mg_03 cr0wl old graham, holding the book in his hands, sat down on a twisted iron chair that was so ravaged by the weather that its former white paint was now splotched grey like lichen on a sea rock. he stared at the cover picture of the two children walking with a tiger, remembering when he sat in a high school classroom with molly across from him and they had been studying the same book in their literature class and he knew it was the story of his life in a parallel world. without further anticipation, while red-breasted warblers sang forth a bold song from their perch in a jacaranda tree, he opened it to the last page where there was an illustration of himself, old molly, new molly, new graham, and the tiger king, all of them together in the first meeting room before they went underground. the rest of the book was blank. graham replayed the next events in his head as they happened. the sudden pitch black darkness. the attack of the bat. the rat bite. the constant dread of lurking danger. it crept into him like a hidden cancer, spreading its fine-haired roots through unyielding tissue. what if we were to go another way, our own way, and not follow the tiger king? let new molly and graham go with him? he thought quite a while as he listened to the birds break the summer stillness. and then, like the zipper flash of a shooting star, he marveled at the possibility that it was molly herself that lived in this very house. he stood up as if pulled by the strings of a puppet master and turned the knob of the quaint door. it was unlocked. he clasped the shut book to his side and stepped in. there was a fragrance of lavender in the air. 101001 ... cr0wl his gaze, perceptive and busy, was captured off to his immediate right by a photograph of a man and a boy. the man was kneeling next to him as the boy stood, and he had his arms around the boy. graham gazed at them long and hard as if he recognized himself either in the man or in the boy. they do not look like father and son, he thought. he was also met with a pellucid sense of comfort and coziness, as if long days, while storms raged, molly would sit inside next to the stone fireplace and write. he remembered her to be one who had many stories to tell because she lived her life like he did. he knew them to be the very best of friends, for they shared more than could be interpreted upon normal existence. they had, together, with the help of a tiger king in a parallel world, learned how to cross the bridge, having somehow earned a pass. the marox_pass, which they failed, though they tried, to understand its mysterious and esoteric origin. a birdcage sat on an embroidered cloth next to a window which looked out to a potager garden, of which contained a pomegranite tree and a wild stand of zinnia. he saw the bird inside. it reminded him upon first sight as a peacock, for it had the crown-like display on the small head and the sweeping tail, but it was not the traditional iridescent blue, but entirely red in various hues of the pigment until it was powdery orange on its perfect, velveteen face. he approached it without hesitation for its beauty was magnet-like it its unavoidable attraction. the gilded cage was large enough to contain a living bonsai hanoki which she had perched in. a nest made from wool was built in the crook of a branch next to her. it contained three eggs. as graham neared, the carmine peacock hollered forth its elegant song, an achingly gorgeous noise that summoned scenes from a childhood, when he walked the dirt road in his secluded neighborhood, past the cage of a flock of peacocks, the males displaying their massive, flower-like, bombs of feathers, like elegant fans to cool the brows of royalty. it was the sound of innocence. the call of the wild. the announcement of what was to come. graham stepped up to the cage in the wake of the song's resonance and studied the bird. he marveled at the intricacies, as if god had created lithe fairies with fingers like flower stems to paint the delicate, fragile facial features. even the eyes were lined with sharp black. there was a tiny, cardboard book tied to the door of the cage with a piece of leather string. graham picked it up and found it had a painting on the front of a sunset over a forest of white, frozen bare trees and a scattering of blue spruce. he opened it and read the first page... "dear graham, i hope this finds you well. i've been worried about you for a long time and i just can't take it anymore. i fear i am going mad with worry. where have you been? everyone is worried about you. we have gone to find you. we can only pray we won't find you with a noose around your neck. kufraya can fly a message to me if you treat her well...please try to get hold of me when you have read this... xo your friend, molly 101002 ... crowli old molly gathered scottie into her arms and carried him towards the back staircase that led to the kitchen and family room area of the house. he felt heavy in her arms, but she loved the comfort of his affection as he snuggled his head into the crook of her neck. “can we play hide and seek again later molly?” he asked. she could hear the smile in his tiny little boy voice as he spoke. “sure thing, squirt. but first, we eat pizza!” molly answered. “what?” scottie asked, raising his head to look at molly’s face