| SORCEROUS SIGNALS |
| Written by Rebecca S.W. Bates / Artwork by Holly Eddy |
| Make a donation to this writer |
| Flour Power |
When the lady of the brownstone dropped dead at her own party, the same party where I worked for
the caterer, naturally I feared I was to blame.
Blame is a word that flies round circles here in D.C. like lightning and thunder claps back at Atlantica
Wizard School, my alma mater where the fear of the possibility of my fault actually began.
Strangled, the coroner’s report later would claim, with her own pantyhose. Oh-ho! So that would be the
official story? Washington hanky-panky sounded better on the books than death by derailed flour. Easier
to believe, too, than what really happened, even though reality is only a definition of one’s perspective.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering why on earth’s oceans anyone would interfere on my behalf.
It all began back at AWS, when I flew up to take my oath and receive my graduation hat. My head was
full of trivia—history, principles, theory, and the science of magic.
“Felicity Flour,” the master trolled in his solemn voice that generated ten-foot swells beneath a backdrop
of lightning, “do you swear to uphold the three laws of wizardry?”
“I do,” I murmured amidst thunder claps breaking in the distance.
I’d mastered spell practicum, transformation intensives, and honors seminars with the top wizards in the
field. Thanks to Uncle Meredith’s connections, I’d apprenticed with the foremost recipe keeper of all time,
a maven named Martha. I had everything I needed for a stellar career that would take me far away from
the illusory island of my genesis. Which offer would I take?
None came in. And I wondered, why on earth’s ocean couldn’t I find a job, when clearly there were
pressing needs, especially for folks of my kind?
Take, for example, the expected outcome of my story, which I learned way back in second-year Theory:
train derails in downtown Washington D.C., only blocks away from cherry trees in high bloom. Bags of
alleged flour burst apart in the wreckage, and white powder explodes everywhere, issuing clouds of
alleged flour that billow out across the city and rain down on tourists from the heartland. Whoa.
Thousands of asphyxiated tourists stack up under dusted cherry blossoms. That’s a picture that will
strike a fatal blow to the driving force of the world’s greatest nation.
So I took my oath in spite of the absence of offers.
Before the first of the ten-footers scattered us from AWS, the master awarded me with my graduation
hat, which resembled a puffy, white mushroom. This was the symbol of my specialty calling—to track the
transportation of flour (in all its variations) and keep its trade from derailing. My calling had chosen me at
the end of first-year Principles, and the rest of my classes at AWS adjusted their design especially for me.
We can theorize why no job offers had yet come in: blame it on widespread suspicion that Gen Y couldn’
t deliver, or on the economy, or on my own family’s history of illicit activities, or heck, blame everything
on W, but honestly, blame doesn’t accomplish anything. Blame doesn’t earn you a living or get you
ahead in these ultra-realistic times. You just have to prove yourself, and in any case, I have to make a
living. Otherwise, I’ll end up sharing a limestone cave on the far side of the tracks in Nowhere Ohi’a,
where failed wizards go.
So I decided to volunteer. It wouldn’t pay the rent, but I’d worry about that next month. For now, Uncle
Meredith had given me one free month in his basement, which he usually rented out, in spite of its
location in a ghetto of D.C. where crack flowed freely. It was a sort of graduation present, a little gift of
urban dwelling while I found my way to my calling. Maybe I could beg a job as an intern in some
congressman’s office. I have a few skills. I can turn political opponents into toads.
Wizard Law #1:
A Wizard Will Never Use Magic in the Real World for Personal Gain
But toads were probably not a good idea since I’d taken my oaths to uphold wizard laws. If we broke
them (they hammered this into us back at AWS) the world would implode—something about colliding
matter and anti-matter, but it’s all theory. No one knows for sure. Our magic is only supposed to be
used in our unreality.
You might think of us as a sort of restricted wizard. Technically, we are wizards in a general sense, but
actually we’re something far more complex. We can come and go through reality versus unreality. We
meddle with time. We are people keepers. We are invisible guides of the universe. Through our role
modeling the subconscious way, we lead unenlightened realists down the path of what they call ‘luck.’
Okay, I found some of their ‘luck’ for myself. On the last day of my free month, I landed a job washing
dishes for a catering company. Anyone could wash dishes. Or so the manager who’d hired me must’ve
thought. It was just me and a rotating crew of illegal Central Americans down in what they called the
‘lava’ room.
A Salvadoreño whom the other washers called Poto Gordo showed me around. P.G. (that’s what I called
him) was as short as his nickname promised his ass was wide, but in spite of his encumbrance, he
slipped through the labyrinthine cellar as soundlessly as an elf. An aroma of aftershave—carnation with a
hint of tamarind—trailed along behind him. He apparently bathed in the stuff and used it to slick down
the coarse, black wires of his hair. Only, they disobeyed, and so he had to wear his cousin’s pantyhose
like a hat, tying the legs into knots across the top of his coiled head.
P.G. showed me around. He showed me the double doors where delivery trucks unloaded bins of dirties.
He showed me the sinks, hoses, scrubbers and mechanized washers and cabinets of supplies, and he
showed me the shelves where I was to stack the washed and dried dishes for someone else to put away.
Not me.
But most important of all, “Señorita Felicidad,” as he liked to call me, was the break room. He showed me
a locker where I could store my mushroom hat. He showed me the vending machines and the tables
where they played cards. A happy worker, P.G. said, was a good worker. Happy happy!
I had a calling to fulfill, and it wasn’t cards. Fresh from school, I was eager to work. P.G. let me start on
the easy bins first: flatware and cocktail plates.
On my second day of work, he let me load martini glasses into the washers. When I broke none of the
crystal wizard hats, he gave me a bin of serving dishes on my third day. They had to be done the old-
fashioned way, by hand, because they were expensive and covered with intricate designs.
Those platters were as heavy as if they’d been reinforced with iron. Once I lathered them all up good in
suds, they just got so darned slippery… Well, I couldn’t help but drop the biggest, most unwieldy,
costliest piece in all the inventory. Paying for it would take an entire week’s pay, which I didn’t have to
spare. One week would have to go to the crack dealers to keep them from breaking into my apartment,
two weeks’ pay to Uncle Meredith for rent, and everything else (say, if I wanted to eat) would have to
come out of my fourth week.
Staring at the broken pieces of rainbow ceramics on the steel countertop, I summoned to mind a
reversal spell I’d learned in the practicum. But then, there was that darned oath. The spell hesitated in
my mind, and I stood there frozen, mute.
