Entry #373224, added on 09-12-06 @ 5:03 pm EDT
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| Chapter Two - The Invisible Window | Entry #373224 |
Elkwater's King
Chapter Two - The Invisible Window
"A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish."
~G.K. Chesterton
Loner had betrayed us. At the very moment when all my doubts about him could have been erased, he abandoned Michael and me in favor of the intruding silver-haired boy. And worse, we couldn't turn and run. A moment before, we were walking towards the boy against our will. But suddenly we couldn't move our legs at all. We were rooted to the spot like turnips. This black-eyed boy could command us to move or stay simply by wishing it.
Then the boy turned his head up to the walnut tree, looking for something. After a few seconds, he found it, straining his head up toward the lowest bough. This branch was so low that a grownup would have to duck to pass under it, but the boy was much too short to reach it with his chin (which is what he seemed to be trying to do). Then he looked down at his hand (as if remembering what it was there for), reached up, and plucked something from the branch. He faced us again, and with his hand extended walked in our direction.
Loner was displeased that the strange boy was moving towards us, and he actually tried to block his progress with his long white body. He whined as he did so. But it was not because he was trying protect us. It was obvious to me that he was trying to protect that boy from us. The boy stopped and uttered another animal moan to the dog, who reluctantly stepped aside and sat down under the walnut tree. But Loner remained attentive. He sat erect, watching me and Michael, his mouth closed, his ears sticking straight up.
Meanwhile the boy was standing right in front of us. By this time, I had made up my mind that he was some simple child of a farmhand or neighbor that Loner had taken an unhealthy (for us) liking to. Could his all-black eyes and silver hairt be part of some disease? Maybe Michael and I could make friends with him and learn not to be afraid of him just because he was different. Heck, maybe we could help him learn to talk, or at least to wear clothes. While I was thinking these things, he turned his head from one of us to the other, as if trying to make up his mind about something. I risked a look at his outstretched hand, and saw something very strange indeed.
He had a walnut in his left hand. While normally there is nothing unusual about someone picking a walnut from a walnut tree, walnuts are only ripe and on the tree from September to November, and as I said before, this was early summer. But even stranger was the walnut itself. It was the most...walnutty walnut I had ever seen.
I have thought very long and hard about the words I could use to describe this walnut (and many other things to come) that had this very peculiar quality. No, peculiar is not a good word, because "peculiar" implies that the walnut was different than what it should be. It wasn't. It was more like a walnut should be than I was used to. It wasn't any bigger, or brighter. It didn't glow or make noise or anything. It just seemed more real than everything else. Try to imagine for a moment that the whole world is just a little bit fuzzy, even if you have perfect vision on a clear day - but since everything is fuzzy you don't notice it. You think everything is clear and sharp. But then, some meteor falls out of the sky which has none of this fuzziness about it, and in fact is the clearest and sharpest thing you have ever seen. Suddenly, you notice for the first time that everything else is just a tiny bit fuzzy. Well, this walnut was like that meteor. It was so real that it made everything else look make-believe.
The boy then seemed to make a decision, and a quick, loud noise came from the back of his throat. Michael and I nearly jumped out of our skins, and the walnut did jump out of its skin. At the sound of the boy's voice, it cracked in two and fell right out of the shell, perfectly in halves. The boy took half the shell and half the nut in his right hand, then extended his hands to us.
Of course I had to accept the half-walnut. I was beginning to lose faith in my idea that the boy was simple (the way the walnut cracked at his command was putting a big strain on the theory), but in any case I didn't want to find out what he would do if I refused. As long as he didn't ask me to eat it, I figured I'd go along.
But no sooner did Michael and I take the gift in our hands when the boy began making chewing motions with his mouth. Michael and I looked at each other, risking a turn of our heads this time. The nut felt very warm in my hand, as if cooling from an oven. I saw Michael swallow hard. I looked at the boy, who was still pretending to chew.
I took a deep breath and ate the nut, the warm shell still in the palm of my hand. It made every other walnut I'd ever tasted seem imitation-flavored. Michael had been watching me carefully, perhaps to see if I would keel over. I shrugged, and he popped his half of the nut into his mouth. His expression told me that his half of the nut must have tasted like mine.
And then the boy made that sound again, only this time I understood what he said. It's not as if he started speaking English - he still had the voice of an animal that had no business being in the body of a little boy. And it wasn't as if my mind made a translation for me either - I just suddenly understood the language he was speaking. Michael gasped, and I knew he understood also.
