The Door in the Forest

by Roderick Townley

  Then Wes Crowley dreamed that he woke up.

  He raised his head from the varnished floor in the back corner of the classroom. He didn’t know why he was lying there when his desk was up front, and the teacher, that nice Miss Temple, was calling on him.

  “Sorry,” he heard himself say as he hurried past snickering classmates to his seat.

  Her hand was on her hip. “Wesley, did you hear a word I said?”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

  “I want you to look at the blackboard.”

  He did, but nothing was written there.

  “What does it say, Wesley? Tell the class.”

  This time, six words appeared. “This number,” he read out loud, “is not a number.” He looked at his teacher. “But there isn’t any number.”

  “That’s why it is not a number.”

  “But …”

  He could see that Miss Temple, nice as she was, and pretty besides, was getting impatient. “Why won’t you read what it says?”

  The other kids were giggling. Their laughter turned into the twittering of birds.

  He squinted. The words wouldn’t stay still. “This sentence,” he read, “cannot be read.”

  Bird songs filled the air.

  “Wesley, pay attention!”

  He tried again. “A bird,” he read, concentrating hard, “is not a bird.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “The island is not an island.”

  “Impossible!”

  “A lie is not a lie.”

  “Wesley, leave the classroom!”

  “But I checked my math!” Close to tears, he stood up. “I checked it!”

  He bolted into the hall and outside to the deserted playing field, his eyes blurring. As he ran, he glanced at the darkening sky. A bird is not a cloud, he thought distractedly. A cloud is not a cat.

  He hadn’t watched where he was going and ran right into a large man, solid as a wall. A soldier, he realized. Then he recognized the bulbous forehead and pox-riddled cheeks of the person grinning down at him.

  “The captain’s been looking for you.”

  Wes shook his head, denying all, struggling to twist free of the man’s inhuman grip.

  “He wants to bury you in a corner of the field.”

  “No!”

  “He says not to worry. He says your death is not your death.”

  Suddenly Wesley’s eyes flew open.

  Inches from his face, staring at him with ice blue eyes, was a white leopard.

  As soon as his face had touched the web, Daniel had involuntarily shut his eyes, and now that he’d gotten through and was on the other side, he found them hard to open. A sticky mist had sealed the lids, cooled his face, and soaked his clothes.

  At least he had gotten through!

  Disgusting, he thought, wiping a wet hand across his face. With his fingers, he pried the lids open.

  What he saw amazed him. Instead of darkness, a brightening dawn rose up just ahead, with sunlight turning the grasses tawny and glinting off a dome of some kind, light blue, rising through the distant canopy.

  He turned and looked behind him. There lay night, darker by contrast than before, and the web he’d just stepped through. He saw the ragged tear he’d made, and behind it the black outline of trees. He watched, transfixed, as a shadow encroached on the web’s upper corner. Slowly it crept downward toward the torn section. It was the spider, monstrous, its numerous legs stepping delicately from strand to glistening strand, like hairy fingers plucking the strings of a harp.

  Daniel couldn’t look away.

  The creature, an obscene, round-bellied silhouette, passed across the opening where the door had been, then turned, crossed again, and turned again, each crossing leaving a taut new strand behind it.

  The beast was sewing the door shut!

  Within a few seconds, you couldn’t see where the hole had ever been. The monster rested beside it awhile, then slowly climbed to its lurking place in an upper corner.

  There would be no way back for Daniel. Not the way he’d come.

  Shaken, he turned and started toward the blue dome he’d glimpsed before. As he came closer, it showed itself in its full grandeur: brilliant as a palace, simple as a hut, many-faceted, bigger than any house Daniel had ever seen, including Bridey’s. It was so bright it made him wince to look at it straight on. He approached, afraid but in control of his fear. He would knock on the door, he decided, and deal with whatever happened.

