The story of my miraculous skill at the organ was known, though largely ignored by my mother and father, but my ability to read and write, in what I had now identified as Bulgarian, was more difficult to prove.

I wrote page after page of text and read aloud to them from Bulgarian books I'd sent for from the University of Minnesota, but all to little more than idle fancy. They were amused at my claim when I first made it, but when I told them it would make sense to any 'other' Bulgarian who read it, they became concerned. When I told them that I knew the organ and the language from another man's memories they became annoyed and when I told them that I remembered another life in another land in another time with another family they became angry, especially my father.

I wanted so badly to tell them, to tell anyone and have them understand, but the more I told them about my memories the angrier they became until I finally fell into silence. That was the last chance I gave anyone to understand me.

With only two months of high school to go, I told them I was leaving and wouldn't be back. After all the other shocks I had given them, this one went almost unnoticed. Almost.

When they accepted that I was really going, my father attempted a half-hearted reconciliation and my mother gave me the lighter. She must have recognized some of the same Russian Cyrillic letters on its worn surface and thought it was the same as the Bulgarian letters I'd shown her. Two nights before I left, she pressed it into my hand after supper. She didn't say anything when she gave it to me. Instead, she held me tightly, stroking my blond hair as she rocked us both back and forth at the table. I went up to my room, packed my things and cried all night.

The animosity between my parents and I had ended, but the new memories, unfortunately, did not, and the next night, my last night there, I burned the barn down with my new lighter.

When my eyes refocused, the lighter was shaking, still inches above the line of vodka. 'Concentrate.' I drew in a lungful of smoke and blew it at my shaking right hand like a shaman exorcising a demon. I moved my head down next to the floorboards in order to watch the miracle up close. The summoning is always the most exciting part. People carry flame around and use it every day but only a few ever realize its potential to consume and rage like a monster.