A woman finds a broom. A magic broom. Gradually, she learns to use it.

She's a teacher, and one day, lecturing to a huge class, she says "Honesty is the most important thing." They shout her down, sneering and hooting, calling her "Honesty the Witch," parodying Christian names like Charity.

Goaded by their taunts, she decides to prove the power of Honesty. She leaps on her broom and flies round the auditorium!

As she heads for the window, one of the hostile students grabs the broom-bristles and hangs on. I leap and hang on too as she sails out the window. And up. Miles up! We all struggle. He's trying to rape Honesty, because if he can, her broom will fall, and we'll all die.

And he wants this! For all of us to die. He'll go that far to bring Honesty down.

I'm feverishly trying to think of a way to save us--pushing him off, or pulling her off with me and leaving him stranded, unable to run the broom--somehow, if Honesty fucks ME in midair, I think we'll land gently, unharmed, broom or no broom. Because magic's in the person, not the tool.

Suddenly the two of us, Honesty and I, are curled up quietly on a padded bench below a sunny window, in the city library, in Penticton, British Columbia. I'm reading over her shoulder, as she skims through a huge set of children's books about winged people.

The books feel like a prophecy--we'll be winged too, eventually.

NOTE YEARS LATER

My godmother Joan-Lee triggered this dream by telling me what she considered absolutes in life. First on her list was honesty. I was a little scientist at the time and thought privately that her merely human values were trivial; my absolutes were spacetime, mass-energy, gravity.

But then, my disdain for human affairs--and honesty--was largely because when I was honest in school about who and what I am, I got beat up. Honesty the Witch is me.

Why Penticton, BC? My family camped there and swam in Lakes Okanagan and Skaha many summers when I was in my teens. The crowded beaches of Penticton were a singles scene (well, a gentle, polite Canadian one). I was closely supervised and couldn't talk to strangers, but at least I observed other teens meet and flirt. So I think Penticton means learning not to pose--being yourself.

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