  The problem was, he couldn’t find a door to knock on. The dome appeared seamless. He walked around it slowly, peering in the translucent panels, but couldn’t make anything out. Hesitantly he reached out a hand to see what the facets felt like. That gave him the greatest surprise of all. Touching the curved surface was like touching a cloud. A portion of the wall, which had looked so solid, swirled aside like blue mist disturbed by an air current.

  He stepped through. The wall reconstituted itself behind him, and he found himself inside a grand pavilion, blue floor, blue wall, blue air, all glowing in morning light.

  That’s when he noticed, across the room, an elegant divan in the eighteenth-century style. On it sat a woman and a girl in deep conversation. This is a dream, he thought, even as they turned to look at him.

  “Emily!” He ran over, filled with joyous disbelief.

  The girl smiled. “Hello, Daniel.”

  The woman beside her rose to her feet. She was tall, Daniel realized, taller than he was, with large, gentle eyes and delicate features. She reminded him, somehow, of a tumbling stream, from her long, loose curls, set off by a sprig of violets, to the flowing dress that might have been white except for the pervasive blueness of the air.

  “Well,” she said, lifting her chin, “Daniel Crowley. I understand you’re the one who burned the map.”

  He flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …”

  She stopped him with her smile. It was a smile that would have stopped anyone, even as it drew him in. “I’m glad,” she said, extending a hand.

  He took it hesitantly.

  “One less burden.”

  “I see.” He didn’t see at all. “Have we met?”

  “Call me Miranda.”

  “It’s my mother!” Emily broke in. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Somewhere in the back of his brain, the word “impossible” was jangling like an alarm bell. “But I thought …”

  Miranda Byrdsong had a very musical laugh. “Oh, I see. You don’t know, do you? Of course you don’t.”

  “I heard you were arrested.”

  “That’s true,” she said slowly.

  “Did you escape?”

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  “Tell him, Mother! Daniel, you’re not going to believe this.”

  “He may not want to hear it.”

  “No, I do,” said Daniel. “Hear about what?”

  “Can’t you tell by the way I’m dressed?” She twirled once around.

  “You look … beautiful.” He blushed. As a fourteen-year-old, he had no experience complimenting a woman’s looks.

  Miranda smiled at Emily. “You’re right about him,” she said. “He’s kind.”

  She turned. “We did our best. There’s only so much you can do with a winding sheet.”

  “A what?”

  “I was buried in this.”

  Daniel blanched.

  “I told you he wouldn’t want to hear it.”

  “Are you, I mean, dead?”

  “I used to think I knew what that word meant. I don’t anymore.”

  “Oh.” He felt shy to be talking to a dead person, even such a lively one as Miranda Byrdsong.

  “Mother’s been explaining things to me,” Emily said. “It was awful, what happened. But—here she is!” The girl was so happy to be with her mother again, after hope had long been lost, that she was hardly able to sit still.

  Daniel closed his eyes to think, but opened them no wiser. “I don’t
understand,” he said to Emily. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know!” she said happily.

  Miranda spoke up. “It’s a place called Here.”

  “Here,” he said. “How big is Here?”

  “As big as you can imagine, and no bigger. The farmers of Everwood, I have to say, see it as a very small place.”

  “Because they see it from outside?”

  “Exactly. They see it from There.”

  Daniel, too, had thought the island a small place, until he’d stepped onto it. Now it seemed like a continent.

  He looked from mother to daughter, only then realizing that Emily was wearing a pearl necklace. The pearl necklace.

  “You found it!” he said.

  “Mother found it.”

  “Yes,” said Miranda, sitting down and crossing her legs. “The heron brought it to me. Why don’t you have a seat?” She indicated a straight-backed mahogany chair that stood nearby.

  “Could I ask,” he said hesitantly, sitting down, “how you got here?”

  “I remember only a part of it,” she said. “Mostly, I remember the wall. They took me out and stood me against it.”

  “The soldiers?”

  Miranda lowered her head, remembering. “It was very quiet at first. I had a few seconds to look around. I’ll tell you, you pay attention at a time like that.”

  Daniel nodded.

