He shrugged and continued working. “You wouldn’t be the first doctoral candidate to sleep with her prof. Too bad I’m not on your committee.”
“Too bad you’re gay.” We both laughed. Best friends.
“You shouldn’t do this alone, Monica,” he said seriously. “It’s dangerous playing with strange energies. You don’t really expect to find a portal into another dimension just by walking the maze; despite the legends.”
I had once before. He’d dragged me back from that escapade and held my hand until my sanity returned.
“I have to do this alone. According to the mythology, it’s a solitary trek and not everyone can bust through the barriers. I’ve trained for this.” Resolutely I yanked on the cord to fire up the portable generator. Instantly artificial light flooded our site.
“Shouldn’t you wait for dawn?” He stood in front of the small opening that would lead me onto this path. “Powerful energies happen in transition times, twilight, dawn, the equinoxes. Neither realm holds sway, portals thin.”
“Midnight is also a transition. I can’t take a chance on being interrupted by your over-eager students at sunset and sunrise.” I faced him, hands on my hips, feet spread, ready to dart around him, though I’d rather enter the maze peacefully, with a calm mind and cautious steps that stayed inside the lines.
“This entire gorge is a transition,” I continued. Between east and west, sunrise and sunset, wet and dry, high and low. The symbolism is huge.”
“Before I take a chance on you disappearing forever, give me a hint on why here. Why this design in this place?”
“Energy. It all comes down to spiritual energy. You’re an atheist. You’ll never understand the pure magic that spins up and down this gorge, spills out of the waterfalls, and pulls you deeper and deeper into each ravine in search of the next treasured view.”
“You almost make a believer of me. How old do you think this maze is?”
“Maybe twelve thousand years.”
He gasped. “The end of the last ice age.”
“When all the world was flooding. When all the water locked into giant ice flows melted. When the ice dam that formed Lake Missoula broke up for the last time and sent a wall of water hundreds of feet high and hundreds of miles long surging along the river bed, changing the course of the Columbia River, carving out this gorge. What better time to seek escape to a different realm?”
“It’s all mythology, Monica.”
“The floods aren’t mythology. They roared through here at least forty-three times.”
He nodded mutely.
“How many times have we followed the myth and found archaeological proof?”
He shook his head. “Proof of places, proof of greater age to civilization. Not proof of magic and other dimensions. Leave that to physicists and string theory.”
“We have to look at the whole. Not one science at a time. The entire picture, all the sciences linked together.” That was near blasphemy twenty years ago. More acceptable now. “Just like we have to look at the entire maze design, not each individual section.”
“And the mythological pattern here is wrong.” Wendall pretended he hadn’t heard me. “Spirals I’d accept. The epitome of a Celtic Knot? No.”
“You’re acting mighty squirrelly for a man who doesn’t believe in this.”
He looked chagrined, but still frightened. “Okay. So I’ve seen enough weird things to be leery of possibilities. Most of those weird things have happened when you were around.”
“Like the ghosts in the Dublin pub.”
“Like the pixie who stole my watch in Bavaria. Watched the bugger come out of the closet and rip me off. Had to bribe him with sparkling costume jewelry to get it back.”
“Or like the time in Brittany when you almost put your hand through a standing stone,” I reminded him.
“Like the time at Stonehenge you disappeared for an hour and a half and came back through a standing stone, not between two, with no memory of where or when you’d been.”
Red and black biting me in a hundred places at once, gouging at my eyes and my sanity.
He glared at me long and hard. Eventually he looked away. “Okay, at least tell me what you expect to find.”
“Nothing I’d be willing to put in my dissertation.” I avoided looking at him by bending over and unlacing my work boots. Maybe I’d find the piece of myself I left behind at Stonehenge. The lost hunk of my soul that is always calling to me. The part that saw patterns in nothing and nothing in patterns. The part of me that knew how to love life and enjoy each moment for what it was.
“This could make your career. Definitive proof...”
“Of Faery Land? I’d be laughed out of my career. The establishment of archaeologists would destroy this maze rather than take a chance it might change their minds.”
We both chuckled grimly.
I kept my gaze averted as I sat and yanked off my boots. When I stood, Wendell stepped aside, leaving the opening clear for me.
“Don’t stay away too long. I’ll wait three hours. Then I call in reinforcements.”
“Look under psychics in the phone book. Or better yet, find a pagan shaman.”
I took the first step across the dividing line between normal ground and the maze. Nothing happened. Disappointment, and relief, weighed heavily on my mind.
Another step. Still nothing. I decided to give it one more step before calling it quits. Then another step and yet another.
My curiosity wasn’t dead after all. I needed to know what happened when I traced my way around all the loops and whorls of the path. A tingle of intense interest flared like a match struck against sand paper. I realized that a bubble of excitement had been building all day, since before I’d cleared the first bit down to weathered granite. Answers. I’d find answers here.
Right, left, left, left, right again. Around and around.
Faster and faster I danced. A little jig bounced around my memory setting my feet to capering. Step together, step, hop. I spun in place, filled with wonder.
