Penny needed some time alone, just like I had. But she came over the day before we were supposed to meet Michael, and said, “I’m ready to swim across the inlet. I want to do it tomorrow if that guy’s around.”
“Want some company?”
“Yeah!”
We packed lunches, suits and towels, and headed for our swimming beach early Saturday morning. Michael was already there. I had a hunch he would be, and I knew why. But no one said anything about magic yet — it wasn’t time. The three of us walked up to the house where the canoe guy lived. He answered the door.
“You guys are lucky. I’m leaving town tomorrow for a while. Are all three of you going to swim it?”
“Not me!” Michael said. “I’ll just help paddle.”
He changed into his swim trunks and got out the canoe. He told us his name was Tom. “If you guys don’t mind paddling back, I’ll swim it too. I haven’t done it in a while.”
“Sure. But won’t you be tired after paddling across for us?” I asked.
“Maybe. I’ll see.”
Michael offered to do most of the paddling so Tom wouldn’t get tired from it.
When we got onto the beach, Penny said, “Nice and easy. Five strokes.
You set the pace.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
Tom and Michael got into the canoe. “You guys ready?”
“Yep!”
We waded in until the water was deep enough, then swam. Nice slow rhythm. We soon passed the half-mile buoy. We swam. When I came up to breathe on that side, I could glimpse the canoe near us. It was good to know it was there. It wasn’t long before I heard Tom yell, “ONE MILE!”
I was fine. I could tell Penny was in good form beside me. I kept my rhythm as even as I could. Still five strokes per breath. “TWO MILES!”
I really knew I had done some swimming. I went a little farther, then knew it was time for more air. I switched to three strokes per breath, and Penny did a moment later. That felt better, but I knew it would slow us down.
“THREE MILES!”
I was getting really tired. My arms were getting heavy. I was having to concentrate on moving them more than before. I knew I could go to floating any time, but I wanted to do my best to swim straight through. Penny was still with me, and so was the canoe. A little farther, and I started to feel lightheaded, and soon after that, like I was floating. I remembered clearly the last time that had happened, and quickly turned over and stretched out to float.
Penny joined me as soon as she noticed. I bet she didn’t have to. She’s a good friend. The canoe slowed to a stop.
“You guys swam more than three miles straight. Amazing!” Tom said.
“How are you?” Penny asked.
“Started getting light-headed, like at my test. I’m okay now. Maybe another minute and I can go on.”
“Okay. No hurry.”
I floated and kicked lightly until I felt rested. Less than a mile to go. “Let’s swim,” I said and turned over. Three strokes. My arms were still a little heavy, but not too bad. I could see the beach getting closer. A few more minutes. Stay loose, arms. Penny was beside me. Here comes the bottom . . .
We made it! I crawled onto the beach and collapsed. Michael came over and sat with us. Penny and I just breathed. Three miles without resting.
Four in all. With my eyes closed, I let the sun warm my shaking body. I felt
strong and proud. I had limits, but I was strong.
Tom came over. “You guys ready to swim back?”
I laughed, just a little.
“I think I’ll swim it, but I’m not in as good a shape as you guys. Stay with me.” Tom started jogging around on the beach to warm up.
I felt a burst of courage, sat up and fully intended to crawled over to Michael and kiss him, but just then he grabbed a rock and threw it into the water. My courage faded and I lay back down and rested some more.
After a few more minutes, everyone was ready to go. The three of us got in the canoe and Tom got in the water and we started across. Michael paddled and Penny and I took turns. Michael was ready to talk.
“While you guys were doing your special thing, whatever it was, I did some reading about magic. I did some tree climbing and running too, and a couple of days ago I did 20 laps in the pool without stopping.”
“Michael!” Penny said. “If you did 20 laps straight, I bet you could do a mile with a couple of rests.”
“You think so? Anyway, I’ve decided. I want to learn magic and become a Wood Sprite!”
“Great!” we said. Tom took a floating break at about a mile, so we talked to him. After a few minutes he started swimming again.
“We have a Pact,” I said. “It’s just about secrecy and honesty. We’ll show you when we get home.”
“Will you tell us about the stuff you’ve read?” Penny said. “We don’t know everything, you know.”
“If you want. It wasn’t how to do magic, it was just what some people think about magic.”
“There’s hardly anything good about how to do magic. You just have to learn things and figure it out for yourself,” I explained.
