Rhiannon

Rhiannon

To the one who finds this book and reads this letter:

Hawthorne already told you my first name, so I won’t repeat it. My surname’s Gethin.

My father wanted to name me ‘Eleanor’, after his favourite aunt, but my mother insisted on naming me after a Celtic goddess of wisdom and horses. I’ve no idea why. Mom never rode a horse in her life, didn’t speak Welsh or Gaelic, never read any of the four branches of the Mabinogion, and was never a Fleetwood Mac fan. The name was mine long before Stevie Nicks wrote that song. I don’t ‘ring like a bell through the night’. Nor do I ‘take to the sky like a bird in flight’ (frankly, I’m a little scared of heights ... Hey! That rhymes!). Call me ‘Rhi’.

Roll the ‘R’, please ... proper pronunciation is important for reasons you’ll come to understand if you find us.

Most people probably think the ability to use Magic is a gift.

It’s not!

Mind you, it isn’t quite a curse either. It can be useful, but it’s more like a burden to be carried very carefully so it doesn’t spill and make a horrible mess. My 3700-year-old teacher knows this very well. His name’s Hawthorne (for now, anyway).

Hawthorne tries to be a complete curmudgeon, but he’s not. Actually, he’s a kind, thoughtful person, and a dear friend ... even when he’s at his grumpiest. I think he’s just lonely because he’s had to spend so much time by himself. I’ll never tell him that, though; I have too much fun gently teasing him until he realizes what’s going on and has to laugh. He even teases back now! Both of us adore horrible puns, too.

In 1962, two years before the physical changes of puberty that are so much fun for everybody involved started, I found an old book, The Phoenix Principle by Powel Prescott. You’re perfectly welcome to try working out how old I am from that information ... I don’t care because I still look like I’m about 25 and always will. Looking however you want is one of the advantages of being what I am.

I was alone (as usual) in the attic of my great-aunt’s house, helping my parents clean the place out after she died. I don’t know why I hid it in my little-kid’s backpack (it was my favourite Barbie backpack, if that matters). It was in the old lady’s will — “... and I bequeath all my books, papers, and any sundry other small personal possessions she may find attractive, to my great-niece ...” — so it would have been mine, anyway. It was as if the book told me to hide it, and made me forget about it until I could use what was in it.

My parents always said I’d taught myself how to read. I was bored with Dr. Seuss when I was four. I was reading (and comprehending!) James Joyce by the time I was eight. Finnegan’s Wake is still one of my favourite rainy-day reads.

Books were always my best friends until I found Hawthorne. Even now I can usually be found nose-down in a book. I was a solitary kid (still am, I suppose) who’d always been ‘different’ from the others in the schoolyard. And yes, children being children, that means I was bullied a lot.

I’d forgotten about that battered old oversewn-bound and leather-covered ream of heavy paper until the summer I turned sixteen. Barbie and my interest in her had considerably faded by then, and it fell out of the backpack one morning while I was cleaning up my bedroom.

I was making a dent in the teenage disaster area I slept in while my parents were away on a holiday trip to Italy to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary. Despite the temptation of the book, I managed to finish tidying my room by 10:00 (filled three industrial-size garbage bags ... like I said, teenage disaster area), then I curled into my favourite spot on the sofa with a big glass of milk and some cookies and started to read.

Right from the foreword (I won’t quote from it and I know Hawthorne didn’t ... if you’ve found these letters you’re probably holding your own copy, anyway), I was locked into what was on the pages and quite literally could not put it down. I skipped my lunch, and my mac-and-cheese dinner, finishing the last chapter at five the next morning. I slept the day away and didn’t wake until almost eight that night.

I’ll admit, most everything in the book after chapter two scared me. All the illustration captions and the headings and opening paragraphs contained hair-raising warnings about what could go wrong. Chapters one and two, the ones about proper, thorough visualization, careful phrasing and pronunciation to produce food and drink, made me curious whether I could do something — and I found out I could!

Later that evening, following the advice in the book, I carefully visualized what I wanted for dinner: medium-rare steak, onions gently sauteed in olive oil, baked potato with sour-cream-bacon-bits-and-chive topping, carrots roasted with butter and honey ... pint of chocolate ice cream for dessert ... even an illicit glass of lovely red wine. It all just kind of ‘whiffed’ into existence at my muttered command and wave of my hand.

It kinda worried my Mom when most of the food they’d left for me was still there when she and my Dad got back two weeks later, even though she was really pleased with how clean the house was. I had to tap-dance around a story about eating out all the time. I kept most of the grocery money they’d left for me, too ... came in handy later.

It was what happened with one of the bullies at school that taught me I was right to be scared of what was in the rest of the chapters.

Her name was Lynette Myers. She was a tall, pretty brunette, captain of the school’s cheerleading squad, ‘alpha’ of a nasty little pack of sycophants, and a thoroughly spoiled and entitled little bitch. Doesn’t mean she deserved what happened ... even if it meant she (and everybody else) left me alone for the rest of my time in high school.

I’d made the unfortunate choice to use a home hair-dye kit late in the summer before grade 12. When I don’t look like somebody else, I’m a natural ash-blonde with wavy, centre-parted hair. I rather foolishly decided I might look more like the paintings of my Welsh namesake I’d seen if my hair was black instead. The dye wouldn’t wash out no matter what my Mom and I tried. Mom said I couldn’t shave my head, so all I could do was wait for it to grow long enough for a cut. A white streak ran down the middle of my head for months.

