Mastery Year 3: Interlude 7

Hi, all, Daniel of 2019, here.

I sometimes struggle with what to write in these interludes because I have no particular news to report, but this time I have the opposite problem--I have news, BIG news, only I'm not going to tell you what it is, not yet. I will tell you eventually, probably in February.

I do have a major housekeeping note; this will be my last interlude as such. It's been planned that way for a while now, but the actual fact of it has crept up on my and I've only just now realized that's what this is. Bittersweet, isn't it?

My story proper ends on Brigit, this coming Brigid, so I won't do a pre-Brigid interlude. But Brigid will not be my last post--I'm going to do an epilogue because I want to tell the story of what happened in our community between my earning my ring and the beginning of this blog, plus there's this news I've been alluding to. Because I was not in constant contact with the school during those years, the journalistic format I've been using won't make sense. Instead, I'll simply take several posts--probably three or four--to tell you what happened. And that will wrap up the blog.

It will not wrap up the entire project. The blog will remain where it is so anyone may read it, in whole or in part, and links will still be posted to social media so new people will find out about the story and come read.

I am also seriously considering reformatting the entire thing as a book, in which case I'll use this blog to help publicize the book once it approaches publication. We'll see.

So, it's been a long, strange trip, and it's not over yet. Thank you for taking it with me.

-best, Daniel

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 6: Kris Kringle

The winter holiday season is in full swing, now. The Great Hall, as always, looks lovely.

By “winter holiday” of course I mostly mean Yule, that being the focus around here, but Christmas—or at least its penumbra (or would that be “corona,” given that Christmas is bright?)--is unavoidable, and then there’s Hanukkah and New Years and Orthodox Christmas and at least a nod to Kwanzaa (though I’ve never known anyone who actually celebrates it) and Zappadan (in honor of Frank Zappa) and so on and on. It all becomes a big, sparkly muddle of good food and music.

There are a couple of major events here on campus that characterize the holiday season, and two of them have happened already.

One is the first and last year party, for yearlings and graduating students and whichever of the masters who want to show up. It’s usually held sometime in November, though occasionally it’s earlier. It’s semi-secret in that nobody but the first- and last-year students (and the masters) seem to know about it—nobody ever says it’s secret, but nobody talks about it, either, and it seems to happen when nobody else is looking. Both years I was a novice but not invited it happened without my knowing at all, and even as a candidate I proved oblivious to it once.

This past year I spent time asking questions about how and why the school runs as it does, and I finally learned that the reason for the secrecy is pretty prosaic; the organizers simply try to keep the party out of the way of those who are not invited, and to avoid drawing attention to a party not everyone can attend. As to the how, Sharon quietly taps a graduating student who is good at organizing things. Of course, the party is a good deal better hidden than that, but people do have to be mysterious around here….

Now that I know how it works, I found it curiously easy to see the party. I didn’t attend (I don’t remember candidates attending either year I went), but it was just as obvious as any other large event one’s housemates might throw.

The other event is decorating the Great Hall.

The Great Hall is always decorated for the nearest holiday, except for Brigid, when the lack of special ornament is itself a decoration, but usually the transitions are gradual and accomplished with no special drama by the landscaping group and the janitorial group. Yule is an exception in that the transition from Samhain to Yule decoration is accomplished in a single night while all but a group of volunteers (who are never yearlings) sleep. Everybody else wakes up to find the place decked with holy and whatever else as if by elves.

I was such an elf three out of my four years as a novice, and loved it. For the past two years, though, I’ve been more or less preoccupied with my wife. I’m not complaining—her first year, my job was to distract her so her observant nature would not spoil the surprise, and I distracted her quite well. Last year, she wanted to continue the tradition. This year, I wanted to be an elf, though, and I wasn’t sure how to ask without seeming, well, unappreciative. Finally I just had bite the bullet and said it; can we please help decorate the Great Hall instead of going to bed this year? June found my awkwardness amusing, as she always does, and when she stopped laughing at me she said sure.

