I don’t want to suggest that my strong headedness had any influence on anything, but after the loss of woodsmoke over the ruins of a city, I also saw, for the first time, exactly what I’d expected to see when it came to traces of magic. The little bits of color and ephemeral inconsistencies that exist when someone has used their innate power or has accessed magic and put it in place. You can see these things in situ, when someone is actively using magic, but for a few moments in time I felt as though I was truly myself again and in that sense I felt as though I had access to the entire world.

It felt wonderful.

And then Ethan was there and it all disappeared.

I now had evidence that suggested my problem was Ethan.

Which meant, for me, there were at least two questions that needed to be answered. First, why did I feel a complete lack of magic after escaping the faerie circle and for almost two days? Second, how exactly was Ethan influencing my ability to access the magic I knew was all around me.

There was a third question as well: What was Ethan? But that was really a question the animals and the jackalope had presented and while I was beginning to consider the question as significant and with purpose, I had yet to decide to investigate it beyond what I could see.

If I were prone to forget things, or to keep a running record of my thoughts and ideas, I’d have written all three of those questions down and then come back and made notes on each one of them. What Ethan had not offered to me was something to write with and something to write on. He had a notebook and pens and pencils. I’d seen him sketching plants and rocks and other structures and things.

However, he’d offered me nothing.

I could surmise that one reason for that was he didn’t have any extra notebooks or writing implements. I didn’t believe that and didn’t really care. Except, I also knew that if I had something to write in and with I could try other forms of magic to test the limits. Using the dirt wasn’t effective and to be honest, and one of the reasons I didn’t often write things down was the relationship to something I made with my own hands, books and notebooks, as opposed to something I acquired from someone else’s hands and then had to build a relationship with and make my own.

Yes. It’s true. I’m a bit lazy when it comes to truly exploiting all of the possibilities that exist for me to truly use the natural magics of the world.

I found a rock near the river and sat down on it facing the island and where the castle had been and in my estimation should still be standing. There was nothing to see, almost like someone had put up a curtain or some kind of wall, except there was no wall and most of my instincts were screaming at me that was I was seeing was wrong. I just didn’t know how or why.

Ethan, on the other hand, had pulled out the same device and started scanning and taking notes on the ambient radiation around where I was sitting. Literally around where I was sitting. The only thing he didn’t do was go into the water and take measurements off the bank, which seemed to me – with my limited knowledge of what he was doing – like he wasn’t doing everything he could to get the information he claimed he wanted.

Rather than paying attention to him or what he was doing, I decided to watch the water for fish or crawdads or water bugs or anything that would indicate the river was in any way different from the land. Instead of keeping up with Ethan and his work, which I no longer cared about, I was trying to find any clues that would help me figure out what was going on around me.

When Ethan stopped to pretend to eat, I ignored his calls to come eat with him. When he decided it was time to head back to camp, I decided to continue sitting to see how long it would take him to either try to force me to leave or to leave me behind.

Since I already knew there was nothing to fear about the dark and had already left camp, I wasn’t concerned about being left. On the other hand, Ethan was very concerned about leaving me.

“I was wrong about predators,” he said. “I’m sorry. Please, just come back to camp with me.”

I didn’t need sorry. The sentiment was absolutely meaningless to me. Nor did I necessarily care about following him. At this point I was pushing his buttons since I could and he wasn’t expressing any sexual desire toward me. I mean, he could be religious or truly a monogamist or gay, but none of those things rang as true. I mean, really. None of those things rang in any way true given what I could see and sense.

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Eventually, after far too much pleading and eventually his attitude bordering on threatening, I got up and let him lead me back to camp. Instead of moving in front of him, I decided to follow. Unlike the last couple of times we’d made this trek,Ethan wasn’t foraging for anything. He was making as direct a line toward the camp as he could and since I was looking for alternative paths, he was avoiding those with a purpose.

When we were back in camp, I waved goodnight and disappeared into my tent and waited.

