Jack
crossed the grounds and easily leapt and caught the top branches of the
protective hedge, and within seconds he had scampered and wriggled up and over
the top, then maneuvered a few feet down through the thick branches to drop
down the few remaining feet to the other side. He knew he was not supposed to
cross the hedge, and he knew that he was not supposed to go out seeking
adventure on his own. Yes, yes, Six had explained everything, more than once.
Jack got it, he wasn’t stupid—okay, he wasn’t that stupid. If Jack wanted to go anywhere, two of the groundsmen
would go with him, dudes employed to be...dudes.
But that was not exactly Jack’s idea of an adventure, and today what he really
wanted to do was get out of the house, get away from literally everyone, and
think, and write, and think some more. And maybe write more, just jotting down
his thoughts. And okay, yeah, maybe have a little bit of an adventure. He was
not intentionally seeking disaster, or mayhem, but sometimes a guy had to get
out, just to free up the thinking. Get some fresh air. And heck, this was High
Vale.
He
had his backpack on his back, packed with a few goodies liberated from the
kitchen, his journals, his pens, and he didn’t really need anything else, did
he—okay, except for his bow, his quiver full of arrows, and his assorted daggers.
And his leather canteen, his bota.
It
was early morning, the sun not yet up, and only a few birds were awake and
singing their little hearts out. The whole world seemed hushed, the shadows
very deep. It was chilly here, prior to the rising of the sun, and Jack was
glad that he had borrowed one of the hunting cloaks, choosing one of the
lighter items—it did not seem to be made of leather, as almost everything here seemed
to be. No, it was dyed canvas, kind of a natural camo, dark and lighter browns,
and dark and lighter greens, and heavily oiled, a little stinky, but he liked
it because it had a big hood, and with it he would blend in the woods. And it
sure was warmer than going it in just his breeches, shirt and vest, and boots.
He
hurried through the cultivated grounds outside the hedge, which were only a bit
wilder than the cultivated grounds inside the hedge. He ran in a slight crouch,
rushing across the open spaces until he made it to the first of the great trees
that surrounded the manor grounds. He did not want to trip any alarms or
startle any watchmen. The plan was to do this whole thing quietly, slip in, and
slip out, and nobody gets hurt. Except he was slipping out, and later back in,
whatever, he just did not wish to do it as a tourist, but more like a ninja. He
pulled his hood low over his Robin Hood hat and face, and chuckled a bit,
imagining himself a ninja. Sure, on the adventurer scale, he was closer to
hobbit than ninja.
Inside
the forest, he loped into a swift, loose jog, reminding himself to be quiet,
and vigilant. He did not wish to go it in his usual runner’s zone, because he
would tune everything out, slide into a state of athletic meditation, and he
could bumble straight into just about anything out here. No, he needed to stay
out of the zone—move fast, gobble some distance, yes—but stay alert.
Of
course, staying alert was different than reminding yourself to stay alert,
because when you reminded yourself to stay alert you tended to think of the
word alert—what a weird word it was—alert—be
alert, because the country needs more lerts.
And pretty soon you’d jogged a mile, laughing at your own stupid joke, and you
had noticed nothing, because words could do that, especially words like alert.
And Jack paused, leaning against a tree, probably a mile into his little jog, and
he only now suddenly realized had been fully inside his own head, thinking his
thoughts, playing with words, noticing nothing. He could barely remember
anything he had passed. Trees, lots of trees, and some wicked looking bushes
that he instinctively went far around. Some vigilance. Vigil, lance, it was
like naming your lance Vigil. Knave, prepare for my lance, his name is Vigil.
Or Virgil would be better, Virgilance—nah,
people would think it was a typo. Probably better would be Vigil and Ants,
which set you up for the standard Vigil Uncle, but Jack realized absolutely
nobody would find that kind of thing amusing, except for him, and maybe Stacey.
Warm
golden light filtered through the upper foliage of the trees, so the sun was
up, but Jack doubted anyone in the manor would yet be up and at ’em. Or at him.
He
was moving through a tight valley, that was closing down around him the farther
he traveled, the land rising drastically and already the trees about him were
not the giants that spread out in the valley below.
