Keeping Holiday

by Starr Meade

  Clare had grabbed Dylan’s hand. “I don’t like it,” she said. “We can’t see where it goes. And look how narrow it is. We’d have to go one at a time. I don’t want to go without you.”

  “Look, Clare,” Dylan said, “you can stand right here by where it starts to go down, and I’ll go first. I’ll see what’s there and come back and tell you.”

  “I don’t want to wait here by myself,” Clare insisted. “And what if whoever screamed is down there?”

  Dylan did not want to think about that. “I’ll only go down a few steps,” Dylan promised. “Then I’ll come right back. It will just take a minute.”

  Clare, frightened as she was, could still see that there was no other choice. Reluctantly, she let go of Dylan’s hand, and he started down. The path quickly turned into something more like a series of uneven steps. The descent was not difficult, but it wound slightly, something like a spiral staircase. After twelve steps, Dylan still could not see what lay around the next corner or how far down the steps led. He did not want to turn back without knowing more, but, aware of Clare waiting, frightened, above him, he turned back to tell her it looked easy and she should come right behind him.

  The problem was that, when he turned around, the twelve steps he had already descended were nowhere to be seen. Dylan felt that he’d been tricked. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he thought to himself. Just as the doorway into the tunnel had disappeared when they had turned back toward it, so the stairs had now disappeared for Dylan. When he tried to go back up them, they were gone. He found himself standing at the top of a series of steps (instead of at the twelfth one down), a solid wall behind him and a low ceiling above. There was no way back to Clare.

  Dylan felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life. “Clare!” he called as loudly as he could. “Clare! Can you hear me?” The stone absorbed his voice so that even to him it sounded muffled and faint. He heard no answer from Clare. As he listened, he realized that he no longer heard any moans or wails either. He stood surrounded by silence as deep as that of the tomb. And it was growing dark on the steps.

  Dylan did not know what else to do, except to keep moving down. So down he went. Perhaps this really was the way out. If he could get out the other end of the tunnel, surely he could find a way to go back in from the front and find Clare. Or perhaps, when he did not come back up, Clare would come down looking for him. Maybe she was following him right now and he just could not see her. Hoping so, Dylan went on down the steps. Down, down, down he went. Twice, Dylan turned around to see if the steps he had just come down were still there. They were not.

  At last, Dylan reached the bottom. All the way down, there had been light on the steps so Dylan could see to walk. But as he stepped on to the stone floor at the bottom of the steps, the light went out completely. Darkness swallowed everything. Dylan reached immediately behind him, to touch the last steps he had just descended. As he had feared, he could feel no steps, only a solid rock wall. He put his arms in front of him and took a few cautious steps—only a few, because he came to another solid rock wall. Dylan felt along the wall to the right. It went a few feet, then turned, and Dylan felt more rock. It took Dylan only a few seconds to fully understand his situation. He was deep under the ground, in a pitch-dark chamber of rock just big enough to lie down in, completely cut off from everyone and everything. There was no way out.

  The Forest of Life

  Horror—the stark realization that the unimaginable has happened to you. Despair—the dark, blackcertainty that there is no room for hope.

  Horror and despair—Dylan knew nothing else. These two things were his whole world. How long had he been here? he wondered dully. Forever, it seemed. His parents, the vacations in Holiday, Clare, whom he had last seen in the half-lit cave—those were all things from a past so far distant that it must have been someone else’s life and not Dylan’s. His own existence had become very simple. It held room for nothing but terror and despair.

  At first, Dylan had tried to keep hope alive. His parents knew he had headed for Holiday, and they would come looking for him. They would see all the signs that pointed the way for first-time visitors, and they would know which way he had gone. But then Dylan remembered all the wails and moans he and Clare had heard. Those were surely the voices of people like him, lost in this black tomb, who had never been found. Dylan began to imagine his parents coming after him, wanting him back. He imagined them taking the same deceptive path he had followed. He saw them, too, being led down to their own little dark chamber, only to find, as he had, that the path led in, but no path led out.

