The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (13 inch ebook reader .TXT) 📗

turned a silvery grey by the moonlight. “You can tell me later what gave you the crazy idea to follow me like that. You were lucky I doubled back on my own trail and found your tracks. But I hope you realize you’ve interrupted my very important meeting tonight with the totem spirits. And here you are, above timberline, where I thought I taught you never to go at night. Didn’t my grandfather, Dark Bear, ever tell you why even the wolf and the cougar will never spend the night above timberline?”

I shook my head and gulped tears as he tossed one arm around my shoulders and picked up my backpack from the ground. We went back into the wood. Sam took my hand and I tried to act brave.

“It’s because the totem spirits themselves live above timberline,” said Sam. As we moved through the dense foliage I could hear the padding squish of his moccasins on the damp ground before me. “Animals sense that the spirits are there, even if they can’t see or smell them. That’s why if you want to meet the spirits, you must wait in a place where not even trees can live. But the place where I’m going is protected by great magic. Since it’s too late to take you back, you have to stay up there with me tonight. So I guess we’ll do our tiwa-titmas together, you and I. We’ll wait up there in the circle for the spirits to enter us.”

Although I was flooding over with relief at being rescued from a night alone on Bald Mountain, I wasn’t sure about this business with the totem spirits.

“Why do we want the spirits to … enter us?” I found it hard even to ask.

Sam didn’t reply, but pressed my hand to show he’d heard as we began again to climb through the dark forest. After what seemed a very long time, we came at last to the circle. It was still dark here within the woods, but up there a shower of white moonlight fell upon the place, lighting the bare, domed crest and the circle of rocks. It looked like the amphitheater where Jersey had once performed in Rome.

Side by side and hand in hand, Sam and I stepped out of the wood. Something strange happened as we entered the circle. The moonlight had a different quality here: sparkling and shimmery, as if bits of silver were hung suspended in the air. And a slight breeze sprang up, bringing with it a chill. But I was no longer afraid; I was truly fascinated by this magical place. I felt that, somehow, I belonged here.

Sam, still holding me by the hand, led me to the center of the circle and knelt before me. He untied the satchel on his belt, and from it he pulled out things I knew must be talismans—brightly colored beads and “lucky” feathers—and, one by one, he tied them into my hair. Then he arranged logs and branches at the center of the circle and swiftly built a fire. As I stood there warming my hands, I suddenly realized how horribly cold I was—wet and chilled to the bone. Hot flames licked the sky as sparks leapt into the blackened night, mingling with the stars. I heard autumn crickets in the brush, and above I could make out the Big and Little Dippers.

“We call them the Large and the Small Bears,” said Sam, following my gaze. He sat cross-legged beside me on the ground and stirred the fire. “I believe the bear may wind up being my own totem spirit—though I’ve never seen her face to face.”

“Her?” I said, surprised.

“The bear is a great female totem,” said Sam. “Like the lioness, the female protects the young—sometimes even from threats by the father—and she gets their food.”

“What happens when your totem spirit … enters you?” I asked him, still worried about the process. “I mean, does it do anything to you?”

Sam smiled his ironic smile. “I’m not sure, hotshot. I’ve never been ‘entered’ myself—but I think we’ll know if it happens to us. My grandfather, Dark Bear, has told me that the totem spirit approaches you softly, sometimes in human form and sometimes as an animal. Then the spirit determines whether you’re ready. And when you are, it speaks to you and gives you your very own secret, sacred name—a name that no one else will ever know but you yourself, unless you decide to share it with somebody else. This name, my grandfather says, is each brave’s own spiritual power, separate from, and in many ways more important than, our eternal soul.”

“Why hasn’t your totem spirit ever entered you and given you your name?” I asked him. “You’ve been trying so hard, and for so long.”

Sam’s jet black hair, hanging in a shimmering fall to his shoulders, shaded his eyes as he stirred the fire, so that I could only make out his profile: dark lashes, strong cheekbones, straight nose, and cleft chin. All at once, in this light, he seemed much older to me than just my twelve-year-old big stepbrother. All at once, Sam himself seemed like an ancient totem spirit. Then he turned to me. His eyes in the firelight were as clear and deep as diamonds, and he was smiling.

“Do you know why I always call you ‘hotshot,’ Ariel?” he asked me, and when I shook my head, he said, “It’s because, even though you’re only eight years old, the age that I was when I went on my first tiwa-titmas, you’re much smarter than I was then. Maybe you’re still smarter than I am now. And that’s not all; I think you’re braver than I am, too. The first time I came to these woods by myself without a guide, I already knew every stick and stone on the path. But you weren’t afraid just to launch out all alone today, to trust blindly in what would happen to you. That’s what my grandfather