I fell asleep quickly that night, but soon found myself standing in The Crossroads. I looked around, confused, since the Hound hadn’t come to summon me. I just seemed to be there.

“Hello?” I heard my voice, but I hadn’t said anything. I spun around and there, coming down one of the paths, was me. I recognized her. This was what I looked like, back in elementary school. Nearly twenty years ago, well before my first trip to The Crossroads. But she was alone, and confused. I lifted my hand to wave, and opened my mouth.

“Hello, child,” my voice said. Again, it wasn’t me. I looked to my left and there was a woman, old and frail, like Abuela in her last days. She looked so much like her, but I knew that wasn’t the case. One blue eye and one brown, flecked with gold, peered out of that wrinkled face. “Let’s take a look at you all.” All? I turned around again and there, coming up from another direction yet, was another me. Another future, she looked to be maybe twenty or so years older. She looked confident, powerful. I stepped forward finally as the three other woman came together. The maiden, the mother, and the crone. Assuming I became a mother, I guess, but these are the titles we take in such a form. But what did that make me, the me watching this? The crone ran her hands along each of our jaws, looking us over.

“What is this?” I asked. The crone smiled.

“This is where we make the choice,” the mother said. “This is when we settle the path ahead.”

“But wait,” the maiden said, pointing at me, “if I’m here, and we’re all me, why doesn’t she remember?”

“You don’t know how to do this yet,” I said, piecing things together. “You were pulled here, rather than walking into it through magic.”

“And so it feels like a dream, and will fade like one,” the crone said. “But your input is valuable anyway.”

“How can we be doing this? How can we be here?” I asked. “The Crossroads isn’t ours to do with as we please.”

“This isn’t the Crossroads. I don’t know what it is,” the mother answered.

“You will,” the crone said, smiling.

“But—”

“But if I tell her,” she said, pointing a bony finger at me, “then you will know, and the cycle will be changed.”

“I don’t think we should break the cycle, whatever it is,” the maiden said.

“Valuable indeed.”

“So what’s this cycle?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s complicated,” the mother answered. “You’ll be told it isn’t a cycle.”

“And they’ll be right,” the crone added.

“And…I suppose they’ll be right. But we’ve learned much about time, and about The Crossroads, and about things we can do.”

“And who we know,” the crone winked to the mother, who sighed and scratched her hair.

“I don’t know if you remember how recent that is for me.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” the crone said, “it will all make sense. When you return.”

“Okay, okay. You said we were here to make a choice? What choice?”

“What we will trust.”

“Who we will trust,” the mother said.

“What path we will take?” the maiden asked. The other two nodded.

“So how do we do that?” I asked.

“We do not choose. We have chosen,” the mother said, pointing between herself and the crone.

“So…?” I pointed to the maiden. The mother and crone shook their heads.

“She is here to advise. You choose.”

“How can I advise?” the maiden asked. “I don’t even know what’s going on!”

“But you remember what we wanted when we started,” the crone said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “And that will be helpful here.”

“What I want? I want to understand! You all talk like you’re in on some secret!”

“I’ve been trying to understand,” I said, “all my life.”

“And that understanding has shaped more than you know,” the crone said.

“Oh!” the mother said, stepping backward and putting her hands over her mouth. “It’s…we told him, and then—”

“That’s quite enough!” The crone stomped her foot with authority as she said that, and the mother stopped.

“Sorry, sorry. I hadn’t realized yet.”

“I remember.”

“How does this help me decide who to trust, exactly?” I asked.

“Who are we not sure about trusting?” the maiden asked.

“Hecate,” both older women said in unison.

“Who?”

“Oh,” I said. “I…I don’t know yet. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“You’re going the wrong way,” the mother said.

“The beginning hasn’t happened yet,” the crone said. I gasped and looked between them.

“I don’t have to be looking backward!” I cupped my hands over my mouth as soon as I said it, and thought about that. “I can be looking forward, can’t I?”

“And you will meet others,” the mother said.

“Are they nice?” the maiden asked.

“They are…something like nice, yes.” The mother looked at me, and I noticed for the first time that she also had the golden flecks in her brown eye.

