

A visitor. Which reminds me of Michael. We need to get to that now, so I can get back to him. I wait for her to turn back, so she can hear me, or read my lips, or whatever she does, but she doesn’t. So maybe she’s not deaf. Or, as Jake says, it is selective. Might as well try it out.

“I met Michael today. When I went in to see Anna.”

The old woman spins around toward me in a flash, yet as graceful as a dancer. The look of shock on her face tells me she heard me just fine.

“Michael?”

“He’s in town. He was at the retirement village, hiding in her room. He heard me talking about you and Jake…”

“He heard you?” Again she growls, this one I now know to be the growl of a black panther. Amazing what you can grasp, once you know a thing or two. Knowing my own anger could break a bread bowl, I realize her anger could break me. If she wanted it to.

“I didn’t know he was there at first. But Anna played her role perfectly. He suspects, but doesn’t know anything for sure. That’s why I came to ask you what to do. He’s staying at my house for a month. He wants you to know he already has the magic.”

“I know all about his magic,” she says, now just grumbling. “What did Anna say?”

I decide not to tell her about the breaking bowl being the wrong thing to have taught me right off. Save that for next time. “She told me about your family history. About her being good, and Michael being really good, and how the family line…”

“Poppycock! She can’t be going on about that with you.”

I don’t know what she means, and so don’t know what to say.

“Child, you’re not to pay a wit of attention to those theories of hers. Makes me wish she was losing her mind right about now. It’s all we need, her teaching you that nonsense.”
“So you don’t agree with her? You don’t think we are good or bad, or that I’ll have to choose between Jake and Michel, to see who gets to be king and continue on as the head of the family line?”

Bea nearly doubles over laughing, as Jake—the real Jake—walks in from the woods. He’s rubbing his head and staggering just a bit.

“Mayden!” he says, like he didn’t just see me here. Because maybe he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t just a spotted leopard. In fact, maybe both Bea and Anna are as loony as it gets. Maybe I’ve been suckered in. Totally snowed.

“What’s funny?” Jake asks Bea, who is still whooping and hopping from foot to foot, looking like it’s all she can do not to pee her pants right here.

“Tell her,” Bea says, because obviously she can’t stop laughing long enough to do it herself.

“Anna was telling me about how there were good and bad people, and how your family line needs to continue.”

Now Jake is laughing, though not nearly so hard as Bea.

“They differ in opinions on this,” he says.

“Clearly,” I say, feeling huffy. I mean really, what am I supposed to do if no one is giving me correct information?

“Don’t be upset,” Jake says. “There is some truth to it. In a round about way.”

“Truth? Not a wit of it, the way Anna tells it!” Now Bea settles down to speak. “Here’s the truth: This family will continue on if just one of you masters the art of shapeshifting. You, Michael, or even you Mayden, as an outsider. Anyway, who can reduce a person to mostly good or mostly bad?”

“You know that is not what she means,” Jake says in a cautious tone of disagreement.

“I know exactly what she means,” Bea insists, “and Anna is going off the deep end to try to teach a novice, an outsider novice, anything about good and bad. It’s master-level material and there’s now way Mayden here is going to take it right.”

“I’m confused,” I say.

“As well you would be, at the level you are thinking. With good being helping an old lady cross the street and bad being playing with matches, no doubt. That kind of thinking can only lead you in the wrong direction.”

“I can go deeper than that,” I say, a little offended. I mean, does Bea think I don’t have a brain? That I can’t consider the greater depths of good and evil?

“Let’s hope you can,” she says. “Now, tell me about Michael.”

“Michael?” Now it’s Jake’s turn to be shocked.

I don’t want this conversation to move on just yet, having absolutely no idea what to believe now. But I don’t think I have a choice.

“He’s returned and found Anna,” Bea explains.

“He is staying with my family for a month,” I add, to prove I do know something.

“What? How?” Jake asks.

“My dad and your grandmother are business partners. That’s why I met Anna, because Dad said to give her a little extra attention.”

Jake looks like he can’t process what I’m saying. He rubs his head, shaking it. Maybe it’s the animal thing, if that was really him. I’m not buying anything I’m told here anymore, without seeing things myself. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Right now I need to get home and I need to know what to do with Michael when I get there.

“Michael took me to lunch. He’s already doing magic. Helene doesn’t know, but he’s figured out a lot about what is going on, or at least he has his ideas about it. He asked me to tell Anna about his magic—things like spinning spoons and making them move…”

“Easy stuff,” Jake says, as if it is nothing.

So maybe there is something to the competition between them. Thankfully, I won’t have to choose, according to Bea.

Though I trust Anna more, I want to believe Bea more. A whole lot less pressure, Bea’s way. It occurs to me for the millionth time that this whole thing could make me crazy.

“Michael thinks you won’t teach him until he is 18, but he doesn’t want to wait. He’s here for a month and I think he wants to see you.”

“Well, he has it right about his coming of age. Not that we don’t want to teach him. It’s that we can’t. Sacred vow to my granddaughter.”

I’d tell her that’s what Anna said, when she went into the family history. But I don’t need to send her off in another fit of laughter. I just need to know what to do with Michael.

“So what do I do? Tell him no? Pretend I don’t know you?”
Bea stops playing with the fire and goes to sit on her front porch rocker.

“Hey!” I say, pointing toward a snake underneath one of the blades.

“Python,” Bea scolds, “get out from under there!”

“Python?” I should leave it, but I just have to ask.

“Just a simple black snake, but she has big dreams,” Bea says as the snake seems to obey, moving out of the way, but not far.

Watching, I have to wonder if this is like a really long, strange dream? Because things like this don’t happen in real life. Do they?

“I’ll have to ponder this,” Bea says. “Magic is surely on the move, if you have found us and Michael has found you. But what does it want? This, we can’t know without a more direct inquiry.”

She seems to ponder as she pulls out a pipe, stuffs it with tobacco, and lights up.

“Why is he saying with you,” she asks, talking around the pipe in her clamped jaw, “and not Helene?”

“She’s traveling out of the country unexpectedly, he said. She thought he’d be better supervised and have someone his age to hang out with. Of course, she doesn’t know I know Anna.”

“So, the magic is moving quite seamlessly, then.”

“I guess,” I say, shrugging.

“Alright then, find out when she’ll be traveling in the air. It’s the safest time. I’ll meet with him at your house. I want to see the place, anyway, and meet your Mrs. Hamilton myself.”

“Why?”

Bea looks up like it’s yet another question that ought to be obvious. “She tried to poison Scottie, a member of our cat family. That cannot go without retribution.”

She leans toward me, removes her pipe, and winks. “You see, I’m as bad as Anna says.”