It was dark. Velvety blackness stretched on in every direction for millions of miles, then folded back on itself, multiplying the effect. This void in my subconscious was the middle grounds of all existence, the obsolete emptiness that formed the padding between my reality, the Tree of Life, and every other possibility in the universe. Nothing made a noise, nothing stirred. There is no wind in that place.

I floated.

Straining my eyes, I struggled to pierce the infinite darkness and see something. Something very specific. A blindingly white dot suspended light-years away in the blackness. The gateway to the Tree of Life. But once again, the gateway eluded me. As always. It almost seemed that that white spot of light was avoiding me. I was so frustrated I could scream, but I didn’t. I pushed the aggravation firmly out of my mindscape. I needed focus. I couldn’t be distracted, not now. I needed to clear my mind of all superfluous thoughts, I needed to keep my concentration…

Why can’t I do this?

Because it’s STUPID!

I tried to deflect the thoughts as I felt them swelling in the back of my brain, but they flooded my mind before I could stop them. Inevitably, my concentration shattered. I felt myself dropping unbridled, falling at the speed of thought through the darkness, and my stomach flopped into my throat in a rush of adrenaline and disappointment. Once again, I had not succeeded to find the gateway…

Dim rays of color swam out from the depths of the darkness. Light filtering through my eyelids. My trance was officially and utterly broken. I kept my eyelids squeezed shut stubbornly and rolled the bitter taste of failure around in my mouth for a few moments before prying my eyes open and facing the ugly reality of my closet.

There was complete darkness in my closet, save for the light of the stumpy red candle ablaze in front of me. In the dim candlelight I could see the clutter that was typical of any space I occupied – scattered books, piles of clothes, last week’s tuna fish. Certainly, nothing to indicate that anybody but an average young lady acknowledged rights to this closet. But in fact, I was very far from average. I was a witch.

How do you define a witch? It’s hard to explain, I suppose. Witchcraft is a religion as much as anything; but then, it’s a practice as well. And naturally, it has everything to do with magic.

For me, it was also a secret. Not even my closest friends knew that I proclaimed myself witch. In fact, the only one I had entrusted the information with was my younger brother, Alan. I could hear him stomping upstairs at that very moment, eating breakfast or doing chores or some other trivial thing like that. He was my greatest ally, covering up for me when I was off doing some basic ritual and my parents got suspicious, keeping my secret. We had been each other’s favorite playmates as children – together, we must have invented hundreds of roll-playing games, where we could be great warriors off on fantastic adventures. Of course, now that we were older those escapades were things of the past. Sometimes I felt a sour heartache for the worlds of my childhood, but those lands had no basis in reality. All of them were just things of insubstantial fantasy.

But then, what’s the difference between fantasy and reality to a witch who can bring her imagination to life?

I blew out my candle and stumbled out of my closet (nearly tripping over the large box I’d placed in front of the closet door to discourage anyone from entering) and into the blatant daylight of my bedroom. My walls were covered with posters of distant nebulae and pictures of my brother – nothing to indicate I was anything more than a science nerd and one hell of a sister.

I plopped down on my twin-sized bed and dug my hand under my pillow to pull out that which I had tucked under there. My hand brushed across the tell-tale smooth cover, and I clenched it and drew it out from its hiding place. It was a medium-sized, paperback book with the title Witch Crafting printed in Gothic type across the front. I’d bought it years ago at a used bookstore for $3.95, and although I couldn’t find a copyright date anywhere within its pages, I highly suspected it was older than I was.

I turned the crumpled pages to the page I’d marked with a spare scrap of paper. At the very top were the words Traversing the Tree of Life in the same Gothic print as on the cover. Trying to find some hidden step I’d been skipping, I read the passage with all the focus I could muster:

“The Tree of Life consists of ten realms of accessibility, worlds that cannot be reached on the physical plane. These realms are the basis of all existence, our reality and all others. Every witch and occultist should make the journey through the realms many times.”

My eyes hovered curiously over the phrase, “our reality and all others.” What were those other realities like: mirrors of our own, or different, magical lands?

But wait. I was supposed to be concentrating, not veering off to explore random tangents! Shaking my head, I grounded myself and glued my eyes to the text once again.

“To explore the Tree of Life, you must first center yourself. Meditate and slip into the trance state used for visualization. Allow yourself to float in complete blackness for a moment.”

Alright, alright. I had that part down.

“Begin to visualize a tiny, pure white dot far off in the distance. This is the gateway to the Tree of Life. Will yourself towards the dot, noting how it begins to get larger as you approach…”

At that was the point I could not get past. The passage went on to explain the different realms, but none of that was pertinent until I found the gateway. I couldn’t make sense of it – I never had trouble with visualization before, but for some reason, that simple distant dot of light was lost on me.

And then, a familiar fear pierced my mind like a white-hot wire: what if I was just not meant to be a witch?

I smothered out that small flame of doubt before it became a raging wildfire. I was being ridiculous again! Of course I was meant to be a witch. Witches were born, not made, and I could feel the magic in me right down to my bone marrow.

Almost subconsciously, I flipped the pages of the book to the section I’d viewed so many times that its binding was cracking along the spine. That section explained, in detail, the process of self-initiation. A rite I would perform someday, hopefully someday soon. I had every last detail of it planned, down to the sacred witch’s name I would choose. That name, supposedly, would be my true name, my spirit name. Certainly more true than Wendy O’Neil, the birth name that I found entirely unfitting.

I closed the book and set it primly on my bed, back side up. There was only one line of Gothic print scribed on the back cover, and I read and re-read it, letting it calm my nerves. It read:

Every witch has a purpose, every witch has a destiny, every witch has a fate.

It was those words that had really prompted me to buy the book in the first place.

I had a purpose, a destiny, a fate.

I liked that idea.