“Is that another spell gone wrong?” I asked, pointing and hoping she remembered what I meant. She smiled.

“It’s more like a spell gone right.”

“Do you trust Hecate?” the maiden asked me. I took a moment to think.

“I don’t think I do, anymore.”

“But you are still in her debt,” the mother noted. “You will need to do the job she has for you, and you do not want her to think you hesitant.”

“What is it? What does she want from me?”

“You are a means to an end for her,” the crone said, waving her hand. “It isn’t about what she wants from you, it’s about what she wants in general.”

“And I give it to her?”

“No,” the mother answered, “but you must do the task she gives you. And then, when you know the truth, you know what to do about it.”

“So I’m right not to trust her.”

“But what about the others? Can we trust them?” the maiden asked.

“Who are they?”

“You will know very soon now,” the crone said. “Very soon indeed.”

“Heed their warnings. Do not forget that they have different goals than you,” the mother said, stepping closer to me. “What is good for them is not always good for you.”

“Are their goals good?” I asked.

“That is a matter of some interpretation,” the crone answered. “I may have an answer, soon.”

“You must decide whether to trust them or not,” the mother said. “We can only advise.”

“What do you advise?” I demanded.

“Caution,” the mother said.

“Diligence,” the crone said.

“Hope,” the maiden said. We all turned to look at her. “Well? You both made it through, right? There’s hope, then.” The crone smiled.

​“Perhaps the most valuable of all,” she said, mussing the maiden’s hair. I was about to ask them another question when I suddenly found myself sitting on the couch in Nan and Sergei’s apartment. I made my way into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. The clock read 1:11 as I drank, and I couldn’t help but feel like the timing was important. But I doubted I would get any more answers tonight, so I finished my drink and went back to bed.

I couldn’t tell how long I was in the cave, since we were too deep to see the sun and we were fiddling with my sense of time. But we tried again, with the same point on the same thread, a couple dozen or so times. Each time I would get a little closer to clarity, and then pass out, have some food and drink and time to rest once I woke up, discuss what I was seeing with the Fates, and then try again. I was starting to understand why they didn’t tend to teach others how to do this, and appreciate that they were taking the effort to teach me.

During the downtime, when I was recovering from one attempt and preparing for another, they would give me tips on ways to ignore certain kinds of things, and how to navigate once I was in, and occasionally slip into their versions of various Greek myths. They told me that once I had a proper understanding of how to see within a person’s thread, I would have to learn for myself how to access those threads from beyond the cave. They could do it, of course—they said that it was as easy for them as breathing was for me—but they were not skilled in magic and did not know what it would take for a mortal to access that same skill. I explained my understanding that magic was just the act of connecting to one side of reality and using it to influence the other, and they seemed to think they might have an idea for me before I left.

By this point I was getting some sense of what I was looking for. By filtering out so much extra information, I was able to piece together that I was peering into my own thread, probably somewhere in my past. By focusing on those things I now knew, I was making much faster progress at getting a clear view of what I was being shown. It was still a few more tries before I was able to actually see the scene. Finally, after so much trouble, I saw me, my face blank, my body raised above the ground. I still felt a certain resistance, and when I pushed through, everything changed.

I was no longer on the outside, looking at my face as though through a window. I was standing in the moment, in the Crossroads, and the Fates were standing there with me. The Crossroads looked different, though, and sat in a vast empty plain. Millions of little paths stretched off from it in every direction, some even going straight up into the sky and others directly into the ground. In the center of it all sat Hecate, as I had never seen her, her faces showing both vitality and death, youth and old age, wisdom and desperation. She sat on a throne of animated bone, at least twenty feet tall, holding her hand up toward me. I was floating such that my eyes were at the same level as hers, and she looked to be mid-sentence. From behind her, the ravens were entering the space, but seemed to be coming from the space itself rather than any of the roads. I don’t know how I knew that, but it seemed so obvious somehow.

“Is this what the Crossroads really looks like?” I asked.