My clatter in the lava room brought P.G. sliding in on his soundless sneakers. Cards sprouted from his
shirt pocket, and babbling incoherence in the form of a wordstream issued from his mouth. His short,
pudgy arms waved in circles above his head. Clearly, me and my hat were bound for Ohi’a.
Here in the lava room I hadn’t yet intersected with the real world, I thought. Not really. Maybe I could
undo the breakage. Who would notice? P.G. might, but he didn’t count as real. He preferred to be a
shadow, since he was here illegally, working under the table, the only breadwinner for a bunch of cousins
on the street. In fact, I had to do the reversal if I wanted to keep my job and move up in the world.
So I did. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.
When I was done with the entire set, the pieces were better than new. Shinier, less heavy, yet more
durable. P.G. smiled, called me “Señorita Felicidad,” and returned happy to his card game. Since he didn’t
know I’d meddled with his time reality (that’s how the spell worked), he would have no memory of my
close call.
Best of all, I found out, the world didn’t implode.
Wizard Law #2:
A Wizard Never Reveals Magic Secrets to a Realist
So I grew a little more daring. I decided what the heck; maybe I could venture upstairs and sample the
canapés P.G. bragged about. One of the chefs was P.G.’s Colombian buddy, close as family. His
compadre’s creations were ‘out of this world.’ Oh, yeah. But with my help, I could actually make that true.
I gave P.G.’s friend a foie gras trick I’d learned from Martha, and that’s when I came to the attention of
the woman who ran this operation, a Martha wannabe named Marionette.
“What have you done to the foie gras?” Marionette shrilled, closing her eyes and licking her fingers. “It’
s…it’s…je ne sais pas….” Her claw-shaped nails, manicured a brilliant pink, stroked the air, and she
moaned, either struggling for a description or having an orgasm, I couldn’t be sure.
“Extraordinaire!” she finally spit out, spitting a wayward blonde curl from her thick coat of lipstick, a pink
that matched her nails and her suit.
The chef smiled at me. “A little family secret our new dishwasher give me.”
Marionette opened her heavily painted lids long enough to glance at me. By now I’d taken off my hat,
and P.G.’s friend could do the introductions. Then Marionette marched straightaway to the personnel
files, tap tap tapping down the cement hall in her spike heels. She demanded her assistant stop
everything, interrupt her sales meeting, and pull my resume immediately. Under cover of my hat once
again, I could follow all this without being seen. She and I existed, after all, but in very different realities.
When Marionette got to the part about my apprenticeship with Martha, she was so delighted she
stopped reading and dropped my file for her assistant to reassemble and put away. Good thing, too,
since the rest of my records are rather nebulous, suggesting that my beginnings arose with the mist of a
dew-laden morn under the shadow of the third volcano in some Atlantic chain of drifting islands.
In any case, Marionette liked me, so she decided to bring me up out of the cellar, effective immediately
(‘immediate’ is the only mode under which Marionette works). She skipped the background search on
me, thank goodness. The less her high-profile clients knew, the better. No doubt they’d assume a wizard
was some sort of terrorist, when in fact, we were little more than guides through life.
Marionette gave me just enough training to send me off to become a server, the first step, she insisted,
on my road to the kitchen. All of her best chefs had to know how to serve, too. Personally, I suspected
she had another agenda, but I went with her. Anything, to get out of the lava room.
She showed me how to hold the platter, which must magically remain full, and she told me I must always
be everywhere at the same time, with whatever was required of me by whomever happened to be in this
undefined place, yet throughout the event, I must never be seen. It sounded easy enough, not so
different from a normal day of life in Atlantica.
Pretty soon, Marionette’s company no longer had to advertise for business. Bookings poured in, and we
accommodated more clients than we could comfortably handle. Our bookings grew…
And grew…
I like to think it was all because of me. Why not? Marionette asked me to serve more and more. She
forgot about my chef grooming, and I became her most trusted server. Which brings me to the real
beginning of my story.
Wizard Law #3:
A Wizard Never Uses Magic to Inflict Bodily Harm on a Realist
Maybe P.G. had been dealt a bad hand, but whatever, he was not so happy anymore in the lava room. I
didn’t understand the babblestream he spoke at me, but one thing for sure, he wasn’t calling me
“Señorita Felicidad” anymore. All the way from my new locker upstairs, I could hear him coming and going
below. His sneakers squeak-squished along the cellar tunnels, and each step echoed as if the weight of
his ass ground him into the cement.
“What’s he saying?” I asked his friend, the Colombian chef who’d been promoted to head chef with a
locker next to mine.
“He say you his girlfriend.”
“Yo?”
“You!”
“Well, what’s he angry about?”
“You owe him a favor, and you no pay up.”
So. P.G. was jealous of my newfound success. Or his perceived lack of it. I sighed. He didn’t understand
how things really worked. Somehow I thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t want to learn
the rest, either. I had other problems on my mind.
Oddly enough, Uncle Meredith’s behavior had changed about the same time as P.G.’s. All of a sudden,
my benign but bumbling uncle took an interest in my comings and goings. He startled me so badly one
night as I was returning home late to my basement apartment I almost transformed into a gnat to get
away from the shadowy visitor squatting atop my bed. Luckily, I recognized him in time and spared us
both the embarrassment.
“What are you doing down here in the dark, Unca Mer?” I asked, locking the barred gate behind me.
Then I triple-locked us safely inside and flicked on the overhead light.
“Waiting for you, Felice, what else?”
“Whassup?” I kicked off my new high heels, spikier than I was accustomed to wearing, and groaned as
the knots unkinked from my legs. I’d been on my feet for the last ten hours. Some things you just had
to do to move up in the world.
“I’ve had enough of this infestation we live in.” Uncle Meredith spoke in a soft, matter-of-fact, slightly sad
tone of voice, so I could tell he wasn’t angry at me.
“Did you find another rat in the kitchen?” I asked.
“No, I’m talking about the gangs out in the street. All around us. You know my ears can’t help but pick
up their confounded chatter, and I tell you what: they’re yapping about some big shipment coming in
soon, something so big, they’re gonna use it to take back the ghetto from us gentrification types. I’m
tired of all their blasted energy, and I’m tired of living in the middle of them. They’re sucking me dry.”
“You could take care of them, you know,” I said with a wink and a wave of a finger to suggest a spell.