when she spoke again. molly often forgot that her brother had hearing difficulty, because he had developed such an amazing ability to adapt to his disability, however, he did read lips most of the time to achieve full comprehension of spoken sound. molly looked down at his upturned face before she spoke again, repeating her words slowly, “i said, sure, but first we need to go and eat.” scottie answered her by snuggling back into the crook of her neck and tightening his hold around her neck. molly stepped closer to the stairs, but just before she took the first step downward, she stopped short, planting both feet and holding on to the railing to halt her momentum abruptly. she could barely make out the words, but could tell her parents were arguing. “what?” scottie asked, questioning this change of plan. molly set scottie down on the carpeted landing, and turned his puzzled face towards hers woth both hands before she whispered. “hey scottie, do me a favor and run back to my room and get my i-pod for me. you can play the racing game after we eat.” “okay!” he responded with a huge smile, and in the next second he was gone. scottie loved to play with her i-pod. he also loved to explore her room’s private hiding places, and since her i-pod was very well concealed in her desk drawer, she knew it would take him awhile to uncover it, thereby buying her some time. all molly really wanted was a way to get him out of her hair for a few minutes while she eavesdropped on the conversation going on below her. she wasn’t sure why, but she had the strangest feeling her life depended on it. molly could only hear her mother’s side of the argument, as her shrill voice carried the easiest up the narrow stairwell. dad was answering her, however it came through as a barely audible mumble. “i am not leaving. and scottie is staying with me!" she shrieked. "i will fight you until my last breath on that! i already have a lawyer!” ‘a lawyer? what is she talking about?’ molly thought, inching her way down the stairs, and taking care to avoid the parts of the stairs that creaked. she heard more mumbling from her dad but could not hear details, yet she felt his anguish envelope her as the tone of his voice was somehow translated into feeling. “molly will be better off with you anyway...the two of you are closer than she and i will ever be.” her mother was babbling now, and molly knew she must have added a healthy pour of the brown stuff from the bottle with the pirate on it into her coke again. as molly alighted on the landing where the staircase made the turn, she stopped. she was still obscured from her parent’s view, yet she could see their reflections in the mirror at the bottom of the stairs. her mother was sitting at the table in the kitchen, gulping brown liquid through a straw. her shoulders were rigid and she was glaring with revulsion at her husband, the stepfather molly happened to adore. molly was able to hear his voice clearly as his anger escalated. “you can’t be serious! you want to split this family in half? for your own benefit? your own whim? molly is at too tender of an age to be separated from scottie. she's been through enough, and she needs her mother! she’s already questioning me all the time about wanting to know her father. now this? are you that insensitive? she’s only 9 for christ’s sake!” ‘they are getting a divorce.’ molly concluded, and in the next second, she felt the air sucked from her lungs as her insular world crashed in on her. ‘this is not happening. tell me this is not happening...’ molly thought, choking on the lump in her throat and swiping at the accompanying tears that dripped out the sides of her eyes. she turned and sprinted back up the staircase. she needed to get out of there, and fast. she needed to think. she needed graham. molly tiptoed past her bedroom door, and peeked in to see that scottie had torn through multiple desk and bureau drawers in order to locate her i-pod, leaving a generous debris field of pencils, live strong bracelets, and scraps of magazines that she had cut out and carefully stored. he had succeeded, obviously, in finding his treasure, but had long since forgotten about the pizza, since he had curled up into her cozy window seat and was engrossed in his beloved racing game. he had the volume on the i-pod turned up loud and his concentration was accordingly so intent that he never noticed her pass. she continued through the upstairs hallway, tossing a backward glance to her parents’ bedroom, as she passed, and headed down the main front staircase. molly crept toward the kitchen, taking care to go unnoticed, and reached under the table next to the phone to retrieve her backpack. retracing her steps like an escaping jewel thief, molly opened the basement door and slipped through it stealthily, closing it behind her and leaving herself in complete darkness. molly had navigated these stairs in the dark a thousand times, and knew the path off by heart. she plunged herself further and further into the darkness, but her eyes gradually adapted to the diminishing light as she progressed. ‘they won’t be able to do anything about this if they find me missing,’ molly reasoned to herself, her lack of maturity appearing as she tried process a solution to her already fragile world that was about to crumble to pieces