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Giles on the stage was deep in trance. His arms spread in the enormous commanding gestures of a King Lear before he was humbled and his eyes were distant. But the audience no more saw him than he saw them, swept into his vision of a deeply red rock hilltop, warm under sunshine on a cold winter day, and a clear hard breakable sky.

When Giles’s voice, only distantly heard, said “Something happened between one breath and the next," the growing crowd held its breath too…

The piercing sky seemed to solidify like blue glass. Then I saw that sky waver, like something pushed at the other side of it. Something was about to whirl me into atoms.

The old woman’s strong weathered hand pulled at my shoulder. I turned to her as the woven blanket slipped from her shoulders. She was still old and beautiful but now her hair was raven black, so black it was almost blue.

Her eyes flashed secret amusement.

My name is Robby Baker, I reminded myself as the maddening world spun.

I clutched her hand to my cheek, folded the fingers and kissed her knuckles.

She pulled her hand away and patted me on the cheek. I lifted my gaze from her hand and saw dark eyes looking into mine. They danced with mischief, merrily innocent as a raven against a night sky.

Then, and I don’t know how this happened, I was kissing her. Her lips were full, soft but chapped.

For a moment she kissed back, lips dancing against mine, fierce gaze pulling me into flight. I was a scrap of ash whirling under a star-flecked sky. Her hands pressed my upper back and her clothes lumped against my front.

But something happened at the same instant and I couldn’t see it except from the corners of my eyes. Something split the bright blue sky but I could think only of this earth goddess who kissed me. She was a Venus of Willendorf and I understood in that instant how a man could go mad with desire for a woman who looked nothing like the models and movie stars we lust after today.

Then came a rush of swirling air. She pulled back and looked me smack in the eyes. “It seems I simply can’t keep you out of trouble, dear boy.”

Her smile gleamed like the felt on an old black-light poster. “Do like it!” she declared with satisfaction, and flung me screaming into the sky, somersaulting crazily.

I would have sworn I was high in the air and upside down when my feet smacked ground again. I sank to my knees and clutched the solid rock which radiated gentle heat like the surface of a red giant star.

A girl’s voice said dreamily, “The Chaos parted for a nano, and know what I saw? You came through from the sky and we all got squished. Maybe I’m … dead.” The voice trailed off and a body fell near where I lay.

Warm liquid rippled under my fingers…

The vision ended like a blank wall. Giles opened his eyes with shock, senses still reeling as the crowd broke into wild applause, eyes gleaming in the reflected stage light.

He skittered over memories of the sky cracking, Tiffany’s sly smile on the face of the old woman, and the crazy feeling of ground where there should have been only sky.

Tiffany had saved him again, but from what? And how?

Then his brain registered: a crowd. An applauding crowd?

Most of his storytellings had been for intimate rooms or nearly empty halls. He might have had a crowd on the main stage at the old festival when he’d finally been hired.

Where had all these clapping people come from? The pizza woman and kids and the scraggly farmer were still there like boats on a newly swollen sea. (The people who might have been Planners were gone, though. Was that good or bad?)

He wanted to just run off and think about Tiffany’s eyes but the voice of his first storytelling teacher came to him. “Give the audience a chance to thank you. Breath in their applause. They want to like you.” Straightening, he breathed in the applause and bowed deeply. “Thank you, thank you so much,” he said as the amazing cheers continued.

As the sound finally started to ebb, he announced, “Looks like I’ll be on the Blue Stage tomorrow at 4 pm. I’ll tell more of this story then. Hope to see you there.” He waved and walked to the edge of the stage.

He tensed as he leaped onto the grass. But there were no guards to arrest him this time.

Instead, there were fans.

A large pale brunette with limpid blue eyes behind thick glasses pressed his hands. “Thank you for seeing that large women are beautiful. It’s just great that you didn’t make her turn into a slender movie star just before Robby kissed her.” She even remembered the “I” character’s name!

“It was my pleasure.” He smiled and nodded self-importantly (just like Tiddwell) but he could almost see Tiffany’s eyebrows lift: he hadn’t created the story, he had only channeled it. More humbly, he said, “And it’s just the simple truth.”

“Thank you.” She pressed his hands again, then shyly kissed his cheek before she was pushed aside by a middle-aged man whose rock-hard muscles spoke of long hours in the gym. “Great, just great. We can’t be at the next telling. You mind telling me what happens next? For my kids.”

Giles tried to smile once more at the woman but she melted away, used to being pushed aside. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” he said firmly to the man, anger making it easier to stand up to the craggy authority. “Got to keep it a surprise, you know.”

The man’s gaze frosted and he snapped, “That’s a crock. You can’t make a couple of kids happy? I’m calling you on your crap.” His hand closed like a vise on Giles’s arm.

In truth, Giles didn’t know what was going to happen next. But he wasn’t allowed to say so. The Planners had made some things clear at the indoctrination: Show up every day. Don’t leave without permission or you will be found and punished, details vague. Tell the stories you feel drawn to tell, no advance planning. And outsiders must never be told that this is anything more than an ordinary storytelling festival.

Giles stuttered, “Look, your kids can, I’m sure there’s a website, maybe the stories’ll get posted there, look, I’ve got to go now.”

But the distant chill eyes held his and in a grating voice, the man rasped, “Gawrd feck it…”

A cultured Oxonian voice spoke quietly from behind Giles. “My dear sir, I’m dreadfully sorry to inform you that your wife is dangerously close to discovering Trixie’s emails.”

Confused but heart leaping, Giles turned.

Tiffany smiled intensely into the eyes of the stranger. “Rather foolish to have left your phone unlocked so near to her, wouldn’t you say?”

The man’s eyes went as big as footballs. “Jesus Christ.” He hurried away without another word, unaware of his smart phone clearly outlined in his rear pocket.

The most beautiful woman Giles had ever seen, with raven eyes and hair so black it was nearly blue, hooked her arm through his. A wind went through him which might have blown him off of a red rock mountain.

“Way, please,” she said quietly to the cluster of people who wanted to praise him or tell him their own stories. “We mustn’t be late.”

Power radiated from Tiffany like mists from a secret hot spring on a winter’s day. And she walked beside him like a lover, arm touching his, leading him somewhere.

When he was 17 Mrs. Claiborne, the glamourous, slightly weathered next-door neighbor, had led him up the stairs to her bedroom. He’d followed just like now, not quite daring to hope what would happen when that bedroom door closed.

Did Tiffany’s skin touch his? He wore a tee shirt on this warm summer night; what did she wear? For the first time, he stole a glance at her body. Her arms, white as snowdrops and powerful as a desert sirocco, were bare except for gloved hands; he was indeed skin to skin with her. But where the blonde demon in the meeting hall had clearly worn tight gold lamé, Tiffany might have worn a power business suit or a black gown or a diaphanous garment like midnight mist.

“Look round and smile at the good people, there’s a love,” her deep voice said quietly. Hastily he took his eyes off her and did as she (there was no other word for it) commanded.

Out of the plaza she led him, and through town streets to a big open field where couples quietly made out, a drunk snored, and a cop walked meaningfully through.

Far from the streetlights, Tiffany stopped. Almost invisible in the dark, but as present as prairie fire, she turned him so he faced her. Unbidden, he took her gloved hands in his and she did not pull them away.

“Lie with me on the grass,” she said, her voice as resonant as the first rumbling of a volcano. Gulping as he had when Mrs. Claiborne had shut the door and whispered, “Lie down on the bed, honey,” Giles knelt. He felt he ought to kiss her feet but he lay on his back as she had invited and waited, heart leaping.