I am going to tell you what he said in a minute, but before I do, you and I are going to have to come to an understanding about two things. First, if you are a level-headed person, you might by now be laughing comfortably, nearly ready to close this book. The reason for this is because you think you know how things really are, and you know that there is no boy with all-black eyes and silver hair giving magic walnuts to normal boys so they can understand him when he bleats like an animal. Such things never happen in the "real" world. I can tell you are very confident about this. All I can tell you is that if this had never happened to me, I would never have been motivated to write this book. I suppose I could write about ordinary days on an ordinary farm with ordinary adventures. And I'm sure it would have made a good book. You can find lots of good books like that on the shelves of any library. Unfortunately, I would never write such a book. I'm much too busy. But precisely because the adventures about which you are going to read are so completely out of the ordinary, so unreal (or super-real), and such an unforgettably unnatural experience, I would be commiting a crime by keeping the story to myself.
Second, let's agree to simplify the translation of the silver-haired boy's language so it is easier for you to follow. If I were to explain exactly what he said at that moment, I would say something like: He made a sound that indicated he had selected us, and that he wanted us to visit a certain place where he lived. But reading that (and writing that) gets tedious. So I'm going to write as if he spoke English words from now on, like this: "I have chosen you," he said, "and now you must come to my home." So, now that we have that business out of the way, on with the story.
"I have chosen you," he said, "and now you must come to my home."
I moved my lips but no sound came out.
"My name is Mike," said a voice next to me. "This is my brother Tim. Who are you?"
I couldn't believe it. My little brother pre-empted me! I ground my teeth while the boy replied.
"I am the Usher. The One-who-chooses. Come with me to my home."
"Thank you for inviting us," I said slowly. My composure was back, solid as a rock. "That's very nice. We have to be getting back now, but maybe tomorrow. How far is your home?"
The boy turned his head to me. "No distance. We are here."
I looked around me. Everything looked just as it had before we first saw the boy. I just raised my eyebrows and looked at Michael, who was frowning.
"Um. OK," I said. I really didn't know what to say. "Nice house."
"I need one of you to help find the King. Come with me. Tomorrow. Come to this same place. Then we will go to the pasture beyond the gate. Come alone. You will tell no one."
"Oh, sorry," Michael said. "We aren't allowed in the pasture without an adult." But I was thinking, one of you?
"You need no other adult," said the boy. "I am older than anyone you have ever met."
"That's fine then," I said. "I'm sure we'll be there. Bye!" I began to turn away. As far as I was concerned, the conversation was over. I could move my legs again, and I did not want to pass up the opportunity to get away.
"But-" Michael began. I gave him a look that said "Hush!" and he frowned again.
"This time tomorrow," said the boy.
"You bet," I said, walking. Michael was barely moving. I gave him another look.
"Come alone. Bring the stiles," said the Usher.
"What style?" Michael asked. I wanted to kick him for delaying our chance of escape.
"The walnut shells. They are your stiles."
You probably have never heard of a stile before, unless you have spent some time on a farm. A stile is like a little ladder - one with steps on both sides - that farmer's use to walk over a fence from one pasture to another. There is no other safe way to get over a barbed wire fence. Two years before, I heard about a teenager getting stuck while trying to get over a fence without a stile. He waited for hours, straddling the barbed wire with a leg on each side, until the large group of farmers and the curious managed to take him off. He howled in pain a lot. No - stiles are important.
But a stile looks nothing like half of a walnut shell. The idea made no sense to me at all.
"Stiles, yes," I said behind my shoulder, "We'll bring them." Don't forget your clothes next time, I wanted to say, but didn't. "Good-bye!"
Michael still lagged behind. He turned to the boy. "Thank you for the stiles, Usher." The boy made no reply, but I imagined that he looked at Michael very intently.
We walked away, then jogged, then ran as fast as we could back to the Farmhouse, the trail of dust behind us as warm as the walnut shells in our hands. As we made the last turn before the Farmhouse came into view, Michael grabbed me by the arm and gasped, "Tim! Wait, wait!"
I pulled my arm away from him and stopped. "What's the matter with you?" I asked, but not in a sympathetic way. "I'm going inside!"
"But first," Michael said, breathing heavily, "we have to figure out what to tell them."
"Figure out!" I yelled, and then I pretended to laugh. Really, I was catching my breath. I never wanted to show Michael that I was out of breath whenever we ran races against each other, and it got to be such a habit that I kept up the ruse even after this strange event.
"I'm telling Aunt Eva everything," I finally said. "That kid is crazy! They should send him to the funny farm!" I accompanied this statement with eye-crossing and whirling my fingers around my ears.
