Jasmine accepted magically mysterious things as part of her everyday life.

Cloud Rock, big as a mountain, had gone back in time to when Silver Mary was a girl and shrunk to a boulder in the stone circle that Silver Mary would paint many times over the years. Check.

It had hit softer than a meteor, drifting lazily to land with a plop so it buried itself in the earth without making a crater or a boom. Check.

Doree was the size of a fairy elf and there watching her was Giles’s mom but she was a girl and not an old lady. Check.

She was sitting in a dark passage between the worlds with a sophisticated demon named Tiffany who now looked and talked like a girl named Doree, while scary voices got closer and closer. Check.

Furthermore, here in the passages she knew stuff that Giles had told out loud at the storytelling festival fifty miles away, knew that he had been the reporter Robby Baker who had been thrown through the air by an old woman who was also Tiffany in disguise so that he landed on Cloud Rock on the day when it pierced the sky and exposed the Chaos now above the earth and somehow things in the story were real life and real life became things in the story. Check, check, check.

And then she stuck on this: a brand new rock shows up in a super ancient stone circle and nobody noticed?! That didn’t make any sense.

“I liked her right away, even though she was huge,” Doree said breathlessly. “And she probably saw me wriggle feet first out of the little hole in the bottom of the rock, so that’s why she thought I was one of the little people.”

“Even more, she was my Robby! Just a little bit ago Robby sat beside me at the bottom of the stairs and told me all kinds of stuff. She was like he’d if he was a girl just starting to get boobs, all pretty and jet black hair like mine and those goofy liquid eyes and super excited.”

Then Doree sat stock still and adult Tiffany appeared like a phantom of delight. Jasmine, relieved, thought she finally heard the voices, but Tiffany/Doree was still turned inward.

“Here’s the part I still don’t get, not all these years later. I thought that she could be my big sister and somehows I knew she lost a baby sister in a car crash or something. But that wasn’t her dream. She was older and the dream of the little sister had turned into, like, a dream of kissing a girl…”

The being in front of her became Tiffany, dark eyes looking at Jasmine closely, her head tilted to one side. The distant harsh voices almost made words but for another few moments, Tiffany did not seem to hear. “Your parents have raised you, have they not, to be completely comfortable with the notion that a man might love a man and a woman might love a woman?”

Acceptance of same-sex couples was so purely and lovingly a part of Jasmine’s world that the question made no sense. “Marci and Joanie are like who you mean, huh?” she tried. “They give me cookies.”

“Alright, my little love, well answered.” From that moment on, Tiffany spoke only in her cultured Oxford voice. “But those were different times. As soon as I caught her dream, I knew that it was mine as well, but that I was far too small, both in size and in years. I simply could not exist as she wished me to be, not yet. And so I … came here.”

“Here, like?” Jasmine’s hand fluttered to indicate the passages.

“Absolutely. You can well imagine that a magic place like a stone circle would have an entrance to these passages. I know not exactly where or how. I only know that I was in these caves and I wandered them for quite a long time. I saw our shaggy horned friends and I fear I did not know to ignore them. I passed into and out of their world time and again. Time seemed to stretch like taffy…

“At last came a moment when I saw her again, through a window in a wall as it were. I looked into her bedroom with a lovely old clock on the wall. I saw her night light gleam off the brass disk of the pendulum and I heard a drip drip of water from a faucet in the bathroom.

“There she lay, breathing quiet and secret, in a bed with metal scrollwork, top and bottom.

“Then her eyes came open as if she knew I was there. Her eyes shone and I longed to fall through that window, onto the hard stone floor with the thin frilly rug and kneel at her side and kiss her. All very hush hush and repressed, of course.”

The far-away voices at last solidified harshly with a sound like “gorrrrrd.” Jasmine moved forward in their little pool of light and pulled Tiffany’s arms around her.

Tiffany seemed on the verge of telling one final story, how she came to be a powerful demon with silver hands and golden palms. Jasmine saw a vision of a wise spirit that walked the passages and caught a single word: Santa. She shook her head: she knew there was no Santa.

The words of the rough voices became muttered phrases. “Somewhere close… can’t be far… gawrd feck it, who’d a thought…”

“Damn and blast,” Tiffany said sharply. “I’ve grown inexcusably careless.” She stood. “Come, my love. For the moment I can still offer you my protection. Let us move on and quickly.”

A thrill of fear raced through Jasmine as she followed Tiffany out of the pool of light and into pitch darkness. She clung tightly to the gloved hand and tried to stand inside the circle of her arms.

And then she stopped, her fine nostrils quivering. The gloved hand pulled at hers and then stopped. “What is it, my child,” the cultured voice whispered. “We must hasten.”

For one more moment Jasmine trembled in the dark. Then she said, “We got to go that way.” She pointed.

“Magic I may be, child, but I cannot see in the dark.” The gloved hand held hers firmly.

From behind them came a chilling new voice. “Fever and smoke, ice and mirrors…” Jasmine stood firm. “This way,” she insisted with a slight tug.

Tiffany’s voice, full of affection, said, “A little child shall lead them. Lay on, MacDuff. It seems that I am in your hands and not the other way round.”

Jasmine started into the dark in the direction she knew was right, and the many-talented, powerful demon followed, her secret smile masked by mythic darkness.