Up
above him was a tall ridge, he’d actually have to do some climbing to reach it,
and he noticed the lone tree jutting up out of this ridge. It was like the last
of the big trees from below, only not quite so tall. It looked to be about a
hundred feet tall, and fat all the way up, like an inverted Christmas tree, or
the tallest bush in the world. The trunk, at its base, jutted up between three
or four massive boulders, and the tree was truly massive in girth. From a mile
away and below it, Jack judged the tree trunk the size of a house, probably
seventy-five feet around, and twenty feet up before any branches began. The
separate boulders, stacked and tumbled, were bigger than dump trucks, the
really big wide-load kind.
He
set off, climbing and crouched over, requiring handholds on slabs of rock and
monstrous boulders. The forest continued around this rocky formation, so the
normal-guy choice would have been to stick with the forest, it would be much
easier going, but Jack liked the look of that tree emerging from the boulders.
It was not the kind of thing he had ever seen before. Okay, it was a tourist
attraction, and here he was, the Ugly American, struggling up with a sweaty red
face, only lacking the gaudy Hawaiian shirt and Panama shorts, and maybe
sandals, with tire treads for soles, yes here he was, coming up in the world to
take selfies of himself with the Sentinel Tree. Jack the Tourist.
Jack
paused near the top of the rocky ledge, and looked down to the forest from
where he had emerged ten minutes ago. For a second he thought he saw movement,
back in the shadows of the forest. What had made him pause was the sudden
sensation that someone was watching him. Someone, or something. Wow, what a
ninja he had proved himself. Probably someone had seen him climbing the hedge
and was even now monitoring his progress, to ensure a giant spider didn’t wrap
him up in webby lingerie. He returned his attention to the climb and scrabbled
up the last ten feet, to sprawl on the ledge, full out on his back. He lay
there several minutes, just soaking in the full sunshine. From below this climb
did not appear that it would prove so strenuous, but he was covered in sweat
and out of breath.
He
sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the rock. He pushed his Robin Hood
hat back on his head (he hated to admit it, but he had come to love the stupid
hat, it fit him perfectly, and kept the sun out of his eyes when he required it
to do so). He dug in his backpack and produced his leather bota bag, or
canteen, whatever they called these toughened leather bags here. He popped the
top and shot a stream of still cool water into his mouth. He had filled the bag
from the icy water tap in the kitchen. Next he produced one of the hard
sourdough baguettes and ripped into it with his teeth. The bread was tough, and
good, its crust thick, but the dough inside soft and somewhat sweet. He
alternated between nips of bread and water, looking out over the lower valley.
He produced his magical wine bottle and was not surprised to see that it was
full—he had not sampled its contents since his first day here in High Vale, or
was it his second day? He extracted the cork and tasted the wine. Just a taste.
He did not wish to end up crying his eyes out up here on the ledge. He recorked
the bottle and replaced it in his backpack.
This
vantage point was up on a high hub amidst three small valleys, the larger
valley opening below where the Great House was situated a couple of miles away,
a medium-sized valley that ended in a massively deep bowl of green and rock
(another great tourist attraction, perhaps for an adventure next week), and
then this smallest valley with the sentinel tree just a few minutes away if he
jogged. The view was vast, and complicated, and breathtaking, and Jack sat
enjoying it all, finishing his small baguette. His eyes flicked often to that
place in the forest where he might have glimpsed movement. But he never saw
anything, or anyone.
He
packed up, rolling his borrowed cloak into a small bundle, which he tied onto
his handy dandy backpack, and then he was off, now loping into a nice run, the
rocky ledge now almost flattening out into a pleasant slope. The rock to his
right went up into a bizarre formation, towering, and would be a challenge for
even the best rock climbers, requiring all their gear, and a hundred feet to
his left there was now a nice cliff, falling away hundreds of feet to the
forested valley on that side. His pace was hampered somewhat by steep rises in
the rock, but these usually paid off in nice sloping runs on the other side, so
he struggled up one side, and then dashed down the next, finding the whole run exhilarating
and liberating. He loved to run, and now did so, going flat out. For some time
he glanced up at the sentinel tree and it did not seem to be drawing any
closer, though it did seem to be growing in size, and now he estimated it to be
as tall as some of the great trees in the Great House valley below.
Jack
approached a jutting bend in the rocky slope, and on a whim he leapt to the
side, placing himself behind the twenty-foot high escarpment, and after a
moment, slowing his breathing and settling his heartbeat, he glanced around the
rocky barrier. He could see two hundred yards down the rocky slope, and
watching, he ensured that nothing was following him. He waited at least two
minutes, peeking about the rock every few seconds, keeping his movements all slow,
contained, thinking, ninja, yeah Jack,
ninja!