around her. molly arrived at her intended destination; the steps that led up to the back of the garage. it was her escape hatch to the outside world. it was her secret. molly had been using this route to sneak out of the house in order to spend time with graham for what seemed like forever. it was a miracle that no one had figured it out yet, but it was their way. they had spent hours making forts in the woods, and taking hikes along the creek. they spent their summer sleeping out under the stars and telling each other stories of other worlds. they talked endlessly, sharing everything they could manage with each other...hopes, dreams, fears, whatever. there were no secrets with graham. he knew her inside and out. her legs felt leaden as she ascended the six creaky wooden stairs that led into the garage, and she was so preoccupied with her current circumstances combined with the urgent need to see graham that she had tried to run up the steps. but she forgot to duck at the appropriate time to miss hitting the crossbeam with her head. forehead connected with two-by-six in a split second, producing a dull, yet sickening thud that no one heard. molly saw a spray of sparkling stars, and instinctively reached up to her hairline. her hand met the warm ooze of blood, causing molly to sink to the stairs as her legs suddenly gave out underneath her slight frame. molly closed her eyes, yet she strangely she could see. she saw her world was exploding all around her; the fragments of all she had ever known... of her life, had suddenly begun to scatter, catching flight into a whirling, dancing tornado of torn photographs and sheets of colored paper strewn with words. and then everything went black. 101002 ... cr0wl graham wondered what had happened to him that he had troubled molly so and made her leave her house to search for him. did i abandon her? he thought. did i just up and go because i was selfish? or was i trying to save someone else? he turned to the next page of the little cardboard book that molly had made from glue, magazine paper, and sharpie pen. it was a photograph of a large rock jutting out from a snowy, rugged hillside. it almost appeared as though it was a sculpture of a large, ancient face. graham recognized it immediately as what molly and he had deemed on their trips into the woods as "the wishing rock." on the next page was the single sentence, "make your wish." graham sighed and shook his head as if he had stumbled blindly into a thick sticky spider web. he tried to understand what was happening to him and why. it was as if he had broken into several pieces and now had to join them all together again. there must be something vital that will unite them, he thought. as he turned the next page he was filled with the same propulsion that every human longs for when they wake in the morning; that will to live and the knowledge that others are the glue that bind the various selves in each one of us. there was a collage of black with various sized white dots, cut-out to look as stars and only one of them larger and brighter than the rest. bright star, graham thought, and a smile spread across his face. on the final page was a photograph of graham holding his arm out with kufraya perched on it. he looked closely at his face and could see a pure visage of happiness. he closed the book and released it, allowing it to dangle and spin by the leather string. "so me and you are tight?" graham said aloud to kufraya as she held on to the perch. she cocked her head and gazed at him as if she was recalling him from a recent past. he opened the door of the cage and stepped inside. 101003 ... crowli  the distinctive spicy scent of evergreen prodded at old molly, causing her to instinctively wrinkle her nose, yet she did not open her eyes. she’d just had the most amazing dream, and though she longed to return to it, the very awareness that she had been asleep seemed to nudge her even harder toward accepting consciousness. especially since she was outside.  'why am i sleeping outside?' she speculated hazily, but she promptly allowed her thoughts to return to the dream. she had been flying, although this time she wasn’t flying herself, per se, but instead was riding on the back of a giant royal blue and emerald green butterfly.   ‘weird….’ molly thought, and took a deep breath, inviting the pleasant, soothing scent of the pine to fill her senses as she fingered the thick bed of soft brown needles underneath her. ‘mmmmmmm….that was so nice.....' molly thought, and a smile overtook her face because the dream had reminded of graham. last summer during one of their secret forays of camping outside under the stars, he had asked her rather matter-of-factly if she would be willing to ride on the back of a bird with him in order to get to another world. though it had seemed like an odd question at the time, she had answered without hesitation. of course she would. she'd go anywhere with graham, and she’d told him so.   graham had such a vivid imagination, always filled with illustrious adventure stories, and molly was absolutely certain he would be a famous novelist someday. the subconscious fantasy she had just awakened from seemed exactly like the type of adventure that graham's mind's eye would conjure up.   she had been running, 'away from something or someone?' she wondered. molly loved to analyze her own dreams, especially the ones that she recalled so vividly, like this one. she was confident she had been fleeing from somewhere, or someone, but she also had the strong sense that she had been running towards someone, something or going somewhere of great importance. she made a mental note to look this one up in her dream book that her dad had gotten her for her birthday last year.   in her dream molly had been about to run over a cliff, when out of nowhere the beautiful human-sized butterfly had swooped in to save her. 