Something clicked. I looked about. A cone of shimmering energy encircled the maze. I saw the path blazing white, more real and vivid than the murky shadow of Wendell Follmoth pacing back and forth across the entrance. The glaring work lights dimmed, as if shrouded in fog.
Another slow spin. I’d reached the center.
“Now what?”
“You need only ask,” a tiny voice whispered across my mind. The same voice that had greeted me earlier. Light and lovely, enticing.
“May I come in?” This place seemed to follow the folkloric rules of Faery. I hadn’t had to ask at Stonehenge. I just got sucked in.
A shift in the shimmer of light before me. An almost physical tug at my heart told me to step forward. I followed the last half of the maze to the end.
Impossibly green grass caressed my feet. Silence near deafened me.
No insect buzz. No bird song. No wind sighing in the tall oaks and elms. Even the creek off to my left flowed around tumbled rocks without sound.
Silence is okay, I thought. The music in my memory is enough.
The water seemed to be some kind of boundary. I directed my feet toward it, yet found myself veering in the other direction, toward a log cabin sitting in the shade of one of the patriarchal oaks. Four rooms around a central chimney, I thought. Or maybe two long rooms, one front, one back.
A bit of movement on the cabin porch drew my gaze. The first movement I’d seen. An old woman sat knitting in a rocking chair. She moved forward and back, forward and back in time to the thrumming beat of my heart.
She seemed a long way off at first. The distance proved deceptive. Each step brought me much closer than my usual stride could account for.
“About time you showed up,” she said when I paused at the foot of the three stairs that led up to the porch. She’d drawn her grey hair up into a tidy knot atop her head. A bit of darker grey filigree encircled it, the same grey as the sock she knitted.
“I’ve been looking for a way through for a long time,” I explained.
“You took a wrong step at Stonehenge. That delayed you more than a bit.”
“How did you...” I gulped. “How did you know?”
“This is Faery. I know everything about you.”
“But how?” I dared move onto the first step.
“It’s in the knitting.” She lifted the yarn tube, a lot of stitches evenly spaced on four needles. No matter how many movements she made with those needles, in and out, wrap the yarn, over and over, the number of stitches on each needle remained the same. The sock never grew.
“What do you see in the knitting?” I ventured another step up.
“Come closer and watch,” she said. Her voice held bright invitation.
I approached eagerly and bent over her shoulder, peering at the fine stitches in grey wool.
The tube of knitting held a glass, neatly framed by the four needles. Truly a looking glass. Inside it I watched Wendell walk the perimeter of the maze with dragging steps. One by one he turned off the glaring work lights. His head hung down, shoulders drooping in defeat.
“I’ve only been gone ten minutes, not the three hours he promised to keep vigil,” I protested. I tapped the glass with a fingernail, trying to gain his attention.
“Time runs differently in Faery,” the old woman said. Her voice washed over me like a refreshing waterfall. “Everyone knows that.”
Up close, something about the curve of her mouth, the slant of her eye, the way her grey hair framed her face reminded me of someone.
“Do I know you?”
She laughed, the same chiming chuckles I’d heard earlier. “Of course you do. Or you did.” She smiled and returned to her fruitless knitting. I couldn’t see why her stitches accomplished nothing.
“Remind me,” I pleaded.
“It will come to you. Just be patient.”
“What’s beyond the creek?” I asked. I needed to hear her speak. Something in her accent tickled my memory.
“The Gorge lies just beyond the horizon.”
“The Columbia River Gorge?” I asked, surprised.
“It was the Columbia River Gorge in your day.”
“My day?”
“Time, my dear. Time runs differently here.”
“I half expected standing stones.” I stepped off the porch and ambled a few steps toward the water. Something held me back—a desire to look in the glass again, a need to keep the woman close—I wasn’t sure what.
“Don’t need stones erected by humans. Beacon Rock is the second largest monolith in your world. The only bigger free standing hunk of rock is Gibraltar. And then there’s Rooster Rock. If that isn’t a phallic standing stone I don’t know what is.” Again she chuckled. “People still come to worship at those places, though they don’t recognize it as such. But they stand and stare in awe. They walk maze patterns as they hike the trails. And they return again and again—in their memory if not in actuality.”
I tried to gauge direction by the shadows. There weren’t any. No shade. Just an overall brightness as if lit by the finest master in Hollywood.
My euphoria slid away from me in a gradual fade. Awareness replaced it. Overly bright and uniformly colored green grass that felt as soft as carpet beneath my bare feet. No prickles. No imperfections. Level—as if constructed with carpenter’s tools. Every log on the cabin appeared the same size, straight and even, they barely needed any chinking to fill the gaps between them. The air caressed my skin at a comfortable temperature and humidity. Perfect proportions and symmetry everywhere I looked.
Unnatural! my mind screamed.
If the place was a construct, so too might be the old woman who looked achingly familiar.
Damn. I knew there were traps in Faery. And yet I’d stepped smack dab in the middle of one in my quest to find a missing piece of myself. Faery wouldn’t be satisfied until it had all of me.
