“Just a small salad for me,” Sylvie said to the waiter, a skinny boy with liquid black eyes and a friendly grin. “I’m not very hungry.”

“O-kay, that’ll be a small house salad, the soup and sandwich special and a personal size pizza with everything. Coming right up!”

Sipping a glass of water between bites of salad, Sylvie looked at her brother. He had changed so much. Was it just the city? He seemed happier, in his element. What about…?

“Carl,” she blurted, “Mom told me about, you know, Asafel. Do you still talk to him?”

Carl’s head jerked up so fast he nearly choked on his pizza. “What? Mom! You didn’t!”

Sylvie was taken aback by his vehement reaction. “Hey!” she protested indignantly, “What’s the big deal? I should’ve been told about him all along! I have a right, you know! I’m the girl! Asafel said!”

“That’s right, dear,” Adele said, glancing nervously at Sylvie, “We decided, Asafel and I that is, that Sylvie needed to know. It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Oh, it did, did it?” he said angrily. “What about Dad? How she going to handle him? Do you want to put her through what I went through, trying to keep a secret like that from him? Dad’s a paranoid maniac about this kind of stuff! Hell, I had a lifetime of practice hiding from him, and the old bugger caught me anyway! Christ!” He lifted a slice of pizza in a shaking hand and ripped off an angry bite.

Sylvie took a deep breath. She had meant to bring this up to her mother earlier, but somehow the moment had never seemed right. “Well, that’s the thing,” she said. “I’m not going home. I won’t live with Dad anymore.”

“What? Sylvie!” Carl looked stricken. “You can’t stay in the city all alone! You’re way too young! Of course you have to go home!”

“Carl,” Adele said, “I’ve thought about this myself. Since you left, Sylvie hasn’t, well, home hasn’t been good for her. If I could, I might leave myself, to tell the truth, but…” she glanced out the window. “I haven’t been a good mother to her in the last couple of years, either. Your father does take up a lot of space, you know. I think she would be better off away from him. She could hardly do worse here, given the right sort of environment. Perhaps…” she hesitated. “Well, I hoped that maybe she could stay with you?”

Sylvie held her breath. Please say yes, Carl, she thought. But she knew from the look on his face that it wouldn’t be that way.

“Oh, no, Mom, I can’t, it would never work. Sylvie’s only fifteen. I’m a musician, I play in a band, I live in a communal house, it’s kind of a party place, it could never work. I couldn’t keep an eye on her in that kind of environment. And I’m always at work or playing gigs, anyway, Syllie, I’m sorry,” he finished, a little lamely.

Her heart in her mouth, desperate words spilled from Sylvie’s mouth like blood from a mortal wound. “Well, no, hey, how about the Home? I bet Father James would let me stay, and he’s just the sweetest nicest gentlest man I’ve ever known, and the other people there are nice too, and I want to stay here, I love the city, I want to go to art school and learn to dance and see all the things there are to see here and please, please don’t make me go back to Follett Creek, I would die there, I’d kill myself, I’d run away again, I promise, I can’t live with Dad and Scotty and it’s so boring and dead and cold up there, and I don’t fit in, I’d go crazy–”

“Hey, hey, Syllie, chill, it’s all good,” Carl interrupted her flood of words. He looked anxiously at Adele. “We’ll figure it out, right, Mom?”

“Yes,” Adele said firmly. “Don’t worry, darling,” she said to Sylvie, who was on the verge of tears. “Don’t forget, you have Asafel now.”

At first she didn’t recognize her son. “Excuse me, is there a…” Adele asked a young man sitting near the door, then stopped, her mouth open. “Oh my goodness, Carl, you’re so thin!” she gasped. He had been husky back in Follett Creek; not fat, but definitely robust. The young man who smiled at her now was sculpted to chiseled perfection. He was gorgeous, Sylvie thought wretchedly.

“Mom!” Carl said warmly, standing to hug her. “Yeah, I’ve been working out at the gym,” he told his mother, ruffling her hair in a gesture so Carl-like it brought tears to Sylvie’s eyes. Her heart ached. “Gotta keep the old pecs cut. I’m a city boy now.” Sylvie felt both invisible and dreadfully conspicuous, hurt and relieved that Carl didn’t seem to notice her. After a moment of horrible tension, Carl said, “Hey, let’s sit down and get some lunch.”

