Leap - chapter eight

                                                      8


        She is walking in the woods on a beautiful spring day.  The fresh green of newly cloaked oaks and elms, interrupted by brilliant white bursts of the dogwoods in bloom, give the air a lovely green tint. As she walks, a carpet of winter’s leftover leaves crunches underfoot.  In the distance, someone calls her name.  She stops and listens.  Who is that? 

          There it is again, very clear, someone calling her name.  “Graaaace.” Someone, sounding very much like Anna, is calling for her.  She walks faster, her heart yearning for her sister, her head telling her to stay calm, it can’t be Anna.  When she hears her name a third time her heart wins the argument and she calls out to her sister.  “Anna . . . where are you?”

          “Over here Grace, come on.”

          She starts to run.  She does not know how it is possible but she knows that it is her sister.  Anna is alive. If Anna is alive then her parents are alive too.  Maybe it was a bad dream, the whole accident and everything that came after – just a really horrible dream.  Ahead she sees a path worn into the forest floor. 

          “Grace . . . are you coming,” Anna calls sounding closer.  Grace’s feet pound along the path and she sees a break in the trees.  As she emerges from the forest, she stops short.  She is standing at the edge of an enormous valley, it stretches out in every direction and she can see no end.  There is a sweet smell like clover in the air and a peaceful silence lies over the valley like a cozy blanket.  Twenty yards ahead the path leads to a huge metal gate built into a 20-foot brick wall.  The wall stretches out to the left and the right for as far as she can see. 

          “Grace, where are you?”  Anna sounds close now, as if she is on the other side of that wall.  Grace runs toward the gate feeling like a six year old that has been separated from her mommy and daddy at Disney World and she has just spotted them ahead. 

          When she is ten yards from the gate, a man steps out of a booth built into the wall.  He is massive, seven feet tall and built like a statue; muscular, toned, and beautiful.  He stands in the middle of the path, directly in front of the gate, and crosses his arms over his enormous chest.  Grace hesitates, his stance makes her wary; it is almost a challenge.  Anna is laughing behind the wall and she decides, challenge or no challenge, she is going to see her sister. 

          She starts around the giant but when she is twelve feet from the gate, he steps directly in front of her.  She cranes her head back to look the man in the eye.  “Hi” she says, her voice sounding stronger than she feels.  The silent giant just looks at her.  “Um . . . I heard my sister inside there,” she points at the gate behind him, “and I think she wants me to go in there.”  The man slowly shakes his head – no.

          “Graaace . . . are you coming?”

          “See,” Grace says to the guard, “she’s calling me!”  He silently refuses her entry.  “Come on mister – that’s my family in there and I haven’t seen them in a long time.  Just let me by.”  She sees compassion in his eyes, but she also sees that he is not going to let her through that gate.

          She tries to go around him but he side steps with her and she ends up staring at his stomach.  She takes a few steps back and stomps her foot.  “Anna,” she yells without taking her eyes from the guard.  “Anna this guy out here won’t let me in.”  She looks right and then left, down the length of the wall but does not see another entrance.  “I’m going to find another way.”  She watches the giant for any sign that he is going to try to stop her and creeps slowly to the right. 

          “Anna, can you hear me?  I can’t climb this wall, it’s too smooth.  I’m going to follow it and look for another way in.”  The guard still has not moved, maybe his job description says guard the gate only.  Encouraged she starts to walk along the wall, her hand brushing its smooth surface; it is cool to the touch. 

          “There’s only one way in Grace,” Anna calls from just the other side of this stupid wall.  She imagines her sister’s hand resting in the same spot as her own on the other side and wishes for a bulldozer.

          “But this stupid guard won’t let me in,” she whines.

          “Then find the one who will let you enter.” 

          “Which one” she yells, close to tears.  “Is there another gate with a nicer guard?”  She shoots the guard to her left an angry look. 

          “We love you Gracie,” Anna sings, her voice is moving away, fading.