And so we were elves. With Charlie and Karen and a dozen or so students we wove and hung garlands and wreaths of cut evergreens interspersed with sprigs of winterberry holly. We filled the room with candles in ornate silver holders and little cut-crystal bowls of candy and fruit. And we put up the tree and decorated it with strings of white lights, tiny silver mirrors and little prisms, long ribbons of cream-colored satin edged in gold, strings of bright-red cranberries, glass balls of red, orange, and gold, and a flock of tiny, blown-glass birds in fantastic shapes and colors. On the top we placed a fairy doll with long, golden hair, a red, green, and silver-blue dress, and large, dragonfly-like wings.

The next morning, the novices were all suitably amazed. The morning sunlight glittered in the tree and the candle sticks and the candy bowls, and the dark evergreen foliage lent the whole place a mysterious, woodsy feel. With breakfast we had hot cocoa and complicated coffee drinks with cream and sugar and all sorts of flavorings and we sat around and admired the place. And then we all went about our day.

That night, after everyone else had retreated to their dorms or wherever else they went, June and I, Steve Bees and his wife, Sarah, and the two Joes collected in the Great Hall to admire the tree—the room was dark except for the tree lights.

I haven’t talked about the Joes in a long time. They’re a male couple, both named Joe. The shorter of the two, Security Joe, used to be the head of our security team around here before he retired. Cuppa Joe is like Sarah in that he was never a student here but lives on campus as the spouse of a community member. Security Joe is very stern, very gruff, very much on his professional dignity, but every so often he makes an exception, and he made one now by sitting curled up in his husband’s lap.

“You know who we don’t talk about enough?” he announced after a few minutes of silence. “Kris Kringle.”

“You mean Santa Clause?” asked Cuppa Joe.

“Maybe. I mean from Miracle on 34^th Street.”

“You mean the one who’s a little older than his teeth?” said Steve.

“I love that movie!” exclaimed Sarah.

“Isn’t everybody older than their teeth?” asked June.

“Not if they’ve always been toothless,” I said. “Like an anteater. Don’t anteaters not have teeth?”

“Only you would wonder about that,” said Steve, though I don’t think he’s right.

“Why do you want to talk about Kris Kringle?” asked Cuppa Joe.

“Because he’s so thoroughly magical! Like the kind of magic we do around here. Where does he ever, in the movie, do anything that can’t really be done? He doesn’t. When does he even give anyone a physical gift? He doesn’t. He’s an old guy living in a nursing home, he doesn’t have any money, he can’t buy a whole bunch of stuff. All the Christmas gifts happen in that movie are other people giving each other stuff because he somehow manipulates them into it—and not in a bad way. People just get more generous when he’s around. He's in exactly the right place at the right time to make a difference. And that's what we do, here."

The thing is, he's right.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 5: Thanksgiving

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving.

As per our usual, we went to my parents' house. We'll go to June's parents for Christmas and New Years, she got enough time off for that. I've always kind of wanted to stay on campus for Thanksgiving, just to see what it's like (I understand that, as with Christmas, there's nothing formal planned, but sometimes there are informal gatherings), but it appears that won't happen. Every year when I have the choice, I choose to do something else.

My brother and his wife and kids came too, and all the various aunts and uncles, and all in all it was a fairly mundane good time. Nobody comments on my weird school anymore--in fact, I'm not sure my aunts and uncles know I'm still a student, since I'm not in a degree program anymore. When they ask what I'm up to, I explain I'm working part-time for a landscaping company while teaching a few courses as an adjunct at my old school. It's not un-true, and while it's not the whole and complete truth, it gives them a more accurate picture than the complete truth would. I've gotten much better, more graceful at explaining myself, just as Allen said I would. My immediate family knows the whole picture, and they've gotten pretty graceful about it, too.

