 
# Chaos Dreams 4

# Candy Ray

Copyright © 2020 Candy Ray

All rights reserved

Smashwords edition

Cover painting by Justin Kingsley Pitonak

Self-published by Frond

Table of Contents

Introduction

Jenny Peg Doll

The Peat Bog

Hypersigil Bubble

Marina

Other Books by Candy Ray
Introduction

We are back with another collection: two short stories from me and two that are channelled from Ino. My first story Jenny Peg Doll is brand new, while Hypersigil Bubble has been available previously on a PDF.

Ino is a demon muse/chaos muse, who I now believe belongs to the species called Leanhaun Sidhe. She writes beautifully and likes to experiment with different forms, and in The Peat Bog she has a go at fiction in the genre of HP Lovecraft (who I have not read.) In Marina she returns to a couple of the themes from the first story she ever wrote with me, The Dark Orient, which is one of my personal favourites and can be found in Chaos Dreams 1. She treats the themes in a different way this time.

I hope you enjoy reading these stories.
Jenny Peg Doll

Jenny was a Peg Doll. She was a square peg in a round world washed by oceans that ran down like treacle from a pudding and dripped down the sides of the globe, where they splashed onto the floor.

It was morning, so Jenny was supposed to be scrubbing the floor in the Peg Doll's house. They had a special house of their own like the Pokémon, or anyone who children would recognise as a community of odd entities not quite human.

She went to get a bowl of soapy water and a scrubbing brush, and then she got down on her knees and began to scrub the kitchen floor. It was exactly the way people used to clean in the past, and now they no longer do. Now they merely splash some cleaning chemical onto the vinyl and then mop it with a string mop, trying not to leave smears. Jenny was cleaning like a 1950's girl, like a character in an Enid Blyton book.

It was actually a while after that: May 1966. Those who remember the 1960's are getting old now, demanding music from their younger days instead of what blares from speakers on mobile phones and other modern devices.

After all, what is "soapy water?" Surely it means soda crystals dissolved in hot water rather than a bar of soap, which no-one would ever use to clean their floor. Bars of soap are for the body and the face, an alternative to bath foam and bath cream. But from somewhere, maybe from a packet of soda, Jenny had managed to get the ingredients to make old-fashioned soapy water.

She had a particular reason for scrubbing every morning. In fact, two reasons: one was to get the budgie droppings off the floor, and the other was more romantic. For during the night, the Flirty Girl ghost always wrote poems and mottos in wax on the floor.

The wax too was from the old days. It looked like sealing wax, smudgy and brown, and if Jenny had taken it to be analysed, that is what it would probably have turned out to be. Imagine ladies who not only scrub with soapy water, but also seal parcels with sealing wax, and you would think you were back in Victorian times. Except that these two ladies were thwarting one another. The Flirty Girl wrote, and Jenny scrubbed, and in the process the messages were lost forever: every pretty poem, every apt motto. Jenny and the ghost were like prisoners condemned forever to follow behind one another and undo one another's work.

The budgie rattled the door of his cage and made angry noises. He wanted to come out and fly around the room, and leave droppings on the floor which would necessitate even more cleaning.

"Shush, Bertie," Jenny scolded. "You can come out later." She squeezed out her mop and shook bubbly drops all around her, which dampened the air and fell around the outside of the plastic bowl. She was just in the process of erasing:

"Meet me by the rose bush tonight-

The pale pink buds...."

No hand came down to shield the lines from the scrubbing bush and hot water, because the Flirty Girl only came into the kitchen at night. She would glance over the unmarked floor and always seemed a little sad that her writing of the previous day had been erased, but she soon forgot it and started on something new, covering the surface with sweeping , florid letters, all in the same brown wax as yesterday.

If Jenny had tiptoed down the stairs into the kitchen during the night, she could have caught her. But Jenny was afraid to do that. It was so much easier to obey Mr. Peg Doll, the master of the house, who decreed that the floor had to be scrubbed every morning. Then she could get on with other jobs around the house, and later, when she had finished all the housework, she could engage in her hobbies.

At the moment, her favourite activity was to go down to the Butterfly Meadow and chase the butterflies around with a net. She never caught any, but it was good exercise and it gave her a chance to look around the lovely meadows that lay behind the Peg Dolls' house. She could pretend to be an explorer, because really Jenny Peg Doll was quite young, only just sixteen, and she hadn't yet given up completely on playing games.

Her mother was hoping she would soon fall in love and marry a nice young man, possibly a Peg Doll male from another family, or even a bendy rubber man. It would definitely have helped if she had learned some of the romantic poems from off the floor, and recited them to the young men she met. But so far she had scrubbed them all away without reading them properly- just a glance here and there, to see where a line ended, and the clear floor began.

The Flirty Girl ghost remembered her lover well, from the time when she had been alive. She had learnt to write poems from writing them for him, while the mottos had started with sayings of her father, and had developed from there into inventions of her own.

If she had known that it was Jenny who cleaned away her writing, she would have wanted the two of them to become best friends and go out together to dances and shows, having a good time and meeting new people. She didn't look at the house at all during the day, only at the corner where she rested, in lieu of sleeping, at the top of the largest bookcase in the library.

She had filled the corner with her possessions: a Japanese fan, folded and clipped shut, a climbing ivy plant that climbed down the bookshelves and was watered in the evening by Jenny's mother, a frilly apron embroidered with dancing girls all holding hands and facing alternate ways. There was a pink handbag, with a fluttering scarf knotted around the handle. By day she sat, surrounded by these, dozing in a half-dream state.

Jenny's apron was of coarser fabric, with a pattern of yellow baskets. It lay stoutly across her knees and protected her from splashing water as she rinsed her scrubbing brush in the kitchen sink. The budgie watched her, head cocked on one side, and let out a series of whistling chirps.

When Jenny had finished the cleaning, she went upstairs to have a word with her younger brother Bonbon. The Peg Doll household were an extended family: Mother, Father and siblings and three more distant relatives: Mr Peg Doll the head of the family, Margie Peg Doll the grand Dame, and Uncle Lionel. Grandmother Peg Doll often stayed the night, but she didn't live there permanently. She lived in a little bungalow on the edge of the town, and Mother worried about her getting older and finding it increasingly hard to look after herself out there. She wanted her to move back into the Peg Doll residence.

Bonbon's bed was covered with rubber giraffes. He had a craze for these flexible yellow toys with black spots and smiling, horsy faces. Jenny pushed the nearest giraffe aside to give her enough room to sit next to Bonbon on the eiderdown. Bonbon smiled and said, "It's nice to see you at this time of day, Jenny. You must have finished the housework early."

"I'm just about to go down to the Butterfly Meadow," she replied. "It's getting warmer every day now- wouldn't you like to come down with me?"

"What do you do down there?"

"I try and catch the butterflies in my net, but they always get away."

"You're interfering with the butterflies mating, then. We might not get any next year."

"Oh, don't be silly. I'm sure they have time to lay hundreds of eggs when I'm not there. It's my favourite game at the moment, and it gets me out running around in the sunshine."

"You're too innocent, Jenny. You don't notice mating butterflies and you don't look at boys. Mother wants you to marry one of the greengrocer's sons- all three of them are nice."

"Oh, Bonbon, I like my life and I don't want it to change yet."

"I like my life too. While I'm still twelve I can get away with playing with these giraffes. But if and when it suddenly changes and I'm all grown-up, I'm ready. You should have more fun. I hear you scrubbing that kitchen floor first thing every morning."

"But I have to. Mr Peg Doll wants it clean, and have you seen the state Bertie gets it in? And all that writing as well- it has to go. It looks terrible."

Strangely, Bonbon had no curiosity about this, the most paranormal aspect of their lives. He had always simply accepted it when Jenny told him that someone wrote on the floor every night. All he did was nod his head and reply, "well, don't work too hard. And after you've been down to chase butterflies, swing by the greengrocer's, buy something, and have a chat with their family."

"So you won't come down, then? All right." Jenny Peg Doll stood up and left the room.

***

Have you ever met a Peg Doll out in the street? That makes it sound like a sect, like meeting someone Amish as they go about their daily routine. In the real world you may never run into a Peg Doll; however, you may encounter those who are a little like the Flirty Girl ghost. And there was someone else like that in Jenny's neighbourhood. She liked to do art and crafts, painting watercolour goldfinches and building towers from cardboard and papier-mâché.

It was as if she was trying to bring some solid physicality to her life as a ghost by means of her favourite occupation, and I don't know how successful that was, but some people took her as their patron. Like a non-human muse who is patron to many artists, she had her band of craft aficionados, and amateur painters working in watercolours.

Her name was Glitta. It was supposed to sound like glitter without being glitter; you get the idea. Like Kayleigh, sounding like Ceilidh, or Nycolle, sounding like Nicole; names which subtly suggest an absent father.

Glitta haunted an art and craft studio in a bloc of school outbuildings that were used for adult evening classes. She didn't think of herself as a ghost as such, but as the spirit of a being who had been both human and fey, (and longer ago an animal), and now wanted to give herself completely to the pastimes she loved best. In the process came the fulfilling experience of meeting others who shared the same passion for art, and were hoping to improve by attending the classes.

Haunting a place can be lonely. Yet Glitta never felt that way; she felt that the students needed her and would benefit from their contact with her by becoming more accomplished artists. Here was a potential life's work, or death's work if you are a ghost.

Tonight, Glitta was looking closely at a collage. Steps cut from an old raffia tablemat ascended into a big, important-looking town square drawn with charcoal, ready to have various bumps glued onto it that would become people, cars and buildings around the outside of the square.

Glitta liked the concept, and even more she liked the lady who was making it. It was usually middle-aged ladies who attended the evening class, although there were a few men, who often took the classes just as seriously as the ladies.

The student began to hunt through the piles of wool, cardboard, sequins and other material that had been supplied on the table. Glitta nudged her when she came to some black lace with a texture like netting, and although she didn't feel the nudge she felt as if the lace lit up momentarily in her vision. She hooked it out of the heap and began fitting it to her collage, where it became railings around the centre of the square and some of the surrounding buildings. Maybe a statue could go in the centre; grey plasticine perhaps, mimicking the colour of the contemporary town statues?

The evening class was being run with the most basic staff: one tutor, and a school caretaker in an office at the back, who checked the area and locked up when the class was over. Between classes the materials were stored in a cupboard, in bulging carrier bags. It was usually well-attended, this being the case with the more practical subjects, and in Autumn the models and collages were sometimes destined to be Christmas presents. However, it was still only May, a month or so after Easter.

***

On the following Monday, a travelling man came to the door of the Peg Doll residence. He was wearing what looked like a jester's suit, with diamonds of red and green, and a brown felt hat with two streamers hanging from the hatband.

Mother Peg Doll let him in, and asked if he would like any refreshments.

"Oh, thank you," he answered, doffing his strange hat. "I'll have a cup of tea, please."

Mother showed him to the living room, where he sat down in one of the armchairs. While she made the tea she kept an eye on him through the open kitchen door, in case he should try to steal anything from the room, but he just sat looking around him blandly.

She came in with tea on a tray for him and for herself, and perched at the front of the other armchair. "What brings you here?" she asked, pouring out his tea.

"I've come to see your ghost."

Mother looked at him sharply. "Our ghost? We haven't got a ghost."

"Pardon me, Madam, but you have," he said, nodding his head earnestly so that the streamers on his hat bobbed up and down. "Your daughter knows her. She has substituted herself for the romantic side that your daughter doesn't have, and the more your daughter is practical, the more the ghost is romantic. But it isn't healthy. The girl needs to develop her own romantic side."

Mother sat up straight and put her cup down firmly on the saucer. "This is nonsense. You can't possibly know our daughter. I can't let you stay very long- if you don't mind, please go when you've finished your tea."

"If you wish, Madam," he said mildly, "but I do advise you to have a look at the kitchen floor, one morning just before sunrise. What you see will astonish you."

A hint of panic passed momentarily across Mother's eyes, then she said, "Thank you. I know you mean well, but please go when you've finished your tea."

"Yes, I will, Madam," replied the strange guest, and so he did, once again doffing his strange hat as he departed.

Later that day, the greengrocer's middle son Tim stopped by and looked over the fence into the Peg Dolls' garden. He wasn't a Peg Doll or bendy rubber man, more a normal boy doll: a man and yet not a man, like the nightmares before Christmas.

Tim was looking for Jenny, to say hello to her, but there was only Bonbon in the garden, digging under a rosebush and examining the earthworms.

"Hey, Bonbon," he called.

Bonbon sat back on his heels and looked towards the fence.

"Bonbon, hey, is Jenny at home?"

"She's down in the Butterfly Meadow. She goes there every afternoon. If you go down there now, you'll see her."

Tim glanced at his watch. "Can't stop for that long; I've got three deliveries to make. It'll have to be some other time."

He looked disappointed, and waved briefly as he turned and went back to his van. Bonbon waved back, his eyes sympathetic.