Lynette and her pack thought it was absolutely hilarious to refer to me as ‘Flower’ or ‘the skunk’ whenever they saw me and laugh uproariously. The other students followed suit. My irritation built until I’d had enough of that nonsense a week into the final term. I was passing through the cafeteria when Lynette spotted me. She and four of her pack blocked my way.

She grinned in a nasty way and said, “Well, if it isn’t the skunk. You’re even starting to smell like one. You gonna do something about that mess on your head, Flower?” My angry expression amused her even further. “Oooooh, look! Flower’s getting mad!”

The chapters after two scared me, yes, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t learned a few things from them. Lynette was teasing me about my hair ... so I made sure I did something about hers ... all of hers.

A quick but thorough visualization, a whispered word or two, a flick of my right wrist, and it was done. While she was laughing at me, Lynette lifted one of her manicured hands and scratched at an itch on her scalp. She came away with a fair-sized hank of hair. She looked shocked, then her hand went back up to rub at her left eyebrow ... and thatbrushed off her forehead like lint. She hunched over and made a distressed little grunt when she began to itch ‘lower down’ ... if you know what I mean. She began whimpering, then screaming when her scalp, underarms (and crotch) continued to itch (and shed).

Her idiot pals figured out what was wrong and got her to the school nurse but all she could do was send Lynette home. By the time her parents got her to the doctor, her scalp, underarms, and pubic area were raw and bleeding from her frantic scratching and rubbing at them and she was completely bald. Her hair, right down to her eyelashes, never grew back.

The girls blamed me, but the principal and teachers didn’t believe them. I do a fair ‘wide-eyed innocent’ when I have to. The rest of the students did believe them, and left me alone, which was fine by me. I preferred it that way.

It was much the same at university. My parents died in an airplane crash when I was twenty-four, in the middle of my final year, but I handed in my assignments, wrote my exams, and gained a BFA. I won’t talk about my marriage a year later ... that was a five-year-long fiasco, but the divorce gave me my full freedom as an adult, and started my wandering years.

Years and years of years and years. I won’t tell you how many. Like I said, you’re welcome to try figuring out how old I am. I always had that book with me wherever I went ... most often without even realizing I had it.

Before the odd compulsion to find Hawthorne (I didn’t even know he existed) took me, I spent the time roaming from small town to small town. I never spent more than a year anywhere because I have the same attitude toward most people Hawthorne has. My favourite printed T-shirt says, “Too many people are like Slinkys ... not good for much, but they make you smile when they tumble downstairs.” Somebody always managed to irritate me just enough to make me leave (Before I gave in to the urge to do something unfortunate to them ... Usually, anyway).

One night, while I was in a little South Carolina town called Moncks Corner, I had a dream. I can’t remember the content, but I woke up the next morning knowing I had to re-read that old book. The short post-script (that I’d never noticed before) described somebody who could teach me how to use Magic properly and ended, “If you have the ability, you will find him and learn.” I also knew, somehow, I had to go north. I hitch-hiked down to Charleston, walked into Frank’s Automart, the first car dealer I found, and paid cash (money’s easy to wave into existence ... so are drivers’ licenses and even passports) for a used Jeep.

I pinballed from town to town, ever northward. It took me an entire year, and I got road-weary. That old Jeep was starting to sound like it was on its last legs and I was miles north of most of anywhere I’d ever heard of. That’s when I spotted it. A narrow, rough gravel road that curved out of sight around a big outcrop of granite. Something silently shouted to me, “Turn right here!”

At the end of the road, on the shore of a lake and hidden from airplanes by huge trees, was a slate-roofed house with a garden. I pulled to a stop and sat in the old Jeep, just looking at the place and breathing. Something, mostly the noise the car made when I shut it off maybe, was telling me my wandering days might be done.

After I don’t know how long, I picked the old book off the passenger seat and walked up the granite steps to a door with a big glass panel. It didn’t look as if the house had a kitchen, but that didn’t bother me ... just one more clue I was in the right place I suppose. I could see a man sitting at a table, drinking coffee over the remains of his breakfast. He was clean-shaven, and looked about fifty or sixty because of his silver-white hair and weathered face. I knocked politely and held the book up so he could see the title. He looked a little surprised and waved a hand.

The door opened by itself — still another clue. I asked him, “Are you the one I’m supposed to ask about learning how to use Magic? The one who’s mentioned in this old book?” He nodded and asked me where I’d found it, and my name. I told him my story (well ... the barest beginning, anyway) and he made me breakfast with a wave and muttered phrase (which further confirmed a lot of things). Then he told me to eat and asked me if I had questions before we started my lessons.

It’s been quite a few years now, but we’re still in the kitchenless house on the lake. Hawthorne thinks he’s taught me everything I need to know about Magic, and that we’ll be moving on soon. I’m not going anywhere, though ... not yet ... and I’m going to badger Hawthorne into sticking around too.

I’m writing this letter, too. I’m going to slip a copy, and the letter I asked Hawthorne to write, into reproductions of this old book and scatter them in libraries and bookstores here and there.

If you find this book, and believe what’s in it, please don’t try anything past chapter two. We’d really like you to survive. The book, and these letters, will let you find Hawthorn and me. We can teach you what you need to know.