Far
below, something flashed onto the path. Jack inhaled, barely peeking with one
eye. It was large, the shape, and alive, and after a few moments Jack exhaled.
It was a big goat, or mountain sheep, probably a ram. After a few moments, the
animal impossibly mounted the bizarre rock formation, pelting up with what
seemed supernatural grace.
Jack
continued his easy lope toward the sentinel tree, concentrating on his feet,
and running, and after a few moments he was jolted out of his zone as a rock
the size of his head crashed on the ground, just a few feet in front of him. He
cried out and leapt to the side, looking up. He didn’t see anyone above him.
For a second he feared to see some kind of rock giant up there, up in the
twisted rock formations, hurling down deadly rocks and boulders. But apparently
it was just a rock that must have chosen that moment to come tumbling down. If
Jack had been running just a tad faster, smacko!
He would have been dead.
But
that was life, wasn’t it? You couldn’t plan for these little dangers, nor
prepare for them. It didn’t matter the world, sometimes life just upped and
smacked you a good one, or came close to doing so, as in this case. It wouldn’t
have helped, if he had two other paid goons with him, it would just have
increased the likelihood that one of them would have received a braining. If
there were a reason for such things, it must be to force you to stop, pause,
and make you reflect. Jack stopped, for a few heart-pounding moments, and reflected,
and thought. Chaos lashed out, but chaos missed. Then, shaking his head,
grinning, he started his jog again with the tall tree centered as his target.
When
he woke this morning, very early in the morning, Joshua’s big lumpy head had
been there beside him on the bed, the wet nose up against the back of Jack’s
head. That was tough, sneaking Joshua inside every night, because the big guy
was just too big for any bedroom. Jack tried to keep Joshua’s head on the other
bed, but in his sleep the dog-ram kept moving his big head over, to snuggle his
wet nose against Jack’s back. Michael slept peacefully and cozily out of the
way, coiled up upon himself on one pillow, and hardly stirred during the entire
night, sleeping deeply. Michael was great, it was like having your own warm,
living teddy bear, yes, it was really comforting to have Michael sleeping near.
Of course, Joshua snored, and it sounded like a dragon suffering an asthma
attack.
They’d
had these sleeping arrangements for the past week, and Jack was not sleeping
well, not well at all. It had been Jack’s idea to sneak Joshua in each night,
because he knew that Joshua was extremely social, and didn’t like being alone,
and Jack didn’t like the idea of Joshua sleeping outside, with all the things
he knew lurked out there in the dark. He knew it would hurt Joshua’s feelings
for him to come up with some other plans—perhaps get him into his own room—Joshua
definitely had feelings, but come on, it wouldn’t be any more difficult sharing
a bedchamber with a wild and angry bull, and Joshua was much larger than any
bull. He probably wasn’t as heavy as a bull, but made up for this dereliction
by being much, much louder. And so the plan was to get away today, and if
possible, along with writing and thinking, he wanted to catch a nap without a
massive nose slobbering against his back.
Finally,
Jack saw that he was closer to the sentinel tree, and could now appreciate just
how off he’d been earlier, observing the tree and its boulders from a distance.
Because the three individual boulders, squared and solitary, were the size of
castles, and the tree dwarfed these boulders. It looked as if the tree had
burst its way up through the rocky ground, and literally shoved aside the titanic
boulders as it grew. But even more, it reminded Jack of lighthouses he had
seen, where the builders had somehow moved vast slabs of stone out into the
very ocean, and then built their lighthouses upon these artificial foundations
that jutted above the sea. It looked unnatural, and dangerous, a precarious way
to roost a lighthouse to the very waves, and so too looked this set up,
although the tree and its boulders had to be natural, Jack thought, because no
force on Earth could move these castle-sized boulders. It was more appropriate
to think of the boulders as mountains comprised of solitary stones. But it was
odd that the three mountainous boulders looked identical, like bricks, as if a
long time in the past there had been a great wall here of same-sized bricks,
and this tree had forced its way up between the bricks. If there had been an orderly
wall, nothing remained of it now but these three jostled bricks.
