The Magic Circle (10 page)

“Sorry,” I said to Olivier, pouring hot water over the mush of brown sugar, butter, and rum in the two glass mugs and handing one to him. “I had to leave suddenly. There was an unexpected death in the family.”

“Oh gosh, no one
I
know, I hope?” said Olivier with a gallantly supportive smile—though we both knew that he knew no one in my family.

“It was Sam,” I said, trying to wash down the stick in my throat with the buttery hot liquor.

“Heavens! Your brother?” said Olivier, sinking onto the sofa near the fire.

“My cousin,” I corrected. “Actually, my stepbrother. We were raised as brother and sister. In fact, he’s more of a blood brother. Or I mean, he
was.
”

“My goodness, your family relations
are
somewhat complex,” Olivier said, mocking my own retort whenever anyone inquired about my family. “Are you quite certain you were related to this fellow at all?”

“I’m sole heir to his estate,” I told him. “That’s enough for me.”

“Ah—then he was rich, but not really close, is that it?” Olivier said hopefully.

“A bit of each,” I told him. “I was probably closer to him than anyone in my family.” Which wasn’t saying much, but Olivier didn’t know that.

“Oh, how dreadful for you! But I don’t understand. Why have I never heard of him, then, except for the name? He’s never been to visit, nor called that I know of, in the many years we’ve worked together and shared this humble abode.”

“Our family communicates psychically,” I told him. Jason was slaloming around my legs as if he were trying to braid a maypole all by himself, so I picked him up and added, “We have no need of satellites or cell phones—”

“That reminds me,” interrupted Olivier. “Your father’s been calling here for
days
. Wouldn’t say what he wanted—just that you must phone him at once.”

Just then the phone rang, startling Jason, who jumped out of my arms.

“They
must
be psychic to pick up our vibes at this hour,” said Olivier. As I reached for the phone, he finished his drink and headed for the door. “I’ll make you some pancakes before work, as a welcome home,” he tossed over his shoulder. Then he was gone.

“Gavroche, darling” were the first words I heard as I picked up the phone.

Good lord, maybe my family members
had
suddenly become psychic. It was my uncle Laf. I hadn’t heard from him in ages. He always called me Gavroche: French for a Parisian street urchin.

“Laf?” I said. “Where
are
you? You sound a million miles away.”

“Just now, Gavroche, I am in
Wien,
” meaning he was at his big eighteenth-century apartment overlooking the Hofburg in Vienna where Jersey and I used to stay—and where it was now eight hours later than it was here, or eleven
A.M
. his time. Apparently Uncle Laf had never gotten the hang of differing time zones.

“I was so sorry, Gavroche, to hear about Sam,” he told me. “I was wanting to come for the service, but your father, of course—”

“That’s okay,” I assured him, not wanting to open that can of worms. “You were there in spirit, and so was Uncle Earnest, even though he’s dead. I found a shaman who did a little ritual at the ceremony, then the military gave Sam honors, and Jersey fell into the open grave.”

“Your mother fell into the grave?” Uncle Laf said with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old. “Oh, but that is marvelous! Did she plan it, do you think?”

“She was drunk, as usual,” I told him. “But it was still fun. I wish you could have seen Augustus’s face!”

“Now I am
really
sorry I was not able to attend!” Laf said with more tickled enjoyment than I would have believed a man of his age, pushing ninety, could muster.

There was no love lost between my father, Augustus, and my uncle, Lafcadio Behn—perhaps because it was with Laf, my grandfather’s stepson by a previous marriage, that my own grandma Pandora had run off when she’d abandoned my father at birth.

This was the thing my family never spoke of, in public or private. Well, at least it was
one
of the things. It suddenly occurred to me that I could probably make a fortune—if I hadn’t just inherited one from Sam—by designing an entirely new model of complexity theory, based solely upon my family’s interactions.

“Uncle Laf,” I said, “I want to ask you a question. I know we never talk about the family, but I want you to know that Sam has left everything to me.”

“Gavroche, this is just what I expect of him. You are a good girl, and everything good should come to you. I have plenty of comfort on my own—do not you fear for me.”