"But how do you explain the stiles?" Michael asked.
I held out my half of the walnut shell. "This," I said slowly, "is not a stile. This is a nut case." After I said it, I realized the double meaning - and pounced on it. "Just like him - a nutcase!" The shell felt slightly cooler in my hand.
"But...we understood what he said after we ate the nut," Michael complained, his voice a little less sure.
"What are you talking about?" I asked. "I don't remember that!"
This once, I wasn't saying that to be mean to my brother. I honestly remembered no such thing. You may have a hard time believing that, since it happened just moments before, but it is true. I plumb forgot, as Uncle Martin would say.
"But it happened!" Michael protested. "He made a sound like a goat or a cow, and then he ate the nut and...or no...he gave you the nut and you cracked it."
"Mike you're losing it," I said. "He gave us each half of the nut, right after telling Loner to stay."
"Loner was there?" Michael asked.
"Yes," I said, but then I wasn't so sure. "And he said he had to go home. But we could play tomorrow."
The walnut shell was cooler.
We looked at each other, our brows furrowed, and realized the same thing at the same time. Michael said it first.
"Tim! We're forgetting!"
"I know. It seems like the cooler this walnut shell gets, the less I remember. But I do remember that we're supposed to hang on to these...what did he call them?"
"Stages, I think," said Michael. "Or Stairs. Something like that."
At exactly this time, my attitude about the Usher and the magic walnut completely changed. A moment before, when most of the encounter was fresh in my memory, I had tried to explain the strange event by saying the boy was crazy. Although this explanation didn't fit all the facts, it could give me the excuse I needed to forget all about the incident and return to more normal adventures. But as soon as I realized I was forgetting the incident unintentionally, I wanted to hold on to every magical detail. Even despised things become dear when they are being taken away from you. But how could I hold on to something I couldn't remember? Suddenly, I had an idea.
"Hey, hand me that stick behind you," I said to my brother.
"Get it yourself!" answered Michael, folding his arms.
"You're wasting time!" I shouted. "The stages are getting cooler!"
"I'm not wasting time," said Michael. "You're wasting time. You could have had it ten seconds ago if you had just grabbed it yourself. How come you're always ordering me around?"
"Fine!" I yelled, and rushed past him toward the stick, and then accidentally (well, only partly accidentally) bumped his shoulder with mine, causing him to fall on his bottom.
"Hey!" said Michael, and launched himself at me, tackling me from behind before I reached the stick. His arms were wrapped around my middle and his hands clasped in a fist in front of my stomach. When we fell, I landed with his clasped hands under me, and it took my breath away. I curled up in a ball and tried to breathe.
Michael was also hurt, since his hands were in-between my stomach and the gravel. He sat up, looked at his bleeding knuckles, then stuffed his hands under his armpits and held his head between his knees, his face in a horrible grimace.
As much as Michael and I fought over the years, our fights were almost always with words and hardly ever came to blows. But very rarely, things just gradually got out of hand. This was one of those times.
I took in two breaths, then reached over and grabbed the stick I had been going for. I slowly stood up, the stick clenched in my hand.
Michael looked up at me, his face beet red. He was rocking forward and back in a sitting position, his hands still tucked under his arms. "Well," he half-sobbed, half-accused, "You got your stupid stick. What was your even stupider idea?"
He must have gotten a good look at my eyes then, because he scrambled to his feet, but the idea of hitting him with the stick only very briefly crossed my mind. I knew it would be wrong to hit Michael at all, let alone with a piece of wood however small, and I knew we would both probably already get in trouble for fighting. So I just stared at the stick.
"You forgot!" said Michael. "You're an idiot!"
Anger welled up in me, but then I remembered--"I forgot! That's right! We can't forget! We can't forget our walnut shells!"
I ran to a sandy section of the gravel drive, and began to scratch words into it as deep as the ground would let me. I scratched these words:
"Keep the walnut shell forever."
I wrote it for myself, but after Michael read the words he said, "My shell! Where did it go?" and he conducted a frantic search over the ground where we had wrestled a moment earlier. In a panic, I realized my own shell was not in my hand. At the same moment, we both saw one half-shell lying in a tuft of grass. We dove for it, but he was closer than I was and grasped it with his bleeding hands. I grabbed his hands and tried to pry them open. His grip was very firm.
I'm afraid I did a mean, unfair thing then. I could feel the grit of pebbles still on his knuckles, so I rubbed his closed hands, grinding the shards of gravel deeper into the skin. He yelled very loudly - so loud I thought Aunt Eva would be running out for sure - when I noticed something uncomfortable pressing against my leg. I reached into my pocket and took out my own half of walnut shell. I stood up and held it in the palm of my hand. The stick was still in my other hand.