So we ate and played and cooked and cleaned (not in that order), and not much that's specifically memorable happened.

Except.

Towards the end of the evening, after the aunts and uncles left (I mean the older aunts and uncles; June and I and Cecilly were all still present) and before the dishes and such started, the kids talked us all into playing hide and seek. Not that I needed much persuasion; I always liked hide and seek as a kid, and the only reason I don't enjoy it more now is that I've gotten so tall that it's hard to fit myself into any decent hiding space.

Anyway, I ended up seeking the first round, so I didn't need to hide anywhere. I expected to find my brother first, because he's bigger than I am and has the same problem but worse. Instead, I found him next-to-last. Where was he?

He was standing in a corner on a bucket facing the wall. I'd walked right by him dozens of times.

I've gotten fairly used to feeling stupid over my obliviousness at school, but I hadn't thought it would follow me home. I thought I was on vacation from that particular kind of mortification. I'd thought wrong.

Curiously, one of my nephews tried a very similar trick, standing still in a corner behind a bookshelf. He hadn't known where his dad was hiding, so I guess maybe it's genetic? But I found the kid instantly upon walking into the room where he was.

What was the man doing that the boy wasn't?

Answer; my brother wasn't behind anything. He was in a place where it was literally impossible to hide, and so I hadn't bothered to look there. That is, he was using Charlie's trick of being where nobody was looking, but he was doing it in a circumstance-specific way. Had I not been looking for anyone, and therefore focused narrowly on the kinds of places where it is possible to hide, I would have seen my brother.

Hmmmm.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 4: Observation

I'm getting pretty good at seeing Charlie's absence.

As you may recall, I am somewhat belatedly attempting to meet Charlie's challenge--to learn how to see him even when he's made himself hard to see, and to make myself hard enough to see that I can sneak up on him and surprise him.

A tall order. Charlie's version of invisibility depends on quietly occupying space where people don't look. I've learned to do it myself, to some extent, and I know the technique can be defeated simply by being more aware--looking in the places where others don't. The problem is that Charlie is already aware of pretty much everything that happens around him. He doesn't have any obliviousness to take advantage of--and he's got to be watching for me especially, since he knows I'll be trying to sneak up on him.

I've divided the project into several stages.

First, learning to see Charlie even when he's hiding--which I've been practicing for about two weeks, now. I'm practicing by looking around for him every few minutes, even when I'm in places where he has no reason to be. I'm just getting myself in the habit of noticing whether he's around. I'm also making a point of noticing other things, glancing around rooms to see if anyone else is in it, whether anything has changed since I last was in there, and so forth. It's easier, I find, to be observant in quick bursts than expecting myself to be Sherlock Holmes Jr all the time. I've made progress here, as I explained last time.

Now, I've also started trying to learn more about Charlie. Does he really have no areas of obliviousness? Suppose his pattern of attention is just different--he looks in different, maybe more, places than other people, but does it follow that he looks everywhere? So where does he look? I've begun watching him.

Finally, I've decided I'm unlikely to be able to sneak up to him in plain view, as he has, until recently, been able to do with me. Instead, I'm going to have be somewhere, probably actually hidden, before he arrives and then emerge. I will have to emerge gradually--he says he never watches people when he isn't in principle visible to them, so part of the game is a kind of fair play; he has to be able to see me, and yet fail to see me, at least briefly before I say BOO.

So, I'm watching, trying to learn not only where Charlie looks and does not look, but also where he goes and when. And I don't want him to know I'm doing any of this, so I have to have plausible excuses for everything I'm doing. I have to seem normal. I have to not only seem to be paying attention to something other than Charlie, I have to actually be doing so, because he'd notice the subterfuge otherwise.

I'm thinking about all those stories where the student tries to fool the master and just can't. There's a scene like that in Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and there's a Zen story from somewhere about a teacher who hits the student every day with a stick until one day the student decides he's had enough and hits his teacher--and the teacher blocks him expertly. Then the real lessons begin. Am I about to be humiliated?

