The Wonderful Roundabout

by Mandy Olina

on the way. Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t. How could anyone see anything through all those trees?

  CLIMBING THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

  PPart I

  I met the little girl who lived in the magical forest one day early in the morning as I was walking to the river to get water. At the time I was living in a small village, at the foothill of a tall mountain.

  It was so tall, that if you climbed it, after you went above the clouds, in the distance you could see yet another layer of clouds, as far away and as thick as the first one. It was a simple chance encounters like many of you may have had in your lives. I sat down next to the clear stream, without any rush or concern. I leaned my clay pot towards the water and as the brim was ready to be touched by the first drop, I noticed a golden reflection in the water’s ripples. I stopped, enchanted for a moment, as it looked as though a golden ray had fallen from the sun into the water. As my mind pondered the beauty of that bright, golden triangle, the world seemed to have stopped. And then, as if out of nowhere, I heard a voice as soft and joyful as a parade of butterflies.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ the voice asked, and for a short while I thought I’d imagined it, it was so delicate. ‘Are you thirsty? Is your pot thirsty?’

  I turned around, smiling at the idea of my pot being thirsty, and there she was. She barely passed my knee in height, and was wearing a dress made out of what seemed to be tree leaves. Her hair shone so bright you could barely look her way, and her eyes were as green as the leaves of the old forest. You can imagine that I immediately assumed she was a forest fairy. They helped children who get lost in the woods find their way home. On the way, they would teach them to speak to an animal of the forest. Afterwards, that animal would follow the child for the rest of his life and defend him at any cost. I imagined however that I was neither a child nor was I lost. But as soon as the thought came to my mind something like a tiny door opened in the back of my head and I knew that neither of those two assumptions were true.

  ‘I have to take you home,’ she said. ‘I have to take you to where you belong. I’ll keep you safe along the way, but you have to believe it to be true. As long as you believe that you are safe, you will be.’

  me. A little girl a foot high promised to protect me on my way home, which was a mere quarter of an hour away.

  ‘Come with me. You’ll have to walk a little slower as you’re taller than me, but we will get there. If you believe that we will get there, we will get there.’

  I did believe I was going to get home, I just didn’t understand how this miraculous creature had stumbled onto me out of all people. Of all the lost children in the world, was I really the one who needed help the most?

  CLIMBING THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

  PPart II

   ‘Come! Follow me!’ the little girl said.

  ‘My home is the other way. There, to the east.’

  ‘No. That is not your home. That is your house. We are going home now. Follow me’ she said again and started walking with small, fast steps. It was as if she was treading on an invisible layer of snow that covered the ground. She was barefoot but the soles of her feet were clean and the leaves on her dress were alive as though they’d never been taken off their tree. I started to follow her in silence.

  We walked for a few hours, deeper and deeper into the forest where I’d never been before. The trees seemed to be changing color. The further we went, the more the green of the leaves seemed to reflect a golden light. At times it was dense that it appeared you could cut through the golden rays. There was more and more light around us as we advanced and it seemed to be coming from all directions.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We are where birds learn to sing.’ And no sooner had she spoken than we came across a flood of light. We’d just stepped into what seemed to be a magical clearing. I looked around and up and down, not believing my eyes. The old tall oaks standing around were filled with birds. Every branch appeared to have a different kind of bird perched on it. They were all looking towards the center of the clearing. They seemed to have not noticed or care about my presence.

  ‘Look!’ the little girl said, pointing to the same place on the ground. A wisp of golden smoke seemed to be coming out of the earth. It rose a few feet, then seven birds flew towards it in a circle, grabbing it by the edges with their beaks and tore it into seven thin golden threads. Each then swirled in the air, wrapped the thread around itself and, in perfect synchronicity with the others, opened its wings wide, almost violently.

  For a moment they seemed to be frozen in mid-air. I felt my heart pounding as they started falling towards the ground, only to reverse in flight at the last moment and swoop back to their initial branches.

  ‘They have all learned to sing now. All seven of them.’

