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voice came into Helen’s head as smoothly as one of her own thoughts.
    â€œWhy are you here? Is it for the writing? Will I see you again?”
    A slight inclination of the head. The hood slid forward, further obscuring the face, which Helen now imagined must be beautiful.
    â€œWhen? How?” Helen asked urgently.
    A flood of words cascaded into her mind, tumbling over one another, yet she was able to comprehend perfectly. The woman told her she’d come whenever Helen wanted to contact someone in the spirit world, that Helen only need open herself and wait. Helen understood that she could dispense with the automatic writing practice, that it was not to be her way until later in her life.
    Surprisingly, after the first rush, no further questions bubbled up in Helen. She was content simply to behold her visitor, who shimmered like a reflection on quiet water. Again, words came
to Helen from the woman, this time in a dreamy flow even more like the winding circuits of her own mind. The woman let her know there would be times when she’d come to Helen unbidden and that at those rare times Helen might experience her only as a strong desire or a strong distaste, or a nudge to unaccustomed action. Helen wondered how she’d be able to tell when such feelings were her own and when they’d been sent from the woman, but at the moment it seemed an unimportant quandary.
    Helen felt a cool breeze. The woman withdrew the flower into her cloak and was gone. So was the warm, floating feeling. The pain in her abdomen reasserted itself.
    She stood up and stretched and looked around her room, half expecting it to be different, but, of course, it wasn’t. Or was it? The colors in the worn patchwork quilt didn’t seem as faded, the starched linen dresser scarf looked crisper, the windowpanes more clear, the jumble of books, games, and old toys on the open shelves tidier. Something had definitely happened here.
    Helen knew she ought to feel special, and in a way she did. But special had two sides. When the woman was smiling and speaking, Helen had felt large and strong. Now what she mostly felt was empty, and that let a little of the fear creep back. She worried that something about her might show that she was a girl whom spirits visited, and that kids at school would notice. Surely it wouldn’t be as obvious a badge of difference as that fifth-grader Charlene Thatcher’s big bosom or Harvey Winkel’s stutter. But what if it were?
    The woman had promised to return. Helen wondered if it would feel as good every time and whether she could stop her from coming again if it didn’t. She wished she knew her name. She thought that would make it feel safer somehow, friendlier, more ordinary.
    She decided to call her Iris. She also decided that she
wouldn’t tell her grandmother just yet. Iris hadn’t wanted to answer too many questions right away, and neither did Helen.
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    Helen was silent at dinner, which was not unusual enough to provoke comment. She couldn’t stop thinking about her encounter with Iris, but not in a dissecting way. The enormous fact of it was simply claiming all the space in her mind. Eventually, however, the adult conversation snagged her attention. Her grandmother was recounting a letter she’d gotten from a nephew in Berlin.
    â€œOtto says things are better. Everyone has jobs.”
    â€œThe radio says there are still shortages of meat and butter and fruit,” Walter said. “And long lines at food shops.”
    â€œBetter are lines for food than no food at all,” Ursula retorted.
    â€œBut at a price,” Walter said. “The Reichstag a powerless sham. Nazis in charge of everything. They arrest anyone who speaks against them, even priests. Why, they don’t hesitate to kill members of their own party who aren’t loyal enough.”
    â€œWhat do we know?” Ursula argued. “Only that Germany was on its knees and now it is not.