***

The travelling man didn't want to hang around outside a school in case he was mistaken for a pervert. So he waited until Thursday evening when the art and craft class was in session, and then pretended to be picking up one of the ladies from the class.

"Is Doreen here?" he asked loudly, putting his head around the door. "Doreen?"

The tutor shook his head. "Sorry, none of my class is called Doreen."

"That's funny, I'm sure she said she was going to your class tonight, and I said I'd give her a lift back. Never mind, I'll go and ring her."

He caught Glitta's eye, jerked his head and said mentally, "hey, girl, come here. I've come especially to talk to you."

Glitta left the student she was watching over, who was just finishing up and putting everything away, and followed the travelling man outside.

"I want to encourage the Flirty Girl to leave the Peg Dolls' house. But the mother didn't trust me, and sent me away. Maybe you can do it."

Glitta gave a ghost frown. "The Flirty Girl? Why hasn't she got a proper name?"

"That's what Jenny calls her. I don't know what she was called before that. I think you'll like her- she's a bit like you."

"Really? Well, I don't know her, but I think I know you. You're Sinbad the Sailor, aren't you?"

"Ha, that's a nickname, because I travel everywhere and never settle down. And you said you were one for correct names! But call me Sinbad for now, and go see that girl ghost. She writes on the floor, every night before sunrise."

He doffed his bouncing hat and walked away.

Glitta's afterlife had started when she read an old-fashioned story-book about a little girl called Harriet. Harriet was a good ghost who, in the tradition of Victorian sentimentality, died too young and tragically, and she decided to haunt a children's hospital and give healing to all the children.

Glitta didn't want to do that exact same thing herself, for she thought it violated the medical etiquette that her brother (a specialist in a hospital) had always firmly believed in. Also, she had not herself died young and tragically, but from an infection when she was in her eighties.

But the idea of helping creative people intrigued her, for she knew how therapeutic the arts and crafts can be. People frequently discover a new focus for their life in classes such as the humble one she haunted, and it wasn't as if she was wandering around the school frightening the children. By the time the weekly evening class started, they had all gone home for the day.

Earlier on while they were having their lessons, she roamed around beautiful places such as flower gardens, and enjoyed her surroundings. She was the idle tourist and pleasure seeker with all of eternity for her wanderings.

She could see herself as a steadying influence for someone like the Flirty Girl, and in her mind she named her 'Beatrice,' to give her a real name. She must of course already have one, but maybe she had grown ashamed of it, associated it with some misdemeanour during her lifetime. Otherwise that psychic Sinbad would have been sure to pick it up, and name her correctly.

***

Mother Peg Doll stole quietly down the stairs to the kitchen, at four-thirty in the morning, holding a torch which she shone in front of her. She looked at the floor, and gasped. Her head turned every way to see if the torchlight would illuminate anyone in the room, but there was no- one.

Then she turned and hurried back upstairs, and returned five minutes later with a notebook and pen. Carefully she copied down everything that was written on the floor.

The Flirty Girl was already halfway back to her lair on top of the bookcase, but she stopped. Although she wasn't in the room, she could sense what was happening in there. And she was delighted. Attention at last, for her articulate outpourings!

She vowed to herself to write again all the best quotes and verses from before, because now they might be appreciated instead of deleted. There simply wasn't enough floor to do that all at once, but she would do it gradually, over a period of several weeks. That is, if the interest continued and wasn't just a temporary flash in the kitchen frying pan here at the Peg Dolls' place.

At a quarter to seven Jenny got up, and went to the kitchen to do her scrubbing as usual. Her mother heard the scratching of the brush, and the slop of hot water on the linoleum, but she did not come into the kitchen. In fact, she didn't speak to Jenny about it at all.

I'm sure you can imagine the subsequent accumulation of much poetry and epithet in mother Peg Doll's notebook, as the days went by. And where was Glitta? Was she not supposed to come in and spoil the volume before it had all been collected, by sending the Flirty Girl to a better home on the next dimension?

Outside the window was where Glitta stood, immobile, watching the proceedings. She wanted to see how the events would unfold without any intervention from herself. It looked as if the lady of the house had double-discovered her romantic side, when it hadn't been missing in the first place, while the maiden of the house still didn't have a clue about hers. 'Beatrice', as she was still calling her, was basking in the admiration and redoubling her efforts.

Glitta was not at all sure about the solution Sinbad had proposed, and thought that, given time, she may be able to come up with a better one. In the meantime, Mother Peg Doll would become a fountain of art and wisdom. But would she acknowledge the source? Would she credit Beatrice as the real authoress of these sublime writings? If she didn't, it could lead to trouble- just as if someone at the evening class were to claim that someone else's papier-mâché model was their own.

As for Jenny, she might easily recognise some of it from the cursory glances she gave the writing while she was cleaning it off the linoleum. She would think her mother was not only a fraud but also in on some kind of conspiracy with the anonymous person who was doing the writing every night.

There was only one way to deal with this, Glitta thought. Before she could even approach Beatrice, she would have to see how mother Peg Doll would react to any temptation to share the writing. Someone would have to offer to publish it in a book of rhymes and aphorisms.

She couldn't ask Sinbad to do it, for he had already got himself turned away from the Peg Dolls' house once. It would have to be someone else, unknown to Mother Peg Doll and the other assorted family members who lived there. Glitta dawdled on the porch outside their front door, thinking about it. She had been dividing her time between their garden and the pretty Butterfly Meadow, where Jenny ran around wildly after the butterflies, unaware of her presence.

Mother Peg Doll was singularly taciturn when it came to discussing anything with Jenny. But maybe she could be nudged to talk about the writings with one of her friends, and feel the relief of unburdening a secret.

***

Mr Peck was wearing a slightly shabby suit and tie as he stood and rang the doorbell of the Peg Dolls' residence. It was always Mother who answered enquirers at the door, and she did so this time, but when she saw Mr Peck standing on the mat she stepped back and almost closed the door.

He threw out a nifty hand and caught the door as it began to swing. "Mrs Peg Doll?" he asked.

"Yes," she said reluctantly.

"I'm looking for you in connection with the writings- the poetry and mottos that you've been collecting in your notebook. I would very much like to publish them in my magazine."

"How do you know about them? The only person I've shown them to is Lyndsey."

"Well, your friend Lyndsey talks. And she memorises chunks of what she's talking about. I would willingly pay you for these. May I use them, and we'll discuss prices?"

Mother Peg Doll rocked back on her heel, in an agony of indecision. From the kitchen came the strains of Bertie the budgie chirruping. After several minutes of only that sound, Mother glanced around her and answered in a strained voice, "come in."

A few weeks later, the whole Peg Doll tribe were gathered in the lounge having a family meeting, draped around plump-cushioned armchairs and a large black and white polka dot sofa. Most families are not large enough to have such things as meetings; normally it's "you- in here, now!" involving two persons, or at the most three. But the Peg Dolls had formal gatherings presided over by Mr Peg Doll, who stood at the front flourishing a notebook and pencil. Mother, Father and Jenny were in attendance, and sometimes Bonbon, and also Dame Margie and Uncle Lionel. Whenever she stayed with them Grandmother was present as well, but on this day she wasn't there.

Mr Peg Doll cleared his throat. "Order!" he cried, rapping his pencil rhythmically against the notebook. Everyone stopped talking, and looked at him.

"I have called this meeting today to discuss the series of magazine articles that have started this week, by Mother Peg Doll," he said.

All eyes turned to Mother, who flushed and stared at Father. He was looking amazed, as well he might, because Mother seldom consulted hm and certainly hadn't about this.

"I cannot decide if this is becoming to the Peg Doll family," Mr Peg Doll continued. "It will earn us some money and maybe fame, or maybe not fame but undesired notoriety. What do you say, Mother?"

Mother stuck her chin out. "I don't see that it will do any harm. I came across these writings, and a friend of Lyndsey wants to make them public." She looked at Father again and added, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Walter. But you were away working all hours at your shop in town, and I never seemed to get the chance to sit down with you and talk."

"Well, he's free now, as it's eight o'clock in the evening," said Mr Peg Doll. "What do you say about it, Father Peg Doll?"

"I...haven't had the chance to think. Did Mother write these stories herself?"

"Not stories. Flowery poems, and mottos. No, she didn't- I understand she found them somewhere in this house, and copied them."

"Does it say in the magazine that she wrote them?"

Mr Peg Doll produced a journal from his large front pocket, held it up high and waved it dramatically. A headlined title on the front proclaimed that it was 'The People's Weekly Digest'. He flicked to the third page and read out, "Now the first in our new series. Collected by Mother Peg Doll, from an anonymous supernatural source.

Eternal flower of my heart

I wait for you here, where it's warm,

On the beach, wearing suntan oil..."

Mother interrupted. "I'm sure they can read it for themselves, later on. You wanted us to discuss if it's becoming to the Peg Doll family. I think it's very becoming- makes us sound all exotic. The readers will love us, and it has quite a big circulation."

Bonbon raised his hand, as if he was at school.

"Yes, Bonbon?" said Mr Peg Doll.

"I would like people to think we're all exotic. It sounds super."

Dame Margie stood up. "Mr Peg Doll," she said. "everyone thinks the Peg Dolls are only good for doing hard work. Jenny never stops her housework. Father hardly ever takes a holiday. It will be nice for them to see us as artistic, for a change."

Jenny kept her eyes down at the living room floor, which was carpeted in cream to go with the polka dots, for she knew that one of their other floors must be where the writing in the magazine article had come from. But she dared not say a word. This was the first she had heard of anyone else but herself seeing what was written on the floor, and because she had never allowed herself to read it, she disapproved.

Mr Peg Doll held up his hand (the one that wasn't clutching the magazine). "Does everyone agree with Dame Margie? I would not disagree myself, you understand. My role in these meetings is simply to be the chairman. But it does occur to me that we could get a lot of curiosity seekers coming to our door, strangers who we might not be able to trust."

"It's all part of being famous," declared Uncle Lionel, knocking his pipe against the arm of his chair. "If Mother Peg Doll makes us famous, we should be very grateful to her."

Everyone laughed and cheered.

"So, I understand we all support Mother in this endeavour?" queried Mr Peg Doll. "Yes? All in favour, please raise your right hand."

They all did so except for Jenny , and Bonbon whooped, "Hooray!"

Father looked at Jenny. "All right, Jen? Anything wrong?" he asked.

Jenny continued to look at the floor, and answered in a small voice. "Only that if something comes to us in such a strange way... perhaps we have no right to use it. It would be better just to leave it alone."

"Oh, Jenny, don't be such a misery!" cried Bonbon.

"Order!" shouted Mr Peg Doll once again. "Mother, will you reply?"

Mother, with the burden of having kept so much from Jenny, stared at a corner of the lounge so as not to meet Jenny's eye and murmured, "I believe this resource was being wasted, and I'm very satisfied that now people are reading the lovely poems and mottos. They're meant to be enjoyed. They're worth hearing."

Mr Peg Doll nodded and smiled, and declared the meeting over, and they all went back to their usual Peg Doll activities. Jenny went out to tidy the hallway and clean the budgie cage. Dame Margie stayed in her armchair and carried on with knitting a bobbly scarf in blue, pink and green, and Uncle Lionel went to his room to play dominoes while smoking his pipe. Mother baked some cinnamon buns, and Father sat still reading the newspaper because he had been busy at work all day. Bonbon went to play with his rubber giraffes.

Outside, Glitta watched this vignette through the window and once more hesitated to come in and seek out the Flirty Girl. She didn't want to interrupt the unfolding of the great 'Sharing of the Writings' adventure, to stop it mid-flow and dam up whatever exciting consequences were going to ensue. Creativity being her greatest love, she thought the magazine articles should continue for as long as possible. Her art class was only one evening a week and she had the rest of the week free to take the Peg Doll household in hand, so it wasn't going to be easy to explain her inaction to Sinbad the Sailor when he returned to town, but still she only watched.

As the warm month of June began, Sinbad strolled jauntily into town, looking happy and humming a Pied Piper tune. He took in all the sights that a psychic sees and other folk miss: Peeping Tom ghosts peering into upstairs bathrooms, spirit animals running along the street, energy orbs circling in the air around the houses.

When he came to the Peg Doll residence his mood changed, and he became pensive. It was obvious that he couldn't rely on Glitta to sort out the problem of Jenny and the Flirty Girl, for everything there was still the same. So who was next in line to consult? He decided to fetch a real muse, which Glitta could never be, however much she might aspire to it, for Glitta was human.

***

Jelly-muse lived in the Welsh mountains, and she was never sure if to call herself 'Tom-and-jerry-muse,' the one who gives you that guilty discovery of seven year old humour still deep inside at the back of your adult brain, or 'Ice-cream-and-jelly-muse,' the one who wobbles into the children's parties and supervises that saying of remarkable things by the children which trump every attempt by the adults to make themselves sound clever. In the end she hit on simply 'Jelly', which seemed especially serviceable as it was a unisex name, and she didn't have to be a she all the time unless she really wanted to.

