What can I do? She is terrified, convinced it’s outside, lurking, lying in wait. Neither of us will rest until her fears are mollified. Hiding my annoyance, I grab the electric tea-kettle and prepare to leave the little house, to venture outside into the dewy dark and show her, prove to her there is nothingthere.
The door thumps shut in its frame behind us, and she clings to me, fingers digging through my shirt. I’ll wear the mark of her nails — scarlet crescents incised into the flesh of my right arm, right shoulder. Lighting our way, the tea-kettle gleams softly — a pale beacon, full of freshly boiled water. Steam escapes its wedge of spout in diffuse, curling trails.
A dirt path leads away from the house, winds through clots of damp grass. We follow its unravelling toward a stone structure that thrusts up from a small hillock ahead. Drawing nearer, the structure slowly resolves into a crypt. A heavy, teal green door is pressed into its recessed face, and pale moonlight limns worn stonework. A dark twist of tree mimics the bent, low, wrought-iron fence encircling the crypt. The fence’s gate leans open on creaking, rusted hinges.
Suddenly, my companion shrieks, tugs at me to halt our forward advance. Emphatically, frantically, she points. Heart racing, I follow the luminous sweep of her arm and see…nothing. Again, her shriek threatens to deafen, and her arm describes a wild arc, pointing. I swing the electric tea-kettle and release a spume of steam and scalding water at…nothing. Jabbing her finger at darkness, this way and that, she continues shrieking, all the while pulling me backward, back toward the little house.
Both ends of this large barn are open; huge wooden doors slid back along their tracks. Bright sunshine spills over the dusky interior in sharp contrast. Bales of hay are stacked six-feet high in one corner, and atop them sits a young man. Shoulders curved, he slouches against the barn wall, draped in shadow. Bright white earbud cords snake up beneath the hair screening his face. Everything about him is designed to ward off approach. I immediately set feet in his direction.
As I thread my way through knots of stablehands, three men in dark suits, fedoras, and sunglasses also enter the barn. They stare pointedly in the boy’s direction. The boy ignores them; the men look away, expressionless. They move past me like a slice of nightfall.
“Am I too late?” I’m breathless with anticipation once I’ve reached the corner.
With a slight shake of his head, the boy indicates there’s still time. He does not look at me, does not remove attention from the device in his hands. But, elated, I am unconcerned with manners and rush outside. Squinting against the light, I find the corral to the left. Easily, quickly I climb the six-foot fence, balance on the fence top. Contained within the corral below, is a small herd of horses. They move like fish, navigating the interior space and each other’s bodies in circling, eddying patterns.
Above the corral, suspended from thick cables are numerous large, clear tubes. Each must be three feet in length, and at their bases are four flat, brightly-colored plastic paddles — red, blue, yellow, green. I drop into a crouch on the fence top, leap to catch hold of one of the tubes. The cable is grooved beneath my hands and cool to the touch. Swinging gently from my perch above the milling horses, I depress one of the paddles with my foot — oats and grain pour out in a yellow stream. Horses gather below me to eat, shouldering each other aside. Before my momentum can slow, I leap to another tube, grip its cable, dispense more food. Again and again, I repeat this until I have made a circuit about the corral and all the horses are contentedly eating.
Except…that one… From this lofty height, I see a scruffy brown and white pinto edging toward me along the corral’s perimeter. Its extraordinarily long neck is thrust out and slung low over the ground. It bares large yellow teeth, eyes me balefully. In order to keep out of reach, I must continue leaping from one dispenser to another. And the horse, with grim intent, is determined to keep me from reaching the fence and climbing out to safety.
Night darkened landscape smears past. Distant mountains. Roadside scree. No street lights, nor shoulder to speak of. Steep drop to either side of the road’s edge. A single bent and scored guardrail off the driver’s side offers little comfort.
Left hand gripping the wheel, right hand slung over the passenger seat’s back, I twist shoulders and torso to see out the car’s rear window, to back down the road. Narrow blacktop snakes back and forth in hairpin turns down the mountain. The left side of my body is a single, taut length, from foot to shoulder. Though I firmly press — stand upon — the brake pedal, the car gains incremental speed.