“Felicity Flour!”
“Sorry. It’s late. Maybe we could talk about this in the morning, how about?”
“And that’s another thing. I worry about you out so late, having to come home under their watchful
eyes.”
“Don’t worry, Unca Mer. One of the guys at work lives nearby and insists on walking me home.” True. It
was P.G. He had some influence over my night safety, seeing as how a couple of his cousins belonged to
the very gang Uncle Meredith worried about.
“I feel responsible for you,” my uncle said, “’cause I brought you here to D.C., so far away from home.”
“It was my choice. You didn’t make me come. I just had to get away from Atlantica…”
“Shhh!” Uncle Meredith leaped out of his squat, tripped over his long beard, and tumbled off the side of
my bed. “You must never mention that word out in public, you know that!”
“But we’re not in public.”
“You just never know who else has ears and where they put them! If we, er, that is, if folks like us
choose to leave our homeland and come to a, shall we say, a remote place such as this, then we must
not intermingle with the natives. That is, not to the degree that…”
“Uncle, what are you trying to say?”
He cleared his throat. “It has come to my attention, Felicity, that you have a…how would I call this? A
boyfriend. And he’s not one of us.”
“That’s not true!”
“I can’t help but worry where this is leading. Interspecies relationships between our kind and theirs have
always ended up as missing person cases. I don’t want it to be you who goes missing. We’ve got to get
you away from here, to someplace safe, before it’s too late. I have a half-sister twice removed in Ohi’a
where you could…”
“No, Uncle! Anything but!”
“It is within my purview to enforce…”
“I know, Uncle, but please don’t!” My eyes focused on the finger he wagged in my direction, reminding
me of the finely tuned powers of an elder wizard, and I quaked with fear.
“You should be with your own kind,” he said with a sigh as he dropped his finger and left it there on the
floor.
“I’m with you, Uncle!”
“I’m too old and used up to watch over you the way I should. Besides, I yearn for the peace and quiet of
our own kind, while you, Felicity Flour….” He bent down to retrieve his finger, apparently changing his
mind about needing it again for my own good. “You seem to feed off all this, all this…chaos!”
“I’ll be more careful, I promise!” Had he heard about my blunders? My close calls intersecting with the real
world and realists?
He shook his head. Years layered on him, weighing down his heart and turning him into a wizened man,
skidding feebly toward the old folks’ abyss. “I don’t know about this calling of yours, following the flour. I
always wondered if just maybe the caller cauldron had, I don’t know, made a mistake. Oh, never mind.
That’s impossible. But what is possible is that flour is the mistake. White powder…. It all looks the same.”
He rolled his eyes to illustrate the gravity of such a mistake.
When he collected them again, he continued. “Look, Felice, if you’re getting sidetracked from your
particular calling, that’s not a bad thing. I can’t help but worry that your calling may be a tad…well, too
dangerous, shall we say?”
“Stop worrying. I’m in a good position at work to watch the flour closely.”
“A-ha! But not when you have to stay out till the wee hours by going to all those parties!” He said the
p-word as if it were dirty, like one of the platters I’d had to fix. Was that the problem? Had the world
imploded and I was the last to know?
I assured him the parties I served at were a perfectly safe way for me to track the pulse of the nation,
and besides, I hadn’t forgotten my calling. Anyway, there was nothing we could do about it in the middle
of the night, so I convinced him to go back upstairs and let me get some rest. I didn’t tell him why I
needed that rest. I was scheduled to serve the next night at the biggest party yet of my budding career:
a reception for the visiting delegation from Colombia. That would’ve given Uncle Meredith something to
worry about, much more so than rumors of a boyfriend.
A row of black vans parked outside the anonymous brownstone the next night where the party was
going to be held in an upscale neighborhood. I was on the list of scheduled servers, so the burly guys
inside the vans let me pass by them without interference.
The lady of the brownstone insisted the arrival of Marionette’s company had tracked in dirt and filth from
god-knows-where, so she made us—yes, the servers—sweep, mop, dust, and polish her already spic ‘n
span palace. My knuckles itched to whip out my mushroom hat and be done with her highness once and
for all, and judging from my colleagues and the throbbing veins that stood out on their temples, I could
tell I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But I’d promised Uncle Meredith I’d be on my best behavior.
Word would get back to him before I could fill my serving platter, and then I’d be headed for Ohi’a for
sure.
Marionette put me on door duty that night, to open the door and usher each guest to the receiving line.
I could tell they were important guests by the eager reactions of the official cameraman, but I didn’t
recognize any of them. Politicians were all alike. As realists, they thought they could influence the
outcome of the world, or so I understood. But what do any of us know about reality or unreality, really?
As invisible people, we often overhear things the realist politicians probably don’t want anyone outside
their circle of reality to hear.
Such as, the ‘chatter’ the arriving guests chatted about. Apparently there was a ton of ‘new chatter’
going around the hill. Weren’t they lucky to stumble across this information in time to ward off the next
national disaster? Yeah, I thought, ‘luck,’ compliments of Uncle Meredith’s circle of Atlantican guiders!
Mr. Secretary, the main dude at the head of the receiving line, laughed and suggested his guests enjoy
themselves pronto, before the media got wind of you-know-what. Because any minute now, America
would once again snuff out a threat to democracy. The threat plotters would find themselves behind bars
before they had a chance to set up their plans.
Then Mr. Secretary winked at me. Here was a man who had an uncanny ability to see us invisible people.
Could he be…? Was he from…Atlantica? Was he giving me a subtle go-ahead to…over-ride my oaths?
The lady of the brownstone, meanwhile, was still complaining. There were smudges on the martini
glasses and specks of foreign substances contaminating the cocktail plates. P.G. had screwed up. Given
his tirades of late, I wouldn’t put it past him. I would have to bring this to Marionette’s attention, but
she was outside, tempting the burly guys from the vans with some of the chef’s confections. That’s
when I noticed another distraction: a hint of carnations and tamarind wafting from the rhododendron
bush nearest my door.
“P.G., what the heck are you doing here?” I asked, stepping outside. “How did you get past the secret
service?”
He dragged me behind the bush and held a pudgy finger to his lips. “They no see because they eat. You
got to help me.”
“Me? What’s going on?”
“Me and my cousins? We lavamos the dishes when one of them, he says he no work no more after
tonight. He go away, and we all die.”
“P.G., you hired your cousins to help you wash the dishes? No wonder they didn’t get done right.”