  Another wave of despair tugged at Dylan’s mind and sucked him under. Nothing could be done. He was helpless to escape his prison. Nor could anyone else rescue him or even locate him. Dylan peered again into the darkness, but of course, he still could not see. (It was no consolation at all that there was nothing to be seen.) He strained to hear anything in the stillness—he would even have been glad to hear the hideous moans again—but he could hear only a deathly silence. And that humming.

  Humming? Dylan lifted his head to hear better. Yes, from somewhere, a faint hum penetrated his prison walls. How long had there been humming? He was certain that it had not just begun, that it had been going on for a while, but he distinctly remembered a time when he had not been able to hear it. He could hear it now, however, and whatever it was, he welcomed it. The sound delighted Dylan, because it meant there was at least one other thing in his world besides horror and despair.

  Where had Dylan heard a sound like this before? Maybe it was like the sound of the surf at the beach, only softer. No, not quite that—it was the sound of wind in the forest. That was it! The hum sounded like a breeze in the top of pine trees, except for this: every now and then, in the hum, Dylan thought he heard a word. Dylan kept listening—after all, he had nothing else to do—and the longer he listened, the more certain he grew that the humming contained words. At first, the only words he could pick out were plant kinds of words, like “forest,” “ivy,” “wither,” “tree,” “grow,” and “evergreen.” As he continued to listen, though, he began to hear other kinds of words as well—“die” and “winter,” “life” and “everlasting.”

  Dylan felt he could listen, content, to the humming forever. The relief at knowing something else was, even it if was outside his prison’s walls, was that great. Then came the voice. Dylan did not recognize it as belonging to anyone he knew. Yet, though he had never heard it before, it seemed somehow familiar. If Dylan had tried to describe it, he would have said the voice was huge, the biggest voice he’d ever heard. Indeed, the voice filled Dylan’s little black chamber, leaving no space for anything else. The voice called Dylan’s name, once, then fell silent.

  Dylan jumped to his feet, heart pounding. Someone knew he was here after all. Someone had come to get him out. “I’m here! I’m in here!” Dylan called. The darkness and the stone dwarfed his own voice and swallowed it. He tried again, louder. “I’m here! I’m in here! It’s me! Dylan!” No answer. “It’s me, Dylan,” he called again, “the one you’re looking for!” He paused and listened. He heard only the humming with its occasional words—no voice, no approaching footsteps. He yelled and yelled without a response, then, finally, his despair deeper than ever, Dylan sank back down onto the floor, his back against the cave wall.

  “Dylan!” came the huge voice again, and, again, Dylan jumped to his feet. He could not help it. It simply was not possible to remain sitting in the presence of that voice. “Come this way,” the voice commanded, then fell silent. From those few simple words, Dylan understood two things. He knew he must obey that voice. Nothing less than his complete and precise obedience would do. And he knew he must meet the one who had spoken.

  Almost immediately, Dylan heard another little voice, from inside his own head. Dylan knew he had heard this voice before, although it was not until later that he realized where. “Come where?” this voice said quietly, but indignantly. “There’s nothing
here but four solid stone walls. You can’t ‘come’ anywhere!” From experience, Dylan knew that this second voice told the truth, but it did not matter to him. He had to obey the huge voice, whether he could or not. He had no choice. He walked forward, feeling for the wall that he knew was right in front of his face—but it was not there. He took another step, then another, still feeling for a wall, but he never found one. He walked on in the direction from which the voice had called, the hum growing louder with each step he took. He had not walked very far at all when he saw bright daylight pouring in at an opening just ahead. He headed for that opening—the hum had become quite loud now—and stepped at last through a hole in the stone just his size and out into a forest clearing.

  Nothing in Dylan’s life had ever smelled as wonderful as the fragrance of these pines. Nothing had ever felt so delicious as the warm breeze playing with the grass in the clearing. Nor had anything ever appeared so alive as this great, green, growing forest. For a moment, Dylan did nothing but soak up the richness of ordinary, everyday life. Then, suddenly, he realized how badly his legs were shaking, and he sank down onto the forest floor.