She liked to inspire tragic poetry, in the spirit of the original Greek division of literature into comedy and tragedy, but she hesitated to tell too many people that because the majority would be bound to prefer comedy, humans being so shallow.

Jelly had always thought that her mountain lair was unknown to man, so on this cloudy Wednesday morning she was surprised to see Sinbad walking jauntily up the mountain path and looking straight at her. She was sitting on a crag by a tiny stream that wiggled like string through the landscape, and she was wearing blonde plaits and a rainbow-coloured crocheted cloak .

She knew Sinbad must have arrived by train, and a vague and fleeting impression of the Peg Doll house flashed across her mind, telling her a little about why he had travelled here.

"Jelly!" he called out as he approached.

"Hi, Sinbad," she responded. "I know your nickname, just as the last person you discussed it with knew it, though I'd have to probe more closely to know who that was. What brings you all the way to Wales?"

He gave her a solemn look. "When I decide to help someone, I'm dedicated. Two ladies I've got on my help list: Jenny Peg Doll and Flirty Girl, whatever her real name is. Jenny has no art, no imagination- she has forsaken them for a life of drudgery to please some subconscious impulse of which I am as ignorant as she. Flirty Girl has no self-control, no independence, and instead of moving on like a spirit should, she spills all her art and imagination onto Jenny's floor, all in vain. Jenny never looks away from her chores and her budgie.

Now Jenny's mum is taking up the scattered jewels in their beauty and wisdom, and she has begun to distribute them for others to enjoy. I want someone to take the situation in hand, but the only one I've asked so far seems unwilling to do it."

"And you think I would be willing? What advantage is in it for me?"

He shook his head and tutted. "You muses and other nymphs- always thinking of an advantage! None but the pure satisfaction of seeing people happier, seeing them progress to where they should be when they seem stuck like a nail in a door and only a quarter of the way there. I can't bear it- I just have to do something."

"Well, I must say, you're heroic. You could be Ajax. Had to get in something Greek- I'm a traditional sort of muse. All right, I'll come with you, but I'll keep a look out for more of a payback than just satisfaction."

Sinbad nodded his thanks, doubtful about the comparison with Ajax who he did not consider to be much of a virtuous hero.

They set off down the mountain, and Sinbad, being human, repaired to a hotel, while Jelly cruised through the clouds with her cloak flapping and stopped to wait in a pool of airborne mist for him to re-join her the next day.

***

Glitta was standing on the Peg Doll residence's large veranda when she heard the whisper, slightly above her ear and to her right.

"Still just watching them. A voyeur, are you? But don't you have a message for Flirty Girl?"

Glitta turned to see accusing blue eyes and a swirl of circular-patterned wool, which looked too warm for this June afternoon.

"You mean Beatrice?"

The muse, drifting a few metres above ground level, shook her head in amusement. "Is that a Dante reference? She's no more Beatrice than I am Cleopatra. Her problem is that she's too open-handed. It's give, give, give: the art, fully-formed and finished, when she should be inspiring the Peg Doll ladies to compose their own. Just let me find her and I'll show her how to do it."

"She rests during the day," said Glitta. "On top of a bookcase-I've seen her through the window, and I didn't like to go in and disturb her. It doesn't feel like the right time yet."

"Then when will that right time be? Never, at this rate. We need to go in during the night, catch her red-handed with her russet sealing wax, and let her know what's what. Then after that, I can sort out your art and craft class."

"My class doesn't need sorting out! I'm doing great with it."

"Well, all right...but a pale imitation of what I could do. Never mind, you have the right to keep the gig for yourself. But it's your own fault I've come cutting and raking up your turf. Sinbad is tired of waiting."

"Sinbad too is not the boss of me," Glitta declared, shaking a bag of scissors and snippets that she was taking for the collage creators at the next class. They wouldn't be able to see them, but ideas would pop into their minds.

Twenty to four on a summer morning saw Jelly and Glitta squeezed behind the jutting corner of a Formica kitchen worktop as they waited for Flirty Girl to appear. The budgie could sense that strangers were in the room and was shifting noisily from perch to perch and making staccato chucking sounds. Porcelain cold moonlight fell on the floor tiles, leaving a round and hazy area that smudged towards the door. Jelly's wool cloak looked even less appropriate in a kitchen, and Glitta felt squeezed by it, right up against the side of the worktop.

They waited in silence for an hour after the sun had risen, and then at last the wraith- like form of their wraith slid down the stairs and into the kitchen, wax pen in hand.

She didn't bother to check properly if she was alone- just a single cursory glance around the kitchen, and then she knelt down and set to with the sealing wax pen, inscribing five mottos in brown, each one below the previous, as if she was writing a list.

When she had completed the fifth one, Jelly stepped out and held up her hand with the palm towards Flirty Girl. "Enough!" she cried.

Flirty Girl looked up, and her eyes grew round as she took in the strange pair of lady spirits.

"Enough!" Jelly repeated. "You are like a bottle of expensive wine spilling its contents. So much went to waste, unappreciated, before the lady of the house finally took an interest in copying it. You are forced now to repeat yourself, to save all your wine from seeping down a cultural drain, never to be recovered. Make them work for it! Push them to write their own. After the merest nudge they will surprise you and may even surpass you, and you will have improved their souls."

Flirty Girl didn't immediately reply. She stood up in a pirouette movement, her pen fluttering living drops like a paintbrush, and read through what she had already written.

Then she spoke, in a soft and beseeching tone. "Please, I can't let you interfere. These mottos come from my father's style, which Mrs Peg Doll could never imitate, having never known him personally. Through me his wisdom lives, and I add my own to it, and now others are hearing it too."

"But it's Jenny who needs to be exposed to this!" Glitta interjected. "To the poems especially, to awaken her romantic side."

"I actually don't agree with you there," Jelly said. "Her innate romance will awaken when it's ready to. You don't need to aim this at Jenny; leave her alone and she'll be fine in time. But her mother- there's an artist in the making, and it will be all the sooner if she learns to make art of her own."

Flirty Girl looked down at the floor again, and Glitta had the impression she was only pretending to read her mottos one more time.

"How about leaving here?" Glitta asked gently. "You could get Mother Peg Doll started on writing poems, and then go somewhere more exciting than here- maybe with people you knew during your life on Earth."

"I...like it here." Suddenly the way Flirty Girl tossed her hair back was Beatrice through and through, the romantic heroine Glitta had imagined, who strikes out and carves her own way.

"Don't let people boss you around, honey- bunch," said Jelly. "Just because they say ghosts are supposed to move on, doesn't mean you have to. Hang around here a while, but specifically to nurture an artist. Like Glitta or myself would do."

Glitta gave up. A united front was what it would take, and that obviously wasn't happening here. She studied the lines on the floor and began to plan a pretty border around them made of brown and yellow tissue paper flowers, to form it into a collage. Mother Peg Doll could make a note of the decorations and reproduce those, adding illustrations to her collection and becoming a versatile purveyor of art and craft along with the poetry.

But how was she going to make the border visible? Beatrice had got the technique down; her writing was there skating across the linoleum, for everyone to see. Glitta decided she would have to nip to the evening class room before the school opened and have a go at materializing the border, as an apport that would appear on the kitchen floor. She didn't want Jelly to go with her, because she guessed Jelly would then accuse her of giving too much, just like Flirty Girl. So she called out something about going to check on a technique and whizzed out through the window, leaving the other two girly spirits together in the kitchen as Mother Peg Doll and Jenny began to stir upstairs, ready for their day to begin.

***

Three months later, negotiations had started to turn Mother Peg Doll's articles into a large, glossy book, which was to include all the Flirty Girl's material and several repeating border illustrations inspired by Glitta. Mr Peg Doll went around beaming, proud of his family. Father had started to take more time off from the shop. Dame Margie and Uncle Lionel dressed more smartly and strode happily around the town, and even Grandmother was talking of coming back to the Peg Doll House, the centre of such excitement and opulence.

Down at the Butterfly Meadow, Jenny was kneeling on the grass pointing to a Painted Lady butterfly as it perched on a clover, its wings moving tremulously up and down. Tim was sitting on his heels beside her.

"Isn't she beautiful? I don't want to put the net around her in case I hurt her- she looks so delicate."

"Yes, she does," said Tim. "When I take you to the Butterfly House tomorrow, I'll show you a lot of others just like her."

Jenny smiled shyly. "It sounds like great fun."

Flirty Girl was getting ready to go and stay with Jelly for a while in Wales. Now that her writings were going to be in a real book, she felt satisfied and was happy to leave, to learn more from Jelly about what she could do next to start coaching artists. And more than that, to expand her own creativity, for spirits like herself and Glitta were not just inspirers of artists; they were artists themselves. Their best plan was to seek opportunities to share their art both in the material world and the next world, anywhere and everywhere they could find a way.
**The Peat Bog -** channelled from Ino

The marsh was waterlogged. Peter picked his way across the mud runnels at the edge as he headed towards the farm. It was a farm owned by his cousin Ben that his family had worked for generations, and he had offered to help out there today.

Peter thrust his hands into his pockets and brought out a handkerchief to wipe the mud from his boots and ankles. He hoped he wasn't going to end up looking and smelling like a dirty navvy today, and Pam would wrinkle her nose and move quickly away when he came home.

The farm was a bright place usually, built at an advantageous angle to the sunshine and winds. It lifted his mood to see it outlined against the hills in this pleasant part of Wales.

There were puddles and runnels full of peat everywhere on the ground as he walked towards the main farm building. The mud clinging round his boots gave him a tugging sensation, as if he was going to be pulled down beneath the marsh. That's what it always came down to whenever he visited the farm: mud, and a drawing down to whatever lay beneath.

The people of these parts were superstitious about such things. Their fear went back centuries, to the time when there were more bogs than human beings, and the mud was untamed, in its free natural state.

As he drew nearer and the farmhouse door became larger, he could see its solid oak wood and the brass door handle and fittings. He had been opening this door to let himself in since late childhood, for his cousin Ben was ten years older than him and had acquired the farm before he had finished growing up. The heavy creek of the door was comforting, like a friend, and he knew Ben and the farm hands would be even more welcoming when they saw him.

The squares of peat that were laid out drying by the fire had always been there since he was young. Nowadays they were mainly purchased for gardening, but in the past there had been other traditional uses.

He washed his hands at the sink in the corner of the old pantry room that led out into the fields. The mud from his boots came off, and swirled around before gurgling down the plughole, and then he was free to join the labourers in the fields where they grew crops of barley and rye.

"Hello, Peter," said his cousin, and taking off his rubber gloves he shook him by the hand. Ben always treated hm like a gentleman who was visiting the farm, which Peter thought was lovely.

"What can I help you with today?" he asked.

"There are some seedings need planting," said Ben. "I'll take you round by the orchard and show you where they are."

They walked slowly round to the orchard, Ben swinging his arms and Peter with his hands behind his back. On the way they passed some of the crop fields and saw some of Ben's men bent double picking weeds. It was one of the largest farms in the area and quite prosperous, with many men working on it.

Peter was actually hoping to inherit it, because he had no brothers and Ben didn't have any children, having never married. But he liked to think that wasn't his only reason for helping out on the farm. Far be it from him to have an ulterior motive; he genuinely wanted to help his cousin.

Pam would love it if they owned property, especially something as large and substantial as a farm. She didn't really like their two up two down flat, even though it was in a rural area, far from the huge towns that she hated the most of all. He could imagine her ordering the farmhands in an imperious tone to go and pick fruit, and to bring her back a couple for the tea table. It was a shame she hadn't been born into a position like that- her talents as a lady landowner were being wasted.

Sometimes Peter wished that Pam would come and work on the farm with him, but she never felt inclined to do anything like that. It wasn't that she didn't want to get her hands dirty. She didn't mind when it was something like gardening on her allotment, but she didn't like the social life of the farm with its community of labourers.

Peter was working by the fruit trees now, and at the direction of Ben's farmhands he started to do the weeding under the trees. Those who are not farming folk don't realise that weeding under the fruit trees is just as important as pruning them and picking the fruit.

As he cleared away some sturdy dandelions, he reflected that the ground must be good and fertile here as it produced so many weeds. Ben was certainly lucky with the quality of his farmland.

The weeding was soon finished, and then he went to plant the seedlings at the side of the orchard. More plants here would help to anchor the fruit trees in the soil and prevent any erosion that could occur if it was to rain a lot one year. The orchard was a great investment for the future and needed to be kept in top condition.

Later, when himself and Ben were eating warm toasted muffins in the farmhouse, they discussed how good the apples looked this year. They were coming along nicely, and by the time they were ready to be harvested they would be plump and juicy. Peter felt in his pockets for some scraps of bread and margarine to eat with the muffins, and finding some he chewed on them and threw the remaining two or three to the birds that hung around and fluttered in the dust outside the back door of the farmhouse.

