May 2001

A nameless malevolence had come for me, and a path across the still lake - an escape route - had been conjured just in time. I didn't have time to ask the questions this raised. The edges of the narrow path were just high enough to keep the water from spilling over. The path itself was slightly depressed, as through age or use. I set out across the lake hastily. Seen edge-on it would have looked like I was walking on the water.

In fact I now saw myself walking the path from without, and it was clear that I was being followed. A young woman in rags, pretty and silent, followed just a few yards behind. Was this who I was fleeing? She seemed to lack the outward appearance of malevolence - but I could take no chances. As the person who was myself reached the other shore, I stood by the path and waited to meet the follower.

She made her way past me. I scrambled to catch up with her, and confronted her. "You cannot follow," I said, frustrated by her presumptuousness. She frowned without looking at me, and carried on. "No," I said. I caught up with her again, and lifted her up. She put up little struggle.

I carried her back to the edge of the path... one of the two paths? There seemed to be two now, roughly parallel. But no matter, I put her down and turned her to face the path. "You go back across," I ordered her. "You have no place over here." She looked at me indignantly. "Look," I said, pointing at the path before her. "There are your marks, from when you came over." On the path were a series of jagged scrapes, like lightning bolts. Somehow this was to be an indictment that she had overstepped her bounds before. But the look on her face said she was unfamiliar with them.

Now I was confused. I looked closely at the concave gully, at the gouged lightning bolts. I had a brief vision then, and saw in my mind's eye a mysterious group, the leader of whom made the gouges with a pike to make the water recede. This was some mysterious magic of old, and indeed the true source of the malevolence. The vision had faded before I could get a closer look, but I was already frightened. The other path.... My safety had already been compromised.

This woman was merely looking for her own escape. I regarded her with sudden understanding. "How high have you been here?" I asked, not sure of the meaning of my own words. Did I mean...?

But she understood, and looked up at me with a hint of a smile, a smile that made her look like Bjork. "The highest," she admitted. Did she mean...?

Time passed, and it was dark. Now free to pursue her own goals on this shore, she had wandered inland a ways, up the bank. I had followed. She stood before an open fire, which burned between us now. There was an older man - a shaman? - to my left, only his face visible in the darkness. I watched the young woman intently, who seemed to be performing some kind of drug-induced rite. She was very familiar with this, and I knew now that she had been here before. She was a user, now content to be back in her little world. Somehow her high was tied to the fire. It was a mystery to me, but I couldn't help but to feel a kind of sadness, for surely this was some kind of depravity. She held her fists out before her, not far from the licking flames. Then, one by one, she swept her right hand outward, allowing her fingers to uncurl, one for each sweep, pinky first. For each movement there was a puff of smoke that rose from her hand, and I knew that for each puff she was feeling the rush of some unknown chemical. When her right hand was completely open, she looked up at me with an unexpected expression. There was guilt there, but also some kind of defiance. And perhaps a new hunger as well.

I saw what she was seeing: A blur of black and white imagery, clips from old television shows, puppets and variety show hosts. And then the vision vanished, and I watched her once more from the other side of the bonfire. Her left hand was still out before her, dangerously close to the flame. Couldn't she feel that? Or was the drug perhaps providing some kind of protection? I wondered. She opened her hand all at once, and my thoughts went back to the jagged scrapes in the path that crossed the water.