  Reminded by his shaky legs of the danger he had just escaped, Dylan looked around for the possessor of the voice that had called his name and led him out. He saw no one. And as for the humming, he was sure that it was not just the wind in the trees he had been hearing, because the occasional words had become even more distinct. Who had called him and what was making the humming song? And most importantly—Dylan went cold all over as the thought came to him—where was Clare?

  To Dylan’s credit, as soon as he remembered Clare, he jumped to his feet and headed back toward the hideous darkness he had just left. A voice something between a squeak and a loud whisper stopped him in his tracks. “Where you goin’?” the voice asked. “You can’t go back in, you know. And why would you want to anyway? People never want to go back in once they’re out.”

  Dylan turned around. He could see no one. There were only the trees surrounding the small clearing in front of the cave’s opening. “Who are you? Where are you?” Dylan called loudly.

  For a moment, a squeaky, breathy laugh was the only response. It reminded Dylan of the times when he and Clare would begin giggling at the dinner table, when they were younger, and find themselves unable to stop. Waiting for the laughter to subside gave Dylan time to look for its source. It really seemed to be coming from a small fir tree on the edge of the clearing, a tree not much taller than Dylan. No breeze of any kind blew any of the other trees at the moment, but this one little tree shook and rustled, Just like a tree might do if it were laughing, Dylan thought to himself.

  At last the tree (for by now Dylan felt sure that this was, indeed, who laughed) gave a long shudder and sighed. “Whew! Sorry,” it said, with the voice of someone who has finally pulled himself together enough to speak. “I didn’t mean to laugh at you. It was just so funny to see you yelling when I’m right in front of you.”

  Dylan’s anxiety for Clare made him a bit sharp. “You can’t blame me for not expecting a tree to be the one talking.”

  Completely serious now, the tree replied, “Really? Don’t they talk where you come from?”

  “Of course not,” Dylan almost snapped, then, thoughtfully, “at least, I’ve never heard one.”

  “Aha!” the tree crowed. “That’s not at all the same thing, is it? Is it that the trees don’t talk? Or is it that you don’t hear?”

  A thought occurred to Dylan. “Then, was the song I heard coming from the trees?” Before the tree could reply, though, Dylan shook his head. “You know, I really don’t care right now,” he said. “My cousin’s back in there, lost, and I need to go find her.”

  “Dad!” called the talking tree, and from behind it came another voice, larger, deeper, husky.

  “You can’t find her,” this deeper voice said. “And if you could, you couldn’t get her out through your exit. She has to come out her own exit.”

  “Her own exit?” Dylan looked, puzzled, at the tall fir tree who was speaking. It stood just behind and to the left of the younger, giggly tree. “How many exits to that cave are there?”

  “Oh, there are as many exits as there are people who come out,” the tree replied. “Everyone has his or her own exit; there are no two alike. But every exit leads out into this forest, so you’re sure to meet up with her again. In fact, someone’s coming now. Down in my roots, I can feel footsteps coming this way.”

  Dylan waited, holding his breath. Soon, he could hear the footsteps the tree felt and, an instant later, he saw the person making them. “Clare!” he called, and ran to her. Dylan and Clare were not the kind of cousins that embraced every time they saw each other, but they hugged one another tightly now. Dylan thought he heard the young tree whisper, “I wish I could do that with my branches.”

  “Have you been out of the cave long?” Dylan asked his cousin.

  Clare nodded. “For a while. Oh, Dylan, I am so glad to see you! I was afraid you’d never come out. How did you get out?” she asked. Something must have been in her eye, because she had to rub at it for a moment.

