 
# Chaos Dreams Part 3- Fruition

# By Candy Ray

Copyright © 2017 Candy Ray

All rights reserved

Smashwords Editions 2017 and 2019

Self-published by Frond

Cover design by Justin Kingsley Pitonak
Table Of Contents

Introduction

Eoss and Bidskimmer

Arcana

Beads Falling, Falling Into A Design

About The Author

Other Books by Candy Ray

#  Introduction

These chaos magick stories have been available as free PDFs for some time, and I have compiled them into this book which is also free.

The first story 'Eoss and Bidskimmer' was part of an ambitious servitor project, which was carried out by chaos magicians in an online group. It was the first piece I wrote as an author.

The second one 'Arcana' is a hypersigil, a chaos magick spell.

The third one 'Beads Falling, Falling Into A Design' was channelled from the chaos muse Ino who originated in the chaos magick group DKMU. Therefore, Ino is the author of the story, and the main character is based partly on herself.

# Eoss And Bidskimmer

Prologue

Engaging Ted

Pete's Trip

The Filly Impresses

Madam M

Into The Stars

Goddess Eoss- channelled from Ino

###  Prologue

Somewhere in the unseen world that presses around us, a fellow chaos mage created Bobby's Art Gallery where every painting is a servitor and Bobby's daughter is the egregore Eoss. I entered his realm and we dreamed it differently, but it is as real as the oppressive concrete world of materialism and sharp rocks. The paintings strung our vision together and from between the picture frames the creatures emerged, eager to find a foothold in our rugged thoroughfares.

The room in the Gallery that houses the servitor pictures is kept locked, and who knows what is mixed in with the rich oil paints or what kind of writing has been flourished on the corners, in old fashioned inks imbued with flavouring spices? Even the material that frames the canvases has been carefully chosen.

### 1. Engaging Ted

Ted's room was untidy, littered with folders and unopened packets of pens, empty take-away food boxes, and his all-important magical notes in a pile that leaned dangerously and threatened to fall off his windowsill. He tried hard to concentrate on daily mental exercises and to organize his notes, but often something didn't gel.

Ted's main teacher was his girlfriend Lucy, perhaps not an ideal situation for keeping his mind on the lessons in chaos magick. Still, she was quite brilliant at explaining entity creation: Ted followed her instructions to the letter, and it appeared to be a success.

***

The new servitor Bidskimmer eased himself through the wall and ventilation pipe into the businessman's office. He was here on behalf of Ted, who wanted sponsorship to turn his little magazine into a book.

Trev, the owner of the office, had been Ted's friend when they were at school and owed him a few favours, but in the intervening years they had lost touch. It was easy for the servitor to find him, but not so easy for him to understand the environment of the office. There was stale cigarette smoke hanging in the air; that didn't touch him, it might as well have been on a cinema screen. Emotions were what he understood. Trev's mind was a morass, the surface broken by a vaguely uncomfortable "Why am I here?" feeling.

Bidskimmer stood by Trevor and began to repeat "Ted, Ted, Ted." Not "remember Ted", although that was what it would mean to someone like Trev who had been conditioned and socialized in human society since his birth.

Trev shifted uneasily in his plush chair. Now there was emotion- a bolt of it, which knocked against Bidskimmer as he hovered there. Apparently, Trev had always sorrowed over the belief that he wasn't as good as Ted. It dug into him when they were together- little needles pricking his brain again and again. The suffering this caused had played a part in them losing touch.

Bidskimmer examined the data to see if it was helpful, and decided not. He knew Trev's belief made no sense, because here he was at the top of his profession, while Ted was struggling and hoping someone would help him. He projected this idea, that it was nonsense, pointedly towards Trev. Trev rejected it. The servitor was puzzled, for he was too new to have learned much of human affairs.

There was no-one else as suitable as Trev, who was now getting back to work and becoming immersed in the business statistics he was analysing. Bidskimmer decided that he would have to persist- persuade him to contact Ted and then he would discover the truth. The truth being that he had succeeded because he was driven: a nasty kind of slow torture in the affairs of human beings that produces a jangled mix of prosperity and inner pain.

Just as Bidskimmer was turning away to await a time when Trev was less busy, more unguarded, his eye fell on a painting above Trev's desk. It was mainly circles and vortices. Some painter must have anticipated his need. He popped straight into the largest circle, and from there planned his campaign. It would entail much tedious listening to telephone conversations with Trev's business contacts, his mistress and his wife. But Trev was squarely in the frame where he belonged, in front of Bidskimmer at all times.

A few weeks later Trev was typing an E- mail to his friend Max. "Some days my life seems perfect. That was my dream, to have it all. Then other days I feel different, as if I've screwed up. I can't even stick to Jenny. I tell myself she wouldn't mind about Megan, but really, I know she would. I find myself thinking about Ted a lot. I feel I owe the world for my screw-ups. Hell, I owe Ted. Wonder where he is now?"

The office was uncomfortably quiet at four in the afternoon. Trev's secretary brought tea and coffee, but that didn't lift the pall of patched darkness that had nothing to do with night falling early in winter. The blinds sheered across his vision, like a curtain of vibrating speckled grey. Trev flicked his computer to sport for two minutes, then to the news headlines for one minute, and then back to his work screens.

To him the computer was purely functional. He would never have suspected the bots and other programs could have a social life, or that Bidskimmer was participating in what for a human would equate to finding a local club that turns his leisure time right around and sends his self-esteem and contentment up several notches. He never knew how it happened that he got onto the page for Ted's magazine, with its gripping content and full contact details. All he knew was that it was suddenly a good day as he typed "Ted! Let's talk."

### 2. Pete's Trip

Pete was lost somewhere on the subway. He couldn't remember where he got on or what he was doing beforehand. He simply found himself there, slumped in a corner seat with his eyes vaguely registering the dark lines of the tunnel flashing by.

Suddenly the train emerged into the open air. The skyline looked unfamiliar, and for a moment he was terrified in case he was on an alien planet. There had been someone with him yesterday who was going to fix all the deals for him and get him everything he wanted. The memory was fuzzy; had he been an alien?

Now the train was pulling into a station. A small group of passengers stood waiting, clustered at one end of the platform. They were obscured by a cloud of cigarette smoke which made them look indistinct, as if they didn't belong to this world. Pete looked at them uncritically, and then thought again about the being from yesterday. He'd seen it before, in a painting somewhere. It was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. He felt a jolt- could it be Mephistopheles? That's how he was usually depicted, on the stage and in films.

Pete looked furtively over his shoulder, a little ashamed of his wish to swing all those deals. He wasn't even working in a high-flying profession with wildly fluctuating profits or stocks and shares. He worked.... where did he work? Now he felt a tinge of panic. Was this a coma, or an alien abduction as he had thought before? Or could it be the dope? His determination to experiment with drugs was matched by an equal amount of caution and trepidation. He must have overcome the caution some time yesterday, before he got on this train.

The train was in the act of pulling into another station. Pete strained his eyes to see the name on the sign, to try and ascertain whether it was near to where he lived. 'Bidders Gate' it said. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on remembering where that was. Bid...that's right, it came to him that the character from yesterday was called Bidskimmer. He could see him again now against his closed eyelids, insubstantial and flickering in and out of form. "Yes", Pete muttered. "I'll do it."

"Are you talking to yourself?" He opened his eyes to see the hard, unsympathetic face of another passenger, a middle-aged man sitting opposite him. "I'd go home if I were you. Clean yourself up." The other passenger rose quickly and walked away down the train. Clean myself up? Pete wondered how he must look, and then abruptly decided to get off at the next stop and give his address to a cab driver. If he stayed on here for too long it would cost him a lot of money, and he would very likely still not recognize any of the stops.

One long and far too expensive cab drive later Pete was back in his own home. Despite what had just happened to him he felt faintly optimistic, as if something in his life was about to improve. He had a shower and ate a quick meal, mainly toast. Then he phoned Ted's number.

"You won't believe the strange shit that happened to me today," he began.

"Try me. Since I've been a mage, nearly everyone who speaks to me says what you just said." He could hear the triumphant grin in Ted's voice.

"Maybe I could get into that too. As long as it isn't all like today- waking up on a train, don't remember who I am, an alien in my head, and it cost half the week's wages to get home."

"That's awesome, man!" Ted said appreciatively. "At least you weren't bored."

"No, really not bored. Can I come over one day and talk about this magick stuff?"

"Sure," said Ted. "So long as you don't hit on Lucy to be your teacher instead of mine."

The conversation ended with a lot of jokes on that subject.

### 3. The Filly Impresses

The horse was plump with a long floaty mane and tail, like a creature in a cartoon. She clopped along the country lane caring little whether she should or should not be there. This was Eoss in her original form before she was Bobby's daughter, before the Gallery. Past, present and future all merged together in this lane beyond consensus reality where she was wild, and free to be herself. Those who knew her considered her quiet and well-behaved.

Scintillating light framed her as she emerged through the time vortex into a centre of culture, the modern equivalent of Renaissance Florence, where she came to rest in a market square. She now looked like a blonde girl with soft features.

"Everyone calls me a gypsy. That is bad for me, because they don't like gypsies."

The young man who had spoken wore a pointed green hat of his own design and carried a carved wooden staff. Eoss felt compassionate towards him and drew near to shed her influence on him, to help him be accepted for whatever talents he had to offer the world.

She flew on, a winged horse to those who imbibed her inspiration and a girl to those who love anthropomorphic forms. She was wary of making the people she helped too dependent on her. Once in a forest at night she approached the nocturnal animals one by one, badgers and foxes and mice. They did evolve, but each one bit her and lost some of its own strength. The fox was a thief in every story, yet he stole nothing from the biosphere and it was only man who did.

***

Lucy was folding some washing. It was always during mundane tasks like this that her fantasy would start up, about singing on a stage. She'd had the fantasy for a long time, about eight years she guessed, ever since she was in high school and belonged to Mara's fan club. In those days she used to try writing her own songs, just because Mara did. Then in idle moments she would daydream about singing them. It was all so vivid: the stage, her own voice singing in her head, the rustling and dimly lit wall that was the living audience in front of her. She could even hear the backing music and feel the mic stand against her hand: she must remember that music, she thought, if she ever went to a recording studio.

When her interest in magick began she thought over the idea of casting to become a successful singer, but she wasn't sure that was what she really wanted. She knew it was important to have a clear intent with no conflict, and there was conflict in her mind about that lifestyle and career. So Lucy did nothing, but her fantasy did a great deal. It ran the gauntlet through all her own songs, and many covers too, and once or twice even through the repertoire of a guest band that was accompanying her. Lucy marvelled at how inventive her mind was. It was the same with some of her dreams: a complete novel packed into a compact space.

Of course it was helpful when making entities to have a good imagination, and most of the entities applied themselves to their tasks without paying any attention to Lucy's fantasies. But lately Eoss, who she was pretty sure was not one that she had made herself, had been taking an interest in her singing fantasy. She would stride uninvited onto the stage that Lucy was imagining, and announce the act that was about to play. Lucy was starting to get used to being announced before she opened her mouth to sing. The words Eoss used were strange: one phrase that Lucy remembered was 'the bouffant sleeves of tomorrow's tearstained clowns.' What was that about? There were no phrases like that in any of Lucy's own songs or in the songs she covered, and she didn't think of herself like that either. Unbeknown to her it was the way Joe spoke, one of the group who had envisioned Eoss.

For some reason that she could not fathom, Eoss' intrusions brought to mind the idea that it would be good to meet other musicians, maybe offer her time and input to a local band. She would have to pick up a journal she had seen which carried adverts like that, and she felt that this week would be a good time to do it.

She finished packing away the laundry and walked into the kitchen. Ted had the fridge door open and was surveying the food critically. It was Sunday evening and he had been staying the weekend. "Let's order pizza", he said. "I'm going back in an hour. Pete's coming over to talk about becoming a mage." He smiled like a mischievous kid.

"Pete?" said Lucy. "Strange, he was never interested in that before. If you like I'll show him a trick or two, though I expect you'd rather do it yourself this time."

"Yes, I would," Ted said lightly, and changed the subject back to pizza.

***

Three months on: band practice was hectic, but so exciting. Lucy was really pleased that she had joined a band after all. She sat down on the bench in the community centre hall and began to get out her song sheets, while the others were busy around her, talking loudly and setting up. She reflected what a surprising feeling it was to receive applause from an audience. A part of her wanted to surrender to it and feel exultant that they liked her. Another part wanted to hold back to avoid being hurt by what the critics might say, for even small local events seemed to attract a flock of critics. But the largest part of her was simply happy that her life had become more fulfilling.

Her listening style had changed too: when she listened to a song on the radio or YouTube she got a sense of how much work had gone into it to arrive at the finished product, and how it was a team effort by many people. Sometimes now she was aware of different notes and phrases as the music played which showed how the song had been put together. It was as if her ears and her brain had grown up and graduated, opening out her whole life. She liked to tell other people about her experiences and share the thrill, especially Ted. He did listen to her, although these days he was very busy himself with his magazine having taken off, and large blocks of it being published with sponsorship from his old school friend Trev.

Of course, it didn't always go smoothly for the band. Last Saturday when they played there had been a fight outside, but it didn't stop the show and had somehow added to the adrenalin. Lucy had always been afraid that despite her interest in magick she would be condemned to stay in the boring, conventional sector of society, with her mother sewing hand-made clothes and inviting her round for roast dinners. Convention is a good refuge if you are in trouble, but it weighs heavily on someone like Lucy with an untamed, alternative heart. Making her own music was an ideal way to move outside it, and she relished the escape and the freedom.

### 4. Madam M

Madam M, like many of the leading characters in films, was already dead when her story began.

"This must be a flashback, then." Her eyelashes felt matted from the thick mascara, and the smells of cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol assaulted her nose as she stood at one side of the dimly lit dance floor. "I remember this nightclub. It's where The Idealist performed one time, although only after her boyfriend talked her into it."

Madam M had names like that for other women. The girl who used to call her a whore was The Prude. This one, Jemima Black, was The Idealist because she swore blind that she didn't want to make it in the music business. That was Madam M's job, making people famous. Suddenly she had the oddest sensation in her mouth, as if her vampire-like fangs were growing longer.

It was hypnotic, the way the disco globe scattered those tiny chips of coloured light all around the room. Now it was no longer a room in a club, only a collection of dancing spots of light which scattered Madam M everywhere and funnelled her through anything that was an artefact: the plaster mouldings and framed pictures in this seedy place: back into a painting at the last.

For a moment Madam M was dismayed by this sensation. Before it started she was just beginning to feel the familiar slapping of a leather skirt against her thighs, and to run over in her mind the dark cabaret songs she was about to sing. A flashback in which she was performing would be pure enjoyment for her.

But it was not to be. This was to be the night when Jemima was singing, and she came back and changed the past for her. Jemima would wind up doing regular television work and leaving all those high ideals far behind.

"Good," Madam M snarled. "Now you won't be consigned to my crate of rejects who I would have torn to pieces in my autobiography, had I lived to write it. The Prude, The Idealist, Slacker, Stay-At-Home Girl: I saw them all, but even in my darkest moods of depression, I was always the best."

