“People, people,” Wow said, waving her hand for attention. She’d actually brought a gavel but had long since snapped the handle in frustration. “We need some order…”

“We need more witches,” one of the other attendants said.

“That’s why we’re here,” Wow said. “To come up with a plan…”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with a good, old-fashioned apprenticeship,” someone said. “That’s how I learned the craft. That’s how my teacher learned it, and her teacher before her.”

“That’s all well and good, but if we each start teaching one newbie now it’ll be years before we’re back up to our strength before the attacks,” Wow said. “We need…”

“You can’t mass-produce magic,” someone objected.

“Magic isn’t taught, it’s experienced… we need to seek out those who’ve been…”

“Seek inward, not outward. We have the power we need within ourselves.”

“Such arrogance. The stars will guide us to the one who will save us…”

“Oh, that’s been done already!”

“It’s all been done. The wheel turns on, the cycle begins anew.”

Wow threw up her hands, then turned to look at her sister, who’d been sitting there quietly the whole time. She didn’t expect much from Woe on a day to day basis… apart from Woe’s peculiarities, the two of them could not coexist in the same place peacefully for long. But when Woe said that she would do something, it generally carried the weight as any other time that she declared something would happen. It wasn’t so much a promise as a prophecy.

“Well?” Wow said.

“Well enough, thank you.”

“I thought you said you’d help me recruit,” Wow said.

“I did,” Woe replied.

Et fini.

Woe stood there, saying nothing while she reasoned aloud.

“But… I don’t know what will happen if I don’t,” Laurie said. “I mean, even if it were safe to assume that I could get out of here without any kind of misadventure and go back home to my normal life, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the day after that. No matter how monotonous it seems… or secure… things are really not more certain outside this maze than they are inside it. I’ve spent most of my life trying to minimize risks, trying to control my exposure to danger.”

She laughed to herself.

“I read this book once… Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber,” Laurie explained. “It’s kind of dated and sexist, but also kind of timeless in a depressing way. The idea was that all women are witches, though most don’t talk about it. According to the book, we… or they, the women in this fictional version of the world… all do spells as to protect themselves and their husbands, try to advance the men’s careers. It’s like ‘behind every good man’ mixed with a lot of old-fashioned misogynistic wisdom fearing. But we all do have little rituals, don’t we? Lock your doors, look both ways, don’t go here after dark, don’t go there alone. We come up with all these little taboos, and if somebody gets struck down we assume they broke one, because that means we are still safe. She wore a short skirt… she had it coming…”

“Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe,” the girl recited. “I never saw a brute I hated so; he must be wicked to deserve such pain.”

“Is that a poem?” Laurie asked her.

“I think it must be,” Woe said. “The first parts rhymed.”

“That’s what they call us,” Woe said. “Because they’re afraid of us.”

“I remember reading that the root word of ‘witch’ means ‘wise’,” Laurie said.

“Yes,” the girl said, nodding. “It does.”

“So, then… it’s not just about being feared,” Laurie said.

“You’re right,” Woe said. “It’s about being feared for your wisdom. If they fear you for something else, they’ll call you another name instead.”

“I suppose it’s some comfort when you hear words like that, knowing that you’re wise, anyway.”

“Not really,” Woe said. “Because you have to know that you’re not wise, no matter what anyone else says. The first magic…”

“…is knowing nothing,” Laurie said. She sighed. “I remember, yeah. But there has to be something in being a witch… power, security, something. What exactly do I get out of it?”

“You’re the one who wanted it,” Woe said.

“It’s just… I want to know that I’m doing the right thing,” Laurie said. “Not morally, right for me… I don’t want to do something immoral, but… if I’m going to be changing my life, I want to know that things are going to be better.”

“Do you want certainty, then?”

“I don’t know what I want!” Laurie replied. “I just want to know what to expect.”

“If you don’t know what you want, then why does it matter what you expect?”

“I don’t know.”

“See?” Woe said. “You do have some natural talent for this.”

“So… say I do want to be a witch,” Laurie replied. “What do I have to do?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No,” Laurie said. “And don’t tell me that’s a good start!”

“You’re walking down a path,” Woe said. “You’ve just figured out where it leads. If you don’t want to end up there, you have to stop. Go back. Get off the path. Get on another.”

“So… I just keep going, then?” Laurie asked. “Wandering. For how long?”

“Until you get there,” Woe said.

What does a wind blow, Laurie thought to herself, if it blows no good?

Bad?

That seemed less than poetic, somehow. Evil? Evil was something that people did. Unfortunate things could happen, terrible things… but they weren’t evil.

So what did the east wind blow for people, if it blew no one good?

