“I could hardly believe it!” Penny’s mom told us about a week later when we were out talking to her as she worked on her new garden. “I thought this dirt was really poor, and then I came out to get it ready for planting and all of a sudden it’s teeming with earthworms! The carrots are here, maybe, and this row will be radishes, I hope, and over there are going to be squash, if I’m lucky. Today I’m planting spinach in this shady spot.”
Penny asked me later, “Do you think our magic is really working?”
“It’s God’s magic, remember?” I said with a proud smirk on my face. “Us sprites are just helping out a little.”
“That thing you did with the Athame on the altar scared me. It sounded dangerous,” she said.
“It wasn’t. What would have been dangerous is if I had tried to do magic without being sincere about it.”
“Jeez, I have more to learn about it than I thought. Would you teach me more of this kind of stuff?”
“I am,” I said.
At the June meeting, we got our Search and Rescue packs. They were bright orange. Mabel helped us adjust them to our size and told us what everything was — tube tent, bivouac sack, 100 feet of light rope, rain gear, folding shovel, hatchet, hunting knife, county map, compass . . .
“This is your signal kit, which you will learn how to use today. We replace
them every two years even if they haven’t been used. See this expiration date?”
“Yes.”
“Emergency food, replaced yearly. Water bottle — keep it full. Stove and pot — new gas cartridge after any use. First aid kit — replaced every two years. Flashlight — extra bulb inside, and the batteries are replaced yearly, sooner if used much.”
Then she showed us the list of stuff we had to supply ourselves and keep ready all the time — boots, socks, jeans, and all that. “And remember, you can’t use any search and rescue gear for other activities. It has to sit in your rooms, packed and ready to go, until needed.”
The rest of the team finished their business meeting, and we drove to the Fire Department’s practice field. Using out-of-date signal kits, Penny and I and a couple of other fairly new people learned how to shoot sky flares, set off smoke cartridges, and use signal mirrors.
“Wow!” Penny said as she pulled the chain and her flare rocketed for the sky. “How high do they go?”
“About a thousand feet,” Jack told us. He made Jeff practice too.
Then a couple of guys who used to be Forest Service firefighters talked about fighting brushfires, and not getting caught by the fire. They lit some dry bushes on fire, and we all practiced putting them out with shovels, hatchets, and lots of dirt.
“Now remember, we aren’t firefighters, but sometimes we have to go into or pass through a burned area to get to a rescue scene. Let the firefighters do the firefighting unless you are forced to by circumstances.”
We burned some more bushes and then went out for Chinese food.
We were getting to be good friends with Michael. By the time school got out and Penny turned 10, he could run two miles, climb maples pretty well, put up a swing, and climb down the rope. Penny had taught him to float, and he could swim eight or ten laps in the pool.
He wasn’t learning stuff as fast as we had, and I wondered about it for a while, until one day at the pool Penny made me realize why.
“How can you swim 100 or more laps?” he asked.
“We just use a lot less energy than you do. You’ve got more body to move than we do,” she said.
“Michael,” I said from the edge of the pool, “it’s because we started training before we became adolescents. Your body is almost all grown up, so it will take a little longer for you. But if you’ll stick with us, we’ll stick with you.”
“Okay. I’ll do some more laps.”
“Five strokes to the breath this time!” Penny yelled.
“Maybe it’s time to find out if he can be a Sprite,” I said, knowing he couldn’t hear me.
“I think so too,” Penny said.
After swimming we went down to the boardwalk by the harbor. Hardly anyone was there.
“Do you believe in God, Michael?” I asked as we leaned on the rail and looked at boats.
“I don’t know. I think so, but when I go to church . . . I don’t know.”
“If there is a God, what’s he . . . or she . . . like?” Penny asked.
“He’d have to be great, and powerful, and kind. He’d have to really like people or he wouldn’t have made them.”
I looked at Penny. “What about the Devil?” I asked.
“I guess the Devil does bad things and God does good things.”
“Do you think that God does good things all by himself?” Penny asked.
“Umm . . . no. He has angels, and good people, doesn’t he?”
“Michael, we want to ask you something,” I began, “but you have to promise not to tell anyone, ever, no matter what you decide.”
“Okay . . . I promise.”
I looked at Penny. I was scared. It was a big risk, but how else could we find new people? “Michael, the things you have been doing with us are the very beginning of training to become a Wood Sprite, and the most important thing that Wood Sprites do is work white magic. I’m not talking about trick magic, with rabbits and scarves and junk. I’m talking about real magic.
White magic is magic that God and his Spirits like. It helps people, and never hurts anyone. But it is powerful, and it takes a lot of training and study to learn. We think you might make a good Wood Sprite, but only you can decide
if you want to try or not.”