It was dark when Peter set out to cross the bog again. He could hear a distant gurgling that brought up the old superstitions and primal fears, and made him think of monsters at the bottom of the bog waiting patiently for those who would fall down, after becoming stranded and sinking in the mud.

He knew his way across the peated areas, and had known it since childhood. No-one had ever removed enough peat from those areas to make them dangerous. Instead they took it from the drier and more open fields that divided the bog from the miles of farmland climbing the valley, and the ridges further away.

Of course, there had always been the stories about hands pulling you under the swamp, even in places where it was supposed to be safe. He liked to think he had never paid any attention to those. But there were niggling fears at the edge of his consciousness, where his own mind faded into the collective mind and became part of the stuff of nightmares.

Peter had always been reticent about these things, and if he felt the fears he didn't share them with others. He kept them locked in a secret place in his mind, like a cupboard that no-one else but himself got to open. As he walked, he thought about his boots which he had only imperfectly scrubbed that morning, and how they might even be liable to slide off in the grip of a particularly strong patch of marsh.

Pam always told him to be careful when he set off, but she never seemed particularly worried, for she had grown up in this area herself amid the peat bogs and sucking marshes, and had always been all right through heeding the instructions of her parents.

He passed the final fencepost that marked the outermost boundary of the farm. The sun was low in the sky and had almost vanished below the horizon, leaving streaks of pale light across the sky which barely illuminated the fields.

Peter felt the first sucking sensations under the soles of his boots, which signalled that he was getting near to the bog. Then, unexpectedly, something clamped onto his boots. It didn't feel sticky like the mud, more like a vice gripping them. It quickly pulled one boot right off.

Now he knew he was in trouble, for he needed both to navigate this terrain. Bending down, he squinted at the ground to see what had got hold of him. He lifted his other foot, and there was an octopus-like sucker clamped to the underside, with a long, stringy tendon leading away from it and beneath the surface.

At once he wanted to cast off the other boot as well and run, in the hope that whatever it was wouldn't have time to let go of the boots and then take a fresh hold on him. But that might not be the best plan, out here in the bog.

Involuntarily he yelled out, but it echoed strangely across the landscape and he knew he was too far away from the farm for anyone there to hear him, and on the other side there was no-one for many miles.

He couldn't see his missing boot- it must have gone below the marsh. Turning around as quickly as he could he began to walk as fast as he was able back in the direction of the farm, one foot paddling and soaked through, the other being pulled with a twisting grip at every step he took.

But before he had got very far, he fell flat on his face. Mud seeped into his ears and into his eyes, stinging them. His arms were pinned to his sides, wallowing in the slush.

He kept his mouth closed because he was afraid of choking if he opened it, and he turned his head to one side to reduce the chances of that. But the position was still extremely uncomfortable, and the rhythmic pulling on his right boot told him that the creature with the sucker had not given up.

Then he heard a voice calling him, Ben's voice, and other voices mingling with it too which sounded like the farmhands. Had they somehow miraculously heard his shout, and were now coming to rescue him?

He tried to stand up, but his legs began to sink, and they were pulling the rest of his body down after them. He could still hear Ben's voice and the sound of running feet approaching, and now at the edge of his vision he could just make out what must have attracted them. It was a green flare low down, in mid-air, like marsh gas except that he knew it was the creature who had got hold of his boot that had sent up the flare. It wanted to lure everyone here from the farm and pull all of them down under the bog.

For moment Peter wasn't even sure how he knew that the creature had sent up the flare. The he saw that the green plume of marsh gas was attached by a thin cord to the sucker on his boot, and by another cord which went below the surface of the marsh, to the creature itself. He could hear it now, blowing bubbles.

The farmhands were still running towards him, but now they slowed and approached more cautiously, and the voice of one of them rose above the others. "It's Cthulu. He won't leave us alone this year. Quick- did anyone bring the salt gun?"

"No, I'll get it," said another.

"Hurry up, or Peter will be under the bog."

"He wants the rest of us too. That's why the flare," said Ben.

As Peter lay there on the mud, slowly sinking, he became angry. No-one had told him about this threat to Ben's farm, which he had for so long hoped to own one day. Maybe some of the workers on the farm had disappeared forever, and he hadn't been told about that either. Strangely this feeling was stronger than his fear of drowning under the marshland.

On one side he could see another creature approaching- one that looked like a minotaur. He heard the pop of a salt gun firing, and the splat as it landed on Cthulhu's half-submerged side, causing some of the flesh to dissolve and leaving a round dent.

Cthulu began to sink, and with him Peter's leg also went down, pulled by the sucker that was attached to it. If he was going down, so was Peter's boot and it would quickly be followed by the rest of his body. Peter turned his head to the side again and yelled something wordless, and then turned again and again till he was shaking his head from side to side, but the mud in his ears and nostrils only increased instead of being shaken out.

The salt gun fired again; however, this time it only hit one of Cthulhu's tentacles, which fizzed in the wet gunge of the marsh but was not visibly dented.

Peter was giving himself up as lost when suddenly a great red and green flower exploded in the sky above him. It grew in size like a firework until it hung over the whole landscape, casting its light over the marsh and the farm. He saw Pam's face before him, and heard her whisper hoarsely, "I've protected you," and then he realised Pam was a witch. Strange, he had never known.

As the flower descended towards the surface of the Earth Cthulu grew transparent, and his large head tilted to look up; he emitted a growling roar which turned into a snicker as he dematerialised more and more. Peter could see the whole vista through him, the sky and the farm in the distance, and the marsh stretching out and diminishing as it approached the horizon. He could just make out Ben and the farmhands, gesticulating, and pushing and shoving one another, yet not daring to come too close.

It occurred to him that he had never even believed in Cthulhu before: he had thought him only a myth. Then the pull on his boot released, and the monster vanished completely. The minotaur had gone too.

Peter knew he had only to lie still, for thrashing around would make him sink, until the others saw their way was clear, and approached. He would never see Pam the same way again. Maybe she WAS destined to be a lady landowner, the mistress of Ben's fertile farm, which she knew how to protect from the ancient unseen dangers that surrounded it.
Hypersigil Bubble

Brand raised his crayon aloft and told himself that this was his wand: his passport into the whole entrancing world of magic. He wanted to emulate Grant Morrison in every way; hence the crayon for drawing comic-book style pictures to go along with the words (soon to be called by everyone the awesome words) of his hypersigil. He completed three pages, and put in three intents. No, that was too greedy. One intent per chapter would be better, or even per book, although one per book would be the opposite of his original greedy draft: too stingy and austere.

He was about to rip up the one with the three intents, but then he paused. Had the magic started already? He'd better not tear up anything yet; just re-draft it later and sprinkle those intents liberally throughout the first half of the book, or quarter if he thought better of it again.

Brand, like many aspiring chaos magicians, loved to do everything himself: the writing, the drawing and either promotional videos or a book straight to screenplay (getting more ambitious now). Even the music for the soundtrack he was sure he could manage himself. Why, hadn't he been singing just the tune he needed as the first track, in the shower this morning?

A collaborator would be good too. A girl, he decided- very beautiful and sexy. They would discuss the scenes they were going to write in bed, and then write them the next day. But maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't tell her yet about the hypersigil side of it- just that it was a new and fabulous graphic comic. Or maybe she would be a witch who had always wanted to get into chaos magic, and they would write the intents together....... but then half of them would be her wishes, not his. Or all of them. Reset- start again.

Brand turned his attention to the visual part if his hypersigil, and with a great flourish he began to colour in parts of the page thickly and extravagantly. He loved this part....no, he loved every part of this endeavour. He might sign the picture in one corner, like an artist. He might even 'double-canvas' it and paint one picture on top of another. But how would he load the invisible one beneath with magical significance? That was a puzzle, he had to admit.

He wrote on and on enthusiastically, forgetting the time, until the antique clock in the hallway struck six. Brand collected outlandish items, and this clock had seemed so at odds with modern life that he felt he had to have it. The clock represented Chronos not yet defeated by Fotomecus, despite their long-standing feud, and he put it in a place of honour on top of a carved teak mini-bookshelf, which stood by itself at the end of the hall. Then he pretended to support Chronos, just for the hell of it.

He would have to stop for dinner even though the hypersigil was just becoming interesting. He closed the book, laid the pen and crayons carefully inside the desk drawer and headed towards the kitchen.

Everyone knows what to expect when they open the fridge. Having seen your own fridge so many times before and having perhaps only recently added more items of food and drink to its contents, you are expecting no surprises.

But when Brand opened his fridge on what had been such an industrious Thursday evening, he found that the back of the fridge simply wasn't there. He leaned forward cautiously into the gaping void that had opened, fringed with crumbling wads of ice around the outside. It must be The Void itself, but it wasn't black: it was white because of the ice. He didn't want to go too far into the fridge and freeze his head into a block.

Suddenly his feet left the ground and he was spinning and whirling. He didn't go through the fridge; instead he shot back into the room, which had started to bend and roll back and forth. It gradually swelled and became transparent until it was a giant bubble. It looked strained, about to burst, yet it didn't burst and still held its occupant, a struggling and yelling Brand. But his yelling made no sound inside the bubble.

As he kicked and somersaulted over, something even stranger began to happen. The bubble's skin now stretched and thinned until it was so fine that he could no longer see it. Then it stopped- no pop, no bursting, just a halt to what was happening, and Brand was deposited on the kitchen floor, all in a knot. He got up very slowly and cautiously, wincing from the bruises and not entirely sure it was safe to stand.

Everything appeared to be back to normal. But when he ventured out into the hallway, something caught his eye. There was a picture on the wall of a man riding a fairground horse on a carousel. It was a picture that he had always particularly liked, because it reminded him of an Xbox game with chaos magic and The Joker in it. Now, when he looked at it, the man was facing the opposite way.

"It must be a glitch in The Matrix!" he exclaimed. But that was only a catch-phrase which did not explain what had happened, because he wasn't in The Matrix: this was real life. He could argue until he was blue in the face that the world truly is a computer simulation, but it would remain merely an unlikely conspiracy theory.

He looked outside the window, and it was too bright to be evening. Somehow the time of day had shifted back to morning, and he no longer felt like dinner. The view outside had changed as well. Some houses on the west side of the street had vanished, and there were new buildings in their place which appeared to be a block of flats and a large community hall with a clock tower at the top. On the east side were a stretch of green fields, like part of a rural landscape, where before had been city streets.

"I've done a quantum jump into the past, or the future," was his next thought. It sounded very grand and wonderful, but then he realized he did not fully understand what a quantum jump was, or how to do one. It sounded unlikely that you could do it just by looking into the fridge, unless that white ice hole that appeared at the back had been a black hole all the time.

He decided the best thing to do would be to try and contact someone else and searched in his jeans pocket for his phone. Maybe in this time zone he had a beautiful young wife who was just about to walk in through the door and say, "darling, how lovely that you're home."

He pulled out his mobile, and it had an extra button- a red one in the bottom right corner. Excitedly he pressed it, but no beautiful wife walked in through the door, and in fact nothing happened at all. A little disappointed, he looked through the contacts for someone close to him and dialled his brother Fenton 'Fnord' Jones.

The call went to voicemail, and he left a message. "Fent, something really weird has happened- to the whole street. Maybe the whole world. Call me back."

He decided against calling all his contacts, and instead got his tan biker jacket and door-key and went outside, to look for another person made of flesh and blood. Speaking of that, what if they all turned out to have skin like a frog, and three eyes each?

After walking past the first block of flats, Brand saw a girl coming towards him, and thank all the gods he knew, she was an ordinary girl. Another chance to hear the words, "darling, how lovely"?

She was certainly a pretty girl, with large blue eyes framed by dark lashes, and long dark brown hair. She was slim and wearing a conventional looking dress, white with a pattern of red flowers. She did come over and speak to him, after giving him a searching glance, but she sounded puzzled.

"Do you know how we got in here?" she asked.

"In where? I don't know what this is." Brand was delighted that he wasn't imagining the anomaly, and he might be about to find out what it was.

"I meant, this bubble. That's what it looks like to me; there's a skin round the edge like a bubble. But it won't burst; it just goes on stretching and stretching. It's gone around the whole district where I live, in the north of Croydon. I think it goes right out of town and maybe further, around the whole country. Everything's a bit different inside it."

"Yeah, I noticed that too. Different buildings and streets. You don't know how it's happened, then?"

"No. I was hoping you did. We'll have to see if we can find someone who does know."

Brand was pleased that she was suggesting the two of them searching together. "What's your name?" he asked.

"I'm Lisa," she replied.

"I'm Brand," he said and held out his hand, which she shook briefly instead of continuing to hold it, which he would have preferred.

"Where shall we go first?" she asked.

"Well, where were you going before I met you, Lisa?"

"At first, I was planning to go to work, as usual. But I work at Maples Store, and it's vanished. There's a car showroom in its place, and I can't very well go in there and ask for a job, can I?"