'from a terrible fall? from my death?' she mused.    it all had seemed so real....   molly closed her eyes again, and felt the tiny pricks of the long pine needles touching against her scalp and shoulder blades as she moved her head back and forth to stretch her neck. the needles didn't hurt, but were rather a gentle reminder of reality. her forehead, on the other hand, was killing her. molly raised her hand up to her hairline, which was aching like she'd been hit by a baseball bat, but yet she could feel no wound or bump there. the pain in her head triggered a lightening bolt of recognition, however, that shocked her to her very core, leaving a telltale burning sensation in her belly in its wake.   "oh my god!" molly shrieked, sitting suddenly upright. she looked up, then down, her eyes widening as understanding took hold. she could ascertain only that she was all alone, sitting under a thick shelter of evergreens. she could see the sky through the branches, noticing quickly that it was as red as fire which meant the sun was setting.   she did not know where she was. ‘where am i?’   then seemingly out of the blue, the memories started filtering in; of her parents' argument, her mom's tears, of her hasty escape plan from home, of her urgent need to see graham. all of it came flooding back like a dam had let loose, and the last thing molly remembered was running up the stairs to get to the garage to get out. then nothing.   she had been running away. she had been running to find her graham.   'the dream!' molly marveled....'in the dream i had been running away!'   "but how did i get here?” molly said into the quiet hush of pine fronds. she was answered with the plaintive whisper of breeze through the trees in its melodic accompaniment with the evening birdsong. molly sighed with exasperation, and as she tried to no avail to make sense of what was happening to her, her thoughts drifted back to the butterfly.    ‘was there a message in the dream? an explanation?' molly wondered.   "when i thanked the butterfly for saving me, he had said he wasn't saving me at all. he said he was guiding me." molly realized she was talking out loud to herself, but it seemed like the right thing to do. if she was going crazy, she could at least talk herself through it.   "the butterfly in the dream told me to follow the sunset. that it would be safe there." molly spoke again into the emptiness around her.   'could i still be dreaming?' molly considered to herself, perplexed, yet certain she needed to make a move.   it was getting dark.   she was going to follow the sunset. what was there to lose?   she stood and brushed the dust and pine pollen off of her sweat pants and tee shirt, and shivering in the dusky chill, she shrugged into her hoodie, picked up her backpack, and spread the thick branches in order to make a doorway for herself to climb through the thick tree canopy. the soft needles felt rubbery against her cheeks as she struggled to pass through them, and she instinctively closed her eyes in order to avoid any accidental scratches. she couldn't shake the feeling that she was crossing a bridge as she climbed in the direction of the red sky, and when she opened her eyes, she was on the other side.   molly sucked in her breath at what her eyes beheld.   there in front of her, looking like a stunning painting backlit by the brilliant red, orange and pink sky of the setting sun, was the unmistakably recognizable, immense stone edifice known as hawksworth.   molly’s heart started to pound as she walked slowly toward the ten foot tall iron gate in front of her. ‘how did i get back to hawksworth?’ molly thought to herself, shaking her head in complete disbelief.   she placed her hand upon the giant handle, but did not turn it, and instead stood frozen with utter indecision as to how to proceed. she cast her eyes down to the ground, as was her habit when she was feeling unsure. but when she looked down this time, she gasped.   