The Ancient One

by T.A. Barron

  “Hang on, now,” Aunt Melanie shouted above the roar as she turned on the headlights. “The road is lousy in any weather, but especially when it’s this muddy.” She patted the red metal dashboard affectionately, then released the clutch. Trusty lurched forward and off they drove into the night.

  Soon after crossing the bridge over Jones River, Aunt Melanie turned onto a heavily rutted road ascending a steep hill. Before long the jostling beams of the headlights revealed forest all around them. Curls of mist wove around small trees, snags, and stumps on both sides of the dirt road. A rivulet running along the left side sometimes curled into the middle of the track, causing Aunt Melanie to swerve sharply to avoid losing a wheel in its channel.

  The road was filled with rocks, roots, potholes, and ruts half as high as Trusty’s tires. As her stomach tightened from repeated bouncing on the rock-hard seat, Kate began to wonder what the two of them could possibly do to stop a whole team of loggers. She glanced toward Aunt Melanie, hoping she at least had some kind of plan.

  At that moment, the Jeep slowed markedly and the driver shifted into low gear. Kate heard the sound of rushing water below as they drove onto a creaking wooden bridge, so flimsy it seemed to tilt sideways under their weight. Slowly, they crept across, bouncing over every crosspiece. Then, with a jolt, they reached solid ground again.

  Aunt Melanie rammed the stick shift into a new gear with a grinding crunch and gunned the engine. Keeping her eyes on the potholes ahead, she reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a peppermint. Handing it to Kate, she said, “Here, dear, eat this. It ought to help.”

  It was nearly another hour of wrenching jolts, deep gullies, and sharp turns before Aunt Melanie pulled into a ditch on the right side of the road, shifted the stick into neutral, and yanked on the parking brake. She turned off the ignition and the lights and sat back in her seat with a sigh. “We made it.”

  Kate, who had managed somehow to doze during the last part of the agonizing journey, woke up with a start. “Did we crash?”

  “No, although I guess that would have put you out of your misery.” She patted Kate’s thigh. “The only good thing about this road is how rotten it is. Like most roads around here, it doesn’t get much traffic. Until they built that new road last week, this was the nearest you could drive to the crater.” With a sigh, she added, “There’s nothing like the combination of bad weather and bad roads to keep a beautiful place beautiful.”

  Kate opened her door carefully, given the steep pitch of the Jeep. All four wheels were caked with mud, and Aunt Melanie’s daisy, more tired than ever, still hugged the antenna. Gingerly, Kate placed her wobbly feet on the ground. To her surprise, it was not muddy but covered with a layer of soft evergreen needles several inches thick. She could almost bounce on the padded surface, but her stomach told her to resist the urge. The sky seemed a touch lighter than when they had started out, but she still wished she had a flashlight.

  As she slipped Aunt Melanie’s small blue day pack over her shoulders, she was struck by the rich smells surrounding her. She drank in the fragrant air like someone encountering her first rose garden, and her nose tingled with fresh, vibrant aromas.

  “Wondrous air, isn’t it?” spoke the familiar voice by her side.

  “I can’t believe how good it smells.”

  “A friend of mine who plays the cello calls it ‘a symphony of scents.’ Isn’t that so?” Aunt Melanie pointed to the trees on her left with her walking stick. “Over there, if aromas were sounds, would be the violins, dancing brightly. On the other side we have the French horns.”

  “And the trumpets?”

  “Right,” she replied. “And sometimes we get jolted by some new spring flower that’s like crashing cymbals.” She grinned at Kate. “How about a quick cup of hot chocolate?”

  Kate smiled, took the thermos and two cups from the day pack, and poured some in each. After taking her first swallow, she asked, “What did you mean last night about strange things happening up there in the crater?”

  Aunt Melanie shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “It’s hard to explain, dear.”

  “Can’t you give me an example? Just one?”

  “Almost anything is possible in a place that’s been undisturbed for so long.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters, you could assume pretty safely there are plants and animals up there no one’s ever seen before.”