  “I thought they were going to blindfold me, but they didn’t. The ground was pretty bare, not much growing, just a little scrub grass and the most beautiful dandelion.” She smiled faintly. “Bright yellow! I decided to look at that, rather than at the men with the guns.” She paused. “It’s strange, but I felt I understood that flower, and it understood me. I felt completely happy. Some of the men, though, I don’t think they were happy. Several, in fact, had the good manners to miss. I wonder if they got in trouble for that.”

  Emily took her mother’s hand in both of hers.

  “One of them didn’t miss. He was a very good shot.” Miranda paused. “Very good.”

  Emily closed her eyes.

  “Things got pretty confusing after that,” her mother continued. “For a long time everything was dark. Then something changed and I had the odd sensation of being lifted. I remember looking down on the city from a great height. I was being carried through the air, by something warm and strong and … bony.” She smiled in happy bewilderment. “I woke up here.”

  The two youngsters were quiet.

  Emily looked up. “Is Grandma here, too?”

  “Who do you think helped me make this dress? If it weren’t for her, I’d be afraid to show myself.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Of course. Oh, wait. I think she went outside. Said something about taking a walk.”

  “A walk?” said Daniel. Bridey Byrdsong, at her age and with her arthritis, was hardly one to step out for a stroll.

  “Let’s go find her.” Miranda glided over to the nearest wall. She blew on it softly. As if clearing mist, her warm breath dissipated an uneven section of blueness, allowing her to step through into the sharp greens and browns of a very real forest.

  Emily was right behind her, and Daniel stumbled after. He looked around wonderingly at the hazy light brightening the tops of trees. The first birds were gossiping in the underbrush, chirring and whistling and calling out, per-chik-o-ree, per-chik-o-ree, while in the distance a faint peter-peter-peter-peter echoed through the forest canopy.

  If this was not morning, it was an excellent imitation.

  Some yards farther on, they came to a large ceiba tree, its thick, leafy branches spread wide.

  Miranda was looking up. “Mother!” she said. “Really!”

  Emily and Daniel followed her eyes. The first thing they saw were two dangling feet in sensible, square-heeled shoes. Above that, almost lost in the leaves, was a smiling Bridey Byrdsong, waving.

  “Hello, children! Wonderful day for a tree climb, don’t you think?”

  “Mother, what are you doing up there?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re trying to break your neck.”

  For some reason, this struck Bridey as funny. The tree limb shook.

  “Hey, Grandma!” Emily yelled up at her.

  “Look at you! Come and join me.”

  Emily needed no encouragement. Grabbing a low limb, she walked two steps up the trunk till she could throw a leg over a branch and hoist herself into the tree. From there, she scampered, branch by branch, to her grandmother’s perch.

  Daniel shaded his eyes to see. “Mrs. Byrdsong? This is Daniel.”

  “Well, hello! You coming up, too?”

  “I’m wondering, how did you manage to get up there?”

  “Climbed, of course.”

  “But …”

  “You mustn’t think of how I was before. Out there is There. It’s how we are in Here that counts.”

  “Does that mean …?”

  “Oh, I’m not dead, Daniel, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She swung her legs back and forth. “Miranda’s the only one with that distinction. Although,” she added, smiling down at her daughter, “you have to admit she’s not acting the part.”

  Daniel glanced at the slender woman beside him.

  “Daniel,” Emily called down, “you’ve got to see this view!”

  He grabbed a branch. “I’m coming.”

  Miranda’s hands were on her hips. “Well, you can’t expect me to stay here by myself!” And she, too, began to climb. She had to twitch her winding sheet free of a twig or two, but she managed to reach a branch not far below the others.

  Three Byrdsongs and one Crowley sat high in the ceiba tree, swinging their legs like little kids. Daniel took in the landscape before him.

  This was not possible. He’d expected to see the Byrdsong house on its hill, and the road to town, but he saw nothing of the life he’d known. From Here, the view stretched to distant mountains and a waterfall leaping into a misty gorge, while overhead an eagle wheeled and cried.