Michael stood too, and slowly opened his hand. Each of us had our own half of the shell. In my hand, it was quite cool. We looked at each other, and down at our hands again.
"You broke it in two," Michael said.
"It was already like that!" I argued.
And then, Michael looked at the ground past me and his jaw dropped. I spun around, and gasped.
Someone (I had no idea who) had written these words in the sand:
"Keep the walnut shell forever."
Of course, you know very well that I had written this only moments earlier. But I had completely forgotten, and so did Michael. We slowly backed away from the strange writing and ran into the Farmhouse, calling for Aunt Eva at the top of our lungs. We found her in the living room watching her favorite soap opera, "The Edge of Night," and she shushed us sternly until the next commercial. We stood there panting until she turned to us.
"Now what in the world has happened to you two boys? Have you been rolling in the dirt?" she asked, a little too close to the mark.
"There's something strange going on, Aunt Eva! Mike and I have these walnut shells, and then we saw some writing on the driveway that says keep the walnut shell forever. Someone scraped it in the sand with a stick! But how could they have known we would find the walnut shells?"
"With a stick, huh?" asked Aunt Eva, eyeing the stick in my right hand.
I looked at it in my hand as if for the first time.
"You did it!" said Michael. "You are trying to play a trick on me!"
"Well," said Aunt Eva, turning back to the television, "I'm glad we solved that little mystery."
I looked at my brother. "No, I..."
Aunt Eva interrupted me. "But I do notice neither of you brought back any blackberries."
Blackberries! We had left the colanders somewhere along the path. Ashamed (and not wanting to miss our blackberry pie) we rushed out the door to retrieve them. For the rest of the day we did not think about our walnuts, the strange writing, or any of the rest of our blackberry hunting adventure. Nor did we see or hear any more of Loner at all until the next morning.
But the first thing I thought about when I opened my eyes that next day was Aunt Eva's blackberry pie from the night before. I wondered if there would be any left over for dinner, and whether we would be allowed any for lunch, and in fact if there was any hope of getting some for breakfast. You see, it was simply the most delicious pie of any kind I had ever eaten. The blackberries were perfectly ripe - not too mushy or sweet, and not too tart. The blend of sugar and berries and filling was perfect. The crust was flaky and buttery at the surface, and just exactly tacky enough where it met the filling. We ate it hot with vanilla ice cream dolloped on top, which melted as we savored every bite. Even Aunt Eva seemed a little surprised, saying it may have been the best berry pie she had ever made. I suppose something must have happened to the blackberries as they sat in the colander near the walnut tree when the Usher was speaking to us, and when the magic of the stiles were at work. In all the times the Usher and I have spoken over the years, I never thought to ask him if this delicious pie was partly his doing. Now it is too late. Or at least, if we do meet again, I'm sure there will be far more important things to speak of.
When I sat up in bed the first thing I saw was my half-walnut shell sitting on the table between the room's twin beds. I picked it up and examined it closely. It was so very real looking, as if my hand were a watercolor drawing that someone had carelessly left a real walnut shell on. My brother's bed was unmade and empty, and I saw his walnut shell still sitting on his side of the table. I dressed, grumbling about how irresponsible Michael was being with the thing (mind you, except for the message I'd left myself in the drive, I had no reason to think the shell was any more important than any old leaf or rock), and brought it downstairs with me.
He was drinking the last drops of milk from his bowl when I put the shell down hard on the counter in front of him. "You forgot this," I said.
Michael looked at me, belched thunderously, and said, "Your breath stinks." But he put the shell in his pocket.
"Your whole body stinks," I retorted. I looked around the kitchen.
"Where's Aunt--" I began, but just then she came in the kitchen behind me carrying three or four mason jars.
"It sounded," she said, "like someone needs to excuse himself."
"Excuse me," said Michael, sheepishly. It had been a very loud belch.
"Aunt Eva," I asked as humbly as I could, "may I please have a small slice of your delicious blackberry pie for breakfast?"
Aunt Eva put the mason jars down by the kitchen sink. Her back was turned, but I think she was smiling as she said, "Like I told Michael, you'll enjoy it even more if you wait until after lunch. But you can pour yourself a bowl of cereal. Or have some fruit. Those berries were so good I'm going to make preserves out of what didn't go into the pie."
"Can I help?" asked Michael.
"You can both help. But first I'd like you to throw some tomatoes over the fence for the cows. I set some overripe green tomatoes by the garden entrance, and I think the cows are right by the front fence now."