I think not. Because what those stories have in common is that the student has made a fatal error--assuming the teacher is as unskilled and oblivious as the student, or even more so. I know perfectly well Charlie is still miles beyond me. I'm treating him as an adversary of far greater skill who can only be defeated (maybe) if I apply all my skill and care and then some.

I may fail, but I will not be humiliated. I have no hubris to puncture here.

And so here I sit in the cooling dark of the Formal Garden, waiting to see whether Charlie will go in by the secret door, watching the last vestiges of the orange sunset in the extreme west. It was a very pretty sunset. I can hear him coming now, but I will not turn around.

It smells like snow.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 3: Invisibility

I realized something the other day.

I've completed my list of things to do to earn my ring, and I have Charlie's vote, but there is one thing he ashed me to do that I haven't gotten around to doing--learn how to see him when he's invisible and make myself so invisible that I can sneak up on him. I'd put that rather daunting project off for later and then I'd forgotten about it. And apparently Charlie is fine with me finishing without getting that part done, but I've realized I'm not.

And now is really a better time to do it, since Charlie is invisible far more often at this time of year.

I should point out that Charlie is never literally invisible. He doesn't even get hard to see the way Allen does. Rather, he occupies places where they eye simply does not look. He takes advantage of other people's obliviousness in order to find his privacy. That's why he's "invisible" more at this time of year--he's not available to students, and while he continues living on campus, he tries not to attract the notice of the students who spend the winter here, too.

I already know how to perform the trick myself. I seldom do it deliberately, but I often notice other people when I'm outside being quite and watching things, and they seldom notice me. I've learned to know when I'm hard to see and when I'm not, so that even when invisibility is not my goal (more like a side-effect) I can feel it come over me and know I'll have to de-cloak if I want to be seen--and de-cloak carefully so that I don't startle or frighten anybody.

But I doubt that my version of invisibility will work on Charlie, yet, since the whole point is to take advantage of other people's obliviousness and he doesn't have any, none I've never noticed, anyway.

He says that an advantage of becoming a hunter is that one learns how to think like prey, and prey cannot afford to ever be oblivious.

So I've put that part of it off for a while, and I'm focusing on how to see Charlie, not on how not to be seen by him--and strangely enough, I've done it twice this past week.

I'd asked him, back when he gave me the assignment, how I was supposed to be able to tell the difference between not seeing him because I haven't defeated his invisibility and not seeing him because he's simply not there. He said that if I learn how to tell if he is there, I will also learn how to tell if he's not. Wise words, I've decided.

So I've adopted a practice of, every few minutes, checking to see if Charlie is around. I look for an absence of Charlie, and I do this even in places where he could not possibly be, like in my bedroom or the shower. I'm just getting used to looking for him regularly, noticing whether he is there or not, rather than waiting passively for him to impinge upon my consciousness.

And twice, while I was checking for an absence of Charlie, I spotted his presence instead.

Once, I'm fairly sure he wasn't trying to be invisible at all, he was just walking down the road on campus and I happened to come out of the Meditation Hall and look left and there he was. But the second time he may indeed have been hiding, though not especially from me. He was crouched down behind a shrub at the back of the Mansion, looking at the ground and not moving. That he was wearing his brown school uniform--as he usually does--helped, since the ground was covered by mostly brown fallen leaves, but the main thing is he was where nobody would expect him to be.

I stopped to look at him and he, probably hearing my footsteps on the gravel and hearing my footprints stop, he looked up. We made I contact and I glanced at the ground he'd been watching and then looked at him, curiously. But he held up his finger for silence so I nodded and walked away.

Maybe when I see him next he'll tell me what he was looking at.

Mastery Year 3: Part 7: Post 2: Puppy

Happy Veteran's Day, I suppose.