Bad luck, maybe. Misfortune. Sorrow.

“Woe,” Laurie said. “Your name is Woe. Is that… that’s your name.” She had almost asked if she was right, but of course, that wasn’t the point of the exercise. “I name you Woe. You seem very woeful to me.”

The girl nodded solemnly, gravely.

“Is that a good name for you?” Laurie asked her.

“It works,” the girl said.

Laurie waited for her to say something more, or to do something, but the girl just stood there, statue-still.

“So… now what?” Laurie asked.

“Do you still not know?”

“I don’t know anything,” Laurie said again.

“Well.. what do you want to do?”

“I want to do something exciting,” Laurie said. “Something magical.”

It hit her as she said this that she had been doing something that could fit that description since she first wandered into the maze of courtyards. It just hadn’t been quite what she’d expected, and she hadn’t reacted to it the way she’d always imagined that she would if she encountered something wondrous and inexplicable.

The problem was that even if the world was a strange and magical place, she herself was neither strange nor magical. She was simply herself: ordinary and somewhat prone to fear.

“No, strike that,” she said. “I want to be someone exciting. I want to be someone magical. Someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” Woe repeated.

“Well, not exactly you,” Laurie said. She didn’t say “someone a little happier.” That seemed rude. “But magical, like you.”

“You want to be a witch?”

“Let’s see,” Laurie said. “Eurus is a Greek name,” she said, repeating her earlier observation with more confidence. It didn’t just sound Greek, it was Greek. She was sure that she remembered the name from somewhere. The name had to be a clue. The girl said so little… that meant the smallest things she said could be important.

Considering the range of subjects Laurie had studied in passing academically, it could very easily have been a character from a play, a philosopher, or a figure from mythology… but whoever Eurus had been, he certainly hadn’t been a stand-out.

Not a main character. Not an important figure.

Mythology seemed unlikely. Greek mythology was all about importance, self and otherwise. Everybody had his or her role to play, especially the “his” roles. She couldn’t swear to being able to recognize all nine of the muses or all the names of the various nymphs, but male deities hadn’t usually had to suffer the indignity of a group identity. They’d been afforded individuality.

Then it came to her… a visual memory of a half sheet of paper on a pressboard desk top. It had been a quiz, in some high school class… it could have been history, it could have been something related to drama or literature. She didn’t remember that. She just remembered the questions: the nine muses, the three graces, the three fates.

The four winds.

“The west wind,” she said. “No, wait. That’s Zephyr, the gay one. East. Eurus is the east wind. I don’t remember any stories about Eurus.”

“Few people do,” the girl said.

“It’s supposed to be unlucky,” Laurie said. “Like the saying, I guess… you know, ‘an ill wind that blows no good’.”

“I met an ill wind once,” the girl said.

“Oh?”

“It dropped a house on me.”

“What?” Laurie asked. “What do I have to do?”

“Oh… I thought you knew,” the girl said. She sounded disappointed.

“Look, I don’t know anything,” Laurie said.

Her voice was getting louder, less controlled. It echoed off the walls of the buildings around them. It wasn’t that she was no longer at all concerned by the thought that she might be discovered trespassing in somebody’s courtyard. It was simply that other emotions were rising up within her, conflicting with that anxiety.

“Well… that’s the first thing,” the girl said.

“What’s the first thing?”

“Knowing nothing,” the girl said.

“Is this a philosopher thing?” Laurie asked her.

“I think over here, they’re called sorcerers,” the girl said. “I’m pretty sure I heard that somewhere. I don’t know, though… and that’s what’s important. It’s the first magic.”

“Not knowing things… is magic?”

“Of course,” the girl said. “But I don’t have to tell you this. You said: it’s like there’s a door, and there could be anything behind it. As long as you don’t know, anyway. As soon as you find out…” She stuck out a closed fist, then turned it over and opened it, revealing… nothing. “Poof. Nothing. Or not anything terribly interesting anyway.”

“What’s your name?” Laurie asked.

“It could be anything,” the girl said.

“What is it, though?”

“It could be… Eurus,” the girl said. She enunciated the “eu” sound very clearly.

“That sounds Greek,” Laurie said. “It also sounds like a boy’s name. But that’s not your name, is it? It could be your name, but so could anything.”

The girl nodded.

“Name me,” she said.

“Is this a test?” Laurie asked.

“It could be.”

“What happens if I fail it?” Laurie asked.

“Anything could happen,” the girl said. “You don’t know.”

“This is a magic thing, isn’t it?” Laurie asked. “Naming.”

“You don’t know?” the girl prodded her.

“Then I guess it is.”