“I’m not worried about you, Laf. But I want to ask you about something, something involving the family. Something maybe only
you
know about. Something that Sam apparently also left to me—not real estate or money.”

My uncle Laf was so silent, I wasn’t sure he was still on the line. At last he spoke. “Gavroche, you do understand that international telephone calls are recorded?”

“They are?” I said, though in my profession I knew it very well. “But that doesn’t affect our conversation,” I added.

“Gavroche, there is the reason why I called,” said Uncle Laf in a voice that sounded very different than a moment ago. “I regret I could not attend the funeral of Sam. But by coincidences, I will be quite near you on the next weekend. I will come to the big hotel at the Valley of the Sun—”

“You’ll be at the Sun Valley Lodge next weekend?” I said. “You’re coming from Austria to Sun Valley?”

I mean, the routing from Vienna to Ketchum was probably not ideal under the best of circumstances—but Laf was almost ninety years old. In fact, what with high mountains and erratic weather, it was hard enough just to get there from the next state. What on earth was he thinking?

“Laf, much as I’d love to see you after all these years, I don’t think that’s a very sensible idea,” I told him. “Besides, I’ve missed a week of work already because of the funeral. I’m not sure I can get away.”

“My darling,” said Laf. “The question you want to ask me—I believe I know what it is. And also, I know the answer. So please be there.”

Just as my eyes were about to close, I remembered something I hadn’t thought of in years. I remembered the first time Grey Cloud cut me. I could see the thin line of beaded blood, like a necklace of tiny rubies on my leg where he drew the sharp blade. I didn’t cry, though I was very young. I recall the color: a beautiful, surprising red—the lifeblood leaving my body. But I was not afraid.

I hadn’t dreamed the dream even once since childhood. Now, as I drifted off into a troubled sleep, it came upon me unexpectedly, as if waiting all along in the shadows of my mind.…

I was alone in the forest. I had lost the way, and the dark, dripping trees closed in about me. From the steamy forest floor, smoky moisture was rising and swirling in the few remaining shafts of light. Damp pine needles formed a spongy carpet beneath my feet. I was only eight years old. I’d lost sight of Sam, then I had lost the trail. It was growing too dark to follow his markings as he’d taught me. I was alone and frightened. What was I to do?

I’d waited up for dawn to arrive that morning. My small backpack was already packed with all I knew to take along: granola, an apple, and a sweater against the cold. Though I’d never been on a serious hike, or more than backyard camping overnight, I was filled with eager excitement about following Sam secretly on this, his first day of
tiwa-titmas
.

Sam, only four years older than I, had started these journeys when he was the age I was right now. So at age twelve, this journey would be his fifth—and all with no results. Everyone in the tribe was praying that this time it would be successful, that he would have the vision. But few had real hope. After all, Sam’s father (Uncle Earnest) was a white face from afar. And when Sam’s mother, Bright Cloud, had died so young, the father had taken the child from the reservation at Lapwai, so he’d been unable to receive the proper training by his own people. Then the father had done the unspeakable: taken as his new wife an Anglo woman (Jersey) who drank too much firewater. No one was deceived when she showed up with a daughter of her own, stopped drinking, and insisted in a spirit of generosity that both children spend each summer with Sam’s grandparents on the reservation. No one was deceived by tricks like these.

The
tiwa-titmas
was the most important event to a Nez Percé youth. It was his or her initiation into life and the universe. Strong measures were taken to ensure that one could receive the vision—hot baths, steamings in the mud hut, purgation with birchbark sticks inserted in the throat—especially if the vision was a long time in coming, or if it took many trials.

Sam had grown up in these mountains, and was able to greet each rock, brook, and tree as if it were an individual, as if it were a friend. Furthermore, having been on four such quests before, he knew how to find the place by himself whether in darkness or blindfolded—while I, bloody little idiot that I was, couldn’t even find the trail.

So here I was: deplorably lost, soaked through from a sudden mountain shower, cold and hungry and weary and footsore and small and young—and terrified by my own stupidity. I sat on a rock to consider my situation.