"Cool- your job's gone. Now you're free!"

Brand instantly regretted saying that, as Lisa gave him a look. "Don't you believe in working?"

"Yes... of course I work, sometimes. One time I had a job at a game convention. It went on for three weeks, and I got to play some of the games. But don't you ever want to get outside consensual reality? It's all based on money. Like, why not make products that do a job forever? A cleaning spray that makes the floor clean forever, so you never have to clean it again. But instead they want you to keep buying it and cleaning your floor every week, so that they can make money."

Lisa shook her head and smiled slightly. "You do think in a funny way, Brand. But come on, we'd better get started trying to find our way out." She began to walk along the street, and he followed a few paces behind, thinking about how girls always turn out to be too conventional.

They passed a small park on the left side of the street, which up till now had been the side that was still urban and built up. The park might have been there before; Brand wasn't sure, but he was sure of one thing: there hadn't been purple flamingos before. Maybe he should start playing croquet with them, like in Alice In Wonderland.

Suddenly Brand's mobile phone rang, and Fenton's name flashed on the screen. "Fent!" he exclaimed happily, seizing it and switching on the loud speaker.

But Fenton sounded strained. "Brand, who's done this? Was it you, or someone you know? Half the office blocks in the city are gone, and Dad's office is gone. There's a safari park there instead. And I can't get hold of Jane. I'm afraid in case she's disappeared as well."

"Come on, I thought you were Mr Fnord," said Brand. "You should love all this!"

"But Jane, my girlfriend. If you had a girlfriend, you'd understand."

Brand looked away from Lisa as he answered. "Keep trying to phone her. I'll try too."

"Where are you going, Brand?" Fent sounded worried. It wasn't like him- he was going to pieces.

"I'm just trying to find out how far the bubble goes."

"The what?"

"Haven't you noticed it's like a bubble? There's a skin that keeps stretching, but it doesn't pop; it just extends some more."

"Don't go too far. I'll be at home. Keep in touch."

He put away the phone and noticed that Lisa was bending down examining some tyre tracks in the muddy drive outside a house. "That's strange," she said. "The tracks stop, but where is the car?"

Brand was thinking that it's just a phenomenon, and you don't have to go all detective. Then Lisa suddenly stood up and pointed. "Look! It's in the tree!"

Brand looked, and that was when it hit him.

No wonder Fenton had asked, "was it you?" His brother had a nose for these things. In the intents he had embedded in his hypersigil, there had been a girl, and there had been cars that grew on trees so that he could help himself to a car. He hadn't even meant it that seriously- but as usual with chaos magic, you have to 'be careful what you wish for.' Here was the girl, but she was more conventional than him. Here was the car, but it appeared to belong to someone else, and it was anyone's guess how to get it down from the tree. Finally, here was the world in which all this happened- but it was squashing the normal world by extending and extending and switching everything around as it passed over it.

"I've made a hypersigil bubble!" Brand exclaimed.

"A what?" asked Lisa.

Brand looked at his fingers and twisted them spasmodically. "Lisa....do you think it's moral to change reality? We were having a debate about it on Facebook earlier this week. I could show it to you. Just a minute- I'll find it on my phone."

"This is no time to look at debates on Facebook. If you know what's changed everything tell me, and then we'll have to try and change it back."

"I don't think we can. Maybe, from outside the bubble. I have to get outside the bubble's skin, and then rewrite it."

"Rewrite what- the bubble? That doesn't make sense."

"Look- when did you last see the edge of the bubble?"

"In my room, this morning. But it wouldn't stay still- it stretched while I was still looking at it, trying to work out what it was."

Brand's head was spinning. That was it- he would have to marry Lisa and drive away in the car, and then the bubble might burst. But he had only just met her, and what if it didn't burst? No, start again. Have an affair with Lisa, and then fall out with her and break up. Knock out whoever lived in the house next to the tree with a blunt instrument, then steal the car. Would that burst the bubble? He felt like he was in a PlayStation game, about to play as the villain. But the people might be real, instead of just bots. The best plan of all would be to burst the bubble with a giant pin, and then go home and rewrite the hypersigil before it could form again.

"I can't follow any of this," said Lisa. "shouldn't you try phoning that girl, Jane? You promised to try and find her."

There, he'd been just about to dump her and assault a stranger, and now she was being considerate to Jane. That's what happens when you mess around with this stuff. Brand called Jane's number, but there was no reply.

***

Brand and Lisa were sitting in a café. The original plan had been to walk the streets and try to reach the edge of the bubble, but Brand didn't dare let the car in the tree out of his sight, for it could hold the key to the whole problem. So he had persuaded Lisa to stop for refreshments before carrying on with the journey. He pulled out his phone and sent a message to several social media sites:

'My car is in a tree. If someone can help me to get it down, everything might go back to normal.'

He received five replies, four of them saying "do you mean 'my cat is in a tree'?" and the other one saying, "things will never be normal again."

Brand replied to the latter one which was from his friend Rick, an old schoolmate who was interested in chaos magic but not a real chaos magician.

"Yes, they will, Rick- it's a hypersigil. When it's worked, we should be able to stop it. Can you get to Eastfield Street?"

"There's no such street," wrote Rick. "What landmarks are you near?"

Oh, no- Eastfield Street sounded such a normal name.

There was nothing recognizable outside the café's window. "Lisa- can you see any landmarks outside?" he asked.

She paused with the teacup in her hand and peered out into the street. "A clock tower? Brand, I wish you would explain this to me instead of texting. I've still got no idea what's going on."

"All right. Magic!" Brand dropped the phone onto his lap and waved his arms in a circle. "Do you believe in magic?"

"I used to, when I was much younger."

"You need to believe in it now. Sometimes, we chaos magicians write a story to do magic. Or it might be music or a film, but it's usually a story. I wrote this story about cars growing on trees, and I think it's my story that has turned into this whole bubble thing."

"It doesn't look like it's actually growing on the tree. Just like it's been thrown up there. And it isn't the only strange thing we've seen today- there were the funny- coloured birds, and all those tin cans climbing up a wall."

"Well, it's true I didn't write about walking tin cans. But I did write about the car, and it's the only chance we've got. If we can just get the car down, and I get in and drive it away, all the weird stuff might disappear, and the real world will come back."

"So, you screwed up the whole world because you want a car?"

Oh, shit- the penny had dropped.

"You're making it sound terrible, Lisa. This wouldn't normally happen. It's a fluke. I must have done something wrong and tapped into something much more powerful than me."

"Can you even drive?"

"Of course. At least.... I've got a provisional license. My Dad showed me a couple of times."

"So, it isn't even legal for you to drive away."

"Who cares about that here? We're in a bubble world. It might be legal to ride elephants down the street here."

Brand's phone rang; it was Rick. "Where are you, man? I'll come and look at that car. We could get a crane or something."

"I'll tell you, starting from my house." Brand described the route he had followed to get to where he was now, with the car in the tree and the café diagonally opposite.

He looked out of the window again, this time searching for building works or a demolition site. Rick was right- they needed a crane, and maybe the best course of action in this artificial world would be to walk in and take one. But he couldn't see any building sites.

It would be best if Lisa didn't see them steal a crane; he doubted that she would agree to bend the usual rules of morality to fit the present circumstances. Brand recalled the same dilemma cropping up in films, and in games he'd played on various consoles. When you are convinced that you're in a virtual or imaginary world, do the ideas of right and wrong that you have been brought up with still apply? You could be in the middle of breaking them, and enjoying the feeling of liberation, when you discover that you're in the real world after all, and in big trouble. Or you might encounter inhabitants of the imaginary world who are enraged with you, because it is real to them.

He sat tapping impatiently on the windowsill, waiting for Rick, while Lisa drank her tea silently. She looked lost for something to say.

At last he saw Rick coming through the door of the café, wearing ripped jeans and looking cheerful. "Hi there, man. What can I do?"

Brand looked at Lisa and asked tentatively, "is it all right if we leave you here while we look for something to move the car? Keep your eye on it, and make sure it stays there." He pointed at the upper branches of the tree.

Lisa laughed suddenly. "So, the car might fly away? And if it does, I have to chase it. Great! Nothing will ever be weird again after this."

"Yeah, that's the idea, Lisa. Adapt to this crazy new world, before it spits you out as obsolete."

Brand kicked himself. He had gone too far with the chaos theory again. But no time to worry about that- he jumped up without looking at her reaction and followed Rick out into the street.

It was always relaxing to be with Rick. He was so easy-going, even more than Fenton. Brand recalled again that he was supposed to keep checking in with Fenton, and trying to phone Jane, but it seemed a distraction when he needed to concentrate on the car problem. Reluctantly he tried Jane a second time, and after a few rings gave up. Then he started to discuss the phenomenon of hypersigils with Rick, and the bizarre ways they could go wrong. Rick was fascinated and saw Brand as a bit of an expert, which was flattering.

"I've never had anything like this happen," Brand confided. "Usually it's the wrong job offer, or the wrong girl, or something. But this time- all the streets changed! Buildings disappeared! Maybe Eris has done it, to teach me a lesson."

"It isn't the twenty-third," said Rick.

"No- but she can do it without that. Or maybe it IS the twenty-third, back in the real world."

They walked on for a while in silence, their attention taken up by the surreal surroundings that they passed. The east side of the street was still predominantly countryside, and in one field there were many haystacks, each one with a tufty top like a quiff, and men were swishing large forks through them without moving any of the hay away. It was like a static animated picture and Brand wondered whether his subconscious mind had produced this, like the symbols in a dream. If so, his mind was a lot cleverer than he thought.

Just after passing this field they came to a craggy area which looked promising, as if it could be a demolition site. It was not fenced off, but there was a warning notice which read: 'Caution- Work In Progress', and there were some industrial vehicles standing around. None of them were cranes or pulleys, but there was an industrial digger of medium size with a toothed scoop on the front.

Rick pointed at it. "I think you could lift the car out of the tree with that."

Brand ran his eye quickly over the site, looking for workmen. There was a little group of builders in the distance wearing protective suits and hard hats, all gathered around a half-finished brick wall. Driving the digger away would be sure to get their attention, so how could they make it look as if they were authorised?

Brand had the mad idea of materializing a clipboard in his hands, so he would look official. This was like a dream, so it could work. He concentrated, but nothing happened. What about a sigil? A sigil to make a clipboard appear, or if it still wouldn't appear, to stop the builders noticing them.

" Rick, have you got a pen and paper?" he asked.

"I've got a biro somewhere, in a pocket. No paper, though. Why?"

"I could draw a sigil to turn me into an official with a clipboard. In this bubble we ought to be able to make stuff just appear. I could charge the sigil by holding it to one side- looking at it out of the corner of my eye."

"Sounds a bit complicated," commented Rick. "Can't we just lie if they come over? Say we're bosses and we need the digger?"

"They wouldn't believe us."

"They're miles away. Just make a run for it."

"Do you know how to start it?"

The digger had something at the front which looked like an ignition, but there was no key in sight.

The men had seen them now and one, who appeared to be a foreman, began to walk over. When he was near enough Brand blurted out, "Could you help us? We need to borrow this digger, to lift up a car."

"I could send someone," the man replied. "Where is your car stuck?"

"It's up..."

"It's halfway down a cliff," Rick cut in. "We could get it out ourselves if we borrow the digger."

Brand sighed. Rick was thinking inside the box- or outside the bubble, where no-one would ever believe a car could be up a tree.

"Someone has to go with you," the foreman said firmly. "It's security. Just take him to the cliff. Is it one of the Margate Stargate beaches?"

Wow! That sounded like Brand's dream Xbox game- or was it a real place in this crazy bubble world?

Then it hit him. The resort! The third of his intents that he had put in the hypersigil! He had asked for a super cool seaside place where he would work over the summer, like a British Disneyland. He didn't live near any coast, so if there was suddenly a resort it must be his third intent.

"Yes, yes! That's where it is!" cried Brand, and Rick glanced over in surprise at him catching on so very enthusiastically.

***

Lisa looked at her watch. Brand had said he wouldn't be long; but he had been, and she couldn't stay in this café all day. Her job was gone, along with an unknown portion of the rest of her life. Mother had been there when she left the house- she had called down a few times from upstairs, but she had no idea about her two older sisters who had their own homes and families. Like Jane, they weren't answering the phone.

She had been ready to chase the end of the bubble and slip through it, like getting out of a hooded coat, but it was all too likely it would elude a pursuer like the end of the rainbow, constantly moving somewhere else.

Brand hadn't left his phone number, or any other details. After a couple of hours and three cups of coffee, Lisa got up and paid for her drinks and began to walk back in the direction of her home.

There were some strange sights on either side: miniature plastic lorries ambling along by themselves; tall, blue mushrooms with many joints in the stem, and a steeple with a loft visible through the window but no church beneath. It just stood squat on the pavement. Lisa barely saw them; she kept her eyes downward.

