Page 1 of A Winding Wave of Magic
PART I
CHESTNUT HILL
FROM THE DREAM JOURNAL OF CASSANDRA WHELAN
Last night I dreamed of Oregon. I was walking on the trail that goes up the south side of Neahkahnie Mountain—the part where we collect fiddleheads and chanterelles, near the big patch of salmonberries and Gran’s favorite elderberry grove. The cedars, though, were older, like they used to be before white people came and cut them all down. So were the ferns and manzanitas. Everything was the way it once was. The way I saw it whenever I touched the right boulder or tree stump.
I padded over a carpet of mud and moss, aware that night was falling and eventually, I would be stranded in the forest if I didn’t find my way out. I was scared. I needed to get to the top of the mountain, but I didn’t know why. There was something I wanted up there, something I desperately needed.
The shadows of the cedars and hemlocks grew longer, and the red dirt trails crumbled under my feet. I started to run,but they kept falling apart, chasing me up the mountain. The darkness bit at my heels, threatening to pull me down.
This mountain was my home, but it seemed ready to eat me alive. The growing shadows were sharp, almost as if they had claws threatening to drag me down like a cougar attacking its prey.
Get away, I thought, faster.
Cassandra!
A voice called my name through the trees, distressed.
Daddy! I cried.
He was waiting for me there. Jimmy Whelan, my plain, human father whom I hadn’t seen since he left for Kuwait. I sprinted up the hill, aware of the shadow closing in on me and eager to see my dad’s kind, open smile. My hamstrings and calves began to burn, but the shadows still threatened to pull me back, keep me from the one person I had wanted to see most since I was twelve. Since we lost him for good.
Onward I pushed, tiring just as the sun set completely on the horizon. The ocean was only hinted at through the trees.
The summit was different from the rocky peak where the tourists like to eat lunch. Instead, it looked like it had been flattened and shaved like a monk’s head, a large clearing in the center of the trees. A man stood in the center, dressed in thick black boots and army fatigues, his arms outstretched. Myfather, back from the Middle East, his hair high and tight, his smile only barely tinged with atrocity.
Daddy! I screamed.
Darkness took me. I looked all around but could See only black. Silence engulfed the mountain. The trees no longer shook in the wind. The roar of the ocean, as familiar to me as a lullaby, couldn’t be heard anymore.
Daddy?
I looked in the direction where I thought he was and saw nothing.
In the back of the darkness, two green eyes the approximate shade of a kiwi fruit’s flesh glowed brightly from several yards away.
Daddy?
I blinked, and the eyes were gone.
Then I woke up. My room was dark, but I stared at my wall for a long time, expecting those eyes to reappear.
They didn’t, but I still waited for them anyway.
1
AN INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING
“Everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt is a visionary without scratching.”
— W.B. YEATS,FAIRY AND FOLK TALES OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY
Iawoke to the heady scents of juniper, sage, and sweat.
Remnants of the dream hung over my bedroom like a canopy. Though winter morning light pushed sleepily through the condensation on my window looking over Cleveland Circle at the westernmost edge of Boston, shadows still seemed to threaten from the corners of the room.
Threats from some other time, past or future. Most often, the present.