Only then did he see Sylvie. “No! Syllie, is that you?” He seemed nearly as shocked as Adele had been by his appearance. “You’re… oh my God, you’re a woman! Look at you!” A huge grin split his face and he stood to hug her tightly. Sylvie’s face heated. She hugged him back spasmodically, then ducked her face away as she sat. Carl was grinning happily at her, almost as though he were genuinely pleased by her presence. That couldn’t be true, though. Not after what she had done to him all those years ago.

“Kiddo, listen,” Carl said, “Let me say this right up front. I’m really, really sorry I left without saying goodbye. I meant to, you know, but everything got crazy. I’ve felt bad about that ever since. It must have been a shock to you. And then, well, I would have written, but… stuff happened. I kept getting distracted.” Now he looked ashamed and squirmingly uncomfortable. The slowly building tension had become unbearable.

“Forget it,” Sylvie mumbled, her face burning. She didn’t know what to say or where to look. Why was she here? She should have stayed at the Home and let her mother visit with Carl. She had been so eager to see him; this whole adventure had begun on a wave of need to see her brother, but now, her desire had turned to soggy ash in her stomach. She felt sick. She wished they hadn’t met in such a public place. She wanted to throw herself onto her bed and cry into her pillow. Her face felt as stiff as cardboard.

Adele had been looking hard at each of her children in turn. Finally she spoke. “Well, heavens, you could cut the air in here with a knife. What’s going on?” She tried to speak lightly, but she could feel the tension in her throat.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sylvie choked, just as Carl said, “It’s all good, Mom.” They looked at each other and laughed despite themselves. To her own horror, Sylvie’s involuntary giggle turned into a sob. She covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook.

Adele put her arm over her daughter’s shoulders and looked helplessly at Carl. Glancing at the waiter who had approached to take their order, he said, “We’ll need a couple more minutes to decide.” Shrugging, the waiter moved on.

Reaching across the table, Carl took Sylvie’s hand in his own. “Hey, Syllie,” he said softly, “It’s okay, it’s only me, your big brother. Remember?” Sylvie’s sobs burst forth and she tried to choke them back by pressing her palm into her mouth. Patiently, Carl and Adele waited, one holding her hand, the other’s arm draped protectively over her shoulder, until her sobs subsided.

“Now,” Carl coaxed, squeezing her hand gently, “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Am I so hideous?” He crossed his eyes as if trying to see his own face. “Is it the fangs? I thought they were a little over the top…”

Despite herself, Sylvie giggled. “I guess it is still you,” she whispered huskily. Her throat hurt. “You haven’t changed at all. Except for the fangs, I mean,” she added with a shaky grin.

“That’s my girl!” her brother laughed, then turned to place their orders.

I’ve never been much for sports. Looking back, my sporting experiences have been disappointing. The one exception was Swedish Dodgeball in high school. For some unknown reason, that was the most popular game in the high school I went to.

The point of Swedish Dodgeball was to hit people with the ball. If they were hit, they were out, and then they’d go back behind the other team’s line and join in trying to hit whoever was left. In that game, I was magic. Untouchable. By the end of the game, it always came down to me and whoever was left on the other team.

My secret, of course, was fear of being whacked with the ball. They used a regular volleyball, which wasn’t nearly soft enough for me. Nerf dodgeball I could have handled. The girls shrieked ‘ouch’ and the boys made stoic grunting sounds when they were hit. It was a sadistic sport. I don’t remember ever actually being hit (though I suppose I must have been), but I do remember going to almost supernatural lengths to avoid the ball.

More advanced version of the game involved multiple balls, so in addition to being incredibly coordinated you had to have eyes in the back of your head. I could do that. Fear of pain will spur a body to feats of magic. I’ve always had a low pain threshold; I allowed myself to become pregnant only by dint of conveniently forgetting (until the eighth month) that pain was (gulp) centrally involved, then spending the last month in terror listening to ubiquitous tales from other women relating their own childbearing agonies in salacious, play-by-play detail.