Reassuring Mother was difficult when she got home, with her sisters missing. It was as if they had been lifted straight out of the world. She went to her bedroom with the vague intention of praying, but when she got there she found that a god had already appeared. It was tall and feathery, a bit like an emu, standing on her bedside rug. Her mouth opened and stayed frozen in that position, with no words coming out.

Her visitor showed no reluctance to speak. "I've come to try and pop this freak bubble. I've never seen anything like it ! Your friend is lucky it didn't form around his neck and leave his head snapped off in the fridge. That wouldn't be much fun for his mum or his brother to find, would it?"

Lisa didn't know what he meant about the fridge, but she seized on the 'popping' idea and exclaimed, "yes- please burst it. It's taken my sisters away, and a lot of other people too."

"But you're one of the intents, that's the trouble. He wished for a girl, a car and a holiday job, and when he went down onto the beach and got his holiday job, that end of the bubble dissolved and allowed him to escape. But he hasn't got the other two yet, so the bubble is resisting me, and I can't let you and your mother out. I've been pulling and slashing, but you're stuck."

"What!"

She was one of the intents? It was as if she was a thing, like the car. She was going to kill him.

***

Earlier that afternoon, on the way to the beach, Brand had been wracking his brain for something to tell the builder when they failed to find the car. Again, he regretted not having a pen and paper- he couldn't even pass a note to Rick. In the distance he began to hear seagulls crying, waves crashing and many voices. The sounds grew louder, and then they cleared the crest of a hill and saw the bay spread out below them.

Brand was thrilled to see that it WAS his resort. It was laid out like a theme park on the sea's edge, with a funfair, many booths for playing computer games, and slot machines. In the middle was a sign which read, 'Virtual Reality, Holograms and Simulated Environments.'

He needn't have worried about explaining to the builder. A whirling current flung him out of the van and straight through the door into an arcade in the resort. It also lifted Rick and he began to fly back home, his arms and legs flailing. The whole scene changed, and Brand was now wearing smart trousers, expensive trainers and a t- shirt with a company name on it. He was in the middle of his summer job, and had forgotten everything else. "This is great, helping people to enjoy their holiday. Mum and Dad will be proud of me. All I need now is a girlfriend and a car."

As that last thought swept across his mind, Brand found himself back at home, on his kitchen floor. The fridge was still open, and on one side of the kitchen a tide of melting soap bubbles washed across the tiles.

For several minutes he lay there, stunned. Then he inched himself into a sitting position, and the next thing he did was pull the phone out of his pocket and phone Fenton. "Fent, are you, all right? Is Jane all right?"

"Course we are. Did I say something was wrong?"

"No, it's just- I thought the chaos magic had made Jane disappear."

"Ha, ha, very funny. Why did you phone really?"

Brand made some excuse, and ended the conversation. Then he felt his head. It didn't feel as if he had hit it on the fridge- no bump, no pain. He got up and went into the hall, and the picture was the right way round again. He looked out of the window: everything back to normal.

Maybe Lisa wasn't real- what a shame. The car as well was probably imaginary, especially as it could climb trees. He would just have to mop the kitchen floor and burn that hypersigil, or rewrite it completely, or take all the intents out and put them back in right at the end, during a ritual. Yes, that last one would be the safest. He would do that right after dinner.

***

Lisa was back in the street, searching for the place where she had left Brand. She was angry with him, but he might be the only person who could help her get out of the bubble.. She came to the place where the café had been, but even in this short time everything had changed and now there was a circus with trapeze artists swinging from one side of the road to the other. It was creepy, like one of those ghost films, and Lisa shivered involuntarily. Brand must be back in everyday reality now, while she was still lost on this dimension. She reached into her handbag and took out her mobile phone. She noticed it had a strange red button on it, the same as Brand's phone earlier on, and she pressed it.

Immediately she slid to a new location, like a counter on a board moving onto a new square. She found herself standing under the tree where the car was hanging and hovering beside it were two long, spindly creatures. They were a bit like the one she had spoken to in her room earlier on, but somehow spikier, as if that one had been an angel, and these two were demons. One of them was just in the act of lifting the car down with its extended arms.

"This is going to be fun to ride in."

"You can't!" Lisa exclaimed. "I need that to...."

"Yes, I can, watch me!" it answered, winking at her with an eye like a stork's eye, and both the creatures jumped into the car and drove away along the adjacent street. They didn't even need to switch on the engine.

Lisa could feel tears pricking behind her eyes. She sat down on a stone seat, with a wild red hedge like a parrot's tail growing up behind it. For a while she just stared down at her lap. Then, gradually, a realization began to dawn. This was chaos. She could do anything.

She jumped up and called out in a commanding voice, picturing the two creatures who had taken the car. "Come back and take me with you! You need me!"

At first nothing happened, but she kept repeating it, until at last the car appeared on the horizon, coming back towards her. The two creatures put their bird-like heads out of the window and looked at her expectantly.

"I'm supposed to be watching this car, so you can't leave me behind," Lisa said. "You must give the car to Brand and let me out of the bubble." She opened the door and climbed in.

"You're welcome," said the creature that was driving, starting up again and leaning its curvy forearm out of the window. "But we're not going to Brand's house. We're giving the car to his brother Fenton."

"No, you can't do that! I'll be trapped in the bubble forever."

The other creature gave Lisa a playful push. "Stupid human being! You don't understand how magic works. Brand's life is a mess- he can't cope with a car dropping into his lap. But Fenton's kind, and he'll let Brand share his car, and then when Brand gets his summer job, he'll pull himself together."

"Does that mean I can leave the bubble?" Lisa persisted. Outside the window they passed a flock of spinning Ferris wheels of all different sizes, gyrating across the fields. All she wanted was the normal world back.

"Of course- when we get to Fenton's house."

Finally, they entered the drive of a little town house, and came to a stop. A wide soapy puddle appeared on the ground, spreading towards them. The edge of the hypersigil bubble was briefly visible, shimmering sideways in the air, and then it broke as it melted into the puddle.

***

Brand was sitting in front of the television, half watching and half drawing on one side of his graphic comic hypersigil with a yellow felt pen. This was true mastery of the meta-paradigm, to integrate magical creation with mundane life, continuing his ritual outside the ritual space. The lounge was an extension of the comic book and the book joined to his temple through a new byway.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a photograph of Lisa on a news bulletin. She was looking severe in the photo, with a tightly-pulled ponytail and formal white blouse. Another photo appeared, this time depicting a plump middle-aged lady, and then it cut to an interview with two other women, evidently Lisa's sisters. They were talking about the disappearance of both Lisa and their mother and appealing for information.

Brand's mouth fell open, and the felt pen froze in mid-air. If she was real after all, and still in his hypersigil, that felt pen he was holding could be erasing her right now! Or maybe it was dipping her in a sea of marmalade. Whatever- but how was it possible he could have power like that, when he was just another idiot writing 'lol' on Facebook? He must have tapped into a higher power just as he'd said to Rick, and it had flung Rick back into the real world, but how was he going to return Lisa there?

Quickly he threw on the jacket he had been wearing that morning, which he found back on its usual peg in the hall next to his Chronos clock, and raced outside to look for the square with the café.

He walked rapidly, trying to judge the distance along the main road that was now perfectly ordinary. He didn't think they had made any turns, but it was hard to remember exactly.

That might possibly be the square and the tree just up ahead, but he was not at all surprised to see that the branches were clear with no car nor anything else unusual tangled up in them. There was a café opposite too... or had been. Now that he was nearer he could see that it had closed down, and the windows were boarded up.

Lisa could be anywhere. He couldn't even be sure how this worked: the two quantum worlds, or parallel tectonic plates, or whatever they were. She should be in the equivalent place in the other dimension, but where was that? Brand looked at his phone: no red button, and he hadn't managed to find out what it did anyway. He should never have dragged that poor girl into this; he should have looked for a girlfriend in a nightclub. In despair, he sat down on a stone bench. They had both sat down in the same place that day, but unaware of one another, separated by different dimensions.

Brand finally decided that all he could do was amend the hypersigil again. Go home and conduct another ritual, and this time take out all the intents permanently. Lisa would go back to her old life, but he would never meet her. It was the only way to save her.

When he turned into his street, Brand immediately recognized the car. You couldn't mistake it- red and flashy, too flashy to be honest, and parked right outside his door. He hurried towards it and saw Fenton sitting in the driving seat.

Fenton opened the door, beaming. "Hey, Brand! I was just coming over to tell you the news. I won this car. We can share it. Thought I'd drive it round and surprise you. Funny thing is, there's a note addressed to you lying on the back seat, and I've no idea how it got there." He pointed to a sheet of white notepaper lying face down, with 'Brand' scrawled on the back.

"That's great, Fent!" Brand leaned to pick up the note and turned it over.

"Hi, Brand," he read. "I got out of the bubble. Call me- here's my number and address----- Lisa."
**Marina-** channelled from Ino

The Sea Adventure

Crawling along the seabed was a strange way to travel when I'm not a sea creature. You may think I'm showing off my superpower, that I can breathe under water, but I've no choice in the matter if I'm to tell this true story.

The sea anemones were in my face as I moved forward, just as my divinity is in your face. I brushed them aside and strode confidently, my feet never sinking in the silt even though it was porous and slushy.

A crab sidled towards me, and waved its pincers uncertainly, as if they were antennae for detecting what kind of creature was in front of it. It stood clutching the muddy seabed between its claws, spanning the path like a compass about to draw a circle. I was following that path, and had to pass it.

"Excuse me, crab," I said imperiously.

The crab jumped and shot upwards, leaving a plume of rising current in the water, which I stepped into indifferently and continued on my way.

I often navigate by means of ships, and this time was no exception. I knew that the ship which now began to cast its shadow over me was the tanker which passed this way during the month of May on the way to New Zealand. I followed its path for what I deemed to be the correct interval of time, in accordance with the route I wanted to follow. My aim was to surface near the island of Bali and alight on a colony of corals, positioning myself on the coral reef.

Sure enough I was on target, and I arrived just as the sunset added a clashing red to the pink and orange surface of the corals.

I sat on the smooth, shiny surface, my face tilted up towards those late rays of sunshine, at peace with the world. But of course, you don't know what my face looks like, do you? It's a bit like a chicken, well a cockerel, actually, with a crest, and folds of feathers at the top of his chest. Except, they're not feathers. They are something marine to aid swimming, akin to a fish with spines floating on the sea currents.

I'm afraid I don't think you can picture me from this. I'm better at describing other random aliens, that shock the sailors when they glance over the rail along the deck, than I am at describing myself.

I peered down at the corals below me, and from the scratchy surface of the reef it was impossible to tell where the living beings began and ended, and what was just hard mineral. The life there was of particular interest to me, for I intended to siphon off some of the strength from it. Ha, I've lost you now, haven't I? You're thinking I am vampiric. Well, look again at what I just described: a colony of corals, farmed by many including man, a bit like oysters in their mystery, and their unaccountable value.

I looked up into the setting sun, and beyond it to the hot, white skies of Bali, and the wind moving through the fronded trees. It was birds with grey-blue tails that I was looking for first, to take my messages into the interior of the island to the comrades who were waiting for them.

After ten minutes or so of waiting, a bird with a fanned grey-blue tail flew down towards me. I broke off a small piece from the coral, scratched some symbols into it and handed it to the bird with a wink. The bird nodded, picked up the little piece of coral in its beak and flew away.

You didn't know I had nails like that, did you ? Nor that I knew symbols like that. I am quite a surprise to many people, but if you lived on the island of Bali, you might be keeping watch to try and stop me doing just those things that I was doing that fateful day.

The bird flew right to the interior and then down into a cave, and as I lost sight of it I still knew where it had gone-into a tunnel that led away from the back of the cave, to a secret cove underneath.

Coves like that one are full of treasure, but not in the form of precious metals or jewels. It is the treasure of the heart, the riches of loyal companions who would stand beside me in any danger, and who most of all want to introduce some lyricism into the world.

I gazed from the reef up to the sky, and the whole vista was now beginning to darken. Night suited me well, for I would retire into one of the caves that stood along the shore and once more become as a sea creature, with thin tentacles splayed out. There I would sleep until it was dawn on the island.

But before I had time to lie down and sprout tentacles, someone approached me who looked like a jellyfish, only larger and not so transparent. He was moving at an angle that made him appear determined, like a businessman in a suit.

"Hey!" he greeted me. "Are you the one who dives for the pearls, and has valuable pearls to trade?"

My reply was a small, humourless laugh. "What you have heard is a code-name," I said. "They are not real pearls; only of value to those pirates who plunder the hearts of such victims as holidaymakers on pleasure cruises."

"Oh." He straightened up and fixed me with crusty lobster eyes. "Well, I do some business with humans, and mermen so-called as well. You would be surprised how the majority of seafarers believe that mermen can bring them pearls."