  Dylan told Clare about the steps that had led him deep into the dark hole and had then disappeared, preventing him from going back up again. He told her how hopeless and how helpless he had felt, sitting alone in his little space of darkness. He told how, first, he had heard the humming, and then a voice that had called him. “It was the strangest thing,” he tried to explain. “When that voice called, ‘Come,’ I had to do it, even though I knew I couldn’t. And as soon as I began moving toward it, there was nothing stopping me at all. I went just a little ways and then here I was, in this forest. Hey! Do you realize these trees can talk? At least some of them can.”

  Clare laughed. “Yes, I’ve been talking with trees, too,” she said.

  “Not to sound mushy,” Dylan said, “but it sure is good to hear you laugh! I didn’t know how I was going to find you in there. In fact, the tree here told me I wouldn’t be able to. He said you’d have your own exit and you wouldn’t be able to use mine. How did you get out?”

  “Well, I heard the humming too,” Clare said, “only it wasn’t coming from outside anywhere; it was inside my own head. I noticed it just as soon as I couldn’t see you anymore, so I was never really afraid. I just stood there waiting—remember, it wasn’t as dark where I was—and I listened to the humming so I wouldn’t feel scared. And you know what I realized about the humming? I’ve been hearing it all my life, at least as far back as I can remember. I remember Mom and Dad humming it to me, when I was tiny. It’s one of the earliest memories I have. Anyway, I listened to the humming and didn’t worry. And I’m sure I heard the same voice you did, only for me, it wasn’t a separate loud voice. It was just mixed in with the humming—like it was part of the humming, but separate too. Pretty soon, I realized from the humming that I was supposed to walk straight ahead and that would lead me out. I didn’t want to go at first, because I was worried about you. But I felt really sure that I needed to go and that someone else would take care of you. There was nothing I could do for you. So I followed the path and came out into the forest.”

  Dylan turned to the trees who had spoken with him earlier. “What about all the other people in the cave?” he wanted to know. “We heard all kinds of horrible moaning and wailing—will they all find their own exits and get out too?”

  “In the first place,” the tree spoke patiently, as if explaining something to a little child, “no one finds his or her exit. People have to be brought to their exits. And then, no, not everyone will get out. Not everyone pays attention to the humming.”

  Dylan found this hard to believe. “Why not?” he asked.

  A breeze—or something—rustled through the tall tree’s upper branches, as though it had shrugged. “Some of the people in there don’t believe the humming is real. Other people don’t even notice it. Who knows what all the reasons are, but one thing’s certain—though many people go in, far f
ewer come out.”

  Dylan turned to Clare. “That’s just what that man said—you know, the one who keeps trying to talk us out of seeing the real Holiday, Mr. Smith.” Dylan’s eyes widened as he realized something. “Clare!” he said. “It was his voice. When the big voice called me to come out, there was something in my head telling me I couldn’t, that there was no way out. I didn’t really pay much attention to it, because I was so focused on the big voice. But it was that man’s voice that was telling me it was impossible. It was inside my own head, but I know it was his voice!”

  Dylan turned back to the trees. “Who called me to come out of the cave?” he asked. “Was it a tree?”

  The younger tree exploded in a burst of laughter. It shook all over as if at the mercy of a violent storm. The laughter continued for a full minute. The little tree’s father made several embarrassed attempts at stopping it, saying things like, “All right, that’s enough,” and “Come on, now, calm down.”

  The laughter subsided at last with a final, “Oh my.” Then the little tree said quietly, as though to himself, “What does he think we are—magic trees?” and he giggled again.

  “The Founder called you,” the older tree responded in a glad and grave voice.

  The horror of the cave, the terror of thinking he would never leave it, the relief at finding himself outside, and the joy of reunion with Clare—all these had driven thoughts of Holiday clear out of Dylan’s mind. Now, with the mention of the Founder, desire for the real Holiday flooded over him again, with even greater intensity. His experiences in the cave, rather than discouraging him in his quest for the real Holiday, made him that much more certain that it must be well worth the price.

  “The Founder,” Dylan repeated softly. If he was the owner of the big voice, Dylan wanted to find him more than ever. “Does the Founder live here in this forest?”