At summer’s close, things changed. Our father forgot we might report back to our mother. He often did not come home at night. He’d stay in another hut. He’d tell Wildflower love was boundless. We wandered in the woods playing hide-and-seek and kick the can while Ocean took pilgrims on spiritual walks and quests in the woods. And sometimes he’d go away on trips and we’d be with Wildflower for the whole weekend.

“Your father is a mystic,” she would tell us at bedtime. Wildflower was twenty-two years old but she seemed much older to me then. She would whisper to us, as though she were imparting secrets about our father.

He can bend things with his will.

Ocean is able to hear the beat of his own heart

and walk in its rhythm.

He is busy stretching his soul

through the universe.

When school started and my mother’s due date approached, she wanted us at home with her and my stepfather. She got very clingy and only let us see Ocean on alternating weekends. She had us help her with the baby’s room, picking out wallpaper with ducks and ducklings and golden suns with smiles and dancing feet. She would burst into tears, and she would fall asleep as she read us bedtime stories. My stepfather took over the bedtime ritual. We lived in his house in town, with a big backyard, and he’d take us to the library when my mother’s feet were too swollen to walk. He registered me in hockey and coached the team. My mother bought me a pink helmet.

But Morgaine always missed the meadows and woods of The Mists. She chanted in her bedroom. Sometimes my mother heard the drone of Morgaine’s voice and she’d tell her to stop. She wanted her to forget. “You live in the Valley now,” we reminded Morgaine. “You don’t live up there on the Mountain anymore.”

My mother took an old feather away from her, saying it was full of bird parasites. She didn’t notice how Morgaine’s face collapsed.

The baby was due any day, and we went to see our father for the weekend. It was a Friday evening. Ocean was having a harvest ceremony. Thick, chilly dew fell down in the twilight. After supper we went to “the temple” in the converted barn. People had come from all over and the upper field was full of cars and hippie vans. My father led a smudging ceremony. Then they danced, the women swirling scarves above their heads. We spun in circles with them, but when they sat down cross-legged to chant and began to smoke the sacred herb and eat little mushrooms, we got bored. We slipped outside and no one noticed. We walked through the barn door and climbed down the stairs in bare feet. The fire circle was prepared, the great logs standing upright, ready to be lit aflame.

It was evening but still so bright with the harvest moon rising. Morgaine wanted to play blindfold. She wrapped the scarf around my face. I tightened it and Morgaine pulled the silk even more. It hurt my eyes. She took my cold hand in her sweaty little one, the palm so meaty, and led me into the trees. The pine needles were cool and sharp under my feet. At first I was worried she was taking me through the labyrinth to the cliff. But Morgaine just guided me straight ahead, bringing me low to dodge the odd branch. But then I could feel the mist on my skin. The air was tangy. The silk blindfold was damp and I heard the waves crashing below. She had bypassed the labyrinth path, taking us straight through the woods to the bench by the edge of the cliff.