But I am speaking of sports. My only other brief spasm of sports-related activity was as an adult. I played ladies’ rec softball for a single season. I got better fast; in fact, I won the trophy for ‘most improved player’… but that doesn’t mean I got good. It just shows how really, really pathetic I was at the beginning.

Nothing could have induced me to play a second season, though. Way too much pain. I couldn’t handle a game that involved actually trying to make physical contact with the ball; not a big soft squishy ball, either, but a hard round missile that left purpling bruises all over my body. I could never quite catch those bouncing low grounders..

By the end of my first and last season playing softball, my legs weren’t fit to be seen in shorts. I looked like I’d been mugged by a midget. If the point of the game had been to avoid the ball, I could’ve been a star, but as it was, I was middling pathetic, flinching away instead of chasing after the ball, and then getting hit in the legs anyway.

Softball was a masochistic game all around. Everything resulted in pain. Sprinting at top speed from a standing start, whacking a hard ball with a hard wooden bat and screeching to sudden bone-jarring stops all resulted in various agonies in hips, shoulders and other wrenchable joints. And for what? The rewards were never clear to me, while the punishments were obvious. Even the best players hurt after a game. It was a joke.

My other problem with softball, aside from the pain thing, was I could never get the hang of how to throw the ball properly. Naturally, I threw ‘like a girl’. I couldn’t figure that out. Why didn’t boys throw like that? Was there a “Secret Order of Balls (S.O.B.)” in which boys were initiated into proper throwing techniques and warned, on pain of expulsion from the brotherhood, never to reveal the sacred mysteries to a female?

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I eventually decided it must be a matter of anatomy. Boys’ arms were jointed differently than girls. The occasional girl or woman who could throw the ball properly must have had some boy genes somewhere. Then there were boys like my brother who also threw like girls. Well, clearly they lacked the ball-throwing boy gene.

Now, I’m told it’s a simple matter of technique: how you ‘cock your elbow’ (hmm…). I’ve been assured that I could easily be taught to throw a ball much farther than I ever dreamed possible. Even if it’s true, frankly, I’m not interested. There’s still the pain problem, and the question ‘why bother?’ has never been adequately answered.

They were to meet Carl at a coffeeshop in Kitsilano near the all-night bagel shop where he worked. He had only an hour’s break and had to work late into the night, so Sylvie and Adele took the bus out to visit him. Sylvie hadn’t talked to him yet; Adele had called him from a pay phone and made the arrangements. Sylvie was so nervous she couldn’t stop fidgeting on the bus, though in her Snowpepper self she felt thrilled and distracted by the novelty of the bus and the people who rode it. She had never imagined that there could be so many different kinds of people! Many of them reminded her of familiar faces from the other side of things. Once she was certain she glimpsed Mother Maples in a chocolate-brown face, but her excited gasp was stifled on a closer look, when she realized it was only a resemblance.

She saw Barkley’s gnarled face in that of one old man who seemed at least a hundred years old, yet agile as a youth. As she watched him spring to his feet and dash out the bus, she noticed her mother watching him as well. “Some people never grow old,” Adele mused. “Asifel says it’s because they keep the fountain of youth within them.”

“What does that mean?” Sylvieasked. “Asifel, can you talk here?”

I can whisper in your ear, he replied. The fountain of youth is magic in some form. Call it faith but it’s more than that. People need something to believe in beyond the mundane everydayness of their lives that they can be excited about. You won’t have to worry about that. You have me, now.

Asifel’s tone made Sylvie feel warm. She smiled at him, and then changed the subject, addressing her mother.

“Mom, was Carl happy to hear from you? Did he seem glad to find out I was coming?"

She felt anxious about seeing her brother. As hard as she had worked to find him, now she feared that he really didn’t want her. Her memories, retrieved from the world of dreams beyond the other side of things, made her writhe in shame. Of course he must hate her. She should consider herself lucky that he was willing to see her at all. Even as Adele responded with vague uninformative reassurances, she fretted. Within, Snowpepper became impatient. Stop thinking like this! she demanded. It hurts the rest of us! You’re making it feel really bad in here!