          “Anna wait.  Where’s the other gate?  Who’s going to let me in?”  She listens but hears only the sound of the forest behind her.  “Anna,” she yells, but there is no reply. 

          Anna is in there somewhere, her parents are in there, and she has to get through this wall.  She starts walking again, following the wall.  Anna said there is only one way in and she said to find the one who would let her enter.  So maybe that giant back there was guarding like a fire exit or something.  Maybe she just had to find the front door.  Encouraged she picks up her pace. 

          She moves along, daydreaming about a reunion with her parents and wondering if she should tell them about the awful dream she’s had and how much she missed them when she thought they were gone.  Where is that gate?  She glances back to see how far she has come and can no longer see the guard or his booth.  Maybe she should have gone the other way; maybe the gate was to the left. 

        To her right, coming from the forest that has kept pace with the wall, she hears voices in the distance.  It sounds like many people, maybe singing.  Maybe this wall makes a turn in that direction.  Maybe those people are at the front gate.  In her excitement, she abandons the wall she has been following and darts off into the woods. 

        She sees no discernable path, so she weaves her way through dense trees and underbrush, the volume of the voices steadily increasing.  The closer she gets to the source of the noise the harder it gets to navigate.  The trees grow so close together they are growing on top of each other and the underbrush is full of briar patches that pull at her jeans and scratch her bare arms. She can hear people so close by, (though they sound less like they’re singing now, and more like they’re yelling), that she can’t give up. 
       
      Finally, she pushes out of the dense forest, her arms and chest scratched and her jeans torn.  She finds herself in another clearing.  Unlike the first valley, this is not a beautiful place.  The earth looks scorched and there is no sign of any growing thing.  There is a light dusting of – powder? - ash? -  on the ground and she sees it falling through the air.  A smell like burnt matches hangs over everything. Fifty yards ahead, she sees a crowd of people, a hundred or more.  They seem to be milling around a big hole in the ground.  Steam rises from the hole and gray ash rides the heated air.  As she watches from a distance, a huge man, like the guard in the woods, climbs up and out of the pit.  He is wearing only a dark loincloth of sorts; sweat and grime glisten on his skin.  As he emerges, the people around the mouth of the pit begin to scream, some of them running in circles as though they can’t decide which way to go, some of them falling to the ground writhing as if in pain. 
   
    She watches, she can hardly look away, as the man steps into the crowd, towering over them.  He grabs the arm of a middle aged woman, her dark hair is tangled, her clothes torn to tatters and she is covered with the same grime as her captor.  When he touches her arm, the woman screams in agony.  She thrashes and fights against the beast that is dragging her toward the mouth of the open pit.  With his mammoth hand still clasped to the woman’s forearm, he lifts her off her feet.  She kicks and claws to no avail; he effortlessly lifts her over the opening and drops her.  Her scream fades quickly.

          Hiding in the trees, Grace puts her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.  To her right a movement catches her eye.  She witnesses another of the grimy giants stepping out of the trees forty yards from her position.  His hand is wrapped around the ankle of a boy who looks to be about seventeen.  The behemoth drags the boy on the ground behind him, heedless of his kicking and pleading.  The boy’s hair is a tangled mess and his body is covered with bleeding welts.  “Stop please,” the boy cries, “Let me go.  I didn’t know okay.  I didn’t know it was real.  Please you have to give me another chance.”  The man ignores him and drags him toward the pit.

          A twig snaps behind her.  She spins around, afraid it is another grimy giant, come to drag her off to that foul pit of terror.  Instead, she sees a man she recognizes and she understands in an instant that he is the man from her other dreams.  This is a dream too.  Relief washes over her at the sight of his kind dark eyes.  “It’s you,” she says.

          “Yes Grace.”

          “What is this place,” she indicates the clearing behind her.

          “This place is not for you.”

          “I know, I was trying to find my way through that wall back there, but I heard these people and found this awful place.”

          “I am the way that you seek Grace.”