“No, no, no, Señorita Felicidad, you no understand.”
“Oh, I understand plenty. I’m gonna have to come back down to the lava room and make sure
everything gets washed properly.”
“No time to wash,” P.G. said. “We have big problem. With el colombiano.”
“What’s he got to do with me? He’s none of my concern. He spread rumors about you and me, that’s all.
I can’t do anything about him.” Besides, I’d promised.
“I was a little loco,” P.G. said, “when I thought you love him instead of me. Is okay now. I understand. Is
all because of masa, yes?”
“Masa? No.”
“Yes, masa. You call flour. Señorita Felicidad de la masa. El colombiano sends for the masa you want.”
“I don’t want it. I just have to watch it.” Oops. He wasn’t supposed to know about my calling. Who was
this guy, anyway? And where was he really from?
“Is okay. You think I don’t see your hat? Sure, I know all about it.”
“Oh, that old thing?”
“I know how it works.” He wagged his eyebrows knowingly.
He…knew?
“You the only one have the magic,” P.G. continued. “Please, Señorita Felicidad, use your magic to stop it.
My cousin tell me they have big bomb go boom tonight, yes this very night. Is when el colombiano’s
masa arrive. Tonight, on midnight train. El centro. You have to be there. Stop bomb.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because of hat. You can do. Otherwise, we all die. I don’t want to die. You want to die?”
My palms sweat. There was that darned oath. But here in the center of the world of politics I hadn’t yet
intersected with the real world, I thought.
“Okay, P.G., I’ll see what I can do.” I gave him a little peck on his cheek, and he wiggled away, happy. It
was the favor he thought I owed.
P.G. was right. I was probably the only one in his reality that had any sort of power. My kind can change
the order of things! We can create alternate realities! My calling took on a new, crystal clarity, despite the
oath I’d taken. I realized my school must’ve created its laws to keep us wizards from misusing our
carefully developed powers. Well, now that I was really in the real world, I’d found out a thing or two. I’d
broken the first two laws—I’d reversed dish breakage, and now I’d given away secrets to my sort of
boyfriend. But the apocalypse hadn’t hit as promised. If I interfered now, I’d only be upholding the third
law, wouldn’t I? Maybe we weren’t dead after all.
I mumbled a transformation chant and darted back inside the party, moving fast before anyone could
spot me. I targeted my pal, Mr. Secretary, and climbed up the silk of his suit to his shoulder pads, where
I whispered in his ear about that fateful forecast from second-year Theory. I described the vision of
asphyxiated, stacked tourists beneath the dusted blossoms of the cherry trees downtown. Mr. Secretary
must shut down the railroads immediately, as in Marionette mode of immediate. I didn’t have to explain
why, because the magical lilt of my chant gave him all the reason he needed.
“I know, I know,” he whispered, giving me a little pat that sent me tumbling to the floor. Then he turned
to the lady beside him. “Excuse me, dear. There’s something I must attend to.”
“Eeek!” She squealed and sloshed the contents of her martini onto the next person in line. “A mouse!”
I resembled that.
Mr. Secretary nodded at one of his assistants, and they hurried away to a private study, stepping lively.
No sooner had the door closed behind him than the lady made a face and keeled over.
Screams fell like dominoes that crashed down on my head. Party guests stampeded, sending me
scurrying in mindless circles. Servers’ trays clattered to the floor, bombarding me with a rain of canapés.
Assistants, and aids, and secretaries to secretaries, and even the burly guys from the vans stormed to
the dead lady’s side. Shouts and camera flashes electrified the air. The door to the private study flung
open, and Mr. Secretary raced through the chaos, his meeting forgotten.
Round and round beside the body I ran. The harder my tiny paws pummeled the carpet, the faster my
blood pumped and the harder dizziness slammed me. Reverse, reverse, reverse…. My desperate murmurs
came out as nothing but babble-speak. I wasn’t going to be able to reverse any transformation spell, not
as long as panic influenced me. The thought of being stuck as a mouse forever only fueled more panic.
The world was about to implode on me.
And then I realized…
Heck, this time it really would implode! With Mr. Secretary’s attention turned to his dead lady, there’d be
no rush to the train station, no saving of the derailed train, no stopping the spilling of flour. My expected
outcome from second-year Theory was about to descend. And me, a mouse.
With my nerves twitching, I popped straight up into the air and plopped down again, askew. Only, I
landed on the body. I felt a rib give way beneath my paw as if my full, wizardly weight pressed down on
the poor deceased, and not just the weight of a mouse. Then a missile fired from her mouth and landed
splat on the wallpaper beside her.
Ducking the canapé missile that had been stuck in her windpipe, I clung to her collar. She coughed next,
so violent a motion she bucked me off, and I landed on the rug beside her. Then came a long, deep
breath. Reverse, reverse, reverse…
The lady of the brownstone was back on her feet, complaining about the smudge on her martini glass,
while Mr. Secretary and his retinue were on their way to the train station, while I stood in my spike-
heeled position by the front door. A hint of carnations and tamarind wafted from the rhododendron bush
nearest my door.
“P.G., what the heck are you doing here?” I asked, stepping outside. “How did you get past the secret
service?”
I nodded at the row of black vans, but only one of them was parked there now. One of the suits leaned
against the van, smoking a cigarette. A pack of cards stuck out of his breast pocket. The rest of the
vans had followed Mr. Secretary. Or maybe el colombiano.
“Your uncle,” P.G. said with a wink, “he ask me to walk home with you when you’re off work. I found me
a card game, so I just wait out here till you are done, okay?”
I was done. Boy, was I done.
The trains came in that night, and when they did, the burly guys were there to meet them. They met the
gang, too, that is the gang that worried Uncle Meredith. And poof! The crack dealers disappeared from
our streets. Like magic.
The next day, tourists from the heartland streamed beneath the cherry trees as usual. Uncle Meredith
and I got to keep our ghetto. We already had a new chef at Marionette’s—this time from the far east—
and the entire crew rotated once again in the lava room. Marionette added me to her sales team, and I
was well on my way.
Not to Ohi’a.
the caterer, naturally I feared I was to blame.
Blame is a word that flies round circles here in D.C. like lightning and thunder claps back at Atlantica
Wizard School, my alma mater where the fear of the possibility of my fault actually began.
