For a subtle reason, the account offered by my corre spondent was given added credibility. He was unaware that the dialogue he repeated had a tripartite structure familar to me from my own experience and study of the visitors. It was sometimes as if they actually spoke according to the ancient law of three forces. According to this law the uni verse if fundamentally divided into a positive and a negative force, and the reconciliation of these forces expresses change into the world. This simple law is a truth of nature. It is friction between opposing forces that causes the light and heat upon which all life is dependent. I doubt that the witness was aware of the hidden struc ture in the dialogue he reported. It is not likely that he would have happened to invent it in just that way. The first state ment, "We are being observed, " was a positive expression of a fact. The next, "We must not be seen, " expressed its negative implications. The third, "We must leave, " recon ciled the two into a creative action. He also went on to say that he'd had the feeling in those days that there was something going on in the Olmos Basin, perhaps even something alien living there. He also remem bered the spot with the creek and the ruined mill . Unlike me and my brother, he was able to find it and took Ed Conroy to see it. My correspondent's testimony made me wonder about the dream of the dark neighborhood. Perhaps there had been nights when I actually rode that sleeping neighborhood, rac ing along real streets on a very real bicycle-toward a ren dezvous in the Olmos Basin with the visitors . . . and, just maybe, with the other meJllbers of the children's circle. Throughout all of Western folklore there are stories of people flying to meetings with supernatural beings. The ex perience was a commonplace of witchcraft, and was be lieved among the ancients to involve the journey to a meeting with the god Dionysus. Does it really happen? Is there someone waiting for us in the night and forest?
Transformation 104