“Well, no,” Clotho said. “This is just your mind trying to make sense of what it sees. But it is more like what the Crossroads truly looks like than you have ever seen.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not really here, so it is not reacting to your expectations or comfort,” Lachesis answered. I walked around, taking everything in, while the Fates waited and watched me.

“I thought this was going to be somewhere in my past.”

“It is,” Atropos said.

“Why don’t I remember this?”

“Perhaps,” Clotho offered, walking over and resting her hand on my shoulder, “you should try to see the scene in action.” I remembered that they said I would need to learn how to manipulate the flow of events. I considered how I would do that, and without consciously deciding it, I reached out with my hand and began to turn it counterclockwise like a dial. Hecate’s mouth moved as slowly as my hand turned, and the ravens began to move backward and melt back into the scenery. I watched as I was lowered back toward the ground. I turned my hand the other way, a bit faster, and saw everything continue moving forward at the new rate. I backed up again, and then pushed my hand forward as though pressing the dial.

I watched the whole scene play out. I watched as Hecate told me to lead Matteson to her. I watched as she commanded me to forget the encounter, and I paused it again as the ravens took human form and I was leaving. I took some deep breaths, trying to calm down, and felt the weight of time on the scene pressing into me a bit again. It took a few minutes of focus to push that aside again, while I paced quickly through the Crossroads.

“What is this? Why would she do that?” I asked, to no one in particular.

“The Hecate you know is not the Hecate we know,” Lachesis said. “Your experience of her has been limited to what you want from each other. But there is so much you do not know about her goals, and her methods, and where all of this leads.”

“Will I know?”

“Yes,” Lachesis answered, “you will see the ultimate end of her thousands of years of work. It will be painful, and difficult, but you will be there when she makes her move.”

“What is all of this about?”

​“You have learned all we have to teach you,” Atropos said, firmly, and with a snap of her fingers we were back in the cave, with no sign of the Crossroads or even the tapestry. “Be mindful, dear mortal. As you search the unknown, never forget that there is far more of it than you can ever expect.”

It had been a long day, and I was ready to crash for the night. I got up to my bedroom a little after 11, and as soon as I closed the door I saw the Hound sitting next to my bed.

“Don’t you usually wait til I’m asleep?” I asked. It cocked its head, then stood and turned around. The wall behind my bed folded out into a forest path overlooking the sea, and the Hound began walking. I yawned, stretched, and followed.

I wasn’t sure whether it was simply because I was going to the Crossroads physically for the first time, or if I had really changed so much that my experience of the Crossroads had to be completely redesigned, but the path seemed much more real than it ever had before. It was partly the senses; the smell of Central American flowers and ocean air, the feel of the ground under my feet, the sound of birds lilting through the trees. But there was something else, something that felt much more surprising: the path no longer looked magical. Before, it had always had an air of mystery to it, a sense that it couldn’t possibly exist in the real world, and of course it couldn’t, not with the ocean hovering overhead and the path forming and disappearing in response to my steps. But this, this felt like home, a home of which I only had very sparse, fleeting memories, from so many years ago.

What was Hecate playing at?

She didn’t behave as if she noticed the difference in the realm when we reached her, and she certainly didn’t present herself any differently in reaction to context. It was strange, looking upon a Greek goddess standing tall in a wilderness half a world away from the mountain her kind called home, carrying herself as if this was her own personal temple. And, well, it was. Whatever the Crossroads looked like to me, it remained the Crossroads, and that made it hers. But the effect was jarring, and my new doubts about her intentions after negotiating with my life prevented me from simply dismissing that incongruity.

“Jacqueline,” she said, her voice dripping with honey. I bowed.

“Mistress.”

“I’ve been thinking about you, you know.” She sat on her throne, which hadn’t existed before and looked like black marble carved by Aegean sculptors. I stood upright. “About your skill for magic and desire for knowledge. You, my dear, did not stop developing and studying when I stopped calling on you.”

“I don’t see why I would have.”

