Fantastical Ramblings (21 page)

“Midnight is also a transition. I can’t take a chance on
being interrupted by your over-eager students at sunset and sunrise.” I faced
him, hands on my hips, feet spread, ready to dart around him, though I’d rather
enter the maze peacefully, with a calm mind and cautious steps that stayed
inside the lines.

“This entire gorge is a transition,” I continued. Between
east and west, sunrise and sunset, wet and dry, high and low. The symbolism is
huge.”

“Before I take a chance on you disappearing forever, give me
a hint on why here. Why this design in this place?”

“Energy. It all comes down to spiritual energy. You’re an
atheist. You’ll never understand the pure magic that spins up and down this
gorge, spills out of the waterfalls, and pulls you deeper and deeper into each
ravine in search of the next treasured view.”

“You almost make a believer of me. How old do you think this
maze is?”

“Maybe twelve thousand years.”

He gasped. “The end of the last ice age.”

“When all the world was flooding. When all the water locked
into giant ice flows melted. When the ice dam that formed Lake Missoula broke
up for the last time and sent a wall of water hundreds of feet high and
hundreds of miles long surging along the river bed, changing the course of the
Columbia River, carving out this gorge. What better time to seek escape to a
different realm?”

“It’s all mythology, Monica.”

“The floods aren’t mythology. They roared through here at
least forty-three times.”

He nodded mutely.

“How many times have we followed the myth and found
archaeological proof?”

He shook his head. “Proof of places, proof of greater age to
civilization. Not proof of magic and other dimensions. Leave that to physicists
and string theory.”

“We have to look at the whole. Not one science at a time. The
entire picture, all the sciences linked together.” That was near blasphemy
twenty years ago. More acceptable now. “Just like we have to look at the entire
maze design, not each individual section.”

“And the mythological pattern here is wrong.” Wendall
pretended he hadn’t heard me. “Spirals I’d accept. The epitome of a Celtic
Knot? No.”

“You’re acting mighty squirrelly for a man who doesn’t
believe in this.”

He looked chagrined, but still frightened. “Okay. So I’ve
seen enough weird things to be leery of possibilities. Most of those weird
things have happened when you were around.”

“Like the ghosts in the Dublin pub.”

“Like the pixie who stole my watch in Bavaria. Watched the
bugger come out of the closet and rip me off. Had to bribe him with sparkling
costume jewelry to get it back.”

“Or like the time in Brittany when you almost put your hand
through a standing stone,” I reminded him.

“Like the time at Stonehenge you disappeared for an hour and
a half and came back through a standing stone, not between two, with no memory
of where or when you’d been.”

Red and black biting me in a hundred places at once, gouging
at my eyes and my sanity.

He glared at me long and hard. Eventually he looked away. “Okay,
at least tell me what you expect to find.”

“Nothing I’d be willing to put in my dissertation.” I avoided
looking at him by bending over and unlacing my work boots. Maybe I’d find the
piece of myself I left behind at Stonehenge. The lost hunk of my soul that is
always calling to me. The part that saw patterns in nothing and nothing in
patterns. The part of me that knew how to love life and enjoy each moment for
what it was.

“This could make your career. Definitive proof...”

“Of Faery Land? I’d be laughed out of my career. The
establishment of archaeologists would destroy this maze rather than take a
chance it might change their minds.”

We both chuckled grimly.

I kept my gaze averted as I sat and yanked off my boots. When
I stood, Wendell stepped aside, leaving the opening clear for me.

“Don’t stay away too long. I’ll wait three hours. Then I
call in reinforcements.”

“Look under psychics in the phone book. Or better yet, find
a pagan shaman.”

I took the first step across the dividing line between
normal ground and the maze. Nothing happened. Disappointment, and relief,
weighed heavily on my mind.

Another step. Still nothing. I decided to give it one more
step before calling it quits. Then another step and yet another.

My curiosity wasn’t dead after all. I needed to know what
happened when I traced my way around all the loops and whorls of the path. A
tingle of intense interest flared like a match struck against sand paper. I
realized that a bubble of excitement had been building all day, since before I’d
cleared the first bit down to weathered granite. Answers. I’d find answers
here.