"Maybe they can, I wouldn't know," I replied. "I only know that my pearls are white balls of phlegm and sweat and other undesirable human secretions, which would disperse in the sea and so have to be kept on land."

The creature recoiled, and now he looked even more like a lobster. For he wiped his eyes with orange spines, one on each side of his head. "I didn't know you could deal in anything that disgusting," he said. "It's pearls for me, supposedly from mermen but really poked out by my diggers, who I pay well. The mermen get cut in somewhere, but it's a bit of a double deal. I'm sure you know the routine." He gave an oily smile.

"I don't know why you think I know about all this wheeling and dealing," I said, with a dismissive wave of my front limb. "I don't come from these parts- I am only around here once in the year. Once is quite enough for the mischief I intend."

He looked reassured that I did indeed intend some mischief, and backed away, waving his strange head from side to side.

Now it was time for me to crawl into a cave, and plot my actions for the next day. Soon the tentacles were swirling around me, orange ones like spaghetti, which I hoped would warn any intruders away and convince them that I would not taste nice with Bolognese sauce.

I was up early the next morning, as soon as the sun began to touch the corals with its rays that still clashed with the reef. Unwinding and discarding my orange tentacles, I leapt towards the beach and began walking up it, pleased to be on dry land at last.

I headed for the underground cove to which the bird had flown the previous evening. Having received my message, they would be ready for me and would have opened up one of the small tunnels which was perpetually being filled in to keep its location a secret. I had some jewels to bring to them: not pearls, as my assailant of yesterday had hoped, and not globules of spit you will be pleased to hear, but tiny radioactive discs which linked us to some aliens in space. They wouldn't give us radiation sickness, for the aliens knew how to manufacture them so that wouldn't happen.

Sure enough the tunnel was open, as I expected, and I sauntered down it with my non- sea creature legs on. It was like a mine-shaft that has been painted white and lined with something crisp, like rice paper. I felt as if I was tipping myself down a rubbish chute, but here in the interior of the island all the rubbish was on the surface, and this in the realm beneath was the actual business.

As I reached the bottom they surrounded me- beings that looked like a jellyfish out on the land, and beings of a more terrestrial aspect, but from the faery kingdom. They were all standing expectantly with their eyes fixed on me, the jellyfish ones dabbing their limbs in the dust and the faery ones hovering, and I was pleased to see they were looking at me with some respect.

"The plan this year is a little different," I said. "We will be rooting the pearls from the bottom of the sea, because due to the amount of oceanic pollution, the concentration is now enough for us to do so. Our extra-terrestrial friends will collect some flour bombs made from wheat which links in with the extensive bread symbolism found here on Earth: communion wafers and food and money, and other such links in the chain that goes right down to Persephone."

"Are they going to bomb anyone with the flour bombs?" asked one of the faeries.

"No," I replied. "They will just explode the flavours within the wheat kernel which reveal the root and seed of the ideas, and how palatable these ideas are to everyone on the Earth."

They all nodded and flapped their trailing jelly legs, or their wings, or any other flaps they had about them.

"I'm going to the seabed to start getting the pearls," I continued. "Some of you stay here and watch these discs to see when the messages come through on them. They will spin, and project the message into the middle. All the rest of you, come with me."

I pointed to another tunnel at the back of the cave, made of the same rice-paper substance but much longer than the others, which went all the way to the sea and came out on the seabed.

That was when our expedition began. It began with high hopes of success, and a lot of oily bubbles in the water because the humans were probably spilling oil as usual. Lucky I only look like a chicken and am not really one, otherwise my feathers would have become stuck together.

The first thing that we hadn't planned for was the seaweed. It always tends to flap over you when you are trying to do something on the bottom of the sea, but this was more than the usual squidgy leaves and popping black bulbs. This was a veritable forest of black, stringy slime- weed that wrapped itself several times around our bodies and threatened to pull our necks off. It didn't help not to be fully physical; it only meant that we weren't actually beheaded.

We pulled away at that seaweed to try and get at the spit-bombs underneath, and it moved obligingly to one side and then pinged back and wrapped itself half-way around our waists, as we were bent double peering at the seabed.

Then there were the treasure seekers, presumably looking for pirate chests buried in the sand. They nipped around behind us in their diving gear, and did the undersea equivalent of sprinting ahead to be sure of reaching the treasure before we did. Mud and silt from the bottom was stirred up and swirled into our faces, and we had no glass covering them as we didn't need to breathe. Strange, that; you would have thought it would have scared them that we weren't breathing, but they didn't give our lack of diving suits a second glance, as they were only thinking about treasure.

After a while we gave up temporarily on our quest for globules of spit and sweat (and other things you would probably prefer not to read about.) We sank down to the bottom and started playing with sea anemones. These too are of course alive, but we twiddled them and batted stones around with them and didn't bother whether or not they liked it.

The day grew cooler, with grey clouds overhead, and as rain splashed into the sea we bobbed up to the surface and shook our heads under it, laughing as whatever we had in the place of hair became tangled up and covered our faces.

It was turning into an unsuccessful but moderately fun expedition. My mind was working fast as I played though, for I was the leader, and I made plans for an alternative approach based largely upon going to another area of seabed with different fauna, yet the same access to escape tunnels if we wanted to get back quickly to our hideout.

Eventually we adjourned to that hideout, and spoke with those who had stayed to receive messages from the aliens. They had received a few which made it sound like they had been trawling around for artefacts in exactly the same way as us, and like us had met with limited success.

"We must get a move on," I told the others, "for it is the auspicious time of year for this work and we don't want our time to run out before we have accomplished all that we can."

The others grumbled a bit and tripped over the parts of themselves that trailed, but I was sure I would end up getting the necessary hard work out of them.

The bathing hut was our next plan. It was supposedly locked because it was a little off-season, and no holidaymakers had hired it out as yet. But we had no trouble getting inside, (through the keyhole if all else failed,) and we set up a temporary outpost there from which we started to make forays to the beach and stretches of the seabed that were not as far offshore as the one we had tried first.

Our efforts were now crowned with success as we harvested the dodgy crop that we had been so intent on finding, and packed it into little plastic containers shaped like ring boxes. I expect everyone would like me to move on hastily in my narrative, to a point after the collection of such noxious substances.

But you will probably be sorry you asked me to do so when you discover that some of our party were now engaged in skinning the tentacles off jellyfish, octopi and anything else we encountered that had them- apart from ourselves. We took them back to use as handles for the boxes of globules.

We spent about a week on these activities, and we were not popular with the shoal of mermen who lingered around the shores of Bali that springtime. They all looked exactly like Neptune, with curly brown hair and beards and stocky torsos, and one's disapproval was just the same as another's as they took it in turn to glare at us. When we were near the reef, which happened on our way back to headquarters each day, they climbed onto it possessively and stood in front of the corals to protect them.

We held our heads high in the air or the water, whichever we happened to be passing through at the time, and continued with our purpose. The mermen increased their numbers, it seemed by fetching some from other shoals, but if this was meant to intimidate us it had no effect, and they looked increasingly irritated as we gazed straight through however many of them were in the surrounding waves. None of them said anything about farming pearls, I noticed.

Whenever we went back to HQ, it was the messages from the aliens that now became a priority for our attention. Those who remained there had transcribed them onto rolls of paper and translated them into a common language that all of us understood, and we were amazed at the ambition of their visions of what we could accomplish.

This was no sci-fi theme of them wanting to take over the Earth. The schemes they spoke of were for us to do on our own planet, while they stayed out of the way and watched from a distance.

As we had now made up for the time lost at the beginning, we began to draft out plans for following their instructions when this present mission was over, using further rolls of paper. We were starting to look like a scroll library in an ancient biblical land, with the wound paper stacked all around our hideout. However, this was not to be an exercise in theory only, for the whole purpose of it was to carry out the instructions, and to start right away.

We had arranged for a truck to take the scrolls away if we were discovered, using the message birds to carry letters. They would then be stored in a secure location, but not for too long, because we knew the aliens would regard even storage as an exercise in theory.

The next day dawned bright and crisp. Bali was beautiful in early summer, and we were delighted to be there to behold its balminess as we packed away our nasty harvest and began our shady schemes for the aliens.

Imagine our annoyance when we were interrupted by a veritable army of mermen outside, pounding against the tunnel so hard that the sound echoed all the way along it and rebounded back towards the surface. This latter was the worst, for it could alert other denizens of the sea and reveal our location to them, and then our secret hideout would be known to all.

I wasn't sure how the mermen had managed to find it, and I cast my chicken-like eye over my comrades suspiciously, to see if anyone looked like a traitor. It would be very unfortunate for them if they did.

If the noise had been alarming, the next development was more alarming still, for now the tunnel was breached, tridents swishing through it like swords and tearing apart the strands of its papery structure.

I whirled round and gave an order: "Everyone take the scrolls and get out- put them in the truck in its parking place on the shore. There's no time to send a message."

Wobbly tentacles and dainty arms seized the scrolls, and everyone flew in a shoal across to the shore of Bali and then to the road where our ally's truck was parked. They opened the back and piled the scrolls inside. Then they flew back, seized the containers of pearls and did the same with them.

Okay, I realise that like a James Bond film, I have omitted to explain how the miracle took place. Faery people can fly, but I expect you thought the tentacled ones could not. Brute force and electronic devices can open a locked truck, but I bet you thought we could not. If I may, I will skip the explanation until later in my account.

Once these treasures were stowed away and our hands were free, we returned to the fractured tunnel and let the mermen have it with whatever weapons we could seize from the store in our hideout. They lashed us with their tridents, and we fought them with everything: spears, whaling harpoons, nails, sharp shafts broken off the sides of fishing nets.

There were no fatalities of course, not even any injuries, because all of us were partially or completely spirits and could not be hurt. It was just a gesture, for the mermen one of outrage and for us one of defiance.

At last the mermen must have realised that the best way to get rid of us completely was to destroy our base, and they stopped jabbing at us and concentrated instead on hacking the hideout to pieces. The hideout was more physical than us and it soon yielded, so that all that was left of it was floating debris. Then they suddenly retreated, all at the same time and without anyone shouting an order as I would have done, so they must have shared a thought between themselves. They returned to the coral reef and perched on it in a cluster, watching us keenly from a distance.

We all conferred, doing the psychic equivalent of speaking behind our hands, to try and ensure the mermen did not hear us. The hideaway we had built had always been intended as a temporary structure which we intended to demolish just before leaving. So we were not attached to it, even though the idea of hiding out somewhere possessed a certain glamour. We were only a little irritated at having it removed before time by someone other than ourselves. What mattered now was the truck, to keep it secure and send a message to our human ally who would be driving it to the storage facility.

The mermen had been too busy smashing up our den of thieves to notice us flying to the truck before, and now that they were idle we were most definitely not going there again and revealing its location to them. We all turned as one, looking as much like a shoal of fish as they did, and glided in the opposite direction, half in and half out of the ocean.

They did not follow us, and we didn't look behind. We went straight on for some time, until we were far enough away to call the blue and grey- tailed birds. Soon two of them came flapping along casually, leaning into the wind that was stronger now we were further away from Bali. I whistled, and as they landed I took up a piece of driftwood and scratched the symbols on that , for there was no coral here, just bare sand. They each took a section that I had snapped off, two halves of a letter to our comrade, and after bowing their heads to me, they flew away with it.

After nightfall we returned to Bali, to the beach hut. Once more we threaded ourselves through the keyhole, and by this method we avoided anyone noticing us. We settled ourselves down in the floor sand which was several centimetres deep and full of seashell fragments, but we were beyond being made gritty by this sand, and we continued blithely with carrying out the aliens' plans as if nothing had happened in between.

On Dry Land

I stated at the beginning of this narrative that I do not look like a sea creature; however, I don't look much like a land dweller either. It appears as if my element would be in mid-air amongst the birds and flying insects, with my feathers, my gliding and lightweight gait.

In this group I was the leader of many who also inhabited the air, the faeries among us, and some who would have looked more at home in the sea with their trailing tentacles, transparent bodies and eyes on stalks. These sea-dwellers now had to begin to walk on the land, for that was where we spent the remainder of our adventure, as summer began in the northern hemisphere and here in the southern it was fairly hot too. To accommodate this need they sprouted lobster-like claws shaped like feet which they placed before them at each step so that non-one could have told they weren't used to walking like this. Unlike the Little Mermaid of legend there were no bleeding feet, no silent voices or crying. We had enough blood, tears and other similar fluids in the truck and had no wish to add any from ourselves to the store, for they were supposed to be human substance only, for our nefarious purposes.

A crowd of us walking along together was semi-visible, particularly at night, just as we had been to the divers, who attributed any convex distortion in what they saw to the effects of the seawater. So we kept to wooded places where we could hide, and on the open road walked under hedges, or their equivalent in tropical landscapes.

At last we came to a barn. It was semi-deserted, and not too dilapidated. We didn't need shelter as such, only a base, and we all zoomed in as one (once again through the keyhole) and bounced down on the meagre brown straw that lay on the floor. Barns like this one were created for the storage of grain and it had wooden shelves under the great wooden roof beams, but they were empty and all that was in the barn were some old machines such as mowers.

