Whisk-pey noticed the clear lake in which the town people’s children went there for swimming lessons, the trees, that hadn’t been uprooted during the raging storm, swayed back and forth when Gilma passed by. The valleys with their temple tops scratched the skies’ roof…, seeing all of this from land and now from the sky brought a smile to Whisk-pey’s lips.
The hills, valleys and land became the thistles and weeds of the Dark Forest and taking extra precaution, Whisk-pey drew her sling-shot and only attempted to load it when they flew at high speed across the last dead tree in the Dark Forest. Whisk-pey was now standing up, on Gilma’s upper back. The lights in the skies began to brighten, setting tracks and motion streaks across the skies and behind structures that could be mistaken for mountains. These mountains or structures not only had various colors of their own but contained their own lights.
“This is beautiful. Where are we, Gilma?” Whisk-pey asked.
“I’m not sure of the name, Whisk-pey, but those people that I spoke about earlier, live in this place.” Gilma landed on one of the mountain statue. They could see the brightness of the lights from just a few huge stones away.
“The light is coming from inside those rocks. It looks like a shield from up here,” Gilma said, directing her attention to the many rocks that were directly in front of her and to Whisk-pey who had climb down the rock. Whisk-pey turned from the rock and peered up at Gilma when she spoke.
“Go ahead. I will be watching you. Go ahead, have a look at the colors of lights. Don’t stay in there too long. I’m sure they are asleep, so make it fast. I’d like to get you home sooner rather than later.”
“I will. It will be fast!” Whisk-pey replied.
“And one other thing, Whisk-pey,” Gilma added. “Make sure you put away that sling-shot of yours. I don’t want any trouble here. Is that clear, Whisk-pey?”
“Yes, Gilma, that’s clear. I will be right back!” But as soon as she was out of Gilma’s sight, she eased her sling-shot out of the satchel and held it to her side. Ento slowly clawed his way out of the satchel and positioned himself on Whisk-pey’s shoulder.
“What is this place, Whisk-pey? It looks really, really bright!” Ento said as they went through the first zigzag line of erected stones.
“I’m not sure where we are, but I can see the lights getting brighter. I think we are really close to, Ento!”
Ento, as if he didn’t believe Whisk-pey, looked around and then reached out his hand to touch the wet flower near him. But as if it had a mind of its own, it snatched itself away and went down into a ground of green.
Ento hunkered behind Whisk-pey’s neck. She was unaware that Ento’s curiosity had scared him. She thought he was just being his normal frightened self. When they passed the ziz-zag stone memorial, eyes that had been opened before, were now big as the clearing of water in front of them.
“Oh, wow! Look at that would you, Ento. That is like really incredible! This here is another world!”
As usual, Ento was at a loss for words when he saw a river staring at them and the streaks of lights that sprouted out of it and bombarded the skies. Orange, blue, white, yellow and green. They didn’t mind the flowers that rustled underneath the water nor the strange creatures with the three set of wings that whisked by, and then disappeared into the thin fog, but what kept their attention and held it there, was the water, the blue beautiful water that held Whisk-pey and Ento’s gazes.
“I think we should get a little closer to the water and the lights, Ento. What do you say?”
Ento had a blaring “no” waiting to fly out of his mouth but he wanted to give the place that appeared to be so beautiful a chance. Yet, he didn’t trust that beauty, not since he had seen the flying creature disappear into the fog and the flowers sinking into the ground. However, he still gave the place the benefit of the doubt and answered, “Yeah, I think we should move in closer but, while we’re walking, could you get me one of those snacks, please.
The illuminating light that came up from the water wasn’t enough, Whisk-pey wanted more. She wanted to see more. What Whisk-pey believed to be trees surrounding the water, when they got closer, weren’t trees at all but stone depiction of trees. Everything there was stone.
This place is really different; she thought. In the distance where ever she looked there were caves with openings. She assumed someone or something lived in these caves.