  ‘How? How did that teach them to sing?’

  ‘They found their song. Their song rose from the ground and they took it. It’s the same song for all of them, they only sing it in different voices. This is why I brought you here. It is the same song for you and me as well. You just have to hear through the voice and realize you’re singing.’

  ‘I am singing?’

  ‘Yes, you are singing all the time. All the time! You just can’t hear your singing as it is. You can’t hear it like you’ve just seen it. That is how the song sounds.’

  ‘The song we all sing sounds like it looks like?’

  ‘Yes. That is not strange at all. You will understand as we get closer to home. There is nothing more simple than the song. That’s why it is beautiful and why it hides.’

  ‘The song is hiding?’

  ‘We are hiding it with all we do. It is why you cannot hear it anymore. You do sometimes. You hear it in your dreams from time to time or when you are awake and you encounter something that makes the world stop. You heard it today when we met. You just have to remember. But we must go now. I showed you the song so you could hear it. Now you have to touch it so you can sing it.’

  ‘Am I not singing it already?’

  ‘You are. Somewhere. You have to sing it louder. You have to sing it so you can hear it. So we’re going where you can touch it.’

  ‘That sounds… Wonderful.’

  I looked at this magical, alive piece of the world with amazement and admiration. She seemed to be powered by something outside my world and you could see through her, like through water. There was nothing but good inside and it sparkled like a river in clear sunlight.

  If this was a dream I did not know what I had done to deserve it. I followed her out of the clearing through a gap in a hedge and arrived at nothing but the widest field I could imagine. There were only red poppies, tall grass and berry bushes as far as my eyes could see. A narrow trail started right at our feet.

  ‘Come! We have to meet Puddle,’ she said and walked away again. I could do nothing but follow her.

  CLIMBING THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

  PPart III

  For what seemed to be hours and hours we walked and I wondered where the evening had gone. The sun set at the far edge of the field with a masterful display of every shade of rose nature had probably ever created. The trail and the scenery seemed to be never-ending. On and on we walked until the soles of my feet started to hurt unbearably. I asked to stop but the little girl wouldn’t answer. Her feet were still clean and her dress of leaves was well alive, but different. It was no longer made out of oak leaves, but smooth blades of fine grass.

  ‘Please stop. Please, please, please, I can’t go any further!’

  ‘We have to go. We are going to meet Puddle. Puddle will help us get you home. He’s not far off now.’

  ‘I can see nothing ahead or behind except this endless field! I don’t know where I am, what world I am in. I don’t know how I am ever going to get home from here!’ I said and turned around to look at the trail. Only there wasn’t one. Any trace of it had disappeared from behind us.

  ‘If you believe that we will get there we will get there. Belief is not something you
say or assume. It is something you do. You have to believe and if you believe you will walk and if you walk you will believe.’

  ‘I am not magical like you are! I am a normal person! My feet are sore, dirty and tired. I just want to rest. I need to rest.’

  ‘There is no time for rest. We have to go meet Puddle. It is not far now.’

  ‘How much longer is it?’

  ‘As much as needed.’

  I realized I couldn’t argue with her or stop and let her disappear into the field, so I just kept walking and walking and walking and the light didn’t change anymore. It was as if we were suspended between day and night on that endless field and that nothing else was ever going to happen, that I was going to walk around the world and back again forever and ever.

  Then… the moon came up. It was as if we’d gone over the corner of the earth. I didn’t know if it had just been covered by clouds before, but there it appeared, large, silver and crystal clear in front of us. A giant gibbous moon. And in the distance something sparkled in the moonlight.

  ‘There! There’s Puddle!’ she said and started walking faster, her tiny feet moving like she had a small, magical engine inside. Well, as it happened, we got to Puddle and that’s exactly what Puddle was. A puddle. Puddle the puddle. I was dreadfully tired so I sat down by it and started laughing. Puddle the puddle. This was really happening to me.

  ‘See, we got to Puddle. Now you have to go