No time to spare, to consider why. Every ounce of concentration is needed to keep the car in the lane, on the road. The descent continues with increasing speed. Wheels spit up gravel as I tug the wheel to follow the road’s endless, twisting contours.
Buffeted by wind, the dirigible sails low over a serpentine river, banking left, then right, back and forth. It swings over the river’s ever-changing course, shouldering its way forward. Low stone bridges span the waterway at evenly-spaced intervals. When the craft approaches one, it must veer sharply upward to clear the structure. Engines churn, grind loudly as it strains to climb. Tail fins drag, sending up plumes of water. And we few inside are tossed about in half-light. Without seat belts, the ride is nerve-wrackingly bumpy. Pitched forward as the craft begins a steep ascent, I dig nails into the edges of my seat, hold on tight.
When at last, we dock, I rise from my bench to follow the others through the dirigible’s interior. Stepping over stiff, slim structural beams, we tread the craft’s taut and toughened skin. The line slowly inches forward, each person pausing to slip their ticket into a squat turnstile’s slot. Time after time, the turnstile’s polished arms clunk and rattle as a rider pushes through. The last in line, I realize my ticket is too large, does not fit into the slot. I fold my thick, fibrous ticket in half, in half again, then mash and force feed it into the too-narrow opening. It is slowly, grudgingly swallowed.
Bright daylight without. Squinting, I follow a neat gravel path that winds past a small peak-roofed kiosk. As I pass, a uniformed woman seated within this cramped structure waves me over. I approach, stand outside to peer into the small, smudged window.
“That will be $30,” the woman informs me. She doesn’t lift her head — all I can see is the flat top of her navy blue hat. The hat’s stiffened black brim flashes with reflected light. She scribbles ceaselessly in a small pad.
I explain the misunderstanding — I had a ticket. Too large; didn’t fit.
“Thirty dollars, please,” she firmly repeats, interrupting me. Still, she does not lift her eyes to meet mine, continues writing in her pad, filling out her form.
Frustrated, I insist I would only have had a cup of tea and eaten one-and-a-half pancakes, had either been offered. The round tip of her nose protrudes from beneath her cap’s rim as, head down, she completes her form. She tears a yellow carbon-copy sheet from the little pad, hands it to me. I have been charged the full amount. Thirty dollars. Five pancakes worth.
Ocean’s of green grass, lush and spreading, rolling. Breath of wind stirs each green blade to whispering. Vast blue sky expands, cloudless, pouring sunlight. And at the center of all, the Tree. It exceeds imagination, defies possibility. Massive trunk a smooth patchwork of ivory and pale green-edged grays. Sinuous, leafless limbs support the sky, arch outward and beckon Spring. Its spread is easily hundreds of feet in all directions, reaching beyond the stone wall once intended to contain it. The wall tumbles on its course, following the contours of spilling land, but it no longer has purpose. The Tree has grown beyond all boundaries.
Comfortless hotel suite. Dank light, dull decor, three narrow beds ill-suited to rest of any kind. I long to put the infant down — just for a moment — but where? The beds arranged at the room’s edges are like benches, pressed up hard against the walls and barely wide enough to accommodate a small adult. Each is a hard and unforgiving cot in one of three lengths — stubby, near-average, or absurdly exaggerated. No place to leave a child, which would certainly roll off, fall to the floor. We’ll find no sleep here. And though placid, the child grows heavier by the minute, wrenching at my wrists and shoulder sockets.
Warm light blooms from just beyond the door, spilling over the brown walls and browner carpet. Moving toward the light, I pass a full-length mirror, hoist the child up to see its reflection. A perfect infant, cherubic and sweet. Until it smiles. Its grin rivals that of the Cheshire Cat, stretching across the child’s face, splitting it from ear to ear. A full set of adult teeth reside in that alarming mouth.