Sylvie sighed. Snowpepper was right. Such thoughts made her feel even more anxious, stimulating the release of adrenalin and other stress hormones. That couldn’t be good for her. She decided to let her faerie self enjoy the rest of the ride and tried to keep her thoughts to a minimum. Let the meeting with her brother take care of itself.

“Quickfoot!” Snowpepper shrieked, throwing her arms around the small man with the fluffy white hair. “You look so different! What happened? Where’s your fur?” She plucked at his rusty black suit jacket. “If I didn’t know who you were, I wouldn’t have recognized you!”

“Dear faerie, it’s so lovely to see you,” Father James said happily, patting her hand. “As to what happened to me, this is the way I look on this side of things. Haven’t you noticed that you, too, are different here? Where are your wings, faerie?”

Snowpepper’s eyes widened and she craned her neck, trying to see behind her. “They’re gone! I don’t have wings here! Oh. That’s right.” Her face clouded. “Sylvie told me this would happen. I won’t be able to fly here, will I?”

Before he could answer, she grinned mercurially and hopped up and down, letting her arms flap like wings. “Oh, I don’t mind. Just walking feels like flying, here! Sylvie didn’t tell me it was going to be so much fun!”

Father James turned apologetically toward the quiet woman who had entered the Home with Snowpepper. He smiled. “Dear lady, please, do excuse the young one. She’s excitable. My name is Father James, and you are…?”

Adele had watched this exchange with quiet bemusement. It appeared that her Sylvie had been up to more than she knew.

“Eh?” she said. “Er, yes. My name is Adele, Father. I’m Sylvie’s mother.”

The little man looked startled. “Oh, but that’s wonderful! Isn’t it wonderful, Snow—that is, Sylvie? Your dear mother is here!”

“Yes! My Mommie came to visit me!” Snowpepper plopped herself onto the couch next to Adele and wrapped her arms tightly around her. Adele smiled nervously. Fortunately the little priest, if that’s what he was, seemed eccentric enough himself, with his talk of faeries and wings. She hoped Sylvie’s odd behavior wouldn’t bother him.

“Have you come to take your daughter away from us, dear Mrs….?”

“Please, Father, call me Adele.” Adele glanced at Sylvie. “I don’t know yet what our plans are, to tell you the truth,” she admitted. “Home hasn’t been a good place for my daughter lately. And before I decide anything, I would like to talk to my son. Carl. He’s also here in the city.”

Carl. The name tolled in Sylvie’s deep brain, where she floated in blissful dreams. She rose to consciousness, uplifted by the echo of the sound of her mother’s voice speaking her brother’s name. Bobbing to the surface of her mind, she felt herself merging seamlessly with Snowpepper, who snuggled in to her mother’s side watching Father James with shining eyes.

“Hey…" Sylvie said, hardly able to contain her excitement. “Mom, did you say Carl? Do you know where he is?”

Adele lay her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Sylvie? Sweetheart, are you all right?”

When the girl turned to look at her, she was startled by the brightness of Sylvie’s eyes; normally a clear grey, they sparkled like crystal. Her face was alight and animated; if she hadn’t known who she was, Adele would never have recognized her daughter, who was normally so composed.

“Oh, I’m fine, Mommie, I’m wonderful!” Sylvie said in a breathless rush. “Isn’t everything just so lovely here? Oh, I could just hug the whole world!” The strange young woman who seemed to be her daughter leaped from the park bench to twirl slowly in a wide circle with her arms outstretched. “Hello beautiful world!” she shouted joyfully.

“Sylvie!” Adele cried, plucking at her sleeve, trying to pull her back down to the bench. “What on earth is wrong with you? Asafel! Please help, Sylvie is acting crazy!”

Asafel faded into visibility in the air in front of Adele. “Don’t worry, Adele,” he said, “Let the child go. I know it’s disconcerting,” he explained, “But this is a phase she must go through. She’s going to seem rather childlike for a bit, but when this is over, she will be more fully herself than she has been since the age of three.”