“You’d be surprised, child. Everyone has their own goals, and those whose goals truly center on me lose their way quickly when I give them space. But others, they truly believe in something. They truly desire something, something I am happy to give in exchange for their service. I think it only right to offer you new knowledge, in honor of your development so far and as a sign of good faith as we continue.” The Hound was sitting by her side by now, and she gracefully slipped her hand down to scratch at the back of its neck. I stood silent for a moment, processing.

“What new knowledge did you have in mind?” She smiled broadly then, baring teeth that seemed to be just a bit more sharp than I remembered.

“What would you like, dear?” My breath caught for a second. I could choose? Would she accept anything I chose? I briefly considered my options, before a common trait of all of them came to mind. I straightened my posture and met her gaze.

“I want knowledge of time magic,” I said, firmly. “I want to know how to see the past and future, and ultimately, how to travel between them.” She chuckled and leaned back into her seat.

“Are you sure? Time is a complicated thing.”

“I’m sure.” She considered me for a moment, then clapped her hands together and stood.

​“Very well! Come, come, let me show you the way.” She turned toward one of the other roads leading away from the Crossroads, and it suddenly seemed like there were hundreds of them. As she walked, the Hound rose to join her, and I began to follow.

There is a significant gap in my knowledge of Hecate's history. What I can say for certain is that she is the real goddess from ancient Greece, that she did not originate in Greece, and that she was also revered in Rome under the name Trivia. The former and latter facts are well-attested, and a host of epithets for her existed in both Grecian and Roman practice. ​Of her origin, however, little is known for certain. Historians with an eye toward mythology debate a Greek, Anatolian, or Egyptian source for her cult. I am inclined to believe she is of Anatolian origin, as the Egyptian theory seems circumstantial and her personal disdain for the other Greek deities as thieves and upstarts suggests to me that she was incorporated into that pantheon some time after both she and they formed. This is difficult to argue without pointing to personal contact with her, however, so it it a matter I can only share with a limited audience.

Sergei is a member of that audience, and remains convinced that she can be traced much farther through history. He notes that some Christian sects associated her with the spirit of salvation and gave her limited dominion over the world; I have not yet managed to help him understand the limited respect Wikipedia has in the academic world, and neither of us has searched for more information on this particular claim yet. But using that, he claims that she shares traits with various minor goddesses, demons, and folklore entities around the world for centuries afterward. His certainty of each of these claims varies, but there is one he is absolutely convinced about: that Hecate is the Devil at the Crossroads that appears in folklore surrounding blues musicians. His case is well-made in this instance, and it does seem difficult for me to believe that she would allow anyone else to claim dominion over the Crossroads, even just as a term for a deal. Many of these accounts do, admittedly, view the Devil at the Crossroads as male; but I have seen her present as male before. I'm not fully convinced that she is this devil, but I also can't assume she isn't.

What I do know is that, by the time I met her, she had begun selecting witches from around the world for direct training. Her exact standards are unknown, as are her goals. I don't know how many witches she has selected or even if she is teaching us all similar material. I have met a couple others at the Crossroads, on rare events when she decided to have us there at the same time. Through these interactions and her own off-handed comments I have pieced together that she has not selected any male witches for her training. She seems to show no preference regarding trans or cis women, and at least two witches I've met at the Crossroads over the years have been nonbinary.

Her demands on me, at least, are high. She has made it very clear that she expects me to become highly skilled at seeing and passing through the metaphysical realm. The latter is a skill I have yet to learn, but she promises that under her tutelage I will be able to open portals between realms and across space, maybe even across time. I don't know why I was selected for this specific set of skills, but I am deeply curious about what I can learn of magic and the metaphysical realm by traveling in this way.

Her claims that she has authority over individual Anchors and Warlocks is of some concern. John didn't seem to have any knowledge of her, and she seemed ignorant of his presence in my apartment until I mentioned him. If she rightfully has the dominion she claims, shouldn't she know them? Shouldn't she at least be aware of them? If she doesn't have that dominion, what happens if and when she tries to assert it? I've decided to do more research on her, at least partly to find out if any previous Anchors or Warlocks appear alongside her. As much as I may doubt some of Sergei's attempts to connect her to history, it is the only list of places to look that I can access. It may be educational to explore those claims, even if only to rule them out.

