“Hey,” I hear a voice say from behind me, soft and low. My heart skips a beat, like it did when Michael first showed up. But this time it is because I thought he was beside me, not behind me. And I have no idea where Jake is.

Suddenly I’m feeling dizzy, like there’s a tornado in my head and another in my stomach, but they are not turning in sync.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “Your dad got to talking. Guy stuff.”

“What?” I say, feeling a sense of de ja vu inside the tornado.

“Your dad,” Michael says. “He kept talking. Looks like I missed the fire.”

I look to the fire and see it has, indeed, gone down. Nearly out. When did that happen?

“Where’s Jake?” I ask, looking around, listening.

“Is he here?” Michael asks, anxious.

“Well, yeah. You were just talking to him.”

“Maybe not?” he says, like it’s a question. Like this swirling in my head and gut might mean I’m not totally on the same page as he is.

“Yes you were. He said we had to be a team. To get Anna out. Ring a bell from about two seconds ago?” Now I’m really getting worried. Because while I’m sure Michael has to know this, I’m also wondering if he does. And if he doesn’t, how could that be?

“Are you alright?” Michael asks, looking at me in the eyes, then one eye, then the other.

“I don’t know.” I say, turning away, and hearing myself sound even further off. “I mean, we were talking. And then Jake showed up. And then you weren’t beside me, you were behind me saying ‘Hey,’ but now you don’t know what just happened.”

“Oh,” he says, clearly unsure of what to say.

“But there was a fire,” I say, turning back to look at it. “A big one. And now clearly…”

“There’s not,” he fills in.

“No, there’s not. I don’t feel so good. Kind of dizzy. Not quite to puking, but edging up on it.”

If that doesn’t put a guy off, I don’t know what will. But it’s true, and I’m too confused to hedge it. He immediately moves to my side, taking me by the elbow and waist, which I have to admit feels pretty nice. He moves me to the wrought iron two-seater bench and sits me down. I feel for his hand, to be sure he’s really here, now. I feel that flash of electric connection, and that feels good, too. Yes, he is here.

“Tell me what happened,” he insists, sounding more than intrigued. “All of it.”

“I don’t know. You came down, said you were late because you were talking guy stuff to Dad. I mean, before, not just now. I told you about Anna, and I was trying to get you to help me get her out of the home. I was really plotting, and well, manipulative to be honest. Which really isn’t like me.”

“Doesn’t seem so,” he says in a kind of voice that makes me feel like I could tell him anything, and it would be okay.

“Then,” I continue, “you told me about how you figured out about why the spoons weren’t working with Bea around.”

“I did?” he asks, surprised. “How?”

“Don’t mess with me,” I insist, as harsh as I can.

“I’m not,” he insists right back. He even sounds innocent.

“Seriously?” I ask.

“Seriously. I’d like to know, because I have not figured it out, despite wracking my brain all day.”

“You said you realized why out on the soccer field. You told me all about how you tune into the zone and you just know things. You said the spoons didn’t work because of the leather bag Bea gave you and then you showed me how you could do the spinning with the bag off, but not on.”

He nods, so at least he doesn’t think I’m crazy. I mean, I might be, but I don’t need him thinking so. “It makes total sense that it would work like that. Only I didn’t figure it out. You did, somehow.”

“No, I didn’t. You told me. Right here in front of the fire. Which for a while there looked a lot like Anna. Which, by the way, was totally weird and a little spooky.”

“We should tell Gran Bea,” Michael insists.

“No need,” a voice says from a distance, up over the hill. It’s Bea. At least, I think it is. I don’t know much for sure right now.

“Gran Bea?” Michael asks.

I see her over the hill, moving quickly, seeming out of breath. I can just imagine her trotting over here as a wild animal then changing back to her old woman form just in time. I have no way to know that is what happened, I just get this image. Just having her here, though, makes me feel better, and at the moment I can’t imagine I was thinking of going against her about anything.

“Michael,” she says, coming closer, “put your medicine bag on and step to the other side of the fire. Mayden, stay where you are.”

“Okay,” I say, even as Michael moves from beside me.

“How did you know to come?” I ask her, already a little afraid she might know too much. After all, just moments ago I was plotting to go behind her back with Michael and Jake. It can’t be good for that to come out.

“Jake’s inner alarm went off. He was falling off to sleep when his image was called upon to project itself here. He’s well trained, and he knows when something is happening that concerns him, even at a distance. He immediately came to tell me, which is exactly what you must do any time there is such an odd occurrence. If you want me to keep you safe during your education, that is. You understand?”

“So you expect it to happen again?” I say, feeling a wave of deep-down fear roll through me.

“I expect everything,” she says flatly.

I don’t like the sound of that, but I’m more than glad I won’t have to be going behind her back. In fact, it seems I couldn’t even if I tried. I’m more than glad for it. This is so very over my head.

“I wasn’t myself, before,” I say, trying to explain my plotting without actually admitting anything, in case she doesn’t actually know the details.

“You were and you weren’t,” Bea says, not exactly accusing, but not letting me off the hook either.

“What happened Gran Bea?” Michael says from a safe distance, probably even farther away than he needs to be, especially with his medicine bag on.

She ignores him, but speaks loud enough for someone a good distance off to hear. “It’s my fault, really. I invoked the fire for you Mayden. But I never warned you to stay away from the element of fire for at least 72 hours. Basic magical rules, really. I never thought you’d have a fire pit in this back yard, but I should have warned you anyway. Even a cigarette match could have been trouble. Not that you smoke. You don’t smoke do you? No, I can see you don’t. I’m just not used to someone who doesn’t know a thing about magic. In any event, you can be sure that won’t happen again.”

“What’s wrong with going near fire?” I ask, wondering how safe I am if she’s forgetting what I do and don’t need to know.