### 5. Into The Stars

Martin, the guide at Bobby's gallery, was only glad that he was no longer unemployed. His notes from university and his poems were all stuffed in carrier bags and a lot of them were stored in his shed. He was lucky to have a knack for chattering to visitors as he showed them around, and getting in a great deal of factual information too, for he had a good memory for facts and figures. That meant the job at the gallery was ideal for him. He was even enthusiastic when his boss Bobby asked him to stay late and lock up last thing at night. There was something fascinating about the place in the still, dark hours.

It was an ordinary Thursday evening and half an hour to locking up time when Martin decided to sit for a while in front of one of the paintings and study it more deeply. It was a fanciful painting of a white horse with gentle eyes, standing proudly on a rugged hill with long, untidy grass. Martin was tired, and he began to fall asleep. He dreamed of a ladder of stars that led upwards into a velvet black void, the void of primal chaos. Wonderingly he started to climb the ladder. A blast of chilly wind hit him and shook him where he stood on the rung. The white horse came sweeping in to save him from falling; one moment she was a young blonde girl lifting him, then she once again became the horse and seated him on her back.

She carried him further up into the smooth blackness, and he felt his consciousness falling away as if into a deep gulf, even though all the while he was ascending. It was different from an ordinary dream, more real and more blissful. Just as he was waking she whispered in his ear, "I am Eoss." Strange- wasn't Eoss his boss Bobby's daughter? He jumped and came back to waking life to the sound of a car revving up outside the gallery.

After this experience Martin wanted to delve deeply into the mysteries of life. He placed a postcard –sized version of the white horse picture, obtained from the small shop at the front of the gallery, on his writing desk at home. Then he began to study all varieties of magick and mysticism. He was going to ascend that ladder- all it would take was determination and research. It wasn't only Martin who felt this influence at the gallery; it gradually became a centre of excellence in esoteric studies, and the attainments were sufficiently far-reaching that its reputation grew far and wide.

The day came when Martin met Bobby's daughter for the first time, during a social evening at the gallery. He felt a little embarrassed. She would probably think he had a crush on her, but he had to ask her about the horse goddess and what it meant. Eventually he got the chance to sit down alone with her. She sat placidly, her pale hand curled around her glass, her blue eyes looking into the far distance.

"Tell me about the horse goddess", he coaxed. It was such an unusual request, but somehow he knew she would understand and respond.

Eoss looked at him then, and returned his gaze steadily. "That is to do with the past", she said. "A society where she was worshipped, where the horse was sacred. It's also connected with the future after I die. But I don't think of myself as a goddess. For all everyday purposes I just ignore it."

Martin's attention was riveted by her admission, but he didn't like to press her to elaborate. So instead he asked, "what about this place? The gallery?"

"It's just a business with a vision, like a thousand others", she replied. " We believe in our vision and the others all believe in theirs too. No preferential treatment. Everyday life goes on, despite there being something about this place." Abruptly she stood up and added, "It's been great to meet you, but I have to go now and speak to some people over there. They asked to see me earlier."

That was all he could get out of her, and that's how it always was at the gallery: low-key, but definitely something different going on.

***

In Pete's nightmare, first it was a bat. The hooks on the ends of its leathery wings flashed before his eyes as he dodged desperately to avoid the creature. Then it morphed and became a mud-coated crocodile, completely at home out of water as it advanced towards him across the carpet. He ran, and came up against random doors. Behind the one which opened was a thin tunnel like a tube. A thought pounded in his head: "there is a chance of happiness, but first I must go through here- it is an initiation that I mustn't fail."

He woke feeling the tunnel pressing round him, claustrophobic and oppressive. It was still the middle of the night, and as he drifted back to sleep he felt Eoss touch him and bathe his forehead with cool water. He would not remember this dream in the morning, though perhaps he would remember the other one that shattered his sleep. The timely touch of a sympathetic hand was needed to spur him forward, for with the right frame of mind there was nothing he could not accomplish.

At a disco the next day Pete searched for a girl with the sweet face of Eoss. Any girl could become the universal woman; any girl WAS that, whether they spent one night together or all time. The single day and the eternal tunnel of time wrapped around one another and were in every way identical.

### 6. Goddess Eoss -channelled from Ino

The tent of the Arabian Nights was a black triangle through which those who were patronised by Eoss were led blindfolded. She never spared them. The scarf lay around their throat and around their vitals and it tightened to do its work and choke them as the initiation proceeded. Those who passed retained a black mark around their throat to show they had come through the ordeal and lived. The ones who failed were consumed in the trough beneath the wall as food for the beast who guards the rampart and controls admission to the tent.

The artist emerged triumphant from his initiation wearing a tie, for he was a conventional soul at heart, and having used a double strip of material well suited his tendency for flamboyance and taking every experience to the max. But his other well-kept rags were jester's stripes of red and yellow, which contrasted sharply with the tie. With his pointy-tipped paintbrush in his hand he applied the sigils directly to the canvas and palatial wall surfaces that his paintings graced with the patronage of the royal house. Their golden coins and energies of the realm flowed into and informed what he did, and so he hijacked their trinkets and accoutrements for himself and pressed the power through it into the very fabric of the physical structure of a kingdom that was both his property and the property of the king and queen.

He went to the valley of the lost children and stooped to pick up the dirt from that place, to rub the essence of loss and deprivation into his flesh and carry those feelings into his work. His society was full of death which he sought only to reflect back to them without judgement or malice. His long fingers, white as much as brown, stroked the pain into the stones and canvases of high society in that kingdom, and he was then exposed to the cynicism of critics; he invariably won them over in the end. They became boring when added to his fan base, but a bored man can be easily manipulated, so he passed it sideways to the potentially bored citizen next to him who then became controlled by the artist himself in any number of subtle, devious and very deadly ways.

His source was the mine shafts filled with jewels which lay around the outskirts of the town where he lived, and the outpouring from the shafts erupted like a fountain into the kingdom and showered its citizens and subjects with light refracted into a thousand sparkling facets falling onto them. The light fed in seams through their veins and arteries, through the arterial roads, through tunnels and animal burrows beneath the surface of the earth, and spread its capillary lines branching to the heart of everything in the town. I long for that level of network in my life's work and I envy our artist his easy access to the mines. No-one had yet mined the jewels and so their pristine nature enabled this power throughout the land that lay above the shafts. Nature in its mineral or plant forms, when untouched, will yield this- but it needs someone like our artist to exploit in a way unlike the 'rape of the environment' style of exploitation and more in tune with the stars.

I have not spoken much of Eoss here, for he does not need her. He is a natural magician and full of cunning, full of evil opportunism. He will fall into the dark one day and then he will ask for Eoss to catch him, arrogantly aware that he does not deserve to be caught as he neglected her and her gentle influence, yet shamelessly taking advantage of her kindness in this late hour of the day of his influence upon the world.

Eoss will ride with him to her destination, and he will dismount to deflower that place for a full year before being detected and stopped. The day and night that forms a solar year revolve in this way before the blight upon such a place can be touched. Let us say to the artist goodnight, for a good and a long night it will be.

#  Arcana

Flying With Angel

Smoky Lights Up

People Skills

Puff The Dragon

Above Our Heads

### Flying With Angel

I was astrally projecting. "Which world is this? I asked for the one in my game, Mage And Angel." I was in the middle of designing the game; it was nearly finished, and I was proud of it, although I knew the name wasn't very original. Perhaps I should change it, before I got sued or something.

An angel appeared before me in mid-air, and began to speak. "I walked off the edge of Mage And Angel, carrying the bag of health tokens and lightning strikes that I picked up just before the save point. I wanted to see what was past the edge, and it was this planet with gold tinfoil trees and pink streaks in the sky, and walnuts growing on the ground. At least, I think those are walnuts."

I called Smoky. I made him in imitation of the Loa as so many others have done before me, and he came with the intention to defend me and to play any tricks he could think of in this new virtual landscape. He started to roll some round glass balls across the ground to see what they would do, and whether they would break with a lovely crash which to him was like the satisfying snap of popping a piece of bubble wrap. They all hit something soft and bounced off harmlessly, without shattering. What was it? - For it was invisible. "My force field," said the angel. "In this game I prevent anything sharp from piercing the human beings; that's how I protect them."

"Thank you, but you're thwarting the aims of my servitor, Smoky. He's trying to play a trick and he will perceive anyone stopping him as his enemy."

"You didn't have to make him like the Loa just because others do. You may find that you end up as the victim of some of his tricks."

I didn't answer. What I really wanted was to see what lay outside the Mage and Angel game, and after having explored that to come back inside it if there was still time before waking, and play for a while as a game character instead of a human user. I saw that in a film once.

The edge of the game looked like the cardboard rim of a snakes and ladders board. I lay on my stomach and crawled over the edge, with the irrational conviction that this posture would stop me falling miles down into an abyss, or maybe The Abyss.

I didn't fall; instead I crawled like a fly onto the underside of the board and carried on upside down, one crawling step at a time- hands and feet forward, hands and feet back.

The angel looked at me anxiously. "That's dangerous. There's no need to do that- I can fly with you to wherever you want to go. It's even an option in the game- fly with angel."

"But does it say which angel you are, and whether I can trust you? You just look like an angel template from the menu, and unless I can customize you I'd rather carry on using my own powers."

"That's a good reason to get out of this game altogether, and right now, before you fall on the floor."

He flew over to me and slipped his hands under my arms. His wings were enormous and genuinely soft like feathers as they flapped and brushed against me, and I felt myself being borne away across a vast expanse of space. The air rushed past me. This was more vivid than normal dreams with stronger sensory impressions: the coldness of the wind and whooshing sounds of flight.

As we soared along I heard him whispering, and at first I thought it was reassurances that I was safe now, but as I listened more closely I was surprised to hear that he was describing a level he wanted me to build in Mage And Angel when I got back to the material world.

We landed in a peaceful parkland area by a lake with tall, white-tipped reeds. Rowing boats were moored by the lake and I sensed that to sail on it was restoration for the weary. Graceful swans circled overhead, and the air itself appeared silvery and full of the sound of chimes. Yet my winged companion paid no attention to this haven, and instead carried on prompting me to build what sounded like a very jagged locale in my computer game.

A rip like a bolt of lightning appeared in the sky and Smoky wriggled through it, to dive down and land beside us. He sniffed the bases of the reeds cautiously, and then approached one of the boats and stood up inside it, holding a punting pole which materialised in his hands. "Would you like a ride?" he asked.

"Come on, Smoky, I know that one," I said. "We'll get to the middle and then you'll say there's a hole in the boat, and make it sink."

"If that is one of his tricks you should keep him under better control," remarked the angel.

"Well, it doesn't matter too much if you know it's a game," I replied. "Which I suppose is the point of the level you want?"

"This is a real place- we're outside the game here. When you get back to Earth I'd like you to make that level, but don't go into it, just give it to me."

I looked at him suspiciously. What did he want with it? And I thought he was from the menu, but he was more sentient than Smoky and must have come from beyond my game.

"You said that once we got outside my game it was another planet," I reminded him. "Are we on that planet now?"

"No- I went past it. This is a convalescence place, for if you're overworked. That doesn't apply to us, though; it's just a place to stop."

"And this does stop, now," I said firmly. "Come here, Smoky. We go, NOW. I wake up, NOW." I pulled away hard, and woke.

At the weekend I was working on the game. I wasn't sure I wanted the additional level that the angel had requested during my astral projection, with all those steep cliffs and sharp spikes everywhere. But it could do with one more level, so I started on it anyway, telling myself that to find out what would happen would all be part of the adventure.

Originally I had wanted a level which had something to do with tarot cards, and I had given up on the idea because 78 cards were too many to put in. An idea sparked, and I downloaded the images of the 21 major trumps onto the extra level. That wasn't too many to work with- he could have his cliffs and spikes and I would have the major arcana.

The first cliff I designed had a tumbling waterfall. I love water in games; in the very earliest games for PCs and consoles it never used to look real, but now you feel as if you could dip your finger in it.

In the entrance to a sweeping cavern I placed a demon. The angel wanted one to fight with, but I wasn't convinced that he wasn't a fallen angel himself. You learn how they operate, and what he had asked me for was a bit of a red flag. It's so easy to make demons look clichéd, and I lingered over it trying out different options. Just then my phone rang; it was Steve.

"Hey, Jackie. You'll never believe what I've been doing- I've been getting into evoking. I evoked a demon and he wants me to call him Roxy. But that's not his real name."

I glanced over at the demon on my screen, unease sliding over me. "Roxy sounds like a girl's name," I answered cautiously.

"He IS a girl...as a disguise I mean, in an old film and one of Nat's stories- by retroactive enchantment. Yours is going to be the third."

"Mine is a..." I swallowed the word 'game' and snapped, "I don't think we should do this. The angels haven't said what they want it for, and since we're mages we should be the ones in charge."

"Oh, ok- I didn't mean to upset you. We'll cool it for now." He changed the subject to what he was doing at work that week.

When the phone conversation was over I went back to my computer, and put the demon in a pending folder. Then I started to flick through the tarot images. Another idea: what about my hypersigil? There were real people in the hypersigil story I was writing, and I didn't feel I had disguised them well enough. How about embedding the book into the new game level?

The book was called 'Arcana'. I created it as a book of magick on the table, in the virtual building where the 21 major arcana of the tarot were housed. The player starts this level at the cliffs, I decided, and he has to pass landslides, ledges, at least one enemy (the one I've pended) and the jagged spikes the angel asked for. The player's destination is the house and when he gets there he lays out some spreads with the cards which can be varied, and whichever one he gets will determine his subsequent options.

That night I dreamed of the angel. I was half-lying on a grassy riverbank, with a hand on my cheek to prop up my head; he was sitting in a nearby tree with his wings folded, like an eagle on a branch, and he looked rather peeved. "So, what if there ARE a couple of points on which we're allies?" he began. "We still want to fight in the game. Get on with it and stop being so careful- what can possibly go wrong?"

I wasn't astrally projecting this time, I was just dreaming, and at first I couldn't think what he was talking about. Then vague memories started to filter through my drowsy mind.

"What? Er...my game...I haven't decided exactly what I'm doing yet. Game still in development: do you want to pre-order?"

"Very funny. Don't pretend to be in a coma- you're too full of wit for that."

I blinked a few times, but it didn't become clearer or turn into a lucid dream. It continued to be a dream about a slightly annoyed angel, and I didn't know what I was supposed to say.

"I'll expect to see Roxy in play by tomorrow. And don't be picky about names- your name isn't Jackie either, and if it's meant to refer to Jack The Crow, he's a guy." The angel flew away, and my dream continued with walking through blue-washed mountain scenery and encounters with mountain people in hooded fur –trimmed coats.

A few days later, on an auspicious date, I uploaded the prologue to my hypersigil 'Arcana' into the book within the game. It was slightly long for a gamer to read on the screen, but it would work with a voice reading it out.

Steve loved his demon, Roxy. Roxy had made his life a success. But today he scowled as he read a message from Cherraleen, the lady who was still carrying a torch for Roxy's 'Arcana' project.

He didn't want to be reminded of the way the project had crashed, after such wild hopes and expectations at the beginning, nor of how the participants had first quarrelled among themselves and then, worse still, had stopped doing anything at all. Steve had made such plans: a feature film starring all the trumps of the tarot that would make a fortune at the box office.