Adele tried to assimilate what Asafel was telling her. “Age three?” she said, “Why, that’s when Sylvie had that terrible head injury! She never was the same after that…she changed, she became so frightened and serious, not the same happy little girl at all. It broke my heart, I remember. Are you saying that whatever happened to her then is somehow now being reversed?”

“Exactly so. She will answer to the name Snowpepper now. I’ve given Sylvie’s dominant personality leave to surrender control for a time; the poor thing has been in rigid charge of herself for far too long. In the meantime, you’ll have your happy little girl back, quite as she was before the accident. Larger, of course.” Asafel’s smile managed to be both gentle and sardonic.

Adele’s eyes widened as she looked at Snowpepper, who danced on the sidewalk, spinning about and hopping with first one foot then the other, with a grin of pure childlike delight on her face.

She paled, her right hand going to her mouth. “Oh, my. Asafel, people will notice, they’ll wonder… what if someone calls the police, what if they want to take her away? She’s behaving so strangely!”

“No, they won’t. In this part of town, people get away with behaving just about any way they want to.” Asafel gestured toward a woman across the street who paced back and forth talking and gesticulating to herself. “Don’t worry, Adele. Sylvie will be fine, I promise. Now, it’s time to return to the house. There’s someone there you ought to meet.”

Guiltily, Sylvie realized that she had reverted to controlling Snowpepper as though they were still two people in one body. What had happened? Snowpepper should be able to speak when she felt moved to just as Sylvie could. That was supposed to have changed. She sighed. It must be her own control issues.

You hit the nail on the head, kiddo, said a voice in her mind.

It wasn’t just a voice. It was the voice. The horrible, slippery, insinuating voice that had tormented her in that strange dream within a dream. She jumped as though she had been pinched.

“Who are you?” she demanded aloud.

“What is it, dear?” Adele stirred. She had been sitting quietly, smoking another cigarette. “Did you say something?”

“It’s… I dunno. There’s a weird voice in my head. I don’t like it!”

“Oh?” Adele’s gaze sharpened. “Ask it who it is, and what it wants from you.”

For lack of any brighter ideas of her own, Sylvie complied.

Okay, who the heck are you anyway? How did you get into my head? And what do you want from me?

Aahh… she’s finally asking the right questions. The voice sounded amused. Your mother must have prompted you.

Yeah, so? What’s the answer, then, if those are the right questions? she demanded.

The voice made a sound like a sigh. All right. I am Asafel, at your service, my dear. I am in your head because I have no place else to be; I’ve always been here, in fact. As for what I want from you, I want us to have the rightful and open relationship we ought to have had if you had been properly introduced to me in childhood. Oh, I know it’s too late for it to be the same as it would have been. But it’s not too late to start fresh.

She gasped. “Mom! He says he’s Asafel!”

“That’s who I thought it must be, Sylvie.”

“Why does he feel so icky? It’s horrible! I feel slimed!”

“You’ll have to ask him, Sylvie. It probably has to do with the fact that you’ve never been properly introduced. My fault, of course.” She sighed, exhaling a puff of smoke. “If you want him out of your head, you’re going to have to formally call on him. Ask him to come out.”

Sylvie could sense Snowpepper’s excitement. She got the impression that Snowpepper hadn’t heard the voice at all, which puzzled her, but right now her priority was to get the voice out. She felt she couldn’t stand it in her head another second.

“All right! Asafel or whatever your name is, come out now! I call you! I conjure you! Whatever!”

She felt a weirdly disorienting sensation like a wind blowing through her mind. She cried out, pressing her hands to her temples, but it lasted only a fraction of a second, leaving her gasping.

“Is he out, Mommie? Where is he?”

“We’re in the city, darling. He doesn’t like to be seen by people who aren’t family. He’s made himself invisible to ordinary people.” A smile came into her voice. “Hello Asafel, dear. I would like to introduce you to my only daughter. Sylvie, this is Asafel, an old family friend and helper.”

Sylvie gaped. As her mother spoke, she began to see a tall, thin, dapper-looking man with a goatee, wearing a rakishly tilted cap, standing about a foot above the ground, striking a jaunty pose and bowing to her with a flourish. He was only partially visible, coloured a uniform shade of translucent red all over. She felt a strange, haunting sense of familiarity, as though she were meeting someone she had known forever.