This amazed Whisk-pey when she got closer since she believed that the only living creatures in her land were her people, the wolf people and the wild beast that was hibernating. What amazed her the most was the voice she heard coming from one of the stone-trees. It was loud but also inexplicably dainty.
“I see we have visitors. Welcome to my humble abode,” the voice sprang out, while the rustling of flowers came out of everywhere, several butterflies, with a long tails attached to their bodies, zoomed by the visitors sending Ento back into the satchel. Whisk-pey, prepared to protect, held up her sling-shot with the rock load ready to fire.
“We heard voices, we don’t mean any harm. Me and my friend Ento, we’re here to see the lights!”
Whisk-pey tried to find where the voice was coming from but in all the places she looked, all she found was more stone monuments and caves.
Then, before her eyes came back to the lake, she heard laughter not just a laughter but from a chorus of voices in front of her. It was as if the one voice had been joined by other voices.
“I don’t feel okay at all, Whisk-pey,” Ento said. “I don’t like the sound of that. Something strange is going on here. I think we better get back to Gilma,” he suggested.
Whisk-pey didn’t reply. In her stubbornness she wasn’t ready to relinquish her misplaced bravery, her stance, her reason for being there in that unfamiliar place.
“We are going, but we won’t be run off, Ento. We will go when we are good and ready to go!”
“Whisk-pey, I’m sure that may be good to you, but to me, I think it may be very, very bad!” Ento muttered.
“Come on out, if you think you are going to scare us away, then you are sadly mistaken. We came here on our own and we will leave here on our own!” Whisk-pey yelled out. Her voice came back in an eerie echo, then the laughter before it, stopped completely. With a feeling that could have been associated with warm air on the back of her neck, Whisk-pey hurled her head around where she felt the warm musky air. To her surprise it wasn’t the air of the place that warmed the back of her neck; it was a distinctive individual, who, in a few way, reminded her of herself in her people.
“Oh I’m so sorry, did I startled you?”
One of the many thing that stood out to Whisk-pey beside him sneaking up on her with his musky breath, was his green body that drooped as if he was carrying too heavy a load on his back.
“I’m not here to hurt you but to welcome you to Troll-villa, the place of the trolls! My name is Norvis the troll, and what is your name?”
Surprisingly Norvis stretched out a hand that was first missing an index finger and seemed too long. She would have declined, but when she saw a smile on Norvis’s face that stretched to his pointed ears. She put the sling shot away, pocketed the rock and shook Norvis’s hand.
His hand felt warm as his breath but the clamminess of his palms was just as abnormal to Whisk-pey as his long tree trunk of a nose.
“My name is Whisk-pey and I have my friend Ento in my satchel,” Whisk-pey said, releasing Norvis’s hand. She looked to see if the clamminess she felt might have lingered onto her palm but it didn’t.
“Ento, oh is that little Ento that’s peeking out of your bag?” Norvis asked his head poking forward to get a closer look at Ento.
Ento went back into the satchel completely.
“He is scared of everything. He would be scared of his own shadow if he didn’t know that it was his shadow,” Whisk-pey said.
“Oh my, there is nothing to be afraid of here. There is nothing here to harm any of us. This is a peaceful place, Whisk-pey. Would you like me to show
you around?”
Outside the stony entrance and the assorted lights, Gilma peered in the direction in which Whisk-pey and Ento walked but didn’t see them. The line of thin fog that was there inside of the stony entryway had now moved out and it had grown much thicker than it had beyond the stones. Gilma panicked.
What sounded like tweeted whispers was Gilma calling Whisk-pey.
“They should be back by now. Come on, Whisk-pey. I have to get you home,” Gilma said aloud. She wanted to wait a little longer but when the fog moved in faster and her vision began to blur, Gilma knew she had to move in right that second. When she got to the entrance, it was sealed off!
Maybe this is the wrong entrance. I don’t know, I don’t remember it being closed, Gilma thought. She flew toward the top but the closer she got the thicker the fog got. She vowed to go through it. She had no other choice but when she found that the fog was not only blurring her vision but making it almost impossible to breathe, she pulled back.
