Somewhere between taking off in a flat out run and meeting up with Anna, an odd thought struck me: Should she be drinking wine? For the past eighteen months she’s been drugged up and nearly dead to the world. Now she’s standing, gesturing, laughing…and drinking? I don’t know why that thought, in particular, came to me. But it did, and now that I’ve caught up to her, I’m both ecstatically excited to see her walking around, and worried, too. Something isn’t right.

“Anna!” I say, nearly running into her, out of breath.

“Mayden!” she replies, seemingly as delighted to see me as I am to see her. We hug right there in front of everyone, careful not to spill her glass.

“I can’t believe you’re here, like this,” I say. I want to ask…Was it the healing I did? Is the Magic I carry that powerful? But I don’t dare. I don’t know the people she’s talking to. She might not want them to know where she’s just been for the past year and a half.

“Margaret, Joanna, meet our dear Mayden,” she says, offering an elegant arm toward each in turn. I shake their hands and get a jolt of energy, like the one with Bea and Anna and Jake and Michael. Not as strong, but a definite current.

“We have heard so much about you,” Margaret says, her smile big and beaming, her eyes sparkling.

“Really?” I say before I can think about it.

“Oh yes,” Joanna answers, “you’re the talk of the town.”

I look at Anna, confused. Maybe they are closer friends than I thought.

Anna smiles a knowing smile, but says nothing. She takes another sip of wine, obviously delighting in it. Maybe it’s not wine. Maybe it’s just juice in a wine glass. But I don’t think so.

“Will you speak to us all today?” Margaret asks.

“Oh no, not today,” Anna says. “She’s yet to have a full shift.”

“Oh,” both women say, as if disappointed but understanding.

They know? I silently ask Anna, my intent eyes boring directly into hers.

To this, she only smiles again and takes another sip. It’s not right. She’s not right.

Yes, something is definitely wrong here. I look toward the hill where Helene is perched, but she is hidden by a small crowd. Michael is there, I see. For some strange reason, he is down on one knee. I feel a pang again, a strong one, as I remember his leaving. But it is more than that, too. There is worry from him. What will Helene say? What will she know, just by seeing him? Will his work with Magic be found out? What will she do? And what if she finds out he’s leaving the family for another kind of magic, studying with some unknown shaman? A male shaman, at that.

Anna slips her arm around my waist and leads me toward another couple.

“Mayden, meet Mr. and Mrs. Josephine Clark.”

Again the handshakes, and the jolts. Josephine? His name is Josephine?

A knowing kind of feeling hits me out of the blue: This is a matriarchy… they follow the women’s names. Could it be, is there any way… everyone here is…

“Now you’re catching on,” Anna whispers to me.

And then the rest of it hits me: We are in a space of Magic. This isn’t real life. Not my real life, anyway. I must have stepped into it when I left the house. That’s why Anna’s standing and drinking. She’s not really here. She’s still back in bed, at the home. My heart drops so hard in my chest I can feel it. It was too much to hope for.

“And now,” Anna whispers again, “you’re off track.”

“This can’t be real,” I say half under my breath.

“I assure you, we assure you, this is real,” Mrs. Josephine Clark says, giggling. “We’ve come to you Julie Mayden!”

I look to her, then to Anna, then to Mr. Josephine Clark. They all look at me expectantly, like someone just told a joke and they are waiting for me to laugh.

“I don’t get it,” I say at full volume, no longer trying to keep cover. Doesn’t seem there is a need to.

“Julie!” Sally says from behind me.

I turn to her, hoping no one blows my cover. That’s the last thing I need.

“Where’s Dad?” I say, trying to sound casual.

“He had to leave,” she says without further explanation.

“What? Where?” I ask, practically cry. Having him here, even if he didn’t lift a finger to help me get all this ready, was a kind of back up for me. These are his business associates, after all. He would have known what to do if things got crazy, which it appears they will.

“Not sure,” she says in a vague way, adding to the chorus of folks who seem to be hiding something from me. She turns to the couple and greets them warmly. “Hello Josephine, Ed.”

“You know them?” I ask. But they are of the Magical people here. How does she know them?

“I know everyone here,” she replies, smiling flatly, like that should be obvious. “Everyone knows everyone here, except you.”

Another knowing hits me, like a blow to my chest. Sally is one of these people. One of… us? And everyone here is…one of us? I thought it was just Anna and Bea and Jake and Michael? And Python, too. I thought the family was dying out? I thought… It’s all I can do to keep my jaw from dropping open and hanging mid-air.

“That’s why your dad isn’t here,” she says, like that should mean something to me.

“These aren’t his business associates?” I ask, just to confirm my crazy notions.

To which Anna, Sally, Ed and Josephine laugh. Not with me, but at me. At my confusion and lack of understanding and probably my utter stupidity. It’s hard to blink back the tears of humiliation that are threatening to come. I have to literally hold my breath, and I can feel my face going red.

“Breathe, Mayden,” Anna says. “It’s almost time.”

I look again to the woman on the hill, and see the crowd is leaving her. She’s still blocked by one very tall man and a shorter woman, but I see Michael is leaving. I follow him with my eyes as he makes his way down the hill to pick up his bag. I want to run to him, to ask him what is going on, but he seems in a hurry. Besides, it seems he’s really leaving, and however much I need him, I can’t risk that goodbye head on. Especially now. I watch him go, and my heart going with him. Don’t forget us, I think, willing the thought to reach him, and travel with him wherever he goes.

“We’ll miss him,” Anna says, her own eyes on Michael as well. But she doesn’t sound like I feel. It doesn’t seem to worry her that he’s going, the way he worried about her being stuck in the home. What was it he said, until last night he “didn’t know” whatever it is I’m finding out. What didn’t he know?

