In the mountains, our bus, like a creeping worm, slowly climbed the steep country road, shaking and threatening to dismantle itself with every bumpy rut.

I was twelve-years-old...when you're twelve, any road to the unknown is always the first road...the only magical way of leaving childhood behind. I watched the forested hills above the road--ghostly tree trunks guarded an azure sky. And smoke--white smoke climbed the sky like snow in reverse--rising snow sucked into clouds.

With an infernal noise, our old bus stopped in a valley between hills. Inside were twenty kids with mouths full of dust collected during hours of riding over dirt roads with the windows open. In single-file, we exited. The others sat on logs. I was the only one who walked away--trying to see beyond the wall of smoke--beyond the mysterious fire burning from nothing. The smell of burnt wood--for me, was an olfactory bliss.

In the middle of the smoke, I saw a ghostly silhouette. A white shadow came toward me...my heart beat rapidly...loud in my ears...I wanted to yell. I wanted to run.

Before me stood a Gypsy woman, wearing overlapping skirts. Colorful, as if in bloom.

I wanted to ask what kept the fire alive but I was silenced by her eerie presence. Blood, sucked by my terrified heart, drained from my cheeks.

The Gypsy woman looked at me as if stealing secrets from my mind. I closed my eyes. For a moment before the chaperones found me, the world disappeared.

The road our bus climbed so many years ago is still there, hidden between smoke and sky. I never went back to see the Gypsy but I've thought of her often. The fire? It still burns in the pit of my belly.