“Nothing wrong with it, in and of itself,” she says. “But the kind of magic we did today lingers, like lighter fluid on your fingers. We taught you to breath in magic, and you know what a bellows will do to fire. My suspicion is that you were practicing the breathing before it happened, weren’t you?

“Actually, I was,” I say, feeling confused because I had thought practicing would have been a good thing. “Before Michael showed up, the first time I mean. I was outdoors so I thought it would be a good chance to build up my magical strength.”

“Yes,” Bea says, “you were right. But between the air and fire, you can conjure up quite a bit of trouble, without knowing much at all of what to do with it. Or what it opens you to. Perhaps Anna was right that the first thing to teach you is protection.”

“Why does she need protection?” Michael asks. “What happened to her?”

“Now, I’m glad to be talking to you, Mayden,” Bea says loudly, “and very glad to have found you alone.”

There seems to be a lot of meaning in her tone, like she’d like us to get her real drift. In two seconds, the meaning comes over me, sort of like a wind. What she is saying is that she’s not teaching him. She’s teaching me. Because that is the way it has to be.

I look to him, and see his heartbreak. He wants to learn directly. I can see that so clearly. It’s not fair, at all.

“What happened?” I ask for him, and also for me. I think I can handle it now, with my stomach a little less queasy and my head clearing.

“I suppose that depends,” she says, “on what happened.”

“Um…” I don’t want to seem dense here, but I am not catching this drift.

“What happened in your vision?” she asks, this time more pointedly.

“Oh. It was a vision?” I ask.

That sounds important. Me, have a vision?

“Don’t be overly impressed with yourself,” she says, again pointedly. “It wasn’t your doing, I’m sure of that.”

I feel the deflation, but hang on to the fact that at least it happened to me. To me! That would be a good thing, right?

“Well, let’s see,” I answer. “I was looking at the fire and breathing in the earth, like you said. It got a little weird, because I kept seeing Anna’s face over the fire. I just thought it was my imagination…”

“Just your imagination!” Bea exclaims. “That’s what they taught you in school, didn’t they? And at home? That your dreams are not real? That your creative thought is best left in kindergarten, along with your crayons? Well, I’ll be un-teaching you that before anything else. Gracious, the list is ever-growing. Alright, what else?”

“Michael came, and we talked about the reason he couldn’t spin the spoons, and he told me about how…”

“You’re missing something important,” Bea interupts.

I think. Oh, yeah. Duh. “So I was being a little sly about getting Michael to help me, well, with a plan I had. It was to, um, well, get Anna out of the home. I have to tell you, it was like I was growing wild about it. I knew I needed his help, and so I was playing him, you know, to get him to think it was his idea and all kinds of stuff. Which I swear to you both is not like me.”

“We’re alone, aren’t we?” Bea insists more than asks.

I catch that drift again. It speaks clearly that we are meant to pretend Michael isn’t even here. Okay, I can do that.

“Totally alone,” I say. “So I had to get him to agree to help me find a way to get Anna out of there. I do feel that we can’t leave her in there, if you want my opinion, but this was more than an opinion. It was like an obsession. And it’s really not like me to plot behind someone’s back. For sure not yours, Bea. I wish I could prove that is how I really feel, but I did also feel the other way, at the time, so I don’t know.”

“I appreciate your honestly,” she says, like she really does.

“Then Jake showed up, well, I heard—we heard—his voice from off over there in the bushes. He said he wanted Anna out too, and that we would team up, the three of us. He said that we had before. That’s pretty much it. And then Michael…” I guess I better leave that part off, because I can’t exactly say he showed up and then she did, if he’s not supposed to be here.

Bea nods again and again, obviously thinking.

I can practically see Michael biting his tongue not to ask a thousand questions. But only I can do that.

“So what happened to me, Bea?”

“Magic has spoken its wishes,” she replies with a huge sigh. “It wants Anna out of the home. And it wants You, Michael, and Jake to work together. Both of which are impossible. Magic doesn’t think much of the impossible, but neither does it help with the many details. That is for us to ponder, and we will. For now, though, I’m more concerned about you. Because most of all, Magic wants to communicate through you, Julie Mayden.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I ask, immediately steeped in fear again. I mean serious fear, like someone took a bat to my gut.

“There is that idea of good and bad, again,” she says. “I suppose it depends on how it all turns out, if you’ll call it a good thing or a bad thing, in the end. The only thing for certain is that it is a powerful thing. A great responsibility. And I must tell you now, the cost of resisting what magic wants is high.”

“Somehow I knew that,” I say, thinking that is what hit me in the stomach with a bat.

I look at Michael, who seems to both feel for me and maybe feel a little envious, too. I get the sense that no matter how far along he is, he’ll be trailing me soon enough. It can’t be easy to take, what with him the true family member.

“There is a lot you are going to know,” Bea says, sounding resolved. “You will likely learn in a variety of ways, not just the way you learned tonight. I can help you with anything you are faced with, but you are likely going to know a great deal before the rest of us. Magic has found you, and chosen you. There is nothing any of the rest of us can do about it.”

“Why me?” I have to ask. I want to learn. I really do. But this is deep and I’m already managing to screw up the little I’ve learned in only two lessons.

“That is the easiest question of all to answer,” Bea says, smiling wistfully. “Magic chose you because you are a beautiful young woman and all the other women in our family are now old. Even Helene has been beyond interest for many years.”

“Okay, that’s creepy,” I say.

“Not like you think,” she assures. “Magic is also female. It seeks to have a mirror to look into, so to speak. It seeks a beautiful, young, feminine face to imagine is it’s own.”

“Mine?” I ask, incredulous.

“Yours,” Bea says, again smiling, like she knows something of this personally, and it’s really not such a bad thing after all.