“Who are you?” I stood firm in the center of the grass, close to where I’d entered this world. If an opportunity arose to leave, I wanted to grab it. Fast.
“Haven’t figured it out yet?” She cocked both eyebrows upward. From the way she scrunched her face I guessed that she wanted to raise only one. Very few people of my acquaintance had mobile enough facial muscles to do that. “I’d been led to believe you were brighter than that. Ph.D. candidate and all.”
How much did she know about me?
She peered closely into her knitting. A frown grew deep along the creases on either side of her mouth.
“Anything new happening in my world?”
“Come see.”
Damn it, I had to go look. I had to know. My feet wouldn’t stay put no matter how hard I willed them to.
Once more I leaned over her shoulder and scanned the tiny images in her glass. Long shadows from the rising sun stretched westward from every imperfection in the land and from every piece of equipment or person in view. Wendell guided his crew to clear more turf away from the maze with dangerous haste. He grabbed a towel and began hacking away at the edges on his own. The camera girl fairly jumped from place to place, snapping dozens of pictures. Most of them would be useless, showing nothing new.
“If you go back now, you will make all the same mistakes I...” the old woman clamped her mouth shut as if she’d said too much. From the cold calculation in her eyes, I knew she’d planned to say just that.
“What mistakes did you make?” My gaze strayed back to the too green grass of the clearing. For half a heartbeat I thought I saw the maze shining through from beneath.
Then it was gone.
“Do you really want to know? You can stay here, safe from...”
“From what?”
“It’s too soon.”
“It’s never too soon to find answers to questions.”
I moved in front of her and speared her with my gaze.
Eventually she looked up under the force of my will.
“Very well.” She bit her lip. “Follow me.” Slowly, almost painfully, she rose from her rocker and set the knitting aside on a low twig table I hadn’t noticed before.
I dogged her heels into the cabin, knowing I should be more cautious. But I had to know. Had to make sure I avoided whatever future she dreaded.
The inside of the cabin proved as symmetrical as the outside. Two long rooms, front and back. A large stone chimney in the center served both. Doors on either side of the hearth kept the symmetry. A table set for two with plates, cutlery, serviettes, and coffee mugs, with two straight chairs to one side. A rustic vase made from an old canning jar held six perfect daisies. Two comfortable stuffed chairs near a shuttered picture window on the other end. I presumed the back room held two beds and two washstands.
Was I the second person in this picture, or someone else?”
“I’ve fixed a nice stew for our supper,” she said. Sure enough a cast iron cauldron hung in the fireplace above the glowing embers of a wood fire.
I couldn’t smell either the burning branches or the stew, yet a quick peek showed me that it burbled happily.
The woman looked longingly at the stew then back at me. “I don’t suppose you’ll wait until after we’ve eaten?”
I knew better than that. All the way back to Persephone and Hades the legend warned against eating anything in an Otherworld. Good way to get trapped there forever.
Had this old woman eaten something here long ago? Or did something else tether her?
“Show me the mistake you made; the mistake I will make.”
“Very well,” she sighed. Slowly, as if arthritic hips ached, she made her way to the picture window. The only window in the place.
Out of symmetry.
My heart started to race. Something was very wrong here. I held my breath as she worked a lever to raise the shutter.
A different quality of light filtered in f
rom the bottom, as the single plank of wood lifted outward from the bottom. Reddish hues permeated the bright and pleasant room, casting an ominous glare.
I looked to the fire to see if it had suddenly flared.
No such luck.
When I returned my gaze to the window, I gasped. Blood red plasma swirled outside, globules of ebony swam in the eddies, creating whirlpools. They fought the tides, trying to forge their own path through the energy streams.
My mind drifted outward, following one large black blob. I felt the heat, the push, the pulse of the plasma. It swirled in echo of my speeding heartbeat. It pulled me out of my body, demanding I join the fight.
Then the big black thing shifted orientation and opened one huge eye that nearly filled its being. A consciousness rode there; an intelligence.
I’d encountered that eye before.
Shocked, I took a step backward, forcing myself to look away and break the link.
“Wh... what is that?” I whispered harshly, not certain I spoke aloud. The pulsing in my head masked any other noise I might have made.
“That is us.”
“I don’t understand?”
“That is what we made of the world. I did, you will. We thought we were helping, bringing beings and energy from Otherworlds to our own, to fight pollution, to raise a spiritual consciousness, to protect and preserve our beloved gorge as well as the rest of the world.”
“You let the wrong energy in.”
“Yes.” She slammed down the lever and the shutter blocked out the malevolence. “Time we ate.”
“This cabin, the grass, and trees, they are constructs. How? Why?”
“I carved this little space out of the primordial mass. This is all that is left of Earth, the universe as you know it.”
“You survived. Why bother? Aren’t you lonely?”
“Incredibly. But I knew you would come. I had to survive until you came.” She shuffled over to the stew pot and grabbed a ladle from a hook set into the stone work. In grasping it she used only her fingers, curving her thumb across the top of her knuckles.
I held tools the same way.
Another shock washed over me like an incoming storm wave. I fought to breathe.
Fantastical Ramblings Page 16