The sun hovered at the lip of the far range, barely visible through the thick fringe of trees. When it set, I’d swiftly find myself in total blackness, ten miles or more, as near as I could guess, from the place I’d left this morning. I had no sleeping bag, waterproof clothes, matches, or extra food. If I’d brought a compass I wouldn’t know how to use it. Worse yet, I knew that when the sun vanished, there would be rodents and snakes and insects and wild beasts moving in the darkness beside me. As the sun sank lower the temperature dropped quickly and the damp chill began to penetrate my bones. I started to cry—huge, hot sobs of unleashed fear and anger and desperation.

The only skill I had, which Sam had taught me, was to send and receive coded messages as the Indians had always done: by smoke signals or flashing mirrors against the sun. Now that it was nearly dark these talents were useless. Or were they?

I gulped back my sobs and peered through my tears at the bicycling reflector strips on my little backpack. Wiping my eyes with my hand, my nose with my sleeve, I stood on wobbly legs and looked around.

Through the darkening forest mist I saw that the sun was not yet gone. But it soon would be. If I could get up high enough before the last beams departed, I’d be able to see a great distance. I could scan the hilltops for the kind of place, the high place, that I knew Sam himself must reach before sunset: the magic circle. It was a wild scheme, but it seemed the only chance I might have to reflect a message from the last light, to send my code into the heart of the magic circle. Forgetting how tired and frightened I was—forgetting that Sam had told me it was more dangerous above timberline at night than here in the protection of the wood—I raced on my little legs uphill, high into the rocky crags that rose above timberline. I raced against the setting sun.

In the dream, I hear the sounds of the forest closing around me as I scramble frantically over rocks, cut by twigs and grasses, the crunch of something large moving behind a tree. In the dream, the forest grows darker and darker, but at last I reach the high ground and clamber to the very top of the highest point. I flatten myself to crawl to the edge, and I peer out across the mountain peaks below.

And there on a mountaintop beneath me, across a wide abyss, is the magic circle. At its very center is Sam. In the dream, he sits on the ground in his fringed buckskins, his hair tumbling loose about his shoulders, his legs and arms folded in meditation—but his back is to me! He is facing the setting sun. He can’t see my signal.

So I shout his name aloud, over and over, hoping an echo will bring it back to him. And then the shout turns into a scream. But he is too far, too far.…

Olivier was shaking me by the shoulders. I could see light coming through the high windows of my dungeon, which meant that some of the snow covering the windows had melted. Just how late in the day was it? My head was pounding. Why was Olivier shaking me up and down?

“Are you all right?” he said when he saw my eyes were open. He looked frightened. “You were screaming, you know. I heard it all the way upstairs. The little argonaut crawled under my refrigerator when he heard you.”

“Screaming?” I said. “It was just a dream. I haven’t had it in years. Besides—it didn’t really happen that way.”

“Happen what way?” said Olivier, looking puzzled.

But then it suddenly dawned on me that Sam was really dead. The only way I could see him again was in a dream, so even if the dream was an incorrect memory, that was all I had. Shit. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the head by the mule of karma.

“The pancake batter’s all ready,” Olivier told me. “I’m making you buttermilk flapjacks, with gallons of chicory coffee and some of those cute, disgusting little pig sausages—enough cholesterol to plug your pipes permanently—and just for good measure, eggs over tenderly—”

“Over easy,” I corrected Olivier’s Yankee slang, a pastiche of
patois
. “Exactly what time is it, landlord?”

“Time for brunch, not breakfast,” said Olivier. “I waited to give you a ride to work. I’m afraid that your car has been buried by the snowplow.”

I decided to put on some warm clothes and thick gloves after brunch and dig out my car before checking in for work. I needed physical exercise after two days of driving. And sometimes, after a melt like this one, we’d have a deep freeze, which would mean a month of hacking at automobile glace. But also, I needed the time to be alone, to make the mental transition from funeral to factory.

So I dragged out my “ghetto blaster” portable radio and took it outside where, surrounded by sparkly snow dunes and icicle-tinseled houses, I hand-dug the slush from my little Honda to the rhythm of Bob Seger cranking out
The Fire Down Below
. And I thought about the various kinds of tissues we choose from which to weave our dreams and our realities.