  “Like the Abominable Snowman?” joked Kate.

  Her companion did not laugh. Instead, she took a sip of hot chocolate. “There could be things beyond anyone’s imagination,” she said quietly. Then, rather incongruously, she added, “I read an interesting article recently. By a physicist. He proposed a new theory, about something he called time tunnels—places that open up ways to travel to the past or the future.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Kate.

  “This fellow certainly was. He thinks time tunnels are most likely to occur where things have lived without interruption for long periods, so their energies can multiply and magnify enough to distort the flow of time.” She fidgeted again, then added, “Pretty farfetched, I admit. But your grandfather would have said that farfetched theories are the ones to take most seriously.”

  The mention of Grandfather made Kate’s stomach clench again. She stared into her cup.

  The white-haired woman reached out a hand and stroked her cheek. “I’m so glad you were with him at the end.”

  Kate’s eyes filled with mist. She swallowed, then said mournfully, “I still miss him. So much.”

  Aunt Melanie nodded, her shell earrings clinking softly. Then her brow wrinkled. “Drat,” she said. “In all the rush, I forgot to pack some matches.”

  “Why would we need matches?”

  “You never know when they might come in handy.” She checked her watch. “Come. If we hurry, we can still get to Kahona Falls by dawn.”

  “To the falls?” asked Kate, replacing the cups and thermos in the day pack. “I thought we were going—”

  “Into the crater,” finished Aunt Melanie. “But we’re going by the old Halami trail, the one they used centuries ago and then abandoned. Until I found it again last week, it had been completely forgotten.”

  Stepping over a gnarled cedar limb by the side of the road, the woman waved her hand toward the forest. In the dim light, Kate could barely discern a shadowy path, overgrown with low-hanging branches, snaking into the trees.

  “But,” protested Kate, “if the walls are unclimbable, how can there be a trail into the crater?”

  “You’ll see,” declared Aunt Melanie.

  Kate scanned the subtle indentation on the forest floor. “If the Halamis haven’t been here to walk on it for five hundred years, then how come the trail is still visible?”

  Aunt Melanie grinned. “Someone else has been walking on it.” She started down the path, her waterproof boots crunching across the bed of needles.

  Full of doubt, Kate followed behind. The trail dove straight into the thick forest, climbing gradually uphill. Whenever Aunt Melanie came to one of the many overhanging boughs, she lifted her stick and pushed it aside, holding it just long enough for Kate to pass. When she let go, the bough would spring back into place, showering them both with a spray of dewdrops.

  As they moved deeper into this realm of green and brown, the sky, barely visible through the thick canopy of branches above their heads, grew lighter by degrees. Subtle sounds came more and more frequently: Shadowy wings fluttered, twigs snapped, branches creaked, small creatures squealed. It was impossible to tell whether forest beings, alarmed by intruders, were scattering to escape, or whether they were simply stirring in anticipation of the sunrise.

  Kate felt the give of the needle-strewn trail under her feet. As the sky lightened, the trail did as well, until it seemed like a radiant pathway into the woods. She felt for a moment that she was one of the long-vanished Halamis, padding softly along a route that her people had traveled for g
enerations.

  Before long, she detected a new openness in the trees ahead of them. The misty light showed a clearing about fifty yards up the trail. Seeing it, Aunt Melanie broke into a run. Kate jogged along behind her, imagining the crashing splendor of the waterfall that would greet them.

  At the edge of the clearing, they halted, panting. Together they surveyed the scene before them.

  It was not Kahona Falls. Nor was it like anything Kate had ever seen before, except in some old photographs of trenched battlefields in World War One. An entire section of the forest, a square about a quarter mile on each side, had literally vanished. Nothing remained but a wasteland of torn limbs, uprooted trunks, slashed bark, and mangled branches strewn across the pockmarked terrain.