We don't do anything for Veteran's Day, here, because the school year is over, the masters have retreated away from the school community, and the campus is quiet--as a school, we're not doing anything about anything until Yule. And there's the issue that patriotism itself isn't really much of a thing, here. A lot of the community members are pacifists of one kind or another, and many, whether they believe in violence or not, have little interest in mundane entities such as the United States of America.

But there are community members who have served--there are some serving now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there was a non-teaching master named Aurora in the first few years of the school who had retired after a career in the military. I think she did something or other in Korea, not combat, obviously, but something. And of course, Charlie's brother was a veteran. They should be acknowledged, somehow.

I think if Veteran's Day fell inside the school year and not outside it, Greg would do something, give some kind of talk.

Campus is particularly quiet, this year. Pretty much everybody except the yearlings and a few of the candidates are gone already. Chapel Hall is closed for the year, as is the Dining Hall, so the few of us who are left eat in the Great Hall and spend most of our time reading, hiking, or working on whatever catch-up projects we need to for this or that assignment while looking out the windows at the pale gray-brown and often-frozen world. The quiet is both metaphoric and literal.

And yet Eddie has a puppy.

Eddie, you may remember, doesn't have his master's vote to finish yet, despite his intention to receive his ring this coming Brigid. He hasn't asked for the vote because he feels he's not ready--he still hasn't recovered from the death of his dog, Elmo.

Maybe recovery isn't the right word. Integrated? Processed? Because Elmo didn't just die, he was shot by Joy after trying to kill Eddie--a crisis deliberately instigated by the masters, who assigned Eddie the task of training a dog he himself considered untrainable. He was set up to fail, in order to learn whatever he could from failure. And he hasn't learned it yet, so he says. He's stuck, not in grief, but in failure.

I'm unclear whether the masters couldn't offer useful help to Eddie, or of Eddie just didn't ask because he's so stuck, but either way, the school year ended without Eddie having any clear idea how to prepare himself to get his ring when he wants to. Steve asked him about it, and he reportedly shrugged.

"That's that," he said.

That's when Steve called a meeting of the candidate's group. Over the summer we pulled together to figure out how to get Steve and his wife and son out to visit a dying relative--that was the first time we acted as a problem-solving group. This was the second. We discussed how to get Eddie ready to receive his ring.

The thing is, besides Steve, there are four others who plan to finish on Brigid, and we all have our votes. That mean in theory, we should have everything it takes to be masters, including the ability to coach one of our own towards his ring.

Not that any of us had any idea what we are doing, but as Raven said, the actual masters didn't have any idea what they were doing when they started, either. So we gave it a shot.

We sat in a circle in the Great Hall, the eight of us, and talked and listened and threw around ideas, until Raven suggested the thing that clicked for all of us:

Eddie is stuck in the past, therefore he needs something to pull his attention into the present--and he's stuck in pain and therefore needs something to pull him towards joy. A puppy will accomplish both.

So now Eddie is fostering a puppy for one of the rescue centers he's worked with in the past. The pup has some medical needs and won't be up for adoption for a couple of months, so we're hoping Eddie can fall in love with the animal and then let her go on a happy note, and maybe that will help.

Maybe it won't. I'd never really appreciated before how uncertain, how vulnerable, this helping people is. But as Raven said, the actual masters are in the same boat, and what they do usually works out, so we're trying it.

And now Eddie has a puppy.

Mastery Year 3: Part: 7: Samhain

Happy (belated) Samhain.

I always get a case of "the lasts" at this time of year--I get obsessed with the idea that I'm doing or experiencing things for the last time. It's seasonally appropriate, I suppose, and the feeling always eases up a bit after the holiday. I guess I get over my obsession and just get on with the year actually ending. But this year, of course, it was especially bad. If all goes well--and I expect it to--my candidacy is basically over.

