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danced.  One man in a white robe played a guitar.  They all looked like they needed a good meal, he thought.  Skinny hippie kids out here in no man’s land. 
    Palmer was intrigued with the costumes some of them wore.  Girls dressed in wings, like little angels.  The guys wearing masks, black and white, green faces, some wore horns, like the pictures of warlocks he’d seen. 
    A tall, lean man in a black robe climbed on a wooden box and began speaking, the chants ended and the drumbeats slowed to a steady pulse.
    “Brothers and sisters,” said the man, eyes scanning the crowd.  Even from the distance of at least one hundred feet, Palmer could see the firelight reflecting in the man’s wide eyes.  “My angels of Eden,” began the man again, pointing to a half dozen women who moved to the beat of the drum.  “From ancient Nordic times, this night is sacred.  It’s the zenith in the crossroads of time and space… a night special beyond all the rest.  Why?  Because this is the night of the mystic movement of the heavens—the trek of planet earth on a southern journey.  It’s the long day when we earthly creatures must move in sync with the pendulum that swings to its fullest arc this night.”
    Someone standing to the far right of the crowd caught Palmer’s eye.  A man, someone who seemed to be older than the majority of these kids, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans.  He stood alone.  Watching.  Palmer had seen the stance, the look of the assassin many times in the prison yard.  This man moved no different.  He seemed to survey the crowd, and then work his way toward a table where food and drink was laid out.  Palmer watched the man approach one of the girls dressed like an angel.
    Palmer wanted to walk up to them and ask where a fella could get a thick steak on a night like tonight.  We’re all fuckin’ carnivores, some have sharper and more deadly teeth , he thought.  And Luke Palmer knew that the man talking with the girls was a lone wolf among sheep.
    He watched the celebrations for another minute, said to hell with it.  He could tell everyone was smokin’ and tokin,’ some drinking something from the bowl in the center of the table.  God knows what’s mixed in that shit.  People chanting.  Dancing.  Crying.  
     He turned and walked back toward his camp, walked through the clearing near the cars when a woman came out from behind a tree.  “I saw you go in there,” she said, her voice soft as the moonlight falling around her shoulders. 
    Palmer looked at her, more curious than anything.  She wore the angel wings, too. Her blond hair braided and up, her long dress was the color of vanilla, and she had a yellow wildflower behind one ear.
    “Well, now you see me leaving,” Palmer said.
    “You think we’re odd.  Maybe some kind of freaks.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You just didn’t speak it.”  She smiled, dimples showing.  “It’s okay.  This is the celebration of St. Johns.  A midsummer’s night dance with the little people.”
    Palmer said nothing.  He hadn’t had a lot of practice talking with women in the last forty years, and tonight he was totally speechless.
    “I’m calling you Night Raven,” the girl smiled.  “Because I think you have the wisdom of the raven.  You feel comfortable at night.  You’re free to live your dreams here, away from a spirit that’s been cooped up with things that you didn’t ask for.”
    “I’ve had more than my spirit cooped up.  What’s your name?”
    “Evening Star, can’t you tell?”  The smile was brighter than the moon over her right shoulder.
    “Yeah, I guess I can, now that you mentioned it.”
    She licked her thumb, knelt down, and placed her thumb in the dirt.  Then she stood and reached up to Palmer’s forehead.  He didn’t resist as she pressed her thumb on the center of his forehead.  “There, Night Raven, you are of this earth… forever.”
    Palmer shook his head.  “Look,