“There we are!” Moira sang in her lilting Irish accent, cheerfully noting Rebecca’s presence. “That makes seven, then! So! Good evening, ladies!” she said to them all as Rebecca half loped, half fell into their midst. “How are we feeling? Alive? Rejuvenated? A wee bit transformed, perhaps?”
Rebecca was feeling transformed, all right, and glanced up at the pristine dusk sky. A few stars were beginning to twinkle at them through the pines, stars that looked close enough to reach up and touch. It was gorgeous at the top of the world!
Not everyone was appreciating the transformation or the scenery, however. “I’m dying, Moira!” Leslie, an outspoken alderman from the northeast, moaned, her fists balled up in her stomach for dramatic effect. “When do we eat?”
Moira flashed a mischievous grin, planted her fists on top of ample hips stacked like two beanbags on thick, muscular legs. “There now, I know you’re quite exhausted, love, but that is precisely the point, isn’t it? In order to transform to a newer, better, stronger you, we must tear down all the old insecurities and misperceptions, mustn’t we, for it is only then that we can build up new and fresh!”
Leslie wasn’t buying it. “Moiii-ra!” she wailed again. “Come on, when do we eat?”
“We’ll fill your belly full, I promise! But first, I have a special treat for you!” she said eagerly, stomping over to a canvas bag. “The boys will be here with our food in about an hour, at which time we’ll feast on fresh river trout, asparagus in cream sauce, squash and peppers and shallots sautéed in a buttery rum sauce, fresh new potatoes . . .”
They were all moaning and clutching their stomachs now as Moira withdrew a long stick, polished to a sheen and adorned with bird feathers. She straightened up, a broad grin across a broader face. “But first, we’ll have our first visioning,” she said excitedly. “Who can remind us all what we talked about in the orientation before embarking on the Journey to The Vision?”
Most of the women were still lost in the dream of food she had created; no one answered. Rebecca couldn’t vouch for the others, but she was so exhausted she could barely remember her name.
“The first step on a journey to your vision of personal growth is what?” Moira prompted.
“To strip away the old so we can build the new?” June, the housewife with self-described empty nest syndrome, suggested.
“That’s it!” Moira proudly exclaimed. “And then what, June? Can you recall for us what the next step is?”
“Er . . . detoxification?”
“Yes! Everyone, look around you now—we’ve stripped away the old, have we not? Not one of you has any of the trappings she came with, does she? And the last three days of physical exertion has wrung you dry of impurities, both in personal chemistry and thought, eh?”
The women around the campfire looked at one another, noses wrinkled, nodding solemnly.
“It’s true. I feel really beat, but I feel better than I have in a long time.” This, from chubby Teresa, who had cried all through Day One.
“That’s marvelous! So who among you then can tell me what happens after detoxification?” Moira asked, and glanced eagerly from woman to woman until the flight attendant Cindy asked timidly, “The visioning begins?”
Moira liked that answer so much that she threw her head back and howled at the moon. Literally. Because that was what they had learned was the first step toward transformation, howling at the classroom lights during orientation. Wolves howl to show supremacy. Women in need of transformation howl their victory over shortcomings and insecurities. And just because they felt like it, apparently. To wit: Moira howled until she had run out of breath, at which point she lowered her head and beamed at the lot of them. “That is exactly the right answer, Cindy. We do the visioning,” she said, and dropping down to one knee, she held out the stick so they could all see it.
“This,” she said reverently, “is our talking stick. Whoever holds the talking stick will speak her vision. Who will be the first to hold it?” she asked, then startled Rebecca right out of her wits by thrusting the stick toward her. “Rebecca Lear?”
Rebecca instantly reared back and looked frantically around the group. She was a convert to transformation, but still! “I, ah . . . I’d rather not go first, Moira, if that’s all right with you.”
“Real-ly? Why wouldn’t you?” she asked pleasantly.
“I, ah . . . I’m not really ready to, ah . . . Vision. Ing.”
“I know. That’s why I chose you,” Moira said, then surprised Rebecca by tossing the stick at her so hard that she had to catch it or be bonked in the face by it. “Now you have the stick, so there’s no point in arguing, is there, love?”
“Really, I’d rather—”
“Oh come on,” Leslie snapped. “We’re starving here! We’re all going to have to do it at some point, so suck it up and go first, or we’ll never eat!”