“What do I do, Mother Maples?” Snowpepper fidgeted anxiously. She felt an urgent need to get on with it! She felt Sylvie slipping away from her, and it terrified her.

“Now, child, it is time for you to relax your mind, slow down your thoughts, and simply breathe.”

“What? But Mother Maples, she’s in trouble, I just know it! Please, I have to go to her now!”

“Remember the first card, Snowpepper.” The witch’s voice was firm. “There is no other way. If you are frightened because of the time this must take, then that fear is where you need to go right now.”

The faerie could hardly restrain her agitation. She wanted to leap up and dance a dance of impatience, jerky and wild, but instead, she tried to pay attention to the Faerie Godwitch’s words. She trusted her implicitly, though she could not say why. “How can I go to fear?” she asked, to take her mind off her own impatience. “It’s not a place, is it?”

A smile twitched the corners of the chocolate mouth. “It’s not exactly a place, no; but we will make believe it has a location, and that will do. Now,” she continued briskly, “You will need to find a comfortable position where your body can relax. That chair should do nicely.” She indicated a huge, stuffed easy chair in the dim corner of the room, which Snowpepper hadn’t previously noticed. She sank obediently into the chair’s soft embrace. It was unbelievably comfortable.

“Allow your body to grow heavier, to sink into the chair, child,” she murmured. “And breathe, deeply and slowly, allowing your breath to fill you on the inhale, and empty you out on the exhale. Imagine that you are a balloon. When you breathe in, the balloon will inflate, and when you breathe out, it will deflate completely.”

The faerie slowly began to relax. It was easier than she had expected to allow her jittery tension to ease, though her background sense of urgency was unabated.

“Sink inside your body, and immerse your awareness into your sensations. Feel the weight of your flesh pressing into the chair, and the feeling of the air and the textures against your skin. Hear the sound of my voice and the ticking of the clock. Hear all these things from the inside of your body, enclosed and surrounded by the boundary of your skin. You exist within your skin, as you continue to breathe, deeply and slowly, and continue to surrender your weight to gravity’s pull.”

This last was proving especially difficult for Snowpepper. Her natural instinct was to lift, to fly; to try to let go of her buoyancy and give herself over to the inexorable force of gravity triggered a deep, visceral terror. Mother Maples seemed to sense this, for she said, “If you feel frightened, locate the fear. Where is it situated in your body?”

Snowpepper felt the fear shuddering in her solar plexus, at the bottom of her rib cage right in the centre, about where her stomach was.

“See yourself traveling with your point of view into that part of yourself, and feel the fear directly. Don’t think about it—feel it. As you do that, allow yourself to make any sounds that the fear wants to make. Let the feeling grow—amplify it—don’t resist it or fear it. Nurture the feeling of fear and find out what its message is. It is a valid part of you trying to tell you something important. Remember that, as you express it.”

She tried to imagine herself moving down inside her body toward the tight quivering ball in her stomach. As she did so, she began to tremble, small quivers at first that grew into wild juddering heaves. Before she could stop herself, a piteous wail escaped her lips.

“Yes, dear one, make all the sounds you need to.” Mother Maples’ voice was soft, approving. “There is nothing you can do wrong now. Simply allow. Release your controls and let go into the fear.”

Snowpepper shrieked and spasmed, her body writhing in a terrified agony that held no physical sensation of pain, yet was utter agony still. The world exploded into a red blaze and she lost all sense of separation from the pure emotion that gripped her. She was but dimly aware of her own voice sobbing and wailing, so immersed she was in her flesh. She felt turned inside out, more aware of the interior of herself than she had ever been.

After an endless time, she became aware again of Mother Maples’ voice, still murmuring, calmly, comfortingly, “Continue to breathe, deep and slow. Continue to feel yourself sinking into your body, into the chair. Continue to feel the sensations of your body from the inside. Allow your body to move in the ways that it wants to, and to make any sounds as you feel the impulse to.”

She focused again on her breathing as the sounds and shudders abated naturally. For the first time, the witch asked her a question. “What has happened to the fear? Can you see it?”

Snowpepper looked again where she had first sensed the fear in her solar plexus. To her surprise, in its place she saw an infant, floating in soft waters. She said, “It’s turned into a baby. It’s floating underwater.”

“Very good. Continue to breathe, deep and slow. Now ask the baby if it needs anything from you now.”

She had an impression of pure contentment. She said, “I don’t think it needs anything. It seems to be happy under the water now. But it was afraid of the water before. Something changed.”

“That’s good,” the witch said, smiling.

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