for there on the bottom rung of the iron gate was a miniature replica of her butterfly. molly stooped down to get a better look at it, and was immediately overtaken with the feeling of worlds colliding for the briefest of seconds before she became overwhelmed with relief. graham was close by. she could feel him.     and on the butterfly’s wings were two distinctive words: ‘welcome back.' 101003 ... cr0wl kufraya stayed where she was, her three-toed feet holding strong to the hanoki branch. she lifted her wings as a sign of greeting and made what could only be described as a purring noise to graham as he reached forth and ran his right hand along her thin neck and back. the feathers felt smooth in the tips of his extended fingers. it was all coming back to him as she seemed to be transferring a certain sense of energy like one vehicle being battery jumped by another. molly and he had found her on a saturday morning when they had hiked into the buddelia fields surrounding hawkwsworth. she had a gnarley wound under her left wing and stumbled about in her attempts to fly. so they cared for her like parents with a sick child and after many summer days she was better and had become theirs. they taught her how to home, that is to carry messages. molly would stay with her in the field and graham would run all the way to the pagodas, almost a mile away, and after a careful exchange of language, words they had patiently taught kufraya, they let her go with an attached message inside a tiny leather pouch. a few minutes later, she arrived and perched on graham's arm. "hey girl, we've got to find molly." graham said. blinking away the memory. 101004 ... crowli   feeling the cool metal of the gate handle pressing against her palm, old molly grasped it tight as she crouched lower in order to study the magnificent butterfly. its colors were so stunningly vivid that the tiny creature almost looked unreal, yet there he was, perched on the weathered black iron, his presence suggesting that he was indeed much more than an ordinary conception of nature. his blue and green velvety wings slowly opened and closed in perfect harmony to the whispering wind that fluttered through molly’s hair, and while his message remained easily legible, it twisted molly’s thoughts right back to hawksworth’s dark basement. the memory of the strange ‘messenger fish’ that she and graham had followed so willingly lingered close, yet for some reason, yesterday’s events seemed as though they had happened in another lifetime.   this butterfly did not exude the neediness that those fish had, however. ‘he radiates authority,’ molly thought.   suddenly acutely aware of the setting sun as the shadows in front of hawksworth lengthened and enveloped her completely in the evening chill, molly tentatively rose to the standing position, her momentum causing her to pull downwards on the gate handle. it was unlocked, and with her slight tug, it clicked free and swung open in a silent invitation for her to enter.   molly let go of the handle, but did she not did not proceed. instead, her gaze was down cast once again, partially with uncertainty and yet to some extent with excitement, but her jaw dropped in surprise when her gaze reached the bottom of the gate, and she discerned that the butterfly had left his former perch and had now alighted himself upon the gate handle directly in front of her.   his wings now had a new message: ‘come in.’   molly forcibly coaxed her feet to move in the direction of the house, and as she passed through the gate, the butterfly swiftly took flight, and began dancing gracefully through the air in front of her. molly smiled at its animated action. the brilliant butterfly was beckoning her to follow it, and she obliged. molly struggled to decipher why she was so apprehensive about going into the house without graham, but yet she also had the overwhelming perception that she would find him here. she somehow trusted this butterfly to lead her to him. molly paused on the flagstone path and blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. she had the strangest feeling whirling around inside her; almost as though she could feel graham reaching for her. ‘it doesn’t feel like he is in trouble, though’ molly mused, ‘it seems like he’s lost.’  she started walking slowly toward what looked to be the front entrance to the grand estate, but the butterfly had some other plan as it veered off to the left and into a grouping of rose bushes. the cobblestone path continued to unfold under molly's feet, and she followed it, quickening her pace to keep up with her guide. she suddenly found herself inside a beautiful garden, navigating a maze of decorative hedges. the greenery had obviously been trimmed recently, as the thick branches were carefully manicured and cut in box-like shapes, but this perplexed molly tremendously because she and graham had been all over these grounds a hundred times and had never stumbled upon this masterpiece. "it's a maze! where in the world did this come from?" molly shouted, giggling to herself, and she started skipping deeper inside, keeping her butterfly within sight.   molly loved mazes.  she smiled huge, and as she broke into a jog, she thought about the time last year when she’d been having such a hard time, and how graham had given her the most amazing gift ever. it was a hand made multi-colored maze crafted from a small box, filled with pictures of various circles within squares. inside of the lid was a picture of a red and white maze in the shape of a cross, and on the bottom was a multi-colored fish in relief. but it was the inside that she loved the most. the path. there was a blue bead, a ball that made the continuous path from the start to the end and then back again. graham had told her to always remember that life was a maze; a continuous series of collisions and choices to make. he had been spot on with that observation. 'well' molly thought as she followed the butterfly further and further in. 'i'm in a real life maze now....here goes nothing!'    101004 ... . mg_04 101006 what's it to you? who go blather from