"Okay!" shouted Michael, and ran to put on his socks and shoes. I was about to yell at him to wait for me to finish breakfast, but then I remembered how long my brother's sock and shoe routine would take to complete. I ate my cereal at a pace only slightly faster than liesurely, and I finished just as Michael ran out the screen door.
Aunt Eva's garden was locally famous for its succulent and varied tomatoes (among other things). But my favorite tomatoes in the garden were the ones which grew too big to eat, or the ones the rabbits got a bite of. The reason I liked the "undesireable" tomatoes was because we could - as Aunt Eva requested that morning - feed them to the cows.
I ran outside and paused only briefly to look both ways. No sign of Loner. Still wary, I shot around to the back of the house and toward the garden gate. Michael was already there. The big green tomatoes Aunt Eva had set aside for us were camouflaged in ankle-high grass, so much so that Michael found them by stepping right on one of the biggest. I scooped up half a dozen and laughed at him as he hopped around on one foot, trying to scrape the green goo off his sneaker with a rock.
"Wait!" he yelled, but I ignored him.
I ran back toward the front of the house. Only a few feet from the door, just on the other side of the drive where the barbed wire fenced off the closest pasture, several brown-and-cream-colored Herefords were grazing contentedly. Hereford cattle spook easily, so I remembered to slow to a walk when I came within forty feet or so.
A couple of the cows stopped grazing and looked at me intently. They craned their necks over the fence so that their heads were that much closer to the moist tomato treats I held in my arms. Two years before, I'd learned to hand feed the cows, but I wasn't feeling quite so brave yet on this trip. I tossed a couple of big tomatoes just over the fence, and the cows obliged me by bringing their drooling mouths back to the pasture side of the fence.
I heard quick footsteps on grass and gravel behind me, but before I could say anything several of the cows dodged away from the fence, eyeing my brother warily. Michael came to a stop just beside me.
"You gotta slow down, lamebrain," I said. "You're scaring them."
"I told you to wait!" Michael tossed a tomato over the fence, but the cows were still on their guard.
"No excuse," I said. "Don't you remember anything from last time? Don't run toward cows or away from them. If you run toward them you'll scare them, and if you run away from them they might chase and trample you."
"You made that last part up," said Michael, tossing another tomato. This time a cow showed some interest in it and started to move closer.
"No I didn't. It's totally true. Ask Uncle Martin," I said, not entirely sure it was true.
"I will ask him," my brother said, "because you don't know anything about cows."
"I know not to scare them away from the fence," I smirked.
"Shut up!" yelled Mike.
"You shut up."
"No, you--"
Just then, I felt something very hot - but not painfully so - in my pants pocket. My brother jumped and grabbed his own pocket. We looked at each other's faces.
We remembered everything from the day before.
But before we could say a word to each other, Loner came trotting up to us. I have no idea where he had been hiding or where he had come from. His ears were straight up and there was an alertness to his gait. He barked once, softly, like an entreaty, then turned around and began trotting down the path we had taken the previous morning. I took the walnut shell out of my pocket and felt its warmth in the palm of my hand.
"I think we should go with Loner," I said. But that wasn't really the truth. The truth was that I was more afraid of forgetting everything again than I was afraid of that strange boy.
"Me too," said Michael. He looked about as sure as I felt.
We began to follow Loner, and Michael and I walked so close to each other that our shoulders actually touched. But then Loner paused right in front of the spot where I had written the message to myself in the ground, the one that said keep the walnut shell forever and he sat down facing us. Then he wagged his tail over the dirt, all but obliterating the words scratched there.
I couldn't believe it. Forgetting myself for a moment (or rather forgetting who I was talking to) I yelled, "Stop it! Bad dog!" and began to move toward the white shepherd.
Loner lowered his head, bared his teeth, and growled at me. I halted in my tracks.
"Good dog. Gooooood dog," I shakily soothed.
Loner got up like nothing had happened, gave another soft "Woof", and started along the path again. We followed, but at a greater distance. Loner led us right down the same path we had used for blackberry hunting the day before. I knew we would be meeting the Usher, since I remembered everything from our first meeting, and how he had invited us to come to his home the very next day. I no longer thought he was crazy. The magic of the walnut to understand his speech, the forgetting and remembering, and the Usher's strange connection with Loner had convinced me that the boy was somehow very powerful. That previous morning, he had invited one of us (I still didn't know why only one of us) to help find a king, and this sounded like the kind of adventure that you only read about in fairy tales. I was afraid, but I wanted to go.
