The Door in the Forest

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The Door in the Forest Page 9

by Roderick Townley


  “So,” she said slowly, “you got a madman trying to kill you, and you burned up the map.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” said Wesley.

  “Who cares whose fault it is? How are we supposed to get to the island?”

  Another silence, this one broken by the cat’s weak meow. It probably hadn’t eaten since yesterday.

  “Emily,” said Daniel, “we may have a map after all.”

  “Don’t start about that.”

  “If we could only get a mirror so you could see …”

  “Why do you keep doing this?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But, Emily, don’t you see? I’m the only person you can always believe.”

  She looked down at the cat. The cat looked up at her and mewed.

  “We’ve got to feed this thing.”

  Daniel watched her.

  “We’ll take her back to Grandma’s house,” she said. “I’ll go in by myself.” She looked at the brothers. “While I’m at it, I suppose I can take a look in a mirror.”

  “Great!” said Daniel.

  “And can you bring back some paper and a pencil?” Daniel’s kid brother was always practical.

  “What for?”

  “We might need to copy down your freckles.”

  She looked at him and shook her head. “You’re as crazy as your brother.”

  Wesley smiled. He didn’t at all mind being called crazy.

  Emily breezed into the house through the big front door to find four soldiers in the parlor talking in low tones.

  “Hello, everybody,” she said.

  Only one of the soldiers looked up.

  “I found Mallow in the woods,” said the girl.

  No one was paying attention.

  “Had any luck?” she asked.

  “Luck doing what?” said one.

  “Finding my grandmother.”

  “Not yet.”

  Emily frowned. They weren’t looking for her grandmother. They weren’t thinking of looking for her grandmother. After last night’s flurry of concern, they’d moved on to other things.

  She went past into the kitchen and got out the dry cat food for Mallow. The poor creature did figure eights around her ankles and cried loudly as Emily filled the dish.

  “There you go.” She stood back and watched the cat attack the food, closing its eyes in concentration as it crunched loudly. Soon other cats appeared, a big gray and an orange-and-black tabby with a white nose.

  Emily set out a bowl of fresh water, then grabbed a banana for herself and hurried upstairs. Sunlight poured in through the spring window. Why hadn’t she just left the map there, where it was safe?

  She looked around. On the night table lay a yellow pad and a couple of pencils. She slipped them into her crocheted shoulder bag. Then she touched the photograph of her mother for luck, as she always did when she went out, and headed down the stairs.

  “Now, where do you think you’re going?”

  A large-bellied sergeant named Dominick blocked the door as Emily was hurrying across the front hall. With his bulbous forehead and cheeks disfigured by smallpox, he was the one soldier Emily always tried to avoid.

  “Nowhere.”

  “You going to see that Crowley kid? We’re looking for him.”

  “Why would I want to see him?”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let’s see.” He reached a ham-sized hand inside and pulled out the pad.

  “I like to draw.”

  The man frowned. “Draw what?”

  “Flowers? Trees? Bunnies?”

  He handed the pad back and Emily went to the door, stopping in front of the backwards mirror. She glanced at Dominick, but he’d already turned away. Quickly she undid a few buttons of her dress and pulled the material aside. Her back’s reflection was right in front of her, and across it lay a weirdly familiar pattern, written in freckles. She stared. Noticing a soldier glancing her way, she buttoned up and ducked out the door, her heart beating with a strange excitement.

  She found the boys where she’d left them, behind a bushy hemlock just inside the lip of the woods.

  “How’s the shoulder feel?” said Daniel.

  “Hadn’t noticed.”

  They moved deeper into the woods and cut over to the cave. Emily sat down on her favorite rock. “All right,” she admitted, “they do look like freckles. I don’t get it.”

  “Do they look like the map?” said Wesley, who’d never seen the map himself.

  “Maybe. Kind of.” She turned to Daniel. “You burn the map,” she murmured, “so the map is burned into me?”

  “Did you bring some paper?” said Wesley. “We’d better copy this down.”

  “Do you mind?” said Daniel.

  “Go ahead.”

  Of the three of them, Wesley was the best sketcher, and so he did the drawing while Emily tried to hold still.

  “Don’t wiggle!” said Wesley, erasing several dots.

  “I got an itch!”

  “I can’t do this if you keep moving.”

  Emily cast a sidelong glance at Daniel.

  The result wasn’t perfect, but close enough. The question was how to use it. Daniel squinted at three little marks on three sides of a larger blotch (the island?) and thought about the original document. He turned to Wesley. “In your geography class, you studied maps, right?”

  “We’re doing a whole unit on them.”

  “What do you make of this one?”

  Wesley frowned. “Without any place names or longitude or latitude?”

  True, there were no place names, but Daniel remembered little spiral symbols on three sides of the central area—like seashells twisting three turns to the left. He described them.

  “I remember that,” said Emily. “I’d forgotten they curved to the left.”

  “Counterclockwise.”

  “Lefty loosey,” she murmured.

  “What?” said Daniel.

  “Righty tighty, lefty loosey. That’s what Grandma taught me about opening jars.”