Fear grows in me, and anger, and a wariness toward everyone here. What do they know that I don’t? And where is Anna? I mean MY Anna, the one who has been so weak and fragile and loving and open with me? Not laughing at me. Not betraying me.

Yes, betraying me. Didn’t everyone say I would learn they lied to me? But was it one lie, or many? Was it something, or everything? And who lied… even Anna? I look at her, desperate to see it’s not true. To see something of the old Anna here. I can’t find her. This woman, this Anna, who clearly is Anna but not MY Anna, is too distant, too cold, too unfeeling.

A crushing weight pounds on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

“She’ll see you now, Mayden,” the short woman has appeared to say. Someone else who knows me, who knows everyone here, who I don’t know.

She’s speaking of Helene, I’m sure. What I’m not sure of is if I want to see her now. Or ever. I look at the stranger, hoping for some small glimpse of understanding as to what is going on. There is none. Another blank, cold, surface-friendly face. Among a hundred such faces, all guests—all lies.

Nonetheless, with my eyes turning as if toward a magnet, they land upon Helene. She is no longer blocked. She is alone on a hill. Waiting, I must presume, for me. Even from a distance, I feel a power that frightens me.

I look to Anna, and now Bea, who has arrived at my side, and Jake, too. Sally, and Python, all stand in one row, looking at me, waiting for me to go to Helene.

“What is this?” I say to any one of them who will answer. But none of them do. They just look at me, stone cold silent. A family, maybe. But a family without love.

Suddenly, I see Jake start to shake, and then shift into his animal form. Python goes right after, and then Bea, and then… yes, Anna, too. Even Sally. One minute she’s Sally, the next she’s a hawk, flapping her wings, looking at me curiously.

“Sally!” I cry out, shivers up and down my spine. But by now everyone, every last person here is shaking and shifting. One by one, people leave, and animals—mostly cats, big cats—appear. My back yard is no longer anything like an urban McMansion with a manicured lawn. It’s a zoo. Even more, a safari.

I look to the hill and see what I expect. The only two humans standing are me, and the great, the awesome, the ever-feared Helene. She beckons me with her eyes. I walk half-dazed through a crowd of parting lions, jaguars, cougars, and a handful of snakes and birds. I know I should be afraid, but I am not. I am, strangely, at home.

The hill is small, but it appears to keep moving away from me, with each step more difficult than the last. Time, too, seems to be slowed, so that the beat of my heart seems to happen only every several seconds. I am breathless.

At last, I reach her.

Looking into her yes, I see my final surprise: She is not hard and cold and ugly. She is beautiful. Utterly beautiful, even magically beautiful.

And then, as Bea predicted, I understand. It was Magic that wanted this party. It was Helene, Bea confessed, that arranged this party.

Helene is Magic.

Despite myself, I bend on one knee before her. Never, ever, in a million years, would I do this if it were not for her utter beauty. There is no way to stand before that. To not be humbled by it.

“Magic,” I whisper.

“Yes,” she says, smiling.

Smiling—at me! I can’t help it, tears begin to roll down my face. This smile, somehow, impossible as it is, means a hundred times what Anna’s did. This is the smile of Magic.

“We have waited so long for this day, Mayden,” she says, her voice like honey glimmering in sunlight. “So much has been done to prepare for it.”

“Thank you,” is all I can say. I would stand, but I can’t. Don’t want to. Let this feeling go on forever. Let me feel the love of this mother, this family, this Magic.

“I didn’t think you would find me,” I hear myself saying, not really knowing what I’m talking about.

“It wasn’t easy. We knew one of us would find you here, in ordinary reality. We didn’t know when, or who. We were beginning to wonder.”

“Sally discovered me,” I say, amazed and yet already knowing it’s true, even before Magic smiles her agreement.

“But Dad, he doesn’t know. He’s not one of us, is he?” Again I already know, even before she shakes her head in confirmation.

“A good man, though, don’t you think?” she asks, again with that smile.

“I love him, as a daughter. And I guess I like him as a human. Even with how ordinary he is.”

“You’ve done well, Mayden, so far. But of course, you know how little time there is now.  How much there is ahead of us, and how few of us there are.”

I nod, but don’t like the sound of it. Nor the sound of her voice, as if the sunlight on the honey has left, and the smooth easiness of it is hardening.

“You also know that there is still much to come, in order to complete your initiation.”

I don’t know, not really, not in any concrete way. But somewhere, deep within, in memories stored far, far away, I have a sense that I do. The burst in my heart, the beaming love I feel, once again begins to fall.

No…no… no…

No. Don’t do this. No, don’t.

My pleading is silent, intent, earnest. But she pays no heed, as somehow I knew she would not.

Instead, Magic turns hard and cold in a matter of seconds. Her ice is worse than Anna’s or any of the others, by the same magnitude that her love shone through so much greater.

“You’ve decided once, with Anna at witness,” she says in a voice that nearly freezes my tears, surely freezes my heart. It is as if she is spitting daggers at me, hating me. “Now decide again. Do you take Magic, whatever the form, whatever the feeling, whatever you do or do not understand?”

My throat is frozen shut, so that I could not answer even if I wanted to. Is it fear? Yes, but more than that. All beauty is gone, in her face and in my heart.

Only betrayal remains.

A hard, cold feeling rises in me now, too. Like a wind that moves through the bone, it permeates my soul. I rise to my feet. I don’t fully comprehend what Magic is up to, but this undercurrent…that I do understand. I’ve been here before. Been iced out before. I’ve played and lost, betrayed a thousand times in a thousand failed initiations.

Now, to face it again? No. A strong no. I am not game. I’m not playing. Not now, when my soul remembers failure after failure, abandonment after abandonment.

I do not answer her; do not look upon Magic’s face for another moment. My actions offer my reply: I turn and leave.