These were the kinds of things I was thinking about when we reached the old walnut tree, and it had changed. Somehow, one of its branches had grown much longer overnight, so that it actually reached across the path and over the barbed wire fence to the pasture on the other side. Also, the portion of the branch that crossed the path swooped low enough for either myself or Michael to easily climb onto it. At the far end of the branch, the part that hung over the pasture, sat the Usher, still only covered with a corn leaf, his little bare white legs dangling, his silver hair moving in the breeze, his expressionless all-black eyes fixed firmly on us.
"Come to the pasture," said the Usher, and for once I moved first, scrambling up the thick branch and walking to the other side. Instead of sitting next to the boy I jumped to the ground.
"And you," he said, his face turned toward my brother.
Michael had a harder time of it. He was actually quite good at tree-climbing, but the pressure of the Usher's gaze and my own must have bothered him because he nearly fell off, and hung upside down like a tail-less opossum right over the barbed wire fence. But he managed to crawl past it upside-down, and fell not-too-gracefully on the plush grass of the pasture. Loner bounded up the branch and used it to leap over the fence, almost in a single motion.
Then the Usher hopped off the branch, and the most remarkable thing happened to it. It shrank before our very eyes, twisting and retreating back over the fence and path and back to the place it was the day before. I looked at the boy with awe.
"Usher," Michael asked quietly, "Will we be safe in the place you are taking us?"
"There are no such things as safe adventures," he answered. "Follow me."
Loner went first, his tail wagging, and then me, with Michael just behind. We walked through the pasture at an angle that partly led us Eastward to the creek and partly Southward in the direction of the farmhouse. In fact the boy was leading us through the truck graveyard.
The truck graveyard was an old apple orchard, but only one or two apple trees were left and the land was used as a pasture. But over the years Uncle Martin had deposited there every broken down pickup truck and tractor he had ever owned since he had purchased the farm. Some were blue, some green, and some had so little paint left on them you could hardly tell what color they had been. There were Chevy and Ford pickups that must have been new in the forties and fifties, and John Deere tractors that hadn't been used for twenty years. Grasses and weeds poked through the windows. In the middle of the graveyard, a wild wineberry bush grew all over an old blue chevy pickup. I paused to get a better look at the sumptuous wineberries growing there.
The Usher stopped but did not turn around. In his calf-like language he said, "There are mice there. And rats. And worse."
He resumed his walk to the creek as I backed away from the wineberry bush, and soon we were only a few yards from Little Fox Creek, which separated the pasture there from a wooded area. The Usher turned around with Loner at his side and spoke to Michael, who was a little behind me examining an old farm tractor - the last one before the creek.
"You must step away from the artifact (this is the closest I can translate what he called the tractor) before you come with me to my home," he said. "It would be very dangerous to be near one of these artifacts when you come with me."
Michael quickly walked forward and stood right beside me. We stood there for a moment, no one speaking or moving much. I could hear the gurgling of the creek and the chirping of a few birds, but other that even the wind had become still.
"What do we do now?" I asked.
"Now one of you will come with me to my home," the silver-haired boy replied.
"How come only one of us?" I asked.
"Because only one of you can find the King," he answered.
"But, I think we could find him faster if we worked together," said Michael.
"No." answered the Usher.
"Which one of us do you want?" I asked, knowing in my heart it would be me. Michael just wasn't as suited for adventures, I felt sure.
"Whichever one of you can see what I have opened up before you. My home is here, but not in this world."
"Is there, like, a doorway to step through?" I asked. I had read books about stepping into other worlds, and almost always there was some sort of doorway. I felt very informed in asking this.
"There is no door to step through," the boy answered. "You have the stiles. There is only the seeing. Whichever of you sees first will come with me."
"How long will we...or whichever of us sees first...how long will that one be gone? I don't want Aunt Eva to worry." asked Michael.
It's me she'll miss, I thought to myself.
"You will come with me and at the same time still be here. But the part of you who stays will not have the stile and will remember none of this." Then the Usher seemed to look down. "The one of you who does not see will still have his stile, but will forget when it cools. And all will be well."
"Where do we look?" I asked, anxious to be the first person to see this opening between two worlds.
"You may see now. Ever since your stiles grew warm today, it has been before your eyes. Hold out your stiles," said the Usher.
Michael and I held the walnut shells in our palms, our arms out in front of us. I strained my eyes to see some porthole, some opening to transport me to his world. There was nothing. I was beginning to doubt again when I heard Michael say:
"The colors! Oh man, the colors!"
