I was travelling through the darkness, through shadows so deep I could almost taste their darkness on my tongue. I felt that if I breathed the inky blackness, it would rush inside of me. I nearly panicked, but then felt the coil of the spiral around me and knew I was protected as long as I stayed in the circle. Dimly in the distance I heard voices keeping me afloat and, as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I caught flashes of images illuminated by the spiral – a sea cave filled with reflected light, a clearing in the woods, a stone circle on a heath – the places I’d glimpsed the last time in the circle. These places were always inside the circle, outside of time, layered within the spiral. And always at the center of each circle stood the same figure – the hooded woman wielding the silver knife.

I hadn’t known she was a woman the last time.

When I saw her I wanted to go back, but then a voice spoke in the shadows.

Here.

It was Brock.

I willed myself – and the spiral – to stop. The coils dropped from me like a discarded hoop skirt and I stood inside a six-petaled flower inscribed in black on pale stone – the center of a labyrinth inside a vast cathedral. The outer edge of the circle was lined with lit candles. Outside the circle sat a man on a stone bench.

“Brock!” I called out to him and started walking toward him, but the instant my foot passed over the lines of the labyrinth a jolt of electricity shot through my body. I took another step within the lines and felt nothing but a warm hum. Apparently I had to walk the labyrinth to reach him. As I carefully tread between the lines I recognized where I was – the medieval cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres in France. I’d visited it on my junior year abroad. When I reached the exit of the labyrinth Brock smiled at me and patted the spot on the bench beside him.

“Cailleach, I thought you might come,” he said as calmly as if we’d run into each other at the Village Diner.

“The circle has been trying to find you since you fell off my roof,” I explained as I sat beside him. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck, but aside from how much I knew it would embarrass him I was also unsure if we should touch in this … dimension or whatever it was. Although he looked like the Brock I knew – plaid flannel shirt straining over muscular arms and broad chest, his face pockmarked, his eyes as kind as ever – he had a strange glow about him.