We were all silent for a long time.
“Somehow, I knew there was something special about you guys. But I never would have guessed what,” he said.
“You still promise to keep our secret?” Penny demanded.
“Yeah. Do you mean magic like in medieval fantasy movies and Dungeons and Dragons and stuff?”
“Ummm . . . mostly no,” I said. “Most of that’s just movie special effects.
White magic helps someone other than the magician, it doesn’t accept payment or reward, and it follows the laws of God. We’ve only told you because it sounds like you already sort of believe in God.”
He didn’t say anything for a while.
“Can I think about it? You won’t cast a spell on me or anything, will you?”
“Of course not!” I said. “That would be black magic.”
“And no black magic or evil or selfishness is allowed anywhere near our Magic Circle!” Penny said. “Remember that as you think about it.”
More
silence.
Finally I said, “We’re going swimming in the inlet tomorrow. If you want to go with us, ride your bike to the park about 9:00. We’ll ride out to a nice little beach.”
Michael did come swimming, and continued the other training too, but no one said anything more about magic when we were together. We were glad he was still training, and he seemed to be keeping our secrets.
Penny and I had other work to do. Penny continued her study of the Tarot cards and astrology, writing in the Grimoire when she had her notes together.
I was studying American Indian religion, especially about the Vision Quest.
We were preparing for our own Vision Quests, two days and one night alone, with no food or equipment. We had talked our parents into letting us take a couple of overnight bicycle trips to the campground at the State Park, but on each trip one of us would be at the Grove instead. We agreed that the person who went to the State Park was in the most danger. I planned to do mine on my birthday in August, and Penny would do hers a week later.
But first would come the ancient holiday of Lugnasad, now called
Lammas, the celebration of the first fruits of the harvest. We were at my house one day in July, thinking about what we should do for it, when the phone rang. It was Mabel.
“We have a helicopter down in the hills. I’ll be by in one minute, A and B
teams are already on their way.”
“Penny is here with me.”
“Okay. We’ll run by her place for gear.”
In those 60 seconds, I changed into hiking clothes, Penny grabbed my pack, and Mom threw some food into a bag for us. Mabel’s truck roared up and we hopped in, flew to Penny’s house to grab her stuff, then Penny changed in the cab on the way.
“Watch and learn,” Mabel said, then picked up the microphone of her two-way radio as we headed out of town. “Search and Rescue Delta team to Dispatch. Have they decided where they’re going in?”
“Delta team, your people are arriving now at the Bear Creek trailhead.”
“Dispatch, any fire involved in the crash?”
“Delta team, negative on that, so far. The chopper’s down in dense forest.
They’ll have to get in and out on the ground.”
“Search and Rescue Delta team out.”
Mabel roared on down the highway. She explained to us how we would wait at the trailhead, and if they needed anything else, we’d have to pack it in.
Or if they had to come out of the woods at a different point, we’d drive around and meet them.
We arrived at the end of a dead-end road. There was a medic truck there already, a Sheriff’s car, and several of the Search and Rescue team’s cars and trucks.
“Keep your packs ready in the truck,” she told us, then ran over to talk to the Sheriff’s deputy.
We checked our packs. Mabel came back and told us the team hadn’t arrived at the crash site yet. We sat on the tailgate and waited. It was hot.
The medic came over to chat with Mabel.
“I didn’t know you guys brought your kids.”
“We don’t,” Mabel said. “Only highly-trained Search and Rescue people, and you’re looking at a couple of them.”
He didn’t say anything else about us as they talked. Mabel kept one ear on the radio.
“Search and Rescue Baker team to Dispatch. The chopper is lodged in some trees. I think we can get to it, but have the climbers on Delta team stand by.”
“Dispatch to Delta team.”
“Search and Rescue Delta. We copy. Climbers standing by.” Then she hopped in the back of the truck and started strapping 100 foot climbing ropes to all 3 packs. “You guys hear that? They might need you.”
We waited. Flies buzzed around. We munched on some of our food.
“Search and Rescue Baker team to Dispatch. We have a dead adult female and a conscious adult male with disorientation and a probable concussion.
No spinal injuries. We’re getting him out of the chopper now. Climbers on Delta can relax.”
I felt both relief and disappointment, and I think Penny did too. About an hour later they brought the conscious man out of the woods and gave him to the medics. A couple of the rescue team people were scraped up a little, and the medics tended to them, also. Mabel brought out water and lemonade and snacks for everybody. After things had settled down, Jack came over to us.
“As you can see, there’s often a lot of waiting in rescue work. It was a mess in there — broken branches everywhere. I’m glad we didn’t need you, but I’m also glad you were here.”