Right, left, left, left, right again. Around and around.

Faster and faster I danced. A little jig bounced around my
memory setting my feet to capering. Step together, step, hop. I spun in place,
filled with wonder.

Something clicked. I looked about. A cone of shimmering
energy encircled the maze. I saw the path blazing white, more real and vivid
than the murky shadow of Wendell Follmoth pacing back and forth across the
entrance. The glaring work lights dimmed, as if shrouded in fog.

Another slow spin. I’d reached the center.

“Now what?”

“You need only ask,” a tiny voice whispered across my mind. The
same voice that had greeted me earlier. Light and lovely, enticing.

“May I come in?” This place seemed to follow the folkloric
rules of Faery. I hadn’t had to ask at Stonehenge. I just got sucked in.

A shift in the shimmer of light before me. An almost
physical tug at my heart told me to step forward. I followed the last half of
the maze to the end.

Impossibly green grass caressed my feet. Silence near
deafened me.

No insect buzz. No bird song. No wind sighing in the tall
oaks and elms. Even the creek off to my left flowed around tumbled rocks
without sound.

Silence is okay
, I
thought.
The music in my memory is enough
.

The water seemed to be some kind of boundary. I directed my
feet toward it, yet found myself veering in the other direction, toward a log
cabin sitting in the shade of one of the patriarchal oaks. Four rooms around a
central chimney, I thought. Or maybe two long rooms, one front, one back.

A bit of movement on the cabin porch drew my gaze. The first
movement I’d seen. An old woman sat knitting in a rocking chair. She moved
forward and back, forward and back in time to the thrumming beat of my heart.

She seemed a long way off at first. The distance proved
deceptive. Each step brought me much closer than my usual stride could account
for.

“About time you showed up,” she said when I paused at the
foot of the three stairs that led up to the porch. She’d drawn her grey hair up
into a tidy knot atop her head. A bit of darker grey filigree encircled it, the
same grey as the sock she knitted.

Without peering closer I knew the pattern in the filigree
echoed the lines of the maze I’d just walked.

“I’ve been looking for a way through for a long time,” I
explained.

“You took a wrong step at Stonehenge. That delayed you more
than a bit.”

“How did you...” I gulped. “How did you know?”

“This is Faery. I know everything about you.”

“But how?” I dared move onto the first step.

“It’s in the knitting.” She lifted the yarn tube, a lot of
stitches evenly spaced on four needles. No matter how many movements she made
with those needles, in and out, wrap the yarn, over and over, the number of
stitches on each needle remained the same. The sock never grew.

“What do you see in the knitting?” I ventured another step
up.

“Come closer and watch,” she said. Her voice held bright
invitation.

I approached eagerly and bent over her shoulder, peering at
the fine stitches in grey wool.

The tube of knitting held a glass, neatly framed by the four
needles. Truly a looking glass. Inside it I watched Wendell walk the perimeter
of the maze with dragging steps. One by one he turned off the glaring work
lights. His head hung down, shoulders drooping in defeat.

“I’ve only been gone ten minutes, not the three hours he
promised to keep vigil,” I protested. I tapped the glass with a fingernail,
trying to gain his attention.

“Time runs differently in Faery,” the old woman said. Her
voice washed over me like a refreshing waterfall. “Everyone knows that.”

Up close, something about the curve of her mouth, the slant
of her eye, the way her grey hair framed her face reminded me of someone.

“Do I know you?”

She laughed, the same chiming chuckles I’d heard earlier. “Of
course you do. Or you did.” She smiled and returned to her fruitless knitting. I
couldn’t see why her stitches accomplished nothing.

“Remind me,” I pleaded.

“It will come to you. Just be patient.”

“What’s beyond the creek?” I asked. I needed to hear her
speak. Something in her accent tickled my memory.

“The Gorge lies just beyond the horizon.”

“The Columbia River Gorge?” I asked, surprised.