  Kate turned to the rear, in disbelief, to see again the rich forest they had just passed through. She could still smell its intertwining fragrances, but a new odor hung over the clearing, an odd mixture of wet sawdust and discarded gasoline cans. She turned back to the clear-cut. No birds sang, no animals stirred, no branches clicked and swished in the breeze. If this had once been a forest, it was no longer. The land lay naked and exposed to the cold mists of morning.

  “I had no idea,” said Aunt Melanie, trying to contain her anger. “Just a week ago this was all still forested. Last time I was here a family of deer ran across the trail right over there.”

  “How did the loggers get in here?” asked Kate.

  “They must have used their new road.”

  Without another word, she strode forward. As best she could, she worked her way across the trampled terrain, using her stick to help her step over ripped-up roots and muddy trenches. Kate followed in silence, feeling at times like she was walking on the face of an open wound.

  At last, with a sense of relief, they reached the edge of the clear-cut and entered a new section of forest. The trail picked up again, and Aunt Melanie did not linger. Who could blame her? Kate, too, wanted to get far away, deep into the woods, before looking back.

  Gradually, amidst the growing light, the forest began to work its healing powers. Subtle aromas comforted her, sounds of the living woods encircled her again. The clear-cut moved farther and farther into the distance, until it was difficult even to remember in the presence of such lush greenery.

  Soon the terrain grew rockier and the trail sharply steeper. For an instant, Kate worried that Aunt Melanie might have trouble making it up the slope, but one glance ahead told her otherwise. The small woman moved steadily along, pausing only to lean briefly on her walking stick after climbing the steepest sections.

  The trail wound back and forth in an endless series of switchbacks, gaining elevation at every turn. At one point, panting from the ascent, Aunt Melanie halted. Kate, who was huffing as well, used the opportunity to bend over to touch her toes. It felt good to hang there, stretching her thighs; she hadn’t had much exercise this week.

  As she straightened up, she detected a new sound, one she could not immediately recognize. It was continuous, like the rustle of wind, but deeper, like faraway thunder. As they returned to working their way up the switchbacks, the mysterious sound grew gradually louder. At first, she wondered whether it could be a distant storm. Then, with a pang, she feared it was the sound of a logging crew at work up ahead. Were they already too late?

  Finally, as the forest gave way to yet another clearing, she knew what lay ahead. The sound had swelled to such a roar that it could be only one thing.

  They had reached the waterfall.

  6

  the legend of kahona falls

  SPRAY soaring in every direction, Kahona Falls leaped out of the side of the steep wall of rock fifty feet above them. It sprung straight out of the mountainside, as if it were a geyser laid on its side, then arched earthward, plunging down the slope into a deep canyon hundreds of feet below. Behind it, the cloudy sky was lit with a pale wash of peach and pink. Dawn.

  Kate turned to Aunt Melanie, who was herself captivated by the waterfall. Looking beyond her great-aunt to the landscape stretching far to the north and west, she saw they had ascended to a rocky ledge nearly fifteen hundred feet above the forest floor. To one side, the sheer face of the volcanic cone rose precipitously into the clouds. To the other side, gently rolling ridges reached as far as she could see.

  At the edge of the horizon, probably twenty miles away, another volcanic peak loomed high and jagged. A thin trail of steam spiraled skyward from its summit. Even the peaceful glow of sunrise could not disguise the violence and torment of its past. This was not a gentle or strength-giving mountain, but a fang-shaped pinnacle that seemed somehow sinister. In a flash, she realized this peak must have been the legendary home of the Halamis’ evil spirit. Brim something-or-other, though the name really didn’t matter.

  Focusing on the nearer ridges, Kate noticed that they looked like a vast checkerboard. Squares of dingy brown alternated with squares of vibrant green. Suddenly she understood that most of them had been clear-cut. So much of the original forest had been removed that she could see clearly the route of Jones River’s rugged canyon from its source at the base of Kahona Falls, twisting and turning into the misty distance.