“Certainty,” Laurie said. “Finding out.”

“Finding out what?” the girl asked.

“I don’t know,” Laurie said. “It’s like there’s this door, and I’m afraid to open it, not because of what’s behind it but because of what might be behind it… the potential, you know.

“No one is really afraid of opening the door… not unless there’s something they’re afraid of finding. So the question is, what are you most afraid of?”

“I don’t know,” Laurie said. “I am afraid, but I can’t think of anything… it’s almost like… like I’m too grown up to be. But I don’t want to be.”

“So what are you more afraid of: you open up the door and you find out there is something there, or you open up the door and find out that there isn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Laurie said again. “I mean, I came all the way out here… I blew my vacation time and my travel money, and I got myself all psyched up… I don’t want there to be nothing. I want there to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and fairies in the garden, and… even trolls under bridges. Ghosts in haunted houses.”

“And witches?”

“Them, too,” Laurie said. “I just… I want there to be something to believe in.”

“Magic?”

“If you want to call it that,” Laurie said. “Sure. Para…”

“Why be like that, if that’s what you want?” the girl asked. “Do you want it, or don’t you?”

“I… I guess I do.”

“Then why do you want out?” the girl asked. She pointed at the balcony. “You can end this at any time. Do you want it to end?”

“No,” Laurie said. “I don’t.”

When a book… even the most ridiculous children’s book… presented itself as a story that had really truly happened, she had always been willing to take it at is word.

Even when it didn’t, young Laurie had tended to suspect that maybe it had really happened somewhere, at some time.

She’d believed in monsters, too. Under the bed. Inside the closet. Under porches, after one Halloween prank from her brother. Even knowing his hand had grabbed her, she still believed there could be monsters.

That child had grown into a sucker… no other word for it… for urban legends and tall tales. Eventually, she’d come to accept that Bloody Mary wouldn’t come no matter what you did in front of a mirror in a dark room. She’d never tried it, if only because by the time she wasn’t terrified by the thought of doing so, she’d already resigned herself to the fact that it and all the other stories she’d heard and collected and breathlessly repeated were just that: stories.

She’d never grown out of her fascination with them, though, and in time she’d acquired a more mature taste. Parapsychology. It was a real thing. Colleges gave degrees for it. There were no ghosts dragging people down to hell, but there were hauntings. They’d been reported, studied, verified. There were unexplained phenomena. Nothing too big and obvious and flashy, of course, but that was probably what kept it unexplained.

Her mature fascination had led her to this, but now, standing out in the cold and paralyzed with fear and indecision, she wondered if she’d really grown up, or had she only painted a grown-up veneer over her childhood fears?

Once she made that decision, all of the possibilities… even the impossible ones… would come tumbling down and one of them would fall into place. While the chances were good she would suffer nothing worse than embarrassment, there was still a chance that it would be something horrible.

Laurie recalled having read a book by a famous horror writer about writing horror. In it the author had espoused a theory… one she’d heard in other places, too… that whenever a movie builds up to something horrible being hidden behind a door, and then the door opens and you see something like a giant bug standing there, the scream you scream in response is tinged with relief because however horrible the monster bug might be you had been afraid it was something bigger, scarier, something infinitely worse.

That was a fine theory for horror movies, but the thought that had Laurie paralyzed in her grip was the possibility that whatever she’d find inside the building would be bigger and scarier and infinitely worse than anything she could imagine.

What could she imagine? That was part of the problem. Adulthood had robbed her of a working vocabulary for articulating her fears. Witches? Ghosts? Werewolves? These words lacked the resonance they needed to explain what she was afraid of. Laurie had read up on paranormal books and websites about contemporary hauntings. She had friends… people she knew online… who were practicing witches. One of her chat buddies insisted that he was a werewolf in spirit and she tried to respect that.

The internet age had conquered all manner of ghouls, leaving her with nothing to fear… and terrified of nothing.

Except there should have been, there had to be, because she’d walked from the first courtyard to this one…

She pushed that thought away. Either her situation was irrational, or she was. All she could do was stay methodical. There were only two exits from where she was: the one she’d checked, and the far end. The courtyard it opened into had two exits, too, which she had not yet fully explored. All she had to do was pick a method and stick with it, like… take every right turn she came to, until she came to a dead end.

Dead end, her mind shrieked. Dead and ended. Ended in death.

If she came to one, of course, it was a simple matter of backtracking.

That had been real simple so far.

And if all else failed, she’d call for help from the people inside the balcony door.

If she was allowed to find her way back to it.

Or at any other window or door she found that showed sins of life.

Signs of habitation were not necessarily signs of life.

She could always consider a different method.