“Hi, um, Asafel,” she said hesitantly. “How come I can see you if you’re invisible?”

“We’ve been properly introduced now,” he explained. “I am pleased to meet you at last, Sylvie,” he went on with a mischievous grin. “You have no idea how pleased. Thank you for finally calling me out.”

“It’s you!!” Sylvie burst out, surprising herself. It was Snowpepper-in-her coming forward spontaneously. “I know you! You were my friend!” Snowpepper was bursting with excitement. She laughed gaily and bounced in her seat. “I remember! I remember!! You were in that horrid no-place with me, right? I’d forgotten about you! I wasn’t alone at all! You were there!”

Asafel’s red eyes gleamed and he smiled. “Yes, my little friend, and I must say, I am more than pleased, I am ecstatic to see you restored to your rightful self!”

As he spoke, the air seemed to brighten. The sky, which had been overcast, grew lighter and the colours of the drab city sharpened. Sylvie had the sense that the homeless people in the park near them, who had been listlessly filling time, had suddenly become more animated.

“Hey!” Sylvie said, “You don’t feel horrible to me anymore! You actually feel kind of … good!”

“I apologize for that, truly,” Asafel grimaced wryly. “That was a side-effect of my situation, being imprisoned wrongly in your head. My voice, indeed my very essence could not feel good to you there. I was situated inside-out, or outside-in, rather.” His eyes twinkled. “Still, I did remain silent a rather long time. I spent my energies with your subconscious alter ego, who was aware of me before she became conscious again. Being outside-in herself at the time, we had something in common.”

Sylvie’s head began to spin. “Ahhh!” she cried out plaintively, “This is getting really horribly complicated. I don’t understand any of it!”

“Let your otherside self be on top,” Asafel suggested. “She understands perfectly, and her understanding will help you, if you let her be the one in charge of the mind. You have an acquired habit of rigid self-control. It’s not your fault, but it doesn’t help things one bit. I would like to help you lose that habit. You’ll be much happier without it, I promise you.”

As grateful for the suggestion as though the possibility had not existed before Asafel named it, Sylvie surrendered the reins of her body to Snowpepper and let her consciousness drift out of her mind’s control.

“That’s it?” Sylvie demanded. “You gave in and let him have his way?”

“Well, sweetheart, please understand that I have the same ability with people that I do with animals. I could tell that little bear wasn’t dangerous, and I could tell that George was. He meant every word of it. He was convinced that I had put our son in danger and anything I said on the subject—anything—he would have left. With the boys. I couldn’t risk that, even if Asafel hadn’t told me my life depended on staying married.”

“Well, Mom, you have to admit, it must have looked pretty crazy to Dad,” Sylvie said. “It would have to any normal person. I mean, Carl was only four, and you let him approach a bear. I mean, duh, you know?”

“I didn’t mean to do it in front of your Dad. He wasn’t supposed to be coming home for two more days. Breakup started early, he said, and we didn’t have a telephone. I wouldn’t have done it in front of him, not unless he had been prepared first. Of course, I didn’t know, yet, how he felt…and you have to realize, I grew up in the woods, with Asafel… I didn’t know how normal people felt…” Adele’s voice trailed away. “God, I was so naïve!” She fumbled in her purse with trembling fingers.

“Is it all right if I smoke in here, Sylvie?” she asked.

Sylvie was shocked. “No, Mom, it’s not, this is a non-smoking house. But I thought you quit smoking, like, years ago!”

“Well, I started again after Carl left, but I tried to hide it. I guess I hid it pretty well.” Adele’s smile was twitchy. “But now… sweetie, I really need a cigarette.”

“We’ll have to take a walk, then.”

“In this neighbourhood? Isn’t it, you know, dangerous?”

“Nah. It’s fine. Come on, Mom.” Sylvie went ahead, not looking back to see if her mother had followed. Her head was spinning with implications she couldn’t sort through. That Asafel character gave her the creeps. Still, she couldn’t help feeling a sense of loss at not having had the chance to know him. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, having a real ‘invisible friend’. After her own recent experiences, she didn’t question whether or not Asafel was real, or whether her mother might have made the whole thing up or been deluded in some way. Anything was possible in this new world she had returned to.