  “I wish she’d said something about opening the island.”

  “What are you talking about?” Wesley demanded.

  They looked at the map again.

  “Do you remember the words around the edge?” said Daniel. “I couldn’t make them out. Something about a serpent?”

  “I think I figured it out,” said Emily. “It said, ‘Cover the Serpent with Next Spring’s Earth.’ ” She looked around at the others.

  “That’s it?” said Wesley.

  “There’s a little more. It doesn’t make sense, either. ‘Three times Round for the Heart’s Rebirth.’ ”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s senseless.”

  “Cover the serpent,” Daniel murmured.

  “Maybe,” she said, “we should go back to that spiral. You say it goes three times to the left?”

  Wesley stood up. “Wait a minute. Is it anything like that mark in the back of the cave?”

  The other two looked at him blankly.

  “I’ll show you. Give me the flashlight.”

  The three of them crowded through the narrow opening. The flashlight cast strange shadows, but there along the back wall, among initials and chalked dates (some going back twenty years), was a deeply etched spiral, not an easy thing to inscribe in such hard rock. It curved three times to the left.

  “That’s it!” Daniel cried.

  Emily’s eyes shone.

  “Do you think,” she said as they stumbled outside, “this is one of the places on the map?”

  “One of three points,” suggested Daniel, pointing to strategic freckle-shaped marks on three sides of the island.

  Wesley looked him doubtfully. “Pretty far-fetched.”

  “The scientist speaks,” said Daniel dryly.

  Emily tossed her curls. “But where are the other two? And,” she said slowly, “do you t
hink the spiral could possibly be a serpent?”

  They looked at one another.

  Emily’s mouth edged into a smile.

  Wesley was the kind of kid who needed to do things right. “Before we go smearing dirt around in the cave,” he said, “let me get my county map. It’s a lot more exact than this thing.” He looked at the crude drawing he’d made.

  Daniel nodded.

  “But hurry back,” said Emily.

  So Wesley went up to the house for his map, protractor, compass, and, to be on the safe side, a pocketful of brownies his mother had made.

  While there, he told her about Daniel, that he was okay but wouldn’t be back for dinner or anything else until things cooled down with Sloper.

  Gwen Crowley was alarmed. She’d been alarmed since last night, when she came home to find the house stinking of smoke and Daniel’s room ruined. She paced around the kitchen clasping and unclasping her hands and wouldn’t sit down. She’d talk to the captain, she said, when he came in and get him to promise not to hurt her son.

  “Emily says not to trust him, no matter what he promises.”

  “Oh, I don’t. Where’s Danny? Is he at the cave?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you coming back, at least?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, we’re trying to get onto the island.”

  “Wesley, no! Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  “I know, Mom, but we think we’ve found a map.”

  “Who is we? You and Daniel?”

  “And Emily.”

  “Emily’s with you? Wait.” She took out a bag and filled it with ham slices, crusty bread, a hunk of yellow cheese, and a bag of pine nuts. For good measure, she tossed in a couple of apples. “Here, it’s all I can spare, but it should keep you fed for a little while.”

  Wes wedged it into his backpack.

  “Just a minute,” said Gwen. “Get your brother’s canteen.”

  She filled it with cold water from the pump.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You be careful, now,” she said, watching as he hurried off, jumping down the two stone steps, then cutting across the Fishes’ backyard and heading for the woods.

  She watched long after he was out of sight.

  The two friends sat together on the boulder above the cave. The sun beat down on them with a special emphasis.

  “Spring earth,” Emily murmured, turning the drawing over in her hands.

  Daniel shook his head. “No, next spring’s earth.”

  “And here we are in the middle of summer. Wait a minute!” She sat up straight. Then she stood up. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  She looked at him excitedly. “Stay here and wait for Wesley.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Grandma’s house. Don’t worry. I’ll be quick.”

  “Em …”

  But she’d already climbed down and was scampering off through the woods.

  Yes, she thought. Of course!

  By the time she reached the house, she was sweating. “Forget something?” Big Dominick watched Emily hurry past, through the hall and up the staircase.

  Breathless, she reached the top floor and burst into her room. She paused, trying to remember which was the spring window. As she cranked open the nearest one, several dry leaves blew in on a chilly breeze.

  The next window gave her a view of budding trees swaying in gentle sunlight. Part of the garden was visible, and the earth looked freshly turned. Good, she thought, but was she seeing last spring or next spring? Just have to take my chances. A trellis thick with greening ivy covered the whole side of the house. Would it hold her? It was a long way to the ground.

  With her hand, she tested one of the wooden slats and found it springy, even flimsy; but the ivy’s roots gripped the wall firmly. It occurred to her that this might not be the smartest idea she’d ever had.

  She tried to think of some other way. There was none. Taking a deep breath, she swung a leg over and started down.

  The two brothers looked up with relief to see Emily staggering toward them carrying a pail filled with dirt. Daniel ran to help her.

  “We were worried you weren’t coming back.”

  “Almost didn’t,” she said, catching her breath. “Ever try climbing up a wall while lugging a pail of dirt?”