  She moved nearer to Aunt Melanie on the ledge, joining her at the edge of the falls. All about them, trees and shrubs had adapted to the constant spray by rounding themselves, bending low toward the ground, anchoring their roots for the duration of their stormy days. Not far above their heads, the forest vegetation grew quite sparse and then ceased entirely. The black volcanic slopes became too steep for anything larger than the occasional tuft of grass or clump of moss to cling to them. The trail did not end here by accident: One could go no farther.

  “If this is the way into the crater,” said Kate, “then I’m a stewed prune.”

  “Better start stewing,” replied Aunt Melanie, glancing toward the sunrise.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  The dark eyes concentrated on Kate. “Because,” she said slowly, “I’ve gone this way before.”

  Staring up at the sheer cliffs, Kate shook her head. “I don’t see how.” Probing her great-aunt’s face, she asked, “How did you find this so-called trail, anyway?”

  Aunt Melanie glanced down at her walking stick, its wood warming to the colors of dawn. “When Billy and the others started building their road, I was desperate to get inside the crater before they did, since there’s no telling what damage they could do. I had to see it, to record what’s in there, before they messed everything up. I knew there would be Halami artifacts like no one’s ever dreamed of finding, and lots more besides. Then I remembered the old legend about Kahona Falls.”

  “What legend?”

  The elder ran a weathered hand through her curls. “It goes like this,” she said, and she started to chant:

  True of heart and straight of spear

  Find the forest walled in fear

  Through the Gate of Death unknown

  Past the Circle of the Stones

  To the trees that touch the sky

  Blessed by spirits ever nigh

  Enter at the start of day

  Dawn’s first light will show the way.

  “My own translation,” she said proudly. “Everyone has a hobby, you know. For some, it’s baseball cards.” She paused, watching the waterfall. “For me, it’s the Halamis.”

  “But what does it mean? Through the Gate of Death unknown. That doesn’t sound too promising.”

  Aunt Melanie moved closer to the edge of the precipice, where water from the falls drenched the rocks continually. “There’s another piece to the puzzle. A long time ago, I did some research into the origins of the name Kahona. Turns out it’s an Anglicization of an old Halami word, pronounced kaha-hanya. That’s all I could find out. There wasn’t a decent translation anyplace. So I put aside the problem and forgot about it.” Her white curls caught the light of dawn. “Then, the night after they started making the new road, I couldn’t get to sleep. I started reading an old Halami
song sent to me by a friend, and I saw it used the word kaha-hanya. The meaning was crystal clear, and suddenly the legend made sense.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Kate, creeping closer to the edge herself.

  Aunt Melanie’s ebony eyes glinted strangely. “It means passage, or doorway. Another word would be—”

  “Gate,” completed Kate, in a flash of understanding. Through the Gate…She peered over the edge into the churning cataract below, and her bewilderment returned. “But how could a waterfall like this be a gate leading anywhere? This thing’s two or three hundred feet high. It’s a lot more likely to kill somebody than to take them anywhere.”

  “Through the Gate of Death unknown,” repeated Aunt Melanie, swinging her head toward the waterfall. Feeling more exasperated than enlightened, Kate followed her line of vision.

  Aunt Melanie was looking neither up at the waterfall’s source nor down into its crashing cascade, but straight across its churning surface. There, Kate could see the pale light of dawn glistening in the spray of droplets. Slowly, the effect of the light began to change. The gleaming droplets seemed to melt into each other, to merge into a single beam of light that stretched across the middle of the waterfall. As the shining droplets merged, they began to scatter the sun’s rays into a broad spectrum of colors, until at last the glowing beam transformed itself into a shimmering, shifting rainbow.

  As Kate watched, the swath of colors grew bolder and brighter. She thought of the way prisms had always fascinated her, so much so that when her father gave her a pair one Christmas, she took to walking around the house holding one in front of each eye in an effort to see the world’s true colors. She had never seen any rainbow as intense as this. But a gate it was not.

  “I still don’t get it,” she declared.

  “Look more closely,” replied the white-haired woman. “Behind the rainbow.”