"Now, what was I saying?

"I say training, Sharon, like it is some big deal, but it's not. It's just being willing to be open to what you can't explain. I opine that magic is nothing but that. Anything we don't know how it happens, or don't know enough to be about to figure out the whycomes and wherefores of, we call magic. Mystery is a better word. There are some who would dig and poke and investigate until they did know the hows and whats. Matter of fact, I'm sure the day will come when some scientist will publish a big paper with it all laid out in terms of string theory, quantum physics, or something like that. For myself, I don't know why anyone would want to go ahead and spoil a good mystery.

"Anyway, my question for you is, are you willing to be open?"

Sharon didn't know what she thought Aunt Kathy had wanted to talk about with such seriousness, but she hadn't expected this. She hesitated before answering, looking both perplexed and perturbed.

Aunt Kathy waited, saying nothing.

Finally, Sharon spoke. "I was always a bit afraid of Cassie when I was a little girl. I always kind of dreaded it when we'd come up to visit the two of you. Not that she wasn't always very kind. I didn't understand why you left Billy and Uncle Zeke to come up this holler and stay with her. I think I was jealous that you moved away from us and Tuppers Creek.    I knew Cassie was sick and needed someone here, but I didn't understand why it had to be you. But it was so lively up here, even with Cassie so sick. It was like the music was more at home here, especially in the summer when we'd gather out on that front porch.

"No, that's not what I mean to say."

She searched for words.

"Here, up this holler, is where I learned to let the music flood my soul, and to let my soul flood the music. And it was Cassie that showed the way. It was like her years on the Missippi had taken the fear of flood away from her. Had taken away the fear of contaminated waters. The flute with the fiddle. The banjo. The guitar. Unlike anyone else I have ever known, she was able to trace out and embrace the threads of kinship between the ballads we had made our Appalachian own, the reels, rags and hymns, and the jazz, blues and Cajun music she took into her self during her years going up and down the Missippi. It is just what you were saying a bit ago. She washed down this creek, to the Kanawha to the Ohio, to the Missippi, like a fleck of the shale that seams these mountains. When she came home, she was tracking a bit of Mississippi mud. It is all of a piece. All the music of people used to hard work and hard times, who knew the touch of heaven would some how make it worth it in the end."