  “We don’t have eagles!” he objected.

  “Looks different from Here, doesn’t it?” said Bridey.

  “It’s huge!”

  “It’s everything you can imagine.”

  “Are there other people here?” he said. “I thought I saw someone.”

  “What sort of someone?” said Bridey.

  “A man. Really old. He was dressed in an old red vest.”

  “That must have been Jakob. He’s my—let’s see—great-granduncle?”

  Daniel looked confused. “He lives here?”

  “Didn’t my daughter explain anything?”

  “The boy seemed confused enough,” said Miranda, “without my adding to it.”

  “Not confusing at all,” said Bridey. “Out there is There.” She gestured vaguely. “In here is Here. And then there’s the Hereafter. We happen to be Here.”

  “And you say that’s not confusing?” Miranda was smiling.

  “I’m just saying, dear, that this is not the final destination. Daniel, you understand me, don’t you?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Don’t try so hard. Just look around. How do you feel?”

  The boy thought a moment. “Lighter.”

  “Yes?”

  “Peaceful.”

  “Good. Yes.”

  The island did feel like a sanctuary, a place where anything was possible. “But you said it’s not …”

  “The final destination? Apparently not.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “There are lots of things I don’t know.”

  “But why are we here?” he pursued.

  She gave him a motherly pat.

  “Grandma says it’s because of me,” said Emily. “It’s a Byrdsong thing. She says we’re the protectors of the island.”

  “You?” He didn’t want to laugh, but the idea of Emily protecting anything …

  “Hey, i
t’s not my idea, but it looks like I’m next in line.”

  “Now that I’m not out There anymore,” Miranda put in.

  “I see,” said Daniel.

  “Probably you don’t,” said Bridey, climbing to a lower branch to be nearer the others. “You see, Miranda was supposed to take over from me, when the time came. But she put it off.”

  “Politics,” said Miranda. “You can say the dirty word.”

  “Well, you had to follow your own way. I thought you’d get it out of your system.”

  “It’s hard,” said Miranda, “to see people suffering and not want to do something.”

  “You were being a protector, in your way.”

  Daniel looked from the old woman to her daughter, and from Miranda to Emily. The direct line, with a tragic detour. But it was so pleasant in Here, with the cool breeze in his hair and the leaves swarming about, that it was hard to think of anything as all that terrible.

  He thought suddenly of his brother. “Wes will never find us.”

  Miranda gave him a sidelong look. “You don’t think so?”

  “How could he?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She seemed to be trying not to smile. “What’s that over there?” She nodded toward a patch of dark undergrowth twenty yards to the west.

  Daniel tried to see. Down among the shadows, he could just make out two faint blue flames. They appeared to be moving.

  As they came closer, he saw they weren’t flames at all. They were the pale blue eyes of an enormous cat.

  Seconds later, the beast broke into the clearing. It was a leopard, creamy white, its long tail twitching. Sitting on its back like a little king, and waving a red bandanna, was Wes Crowley, grinning.

  “Wes! Hey, Wes!”

  Daniel practically jumped out of the tree at the sight of his brother. But then he held back. The leopard had stopped short and was eyeing him, its eyes unreadable. It made a low sound in its throat.

  “Don’t worry about Snowball.” Wesley hopped off the leopard’s back. “She won’t hurt you.”

  “Snowball?”

  “That’s what I call her. Hey, Emily!”

  “Hey.”

  He was squinting into the tree. “That you, Mrs. Byrdsong?”

  “Good morning, Wesley.”

  Slowly the whole group climbed down, and Miranda shook Wesley’s hand gravely and introduced herself. He’d had no experience talking to such a remarkable-looking person and felt suddenly shy. It didn’t help when she broke into a smile, because that made her even more brilliant than before, her high cheekbones flushed with pleasure and her almond eyes shining. It was only when she’d led everyone inside the blue room for a treat of breadfruit pudding and blueberries—a combination as odd as it was delicious—that Wesley began to relax.