Strangled, the coroner’s report later would claim, with her own pantyhose. Oh-ho! So that would be the
official story? Washington hanky-panky sounded better on the books than death by derailed flour. Easier
to believe, too, than what really happened, even though reality is only a definition of one’s perspective.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering why on earth’s oceans anyone would interfere on my behalf.
It all began back at AWS, when I flew up to take my oath and receive my graduation hat. My head was
full of trivia—history, principles, theory, and the science of magic.
“Felicity Flour,” the master trolled in his solemn voice that generated ten-foot swells beneath a backdrop
of lightning, “do you swear to uphold the three laws of wizardry?”
“I do,” I murmured amidst thunder claps breaking in the distance.
I’d mastered spell practicum, transformation intensives, and honors seminars with the top wizards in the
field. Thanks to Uncle Meredith’s connections, I’d apprenticed with the foremost recipe keeper of all time,
a maven named Martha. I had everything I needed for a stellar career that would take me far away from
the illusory island of my genesis. Which offer would I take?
None came in. And I wondered, why on earth’s ocean couldn’t I find a job, when clearly there were
pressing needs, especially for folks of my kind?
Take, for example, the expected outcome of my story, which I learned way back in second-year Theory:
train derails in downtown Washington D.C., only blocks away from cherry trees in high bloom. Bags of
alleged flour burst apart in the wreckage, and white powder explodes everywhere, issuing clouds of
alleged flour that billow out across the city and rain down on tourists from the heartland. Whoa.
Thousands of asphyxiated tourists stack up under dusted cherry blossoms. That’s a picture that will
strike a fatal blow to the driving force of the world’s greatest nation.
So I took my oath in spite of the absence of offers.
Before the first of the ten-footers scattered us from AWS, the master awarded me with my graduation
hat, which resembled a puffy, white mushroom. This was the symbol of my specialty calling—to track the
transportation of flour (in all its variations) and keep its trade from derailing. My calling had chosen me at
the end of first-year Principles, and the rest of my classes at AWS adjusted their design especially for me.
We can theorize why no job offers had yet come in: blame it on widespread suspicion that Gen Y couldn’
t deliver, or on the economy, or on my own family’s history of illicit activities, or heck, blame everything
on W, but honestly, blame doesn’t accomplish anything. Blame doesn’t earn you a living or get you
ahead in these ultra-realistic times. You just have to prove yourself, and in any case, I have to make a
living. Otherwise, I’ll end up sharing a limestone cave on the far side of the tracks in Nowhere Ohi’a,
where failed wizards go.
So I decided to volunteer. It wouldn’t pay the rent, but I’d worry about that next month. For now, Uncle
Meredith had given me one free month in his basement, which he usually rented out, in spite of its
location in a ghetto of D.C. where crack flowed freely. It was a sort of graduation present, a little gift of
urban dwelling while I found my way to my calling. Maybe I could beg a job as an intern in some
congressman’s office. I have a few skills. I can turn political opponents into toads.
Wizard Law #1:
A Wizard Will Never Use Magic in the Real World for Personal Gain
But toads were probably not a good idea since I’d taken my oaths to uphold wizard laws. If we broke
them (they hammered this into us back at AWS) the world would implode—something about colliding
matter and anti-matter, but it’s all theory. No one knows for sure. Our magic is only supposed to be
used in our unreality.
You might think of us as a sort of restricted wizard. Technically, we are wizards in a general sense, but
actually we’re something far more complex. We can come and go through reality versus unreality. We
meddle with time. We are people keepers. We are invisible guides of the universe. Through our role
modeling the subconscious way, we lead unenlightened realists down the path of what they call ‘luck.’
Okay, I found some of their ‘luck’ for myself. On the last day of my free month, I landed a job washing
dishes for a catering company. Anyone could wash dishes. Or so the manager who’d hired me must’ve
thought. It was just me and a rotating crew of illegal Central Americans down in what they called the
‘lava’ room.
A Salvadoreño whom the other washers called Poto Gordo showed me around. P.G. (that’s what I called
him) was as short as his nickname promised his ass was wide, but in spite of his encumbrance, he
slipped through the labyrinthine cellar as soundlessly as an elf. An aroma of aftershave—carnation with a
hint of tamarind—trailed along behind him. He apparently bathed in the stuff and used it to slick down
the coarse, black wires of his hair. Only, they disobeyed, and so he had to wear his cousin’s pantyhose
like a hat, tying the legs into knots across the top of his coiled head.
P.G. showed me around. He showed me the double doors where delivery trucks unloaded bins of dirties.
He showed me the sinks, hoses, scrubbers and mechanized washers and cabinets of supplies, and he
showed me the shelves where I was to stack the washed and dried dishes for someone else to put away.
Not me.
But most important of all, “Señorita Felicidad,” as he liked to call me, was the break room. He showed me
a locker where I could store my mushroom hat. He showed me the vending machines and the tables
where they played cards. A happy worker, P.G. said, was a good worker. Happy happy!
I had a calling to fulfill, and it wasn’t cards. Fresh from school, I was eager to work. P.G. let me start on
the easy bins first: flatware and cocktail plates.
On my second day of work, he let me load martini glasses into the washers. When I broke none of the
crystal wizard hats, he gave me a bin of serving dishes on my third day. They had to be done the old-
fashioned way, by hand, because they were expensive and covered with intricate designs.
Those platters were as heavy as if they’d been reinforced with iron. Once I lathered them all up good in
suds, they just got so darned slippery… Well, I couldn’t help but drop the biggest, most unwieldy,
costliest piece in all the inventory. Paying for it would take an entire week’s pay, which I didn’t have to
spare. One week would have to go to the crack dealers to keep them from breaking into my apartment,
two weeks’ pay to Uncle Meredith for rent, and everything else (say, if I wanted to eat) would have to
come out of my fourth week.
Staring at the broken pieces of rainbow ceramics on the steel countertop, I summoned to mind a
reversal spell I’d learned in the practicum. But then, there was that darned oath. The spell hesitated in
my mind, and I stood there frozen, mute.
My clatter in the lava room brought P.G. sliding in on his soundless sneakers. Cards sprouted from his
shirt pocket, and babbling incoherence in the form of a wordstream issued from his mouth. His short,
pudgy arms waved in circles above his head. Clearly, me and my hat were bound for Ohi’a.
