Footprints
“I can’t talk you out of this?” I wheedled.
Elie and his best friend Paul sighed. “We’ll be fine,” Elie assured me.
“I’ll get lost,” Paul admitted, “but then Elie will save the day, as usual.”
“You’ve never been worried about us going off before,” Elie said.
All the more reason you should listen to me now, I thought. My intuitions were usually correct, and this camping trip of theirs, though planned for just a couple of days, had me completely spooked. But seeing their determination, I prayed it was not my intuition but just some silly random fear. I hugged Paul goodbye, then clung to Elie a few moments more than usual. He looked at me fondly. “We’ll be back safe and sound, I promise.”
“You’d better,” I threatened. “Anything happens, you know I’ll haunt you in the afterlife.”
Elie cringed in mock terror. “No worries. I’m not done with this life.”
I blew him a kiss, trying to look jaunty as he hitched up his backpack, and they strode happily out to the car. They’re big, strong, smart guys, I told myself, they’ll be fine.
That night, when Elie and Paul were scheduled to be in the Sierras, I had a dream. In my dream, Elie and Paul were sleeping by the side of the road. A light dusting of snow covered their sleeping bags and the road itself. Tucked in their sleeping bags like enormous caterpillars, they snored on, oblivious to the cold.
And equally oblivious to the man with the bloody knife trudging up the hill towards them like a vengeful ghost.
I placed myself between the man and the sleepers, and expanded into a sheet of Goddess light. My arms were out, palms facing the man with the dagger, creating a shimmering wall he could not cross.
The man with the knife stopped, uncertain, disoriented.
No need, I thought to him. They’re fast asleep. No threat to you.
He squinted up the hill, wavered.
I pursed my lips and blew, and the cold east wind blew through me, pushing him back, gently but firmly.
He gave one more searching glance towards the sleeping men.
Then he turned and went back down the hill, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in his wake.
I jolted awake to the sound of our clock radio blaring the news; two men in their twenties found dead outside of a small town in the Sierras.
Two men found dead! Terror gripped me. I forced the fear away; just give me a moment to get clear I said to my panic. I focused on Elie and Paul, holding their image in my mind, breathing steadily. Are they all right? I asked. I kept visualizing their faces. The light around them did not dim or waver. Calm suffused me. They were all right. I was sure of it.
The next night, when they came home safely, as promised, they told me their story.
They had driven as far as they could, and then, too sleepy to go any farther, had parked their car by the side of the road, simply unrolled their sleeping bags on the other side of the road under some pines, and gone to sleep.
They woke the next morning with a sheriff kicking them lightly in the feet to see if they were still alive. They hitched themselves up on their elbows to find several nervous cops milling around with their hands on their guns. “You guys lose a couple friends last night?” the sheriff asked. Then he asked them to climb out of their sleeping bags real slow, so he could see their hands. After a bewildered Paul and Elie were patted down and their car searched, the sheriff gestured to the meadow below the hill. Other police were inspecting two bodies sprawled there, each surrounded by a wide fan of crimson. He turned their attention to the snowy road, and to the bloody footprints that had come within fifteen feet of them before turning back.
“Yup, I’d say you folks are darn lucky you’re deep sleepers. Fella probably heard you snoring. Hard to believe you slept through all that, but darn lucky you did.”
Hearing their tale, my knees buckled, and I collapsed. When they heard my dream they became very silent.
“Well,” Elie finally said, “I knew having a Witch girlfriend would come in handy.”
Vivid dream? Astral projection? Coincidence? Magic? I don’t know. Ursula LeGuin once said, “I think the universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.”
Ursula is right.