“Only once,” Stevie said.
“Only once?I’d have figured it was easy to get lost in there.”
“It is, but when it happened, I’d been working there for five years.So itshouldn’thave been easy.”
“Wait a minute,” Corinthia said.“You’d been running around in there for half a decade, andthenyou got lost?How is that even possible?”
“Well,” Stevie said, “I don’t rightly know.I was leading a group on the long trail, all the way to the bigger of the two Ephemeral Wetlands—we were a little over halfway there, I think—and all of a sudden I got turned around.Nothing looked familiar.”
“But you can see landmarks from most of the big trails…”
“I know!I even had my phone, as a map.But the map didn’t line up with the landmarks.Everything was just slightly off.As in, if I thought I was facing north, the map showed I was actually facing north-northeast.Or it might have even been the other way around.I don’t know.”
“What did you do?”
“I did the only thing I could do.I got to high ground, spotted the library building, and took everyone back.I couldn’t risk running those people around in circles until I figured out where the Ephemeral Wetland had hidden itself.Very embarrassing.”
“Why do you think you got lost?”
“Magic,” Stevie said.
“Magic,” Corinthia echoed, full of crystal-averse skepticism.
“Sure,” Stevie replied.“Local magic.We don’t have any crystals around here, so maybe it’s in everything else.”
“If everything is magic, then nothing is magic.”
“Maybe it’s that simple.”
Corinthia raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
“Maybe everythingismagic,” Steve finished.
“That’syour unified field theory?”
“I like it,” Stevie said cheerfully.
Corinthia let it ride.Early evening sunlight poured over everything like melted butter, until even the plainest things were gilded, and Corinthia could almost—but not quite—admit that the world could be imagined as Stevie saw it.
Come back, the Refuge whispered.
Which was impossible, because Corinthia had most certainly not purchased a blue rock and entered an altered state of consciousness.The sweet taste of orange was fresh on her lips; the book bumped against her as she walked; even the quiet crunch of gravel underfoot conspired to keep her quite literally grounded.No flights of fancy, she reassured herself.
Upon parting from Stevie, it was reassuring to return home to Beaufort and the very earth-bound routine of patting, brushing, praising, and giving treats.Corinthia decided to take the longest route for Beaufort’s walk, both for the dog’s sheer joy and her own conviction that walking the neighborhood was a way of contributing to the overall good feelings of the community.
She leashed the hound and headed out the door, Beaufort’s soulful eyes rolling upward to the heavens as the dog caroled a series of happy howls.
It was only a few houses down when Corinthia began to detect something about her street that she’d never noticed before.Having been used to thinking of the terrain as flat, she had smoothed out the hills, valleys, and ridges that actually existed, and now, like an illustration in a pop-up book, they suddenly sprang into existence.The street curved down, then up, then plateaued.Underneath the shoebox houses and asphalt roads, and the varying efforts at landscaping, it was the same up-and-down terrain as the Refuge.
Had a bulldozer just scraped everything away?
Did any original plants remain?
There were ornamental palm trees; citrus trees that had obviously been planted when the houses were built; and grass, grass everywhere.Even if it wasn’t a true monoculture, considering that everyone seemed to collectively agree to let other short-growing plants run wild, the street looked like the Refuge had been painted out with asphalt and lawns.
Corinthia adored her little house; was grateful she had been able to find something so suitable; understood that the affordable homes were a lifeline not just for her but for the entire Shadow Ridge community; and yet, this was a sadness like no other.
So much had been lost.There were no scrub jays here, and the need to see one again struck Corinthia with sudden force.