Cherraleen's message had been about taking up the project again and continuing it in a new form, and he sensed that this elicited a response from Roxy. But he had become cynical. So what if Cherraleen still believed in it? She was the only one, and it had been two years for God's sake. Steve deleted the message and turned to something that would improve his morning; a fizzy, mildly alcoholic drink and a report of how his shares were doing on the stock market.

A memory came unbidden into his mind of his first online conversation with Cherraleen. "I dreamed once that I met the Princess of Pentacles," she had written. "She told me that I would get a job that I had applied for, but it didn't come true- I didn't get it."

" _That's the court cards; they're liars," he had replied. "We don't want any of them in the film, nor minor arcana. We've got plenty of characters to choose from in the major arcana: 21 if you count constructs like the Wheel of Fortune as characters. Roxy wants us to stick to those."_

" _It really excites me that this is Roxy's project. I can't wait to get started."_

If only the others had been just as excited- apart from in the initial group discussion on Facebook, which had gone on for three hours. But that was life on the internet: every new sensation soon passes. Surely it should have been different with Roxy instigating it? Roxy's verdict when it ended was, "they're all just time-wasters. Move on."

All just wankers was what Steve thought. He was rattled more than he would ever admit to them, having invested so much time and effort. It was ancient history now; the story wasn't even worth telling....

I decided to put the rest of the story as the narrative within the book. While you are playing as the mage you get occasional glimpses of extracts from it, in such places as a child's volume of bedtime stories, or painted on a wall.

If I was to put all twenty-one of the major tarot trumps into the gameplay 'Arcana' would be vast, and it would take a few days to get through that level of the game. Some hard-core gamers do expect to be tied up for days, but even so I didn't want to go right over the top with it. A handful of horseshoe spreads would do, to give alternative storylines and alternate endings for the final level above. I sat there for a long time, absorbed in my work.

### 2. Smoky Lights Up

Night was deepening and my work on the game had temporarily ended while I lay in bed taking much-needed restorative sleep. Smoky approached the laptop screen determinedly. "There's something going on in here. I have to check it out."

Although Mage And Angel was switched off Smoky made his way without any trouble through the landscape beyond the cliff, eyeing the obstacles and puzzles as he passed them, and straight to the room where the book 'Arcana' lay open on the table. The angel arrived at the same moment he did, with two other angels in tow each one looking a little different. The first was taller than the others with reddish wings and rosy cheeks as well. The second had sweeping robes with triangular cuts at the edges, straggly hair and an almost plump figure.

They all stopped and squared off as though they were going to draw guns on each other, but no-one drew any weapons. Instead the angel with the straggly hair began to speak.

"Are you going to read it? We've come to do the same, so that we can interact with it."

"Hypersigils are my territory-so I thought," said Smoky.

"They're not new. Similar things have always been made," proclaimed the original angel. "Either you move aside, or we'll all read it together."

"I was going to go inside," Smoky commented, pushing his paw-like arm against the book.

"No need to. It's got its own characters, and a different story from the game. The likes of us can do everything we want to do in the gameplay; all we have to do with 'Arcana 'is read it, and keep it in mind."

"Okay, I'm game. Ha, ha- get it?" Smoky's jokes were adolescent, like his stage of evolution. They gathered round the book.

Kevin didn't realize how precious his time with Phoebe was. She was a serial recluse, who regularly disappeared for many months, or even years. While she was socially active, she chose her friends carefully. Kevin was ideal: a film student who liked to make elite esoteric films of the same kind as Kenneth Anger's films- except that Kenneth Anger was well-known while Kevin lived in obscurity.

" _I'm involved with a goddess," Phoebe confided. "I call her Queen Jasmine, or Jasmine Lace. She deserves to be in a film."_

They were sitting in a quiet café near Kevin's college drinking milkshakes through a straw like teenagers, even though they were ten years older and could have been getting drunk.

" _I'll make a film about Queen Jasmine," Kevin replied eagerly. "What's she like?"_

" _You should have asked that first, before saying you'll make a film. Fancy saying 'yes' without knowing anything."_

" _That's what art's about- feeling it's right, like I do with you. I want to make alternative films outside the film industry, showing what the people need to see, and I just know your Jasmine would fit in with that."_

Phoebe tucked some wisps of her fine hair behind her ears and looked sideways at Kevin, trying to read how seriously he meant it. "I do believe she would like that," Phoebe said carefully.

Soon Kevin had built up a 'Jasmine Lace' Facebook group consisting of himself and Phoebe, a few friends from Film College and some people he knew only on the internet, including Steve and Cherraleen, and others from places as far apart as Wales and Africa.

It was a great mêlée of different ideas and opinions. Kevin sought to draw the many threads together into a multi-coloured ball of wool from which they would all knit together, to come up with a coat of many colours that would be Jasmine Lace's film.

Soon they adopted Steve's idea to call the film 'Arcana,' and to feature the major tarot trumps in the starring roles. Steve made it clear that this idea came from Roxy, but only Cherraleen was interested in that aspect, and even Kevin who so wanted to make esoteric films was indifferent. They had all been mesmerised by Phoebe's tale of Jasmine Lace.

" _Jasmine has a child," Phoebe wrote on the group page. "She has concealed him, or her, in a pack of fortune-telling cards, because being an egregore the child would not be welcome among the gods and goddesses of ancient lore. The father was a human sorcerer, now deceased and calling himself High John, with tarot card 20 The Day of Judgement as his symbol. He doesn't agree with Jasmine about hiding their son or daughter, and he wants to reveal to the whole world which card the child is hiding in, but he hasn't been able to find out himself which one it is."_

" _I love this," Darren wrote from his computer desk in Africa. "Let me film the sequences about the Devil. Really, I'd like to put Baphomet in it, but I'll make him different from Baphomet – just to be original."_

" _You can do that part, then," Kevin confirmed. He was enjoying being the director: such a contrast with his job where he had to run around for other people all day long. Of course, Phoebe was supposed to be a leader too: the joint director, but she was already starting to slip back into seclusion mode and any minute now she would drop out of sight, leaving her legacy to Kevin._

Kevin had hoped that she would fall in love with him. But a few weeks' acquaintance wasn't enough time, at least not for someone as cautious as Phoebe. Another girl might have hurled herself straight into an affair, but Phoebe was not that girl; a fact which became painfully clear to Kevin as he tried in vain to reach her on the phone. All that was left was Jasmine Lace, and Kevin was determined to make the film.

Two evenings later, after a break due to the regrettable necessity of working for my living, I was once again seated before my computer. I frowned. Where was Smoky? He was supposed to defend me while I transferred the demon from the pending folder and made it a small legion of game subordinates. The angel already had both subordinates and companions all ready to go, waiting only for powers and weapons to be added.

I called Smoky, holding the cigarette lighter to which he was attached by a tiny etheric thread. Offerings of tobacco are big in Voodoo and pretty widespread in chaos magick too: Smoky loved all things cigarette, and so did the other servitor I was working on which didn't yet have a name.

He wouldn't come, even with lighting a cigarette, and I started to worry.

Make a talisman instead? Then make my game demons, then make something to find Smoky...it would take all the evening. Impulsively I jumped up to the final level above the Arcana one, and spent about an hour and a half constructing part of that. Then I went to bed, for it was work again in the morning, and before going to sleep I gave myself a suggestion to look for Smoky during my dreams.

The angel was flying towards me, out of a hazy purple sky where mountains rose. "I told your little friend not to go into the book," he began. "And he didn't, but he did something just as foolish- he went behind the table it lies on and started messaging his friend: the other one who likes smoke. They're still talking."

It started to turn into a lucid dream. I understood the message and could see where I was: it was the higher plane of the park two miles away from my home. "You mean Smoky? I don't mind if he has his own life, but the lighter is supposed to work."

The angel landed beside me and folded his wings like a kestrel. "I'll come with you to look for him. But afterwards, finish my game opponents, okay?"

"Will do," I answered, and tentatively stretched out my arms as if about to swim the breaststroke. "Can I fly by myself this time?"

"If you must, but you'll need me to show you the way to Mage And Angel. If you just head for your living room, it will take too long."

I didn't ask why, but simply took his hand. It felt soft and slightly cold.

We both launched ourselves into the air, and for a few minutes we soared above green pastures and hills. Then the angel gave me a tug and I slid edge-on through the environment; that's the only way to describe it. We came out in my game, just outside the ground floor window of the house with the book. Another edge-on slide and we were through into the room. A hologram of The Fool card was floating a little below the ceiling, twirling, and the picture of the jester shrunk to allow black letters to appear in the space below the picture. UNLOCK YOUR MAJOR ARCANA CARDS AND CHOOSE A READING.

Because this was my design I was sure I knew where to go, and I hurried straight over to a tall, white-painted wooden cupboard and pulled the handle on the little drawer at the base. But there was no pack of cards inside: only a yawning tunnel which swerved to the side and then rapidly descended into the ground. It made me feel like my head was swimming; a strange sensation when I was in my astral body.

The angel, still standing calmly in the middle of the room, remarked "Smoky and his friend have gone down there. You'll have to follow if you want to bring him back."

"I thought you said they were still talking?"

"They were, not long ago, but now they've gone to explore."

I made an effort not to look scared and asked, "is there time to follow them? I've got work in the morning."

"It's only two AM. Time will speed up in that tunnel anyway, so everything will happen more quickly."

Gingerly I squeezed into the beginning part, and when I saw that he wasn't following I looked back and said, "how about your force field that protects the human beings?"

He flicked out a hand casually. "You've got it, but the enemies will notice it and run in this direction."

"I haven't put them in yet."

"Not Roxy: the large bugs."

I flipped out then as I'm sure you can imagine, but since becoming a mage I'd learned always to appear brave. I'm not so sure it works with angels as they can read your mind, but I assumed my usual confident expression and walked along the tunnel, focussing on every detail in my surroundings for possible shields and weapons.

The tunnel was like a grey plastic pipe, with scratches on the floor furred with clinging dust. Every so often along the sides were glints of blue light bouncing off the walls with no visible source of the light, and the ceiling above was low. There was no sign of anything I could use, and it all looked the same. To my relief the monotony was soon over as the tunnel sloped sharply upwards and ended in a gloomy city street, very different from the cliffs and rolling woodland that I had placed at the beginning of this level. Dilapidated houses and shops lined the street on both sides and only the occasional rusting car rattled along the road, with the driver dressed in rags.

No sooner had I started to walk along this road than a giant black beetle ran from around the next corner and headed straight towards me. There was a bang as its front legs collided with the force field and it stood upright, leaning against the invisible barrier and feeling it with curly antennae.

A street sign ahead of me lit up with the words, "You need more health tokens to maintain the force field."

Desperately I felt in my pockets- nothing there, and I seemed to be wearing a tattered cloak a bit like the third angel with triangular cuts in his robes. "Come on, it's a lucid dream, so I can materialize the tokens," I told myself.

They didn't appear, and the invisible barrier began to crack where the beetle was prodding it with one front leg.

I remembered that I might have to 'fire and forget' the tokens, and strived to relax and look at something else. Behind the street sign was a group of hoardings advertising imaginary events in the shabby town, and I glanced over at one which announced a concert by the Spiny Hedgehogs at the Oval Ballroom. Did that sound stupid? I could always change it when I got back to Earth.

Pop- the tokens appeared in my hand, and I threw them at the force field which immediately firmed up. Another giant beetle ran over and both of them stood up in a vertical position, poking fruitlessly at the barrier.

I jumped up and flew a metre or so above the ground, whizzing forward as fast as I could to escape, and rounded the corner from which the first beetle had approached.

Here a brick wall bordered one entire side of the road and there was graffiti all the way along it, inscribed with heavy red chalk.

Kevin's fellow student Oliver had been fascinated by The Star for a long time. It had never occurred to him that now he was a film student he could take advantage and make a film about tarot trump 17. But now he had the chance to do that, and he was also convinced that Jasmine's child was a girl and was hiding in The Star card.

He began to set up an animation on his screen. The deck he was using depicted The Star as slim, black-haired and a little Spanish- looking. She wasn't nude as she is in some decks, and that was fortunate as Kevin had said he didn't want any nudity in the film. She was clothed in a robe that looked like white streamers. There was no restriction on which deck to use for the film project; each participant was encouraged to choose their favourite or even to design one of their own, but Oliver didn't feel up to that. The Star is the card of hopes and dreams: how to interpret that? Oliver decided it meant ambition. She would be an ambitious character in the story- a social climber.

Most of the students on the course were talented in both the visual arts and scriptwriting, and quite a few of them could also score the music for a soundtrack. It was a great advantage to be multi-talented because if it came to the pinch you could make an entire film by yourself. This project had been conceived as the opposite of that; there were likely to be 'too many cooks' and a lot of compromise would be required before they served up the final dish.

Oliver animated his Star on the screen and forged ahead with some of her dialogue. Darren was supposed to be the chief scriptwriter, but he was busy with The Devil card at this moment.

In Oliver's story The Star was seeking invitations to the sort of gatherings where she would meet influential people; she hoped they would become her friends, or better still that she would meet a partner. High John could get her into those circles, and he didn't seem to want much in return: only for her to tell him her mother's name......

As Oliver sat there working on The Star: the contours of her face, the way her clothes moved when she did, her world came to life in his mind and he became involved in its sights and sounds. Feelings too washed over him, and he felt ambition taking root in his own heart. Previously he had always agreed with his friend Kevin that film- makers should stand outside the commercial establishment and live in relative poverty. Now he decided he must persuade Kevin to make it into a commercial concern and make as much money as they could from it.

" _You, Star, are Jasmine Lace's daughter and you lift me towards the star that bears your name," he recited in his mind. "We will all become stars through this." The animation seemed to turn her head and look at him triumphantly, and he felt sure he had been tasked with creating the heroine of the film._

In my headlong flight I had almost reached the end of the street when I was delighted to see Smoky drifting towards me with his companion. It was strange that the other servitor had turned into a tarot card; but I didn't get the chance to look closely and see which one, only that it was a man. I kept looking behind me to see if the beetles were following, and as soon as Smoky appeared I concentrated on getting his attention. "Smoky-you've got to help me against the enemies, and come home with me."

"Okay," Smoky chirped casually. "I'll trick the enemies if they get near."

"No, come home; home- now!"

He turned, looking regretfully over his shoulder. "I want to trick a bug; you just said I could."

"Home's more important." As I said that, five beetles began to march towards us along by the wall.

"Boring.... but come on, then." Smoky drew level with me, seized me in his hands, so like weasel paws, and dematerialized from the place pulling me with him, so that I woke up in bed.

"I did it- I played as a game character," I wrote in my journal.

### 3. People Skills

Smoky flattened himself against the ground and wriggled under the door. Five doors and only one will open: surely Jackie realizes that every game has that? -And giant insects, and broken- down streets. No-one is going to buy her game unless she comes up with something new.

He'd explored a lot of these in the past. Don't tell the humans or they'll be asking for a walkthrough. He loved to study the objects and match them to the physical world, learning more about both worlds in the process: such mundane objects as teacups, jewellery and doormats which would appear in games and also in the real home.

When he emerged from under the door he was confronted with not just a room but a whole cottage, petite and pink-painted with tiny squares of coloured glass in the windows. Standing up brought him in line with the ground floor windows, all latched open and obviously intended to be peered into.