Tom rested at about two miles.
“Penny,” I began, “I would sort of like to tell my mom and dad about this swim. Can you see any harm in that?”
She thought a minute. “Sounds okay to me. They know about the demos and Search and Rescue and stuff.”
Then I started telling Michael about how the training would go. “The first
part is getting basically good at Earth things, like running, Air things, like climbing and swinging, Water things, swimming, and Fire. We’ll teach you how to make fire without matches, and make you a fire pouch. When you think you’re ready, you’ll have a test day where you do it all in one day.”
We weren’t quite to three miles, but Tom rested. He looked really tired.
“We’re right here, Tom.”
Tom swam, and Penny said, “The second part of the training is all about the night, and darkness, and silence, and being alone. You’ll learn to move through the woods quickly and silently. You’ll learn how to see in the dark and not be afraid of it. And you’ll learn how to be alone with yourself. The final test is called the Vision Quest. Ariel and me just did them. We each spent two days and one night alone in the woods, with nothing to eat or drink, nothing to do, no fire, no camping gear, nothing but trees.”
“Wow! That sounds . . . scary! What’s it like?”
“It’s too personal to talk about,” I said. “But it’s wonderful, and it really helped me to be strong, and to know who I am.”
“All that stuff is just the physical, outdoors stuff,” Penny said. “Then there’s still studying and learning from books, and each other, and going to church. Going to church is important. Can you do that?”
“What
for?”
I said, “This isn’t just a game, Michael. Wood Sprites are like a kind of priest. We are doing God’s work. We have to know everything we can about God, and talk to him and his Spirits every chance we get.”
“But my church is so dumb!”
“Penny, how about if Michael goes with me to church sometimes, and with you sometimes?”
“That would be fun. Do you think you could?”
“I don’t think my parents would say I couldn’t go to church. They might wonder what drug I was on, but they’d let me.”
At about three and a half miles, near the buoy on this side, Tom took a long rest. We talked to him, and told him how strong he looked in the water.
Finally, he swam slowly on in. We hugged him, thanked him for coming with us, and helped him put away the canoe. He went home and the three of us sat on the beach and ate lunch.
“After what we’ve told you, do you still want to be a Wood Sprite?” I asked.
Michael didn’t answer for awhile. “What happens if I do it, and then find out it’s not for me?”
I answered. “You will have promised us, when you sign the Pact, that you will keep us secret if you leave. That’s all. We’re not the Mafia, you know.”
“Will you keep it secret that I’m doing it?”
“Absolutely!” Penny said. “All anyone else knows, including our parents, is that we run and swim and do stuff like that together.”
Michael looked at each of us. “Okay. I’d like to try it.”
We all went to my house, lit candles in my room, and I read the Pact to Michael. Then he read it to himself.
“Who wrote this? It’s beautiful!”
“Penny and I both do calligraphy. You can learn if you want. You have to learn if you ever want to write in the Grimoire.”
“In
the
what? ”
I explained, and told him he couldn’t look at other pages quite yet. He read the Pact again, pricked his finger, and signed it with his own blood.
It was late August. The three of us climbed trees together, ran, and swam almost every day. Michael started going to church with one of us, and sometimes we would all three go to one of our churches.
Penny and I realized we needed to get more organized in our training of new people. We had the physical stuff pretty well figured out, but not the magical studies. We started making lists of all the books we had found useful.
I had to go back to all the libraries to find the books I had used.
Penny came up with the idea of photocopying the good pages, and putting together our own book. It was a good idea, and we began working on it right after school started in September. We copied pages from encyclopedias, books about religion and philosophy, history books, books about magical things, fairy tales, and whatever else we thought was good. I borrowed my dad’s typewriter, and pecked at it until we had a list of the books we didn’t photocopy because there was too much good stuff in them.
We had both been reading the Bible, and we took hours one day deciding which books in it we thought all Wood Sprites should read. I typed up the list.
Ariel’s Grove 130
Penny got a binder from her garage. We punched holes in all the sheets of paper from copying and typing, and I made a nice cover for it from some thick paper. I used a new calligraphy style I had been practicing, and Penny added a border she had learned how to do.
We put it all together in early October, even though we knew we would add more pages later. It was beautiful. We told Michael about it, and we told him about the Grove, but not where it was. We wanted to save that for Halloween.