“I can’t leave Whisk-pey here but I have no other choice I have to wait until the fog clears,” Gilma told herself. She was convinced that leaving Whisk-pey and Ento there was going to be detrimental. So, she flew to the other side of Troll-villa. The fog was even worst there. Gilma pulled all the way back, as the fog engulfed the entire stoned residence.
As the fog kept coming, she flew the other way. She peered at what she saw in the distance.
Down below, in front of the entrance was a troll; this one much taller and muscular than Norvis. In his right hand he held a brown club half the size of a tree. He walked out of the fog to peer up at Gilma. She was hovering several feet above and several feet away from the troll.
“There is much to see here and as I said just seconds ago, we never have visitors. We stay by ourselves and keep to ourselves but when visitors happen to show up unexpectedly, we welcome them as if they are residents here,” Norvis said as they walked past more caves. Ento finally came up out of hiding.
“I see the scary one has come out of his hiding quarters. I’m Norvis, how do you do, Ento?”
“I’m okay, but you have a tail!” Ento said stupidly.
“Yes, all of us Troll people have tails, every last one of us; just as Whisk-pey has hair and you have frog rivets on the top of your head. Ento felt his head as if he didn’t know if he had rivets on his head. There were eyes on the visitors. Whisk-pey could feel their presence and her sensitive ears could here giggles but when she turned toward what she believed were other trolls hiding, there was no one but the thin fog moving through the air.
“We came here to see the lights, I saw them from my bedroom window and I thought that it would be so cool to finding out where they came from and getting a closer look,” Whisk-pey said. Then she remembered Gilma and how she expected them back, and how the troll people were trouble, she had said. She would have left by now and she would have believed Gilma about the troll people if in fact she had to use her black rock to confirm Gilma’s claims.
He is really nice. He looks really different but I am sure I look much different to him too. So I guess it is an even Steven type of thing. We both look different to each other.
“Awh funny how you said ‘lights’. There are many more lights to see before you say goodbye to us. You want to see them, right?” Norvis said. His unusual hands stroked his long wiry beard.
“Yes, I want to see more and I think Ento wants to see more too, right, Ento?”
I hate when she does this. Can’t seem to leave me out of her equation, Ento thought but said, “Yes, I want to see more!”
What they saw as they went deeper into this place had been a little less spectacular then the part where they saw the lights coming forth out of the lake. Then suddenly they came to an opening on the top of the stone boulder. Below the opening there was a shining light, but when Whisk-pey looked at it more closely she realized the light was coming from the water itself and out of the top of the stone monuments rather than from the top of the boulders.
“This is beautiful. What exactly is this?” Whisk-pey asked, seeing the butterflies with the tails fly up and around the water before flying completely out of sight into the fog.
“This is what I called a wishing well!”
“A wishing well?” Whisk-pey blurted in utmost bewilderment. “I never heard of that. What exactly is a wishing well?”
Norvis smiled, and then without answering, he bent his hand, which was striated by years of hard work, and plunged it deep beneath the water’s surface.
The brightness rose in a fury over the opening between the two boulders embracing the shine as it sent its glory upwards.
“Oh my, that is so beautiful! Did you see that, Ento?”
“Yes, and I am just stunned right this absolute second if I said that right!”
And Norvis’s hand came out. That hand that looked crippled with age was now unscathed, flawless, and whole.
“Wow, your hand…! It looks, it looks…”
“Different is what I thought you were going to say. Correct me if I’m wrong, young lady!” Norvis said his left hand tight in a ball.
“Yes, yes that is what I was going to say,” Whisk-pey replied. “I mean, like how did you do that?”
“It’s not how I did it; it’s what I said from my mouth.”
“I don’t understand!”
Norvis opened the hand that was closed and extended a flat palm out to Whisk-pey. She beheld not the now normal hand of Norvis but what was inside that hairy palm. She beheld the many different round colored flat pieces of metal. “These are the many wishes from people who made a wish, Whisk-pey!”