Jackie must be playing dolls-house: the rooms were furnished in great detail and a family was in residence. She hadn't quite finished this part, he observed, but it was something to do with the angels who would have to protect the family during an action sequence. The people were of overwhelming interest to Smoky: manikins/thought forms/bots all rolled into one and walking vibrantly around their little homestead engaged in imaginary tasks, just like real humans.

He approached the mother with her bright gingham apron around her waist as she whisked a bowl of cake mixture. "Oops!" he exclaimed, flicking a party popper into the air and making sure it banged loudly and then fell straight into the mixing bowl.

She didn't react like a human does when you play a trick. She twisted both her head and body around towards a corner of the celling from which she expected to receive instructions of what to do next, and when she failed to get them because Jackie hadn't programmed in the trick she turned back again and became immobile. The whisk too stopped whirring.

"Look, I've ruined your cake. Hit me, go on, hit me! Shall I hit first?" Smoky picked up a wooden spoon from the table. But it was no fun with an inactive bot, so he put the spoon down and carried on exploring the house.

He drew the curtains in the living room and made them overlap so that it was really dark. He bounced on the double bed and threw the pillows across the room. He emptied out the wastepaper basket: sweet wrappers and crumpled paper that someone had drawn on and then thrown away. Who was playing with a doll's house now?

From somewhere he could hear a tinkling music, as if it was coming from a music box. He put his head around the door of the nursery, and there was a toddler tucked up in bed, one arm with its frilled pyjama top sleeve hanging outside on the quilt. On the bedside table lay a large book labelled 'Bedtime Stories' beside a cobalt blue lamp with matching shade.

The little boy opened his eyes and raised a curly brown head from the pillow. "Have you come to save me?" he asked.

Smoky leaned over him, enchanted with the fine detail. Jackie was an artist after all. "Shall I read you a bedtime story?" he murmured tenderly.

Bingo- he'd said the right line. The little boy exclaimed eagerly, "yes, please, read me a story", and he sat right up and swung his legs out of bed. Smoky couldn't take his eyes off the pyjamas and little feet. Maybe he could make one of these miniature humans to play with? He wanted to call the other servitor to see it, but first the bedtime story. The pages lifted slowly and turned by themselves....

Most of the people involved in the film project were men, and among the students from Kevin's course the only girl was Julia. She came to production meetings with her friend Anthony, and her comments were memorable. "I'll paint anyone- paint and then animate," she said. "Has anyone seen 'Flatliners'? We're just like them and I'm the girl- I've even got the same name as Julia Roberts."

" _Don't die on the table, then," teased Anthony. He was a mate, not a boyfriend, but he had seen all the same films as Julia and read some of the same books. He knew from the start that he was going to create the sequences about The Magician. He loved that image of the four elemental tools on the table, representing the magician's magical will. He sketched out a draft of them on the central long desk, in the college workroom that they had commandeered for their meetings._

Cherraleen, who like Darren and Steve had never met any of them in the flesh, was keen to make a film about The Emperor and then send it to Kevin over the internet. The Empress had a more personal meaning for her, and to portray that figure would have made her feel as though parading before everyone in those new clothes that she intended to place on The Emperor by choosing him instead.

So it was that the Jasmine Lace project began with these four: The Devil, The Magician, The Emperor and The Star, three male trumps and a female one alternately and separately envisioned by the motley group of filmmakers and students. That they each made their own film was inevitable considering their multiple talents, and the films proved too incompatible to be meshed in with one another. That was the beginning of the end of the whole endeavour.

Darren's Devil card revelled in the knowledge that no-one was very sure where he had sprung from. He was red, sexy and ferocious, and he looked down on the human landscape from the same plane as Roxy and High John. "The sheer stupidity of it!" he remarked to High John. "How would anyone ever think that I was the hidden child of you and Jasmine Lace?"

" _Remember all twenty-one of us are suspects," replied High John. "That means I'm a suspect of being my own child. Human beings made the plot, and that's why it's full of holes."_

The breath of life implied by their having a conversation swept across Darren like a desert wind, and fanned into a blaze by this he forged ahead much further than he had originally intended. As he sat at his computer under the tropical sun in sight of a herd of giraffes, he planned a whole script in which High John would interact with the other trumps one by one. His daughter- for a girl it was- would feature in it more than any of the others. All that remained was for Darren to complete each scene, adding first the animation, then the dialogue and next the music too, as he was well able to do by himself.

" _Man, I'm telling you, The Star's the one," Oliver wrote in the group chat. "She's the hidden child."_

" _Ok," Kevin replied. "What do you all think of that? Shall we make it The Star?"_

" _My film's quite long already," Darren wrote, "and High John and his daughter are the main characters. I'll be happy to make her The Star."_

" _But that isn't the original storyline," Kevin pointed out. "It was supposed to be that she was hidden from High John, and he's never met her."_

" _Too much like 'The Magic Flute', Julia cut in. "Let's be more original."_

Cherraleen jumped in as well. "I've finished The Emperor section of the film. Hey, this group chat goes on for sixteen pages- I can't read all that."

" _We were talking about having The Star as Jasmine Lace's daughter," Kevin wrote._

" _That's all right," she answered, agreeing for the sake._

The others assented too, and Kevin said, "that's it then, we'll have The Star."

Oliver felt a warm glow round the middle of his abdomen. They wouldn't regret it.

### 4. Puff The Dragon

I was out in the everyday world; not something I like to write about in my journal, for ordinary diaries bore me and I prefer to record wild dreams and inner visions in all their vivid intensity.

Saturday morning was going to be pretty mundane; I would be shopping and looking around the sales, but at least in the afternoon I was due to visit my friend Clover, a mage and animator like me with whom I could discuss my game. I wanted her opinion about the angels and demons; I had finally put them all in, and they sparred and smashed things to pieces and debated fiercely with one another. But when it came to the scene at the cottage I didn't want their internal fights mixed up with the human beings, so instead it was a werewolf that threatened them and only one angel at the end of that scene which came to save them. Did that sound right, or was the game wandering off its own theme? It would be interesting to see what Clover thought.

I started up the wide steps of a road bridge which spanned the street. On the horizon were fields, pale and slightly misted at the edge of the town, and nearer on the far side of the bridge stood a quaint sweetshop on its own, a gap of wasteland and then the main high road. The paint was peeling on the wooden handrail at the side of the bridge. I remember the sky had that strange whiteness you see some days instead of blue, and the wind felt fresh. No-one else was around; I live in a very small town.

Coming down the other side I felt like a smoke. I'd been trying to quit smoking, but what with tobacco being the magical ingredient for Smoky, and for other magick stuff too, I was finding it awkward to give up. Pot was an alternative, but it was illegal here and it's a very conservative neighbourhood.

I got out a cigarette from my back pocket, and my non-servitor lighter, the one with the green top. Shielding the flame from the wind, I lit up. Suddenly...what was this rolling towards me-a cloud at ground level? It didn't look normal, and the air was bending. The street itself was bending as if I was in some crazy animation.

Then I felt myself against a fence, sliding down. I must be going to collapse, and there was no-one around to help me. Panic began, but then I realized I felt fine- I couldn't possibly be ill. A figure faded into view in front of me. It was my other servitor, the one I still hadn't named. It must be one lighter to call each of them, but that wasn't what I'd specified; the other servitor was bound to a pack of cigarette cards, a modern issue in imitation and tribute to the vintage cards from the past.

Once again the servitor slipped into a different shape, a tarot card figure in a pleated red robe wearing a coronet. It looked like The Emperor. I could feel myself falling into a trance as I slumped at the bottom of the fence.

No-one picked me up. If anyone came by they must have thought I was drunk and just carried on walking. It's common human behaviour, but I hate to think what would have happened if I genuinely had collapsed. Luckily the cigarette fell on the pavement and not on something inflammable like my clothes.

What I saw in my trance was a communal-style room with bundles of cards lying on a central table, of which some were tarot cards and others cigarette cards.

The cigarette card that was closest to me was labelled: OBSCURE CHARACTERS IN LITERATURE NO.4- THE EMPEROR FROM FAUST PART 2. Pictured on it was the figure I had seen just before I fell into the trance, my servitor as the tarot card The Emperor. I reached out and turned the nearest bundle over and it became the tarot pack from my game, at the section in which the cards are spread face down along a table and an extract from 'Arcana' is written across the backs.

" _Do you know any of Phoebe's friends?" Kevin asked Julia, as they cleared up after the production meeting._

" _No. She's never hung out with anyone from the college. Why?"_

" _She seems to have changed her address. I don't even know where to find her."_

" _Forget it- she doesn't want to be found. She'll only think you're stalking her."_

" _Phoebe's so other-worldly. I've never met anyone like her. We need her, if only for more insights about Jasmine Lace."_

" _Huh. She knows you're interested in her, not Jasmine Lace, and she just doesn't want to get involved with anyone. Trust me."_

***

The Star walked purposefully up the hill towards the square white house which sparkled like a sugar cube. She touched the door, a smooth ice bar, and it opened to admit her to Jasmine Lace's hall.

Jasmine was originally the male aspect of the entity, but having been called upon to be 'mother' in the film had quickly assumed a regal-looking female form with blue eyes, shoulder-length ash blonde hair and a puffed-out dress like a cartoon princess.

" _I have been given free rein!" The Star announced, without announcing herself. "They have chosen me, and I in turn have chosen not to be merely a star but a star -maker, one who makes you a star and leads you straight into the annals of fame and fortune."_

" _A theme very closely linked with the world of film-making, where everyone hopes to become the next film star," Jasmine observed._

" _Yes, that's it! My special talent will be to turn them into stars of the silver screen."_

" _You devalue it, though, from the elite reference that every man and woman is a star."_

The Star raced ahead without stopping to listen properly. "Yes, the elite- that is what they'll belong to and they will have me to thank: success for them and me, and for all who are involved. When I'm through with my visit here I'm going back to High John, this time as the daughter in Darren's film script, and our story so full of potential is already fixed by the words Darren chose when he wrote it."

***

Cherraleen was filming in her garden. She started on a sequence about The Star to add onto the one she had already made about The Emperor. Cherraline was lucky to be of independent means: she could afford to spend her free time working on this for as long as it took, while the students had to tailor it to the length of their course and their grant.

As Cherraleen worked, she found that for some reason the theme made her feel uneasy- in fact more than uneasy, violated somehow. No film had ever made her feel that way before, and it was so unsettling that she even began to think seriously about quitting.

The following week came Oliver's row with Kevin, about the film going on the commercial circuit when it was finished. It was bitter and acrimonious, and Kevin was the winner. "We stick to our original ideals- I insist! No commercialism and no money- it will be shown privately to those who appreciate cinema as art."

Oliver departed in a cloud of fury, and declared that he was taking his Star animation with him, copyright to himself. "It's better this way. You wouldn't all want to burn like I do, with the same fire of ambition that burned Macbeth to a crisp."

Steve was in the middle of designing the film poster, in the optimistic belief that it might be needed in six months' time, when he heard the news. Roxy was even more put out than Steve, because an eventual run on the commercial circuit had been a vital part of his plan from the beginning, and he hadn't seen this coming as it was brought about by Kevin's free will.

The remaining participants conferred and decided to choose another card as Jasmine's child. They lighted on Trump 7 The Charioteer. This was one that no-one would ever suspect, and moreover could be made male or female according to individual preference.

Hopes were high for continuation, but unfortunately the project never recovered from the impact of Kevin and Oliver's row. There were a few more production meetings on the campus, but the students were worried about the time constraints with having to start all over again, and everyone stalled except Darren and Cherraleen. The film was put aside for an indefinite period.

To Cherraleen's surprise, when she ran with the new storyline she felt great about this alternative daughter and forged ahead with no misgivings at all. That was what made her carry on.

Darren too retained his enthusiasm and continued with The Chariot as the new heroine. He also added The Fool, the Sun and his own version of the initial trumps Magician and Emperor to go with his Devil. However, even he found it too demanding to stretch to the full twenty-one as he sat alone at his computer. He was a talented animator who would become quite well known in the future, but with limited resources while still working as an amateur.

Clover handed me a cup of hot coffee. "Let's look at the game. Maybe it'll give us some clue what happened to you."

I took out the disc from my handbag and put in in her console, and we navigated to the 'Arcana' level.

"Do you have any tarot card characters on the other levels?" Clover asked.

"No- only in the 'Arcana' book, and not even on the rest of that level. The other bits of the level have angels and demons fighting, and impersonal enemies, like a waterfall with cross-currents."

"The card was sort of acting like your enemy when it sent you to sleep. It overpowered you." She scrolled through the level as she talked, checking all the parts.

"But it was my other servitor, the one I haven't finished. I think the solution is to finish him: take control."

"He shouldn't be alive if he's only half- made."

"He is, though. Him and Smoky were talking and running around together. I took no notice- I've had them do it before. Everything's alive really."

"So why didn't you finish him?"

"Too busy. There's my job, and the game, and the flat doesn't clean itself."

"Sounds like you've taken on too much. It could be burnout, fainting like that. Try finishing one thing at a time: the servitor, as he attacked you, then the game."

"Attack's a bit of an exaggeration. But you're right about one thing at a time."

Clover pushed the controller away. "I can't find anything dodgy. Bring it round again when it's finished – I'd love to play it."

When I got home I realized I'd forgotten to ask her about the werewolf. Best to trust my own judgement: I deleted the werewolf and made it one of Roxy's subordinates who threatened the people in the cottage, so that I was sticking to the same characters all the way through. Then I took the master disc out and put it in its box and into my desk drawer. I would come back to it when I'd finished Emperor.

### Above Our Heads

Clouds of smoke on the platform by the ticket office, and shapes forming in it; could it be a group of people on a day trip who are all heavy smokers? Or was it Smoky and Emperor making everyday life into some kind of continuous evocation, where inner- space friends make signs and paint pictures?

I wasn't sure what I was seeing, but I couldn't stop otherwise I might be late for the appointment with the game designer. I didn't think it likely he would want to collaborate as after all I was only an amateur; networking was a good move, though.

The Magician and The Emperor didn't linger either, for they were on the way to Jasmine Lace's palace for a meeting about state affairs of the realm.

The chamber was of white marble and immensely wide, with small windows high up on the walls and many doors and corridors leading off it. A lush blue and silver carpet lay on the floor and the high-backed chairs were of white-painted walnut, the tops carved into a delicate leaf and berry pattern.

The courtiers filed in and sat down, and The Magician moved to his prime place of influence beside the throne. "Your Majesty, we must first discuss your trips to remote parts of the realm in The Chariot," said The Magician. "We understand that you can spend time with your daughter undisturbed on these secret journeys, but the two of you could be in danger and should really be accompanied by a retinue of guards."

" _Don't fuss, my mage," Jasmine Lace replied. "I have sources of power to protect me- you yourself are one of them."_

" _The rumours are flying about High John," declared The Emperor. "Which version is true? Have you hidden your daughter from him for all her life? Or was she staying with him until last summer, when your trips in The Chariot started? These contradictions destabilize our whole society."_

" _You will all know our secrets in good time. There is a reason to keep them for now."_

Suddenly a herald rushed in. "The Son is outside requesting an audience- and you know whose son: Star, exiled from our kingdom. There is a jester with him."