"Are we going to store our stuff here, where the sacks of grain should go?" asked a faery girl who looked a little like a dragonfly.

We examined the shelves critically and I said, "let's stick to the storehouse our human ally has ready. Two of you can go and check that he got the message and has loaded everything in there from the truck. If it's all there as it should be, we'll take some out each day and work on it in here until we've finished."

They all liked that plan, and two of the winged ones flew off immediately to check out the store. While they were gone we entertained ourselves with music played on small lyres that some members of my party had about them; they folded these away and hid them in pockets when they were not in use, and when they got them out, the lyres like many a mythical artefact increased in size until they were big enough to play.

We were getting quite drunk when the spies returned, not on anything as vulgar as alcohol you understand, but flower and honey vapours from the rural atmosphere that surrounded us, which we sucked in and amplified like the lyres.

There was quite a bit of spitting the said vapours across the room when we heard the message from our human ally. He sympathised fully with our hideout having been attacked, and he would be happy to keep our effects in his warehouse, but now there was a condition. He wanted a share of the valuable pearls that he understood had been mined by the mermen- otherwise he would tip our possessions into the sea.

"Doesn't he know he shouldn't mess with us?" I exclaimed. "Supernatural beings who could work magic against him." It sounded very grand, but actually I had just been in the process of confiscating someone's lyre and had been about to make a row about it. I quickly passed the lyre back to its owner, who gave me a suffering look and secreted it in his pocket.

"Who told him the mermen have been mining pearls?" asked the faery who resembled a dragonfly. (I'm not going to say her name- none of us could pronounce it anyway, and I think it is as well not to characterise our band too much. We were a band of pirates, no more or less, who simply came together for a few weeks at the same time each year to serve mutual interests.)

"It might have been that fool I met who looked like a lobster," I replied. "It's a lie anyway. The mermen wouldn't scrape out their friends the oysters, and those who do ask for money- lots of it."

"Maybe WE could hack some pearls out of oysters," suggested one comrade who was shaped a bit like an oyster himself, and would have to run pretty quickly if a hunter came along who had trouble telling his various victims apart.

"You forget, our sea base is gone, and we're confined to the land now," I corrected him. "We only have time to finish our work if we do it here, inland, where there are no oysters to be found."

"Double-cross him," said someone else, irritably. "Promise him some pearls, and then when we're finished, just go. He can't stop us."

I must say, that was tempting. A very attractive prospect. I decided to vary it only a little, and give our friend one single globule of phlegm for his trouble, with the instruction that if he wanted more he should cough into a bucket.

Having despatched the message that he could have a large pearl, and we would tell him later how to get more, I then returned to our current plans and sent a couple of comrades to arrive after the messenger and start taking the first load of pearls and scrolls from the warehouse.

Well, dear readers, it was successful. We got all our work done in the three weeks we had allocated for it, and at the end of that time we sent our ally, whose name was Mike, some phlegm that we had harvested specially from the pavement of the city street that was nearest to the barn. Why must human beings name themselves after Archangel Michael? They are so much more boring than him, and so much harder to negotiate with.

We were expecting to hear from Mike, and as we packed away everything from the barn and prepared to go our separate pirate-y ways, we did hear, although via an unexpected source. A flock of easily a hundred seagulls darkened the sky and veered towards us, and I heard later that to them we looked like a motley crowd of specks in the centre of a wodge of flat fields with waving corn. By now it was high summer, and the crops were growing higher.

As they turned, almost in formation like migrating geese, we began to make out what they were saying as they swept down towards us. "Plunderers of the sea! We will destroy you, or nothing will be left for us."

Quickly we all made ourselves more ethereal, more spirit, so that snapping beaks closed on nothing- or almost nothing. I was going to make Mike the human guy pay for that 'almost.'

The seagulls thought they were chasing us, whereas really we were continuing on our sauntering way, and going in just the same direction we would have gone in anyway. They kept pecking and eventually gave up trying to hurt us, with some disappointment we thought, because they are such savage scavenger birds.

Mike really had no right to use his 'bird whisperer' talents to do this, when the whole point of them was to exchange messages via the blue and grey-tailed birds. He was supposed to put all his talents at our disposal, and not get greedy- that was the original agreement, and I was determined to enforce it. I despatched a few of the faeries to cause him some problems, and make sure he knew why, and then to re-join us further along our route.

There was really no need for us to stay together now that our project was finished for the year. All that was left was to have a debriefing in which I would allocate tasks for us all to do until our next meeting. It was this last stop which was to cause our final spot of trouble.

As we stood in an elliptical formation, a distorted fairy ring of villains, a crowd of about fifteen lobsters came round the bend in the country road. This third flock of creatures to assail us was the strangest of all, for they were lying flat, not walking on makeshift feet like some of us, and seawater still glistened on their outer crust.

It is time now to explain that mystery of transport that I mentioned earlier. Picture an air balloon with a basket, but one that cannot be seen and can barely be felt. You produce it from your pocket like the lyres, and inflate it so that it mysteriously grows, as they do. Creatures who believe strongly in this transport can ride it- like Tinkerbell, it becomes more insubstantial if you think it isn't real. The lobsters had no reason to suppose that their habitual mode of travelling inland was unreal in any way, and as the leader of this deputation stepped forward to speak to me, it became clear that they also used it for travel across the sea.

"We have been digging for oysters all over the world and giving the pearls to our supply chain. We hear your activities every year could be bad for business. I'm here to say, get off our turf. Next year we won't let you do that- we'll stop you."

"So, who's behind this?" I asked icily. "Your boss who sells the pearls?"

"Of course not. He told someone who is a bigger fish than he is- though he's not a fish. Big enough to put you out of business."

"We're not selling anything!" I snapped. "Money's just dirt to us, especially your money. We do etheric harvesting, and use it for things- things that go better this time of year."

"What about the discs, though?" His expression suggested he expected me to pale, and beg him not to mention the discs to anyone. Maybe he thought they were DVD's, or something.

"Those are just instructions, to keep us busy for the rest of the year. I don't care if you know. They're not worth money, and YOU won't find any."

He looked puzzled, but carried on bluffing. "All the riches of the sea are ours. I'm telling you. So don't come back- not next year, not ever."

"I'm tired of this." I turned to my companions. "We'll continue our debriefing in the air. Those who can fly, lift the others up, higher than the transports go. Then you can leave, and I'll sort out our farming rights next year."

As we rose up, I was thinking we could stick to land only next year as we usually do, even if the ocean IS full of gunk which human beings, like idiots, have put there. But that felt too much like defeat. I wanted to show that we could farm the ocean if we wanted to.

When we had finished our meeting and the others had gone, waving goodbye and throwing glitter streams up in the air like fireworks, I whistled a blue and grey-tailed bird to take a message to the aliens. You thought those birds only lived in Bali, didn't you? But they are in other places too, and I always know how to reach them.

Soon the bird floated down gracefully, and I scratched a message on loose tree bark and handed it over. You mustn't omit of course to tell the bird where to take the message to, but I can communicate well with birds, especially as I look so much like one.

Soon there appeared in the sea a shining white lobster pot full of plastic pearls. It gave anyone who touched it an electric shock, just as some say the Ark of the Covenant did, and it sent radio waves into the surrounding water with a message to leave anyone alone who was farming the sea in May. If someone managed to get inside, it would administer a sharp smack and blow them out again. We have some wonderful treasures in the sea environment, and I have added another for the entertainment of many, one which also camouflages itself from humans.

As I write this, I am sitting at a marina watching the boats go by. I love to watch the busy activity in beautiful natural places, and most of all I love to tell a story.
Other Books by Candy Ray

Short Story Collections. All available as free eBooks on Smashwords.

Chaos Dreams Part 1

These short stories were channelled by Candy Ray from a non-human chaos muse called Ino. Each one creates a vivid and enchanting world, sometimes in the past. Some of the stories have a narrative style that roves around observing. The tales are a showcase for Ino's unique views about human beings; her observation of people is very sharp, yet with a motherly quality.

Chaos Dreams part 2: Astral Tales

The common theme in this collection of Candy Ray's short stories is the astral plane, which is both the realm of the dead and the plane of dreams.

A murdered child tries to contact her mother.

A solitary student has lucid dreams, but they trap her in an oppressive forest.

In the afterlife, a girl strives to stop sadness pulling her down, and is helped by an unexpected encounter.

Batman's niece goes on a quest unlike a superhero comic, full of alchemical symbols instead.

On Midsummer Night an occultist meets his true love; can he use the film he is making to win her from another man?

Chaos dreams Part 3: Fruition

This is a compilation of three chaos magic stories. The first one 'Eoss and Bidskimmer' was part of an ambitious servitor project, which was carried out by chaos magicians in an online group. It is about a servitor and an egregore who make life much better for a group of young people.

The second one 'Arcana' is a hypersigil, a chaos magic spell, and it is the story of a lady chaos magician and game designer, her cute servitor, tarot cards, an angel and a demon.

The third one 'Beads Falling, Falling Into A Design' was channelled from Ino, and the main character is based partly on herself. This story is narrated by a spirit from the mineral kingdom who finds herself within a bead in a ladies' necklace, and through this becomes closely involved with a human family.

Chaotic Dreams

Five short stories of surreal and slightly dark fantasy. The last two stories are channelled from Ino.

An ancient legend meanders into strange directions.

An inner demon seems to depart- but has he really gone?

Alchemical fantasies sweep one man's world into disarray.

A living doll yearns to escape.

Trading in crystals leads to an unexpected magical drama.

Novellas

The Wizard From Vahan (Fantasy/Science Fiction)

Jasper is an apprentice magician in a society of the future where chaos magic has become the dominant religion. He does a time-jump which is supposed to be a meditation, but it goes wrong and he finds himself in a parallel world about to embark on a mission as a heroic knight: a mission that he does not want, as he is more of a mystic than a warrior. He encounters Emin, an advanced magician who offers to help by swapping places with him, leaving Jasper in his Retreat up in space.

Jasper must use his emerging magical abilities to return to the planet and fight aliens who threaten its people and the girl he loves. The story explores the role of magicians in society, and the contrast between a great adept and a junior magician.

Copying A Master (channelled from Ino).

Maurice, an idealistic painter, is pulled into an art fraud against his will. It is the 1950's, the time when Austin Spare was alive, and the premise of this book is that artists had already been painting magical sigils for millennia. So Maurice seeks a solution to his problem through a sigil spell. Meanwhile the crisis of the fraud uproots him, wrecks his domestic life and drags him across three European countries as he flees the revenge he fears.

The Rescue Circle

A magician undertakes a dangerous quest to become a psychopomp, a guide of the dead, and afterwards to find his true love who has gone hitchhiking without him. During his trance he encounters angels, gods, djinn and troubled souls, and joins a rescue circle of Spiritualists who are more advanced than himself.

Novellas under the pen name Lena Chere

The Eoss Trilogy

1. Platara Mountain: (Paperback)

Imagine magicians of the modern-day internet becoming involved with a parallel world where human beings are still in the Stone Age. Imagine this involvement precipitated by a kind but much-feared Horse Goddess who was created on Facebook.

Alexandra has just left school and is looking for love and a vocation in life when that scenario becomes her reality. She comes to care deeply about both the Horse Goddess and a young family in the parallel world; it dramatically reveals her past and changes her future, transforming her into a magician.

2. Mount Clexa: (Self -published paperback and eBook)

This is a book of serious occult fiction told in the first person by Clexa, the daughter of the Horse Goddess Eoss.

Bound to a magician in service, she finds herself forced to explore the aethyrs of the Enochian magic system with him, and to carry out a revenge curse on a girl when she would prefer to spare her.

Clexa thinks for herself about how to interact with the human beings she meets and also the aethyr guardians, and this results in her being chased and harried across the inner realms, so that she has to evolve much faster than she anticipated.

3. Silver Manes: (Self -published paperback and eBook)

Arran is a Kabbalist, a young professional man from the UK, and his accident comes at a critical moment in his love life. It also serves to deepen his emerging connection with one of the kingdoms of Hell.

He enters into an extended coma, which becomes a test of character both for himself and for his secret enemy, Jez. As Arran learns lessons about love and about the phenomenon of archetypes, many of the people around him get the opportunity to petition a Wishing Horse for three wishes- or for anything else they want.

Non-Fiction.

Alchemical Journey: (Autobiography)

Now available as an eBook, Candy Ray's popular account of her six past lives, and the times in between them. She has been a demon, a warrior in ancient India, a sacred cat in the time of Moses, a scholar in Medieval England, a witch during the English Civil War and a Quaker in the era of slavery.

The account is a concise summary of many events covering the past five thousand years. It focuses on how the Law of Karma works, and gives insights into some important world events. This edition has added end notes which give more details about consequences in the present day.