Here in the lava room I hadn’t yet intersected with the real world, I thought. Not really. Maybe I could
undo the breakage. Who would notice? P.G. might, but he didn’t count as real. He preferred to be a
shadow, since he was here illegally, working under the table, the only breadwinner for a bunch of cousins
on the street. In fact, I had to do the reversal if I wanted to keep my job and move up in the world.
So I did. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.
When I was done with the entire set, the pieces were better than new. Shinier, less heavy, yet more
durable. P.G. smiled, called me “Señorita Felicidad,” and returned happy to his card game. Since he didn’t
know I’d meddled with his time reality (that’s how the spell worked), he would have no memory of my
close call.
Best of all, I found out, the world didn’t implode.
Wizard Law #2:
A Wizard Never Reveals Magic Secrets to a Realist
So I grew a little more daring. I decided what the heck; maybe I could venture upstairs and sample the
canapés P.G. bragged about. One of the chefs was P.G.’s Colombian buddy, close as family. His
compadre’s creations were ‘out of this world.’ Oh, yeah. But with my help, I could actually make that true.
I gave P.G.’s friend a foie gras trick I’d learned from Martha, and that’s when I came to the attention of
the woman who ran this operation, a Martha wannabe named Marionette.
“What have you done to the foie gras?” Marionette shrilled, closing her eyes and licking her fingers. “It’
s…it’s…je ne sais pas….” Her claw-shaped nails, manicured a brilliant pink, stroked the air, and she
moaned, either struggling for a description or having an orgasm, I couldn’t be sure.
“Extraordinaire!” she finally spit out, spitting a wayward blonde curl from her thick coat of lipstick, a pink
that matched her nails and her suit.
The chef smiled at me. “A little family secret our new dishwasher give me.”
Marionette opened her heavily painted lids long enough to glance at me. By now I’d taken off my hat,
and P.G.’s friend could do the introductions. Then Marionette marched straightaway to the personnel
files, tap tap tapping down the cement hall in her spike heels. She demanded her assistant stop
everything, interrupt her sales meeting, and pull my resume immediately. Under cover of my hat once
again, I could follow all this without being seen. She and I existed, after all, but in very different realities.
When Marionette got to the part about my apprenticeship with Martha, she was so delighted she
stopped reading and dropped my file for her assistant to reassemble and put away. Good thing, too,
since the rest of my records are rather nebulous, suggesting that my beginnings arose with the mist of a
dew-laden morn under the shadow of the third volcano in some Atlantic chain of drifting islands.
In any case, Marionette liked me, so she decided to bring me up out of the cellar, effective immediately
(‘immediate’ is the only mode under which Marionette works). She skipped the background search on
me, thank goodness. The less her high-profile clients knew, the better. No doubt they’d assume a wizard
was some sort of terrorist, when in fact, we were little more than guides through life.
Marionette gave me just enough training to send me off to become a server, the first step, she insisted,
on my road to the kitchen. All of her best chefs had to know how to serve, too. Personally, I suspected
she had another agenda, but I went with her. Anything, to get out of the lava room.
She showed me how to hold the platter, which must magically remain full, and she told me I must always
be everywhere at the same time, with whatever was required of me by whomever happened to be in this
undefined place, yet throughout the event, I must never be seen. It sounded easy enough, not so
different from a normal day of life in Atlantica.
Pretty soon, Marionette’s company no longer had to advertise for business. Bookings poured in, and we
accommodated more clients than we could comfortably handle. Our bookings grew…
And grew…
I like to think it was all because of me. Why not? Marionette asked me to serve more and more. She
forgot about my chef grooming, and I became her most trusted server. Which brings me to the real
beginning of my story.
Wizard Law #3:
A Wizard Never Uses Magic to Inflict Bodily Harm on a Realist
Maybe P.G. had been dealt a bad hand, but whatever, he was not so happy anymore in the lava room. I
didn’t understand the babblestream he spoke at me, but one thing for sure, he wasn’t calling me
“Señorita Felicidad” anymore. All the way from my new locker upstairs, I could hear him coming and going
below. His sneakers squeak-squished along the cellar tunnels, and each step echoed as if the weight of
his ass ground him into the cement.
“What’s he saying?” I asked his friend, the Colombian chef who’d been promoted to head chef with a
locker next to mine.
“He say you his girlfriend.”
“Yo?”
“You!”
“Well, what’s he angry about?”
“You owe him a favor, and you no pay up.”
So. P.G. was jealous of my newfound success. Or his perceived lack of it. I sighed. He didn’t understand
how things really worked. Somehow I thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t want to learn
the rest, either. I had other problems on my mind.
Oddly enough, Uncle Meredith’s behavior had changed about the same time as P.G.’s. All of a sudden,
my benign but bumbling uncle took an interest in my comings and goings. He startled me so badly one
night as I was returning home late to my basement apartment I almost transformed into a gnat to get
away from the shadowy visitor squatting atop my bed. Luckily, I recognized him in time and spared us
both the embarrassment.
“What are you doing down here in the dark, Unca Mer?” I asked, locking the barred gate behind me.
Then I triple-locked us safely inside and flicked on the overhead light.
“Waiting for you, Felice, what else?”
“Whassup?” I kicked off my new high heels, spikier than I was accustomed to wearing, and groaned as
the knots unkinked from my legs. I’d been on my feet for the last ten hours. Some things you just had
to do to move up in the world.
“I’ve had enough of this infestation we live in.” Uncle Meredith spoke in a soft, matter-of-fact, slightly sad
tone of voice, so I could tell he wasn’t angry at me.
“Did you find another rat in the kitchen?” I asked.
“No, I’m talking about the gangs out in the street. All around us. You know my ears can’t help but pick
up their confounded chatter, and I tell you what: they’re yapping about some big shipment coming in
soon, something so big, they’re gonna use it to take back the ghetto from us gentrification types. I’m
tired of all their blasted energy, and I’m tired of living in the middle of them. They’re sucking me dry.”
“You could take care of them, you know,” I said with a wink and a wave of a finger to suggest a spell.
“Felicity Flour!”
“Sorry. It’s late. Maybe we could talk about this in the morning, how about?”
“And that’s another thing. I worry about you out so late, having to come home under their watchful
eyes.”
“Don’t worry, Unca Mer. One of the guys at work lives nearby and insists on walking me home.” True. It
was P.G. He had some influence over my night safety, seeing as how a couple of his cousins belonged to
the very gang Uncle Meredith worried about.
“I feel responsible for you,” my uncle said, “’cause I brought you here to D.C., so far away from home.”