Hurrying out of the room, I enter a kitchenette. A counter divides this area from the living area in which a dozen or more young women are dancing and laughing. Hip and fashionable, they glow with youth and vibrancy, silky hair swinging as they move. I understand that they are completely oblivious to my presence. No surprise. We could not be more different — my short and sturdy stature, printed house dress, and sensible shoes fairly shout my virtual invisibility. The short tips of my no-fuss hair confirm a generational divide. Impassively, I watch them. Exuberant youth, in its natural habitat — even if this is my hotel suite. It’s not envy I feel, but difference. My own otherness. My exclusion — by fate or fortune, nurture or nature. Maybe even by purposeful intent.
Resting on the separating counter is an enormous gift basket, wrapped in bright pink cellophane. It crinkles as I pull it apart, layer by layer. Nestled within are an array of beauty products. Competing scents rise and drift — sweet perfumes, flowery soaps. Candy-colored cosmetics in jeweled acrylic cases. Pushing things aside, lifting them up for inspection and laying them out over the counter, I find nothing appealing. But maybe those girls might…
When, finally, I get their attention, they flock like prismatic birds. Such excitement! They pick through the basket’s contents, comparing notes with each other regarding product benefits, techniques, matching colors to skin tones. They are so happy and grateful, and suddenly, I am interesting enough to invite beyond the dividing counter, to listen to music, to dance, to share a drink…
Vaporous, diaphanous, insubstantial — I linger outside the door to my darkened room. Light spills from across the hall where she hurries over breakfast, head bent to read the paper spread over kitchen table.
“Not now,” she says — quick swallow from white mug. “No time,” she says — quick bite of toast. Never raising her head, her eyes, to look.
She. The only one who does not see through me.
Turn away. Down the hall. Toward the stairs. No need to walk — I drift, I float, I whisper over carpeted steps. For each slow-measured stride, two steps fall away beneath me untrod, untouched; sometimes three. The material world moves at a different rate than I, aware it has much to accomplish in uncertain time.
Out the front door, into the evening. Glide over sidewalks. Drift through this quaint neighborhood of hedges and dooryard gardens, warmly lit by star- and lamplight. Ahead, the restaurant beckons, draws me, solitary moth to all those human flames. Lovely old building, reclining in exposed, worn bricks, scrubbed of white-wash. Paired banks of leaded-glass windows fill its street-side wall, each set crowned with half-arch of bevelled and bisected panes. Prismatic light splashed over smooth polished floors; orbits of wrought-iron chandeliers flicker above. Throng of people — life, warmth, laughter. Suits and cocktail dresses, glittering adornments. Flutes of champagne. All sparkles.
Here, yet not. Move through the crowd unimpeded, unobstructed. They do not walk through me, but each knot of people, each individual approached steps lightly aside, allows room to pass. A bubble of anti-gravitational force surrounds, nudges the human tide aside. Ghostly Moses, I part my way through the sea of revelers, reach the room’s far side, pause at French doors flung open to receive night’s air. Slow glance over one shoulder, linger upon a foursome. Two sleek-haired, pretty young women clad in silver and gold, man in sharp blue suit — each steps lightly aside. Fourth member of their group remains rooted, stares in my direction. More casually dressed, in plaid shirt and jeans, he wears sandy-brown hair vaguely uncombed, beard and mustache more neatly attended. Does he look through me? Beyond me? I drift closer, my hand streaming back and forth before his face in curiosity, in challenge. He flinches with surprise, returns my wave. Smiling, he says hello.
So slow before — now, I move as the wind. Flee out the doors, across the street. Pass through traffic, cars swallowing my misted form in an amalgam of steel, leather, vinyl. Pass through the grass-sloped berm, through its darkened reservoir of dammed water. Though he pursues, calling, he cannot keep up, cannot catch me; he must contend with the solid fact of those obstacles through which I easily slide…
Days later, perhaps weeks — what concern have I for fluid time? Drawn again to wander among others. Move through this office space, slip down wide corridors that open onto great, sprawling areas filled with desks, lined with cubicles. Glass-walled conference room filled with people standing, gesturing, discussing. Lured nearer, drift closer. Invisible, disembodied. But…he is here…sees…approaches.
“Why did you run?”