“I don’t understand, how did it get here? And why is it here; this water, this beautiful water and these metal circles?” It was apparent that Whisk-pey’s curiosity was getting the best of her. Norvis didn’t want the duty of explaining what to him was the obvious. Or was there something else, something much more important to Norvis than explaining the obvious?
“There is much that I don’t understand about it either, Whisk-pey, and I have been around these parts for a very long time. How would I be able to explain this? The only thing I know is I am its keeper. I make sure it is protected and I look after it all.”
Then there was a pause, a paused that in Whisk-pey’s mind dwelled in the negative. She consulted with this adversary in her mind and the smile that matched the smile on Norvis’s face had suddenly disappeared. “Is there something wrong, young Whisk-pey? You look suddenly worried about something.” She was worried about something alright. Norvis didn’t have to tell her that, nor did he have to tell her that the thoughts she entertained at that particular point were bothering her.
“I think I am okay, thanks for letting me and my friend Ento see the lights. I think we should be going now. If my father finds out that we left the house and he doesn’t know where I am, he would be very, very worried.”
“That is understandable. I will show you back to the exit,” Norvis said then he gently put the flat round pieces of metal back into the water.
“If you must hurry off, my little bitty girl. At least don’t go before making a wish. It is effortless and the cost is absolutely nothing for you considering I like you!” Norvis said his voice elevated. Whisk-pey had begun walking forward ahead of Norvis.
“A wish? You mean like some sort of hope or something like that, Norvis?”
Norvis smiled while wiping away what looked to be nothing on his patchy wool shirt.
“Yes, yes, my dear, that is correct, any hope that you dreamed of. It’s here right in the confines of this water.”
“I don’t think we can go wrong with a wish, could we?” Ento asked.
“No, but Gilma has been waiting on us and we been here quite some time now, and if Dad finds out then…”
“A wish is only as good as the mouth who speaks it. Live your life and the way that you are feeling right at the breaking of these gorgeous lights.” When Norvis said “lights” his face lit up with the very bri
ghtness that enticed Whisk-pey and brought her and Ento to this unfamiliar place. She thought she would pass up on Norvis’s request. She thought she would walk out of there, hop on Gilma’s back and within seconds her and Ento would be back home. But the lights had never lost her attention. She walked back toward Norvis.
Chapter 6
“So anything that I want to wish I can wish it, Norvis?” “Yes, yes, Whisk-pey, you can wish anything you want. The wishing well has no restriction. You can wish anything for me or against me, of course, and it must be something that can really help you or someone else’s life for the better. Now if you have all that in that little bitty head of yours, child, then hurry back to the wishing well and make your wish. All that matters is that the wish is spoken not to me or anyone, but to yourself only!”
Whisk-pey’s smile was back and the thoughts she had of what was outside of those stone barriers had dissipated. Her mind was clear, free, and optimistic and solely focused on what would come of her soon-to-be wish.
“Come now, the wishing well isn’t going to wait for anyone. Come on, make your wish!”
Ento, who, most of the time found it hard to produce any smile, considering the circumstances in which Whisk-pey put the two of them, at that moment, found a grin that almost stretched to the edges of his very small face.
“Is there anything special I’m supposed to do, Norvis?” Whisk-pey asked as she stood beside the water, staring down into it.
“No, not at all, dear. You make your wish and you walk away, that’s all!”
“Are you sure that is all, Norvis? It seemed like that is really, really easy!”
“Yes, that’s it, that’s all that it takes; just a verbal expression, Whisk-pey.” Norvis whispered. He encouraged her with a vigorous nod and a smile, which Ento believed was getting old.
“I wish I could go somewhere else, another place, somewhere different. I wish things would change and my dad wouldn’t treat me if I was just another girl, but would realize somehow that I was more than just a girl that he wants to keep locked away in the house.”
The Land of Make Believe Page 6