When I saw Madeline next morning she made it clear that she had been waiting patiently for me to appear. Her gracious manner and her soft, inviting voice put me immediately at ease, as though she were some long-lost great aunt making a good first impression, or a schoolteacher who, with a grin of recognition, stops to greet an almost but not quite forgotten star student.

"Why, good day, Barrih. I see you found your way around well enough to find your way back. Might I interest you in a little cup of morning tea?" After the surprise of my first cup last night, after the sensation of the tea seeping through my mouth and out into my body, warming my blood and steeling my nerve, I could barely imagine what delights might lay stewing in my morning mug.

Last night's refreshment of baroque trumpet accompanied me like a guide into a deep and refreshing sleep. She held the white ceramic mug in front of her, with both hands, like a chalice, and lifted it so that I might take it easily. The mug itself was warm, not hot, and I felt the music living within the tea struggle for expression as it sent little ripples, like tiny tsunami waves, shuddering across the surface.

"Go ahead, Sugah, take a little taste." Her voice was hypnotic in its gentle insistence, almost seductive in its invitation. Her stunning blue eyes glistened with knowing excitement. "I brewed it up for you just this mornin'. I suspect you'll find that it meets all your needs." As I lifted the mug to my lips I heard distant shadows of sound rising out of it, not distinct enough to be a tune or a melody, but more like the thin vibrations hummed up by tenuous ghosts of steam hovering over a cold mountain stream. Madeline's tea was urging me along, opening itself up to me, almost impatient for me to indulge myself.

I sipped, and it was Celtic. Its strong assertive chords rolled up thick and lush as an island forest, its full voice green with hardy tonal harmonics, its body rounded like the weathered curved walls of ancient stone castles. I let the tea find the back of my mouth, just above my throat, and springing into life were the wild leaping roars of cold blue seas smashing into rainbow-plumed geysers on jagged rocks as old as time. The bass was heavy thunder rolling in like sharp salt spray mounted on a full and rising tide. In the corners of my mouth, behind my teeth, a young girl wailed out a dusky woodland lament for some sadly lost love, and in startling inversions smooth ivory flutes wept bitter tears for life's tragic ironies. And then, in full flavor in the center of my tongue, there were heavily scarred primitive warriors. These were the battling heroes of dark mythic sagas: brave well-muscled guardians of virtue whose fearless eyes stared unblinking into Death's leering face. Steadfastly they stood their ground and wielded their merciless steely swords against ruthless hordes of vile adversaries, while round them threatened black swirling clouds of unavenged ancient evils. I tasted the blowing red hair of a young woman wrapped in coarse green wool, staring out to sea, her faithful heart longing for her husband or her lover to come home. And finally, across the craggy faces of sheer precipices that sliced like knives into the crashing edges of the sea, there were snowy white flashes darting, streaking slashes of soaring sea birds stitching up their fragile straw nests. They rocketed skyward like winged comets, pinwheeling like feathered galaxies against cliffs as unforgiving as fortresses. The music in the tea woke before my eyes the narrow brick streets of Ireland, and the harsh wild mountains of Scotland. I was enchanted.

"Oh my word," was all I could manage, as I steadied myself on the arm of a chair, and slowly seated myself, because my knees had turned to rubber. "This is beyond wonderful." Madeline shyly cast her eyes downward. I started to thank her, thanks being the only fitting thing I could think of to do. She held up her small hand in a clear signal that she had anticipated my response and that she would not be entirely pleased no matter how genuine and sincere my thanks.

"Barrih, honih, here's where you learn the first lesson of Second Heaven. There are no thanks offered here, no matter how wonderful the gift. Because, you see, what is given and what is received happens so naturally, with such a sparkle and sprinkle of the sacred, that no words and no expression are necessary. It is the way spirit-beings behave with one another: without obligation and without thanks. Now, take another sip, and when you've finished, maybe we can enjoy a nice chat.

By now the Celtic music had faded to less than a whisper, and soon not even a distant echo of it remained. I was completely satisfied with what I had just tasted, but also hungry and thirsty for more. So I raised the mug to take a second taste, and when I looked at her over its smooth rim, I allowed just a drop or two of the living liquid to slide over my lips. She nodded at me. A slight catlike smile skittered across her face. "Just a little bit," she said. "It only takes a drop or two.

The tea crossed into my mouth, and oh Lord, oh my sweet Lordy Lord, it was the blues. It was music plucked from the muddy funk, nasty, ecstatic, hip-churning musky home-brew boiled up in a beat-down shingle shack, copper-lined tin still, tuneful music. It was fat black Alabama slave women throat-singing songs strong in the gospel, call and reply in hammer and anvil rhythms popping in cardiac cadences straight as corn rows and round as sticky balls of unplucked cotton. It was music cobbled up simple as a lean-to, tattered as the whistle of a bull whip, bubbling up out of cast iron cookpots, music that knew it would never be great, so it settled for just being noble. It wasn't the smooth electric mixing board blues put down by Allman or Clapton or B.B. King. It was worn down and hard-scrabble, hoein' the rows with the pinkney in tow, red-dirt stickin' to the bottom of my shoes, my best dog died this morning, and forlorn freight train blues. It was slashin' with the cane knife, scrubbin' with the wire brush, sloshin' on the wash board, thumpin' on the tin tub, runnin' out the back door, hitchin' to New Orleans, tunin' up the git-tar, pouring out the warm beer, and a belly clutchin' head burnin' joint achin' fever oozing out of a way bad three-day drunk case of the hot tongue and cold shoulder balooze.

I closed my eyes and tasted salty thick drops of black man sweat sliding down into the hard dirt. And there was more: All the icy agony slashed out of blue heartbreak; the way cold-blooded betrayal brings you right up to the razor edge of hope, to where maybe a little hope might be OK, and then you figure that almost any hope is too heavy a load to bear. And there was all the sick sorrow about growing up and the eerie finality of moving on. And it was weeping weary resignation to being smacked hard one more time by the cruel hand of uncaring fate. And it was good love rotted down into bad, and bad love churnin' into worse. It was forty-eight crying bars long, with a bridge that took it all up a notch while it sat stone alone with its head between its knees grieving for everything good that had ever come to a tragic end or anyone who had ever been cruelly maimed by life and then forced to live on scarred and limping anyway. What I held in my mouth was the heart of the blues, its crippled soul and its poisonous secrets and I dared not swallow it for fear it would consume me, or at the very least it would clench my heart to death in the steely grip of a grieving and angry fist. Then it was gone.

I sat immobile and paralyzed for long minutes, distantly aware that the passing of the blues had left me shocked senseless and helplessly breathless, feeling as though I had been assaulted, shaken, numbed and weak. When at last I dared to open my eyes I saw that this strange world of which I was now a part was still intact and I was thankfully alive and functioning within that world. Then Madeline fixed me with a cold stare, and I knew in an icy instant that she was fully aware of all my old secrets, that she could see clearly all the scars I had inflicted upon myself and all the wounds I had carelessly sliced into the people and things I had claimed to love Before. But in her eyes, old as rolling hills and twice as solid, I saw nothing that condemned or judged me. It was the look of a compassionate healer who was no stranger to this disease, who has dealt with its furious and feverish symptoms and who has handled the ruins of its ravages many, many times before. "Sugah," she said, leveling her eye and spearing me with her unwavering gaze, "I may look like granny, but I got all the subtlety of a coal truck.