Absurd question! How could I not have? The shock. To be so startled. After so much time, having grown accustomed to anonymity. To be seen…when all else (but her) see… through. Arm thrown in slow-moving, mist-limbed gesture, to encompass all those here, now — she, he, they — oblivious to my presence.
“But I see you…”
Impossible! How? He has no answer, does not know. And I am afraid. Afraid to trust, afraid that this moment will fade, his unique ability will pass. Afraid this new and unexpected fact will not see me through…
Reservoir Road rises steadily underfoot, spattered with shifting tree shadow. Gentle breeze; spill of late spring sunlight. Cool flesh, warming. We walk together, she and I, our strides matched, hearts’ beats echoing the hill’s slight incline. Conversation covers as much ground as our feet. I wave to a neighbor weeding her front garden; she returns my greeting, calling, “Hello, Charlie.” I smile and nod, accept the error. Charlie. Carol. Karen. My name eludes people’s grasps like sand, like quicksilver. Like a calm Spring day. The moment slips by, smooth as the swell of pavement beneath my feet. But I see, with a backward glance, that the woman has realized her mistake, is confused, embarrassed. Kara. Kristen. Connie. So hard to recall — my name…
Our friendship is so strong, extending back over so many years to our schoolboy days, that I don’t need to hear it in his voice — I can feel Gus’ anxiety. Sense it. But, as no doubt he expects, I dismiss it. Gus is always nervous. Yet, he’s always right there beside me, disapproving, not wanting to be left behind. Crouched within shadow, I shrug his hand off my shoulder in exaggerated fashion, continue creeping down the hall.
The building is incomplete, still in the early stages of framing. A collection of vertical steel ribs and two-by-fours. Pale plywood floors, seams meeting in red and green edges. A descent of stairs ahead. Here and there, a few sheetrock walls define half-finished rooms. Plaster smears over nail heads. Saw dust everywhere — sifted over floors and wooden beams, swirling in half light. It’s enough to make one sneeze, and Gus obliges.
At the hallway’s end, at the top of the landing, a door has been framed out and fitted with a makeshift panel. Thrust to fill the doorway’s mouth, the panel is wrapped, top to bottom, in bright red plastic sheeting. A sign taped at its center reads “Danger — No Entry — Noxious Gases.” Ridiculous. There’s no real seal here, any gas within would easily leak past the panel’s edges. Highly suspicious. A crude, but obvious, attempt to keep people out. Worthy of investigation. Running my fingers over the panel’s rim, I begin to slowly work it open while Gus, predictably, attempts to hamper my efforts.
“The sign says no entry, Shawn.”
As I suspected, the room is clean — no fumes, no gas, noxious or otherwise. It is, however, a peculiar space. Measuring about ten-feet square, this room is sheet rocked from the outside, studs visible within. Packed between the studs is some sort of soft padding. A secret “padded room”? Strange.
Replacing the plastic-wrapped panel snug within its frame, I lead the way down the open staircase to the ground floor. Nervous Gus sticks close to my heels. The floor below is an open plan. A handful of men in hard hats work to erect support beams. The whir of drills biting wood, the concussive thud of hammers. We are mid-way down the stairs when the foreman looks up, fixes me with a glare.
“I thought I told you to get out of here!”
He’s a big guy, shaved head, full beard and mustache. Work clothes coated in plaster and sawdust, creased architectural plans in gloved hands. I smile and agree, hands raised, and begin a steady stream of fast-talking nonsense, excuses, rationalizations of our presence. Beside me, Gus nods emphatically, frantically. I know I’m not fooling this guy, I’m just buying us time. We back toward our exit — a glass door set in a wall of plate glass windows looking out onto the street.
The foreman picks up a long, wide, heavy cloth strap, fits a brick at its center, and begins swinging it over his head in a wide arc. Pushing Gus before me, I turn and run for the door as the foreman lets fly the brick, then another, and another. A volley of bricks hurtling at us, shattering door and windows. Crystals and shards of glass collect in my hair, on my clothes, as we spill out into the street otherwise unharmed.
Okay — go brew yourself a pot of your favorite hot beverage and get a little something to snack on…maybe a cinnamon raisin scone, or an old-fashioned doughnut. Then, sit back, make yourself comfy, a prepare for a long, wild read!