" _Ay, The Fool," said The Magician. "That Fool has protected him since childhood- and it is the same one who before that used to serve High John. I would give much to know what intrigues have gone on."_

" _Tell them I will not see them!" cried Jasmine Lace._

From a window across the street High John and The Devil watched through a crystal telescope. "The plot's really gone to pieces now," said High John. "It makes no sense at all. Now my daughter's a carriage driver- or even a horse, and that Sun is more or less Mordred. And it's all due to that stupid row among the humans. The other cards don't even know they're in a story. How come I know, and they don't?"

" _Something's given you clear vision. What you're named after, maybe? -and you're also The Judgement."_

The changes now that I'd finished Emperor were subtle, but I noticed them because he was part of me, and I was the one it would affect the most. Clover was a good friend and it had helped a lot to discuss it with her. I wasn't as close to Steve (the girlfriend wouldn't like it anyway) and it was hard to tell whether he would have been of any use on that dramatic day when I visited Clover.

In the end it had only taken a few more months to complete Mage and Angel (working title only, of course.) Easily the most exciting part had been the final level with its six different endings, because I had made each storyline fairly long and detailed and only one of the endings took place in the everyday physical world. One was on the astral plane, another in a parallel dimension, and one in a cyber realm, being careful to avoid any similarities to 'The Matrix.' The fifth was inside a black hole, and the sixth within the universal current of magick.

Clover had suggested I give it first to a child to play, then to an adult with no interest in the occult, and take careful note of their comments. But she knew I had taken it a good way further than any of her own gaming creations and was in general very complimentary. We spent several thrillingly escapist afternoons playing the game together.

***

"What are you doing here?" the angel queried loftily. He might well ask; however, he was straying as well from his proper place on the Arcana level.

"Jackie got the parallel world. This I must see- and I might even decide to come and live here every night." Smoky scrambled into some dense undergrowth and went into glide mode, sailing through to the next clearing without catching any of the prickly plants on his fur.

"It isn't much different from Earth. Human beings know they've urbanised their world too much, so when they imagine a parallel one, they always fill it with wilderness. You'd do better to go to the black hole and see how she's done that- or the magick one."

"But she didn't GET those. We're playing; she got this one. I want to look at this one."

"I'm not stopping you," said the angel.

"What ARE you doing, though, and why did you want Jackie to make you the Arcana level?" He went into his defensive stance, which made him look like a gerbil with razor teeth.

The angel's sword became palpably more solid, but he didn't draw it. "Roxy and I are doing angelic hierarchy things. You wouldn't understand them, Smoky." He turned away and rose slightly, imperceptibly above the woodland path that led further into the level.

"Up here, though?" Smoky persisted, clenching his paws into fists. "This is the final level where there aren't any angels and demons fighting."

The angel paused again, and glanced at him disdainfully. "The fighting's a smoke screen. You and Emperor should know all about that, with your cigarettes and such. No-one is going to blame Jackie for what we do; if the game wasn't here we would do it somewhere else, but a game is useful." With that he abruptly flew away.

"Cheek!" Smoky muttered. "I'm telling Jackie he's up to something." Then he began scrabbling around in a ditch and followed it till he came out under some thick bushes, and after that he pushed his way into a hole in a tree trunk like a squirrel, and after exploring the inside of the tree he went on to the village, where Jackie had made the people look like aliens and given them otherworldly homes and furniture.

Smoky skipped all around the village, delighting in the contrast between the alien artefacts here and those of the cottage on the level below which had been copied from real items in the physical world. He loved comparing the two, notching up in his mind this inventory of purely imaginary items and the lists of quasi-real ones as represented on the various game menus.

At the edge of the settlement was a little group of burrowing animals roughly based on rabbits, their bodies elongated into strange twisty shapes and with flattened teddy-bear faces. Smoky ran and jumped amongst them, nudging their fat flanks as he squeezed past, and he couldn't resist calling out to them. "Hi, hi, better guard your burrows because I'm coming in right now!" Then he threw himself headlong down the nearest one, kicking at the narrow roof and nuzzling the fuzzy faces as he went past them. It sloped steeply and he ran all the faster, until... what was this?

A hidden tunnel in a programming menu, leading back to 'Arcana'! Now we are back in the room with the table, so shall we pick our cards? This time the minor arcana: wands for Kevin's story, cups for Jasmine Lace's story, swords for Smoky's and pentacles for Jackie's. And none of these stories are finished yet; all of them are still in progress, just like the stories of all of us who have the privilege to inhabit this diverse and varied meta cosmos.

# Beads Falling, Falling Into A Design.

# (Channelled from Ino)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

### Chapter 1

From My Journal

One bead on its own makes no kind of necklace. There are many of us. We are beads of a great variety of different colours and sizes: some shiny, some of a rough texture and the smallest ones like pearls, with the impression that gives of a round shell.

We are the beads from Mars, and the ones from Venus are there too, just across the way. You've seen those shops with one red and one green clothes rail, in an effort to increase the sales. We're doing 'red bead and green bead', because we think people need to know which is the right crystal; or if they are not crystal-mancers they still need to know what goes on the hem.

The bead that I was yesterday has gone with the necklaces of that day, and with the necks they hung around. Bracelets and anklets may be made of beads too, but it is cutting off the neck that represents the loss of the owner, who could still function without an arm or a leg.

Today I am going on a trip to the bead- threader to see if she can find me a novelty plastic string like a cheap candlewick to string myself along, and all the other Martian beads with me; red, coppery tones in the beads, and warlike glints, like light striking a shield in the heat of battle.

The threader picks up the bag that holds us and shakes it- a vigorous throw against her arm to jumble us up into a truly random mêlée; and then she presses us out through the top of the bag one by one along an electrical threading machine.

Is there a tweaking machine in the mix? No, tweaking will have to be done with human hands to get the beads just the way she wants them, for a novelty shop where individuality is prized. Trailing parts are hanging down and it almost looks like feathers, although not quite because that cheap dream-catcher look has been exploited far too much.

All my feathers would ever catch would be the wind in flight. I would never expect them to adorn a necklace for any self-respecting fashionista to wear, and so they remain hidden, curled up round and round over themselves within the inner curves of my Mars bead.

The bead threader does not know what I'm thinking, or that I am thinking; she only knows that with a load like this she should make some deliveries today, to people who are ready and keen to sell beads. When lunchtime comes she makes a sandwich, but I cannot eat, and think only of the way in which bouncing beads appear to be alive when they scud across the floor veering off into many random directions. Do you have sufficient astrological prowess to choose a Mars bead when one is needed?

The bead- threader has become a bead seller as she sits behind a market stall at the weekend. She made those deliveries to retailers, but some beads she kept back to sell herself, including the necklace of which I am now part. If someone buys me, as a bead I will caress their neck. That sounds obvious when we are speaking of a necklace, but I don't mean it in an obvious way. I am speaking of sending through a hidden influence, which when conveniently close to the throat is a great source of literary wisdom. You might find yourself reading or even writing about some subject, simply after a stroke from a round bead.

Don't put me around the neck of a toy; otherwise you will live to regret it. That also applies to ankles. Tinkling anklets are seen as charming in India, but why give a cat a bell? And why be so close to feet that can trip over, or can walk in directions that their owner never intended? It might all be due to me, their little bead.

At the end of the day Vertiga, (that being her exotic name), travels down in a boat with the beads she did not sell, to the black bracken at the foot of the canal. Pipette fronds spring from the leaf beds here, and the mud is crossed with white tramlines from the wheels of prams. No-one wants to pick up the sweet papers that litter the verge of grass up against the steep wall of the canal.

Vertiga sits here and plays with leftover beads, twisting them into new patterns that no-one has yet thought of except herself. It is the stalk they are threaded onto which makes the shape, and people are too easily put off, thinking that because they cannot easily thread a needle they will find it too hard to make necklace ropes (or strings of pearls, or tiaras worth a fortune, or random teasing beads that warp reality for the observer of the jewellery.) Anyone can thread if they try hard enough.

Vertiga has threaded many and here the latest batch lies in her box, which resembles more than anything a sewing basket. She has plenty of needles should she need them but can usually thread without them, being experienced in the art of making necklaces and bracelets.

_Next Day_ : Someone did buy me, and now I am a bead in the necklace she is wearing. Her name is Alicia and she has long, wavy hair of a copper colour and pale skin. Alicia is wearing a green dress with quite a tight neck, and if it had buttons she would undo the top one so as not to feel throttled on a warm day.

Alicia reaches her home with her new necklace, and proceeds to unpack her handbag of aspirins, ribbon trim and a pack of four biscuits; for when she remembered these necessities she didn't have a shopping bag to put them into. Her mind was on other things, and typical of a human mind it was fogged white like the opaque bead and bouncing like a child's marble from one strike to another.

Alicia notices Ben. He looks as if he has been to the pub on the way home from a morning shift at work. She decides not to tell him that she has been treating herself as well, to a necklace and anything else her eye fell on while she was out. Both of them think they deserve plenty of treats, to compensate for working in those jobs they dread.

After dinner Alicia puts on her rubber washing-up gloves. There are two kinds of women: those who wear gloves to wash up because the detergent would damage their beautiful skin, and those who do not wear gloves because they can't be bothered, or find it restrictive. The former kind to which Alicia belongs could be considered vain spirits, but not free spirits. Hanging around her neck I tap against her breastbone and exert force to change that.

This is in the nature of a little experiment: what will happen? Will a hole appear in one finger of the glove? I hope not- I don't want a drama in the kitchen. And yes, there are some habitations like this one in which that hole appearing would cause a drama, even though there may be a war going on somewhere else in the world.

She pauses, gazes wistfully out of the window into the distance, and that is her whole rebellion. I'll have to bang against her like a hammer.

The other beads vary in their composition. Some are alive like me and others are mineral in its state of deep sleep, before it rises in the chain. But strictly speaking I don't have allies among the beads, for their consciousness is all going separate ways, and some of it is burrowing down I don't know what tunnel.

Later Alicia folds me and puts me in the box. It must be bedtime. The silky material lining the box is like a car seat against the leg of a fallen angel in a novel, who is riding in the back. The new sensation is overwhelming, and yet all that angel is thinking is, "I'll learn to drive." Lucky are those who can detach from sensuality, and indeed from imprisonment, for a box always has a lid.

There is a central niche as well that the necklace is supposed to be pushed into, although Alicia has neglected to do that, as many would on opening the box for only the second time. I look at the niche: a crevice in rocks. You would keep your eyes and hands on the rocks, uneven and lumpy though they would be.

***

Ben always looked fed up these days. Whatever had been his absorbing interest at any time, like a certain comedy series of which he collected all the episodes, it had always seemed enough to make him content. But like a Buddhist monk meditating he soon discovered background thoughts, which carry on a great, dramatic dialogue while your surface thoughts are peaceful. Nowadays he suspected that all the grievances in this dialogue might be spot on.

Alicia knew not to talk to him too much when he was in this mood, and it appeared to be increasing in frequency. Maybe it was due to the hours he spent working in the accounts office.

From My Journal

There are many things that Alicia does today, and I do not watch them all. My attention is drawn to certain actions, like her playing with trinkets and beginning to thread some of them onto a string. I can't have any rivals for my prime place of influence around her neck.

She drops a silver silhouette, which looks like something you would add to a Christmas decoration rather than a piece of jewellery. It lies flat staring at the floor, forever in profile yet paradoxically also facing the floor to examine it. Alicia goes to pick it up and then does not; instead she sits back and threads something else onto the string. This seems like erratic behaviour to me- I cannot follow it.

Nor can I follow the taxi she hails to take her shopping in the main commercial precinct of the town. Being within the cab, around the passenger's neck, you cannot 'follow that cab' to satisfy the desire of a spy. You would be hard pressed to fall into that mould (like the ridge in the necklace box) and you have to be content with the role of a participant, swinging each time the taxi turns a corner.

She seems to be going somewhere on a whim and she is not even sure where. But that is her practice at the weekend, as I am soon to learn. When I accompany her to work I will have to be latent, present in potential only, with my vision turned downwards to contemplate the carpets alone, and the regular footsteps that cross them.

***

Ben flicked through the CD's. He looked as if he couldn't choose between them; not because he wanted to hear them all but because he didn't really want to hear any of them.

Alicia was making dinner and wondering whether meat pie was really of any interest, or should they go vegetarian, or even macrobiotic? There could be health benefits, and more importantly something new to do and plan.

"Ben," she asked, "Do you like vegetables?"

He contemplated the unusual question. She should know whether he liked them, after five years of marriage. You never know what women are going to say next, especially Alicia.

"They're all right. Why, what were you going to put with the steak pie?"

"Just a few potatoes and onions, but I meant, would you be interested in going vegetarian?"

He paused in the act of wiping CD's with an anti-static cloth. "I've never really thought about it. But, no. I like my meat."

Alicia sighed, and then realized she could not say that her strongest reason for asking him was that she was bored.

Boredom leaves a hole in your mind. It might as well be a hole in your head, where a bullet has torn it and left tender bruised flesh at the edges, for a bead to slide in and make a necklace of your brain. I shall not be moving from Alicia's neck, and yet I shall be suggesting ideas to her, and courses of action too, for what are ideas without them?

From My Journal

Once again, I nestle into my niche in the silk-lined box. (Not real silk of course, but you know what I mean.) The night will be long, and Alicia will dream, and I am trying to dream as well, for to live truly I must dream even if I do not need to rest and cannot summon up the grey matter for a brain.

I am rolling along a path through a wood, and bouncing where the sandstone includes rocks. Pebbles crumble to become smaller, like the tiny joining beads in between the larger beads in a necklace. If you break it you can never thread it again, for these were done by a machine in a factory. Like R2D2 it beeps, and I understand, and that's probably why I didn't get crushed by mistake during the process of manufacture. But that has led me away from the original dream in which I was rolling past copses, grassy clearings and patches of thick undergrowth where no light penetrates.

Beads could drop one by one down any hole with muddied sides, concealed by the leaves on the ground. A cluster of us could get together at the bottom and form a colony. In my dream I don't roll down any holes or pits in the woodland; I navigate safely to the other side, and I see the moon blinking on and off as it appears periodically through the trees.

The tree trunks end so suddenly that it feels as if a gate should be there, and yet I see no gate, only paving stones that come right up to the edge of the wood, and in other places a grass verge instead. For it is countryside here really, and the pavements belong to the drives of a few houses. Does that mean it is a real place, then? I'll have to try harder to dream the way people do; yet people sometimes spend their nights striving to see something real, and would gladly swap places with me.

### Chapter 2

Ben was cleaning the mud off his rubber boots, hunched over them in the hallway with sheets of newspaper spread haphazardly on the ground. He had been doing some gardening, and was trying to get his small patch of nasturtiums to grow into something respectable. Time seemed to flow more freely when he was working with the earth, pushing stones and soil with a trowel and crumbling them into some semblance of order along the edge of the flowerbed where he had placed a row of upturned crescent-shaped stones. It was relaxing, and if it went well the results were clearly to be seen afterwards.

He liked to come to his garden to escape from any unpredictability in the working day. The office was a random place, where despite regimented columns of figures in the company's accounts he could not seize control of the flow of events and direct them to his liking. It was unwelcome if Alicia called him away from the garden or if any of his friends called to disturb him, and today he was pleased that he had chosen this time to finish his gardening.

But he didn't want to cover the hall carpet in mud- you didn't have to be a woman to believe in wiping your feet, so that gave him an onerous task when he came in before he could get to the serious business of smoking and watching TV.