She is served directly by a dog, a great hound usually with jet black fur and red eyes. She has a deep animosity for ravens and reacts strongly when they are suggested as a symbol of any of her domains. I have seen other animals in the Crossroads, but do not know how many serve her directly. She has other symbols that appear frequently in the Crossroads and our training sessions, most commonly the key and the torch.

She has three faces, or possibly three selves, that never seem to face the same direction. I have seen at least a dozen different forms that she may take; she is gorgeous in every form, and most of them retain her threefold form, her distinct musculature, and her eastern Mediterranean complexion. She is sexually active to some degree with at least some of her followers, though personal experience on the matter is limited to very few incidents. Her variety of forms prevents me from making any statement on common aspects of these incidents.

​I have not seen her since the night I asked John to shield me from her call, and at this point I'm beginning to worry that I will not see her again.

There was something off about the statue. I could feel it ever since I'd moved to town, like it was somehow...wrong, that it interacted with magic but not in the way it was intended. I couldn't shake the nagging thought that there was something that needed to be done, and I just knew I had to be the one to do it.

None of the rituals seemed to be working quite like they should, and I could remember nothing in Abuela’s teachings that could help me figure out why. There had to be something to the nature of magic, or the spiritual realm itself, that wasn’t covered by the rituals and practices I knew. I considered the possibility that other traditions had explored this aspect of magic, traditions where the basic maintenance of mystical energy was seen as something in which humans could participate rather than a purview of the gods.

I had spent seven months digging around in what I could find, and while some avenues seemed promising, nothing had produced fruit. I found a small magic shop, got to know the owners a bit, but when I asked if anyone knew anything about the statue they just gave me mundane history. I passed out last night surrounded by books and notes. As the information I had gathered bounced around in my head, trying to find a place to land, I was approached by a black dog, strong and long-haired with a glimmer of intelligence in its eyes. As my mind fixed on it, everything else seemed to melt away, until I felt I was standing with it in a real space.

"You wish to know how the worlds meet," it said, as though it were answering a question rather than asking one.

"Can you tell me?" I asked.

"I am a guard and a shepherd. My mistress gives answers." I saw now that the dog sat at the edge of a road which seemed to stretch on forever beyond it. The closer I looked at the road the more it resembled a river, but it never lost the sense of being solid. I turned back and saw a forest behind me.

"Is this a dream?"

"Does it matter?" I turned back to the dog and exhaled sharply to brace myself.

"Lead, and I will follow."

We walked the road for a long time, neither speaking to the other, with no landscape in sight. It seemed the road just existed, surrounded by void, and even the thought of looking at it for any length of time was painful. Finally, some land began to appear, empty but for rocks and craggy trees. Then we reached an intersection, where three roads met in the midst of a field, barren but for small plots of wild grass. Standing in the center of the intersection was a woman in a black, finely-tailored suit. Her black hair was in a tight braid riding her brow like a crown, and she held a torch that provided the only light to this place. When I tried to focus on the details of her face, it began to seem as though she had three, and I found it difficult to maintain the focus long. Her features were strong, bronzed, and I would later learn they betrayed an eastern Mediterranean origin. She had to have been eight feet tall, with finely-crafted muscles and eyes that burned with a restrained passion that almost hurt to stare deeply into. I felt my breath catch at her form and turned my eyes down and my attention to centering myself again.

"Welcome, child," she said, extending a hand as though to lead me further. I stepped slightly forward as the dog sat by her side.

"Thank you. Where are we?"

"The Crossroads. This is where all things meet."

"Who are you? Is this your realm?"

"I am Hekate, Goddess of the Threefold Crossroads, Lady of the Liminal Spaces, Mistress of Magic, Keeper of the Night and Its Ghosts. This is one form my realm may take." I shuddered at the title and took another hesitant step forward.

"I understand you have answers."

"Yes. If you will become my disciple, I can reveal the flow of magic itself to you." I looked at her hand, still open to me, but now I saw it held a key. I looked into her eyes and knew she could deliver what she promised. I took a deep breath before reaching out and taking her hand.