“It was the Columbia River Gorge in your day.”

“My day?”

“Time, my dear. Time runs differently here.”

“I half expected standing stones.” I stepped off the porch
and ambled a few steps toward the water. Something held me back—a desire to
look in the glass again, a need to keep the woman close—I wasn’t sure what.

“Don’t need stones erected by humans. Beacon Rock is the
second largest monolith in your world. The only bigger free standing hunk of
rock is Gibraltar. And then there’s Rooster Rock. If that isn’t a phallic
standing stone I don’t know what is.” Again she chuckled. “People still come to
worship at those places, though they don’t recognize it as such. But they stand
and stare in awe. They walk maze patterns as they hike the trails. And they
return again and again—in their memory if not in actuality.”

I tried to gauge direction by the shadows. There weren’t
any. No shade. Just an overall brightness as if lit by the finest master in
Hollywood.

My euphoria slid away from me in a gradual fade. Awareness
replaced it. Overly bright and uniformly colored green grass that felt as soft
as carpet beneath my bare feet. No prickles. No imperfections. Level—as if
constructed with carpenter’s tools. Every log on the cabin appeared the same
size, straight and even, they barely needed any chinking to fill the gaps
between them. The air caressed my skin at a comfortable temperature and humidity.
Perfect proportions and symmetry everywhere I looked.

Unnatural!
my mind
screamed.

If the place was a construct, so too might be the old woman
who looked achingly familiar.

Damn
. I knew there
were traps in Faery. And yet I’d stepped smack dab in the middle of one in my
quest to find a missing piece of myself. Faery wouldn’t be satisfied until it
had all of me.

“Who are you?” I stood firm in the center of the grass,
close to where I’d entered this world. If an opportunity arose to leave, I
wanted to grab it. Fast.

“Haven’t figured it out yet?” She cocked both eyebrows
upward. From the way she scrunched her face I guessed that she wanted to raise
only one. Very few people of my acquaintance had mobile enough facial muscles
to do that. “I’d been led to believe you were brighter than that. Ph.D.
candidate and all.”

How much did she know about me?

She peered closely into her knitting. A frown grew deep
along the creases on either side of her mouth.

“Anything new happening in my world?”

“Come see.”

Damn it, I had to go look. I had to know. My feet wouldn’t
stay put no matter how hard I willed them to.

Once more I leaned over her shoulder and scanned the tiny
images in her glass. Long shadows from the rising sun stretched westward from
every imperfection in the land and from every piece of equipment or person in
view. Wendell guided his crew to clear more turf away from the maze with
dangerous haste. He grabbed a towel and began hacking away at the edges on his
own. The camera girl fairly jumped from place to place, snapping dozens of
pictures. Most of them would be useless, showing nothing new.

“If you go back now, you will make all the same mistakes
I...” the old woman clamped her mouth shut as if she’d said too much. From the
cold calculation in her eyes, I knew she’d planned to say just that.

“What mistakes did you make?” My gaze strayed back to the
too green grass of the clearing. For half a heartbeat I thought I saw the maze
shining through from beneath.

Then it was gone.

“Do you really want to know? You can stay here, safe from...”

“From what?”

“It’s too soon.”

“It’s never too soon to find answers to questions.”

I moved in front of her and speared her with my gaze.

Eventually she looked up under the force of my will.

“Very well.” She bit her lip. “Follow me.” Slowly, almost
painfully, she rose from her rocker and set the knitting aside on a low twig
table I hadn’t noticed before.

I dogged her heels into the cabin, knowing I should be more
cautious. But I had to know. Had to make sure I avoided whatever future she
dreaded.

The inside of the cabin proved as symmetrical as the
outside. Two long rooms, front and back. A large stone chimney in the center
served both. Doors on either side of the hearth kept the symmetry. A table set
for two with plates, cutlery, serviettes, and coffee mugs, with two straight
chairs to one side. A rustic vase made from an old canning jar held six perfect
daisies. Two comfortable stuffed chairs near a shuttered picture window on the
other end. I presumed the back room held two beds and two washstands.