I looked over my shoulder, which in practice was Alicia's shoulder, and tried to see Ben and introduce him if only a little to refreshing chaos rather than humdrum order. It was no use; Alicia was at the wrong angle to him on her way to the cupboard to get out the ironing, and I could not make contact with him. After all I'm only a bead, but I'm round and the planet is a sphere; the sun is a sphere and has a dark sun behind it.

Ben's life needed white light, black light, alternating disco pulses with a pounding, a thrumming; awakening him to more sentient activities that bathe him in moving chips of light, because he was sad as he was, and was only heading for depression.

From My Journal

Alicia swishes the iron. Today she is wearing a blue wool dress, buttoned up quite high so that I touch only the wool and not the soft flash of her neck. She seems to like hiding her throat under layers of material: does this hint at a reluctance to express herself, or a fear of winter chills?

Beads against fabric make a pleasing shape, unless the fabric catches the beads and pulls them out of position or over to one side, and this one does not. The necklace hangs like the curve of a smiley face emoticon over the front of her dress and I am part of that smile, whether it be a wicked, conspiratorial grin or a frank and open smile of welcoming acceptance. I am aware of the beads linked to me on either side and know that I have their physical support even if not necessarily an emotional support. I won't fall out or roll down the front of her neck, or down her throat and choke her.

It's good to know that Alicia is happy ironing-she sees it as a vital part of looking smart. Her contentment while busy like this is much greater than Ben's, and he is the one who is supposed to be enjoying leisure time as he watches TV.

I contemplate whether or not it is morally right to exert influence on Alicia and Ben. Many would say it is wrong for a bead to do this, but I don't fully understand the arguments and only do what is natural to me. My values come from the stairway of fractal patterns in beads and other spherical stones, and to impose them on human beings appears acceptable to me when my desire is to set them free. Although some would cite the policy of non-interference, like the one of that name in 'Star Trek,' whereby you allow alien races to pull one another and themselves to pieces if they want to. Without grabbing them, putting the pieces back and rearranging them, and adding other pieces to them which you stick on at random when needed, resulting in a spiky collage.

Alicia and Ben would look good all starred with tiny linking beads from between the larger sections of a necklace, and maybe a length of elastic through the middle of it all to stem the imminent collapse of structures that lie alongside one another.

I begin to weary of the wide compass of my speculations, for I would prefer my role to be taken as read and for Alicia to jiggle the necklace casually with the comment, "what a great string of beads! - and at least one of them tries to impart its own brand of wisdom to me." She might even add, "cool!" as this has been the term for some time amongst humans.

***

Ben returned for a moment to gardening tasks. He took a sack of garden waste: weeds he had cut from borders and grass and small plants he had cleared from the lawn, and placed it all in a stout brown bin for the garden waste collection. He hoped it would do some good to the environment, although he had never bothered to find out exactly how the garden waste was recycled.

Alicia put her ironing away: jumpers folded over and bulging with their plumpness, taking up more than their share of room on the shelf; crisp blouses with a slight shine when the light caught them as she hung them up in the wardrobe.

I could be somewhere else during these operations, alone with my thoughts, or I could be a camera with a bird's eye view, recording what I saw onto some consciousness like a swelling blossom, but certainly not onto a retina. I am always free to choose, but never free to disentangle from the necklace unless it catches on something by accident and splits. If beads flew everywhere no-one would ever be able to tell which of them were sentient and which, if any, it would be better to grind down and start again.

From My Journal

The phone rings. It's Alicia's sister. She runs over and lifts the receiver and says, "Hallo, Alicia speaking. Janette? How are you, sis?"

"Oh." Her face crumbles and whitens, chalk falling towards the floor. She sits down quickly, the phone receiver on her lap. "Ben!" A shrill edge to her voice. "Dad's dead."

I have been criticized profoundly for my attitude to death. When a human being dies everything changes: all roles in their family, circumstances where they used to work, ownership of property and furniture, and most importantly of all the events that befall those who are left behind. Therefore, I regard death as positive, a lever that shifts reality, and if it has become stagnant this gives it quite the push into new territory. Many would say my attitude renders me unfit to be as close to Alicia as around her neck.

But I haven't had to kill Alicia or Ben. Someone has died naturally, and I sit back contentedly thinking how everything will change around them and the changes could be for the better. Alicia will be busy, and Ben, helping her, will have no time to brood and every opportunity to give his affairs a shake-up.

### Chapter 3

From My Journal

Alicia wears black for the funeral, and I hang in pride of place against the dress, not too ornate for a solemn occasion. She is a little disappointed in the sermon. Human beings are often disappointed, many times inappropriately when they live an affluent life and have been taught to be appreciative of everything they have. But it's different in the case of the dead; their wishes are of paramount importance and the human is approved of for being disappointed on their behalf, even though the way something has gone is of less use to them now than it has ever been before.

Do you think a Christian human comes back and complains to the vicar that he should have been sent off with a more rousing sermon? The vicar would believe he was sleeping till the last trumpet and could not come back. The deceased would believe.... oh, but now I am speaking with the unfair advantage of having conversed with the deceased before I became a bead, and I don't suppose anyone cares what a bead has to say. Nor do they care where I came from before I was a bead. From the four elements? From one of the four? - From the leaves under a bonfire, for all they care.

I am waiting with great anticipation for the changes this couple will make as a result of what I mentioned previously: the shift in reality when someone dies. First they will clear the house, and furniture and effects will move to new locations. The house is empty now, for Alicia's mother exited the family some time ago and I haven't found out how she left, whether through death or departure. Alicia and her sister will sell the house and split the proceeds between them, and they will have to pay some bills out of that.

On the way home after the service and the wake Alicia turns to Ben and says quietly, "we'll inherit a bit of money, even after paying the bills. I could have a baby."

"Your poor old Dad! You wait until he's popped off before giving him a grandchild."

Ben didn't mean to say that, but the day has been a strain. Alicia looks at him tight-lipped and doesn't answer, but inside she thinks his remark was actually quite funny.

I would like a child to play with me, but not to burst the necklace or swallow me by mistake. It would please me to watch a child grow and to influence the child to be free-thinking, despite not being around its neck (for every necklace is labelled: 'small parts- keep away from young children').

***

In the weeks following this conversation Alicia cried sometimes, and if Ben was around he comforted her. She took a few weeks off work to recover her composure and to sort things out. Soon she was expecting that baby she had spoken of; for Ben sometimes took her to bed while comforting her and he did not take precautions because she had said she wanted a baby.

Alicia's office was different from Ben's: it was an estate agent. One day while she was at work, and I was looking silently down at the carpet as I previously described, I heard her having a conversation with her boss about maternity leave.

"Are you sure you want to take the full whack, Alicia? You must have noticed all the mortgages are based on both partners working full-time- it's the norm now."

At this I swivelled round; or my soul did, because the necklace remained in the same position over her chest. This sounded dangerous to me: bad for Alicia's health, and I wanted to see her eyes. They are the windows to a chilly prospect outside, where the inhabitants value profit more than the young in the nests of their race.

Alicia's eyes when I did meet them were cloudy, the way her mind had been that time before: a sapphire cloudiness like a child's marble that is coveted and exchanged for another toy. I realized that she wanted to conceal her feelings from the manager and that her feelings were more in line with my own. I almost moved nearer to her protectively, although of course this was a symbolic idea only.

"Can I decide later? Put me down provisionally for the shorter leave, but so I can change it if I'm getting really tired."

"All right. I'll pencil it in as flexible." The boss clasped the rota book and pencil as if they were a royal crown and sceptre.

***

Ben poked the chimney violently with an old broom handle. He didn't want to call a chimney sweep; they sounded like something out of Victorian times instead of the modern world, and besides he always tried to do the jobs himself in his own house. He didn't want to give up having a real fire either, although they would have to be careful when the baby was born. You need a very strong fire guard for toddlers.

"I just like to pretend I'm in a place where they have real fires: a camp or somewhere, and there's no accounts office because it's a different century and all the taxes are worked out by the King's men, or somebody." Ben remembered that conversation, and he still meant it.

He wasn't sure where Alicia had got to; out looking in babywear shops again most likely. She seemed to be neglecting him with all this new excitement.

From My Journal

I am hidden under Alicia's coat as she looks into the shop windows. Her coat is a thick plaid, double-breasted, and it lies heavily upon me and the other beads in the string, holding us almost completely still. The only way I can see the world outside is through the same kind of vision I used in my dream of the woodland: soul vision that sees the real world as if from above. No wonder I was only able to dream of real places when I tried to dream like a person.

"Winter babies are best; you don't get so hot carrying them." Those are Alicia's thoughts, not my own, and already many months have gone by. I am starting to read her thoughts more and more, and it is possible someone will say that her baby is possessed, but I hope not. I try to be unobtrusive, to shrink back from this family, but they feel like my term project at a university.

Alicia buys a new-born-sized baby suit. People are always superstitious around buying things for new babies; they are afraid the baby could die. I see that her baby is very well, and she has no need to worry. The succubi are afar off doing their work, and this is not one of their cases. I open my mouth without thinking to tell Alicia that everything will be all right, but then I freeze because she won't hear me, and even if she did she would think she had gone mad to have lighted on a spirit in one of her beads.

***

Ben had got the fire going and he was proud that he hadn't needed to call an expert to unblock the chimney. The flames reminded him of melted honey, dripping from a picnic sandwich on a very hot summer day. Honey sandwiches sound like something that only unconventional people would eat, and Ben remembered his childhood as quite conventional. He didn't want to be thought eccentric, but neither did he want to be called 'a boring accountant.'

He started the preparations for dinner in case Alicia was late back. He wanted to be seen to be helping at this time, even though she had reduced her hours and was only working half the time she did previously so that she could avoid going off too soon on full maternity leave. It seemed a long time before her key turned in the door, and Ben had got right up to the gravy.

"Oh, Ben, there was no need to do all that. We could just have had a quick snack, or a takeaway."

"You need to eat properly, and takeaways are a bit spicy for you- the ones we like, anyway."

"Don't treat me as if I'm fragile or I'll start to feel like it."

"Just thank me for making the dinner, and sit down!"

"All right- thank you, Ben. Don't you want to see what I've bought?"

"Baby things, I expect. Show me afterwards."

From My Journal

Alicia is in hospital and I am privileged to be packed in her hospital bag, but she doesn't get me out. She wears a nightdress for the full three and a half days she is in there and her jewellery, consisting of a ring, a bangle, the necklace I am in and for some reason a hair slide, remains rolled up inside a sponge bag like the one where she keeps her make-up, only smaller. The box with its ridge where I usually lie at night is back at home on her dressing table.

Muffled through the bag I hear moans, voices, screams (but only one or two and not all Alicia's) and much crying from babies. I don't want to come out of the bag and use my panoramic 360-degree spirit vision to take in every detail of a maternity ward. Better to pretend I am just a bead, and rest in the bag.

The first night I almost miss the box with the ridge; strange what habit can do to you. Then I hear Alicia speaking in a cooing voice to the baby. She's calling him Charlie. She sounds so loving, so patient, though he must be difficult to manage.

I am about to feel jealous of Charlie, and then I catch myself in time to stop myself turning into a pet when I am still a mineral. 'Animal, vegetable, mineral' as some of the humans say- two steps away from being a pet.

I know Ben is jealous; already, without ever having seen Charlie, but I can only speculate that perhaps all human men feel the same. I know where he is, as well: he's doing those extra hours at the accounts office that he agreed to do in anticipation of becoming a father. He'll be coming to visit Alicia and Charlie tomorrow.

_Next Day_ : I think perhaps I was wrong about Ben being jealous. Everything seems all right after all, and I can hear him speaking to the two of them with affection and excitement. He sounds genuinely thrilled. He has brought biscuits and grapes, and two baby toys.

### Chapter 4

Ben had left his job at the accounts office. He just walked out one day, telling everyone that it stifled him; he couldn't be free, and the longer hours he had been doing just made it worse so that he had to get out.

Alicia was devastated. She immediately told him to leave the house as well; with a young baby to support she would get more help if she was on her own.

Ben became angry that she couldn't stand by him in his decision, and he packed some suitcases and moved to a friend's house, telling her they would sort out the house they owned jointly at a later date.

From My Journal

Nestled in the necklace box in Alicia's dressing table drawer (for she rarely wears jewellery now) I wonder... yes, you have guessed what I wonder. Was it my fault, for my whisperings about the adventure of chaos above order? I keep asking myself, "should I have left this young family alone?"

Alone to perish some other way, for so many of these romantic unions do not survive when there is a crisis, or when children come along. My whisperings were only gentle, not strongly insistent, and I could never bear to ruin Charlie's life even though I have known him such a short time.

***

Ben wheeled his motorbike out towards the open road. He had started putting money away for it the previous year, before Alicia had any plans to have a baby, and he had only added the final instalment before buying it, so he didn't feel that he was being irresponsible. Disloyal maybe, for having walked out through the door, but Alicia had told him to leave. Possibly she would change her mind, and if and when that happened he would be happy to return- unless their relationship had broken down completely by then and they were both with other people.

Riding the motorbike made him feel free, as indeed it had been a symbol of freedom for some previous generations. To be defined as an aggressive biker would be just as restrictive a label as it would have been to let the appellation 'boring accountant' define him, and he was determined that neither definition would restrict him and hem him into a box.

He would find a new job, of course, one which involved riding: a courier perhaps, or even pizza delivery. Neither Alicia nor anyone else would be able to accuse him of not working for his living. His friend Nat with whom he was staying worked in a post office, and at the moment even that appeared to Ben to be a box wherein its workers were imprisoned.

When had these ideas first come to him? It wasn't fair to say that it was when Alicia had announced her pregnancy. Charlie was here now, a person, and he would never reject his son. It must have been that day when he was cleaning the mud off the carpet, and a feeling within him had begun its approach towards critical mass.

From My Journal

I couldn't connect with Ben that day when he was cleaning off the mud, although I did try. Not my fault, then.

***

"Contagion from Alicia, though? She turned towards you."

It was Ben's guardian angel that had spoken: not the HGA, the one that Christians and Jews call the guardian angel- the godly one. He addressed his remark not to any bead but directly to Ben himself. Ben did not hear it.

There is a technique some parents use, and some marital partners, in which they address a pertinent remark to the dog. Their eyes never leave the dog's face, and they pronounce their opinion in an easy conversational tone, ostensibly for the dog to ponder on and contemplate a possible reply. No sign is given that the remark was intended for someone else, and if it is done cleverly no-one else dares to jump in front of the dog and answer them.

From My Journal

It is night-time, and I am with Alicia as she feeds and changes Charlie and tries to comfort him. Financially she is better off as a single parent, but emotionally she would like support when Charlie cries.

People think of Mars as a male planet, but although I am (as I previously stated) a Mars bead, I am predominantly female. My stance towards Charlie is motherly, and towards Alicia is that of a female friend or relative who hopes she didn't speak out of turn about the relationship that has now fractured.

Please wear your necklace, Alicia. I don't mind being in the box with the ridge; it's not that, it's you. You are very alone even with Charlie here.

As for my several remarks about necks breaking.... I will not say that I didn't mean them. I did notice how your collarbone is rather hollow and is not well reinforced against the vicissitudes of life in the city. I notice such matters, and how the vulnerable perish easily leaving a necklace to pass onto new necks; perhaps as an heirloom or perhaps in a box of low-level junk. It may become the centre of a creepy film: the mysterious pearl necklace that survived its owner, and was found in the opening frame of the film.