They went out the front door just as Squid and Julie were returning. “Hey, dude!” Squid said enthusiastically, high-fiving Sylvie. “This your mom? Hey, Sylvie’s mom, dude, how’s it goin’?”

Adele removed her hand from Squid’s eager grip and slipped quickly past the two street kids, nodding and smiling frozenly. Squid’s high-energy puppydog friendliness made her nervous, not to mention his tattoos and piercings.

“Dear,” she whispered to Sylvie when they had successfully made their escape, “Am I mistaken, or was his tongue, you know…” she trailed off, gesturing vaguely.

“Yeah, his tongue is pierced with a skull. I don’t get it, but he’s into it.” She shrugged. After only a few days in the city, plus a timeless span on the other side of things, she felt like a veteran of the strange. “Squid’s cool Mom,” she said. “Really, he’s just sweet and totally harmless.”

“Yes, I suppose he is,” Adele murmured. As soon as they reached the outdoors she fished in her purse for a cigarette. She lit it with a tiny pink disposable lighter then exhaled a streamer of smoke with a long sigh.

“That’s better.”

Sylvie glanced at her but said nothing. Now was not the time to protest her mother’s smoking habit.

“Mom,” she began. “What happened next? Did Asafel go away?”

“Oh, no, of course he didn’t. He can’t, you know. He’s a part of us, part of our family really. No, he’s still here, right now. All we have to do is call on him.”

“Us? You mean, I could…” The thought chilled her.

“Oh, yes, he’d love it if you did,” Adele said. “He was very upset with me for not introducing you to him while you were growing up. It was too late for Carl, of course, but it seemed the best thing for you and Scotty. The simplest, anyway.”

Sylvie walked in silence for a while. The came to a small barren park; a stretch of grass with a few scrubby trees. Homeless people were huddled here and there with their bundles and blankets. She supposed they had to go somewhere.

“Want to sit here?” She pointed to an empty park bench.

“All right,” her mother agreed, after glancing furtively around. Satisfied that there were no potential attackers lurking near, she carefully brushed loose grit from the seat with a grimace of distaste, then sat.

“Tell me more, Mom. I really want to know. How did Carl manage to keep Asafel a secret from Dad for so long? And did you still talk to him? Asafel, I mean.”

“Yes, I still talked to him, whenever I had that chance, that is. It wasn’t very often though, because things changed after that. Your Dad quit logging and got a job at the mill so he could be home more often. I might have had the opportunity while he was at work, but then we moved in to town because he thought it would be safer there. I didn’t care for it much. I missed our cabin in the woods. I missed the woods, the privacy.” Tears rose in Adele’s eyes as she puffed on her second cigarette.

“What about Carl?”

“I spoke to Carl. I explained to him that Daddy didn’t like magic and it would be better for him not to talk to Asafel or fly or anything like that where Daddy could see or hear him The poor little guy was so terrified by what he’d seen happen to the bear that I think he believed George would shoot him if he caught him behaving against his rules, so he was very careful. It was easier for him after your Dad built his bedroom down in the basement when he was eight. He was a very private boy and Scotty’s wildness in the same room was hard for him. I encouraged George to build the room, of course.”

“Of course,” Sylvie murmured. In her mind, she could feel Snowpepper’s churning excitement. I want to meet Asafel, she urged. Please, Sylvie, let me meet him!

No, Snow. No! I can’t explain why. Sylvie shuddered. He gives me the crawling horrors. Maybe later. Not now.

Sylvie! It could be important! He’s been with your family for so long! Aren’t you even the tiniest bit curious?

Not now!! At Sylvie’s imperative tone, Snowpepper subsided sulkily.

“I…” Adele shook her head, feeling muddled. “George, of course I’m happy you’re home, really I am. But really, you shouldn’t have shot that poor little bear. He wouldn’t have hurt Carl.”

“Oh, give me a break, Adele, it was a bear! A bear in springtime! You couldn’t know it wasn’t going to attack. Don’t hand me that crap!”