And the Usher was gone. Loner gave me a long an intelligent look, almost a sympathetic one, before he trotted off across the creek and into the woods beyond. Michael still stood beside me, but his palm was empty. He looked around, puzzled.
"What are we doing here?" he asked.
I couldn't speak. I was full of fury and grief. Michael saw the opening to Usher's world and I didn't. Some part of Michael was beginning a great adventure that very minute.
"We're not supposed to be here!" Michael said. "We'll get in trouble if Aunt Eva and Uncle Martin find out!" And then he looked at me more carefully. "Your face is really red, Tim."
The shell was still warm in my hand. The Usher had said the way was open from the time the stile first felt warm. Could it still be open?
"What are you looking for?" asked Michael.
"Nothing!" I said impatiently, and nothing is what I saw. Not a glimmer, not an outline of a hole, nothing.
"We'd better go!" my brother said, starting to walk toward the pasture gate.
I did not know what to do. I needed someone to help me see the opening. I needed someone to explain what I was doing wrong. Suddenly, I decided to ask Aunt Eva. She was the wisest person I had ever known in my whole life, and she was just nearby enough that she might have the answer before my stile grew cool. But I did not know how to ask her, and I needed to ask alone.
"Mike," I said. I'd better tell Aunt Eva we were playing out here in the pasture where we shouldn't. I'd better go tell her right now."
Michaels eyes got very wide. "You don't have to tell her. Let's just get out."
"No," I said. "I'd better tell."
"I'll be in the garden, then!" Michael said, and sped off toward the gate. I knew he wouldn't want to be there when I confessed. Aunt Eva wouldn't have yelled. She wasn't the yelling type. But we both felt that if she was ever truly disappointed in us, we'd be crushed in our hearts. Michael wanted no part in seeing disappointment in her eyes. But I had no intention of confessing anything. I wanted guidance, not forgiveness.
I watched my brother leave. I turned around and tried to see once more. Nothing.
The walnut shell felt as if it might be a little cooler.
A terrible feeling started to rise up in me. I was angry that I could not see anything. I was sad at being left out of an adventure. But this feeling was neither anger nor sadness. This feeling caused my stomach to churn, my breathing to quicken, and my eyes to narrow. It is the kind of feeling you would get if the person who cut in line in front of you bought the winning lottery ticket. It was envy.
I ran toward the farmhouse as fast as I could, the dark sick power of jealousy driving me on. The corners of my mouth kept wanting to turn downward, and a sob escaped my lips. I threw open the screen door and ran to the kitchen, where Aunt Eva was measuring sugar in a big glass measuring cup. She turned and saw my expression, then set down the sugar and quickly kneeled in front of me, her hands on my shoulders.
"What's wrong, Timmy?" she whispered. "What's happened?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but I did not know how to tell Aunt Eva all there was to tell. Even if she managed to believe me, it would take too long. Soon the walnut shell would cool and I would forget and the way to the Usher's world would be lost forever.
"Aunt Eva," I said, a tear streaming down my face, "How can I see something that is invisible?"
Aunt Eva furrowed her brows at me.
"I mean, look," I went on, "If something is really there, I ought to be able to see it, right? But how? How can I?"
I wanted to kick myself. I didn't know how to explain at all. But after I asked these things Aunt Eva got a knowing look. She smiled a little, but then made herself look very serious.
"I see," she said. "I thought it would be a few more years before we had this conversation." She stood up and brushed off her apron. She took a deep breath. "I don't know if I can answer all your questions, Timmy. But I'll try."
I stared at my aunt. Did she know? Had she also been to this other world?
"So..." I began, and paused. "So...you know?" I asked.
"I have faith. It's like knowing, but a different kind of knowing," she said. "Faith is what makes it possible to see God . You see Him with the eyes of faith."
I was crestfallen. Aunt Eva had completely misunderstood me. Envy began to be replaced with a sense of panic. She thought I was asking a church question! I didn't really want to know about faith at that moment. Oh I believed in God I suppose, sort of. I didn't think about it much. But Aunt Eva could not have picked a worse time to lecture me about it.
"But I'm talking about what you can't see no matter how hard you try --" I began, but Aunt Eva took me by the hand.
"Come with me to Mom-mom's office," she said. Mom-mom was Aunt Eva's mother and my own mom's grandmother. Uncle Martin had built two extra rooms on the house for her to live in. Aunt Eva walked me through the living room with its creaky wood floors, through a corner of the family room, the cuckoo clock ticking loudly there, past the pink bedroom that was once Aunt Eva's daughter's when she was still at home, and into Mom-mom's office. It was a long, narrow room with a single desk facing the far wall, and a bookcase with family photos and beloved books on the nearest. On the wall to the right was a green couch, and above it a wonderfully detailed oil painting of a sailing ship. Mom-mom had painted it herself. Everything in the room was kept by Aunt Eva exactly as it had been before Mom-mom had gone away, even to the half-composed letter to a friend on her writing desk.