“It was my choice. You didn’t make me come. I just had to get away from Atlantica…”
“Shhh!” Uncle Meredith leaped out of his squat, tripped over his long beard, and tumbled off the side of
my bed. “You must never mention that word out in public, you know that!”
“But we’re not in public.”
“You just never know who else has ears and where they put them! If we, er, that is, if folks like us
choose to leave our homeland and come to a, shall we say, a remote place such as this, then we must
not intermingle with the natives. That is, not to the degree that…”
“Uncle, what are you trying to say?”
He cleared his throat. “It has come to my attention, Felicity, that you have a…how would I call this? A
boyfriend. And he’s not one of us.”
“That’s not true!”
“I can’t help but worry where this is leading. Interspecies relationships between our kind and theirs have
always ended up as missing person cases. I don’t want it to be you who goes missing. We’ve got to get
you away from here, to someplace safe, before it’s too late. I have a half-sister twice removed in Ohi’a
where you could…”
“No, Uncle! Anything but!”
“It is within my purview to enforce…”
“I know, Uncle, but please don’t!” My eyes focused on the finger he wagged in my direction, reminding
me of the finely tuned powers of an elder wizard, and I quaked with fear.
“You should be with your own kind,” he said with a sigh as he dropped his finger and left it there on the
floor.
“I’m with you, Uncle!”
“I’m too old and used up to watch over you the way I should. Besides, I yearn for the peace and quiet of
our own kind, while you, Felicity Flour….” He bent down to retrieve his finger, apparently changing his
mind about needing it again for my own good. “You seem to feed off all this, all this…chaos!”
“I’ll be more careful, I promise!” Had he heard about my blunders? My close calls intersecting with the real
world and realists?
He shook his head. Years layered on him, weighing down his heart and turning him into a wizened man,
skidding feebly toward the old folks’ abyss. “I don’t know about this calling of yours, following the flour. I
always wondered if just maybe the caller cauldron had, I don’t know, made a mistake. Oh, never mind.
That’s impossible. But what is possible is that flour is the mistake. White powder…. It all looks the same.”
He rolled his eyes to illustrate the gravity of such a mistake.
When he collected them again, he continued. “Look, Felice, if you’re getting sidetracked from your
particular calling, that’s not a bad thing. I can’t help but worry that your calling may be a tad…well, too
dangerous, shall we say?”
“Stop worrying. I’m in a good position at work to watch the flour closely.”
“A-ha! But not when you have to stay out till the wee hours by going to all those parties!” He said the
p-word as if it were dirty, like one of the platters I’d had to fix. Was that the problem? Had the world
imploded and I was the last to know?
I assured him the parties I served at were a perfectly safe way for me to track the pulse of the nation,
and besides, I hadn’t forgotten my calling. Anyway, there was nothing we could do about it in the middle
of the night, so I convinced him to go back upstairs and let me get some rest. I didn’t tell him why I
needed that rest. I was scheduled to serve the next night at the biggest party yet of my budding career:
a reception for the visiting delegation from Colombia. That would’ve given Uncle Meredith something to
worry about, much more so than rumors of a boyfriend.
A row of black vans parked outside the anonymous brownstone the next night where the party was
going to be held in an upscale neighborhood. I was on the list of scheduled servers, so the burly guys
inside the vans let me pass by them without interference.
The lady of the brownstone insisted the arrival of Marionette’s company had tracked in dirt and filth from
god-knows-where, so she made us—yes, the servers—sweep, mop, dust, and polish her already spic ‘n
span palace. My knuckles itched to whip out my mushroom hat and be done with her highness once and
for all, and judging from my colleagues and the throbbing veins that stood out on their temples, I could
tell I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But I’d promised Uncle Meredith I’d be on my best behavior.
Word would get back to him before I could fill my serving platter, and then I’d be headed for Ohi’a for
sure.
Marionette put me on door duty that night, to open the door and usher each guest to the receiving line.
I could tell they were important guests by the eager reactions of the official cameraman, but I didn’t
recognize any of them. Politicians were all alike. As realists, they thought they could influence the
outcome of the world, or so I understood. But what do any of us know about reality or unreality, really?
As invisible people, we often overhear things the realist politicians probably don’t want anyone outside
their circle of reality to hear.
Such as, the ‘chatter’ the arriving guests chatted about. Apparently there was a ton of ‘new chatter’
going around the hill. Weren’t they lucky to stumble across this information in time to ward off the next
national disaster? Yeah, I thought, ‘luck,’ compliments of Uncle Meredith’s circle of Atlantican guiders!
Mr. Secretary, the main dude at the head of the receiving line, laughed and suggested his guests enjoy
themselves pronto, before the media got wind of you-know-what. Because any minute now, America
would once again snuff out a threat to democracy. The threat plotters would find themselves behind bars
before they had a chance to set up their plans.
Then Mr. Secretary winked at me. Here was a man who had an uncanny ability to see us invisible people.
Could he be…? Was he from…Atlantica? Was he giving me a subtle go-ahead to…over-ride my oaths?
The lady of the brownstone, meanwhile, was still complaining. There were smudges on the martini
glasses and specks of foreign substances contaminating the cocktail plates. P.G. had screwed up. Given
his tirades of late, I wouldn’t put it past him. I would have to bring this to Marionette’s attention, but
she was outside, tempting the burly guys from the vans with some of the chef’s confections. That’s
when I noticed another distraction: a hint of carnations and tamarind wafting from the rhododendron
bush nearest my door.
“P.G., what the heck are you doing here?” I asked, stepping outside. “How did you get past the secret
service?”
He dragged me behind the bush and held a pudgy finger to his lips. “They no see because they eat. You
got to help me.”
“Me? What’s going on?”
“Me and my cousins? We lavamos the dishes when one of them, he says he no work no more after
tonight. He go away, and we all die.”
“P.G., you hired your cousins to help you wash the dishes? No wonder they didn’t get done right.”
“No, no, no, Señorita Felicidad, you no understand.”
“Oh, I understand plenty. I’m gonna have to come back down to the lava room and make sure
everything gets washed properly.”
“No time to wash,” P.G. said. “We have big problem. With el colombiano.”
“What’s he got to do with me? He’s none of my concern. He spread rumors about you and me, that’s all.
I can’t do anything about him.” Besides, I’d promised.
“I was a little loco,” P.G. said, “when I thought you love him instead of me. Is okay now. I understand. Is
all because of masa, yes?”