  Daniel smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “Here, take a drink of water. Wesley brought a canteen from the house.”

  She nodded thanks and took a deep drink, ending with a gasp.

  “You want to tell us what this is about?” said Daniel.

  She sat down by the extinct fire pit. It seemed she was trying not to smile. “Feast your eyes,” she said, “on next spring’s earth.”

  Eagerly, she told about her adventure and the strange feeling it gave her to enter a different season—and to bring a bucketful of the future back to the present.

  “Now,” said Wesley, “all we have to do is figure out where to put that wonderful dirt.”

  “Well, we think we know one place,” she said.

  “Yeah, but there have to be others.”

  Wesley spread out the county map he’d brought from the house. Beside it he laid the map he’d drawn. He was good at this kind of thing—math, geometry, geography, anything to do with calculations. Daniel let him work.

  While they waited, Emily and Daniel looked into making sandwiches. “Here,” Emily said, handing a ham sandwich and a brownie to Wesley. “Brain food.”

  The boy took absentminded bites as he refigured his work. “The original map was very old, right? Rock formations might be the only things left. This cave, for instance.”

  “So,” said Emily, “we need to find two other formations?”

  “I know where they should be,” said Wesley, shouldering his backpack. “Let’s see if they’re there.”

  “And we’re supposed to go counterclockwise,” said Daniel.

  “Three times around?” said Emily.

  Daniel held up his hand. “First, let’s do this one.”

  They went in the back of the cave, Emily holding the flashlight. She reached into the pail for some dirt, but found it wouldn’t stay in the groove of the spiral. Daniel dribbled in some water from the canteen, making mud, and she had better luck with that. In fact, the design was soon covered, leaving only a dark patch on the wall.

  She stood back, admiring her messy work. “Now for the other two.”

  With the help of Wesley’s compass and the county map, it wasn’t long before they found a likely formation. It was a single vertical boulder rising like a monolith from the hillside. They walked around it slowly, looking for markings. They didn’t find any.

  “I wonder,” said Wesley. He knelt and started scooping dirt away from the base. “This is on a hill. Over the years, the soil would have built up on the back side.”

  A foot below the surface, there it was. Emily traced the spiral gently with her finger. She looked up at the boys and smiled brightly.

  “One more to go,” said Wesley.

  Finding it was easier said than done—the brambles treacherous, the branches fiercely resistant. At last they came to a cavelike structure formed of several boulders thrown together. And there, on the side of the largest rock, half-hidden under ivy, was the third spiral. The kids jumped around, shouting and laughing.

  “We did it!” Wesley cried.

  “Miss Byrdsong,” said Daniel grandly. “If you please!”

  She gave a little bow and dug her hand into the muck.

  After she’d covered the spiral, the friends continued around the perimeter of the island, crossing bridges where necessary, till they arrived back where they’d started.

  “Now,” said Daniel, giving the cave’s boulder a pat, “two more times.”

  Emily nodded, her face flushed.

  “Are we supposed to put on more dirt?” said Wesley.

  “I hope not,” Emily sa
id. “We just used up the last of it.”

  “Let’s go around again and see what happens,” said Daniel.

  Along the way, they noticed that the woods looked different—thicker, wilder than it had a few minutes before. By the time they reached the final set of boulders, they almost didn’t recognize the place, it was so grown over. A badger skittered out from the opening in the rocks and waddled away.

  They continued on, breathing hard, until they made it back to the campsite.

  “Ready for the last circle?” said Daniel.

  Emily was leaning against the side of the cave, catching her breath. “Hey,” she said, looking around. “Where is everything?”

  Wesley had a panicked look. “Where’s my stuff? Did somebody take it?”

  Daniel stared at the place where the fire pit had been. The ground was thickly covered in scrub bushes. “We must be at the wrong cave,” he said.

  Wesley shook his head. “Look at the rocks. Same slant, same shape.”

  “I’ll check in the back,” said Daniel, heading inside. He came out seconds later, preceded by a burst of frightened bats. “The spiral’s still there. Still covered with mud. But nothing else.”

  “What about our supplies?” said Wesley.

  “Gone!”

  “Okay,” said Emily, “I know I’m not crazy.”

  Daniel rubbed his chin. “It’s like each turn around the island takes us to some other place.”

  Emily looked down. “No,” she said slowly. “Not some other place. Some other time.”

  “That’s dumb,” said Wes.

  “You think so? It’s like the windows in my room. The spring window, say. You turn one handle, you see next spring. Turn the other one, you see last spring.”

  Wesley raised an eyebrow.

  “Where do you think I got the spring earth?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wesley. “All I know is somebody stole my things.”

  “Maybe they don’t exist back here.”

  “Back where?”

  She looked at him as though he were thick.

  “Look,” he said. “I don’t believe in this stuff. It’s just a bunch of superstition.”

  Emily checked the urge to fire back. She remembered saying the same thing to her grandmother. “Well,” she said, “we’ve got one more turn around the island. Why don’t we see what happens?”

 

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