My girlfriend and I are fighting to free ourselves from an arrogant wizard who leads a cult and wears a cape. What a walking cliché!

He turns my car invisible so we can't get away in it. I search for it, yelling in frustration. He hears me and reappears for a moment, smirking. I say "All right, you've made your point. You're more powerful than we are, no question about it. You can beat us."

The bitterest part is, I know exactly where I parked it; yet when I sweep the area on foot, I can't even feel it! Or am I overestimating him? Maybe he and his goons just stole it.

Now we're trapped on a cruise with him. Spied on every minute. One night, miles out, I get so sick of it I jump overboard. I have my reasons--this wizard's powerful, but his night vision's poor. He won't be able to track me.

Drown? I won't drown in water: I become water!

But it turns out he has a night shift of wizard minions, and they can see at night. One fires a spell at me, and I black out.

I wake in a big fishtank. No air. I don't care. I'm a mermaid, breathing water.

Wizard-minions of a dozen kinds--even sea-folk--watch through portholes, calmly condescending. They're studying me because true shapeshifting is rare.

So I turn clear as water, sloshing back and forth across the tank as living water. Not quite invisible, like that wizard turned my car, but hard to see. I flow between forms and genders, creating small tidal bores in my wake. I've long been able to hide in water like this, becoming the water; but now I can match any shape I see, too.

I'm gradually learning to accept myself as tough, as a survivor. I feel like Morgan and Raederle in The Riddle of Stars, but I fear myself less than they did. I won't become like my persecutors. Except in one regard: they're pushing me into my own power, until I'm as dangerous as they are.

But I choose what to do with it!

AFTERWORD

Why all the magic? It's no metaphor. In 1986 I'd been experimenting with JW Dunne's dream-protocols for three years--and found that shamans were right all along. Diagnostic, clairvoyant, telepathic and predictive dreams were quite as attainable through practice and discipline as lucid dreams. Upsetting, difficult, and subversive, yes--but real.

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