“Masa? No.”
“Yes, masa. You call flour. Señorita Felicidad de la masa. El colombiano sends for the masa you want.”
“I don’t want it. I just have to watch it.” Oops. He wasn’t supposed to know about my calling. Who was
this guy, anyway? And where was he really from?
“Is okay. You think I don’t see your hat? Sure, I know all about it.”
“Oh, that old thing?”
“I know how it works.” He wagged his eyebrows knowingly.
He…knew?
“You the only one have the magic,” P.G. continued. “Please, Señorita Felicidad, use your magic to stop it.
My cousin tell me they have big bomb go boom tonight, yes this very night. Is when el colombiano’s
masa arrive. Tonight, on midnight train. El centro. You have to be there. Stop bomb.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because of hat. You can do. Otherwise, we all die. I don’t want to die. You want to die?”
My palms sweat. There was that darned oath. But here in the center of the world of politics I hadn’t yet
intersected with the real world, I thought.
“Okay, P.G., I’ll see what I can do.” I gave him a little peck on his cheek, and he wiggled away, happy. It
was the favor he thought I owed.
P.G. was right. I was probably the only one in his reality that had any sort of power. My kind can change
the order of things! We can create alternate realities! My calling took on a new, crystal clarity, despite the
oath I’d taken. I realized my school must’ve created its laws to keep us wizards from misusing our
carefully developed powers. Well, now that I was really in the real world, I’d found out a thing or two. I’d
broken the first two laws—I’d reversed dish breakage, and now I’d given away secrets to my sort of
boyfriend. But the apocalypse hadn’t hit as promised. If I interfered now, I’d only be upholding the third
law, wouldn’t I? Maybe we weren’t dead after all.
I mumbled a transformation chant and darted back inside the party, moving fast before anyone could
spot me. I targeted my pal, Mr. Secretary, and climbed up the silk of his suit to his shoulder pads, where
I whispered in his ear about that fateful forecast from second-year Theory. I described the vision of
asphyxiated, stacked tourists beneath the dusted blossoms of the cherry trees downtown. Mr. Secretary
must shut down the railroads immediately, as in Marionette mode of immediate. I didn’t have to explain
why, because the magical lilt of my chant gave him all the reason he needed.
“I know, I know,” he whispered, giving me a little pat that sent me tumbling to the floor. Then he turned
to the lady beside him. “Excuse me, dear. There’s something I must attend to.”
“Eeek!” She squealed and sloshed the contents of her martini onto the next person in line. “A mouse!”
I resembled that.
Mr. Secretary nodded at one of his assistants, and they hurried away to a private study, stepping lively.
No sooner had the door closed behind him than the lady made a face and keeled over.
Screams fell like dominoes that crashed down on my head. Party guests stampeded, sending me
scurrying in mindless circles. Servers’ trays clattered to the floor, bombarding me with a rain of canapés.
Assistants, and aids, and secretaries to secretaries, and even the burly guys from the vans stormed to
the dead lady’s side. Shouts and camera flashes electrified the air. The door to the private study flung
open, and Mr. Secretary raced through the chaos, his meeting forgotten.
Round and round beside the body I ran. The harder my tiny paws pummeled the carpet, the faster my
blood pumped and the harder dizziness slammed me. Reverse, reverse, reverse…. My desperate murmurs
came out as nothing but babble-speak. I wasn’t going to be able to reverse any transformation spell, not
as long as panic influenced me. The thought of being stuck as a mouse forever only fueled more panic.
The world was about to implode on me.
And then I realized…
Heck, this time it really would implode! With Mr. Secretary’s attention turned to his dead lady, there’d be
no rush to the train station, no saving of the derailed train, no stopping the spilling of flour. My expected
outcome from second-year Theory was about to descend. And me, a mouse.
With my nerves twitching, I popped straight up into the air and plopped down again, askew. Only, I
landed on the body. I felt a rib give way beneath my paw as if my full, wizardly weight pressed down on
the poor deceased, and not just the weight of a mouse. Then a missile fired from her mouth and landed
splat on the wallpaper beside her.
Ducking the canapé missile that had been stuck in her windpipe, I clung to her collar. She coughed next,
so violent a motion she bucked me off, and I landed on the rug beside her. Then came a long, deep
breath. Reverse, reverse, reverse…
The lady of the brownstone was back on her feet, complaining about the smudge on her martini glass,
while Mr. Secretary and his retinue were on their way to the train station, while I stood in my spike-
heeled position by the front door. A hint of carnations and tamarind wafted from the rhododendron bush
nearest my door.
“P.G., what the heck are you doing here?” I asked, stepping outside. “How did you get past the secret
service?”
I nodded at the row of black vans, but only one of them was parked there now. One of the suits leaned
against the van, smoking a cigarette. A pack of cards stuck out of his breast pocket. The rest of the
vans had followed Mr. Secretary. Or maybe el colombiano.
“Your uncle,” P.G. said with a wink, “he ask me to walk home with you when you’re off work. I found me
a card game, so I just wait out here till you are done, okay?”
I was done. Boy, was I done.
The trains came in that night, and when they did, the burly guys were there to meet them. They met the
gang, too, that is the gang that worried Uncle Meredith. And poof! The crack dealers disappeared from
our streets. Like magic.
The next day, tourists from the heartland streamed beneath the cherry trees as usual. Uncle Meredith
and I got to keep our ghetto. We already had a new chef at Marionette’s—this time from the far east—
and the entire crew rotated once again in the lava room. Marionette added me to her sales team, and I
was well on my way.
Not to Ohi’a.
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Rebecca’s science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in
Broken Links, Mended Lives, Future Syndicate, and
Ecotastrophe. She also has a suspense novel, The Drowning of
Chittenden, by Rebecca Williamson.
Rebecca lives in Colorado and writes from her experiences of
traveling and living overseas, teaching Spanish, her passion for
the outdoors, skiing, martial arts, sewing, and hanging out with
her family.
Find out more at: http://rebeccawriter.blogspot.com/
Broken Links, Mended Lives, Future Syndicate, and
Ecotastrophe. She also has a suspense novel, The Drowning of
Chittenden, by Rebecca Williamson.
Rebecca lives in Colorado and writes from her experiences of
traveling and living overseas, teaching Spanish, her passion for
the outdoors, skiing, martial arts, sewing, and hanging out with
her family.
Find out more at: http://rebeccawriter.blogspot.com/