"If you will have me, Mistress." She smiled.

"I would not have invited you otherwise. It will be some nights before you have the answers you seek; rest, for now. We shall meet more in your dreams."

​I opened my eyes to daylight, surrounded by books and notes.

John and I talked less than I think he expected while out yesterday. It seems he's grown comfortable openly discussing these things in public, but I'm still a little wary. That, and talking about it made me recall what Alethea had shown me, and I'm still trying to emotionally process it all. It's hard to tell if John was unaffected, or if he was just pushing it aside to deal with the task at hand. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. The end result, however, was that he agreed to let me know if he finds anything else, and I'll try to come up with a means to help her move on before he leaves. His alleged knack for exorcism may be helpful, but I don't see how we'd both be able to do anything at the same time unless we're fairly far apart.

The black dog came for me last night. At the Crossroads, Hecate asked what I had learned about John. I tried to use his meeting Alethea to steer the conversation toward ways to help her, but She seemed largely unconcerned. This is the second night in a row She's wanted to talk about him. Given her previous statement that Anchors are her property, I'm growing concerned about this sudden interest in him. I should tell him, but I seem to have trouble remembering it when I'm talking to him. So here I am making a note of it, for next time.

For now, though, I need to get ready for the party tonight. We have a lot of work to do around the apartment before people arrive.

Went downtown with John and Jacob yesterday. It was fun, John and I got to explore a bunch of alleys and corners of the city that I never get to check out with anyone else. After everyone else went to sleep and it was just us on our couches, we talked for a while about magic. He showed me a book in his bag, he said it had various exorcism notes and a couple circles. I asked how that works, if he breaks magic and can't use it, and he explained that he seems to be able to push things out of the physical realm (or at least away from physical things), and he's not sure if that counts as magic so much as enforcing a world without magic. Which makes sense, I guess, if in a terribly frightening way.

How many people are there like him out there? Are they why magic is so hard to do? Did they create the divide between the worlds? There's stories that it wasn't always this way, that spirits used to walk among us so much easier, and that there are still places around the world where they still can. I was still sorting that out when I went to sleep, and my thoughts on the matter must have caught my Mentor's attention because I found myself standing beside my body and the black dog waiting for me. It was time to go to the Crossroads.

Over the years, as I've come more in touch with the element of water, this place has changed. It probably hasn't, not really, but I'm seeing it in a new way. The crossroads itself still looks about the same, but above us, rather than void or sky, is a great sea. It's like standing beneath the ocean, like really beneath it and not just in its depths, or maybe upside down above it. The shimmer of the water reflecting on the ground comforts me, makes everything we do so much easier.

"What troubles you, child?" She asked when we arrived. The dog went and laid down next to Her, as it usually did.
"I've--I've encountered someone who claims to break magic. Is that possible?"
"An Anchor." She remained silent for a moment, looking off at the distance, before her faces turned back to me. "You must be very careful. If this one is what they say, they 'ground' your world to physical laws. When Anchors fail to understand their purpose, they take and kill and destroy and never look back. Unchecked, they are a blight upon the world."
"What's their purpose?"
"The realm of spirits, the true world you've been learning to explore, has chaos, vibrant life, unlimited power flowing endlessly. But it also has structure, rules, a certain kind of order. The Two embody these traits for the realm. Anchors and Warlocks are liminal beings, and as such they are Mine to do with as I choose; but their basic function is to serve that balance. Warlocks bring the chaos of the spiritual world to the physical, Anchors bring the order of the physical back to the spiritual." She stepped forward and lightly touched my chin, raising my eyes to look into hers. I took a deep breath of her scent and focused on her central face. "But enough about that now," She said. "Be wary of this one, find out their intentions, but for now I have much to teach you."
"Yes, mistress." She smiled and drew back her hand, and we began.

When I returned, I found I couldn't get back into my body. She does this sometimes, to remind me that I do not rely on myself for the things I do. Normally, I would go into Jacob's dream, and ask him to wake my body, which tends to do the trick. But John was so much closer, so I decided to try him this time.