What I was waiting for was for him to return to his tent and go to sleep or do whatever he did during the night. He made food and called for me, but only got a not interested response. I was in full on fit throwing and even though I wasn’t actually upset he didn’t need to know that. All he needed to know was that I was upset and figuring out why I was upset was his problem.

Yes. It’s a dirty tactic and one I’ve taught many a disgruntled wife or queen or chieftain or any woman I thought could torture her male significant other. In this case, I was using it to throw him off, basically to throw mud at the wall (shit, it’s shit at the wall) and see what stuck.

There was a part of me that wondered if anything would stick or could stick to Ethan’s personality. He was nice enough and liked to talk but had still avoided any real conversations or answers about the things I was most interested in, especially stories about the forest, the castle, and the river. He was very skilled at redirecting conversations or diverting questions into areas I might consider benign or uninteresting. I, however, was not born yesterday and because that was also true I was choosing to push back with questions and conversations that moved in the direction I wanted them to go.

Eventually, though not as quickly as I would have liked, Ethan entered his tent, the sound of the zipper running up the door clear. I didn’t wait as long as I did night before, nor was I trying to meditate as was true when I met Ant. My only goal was for the sunset to be over and dark to have begun and for Ethan to be in his tent.

The moment all of that was true, I opened my tent and stepped outside. Yes. The overwhelming sensations of fear and other physiological sensations were there, but I knew that crossing the threshold was enough and so I did.

Once outside, I quietly made my way across the distance between tents and stopped outside of his. I was trying to decide whether or not to figure out more about Ethan by invading his privacy or to return to where I’d met up with the animals the night before or, and this was almost a new thought, heading back to the river and the cattle in order to see what kinds of clarity and awareness the night brought with it.

At this point, I was more than certain Ethan was trying to stop me from seeing anything at night. Night is a powerful time. It’s the time of witches and demons and fantasy creatures and it was the time when I was trapped in the faerie circle. Night had power and I was going to use that power no matter what.

There was no noise coming from inside Ethan’s tent, not even the slow, rhythmic breathing of sleep and instead of opening the tent and jumping inside I made my way across the camp to where the animals would be waiting and stepped over the barrier separating me from them.

Sitting just the other side of the barrier was Olga, though I hadn’t actually told her her name yet, and she was watching and waiting until I could see her. There were other animals as well, one of the skunks and a handful of squirrels, there are always squirrels, as well as a gnome who appeared to be smaller than I remembered them being.

“We need to head toward the mountain,” Olga said.

“Who is this?” I asked, addressing the gnome.

“That’s Wander,” Olga said. “He came because he was sent. He won’t talk to you or about anything.”

“Is that true Wander?” I asked.

He didn’t respond.

“To be perfectly honest about Wander, and I’m not alone in thinking this, he’s a bit slow on the uptake and even slower in other areas. His job is to keep guard and protect us from things,” Olga said.

She didn’t wait for any response from me, not that I had one, and instead took off along what appeared to be a well-established deer path directly (or as directly as a deer path can be) toward the mountains to the north. We moved in that direction for quite some time before Olga said, “There’s a gather tonight and they want you there.”

“A gathering?”

“Yes. Animals and others. They want you there to discuss what we can do about those who would invade and destroy,” Olga said and paused and then hurried on.

Okay. I didn’t know how to respond to that other than it seemed like we, the animals and me, were aligned. Though when Olga mentioned others, I really had to wonder which others she was referring to. There are not a lot of others, in my experience, who want to see me. Not if they really know who I am and then rarely after I’ve had my fun.

We made good time and arrived at a clearing that was part of a natural indentation in the ground. The trees seemed to grow right up to the edge and no farther. There were already animals all around. One of the three bears from the night before, none of whose names I got, was sitting on the other side of the clearing in what clearly looked like the head of the gathering.

Next to the bear was a small group of other animals, a couple of rabbits, another woodchuck, a small gathering of squirrels who looked like they might leave at any time, three more gnomes and elves and faeries.