by William Hill
"Have a seat Liam", his dad told him. "There are a few things I'm sure you want to know, and I'll tell you if I can. And there is another matter I need to discuss with you...about you...that maybe we should talk about first".
Liam sat down at the table, unable to imagine what about him needed to be discussed, unless it was about his missing school yesterday. But that couldn't be as important as what was going on today!
"Liam, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary about yourself of late?"
"Dad!" Liam said, turning red, there in front of his mother, "I think we had that 'talk' a couple of years ago!"
"Not that! I don't mean physically, I mean have you experienced anything else you don't understand, anything at all?
"Well," Liam answered hesitantly, "Life in general, I suppose."
"I'm talking specifically about your life. Recently, as in, did anything interesting happen to you yesterday?" his father explained with a touch of frustration.
He knows! I guess I might as well own up to it. "Yeah, I didn't go to school yesterday."
"I know that, but that's not what I mean either. Did anything out of the ordinary happen while you were playing hooky?"
How does he know I blew off school, already? "Well, I didn't intend to ditch school; it's just that I took a short cut through the woods..." (as he proceeded to tell his parents what had happened, without leaving out a single detail). "It was the most realistic dream I've ever had!"
"I'll bet it was," his father said quietly.
"Right down to the scratch on your forehead…" his mother added,
“…and the smell of gunpowder on your clothes," his father finished.
He didn't know what to say. He just stared at his folks. "Are you trying to tell me my dream was real?" he whispered with a snort, cocking an eyebrow, believing they were kidding him.
"Well, how can you explain the mark on your forehead and the smell on your clothes?" his father asked.
"Maybe Nell was right, maybe I did walk into a tree, as she suggested. But I can't explain the gun powder odor," he admitted.
"The trees in that wood are so sparse these days a blind man would be hard put to walk into one of them!" his mother laughed.
"I don't understand."
"Remember your family history, how the Sherwood's married into the MacDonald’s, and specifically one Grace Sherwood?" his father asked.
"You mean Grace, the 'Witch of Pungo'?", he asked, with a giggle.
"The same."
His father then recounted the story, for the umpteenth time, of how Grace lived in a village called Pungo (in what is now Virginia Beach, just across the Chesapeake Bay and south a bit from St. Mary’s) and was the only person ever convicted of witchcraft in colonial Virginia. She had, over time been tried, but acquitted, twelve times of witchcraft (for various reasons, such as killing animals with a hex, shape shifting into an animal). But the thirteenth time she was accused of using magic to make her crops flourish when all her neighbor's were failing and was found guilty (she had two moles on her body, a sure sign of “possession”). They submitted her to a test of truth — they had tied her up and thrown her into a river with a thirteen pound Bible strapped to her. Had she drowned, she would have been proclaimed “innocent”. However, she floated, which meant the Devil kept her alive. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. Once freed, she was never bothered again and lived until she was eighty.
"Do you really expect me to believe she was actually a witch? And magic spells, and all? And what's her story got to do with my situation?"
"Witches, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Mages and the like are just names applied to people who are in-tune with the world in a different way from most folk, or have certain abilities," his mother explained.
"And magic isn't something you go to a wizard's school to learn," his father added. "Most of what passes for magic is just slight-of-hand, hypnosis and auto-suggestion, smoke and mirrors. There are no magic wands or potions, or hexes; all that belongs to books, movies, and folklore. You've heard us use the expressions, 'Reality is all in the mind' and ‘Truth is relative’? For most people, reality — or truth — is based solely on their own past experiences and, most importantly, on what others have told them is real; reality is what most people collectively say is 'real'. However, some see the world around them differently than others. Real magic, if that's what you want to call it, is the inborn ability some have where they can create an alternate reality, that really exists, through their own minds, and one that others can simultaneously experience and accept as real, because it is real, for a length of time. You know who Arthur C. Clark was, right? He once said that ‘magic is just science we don’t understand yet’."
"You've lost me," he sighed.
"Okay. In the woods, you imagined — dreamt, if you will — yourself in a pirate adventure. Everything you felt, saw, smelt, or otherwise experienced was not just imagined. It was, even if we don’t fully understand how yet, actually real, as the mark on your head is proof of your being grazed by a bullet, and the odor of gun powder on your clothes is proof of musket and cannon fire. And, had anyone else been with you, they would have experienced the same ‘vision’ with you and it would have been just as real to them as it was to you. Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"It all depends on the strength of your mind and if you wanted them to experience it with you" his mother added.
"Everyone has daydreams, but only some can project them outwardly around themselves and make them reality," his father said. "And how far they can be projected, and how real they become, and whether you can bring others into that reality, are all in the strength of mind and will."
"Cousin Grace Sherwood apparently had an exceptionally strong mind," his mother said.
"So she wasn't a witch?"
"No," his father answered.
"Then what was she?”
"A Vision Master".
Chapter Six: Revelation
“A dream! That seem’d as swearable reality as what I wake in now.”