I have to stop to breathe once I'm half way up the hill on the path in the forest.
It's been almost three days since my visit to old Garandeol's place. I wanted to come right away, but the trip to the village and back took most of my free time that day, so it was too late to go anywhere by the time I got back, and then Mom and Dad needed my help the whole following day, and it wasn't like I could have asked them to let me go out to search for more faeries and doors instead of helping them out. And then the next day was market day, and we all went to the village together.
Then I got tired of waiting.
This morning I woke up early, and snuck out before sunrise. It's still quite dark outside, but that's okay. The clouds are only wisps, so the
moon and the stars shine and bring some light, and the snow
on the ground reflects it all so it's still quite easy enough to see. It's brighter than most mornings in the
last months when it has been simply black, and I've been fine then. It's
just dark. That's how winters work.
I ran most of the way here, excited and nervous. I lean heavily on my knees and watch my heavy breath turn to mist in the air below my face. I have to find the faerie. I breathe deep one more time -- in and out -- and decide I'm close enough to the cliff. That's my reasoning; since the faerie that created the door was close to the cliff when it created the door, then it might still be near the cliff. Or be near the cliff again. Either way, I don't know where else to start my search.
I'm still on the opposite side of the cliff from where the door appeared, but maybe the faerie isn't that stationary.
Or maybe it isn't here at all. Let's be honest, I'm only pretending I know what I'm doing. But I don't know what else to do, so here I am, in the ancient forest, looking for a faerie.
Well, when I put it like that, I sound crazy.
"Hello?" I call out to the woods. Great, now I feel crazy too. I ignore the feeling.
"Hello?" I call out again, as I continue walking up the hill. "Is there anyone here? I... I'm looking for a... faerie?"
Suddenly something changes. Or maybe I notice something has changed, now that I'm not so concentrated on my breathing and there's no burning in my legs from the running. Now that I'm actively paying attention to my surroundings.
The unnerving part is I can't tell what it is that has changed. Something simply feels different. The forest feels different. It feels... alive? But I've always felt the forest is alive, to some extent. That's what has kept me from straying from the paths all these years. But I know the forest. I've walked these paths for longer than I remember. The forest has always had the feeling it has now. Only now the feeling is more, somehow. Maybe before it felt simply alive. Now it feels aware, in a way it has never felt before.
I stop, and simply stare around, trying to figure out where this new feeling is coming from. I can't. I can't see anything out of the ordinary. More snow has fallen since I was last here, and some of it has made its way through the canopy, through the layers of branches, down to the forest floor. I can see some tracks of small animals crisscrossing on the thin layer of white. Some rodents, but I can't quite figure which. There are so many of the small ones. Everything is the same. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I swallow my uneasiness, raise my head up high, and continue up the slope.
"Hello?" I call again. Nothing answers, but I feel the forest listening. I keep calling out as I make my way all the way up to the cliff.
When I'm almost at the boulder, something catches my attention on the opposite side of the path. I stop turn to look. I see nothing. Or at least my eyes see nothing, because there's definitely something there, and some part of me feels like I can see it. It's another door. Except this one is closed. It feels closed. And there isn't a door frame. That, at least, I would see. And now that I think about it, the door on the path, that had felt like an open door. I simply hadn't known what a closed door felt like, so I hadn't noticed it. But now I do. And that door was definitely open. And this door is definitely closed.
I stare at the empty spot off the path where the closed door is. Then I blink, take a deep breath, and continue my walk. It's good to know there's a door here, but I can't open it myself. I'm not sure I want to open it. I need to find the faerie. A faerie. I need to see if it can tell me something. So I keep walking, I keep calling out. I keep not thinking about why I can suddenly see the doors in the forest. Maybe they haven't been there before? Maybe having seen an open door has tuned my mind so that I can now see the doors that aren't open because I know there could be doors out here? Maybe... I don't know.
I feel my heart starting to beat slightly faster as I approach the place where the door was on the path. I stop a few steps from where the door was. Is. It's still there. It's just closed now. If I didn't know it's there, I might have walked straight... through it? No, you can't walk through a closed door. Past it? But it's in the middle of the path. I walked past it the last time, when I went around it. I don't know how to describe going through a point where there is a door, but not go through the door itself. Either way, I must have, so many times. And I never knew about it.
"Hello?" I call. "I.. uh... I'm looking for whoever opened this door a few days ago." I look around, uncertain. "I want to know--" what? I'm not sure myself. "My uncle. I was told he disappeared as a kid. He might be in the Faerie Realm. I just... I was wondering if there could be a way to get him back here?" I pause for a moment. "And I'd also want to know why the door was open the other day. And why I can now see the doors. This is... all very confusing. I just want to talk."
I look around me, trying to find a faerie that might be hiding. Old Garandeol said it would be very hard, but my eyes are very good. But in the dark (though dawn is only a little time away) I can't see anything in the forest. I wait for a moment. Another. I sigh.
I imagine I can feel something in the woods, but nothing is coming out to talk to me, and I'm not going out there off the path to see if I could find something. If there's something out there that isn't coming out on it's own, I won't find it trying to look for it off path. And I wouldn't get off the path even if I thought I could.
So I sigh again, and start moving again, along the path, through the place of the door, towards home.
_____________________________________________________________
The topic for tomorrow is Time.
~matu
No comments:
Post a Comment