The shell was cooler in my hand.
Aunt Eva led me to the left wall, which mostly consisted of a great bay window facing the gorgeous "front lawn" of the house. She stood me right in front of it.
"What do you see?" she asked.
Impatiently, I said, "The front lawn."
"Is that all you see?" asked Aunt Eva.
I looked out again, shifting my feet. "I see the old pine with the tire swing, the peach tree, the grass, the wood fence, the hedge, the oaks, and two chairs and a table."
"That's what you ought to see," said Aunt Eva. "But you didn't mention the window, which is what you have been staring at."
"Oh," I said. "But I was looking at the lawn, not the window."
"And that's the way it should be," said Aunt Eva. "Windows are supposed to be invisible. Unless you are cleaning them or making them, windows ae not for looking at. They are for looking through."
I turned to look at her. My interest was starting to pick up, but I still didn't understand.
"Faith is like a window," Aunt Eva was saying. "It isn't something you can see. But by looking through it, you can see everything else. You can even see the hand of God."
She lost me again. She kept distracting me with religion. And I wanted...what did I want? I clutched the still warm stile and reminded myself of the Usher and his world. Aunt Eva must have seen the frown on my face because she took an orange, hardback book off the shelf and opened it at random in front of me.
"What do you see here?" she asked. "Look closely."
I was about to say "a book" but then I read a sentence or two and my expression brightened.
"That's Jack and the Bull! It's The Jack Tales!" I said. Mom-mom loved to read the Jack Tales to me and her other great-grandchildren. She would read them in the North Carolina accent she never lost even after she moved to the Farm. She would read them sometimes to her high school art class, and the seniors would sit in a circle on the floor as if they were Kindergarteners.
"Jack and the Bull" was one of my favorite stories in the book.
"But it isn't," said Aunt Eva. "It's only black dots on white paper, glued onto cardboard and covered with orange fabric."
I looked up at Aunt Eva. "Well, yes..."
"But you didn't look just at those things," she insited. "You looked through those things to see a story because you know the black dots on this page can take you to another world if only you see through them instead of at them. By looking through the ink, you see this for what it really is - a wonderful tale."
Finally, I understood. And it struck me that I should have not been trying to look for an opening or a porthole or a window into the Usher's world. I should have been looking for the other world itself. The window was already there, just not visible.
But I was running out of time to try.
Before Aunt Eva could say another word (for I felt sure she was going to start talking about God again) I began to run through the house, calling over my back, "Thank you! I'll remember it all for Church on Sunday!" Not very polite, I know, but already I doubted I could make it to the creek in time before all my memories faded.
I sped outside as fast as my feet could carry me and ran to the pasture gate. The cows had moved along to the front pasture, but even if they had been in front of me I would have risked the danger in the state I was in. I heard the sound of a tractor coming down the road as I fumbled with the latch. Uncle Martin! I could hear his voice calling to me, surely warning me not to go into the pasture. It was against the rules. I was neverone for breaking rules, at least not too many of them, but my mind was made up that I must get to the creek before the stile went cold. I got the latch undone and swung the gate wide open, not even closing it behind me before I ran toward the creek through the truck graveyard.
The memories were disappearing. I wondered where Michael was. I could hear Uncle Martin closing the gate and calling after me. The creek was ahead. Why was I in the pasture? I slowed to a jog, winded. I put my hand on the last tractor before the Creek to steady myself. The walnut shell was almost cool.
Suddenly, there was a last burst of remembrance and I looked up from my panting. And I did not try to look for the Invisible Window. Instead I looked through it.
There was a topaz blue sky dotted with cottony clouds, the most beautiful sky and clouds I had ever seen. A moon hung there, but not the moon I knew. It was smaller, and a little yellow even in the light of day. I looked down a little to see a grey rock wall in front of me, and it seemed I could see every imperfection and every speck of dust on its surface. And--
--too late I remembered the Usher's warning not so look into his world near the trucks or tractors, and I swiftly took my hand off the metal of the "artifact". I lost my balance, and fell forward onto a hard, stony surface where I was about to enter the right world but in exactly the wrong place.
(Chapter ends. Chapter Three, "New Wineberries in Old Skins" will begin on January 10) |
© Copyright 2006 Basilides (UN: basilides at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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