Wide blue sky. Scudding clouds. Steep slope of grassy hill awash in gray stones scattered like small flocks of sheep. We follow her — this green-clad woman, this mystic, old-world physician — up the hillside, struggling against an edge of wind through which she glides unbufetted. We have left the small town below so suddenly, the townsfolk are suspicious; they gather together in the square, plotting and whispering. Even at this distance, at our ever-increasing elevation, I feel their collective stare.
We have almost reached the hill’s top, that gently sloping shoulder of soft, wind-tossed grasses, when we see them — three small gray balls of fluff. Wolf pups. And then, we see their mother, prone upon the ground, torn in two. Beyond all probability and imagining, she yet lives. The woman, this doctor who leads us — she can save the wolf. I watch as she kneels beside the ragged body, and I realize another gray shape hurtles toward us from the hill’s far side. The she-wolf’s mate. Fury in his eyes, bristling his coat. He won’t stop, will rend us entirely, though we wish only to help.
Standing, placing myself in his path and shielding the doctor and her lupine charge, I call out in a loud, steady voice unfamiliar to my own ears:
“WOLF!”
Immediately, the rushing male halts. Yellow eyes stare, but he listens as I explain, in wolf’s tongue, what we attempt, that he must take the pups to safety, that we will bring her to him when we have completed our task to the best of our abilities. He must show me where we may deliver her at that time. Still, he stares with those yellow eyes, turns at last and leads me around the hill’s far side till we arrive at a steep mountain of polished granite. A smooth ledge is incised into the mountain’s curve, up and around. The wolf starts upon this path, looks back at me, and gestures with his muzzle several times to be sure I understand. Yes. Follow the path. Continue. Around. Like the warming curl of tail over nose in Winter. Up. And up. Like wolfsong called out to the full Moon.
Back at the scene of carnage, I am, now, the woman physician. The mystic. I kneel in the spread of spilled blood. Green skirts rusting, hands slick. I stitch the she-wolf together — organ to organ, flesh to flesh, front half to back. I wrap her torso in strips of white cloth. Fur pokes through, a fringe of gray between overlapping seams. She makes no noise at any time. Never struggles.
With help, I fashion a litter from two long branches and a pair of jeans. We struggle to force the leafed and twigged limbs down the pant legs. At last, I lift the wolf as gently as possible, secure her to the litter. Leading the way, I begin the trek up the smooth granite path to the mountain’s top.
Such a climb. Footing unsure on gripless stone. Ceaseless, tugging wind. Upon reaching the top, I have abandoned the litter, clutch the bundled wolf to my chest. Before us — a pair of stainless steel sliding doors, which part, allow entry into a cavern fashioned from within the mountain’s dome. Lights hang from impossibly long steel cables anchored to the interior curve of mountain above us — slender, luminous stalactites. A plane of polished granite spreads out before us, chasing away past a reception desk, a set of elevators, what appear to be offices. The floor disappears into the dark beyond.
Most astonishing, though are this places’ inhabitants — wolves all, yes; but the majority of them walk about upright on two legs. Some are clad as people, in business suits and work uniforms; others in only their varied shades of fur. All eyes slew to intercept us, eyeing me in particular, with my bloodied burden clasped against my chest.
A wolf dressed in white doctor’s scrubs and head mirror steps out from behind the front desk. I lay my charge down, and the wolf doctor speaks to me, assures me of our safety, of their gratitude. She speaks English, I notice. She begins her examination, and I watch her run a scanner over the wounded hind wolf’s paws, witness her alarm when the device offers no reading. Again, the same with the she-wolf’s front paws. The doctor wolf is confused, she says; the patient smells of the right identity, but the scanners do not support this finding. I explain her injuries were so severe, I was forced to apply skin grafts.
Noise from the dark. Tumult. The wounded wolf’s mate is charging, on all fours. I exhort the doctor to check the she-wolf’s eyes, to take a retinal scan. She peel’s back an eyelid. To my great relief, the scanning device blips confirmation.
