Quinn speaks:

I don’t believe in ghosts. This is what I believe:

Mediums are at best a diversion for people who need to have their spines tingled.

I don’t believe UFOs are visitors from another planet. There are no bodies of aliens on ice or remains of flying saucers in hangars at Roswell, New Mexico, or in Area 51.

There was no second gunman. The U.S. government didn’t knock the World Trade Center down or arrange to have most of its Pacific fleet wiped out at Pearl Harbor.

If there is a chupacabra at all, it’s just a feral dog or a coyote with mange. The Loch Ness Monster is a figment of sunlight glaring on the water, promoted by entrepreneurs of the Caledonian tourist trade, trolling for customers.

I don’t believe that Buttonwood, Jewish bankers, the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg participants, the Bohemian Grove meetings, or the CIA run the world. The fact that it is run so badly should be proof enough and a testament to the supremacy of chaos.

My point is this: I’m not the sort who feels a deep-seated emotional need to harbor fantasies about mysterious creatures, UFOs, or massive conspiracies. I like facts. I like science, sound research, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I buy into medical treatments that succeed in double-blind clinical trials. I believe what mainstream climate scientists say about the Global Heating because they’re not paid to prevaricate.

I believe what I can verify with my own eyes or with convincing data.

And yet, despite all that, I know this:

Magic has re-emerged in our world.

I don’t mean the term metaphorically, as in Moviewood lighting effects or other parlor tricks, in which ordinary events are gussied up with computer-generated imagery or lighting. Nor do I mean the Magic Castle/performing artist magician’s tricks.

Nor do I mean even true love, which we often refer to as “magical” (and it is indeed the underlying Magic of the Universe, but that is for another part of the story).

No, I mean Magic – that is, the rendition of events that occur outside of explainable physics, chemistry, and the knowable nutritional characteristics of herbs and fungi. I mean stuff that would have made even Stephen Hawking scratch his head in wonder.

I have seen it.

My first glimpse, as an adult, of the magical world we don’t see, and which we train our children to stop seeing, was the day that a creature whom we presume to be a pure figment of imagination rescued me from freezing to death in the White Mountains of New Hampton.

I’ll tell that tale later.

My point right now is that, in the same manner as we deny unwelcome facts in political life, such as federal government budget deficits and the heating climate – by reassigning them in our minds to the category of someone else’s annoying fantasies – we deny the existence of Magical Creatures.

In this regard, I was no different from you. For no other reason than that of desiring to be held in reasonable esteem by relentlessly ambitious people (I hung around with a lot of Federal City types at the time, policy wonks and lawyers and such), I mentally filed my mountain rescue under the heading of “hallucination arising from exhaustion.”

And there it resided comfortably for a long time, along with all other events, creatures, and powers from beyond the mundane.

However, many years later, shortly after I had begun stepping out with the Queen of the True Heart, I witnessed another inexplicable event, and it seared itself into my mind so strongly that I was forced to reconsider my understanding of what “reality” actually is.

This event occurred on Olympic Boulevard in Los Celestiales, on the morning of what would be my first Christmas Eve with Queen Suzanne. It had rained heavily the day and night before, and the roads were slick with leaked motor lube emulsified in water, the way they often are in that city with the first rain after a long drought.

I was driving west. Traffic had slowed to an inch-by-inch, bumper-to-bumper crawl. As usual with City of Celestials traffic, I couldn’t see why. And so, like almost every other driver, I was impatient for two things: mainly, to arrive at my destination across town, of course; but more immediately, to reach the source of the delay so that I could take out my frustration with a honk or a curse – or, if it turned out to be a cop or some huge construction worker, a fantasy about honking or cursing.

As my car drew close to the cause of the delay, I saw that the traffic in my lane – the left of the two westbound lanes – was merging to the right. When I reached the merge point, I saw what was blocking the road:

A Poinsettia plant. It stood a mere three feet from the double yellow stripe dividing the eastbound and westbound lanes.

It was not damaged, or on its side, as it should have been if it had fallen off the back of a truck. It stood there – tall, red, and resplendent in a clay pot decorated for Christmas with festive green foil.

Then, I saw that there was another, a bit to the right of the first Poinsettia and a couple of yards down the road. As the car in front of me moved to the right, I saw a third big red Poinsettia with bright green foil covering the pot. These plants had been set at an angle in the roadway to guide the cars in my lane to merge right.

And then, I saw a Christmas Elf – at the time, I thought he was just a chubby little guy dressed for the season in a green and red outfit with pointy shoes, but I would later come to know his kind – running from the flower store on the corner with two more big potted Poinsettias.

As he placed them in the angled line with the first three, I finally saw the reason he was putting them there:

A big, beautiful Bernese Mountain Dog lay dead in the left lane, in a pool of blood. Apparently, it had been hit by a car or truck. Next to its body, a man knelt, weeping, and cradling the dead dog’s head in his arms.

The Poinsettias had been set as impromptu road cones for the sole purpose of giving this grieving man and his deceased best friend some temporary space.

Okay… Bestowing on you the presumption of an ounce of kindness in your soul, no doubt you are concluding that this was a beautiful and utilitarian gesture to ease a man’s heartache, but that there was nothing magical about it.

That is what you’re thinking, right?

Well, here’s the thing: I had driven through that intersection a couple of dozen times before, including the very day before. And I drove it several times afterward.

And there is no floral shop on that corner.

That space had always been, and still is, occupied by a Wiener Doggie fast-food restaurant.

But on that morning of Christmas Eve, when its services were needed to let a man grieve for the loss of his best friend, there was a flower shop, staffed by Santa’s Elves, stocked with big, festive Poinsettias to spare.

The point of this? Simply that indeed, there is Magic in this world. It is both as commonplace and as precious as love itself. And it is just as dangerous when abused.