***

Alicia and Ben sat in the solicitor's office some distance apart from one another.

"We usually advise you to see a counsellor first, before going straight to a divorce lawyer," the solicitor said.

"It isn't about divorce," Ben answered in a strained voice. "It's just...we're living apart, and we want to know about the legal position with the house."

"There's a baby, isn't there? The house is the baby's home. That's why you should speak to a counsellor about the family side of things- the legal position is secondary to that."

"Can't you just tell us what we can do with the house legally?"

"I'm trying to tell you that, sir. Go and have a chat with the family counsellors about your relationship and the baby, and then come back."

"Well, that was no use," Alicia said as they left.

"No, and meanwhile I'm homeless, on Nat's sofa. I want to do a job on a bike, but not to spend my whole life on the road."

"Well, when you get another job we can discuss you coming back."

"That's no good. Suppose I did something else you thought was too unconventional and then you pushed me out again? I'd never know where I was. Leave it a bit- I want to think about it. I'm not doing what a counsellor says."

"Neither am I," said Alicia, and walked off to pick up Charlie from her sister Janette's house.

From My Journal

The other Mars beads are puzzled, in their semi-conscious way, about where I have gone. They thought I would show up as a distant bright speck attached to a necklace, a spark they could see swinging around a warm, perspiring neck that damps the air slightly around itself. Instead the box with the ridge, which I disliked from the start, has become my home and Alicia wears smocks with wide collars, jeans and no jewellery except her wedding ring. Even that she is beginning to have doubts about.

Perhaps I could impress her to give me away before I become too attached to her? It could be dangerous to be attached too much- and to Charlie as well.

Charlie likes to play with anything that dangles down. He has some hanging toys in his nursery, and if Alicia was wearing her necklace he would like to reach up and pat it and make it swing to and fro. It's possible he would break it, and that might be one of the reasons why she no longer wears it.

If my suggestion that she should give me away is serious I will have to try pointing her in the direction of charity shops, or friends who are a bit short of trinkets and would love some to be passed on to them. Try to make her think about such things. But when I link my mind with hers I notice she has a belief in 'those years when you are building your family, during which you put many things aside and take them up again later.' She wants to take up wearing necklaces later, along with a host of other related activities, and she does not want to give anything away that she will want again because by then it will have become more expensive.

All right, then- I shall hibernate in this box. It is nothing compared to how long the Djinn in the lamp has to wait to be let out, or the guardian in the tomb who nips those who open it. She will probably be thirty by then with two children, both Ben's, and a new boyfriend on the horizon, having finally split up with Ben. The children will be in school and Alicia will have started going to dances and social events wearing all her jewellery, new shades of make-up and fashionable shoes.

This journal will have to be suspended for a while. But who has written the other parts, which are not from my journal? That's strange. Still, it is not my concern now. My role now is to dream.

### Chapter 5

Alicia opened the box and got out the necklace of which I am part. She held me up and whispered, "It's a special occasion."

So, no interval of five years, then; it had only been two. Come on, I'm sure you didn't want to hear every detail about Charlie's first tooth and first step. That would have been so sentimental. And Cora's birth, too; I was right, the second child WAS Ben's, but he didn't always live there. He had his own flat, and did courier jobs from time to time.

As Alicia dressed herself in Pagan- looking garments and bangles it emerged that she was going to be the Queen of the May. If she liked it she might stay with the group who had arranged the pageant, and might even study their Pagan religion more deeply. They honoured equally the maiden, the mother and the crone, and had arranged childcare for anyone in the pageant who happened to be a mother.

"You being unconventional at last, Alicia? I'm still way ahead of you. Better not tell Janette." That was Ben's only comment, and Alicia was reassured that Ben didn't consider her a bad mother.

I relished my freedom- to slap the flesh around a neck again and the material lying round the neck as well. Swinging freely (a helter-skelter compared to my previous immobile state) I took in how Cora looked, her red mouth open in an uneven oval, how Charlie looked now, walking in short trousers, and the new art décor posters in the bedroom. I was looking forward eagerly to establishing a relationship with Cora and feeling concerned about her welfare the way I did with Charlie. First I would check out the child-minder Alicia was taking them to; I might as well make sure it was the kind of person I would leave them with if I was going to take part in the May pageant myself.

But I never got there. Don't get me wrong- Alicia did. Even the rest of her necklace did. But I was pulled suddenly away from the bead, into a clear air that was to me like the world outside its shell would be for a snail. The person who had pulled me there was small and green, a nature spirit.

"I'm cleaning, before the parade," he said. "Can't have you in her necklace when she's representing the Goddess. You split her up with her children's father- why?"

The sting of being falsely accused added itself to the strange new sensations I was experiencing. "I merely suggested introducing some chaos into a far too stagnant life," I said. "Last time I checked that did not constitute splitting people up. I was surprised and concerned when Ben left the house, and did not suggest he should leave."

"Oh. All right, I'm sorry, then. But go somewhere else- not near Alicia."

"I'm fond of Alicia!" I exclaimed. I'd never put it so clearly before, not even to myself.

"No, no, no. That's not right. No. Go somewhere else."

How had the nature spirit ejected me from the bead? He appeared to be connected with plants and animals, and he was small and weak. He must be linked with some power source that had enabled him to do it, and it was years since I had connected with my own source. I wasn't even sure if it was Mars or something else. My feathers, which you may remember me saying were rolled up inside the bead, stood out freely now and I was like a peacock surrounded by plumes.

"You seem to be female, and a pretty thing," he said. "You can come with me if you like and be one of my sweethearts. Just keep away from Alicia."

"I might come with you later, but first I need to get used to these changes," I said, and as I flew away I wondered why ever I had said that. It must be because it was May, that mating festival, but surely it would be humiliating to fall in love with someone who had defeated me?

But I had won with Alicia. She had left that life that stifled her, possibly forever, and Ben had left it even before she did. Maybe their lives were not radically different from when I had first met them, for there are certain constraints in human society that they could only go outside it they wandered off into a desert. But the changes had happened that were beneficial, linked not only with deaths in the family as I described before but also with Ben and Alicia's own decisions. It would benefit their children in the future- which reminded me, was all I ever saw of Cora to be that one vignette? I should have taken a photograph, as the human beings would say.

Over the next few months several things happened. I spent a while as the nature spirit's partner, and said nothing about the conflict that had occurred between us at the beginning- except for once when I queried mildly, "did Alicia join your religion in the end?"

"Yes," he said.

"MY victory," I muttered, and he definitely heard me but paid no attention. I've learned that human beings make a big deal of the rivalry between chaos religions and nature religions, but I cared nothing for which of the two she joined so long as she didn't stay in that unawakened state of mind that depressed her and frankly bored her.

The other main event was that I began to take an increasing interest in Ben's earring. As part of his new image Ben wore a single earring on one side, being careful not to make it a 'gay' decoration as he was straight. There was no-one protecting him the way there had been with Alicia on that fateful day, and it occurred to me that I could slip into Ben's earring and in that way maintain a connection with all of the family. He sometimes took Charlie and Cora out, and of course he spoke with Alicia regularly about where he was taking them for the afternoon. Usually it was somewhere like a beach or a flower garden, because Cora was really still a baby.

It would have to be after this little Puck fellow had become tired of me, otherwise he would suddenly interest himself in Ben's case whether Ben was a Pagan or not. He looked to see where I went, but never looked to see where Ben went. Eventually the moment came when my pixie-like friend (I know his name, but I won't write it in my account) had a new love interest in his life and forgot about me.

"I'm going to another area," I said. Was that a lie? I meant Ben area, not Alicia area.

"Fine," he said. "Goodbye. Come back later, if you want to."

I went straight over to Ben's ear. I never severed Alicia's neck, did I? And I was quite sure I could be trusted with Ben's ear. An earring is more awkwardly shaped than a bead, and as you will remember I was accustomed to say, "I am a bead", whereas it didn't feel right to say, "I am an earring". When you go through the mineral kingdom you might be a diamond, but it isn't man-made. A bead is, but feels as though it isn't, and an earring definitely is. "I don't think I'm a mineral any more anyway," I pondered. "Where are the other Mars beads? I bet none of them have become earrings."

So I tried being Ben's earring, or being in his earring, or in his ear, or having his ear, or something. Ben didn't seem to notice; except he scratched his ear a bit. I found myself constantly impatient with him, even though I approved of his new lifestyle. That feeling had never occurred with Alicia. I missed the way a necklace swings, for the ear moves when the whole head moves and that doesn't really count as movement- it might as well be stock still.

Ben's motorbike was quite jarring. I was with him all the way on the 'Easy Rider' way of life, as far as you can without (as I said before) wandering off into a desert, but I found the sound and vibration very unappealing. I had so preferred Alicia's sedate walk, her fingers laced through the handles of a bag and her eyes watering a little as the wind blew on her face.

Sometimes it felt like a kind of masochism, a putting myself in jail in the confines of the earring despite having tasted freedom when I was released unexpectedly from the bead. Was I like a rat crawling back into the dirt? But a piece of jewellery is quite clean in its construction, and the metaphorical meaning of dirt is too insulting. If by dirt is meant the making of suggestions to Ben, I didn't do that often and when I did it was only like a friend who wants to help. Ben didn't respond much anyway. He had changed once and was at the plateau stage, not yet ready to change any more.

I tried to make up for my single glance at Cora when Alicia had opened the necklace box by seeing more of her now, when Ben took her to the park. She liked to point at things like butterflies and follow them with her eyes; however, she never followed me, and it was left to me to follow her with my eyes, and enjoy the contact.

If the little Puck fellow had known I was missing the chance of getting to know Cora, he would have suggested himself and me having several children. "What you need is some children of your own to look after," he would have said.

"Maybe I will have some in a few years' time," I thought, "and maybe even his children when I do, but they won't be like Cora."

### Chapter 6

I stayed in Ben's earring for a long time. Nobody detected me there, and those who would throw me out of the earring for little more than an abstract principle did not approach and find me. Slowly I began to feel contented again, being around the people I wanted to watch and associate with.

In the end I left, and when I did it was for a collection of cups with jewels around the rim which Ben won in some competition in the pub and stashed away in a cabinet. They were sports trophies of some kind, not as valuable as they looked but very ornate. I didn't feel like a bead now or indeed any mineral; I felt like a person seeking houses to live in, and preferring ones that included a gemstone feature around the door, equivalent to a cottage with a thatch of roses. I lived in those cups and looked out of the cabinet into Ben's living room with its pleasing scenery: his children and their mother, who visited often, other relatives and friends, Ben's beer mugs and heavy metal CD's.

Alicia sometimes wore Pagan-style dresses now when she visited, and I loved the velvet and imitation silk. I was planning to go back to the little green fellow soon and 'build my family' as Alicia had done, but I didn't know how I would explain to him that I was living in Ben's cup collection and still watching Alicia and her children.

In the end I had my family with someone else, and both of us haunted Charlie's school where we tried to impress the children to step out of those boundaries of social convention and assert their own individuality as creative self-determined beings. Some of the children responded, and of those who did most were not even labelled 'naughty' by the teachers. That I considered to be our victory, comparable to my earlier victory with Alicia.

I had become a subversive among children; however, to subvert means to turn away and I did not turn the children away from anything, only towards their inner nature which should not be suppressed by the educational system but should be allowed to come out. The children would be eternally grateful when it led to adult lives that were more fulfilled without having to go through that barren period that Alicia and Ben were passing through when I first entered their lives.

I realize that I have given a lot of details about Alicia and Ben's private life, but not much about mine. That's just me. My children did not bother themselves with influencing human beings; however, I was very interested in doing this, just I had been before.

In Charlie's school the bell rang: a digital sound, unlike the clanging bells of earlier times that were lipped like church bells and swung like them too. Charlie looked up and saw the teacher gathering her papers together in readiness to leave the classroom, and the bullies moving towards the door eager to accost some unfortunate victims in the corridor. The school bullies didn't bother Charlie because his eyes, although predominantly inquisitive as they roved around the classroom, had a habit of going hard if anyone gave him a challenging look. It implied that he would give as good as he got. He was not in the habit of proving this by getting into fights; in the main his state of mind was questioning and wondering about what he saw in his surroundings- a good quality in a child I believe.

He looked in his rucksack to see what Alicia had given him for lunch and found stout sandwiches with meat and salad fillings, fruit and one or two biscuits of a wholemeal variety. He headed for a seat beside the school fountain and sat down with three friends, the same boys with whom he usually ate lunch.

As they talked about boyish subjects like football Charlie was looking inward, contemplating thoughts that had been sparked by the lesson they had that morning. Yet he would never have revealed to the others that he was introspective, for it did not fit the image of a successful young male.

He looked down as he ate, and just below him at an angle were woodlice walking. Charlie watched them carefully and asked himself whether his interest in them meant he might become a scientist later on, a biologist for example, or whether it marked him out as a philosopher. He had a keen eye for detail and always thought about the deeper meaning of what he could see.

His mother encouraged this scientific or philosophical bent as well as she was able to, but she did not share these characteristics herself, seeming more concerned with the pragmatic realities of daily life. She often watched him for a few minutes, then shook her head and laughed and said he must take after someone a few generations back in the family: someone who had been forgotten.

I was very pleased with Charlie and began to watch Cora more in case she should need my help with becoming as promising a specimen of human being as her brother. This was difficult for me, however, because Cora was still in the infant part of the school and I couldn't get in there. Maybe someone thought I was a succubus, but the briefest of glances at me would have told them that my partner was someone like myself, not a human being, and we even had children of our own.

So instead I watched Cora at Ben's flat. It felt familiar and untidy here, like home, and I glanced fondly at the cups and hoped Ben would not sell them. Cora seemed to be taking a while to decide what kind of personality she was going to have. I thought of it as what personality she would cultivate, but Ben and Cora and especially Alicia took the view that there was no control over how she would develop, and it was all due only to nature. At one moment she would be wide-eyed, inquisitive like Charlie, and then the next she shot into a different mode at some random tangent and became helpless, or imitative of conventions, or lost on a plane of her own choosing that was obscure to others.

Are you wearying of this family? I am actually quoting what I said to myself; I asked myself whether I was wearying of them, and was shocked that I should even consider it. Yet opinions both spoken and unspoken that I should not concern myself so much with their affairs had wormed their way into my mind and prompted from below until that sudden thought erupted upon the surface. I am sure it is the same with your mind.

The world is wide, as the saying goes, and there are many places and experiences with which I could concern myself. In the end I concluded that it was the opposition at Cora's school which had led to me contemplating the breadth of the world, just as a human being might be led to contemplate doing their Christmas shopping much too early due to the innocuous looking presence of a radio in the living room.

At Charlie's school I was entrenched- I was part of the furniture, so it seemed to me best if I continued to base my work there (despite the possibility that some fools would believe I was in love with Charlie.) Beads roll, and they gather no moss or dreams from that which they roll over and press to their will. Although I was no longer a bead, unhelpful attachments still did not stick to me, and I was still a flattener and no respecter of persons' ideas and ideals.