“But, George, I did know. I’ve always been able to know things like that. It’s a sort of gift I have, a… a power. And I’ve been teaching it to Carl, too. He wouldn’t have…”

That was when George exploded. He spun around and whacked Adele on the side of the head so hard it knocked her sideways onto the ground. Carl, already crying, began to shriek in true terror, and Scotty, nearly falling from his father’s grasp, let out a panicky wail.

Adele bit back her own tears, not wishing to frighten the children further. George had never hit her before this. Never! What was more, he had sworn to her that he never would. And the things he was saying! Her ears rang so she could barely hear him, but she could tell it was dreadful. His face was red and swollen; his neck muscles bulged frighteningly. He looked like he was about to have some sort of an attack. A distant, abstracted part of her worried for him.

Some of his words came through the ringing in her ears. “…never want to hear… superstitious BS… won’t have my children … real world and you’d better …”

When he ran out of steam, still breathing hard, eyes glinting like sun on steel, he said, very deliberately, “Adele, I have one more thing to say and you’d better believe I mean it. If you ever pull a stunt like this around my children again, if you ever put their lives at risk because you think some crazy-ass power is going to save you or them, and if you even say one more thing that leads me to believe you might do it again, I will leave you so fast it will make your head spin, and I will take my boys with me. Do you get it? Do you understand?”

She shook her head, confused. He couldn’t mean this. Not her affable and easygoing husband. “George, don’t say these things,” she pleaded brokenly. “Don’t be like this! This isn’t you!”

“Goddamn rights this is me!” he bellowed, shaking in her face the clenched fist that wasn’t gripping the terrified Scotty. “Believe it, woman! I won’t have this superstitious BS in my family! All I want to hear from you right now is ‘Yes, George,’ do you understand me?”

“I … yes, George,” she said meekly.

The bear saw Adele at the same time as she noticed it. It was a smallish black bear, perhaps a yearling cub, and she felt no fear of it. It snuffled, and then began to waddle closer, its round ears perked forward.

Carl laughed delightedly. “Look, Mummy! A doggie!”

“No, sweetie, it’s a darling little bear. See, he’s friendly.”

Asafel had vanished, as he tended to do when not called on for awhile, so he was not present to prevent what happened next. Carl reached his arm toward the little bear, who plopped down on his hindquarters, looking so much like a teddy bear that Adele smiled.

A shot rang out, and the bear slumped to one side, collapsing bonelessly to sprawl on the earth.

“Mummy, wha’ happ’n?  Why de bayer fa’ down?” Adele shook her head, gazing helplessly around. Who had fired the shot? She huddled on the ground, clutching both boys to her breast, when George arrived on the scene, sweaty and furious.

Without preamble, he launched into Adele. “For Christ’s sake, woman, what were you thinking? Dragging these boys this far from safety in bear country? You’re goddamn lucky I showed up in time! That thing could’ve ripped Carly’s face right off his head!” With a steel-toed boot, he prodded the bear’s limp carcass. A thin trickle of bright red blood flowed from a small hole in the bear’s forehead.

“Not a bad shot, though, eh?” he grinned, proud as all get-out. The thing about George was, he never stayed angry for very long about ordinary things like his eldest child nearly getting mauled by a bear. And he loved to kill things.

Adele was too stunned to respond. Her head still rang from the sound of the shot, and the hammering of her heart would not slow down. The little bear’s open, curious expression was imprinted on her retinas like the afterimage after a camera flash.

“Mummy, de bayer bleedin’!” Carl wailed. “Is de bayer hurted, Daddy?”

“Damn rights that bear is hurted,” George said. “That bayer is hurted right to death, honey. He’s not going to hurt you now. Everything’s okay, eh?”

Carl’s shocked face crumpled and he began to wail. “De bayer! I want de bayer! Daddy kiwwed it!” He buried his face in Adele’s breast and sobbed heartbrokenly. Scotty’s ‘welcome home Daddy’ grin dampened slightly and he looked in puzzlement from Carl to George. Then he broke into giggles and waved his arms to be picked up. “Da Da!” he gurgled.

George swung Scottie up into the air, eliciting more giggles. “There, at least somebody’s happy to see me! What the hell’s going on, Adele?”