I was sitting in the audience, breathing in that old, familiar scent of beeswax, wool, and autumn leaves, thinking about how I'd never be a student sitting in this audience again, because at Brigid I'll be on the stage as a newly-minted master, when I suddenly realized I didn't know the actual procedure. What has to happen between now and February to ensure I am sitting on that stage?

So after the ceremony I found Charlie.

"How does the next few months go?" I asked him. "When do I interview? How will I know? Is there something weird happening before then that I need to be on campus for? I forgot to ask!" I was hurried and breathless because I didn't know exactly when they'd ring the bell, and there's never any guarantee of being able to ask questions like that after the bell rings.

Charlie looked confused for a few seconds and then smiled at me, clearly amused.

"Nothing weird, unless you make it weird yourself. Mind-games are for novices, remember? You'll interview the last week before Brigid--they'll be a schedule, we'll reach out to one of you and let you know.  Then there's a short ceremony earlier on Brigid day. None of it's secret."

"Oh."

"No, it's good you asked. You should have."

"Thanks."

"You're welcs. But Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"You have the votes of everybody on your committee, right?"

"Charlie, I don't know who everyone on my committee is. But...yes."

That earned me a smile.

"Don't take those votes for granted. That interview is not a formality."

"Way to make me anxious, Charlie."

"Hmph. I can't make you feel anything, Daniel. I expect you'll be fine, but you know what expectations are. Complacency teaches you nothing."

Great.

Anyway, the ceremony itself went very well, and since I haven't described it in any detail in a few years, I'd better do it now--meaning this whole post is somewhat inside-out. Ah, well.

Samhain (pronounced "Sah-wen") is a Day or the Dead, related to, but distinct from, both Halloween and Dia Del Muerte. There are many people who celebrate it, and the way we celebrate it on campus is probably a little different than what most people do--though honestly, I wouldn't know. We prepare for it by decorating campus with shocks of corn stalks, bales of straw, pumpkins, squash, and gourds, and, indoors, cut vines of bittersweet and grape, candles, and baskets of apples. And, in a new twist they added last year, pots of marigolds both indoors and out. Anyone who wants to is also welcome to make a poster to memorialize a dead person. Those go up on display in the Chapel several days before the event.

Usually, the 31st, the evening of which is Samhain Eve (these things begin the sunset before, like Jewish holidays) is our last day of classes, but this year it fell on a Saturday. Most of us treated it like a regular Saturday, while the janitorial team set up for the ceremony. Instead of dinner, we all dressed in our uniforms and moseyed on over to Chapel Hall across already frosty ground lit with constellations of candles, each floating in a small bowl of water.

We all found seats in the Chapel, which was lit by dozens and dozens of beeswax candles so that the whole room was dim and honey-colored and warm from the candles and the ceiling was lost in the gloom and might have been a million miles up. My stomach started to grumble; it knows what time dinner normally is and I'd skipped it.

A small bell rang from somewhere and rang again and again and the masters processed in, each carrying a lit candle. Charlie, the current Head of the masters' group, led the procession, though with his hood up I wouldn't have recognized him if I didn't know him as well as I do--the way he walks and the breadth of his shoulders are distinctive.

They climbed onto the stage, which was empty except for the tall candle-holders, deposited their candles, and then all of them except Charlie left the stage and sat in the audience with us. As Head, Charlie was master of ceremonies. He put his hood down and made a kind of semi-formal opening speech, and then he read the names. Some years they get someone other than the Head to do it, but Charlie read them himself, a long list of people who had died and were being honored. Most of the names belonged to people I never met, and while most were community members of one kind or another, but some were simply famous people we like to honor. I noticed Steve's grandfather had joined the list.

They put the list together every year, so if nobody writes a name down it just isn't on there--that's how the list does not get impossibly long with favorite cousins of former students and that sort of thing, but some people go on the list every year, and it is gradually getting longer. This year I noticed Charlie did not read the list of exist species. It appears to have been cut for space.