Children do love to roll things along the floor; both items that are made for it such as marbles and tennis balls and others not made for it like the round parts of toys. As I watched them I always identified with these items being rolled, for they were so like beads in the way they moved and reacted to being pushed. As a bead, I could have rolled all the way around the school and collected who knows what information about the various occupants of the building; perhaps enough to analyse their needs and perhaps sufficient to get them into a lot of trouble with some authority figure.

But now, no longer beady in my eyeing of these people, I contented myself with looking down most of the time-and it jogged my memory of that time looking at the floor in Alicia's office which now seemed so long ago. Alicia was thinking these days about going back to work part-time; however, with Cora so young she made no moves to do this and remained a full-time mother.

A year passed. I remember the day when Alicia got the children ready for their trip with exceptional clarity. It was to be a journey to the site of some standing stones, not just for one day but for a week-long festival. They would be camping on a temporary site similar to the ones that are set up for music festivals. It was a mark of how much Alicia had changed, that she would subject the children and herself to roughing it like that in an environment so close to nature. I was full of foreboding, afraid that something would happen to them, although strangely Ben was very casual about it and did not share my concerns.

If this account was a feature film, they would all be dead by the roadside. But I have no interest in manipulating my audience's feelings so shamelessly. What would I do with a wheelbarrow load of emotions, wasted on unreal manikins when they should be lavished upon the living and breathing who need them? See what I did- now you are thinking my family who I watch over are unreal. What I am in fact saying is that beings such as myself are often guilty of feeding on feelings, but I am quite full up, thank you, and have no intention of doing that. The Pagans at the gathering by the standing stones would have been the first to accuse me as soon as they saw me, but as you observe, no car crash, no poisonous snake attack, and no tears on YOUR cheeks- yes, I'm addressing you. Sometimes I miss my journal.

The family did, however, get lost- and not in a hospitable place but in a wilderness area full of treacherous ditches tangled with brambles. Alicia was driving; she had recently learned to drive and had acquired a second-hand car slightly battered around the edges. She meant to take the children straight there without any diversions, but took a wrong turning and ended up with the car's wheels almost snagged to a standstill by the weeds on the narrow dirt road.

Cora's eyes went straight to the dark expanse beneath the soil and leaf-mould on the ground, which turned swampy a little further into the wood. She had never shown any psychic abilities before and I was proud of her, while still preoccupied with the danger.

Alicia looked from the steering wheel to the knotted brambles and she was about to lose it, I could see. She was still far too inexperienced as a driver to keep calm. For my part, I was looking around for someone who could help her; maybe a Pagan who had strayed over here deliberately to do a little exploring, rather than by accident as she had done.

But no-one showed up, and after ten minutes she gave up trying to make the wheels turn and said, a little breathlessly, "Come on, you two, we'll have to get out and walk." Charlie looked pleased, as if he thought it was going to be fun, and said, "all right, Mum." Cora however appeared solemn and kept her eyes down, still fixed on the ground.

Alicia hurried them out of the car, locking it and hoisting her rucksack of essential items for the festival onto her back. They began to walk, and the uneven ground almost formed into a path several times but then reverted to a precursor of marshland. The ground was spongey, and the hour nearer to evening than Alicia and myself would have liked.

An old man with very wild hair crossed their path; he had a rucksack too, and a dirty shirt with the tails hanging out, and mud-encrusted shoes. Alicia wasn't sure whether she should trust such a person. But then he turned and looked at her and quoted in a low voice the exact thoughts I had in my mind, adding at the end "so says the spirit who watches over you."

I was stunned to have my presence so suddenly announced to Alicia who would never have suspected it, and to have the privacy of my thoughts violated- something about being glad to see her so freewheeling now, but worried for the children. Perhaps she would think I was her grandmother, spoiling things.

To my surprise, Alicia did not react to this information but instead pursed her forehead in a frown and asked, "do you know where the camp for the festival is from here? Are we going the right way?"

"Just follow me- I'm on my way back there. Sitting around there all day's no way to get insights; I'd rather walk here, alone."

The children had gone very quiet when the stranger first appeared, but now Cora asked tentatively, "is he taking us somewhere for dinner, Mummy?"

Alicia gave a short laugh, but she didn't sound amused or even happy. "Dinner and bed for you two, I hope," she said.

"Oh, not bed," objected Charlie. "Can't we run around the camp and see everything?"

"Only if I'm with you. You'll be getting yourself lost, or burnt or something. And I've still got to arrange for someone to help me pull the car out of the ditch."

"Oh." The scruffy old man paused. "You should have said. I can go back with some of the other men and pull out your car. Do you want to do it now?"

"Thank you, it's very good of you, but I need to get the children sorted out first."

He smiled suddenly. "You mums are all the same. You could leave them in the crèche."

Alicia shook her head. "Tomorrow I might, but not the first evening."

At this point I detached myself and moved away. I had no wish to watch rootless Pagan types pulling a car out of brambles, attending rituals and supervising children cleaning their teeth. Am I being harsh, when it was me who encouraged Alicia to change her lifestyle in the first place? I think most of all I was reluctant to have someone else identify me, and point me out loudly to all and sundry.

I made my way across the fields to an area long neglected by man: a gully carved deep into the side of a steep hill that human beings could not reach by climbing down without being in danger of falling, and being dashed on the rocks below. I filtered myself into the cave at the back of the gully and moved for a while along a tunnel inside the hill.

I recalled Alan Garner's tale about a long journey through tunnels and caves under the ground. It is supposed to be an initiatory test, but doesn't it make those of you who need to breathe feel claustrophobic to think about moving through stretches of terrain where you must pull yourself through semi-flooded tunnels with low ceilings? And you must keep moving forward, or else be stuck there forever. I had no such problems, of course; my mind raced through sequences of rolling, once more a bead, through grooves in the middle of the earthwork, while my actual movement was a glide through the centre of the available space making constant minor motor adjustments. Even though I will never be a bead again my movements are still a swing not unlike a roll and with a far greater degree of control. The sense of weight of the ground above me, and lack of air in some places, was to me a curiosity that I observed like a scientist gathering data about a natural process and himself immune from being harmed by it.

As I approached further into the centre of the hills it became warmer, as if the fire at the Earth's core had thrown off a miniature spark of itself and projected it here to heat up a former bead and declare to that bead its existence. The round, fiery swirl reflected itself in every pebble, every fruit, every grain of sand and the prototype for we beads in our original bouncing form. I felt close to my origin- the forge that had smelted me and the others.

I descended further, through solid rocks and along tunnels, nearing the centre of the Earth with its molten rocks forever swirling in a concentric circle. I heard a voice above me which declared, "as CS Lewis wrote, "'many fall down and few return to the sunlit lands." That cleric had a sense of humour and we were frequently the butt of his jokes- you too."

"That I know," I replied, "but I have taken the joke to new territories: jungles wherein man cannot see where we the beads and other hard minerals begin and where his own soul ends. Our birth is allegedly underground in seams below the Earth, but who of mankind has ever been there to witness that? Have they cut the umbilical cords of the rocks and borne us to the surface, there to extract our energy like coal and wrap us around their necks like trinkets won at the fairground? I was liberated from the mineral bead by a green sprite who thought it was a Pagan cleansing rite, and what I am now is like unto man but not yet at the stage that the animals and man have reached. My heart is still hardened, squeezed tight into a ball that you may thread on a string, and yet the bead is falling. All the beads are falling, falling into a design and when it is fixed those who saw a fractal in it will wonder what they can see now that it has stabilized into a single unit."

"Go back!" cried the voice. "Do not enter into the Earth's core where you will dissolve, and have to start this process of which you speak again from the beginning. Beware of descending too far now that you can travel of your own volition instead of simply rolling, or being rolled by someone else."

"I will rise, then," I said. "But I sense that my protégée Alicia is also going to descend to the centre of the Earth tonight, just like me. Her descent will be symbolic only and she may not even be paying attention enough to notice it. She may be too busy wondering if she should wipe Charlie's nose. But the intention will be there. At times like this I must leave her, without that sprite prompting me to leave as he would do if he knew that I was here; of my own judgement I must go, and I think I shall unite myself with the wind that blows past Ben's motorbike and whips around his head, tearing a hole in the air that surrounds him as he rides."

### Chapter 7

What is this place that I have arrived at? It is some sort of clearing house for those who were formerly something like a Mars bead and now have evolved, so that the planetary attribution is gone, and the outer form is gone. No Mars, no bead, and no secure ground on which to lay one's head prior to sleeping on the bare earth and then, like the white dove who sailed the skies in Bob Dylan's song, sleeping in the sand.

I sit here humbly with my hands folded in my lap- so unlike me, for I am overawed by the difference and unusually subdued. Several flame-tipped beings are shepherding me to a new fold under which my new wings will be folded until they open unburdened and emboldened. It feels initiatory, a new flesh and new start in the same world where that bead-threader originally slid me up the shaft of a necklace wire.

Am I to be something like Charlie, instead of merely watching Charlie and encouraging him to be a rebel like his parents? But then, his parents' rebellion is now seen as pretty tame due to changes in society which waits for no-one as it moves forward.

I expected to struggle out of there as though lifting my arms and legs out of a chrysalis, but instead I transited smoothly to the mines where people were digging out minerals such as those they use to make metallic beads. (However it must be mentioned that in modern times many beads are plastic and devoid of life in the classic animal-vegetable- mineral pattern and only have a robotic structure derived secondarily from minerals.)

These mines barely scratched the surface of the Earth. The miners and their leaders seemed not to realize how far down the mine shafts could go and what was going on in all the many layers leading down to the Earth's core; either they had never investigated the matter or else they deliberately wished to keep their operation within the bounds of an uneducated person's limited understanding. One can see why with a gold rush, but it's hard to see why when it only relates to the production of everyday strung beads.

I landed on the grass beside the mine and was with a crowd of spirits: mostly the guardian angels of the individual miners, who have a hard time of it when their charges are daily exposed to danger that is an unavoidable part of their profession. They looked at me without reaction, although the thought did flit across the mind of one of them that I had lately been tied to a bead and within the mineral kingdom myself. I went straight away and stood by that one, and asked, "How do I proceed now?"

"You can be born as a plant and then an animal," he replied. "Or as an animal straight away, which is faster evolution, but for that you will have to throw out a line to the one who set you on your path as a chaos influence that shakes people out of complacency. Throw out a line to her, and hold it without letting go."

My surprise was total. "Who is she?" I asked. "I've always made my own decisions about what to be."

"There will be someone," the angel replied, "and because I said 'her' that's probably given you the idea that I know who it is. But I don't – only that it's female, like you. You'll just have to shut your eyes and do it."

"Now? Shut my eyes now?"

"Yes- or in five years' time, or ten. You choose. I can't read your mind very well. I can see a motorbike and some sports cups. Go and sit in those for ten years if you like. You have to be ready for whatever you want to do next."

I reflected that he meant well, and it was better than no advice at all. But animals don't appear to have much in common with me.

***

Charlie was walking home from the young people's club, his hands in his pockets. He wondered whether all teenagers felt awkward, and as if the sky was falling when anything went wrong. He never suspected that I was still watching him, encouraging him to be adventurous.

All he was aware of was his home, his father affectionate but often absent, his mother attentive but wrapped up in her new relationship and life on a smallholding growing most of her own food. His sister was at a kind of boarding school, one without fees for poorer people, and he didn't know where his mother had managed to find it or why she hadn't sent him there too (unless it was because he so often looked after himself, in the flat that used to be Ben's.)

Science subjects at school were what he loved the most, but he was beginning to want parties and girlfriends as well and hoped that wouldn't lead to failing all his exams.

"Charlie needs me," I thought. "I can't leave him now. Surely no-one could object to my being his guardian angel?" This time I did mean the HGA and not the kind of guardian angels I had encountered outside the mine. I know what I meant, and I know what I am, but among human beings it is lost in the tangled web of competing theologies and philosophies, each one more confusing than the last. I knew that I didn't want to be his kitten.

"Even if men wore necklaces, I could never squeeze myself now into a rigid bead, and curl over and over until the momentum of the tight spiral hug leads me down a lighthouse staircase into the bejewelled caverns of the mountain king. I would be dizzy with such a fall- I would be vertigo; and now I know my name- it is Vertiga. It was never the bead- threader's name, it was my name all the time, and hers was Doreen. She was a plump everyday human called Doreen, and I was a dizzy spiral fall personified. Vertiga."

I looked sideways and saw Charlie taking a key from his pocket. Why was he having to let himself in, at only fourteen? Ben would be round later, but till then he would be fending for himself.

I found a convenient perch within the room from which to observe Charlie as he made himself a peanut butter sandwich, got out his homework and alternated the homework with a television programme for children slightly younger than himself. His school shirt was untucked round the waist, and flapped over his belt.

The cups were gone that used to be in Ben's cabinet, and now it held slightly alternative books that Ben had left behind when he started living most days with his new girlfriend. At one time I would have been sorry that the cups were no longer there, but only because I wanted to live in them, and now I didn't care. A sports cup, a body, this curtain rail on which I sat...all were one to me as possible places to reside and my attention was all on who, or what, was present in the room where I resided. The interaction was everything, whether it was with Charlie, a budgerigar or a would-be burglar. I would watch out for anyone like the burglar and defend Charlie- always.

From A Journal

I, a Mars bead, find myself part of this collage of fabric, felt, beads and feathers that has been hung up as a tapestry in the village hall. Classes are being held in the hall: yoga and portrait painting and card-making by computer, and people come and go throughout the week, walking across this main area to the small rooms where they attend their classes. They talk about what they learned last week and what they are going to do today. Also they gossip, and tell the news about their private affairs.

I am immobile here, wound tightly in a spherical perfection, and yet I feel that the movement taking place around me is going to have a very profound influence on what I become in the future. All the Mars beads are in different places. Is it chance or design? A strange kind of design: precise, like the tapestry of which I am a part, which was only permitted to adorn the wall here because it came second in a prize event.

I can't see the others. I expect them to shine, coppery and red, like a warrior shield of Mars, but I can only sense them faintly and cannot see them. What my comrades are doing I don't know, and what I am doing feels like nothing as I'm unable to move from the wall. We shall see how things unfold.

***

Alicia walked past the village hall, on her way to the shops.

# About the Author

Candy Ray comes from London, UK. She is passionate about the occult and religion and since discovering chaos magick she has adopted a new identity as a fiction writer. She lives in the south of England with her small family.

# Other books by Candy Ray

The Wizard From Vahan (Fantasy/Science Fiction Novella)

Jasper is an apprentice magician in a society of the future where chaos magick 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. The story explores the role of magicians in society, and the contrast between a great adept and a junior magician.

Copying A Master ( Novella 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 (as he did) 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.

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. In each story the action focuses on a different aspect of this plane: mediumship, lucid dreams, life after death, visionary alchemical experience and esoteric magick. Dive deep into these other worlds and you will find that they intersect with your own.

Chaotic Dreams

Five short stories of surreal and slightly dark fantasy. 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. Last two stories channelled from Ino.

The Rescue Circle (Novella)

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 he is.

The story of Eoss, from the first section of this book, continues in the Eoss Trilogy which Candy Ray wrote under her other pen name, Lena Chere.

Platara Mountain paperback, published by Austin Macauley

Mount Clexa self-published, paperback and free eBook on Smashwords.

Silver Manes self-published, paperback and free eBook on Smashwords.

Platara Mountain:

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.

Mount Clexa:

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.

Silver Manes:

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.