Then Charlie invited anyone who wanted to to eulogize community members who had died over the past year. There was only one, a former student I never met, and two people stood up at the same time. There was a bit of awkward negotiation with gestures before one sat down and the other said a few words.

Finally, we sang "Hats Off to Dead Folks," our goofy memorial song where anyone who wants to can contribute a verse. I'd expected Kit to lead it, she usually does, but Charlie never introduced her. Instead, he started off by singing a verse about his brother, which surprised me twice--once since he'd obviously, publicly, and apparently pointlessly snubbed Kit (she routinely does so to him, but he tends to act as though he's above whatever goes on between them) and another time because Mario has been dead a couple of years, now, and Charlie has not sung for him publicly before.

The song is goofy and light-hearted, but Eddie's voice still broke when he sang a verse for his dog. I sat a few rows behind him and saw hands reach up to him, almost literally supporting him as he sang. Steve sung a verse for his grandfather--and Sarah, Steve's wife, surprised us all by singing her own different verse for the same man. I suppose that's allowed--we allowed it, anyway--but I've never seen it done before. I didn't know any of the other people who got verses and I didn't sing one myself.

Then we all milled around for a while, leaving the ritual seemingly unfinished, until the bells rung and the masters suddenly absented themselves, some of thm leaving mid-sense, as they do. There is, after all, a sharpness, a suddenness to loss, however expected, that cannot be made goofy and must be acknowledged.

We all streamed out of the Chapel and out towards the fire pit where food and drink awaited us. And we old hands dropped towards the rear of the crowd, unobtrusively forcing the yearlings to the front so they wouldn't try to stop the abduction of one community member by a pack of masked miscreants--the sprouts and their friends, of course. Yearlings never know about the tradition until they see it done.

It was Alexis, Allen's youngest, who came to demand ransom for the prisoner--Ebony, as it turned out.

Predictably, everyone made a big show of weeping and wailing and pleading for her return, but Alexis, whom we were not supposed to recognize under her costume, held firm. Finally, Kit regretfully asked what the hostage-takers wanted. Normally some haggling follows over how much candy and so forth the kids will get, but I stood up and said NO in a loud voice.

"What?" said kit, momentarily startled.

"No," I repeated. "We can't give in to terrorists! Come on, I can't believe you people are even considering it! You know how this works--if we pay one ransom, none of us will be safe!"

A short pause, then, as the others came up to speed, a vociferous argument broke out, some of us in favor of paying, others joining my side of it. Alexis stood there, obviously unsure of what to do. Gradually, more and more people came over to my side until, with a nervous glance at each other at our temerity, we made a united front ant told the bandits they could do their worst--we wouldn't pay.

"NO!" cried another voice, this time June's.

We turned to look at her and found her standing, gun-shaped stick in hand, covering us all with a kind of unhinged nervousness.

"No," she said again. "We're paying, I don't care.I'll pay myself, if I have to. I'll, I'll, I'll shoot anyone who gets in my way."

"June," I cried, aghast, staring down the barrel of my wife's imaginary gun, "why?"

"Because, because--I'm in love with her!" She said this with enough melodrama for three day-time-TV stars, and someone sang "dun-dun-dun!" in approximation of suitable music.

Of course, June's elaboration blew our negotiating power to hell, and the sprouts ended up with more candy and other goodies than I think they've ever gotten before. Ebony was returned unharmed, and I was pleased to see they'd blindfolded her just like they would have any other abductee.  She doesn't like special treatment.

"I'd always wondered what being abducted felt like," she said, quite merrily, once we'd gotten her freed from her restraints. She disappeared into a knot of well-wishers bearing warm drinks.

"Well," said Kit to me in mock anger, once the others were too far away, up near the fire, to pay attention. "I hope you're satisfied. Next year they'll expect twice as much."

"What?" I replied, all innocence. "If I'm going to be a master soon, I figured I'd better start acting it and try changing something.