Jack
slid the bow off his shoulder and hefted it in his left hand. He didn’t feel
pressed to nock an arrow, but the intricately carved bow felt comforting in his
hand, and it didn’t hurt to be ready, for whatever. There were banks of earth
again all about him, with small trees, and mounds of stacked stones. Jack
jogged at an easy pace, keeping his eyes in search mode, only glancing at the
ground periodically as he moved forward. Although there was more than rock,
this area seemed barren, and the mounds of piled stones looked like gravesites.
Funny,
he thought, jogging with his bow in his hand, but this seems like another
world. From below you couldn’t imagine this shelf of life spreading out
hundreds of yards in several directions. Off in the distance he saw what
appeared to be ruins, foundations, and the remains of chimneys. People lived up
here, a long, long time ago.
Ten
minutes later, sweating and out of breath, he made it to the base of the first
of the mountainous “bricks.” He was thirsty again, and to tell the truth, somewhat
hungry as well, but he wanted to find a path up to the tree before he rested
again. He followed the base of the rock face and discovered an old path, well
worn, but with gnarled vegetation pushing up through the hardened soil. From
the looks of it, no one had been here in a long while.
Up
close, his shoulder brushing the stone as he carefully placed each step,
nothing seemed artificial. It all seemed natural and ancient. He finally came
to a corner where two of the bricks touched high above him, the corners
creating a stone ceiling seventy-seven feet up, and there going up between the
bricks toward the tree (Jack couldn’t see the tree, in the shadow of the stone
bricks) was a massive stairway carved out of what appeared to be another
massive stone. The stairway was broad, probably fifty feet across, and sometime
in a far-off past, one of the tree’s roots had burst up, cracking the stairway,
so that the left half tilted off, and would be dangerous to climb, while the
right side had fallen in on itself, and appeared crumbled and more worn than
the left side, but still looked useable, if you were careful.
Jack
mounted the right side of the stairway, keeping as close to the middle as
possible, until he reached the ancient root that looped out of the stone
stairway like a sea serpent. It was like a lump of fibrous old wood that had
died a thousand years ago, and now stood humped and crumbling ten feet high.
The stone about the ancient root looked exploded, and shattered, and sunken in
all about the dead part of the tree.
Climbing
the stairway, many of the steps crumbling away beneath his boots, he found
himself disoriented, with the vast blocks above him set at drunken angles, and
the steps themselves canted and tipped, it gave him a giddy, funhouse feel.
Moments before, everything seemed natural, and now everything seemed unnatural.
Now, well within the crevasse of stone, it was dark, and his imagination
suggested looming shapes in the gloom, crazed figures rising up to peer at him.
At one point, maybe one hundred steps up (Jack wasn’t counting), the stairway
split into a wide fissure, and peering over the edge, Jack could only see what
appeared to be a bottomless pit, and his belly felt queasy. He moved back
toward the right side of the stairs, and another hundred steps up and there was
hardly a crack in the stairway, although the steps still bent and rose and fell
drunkenly. But the steps seemed less fragile here, high up above the explosion
caused by the root of the tree.
Another
hundred steps brought him to the edge of the ceiling created by the canted
stone bricks, and he finally came within view of the sentinel tree itself. He
came out of darkness into bright, warm sunlight, and the tree was there before
him in all its hoary glory, with great cracked bark skin, in patterns
thirty-two feet across, with mosaic border cracks sunk several feet in and
several feet wide. Up close, the tree looming massive above him, it looked more
like artwork than actual tree bark—he felt like a normal everyday ant
approaching a normal everyday tree, and felt awed, overwhelmed, and a little
sick, looking up at the tree rising above the blocks. Because now the blocks
seemed tiny in comparison to the tree, and if he were able to stroll about the circumference
of the tree, he would probably walk a full city block.
Just
approaching this tree was a confusing tumble of reality, the perspective constantly
shifting, the internal measurements flying off the charts, and everything you
were figuring suddenly turned inside out.
He
stood in a complicated ruin of ancient pillars, fallen, and a few partially
standing. There had been some kind of building here, long ago. It was amazing.
The whole scene reminded him of pictures of the Parthenon, only further dilapidated
(and with no trace of sea, and of course, a giant tree dwarfing everything out
in the center); hardly anything remaining to suggest what had originally stood
here, long before that root had cracked the staircase.
But
the most incredible aspect before him was that there was a massive doorway hollowed
out of the trunk of the tree. The doorway must measure thirty-two feet high by
seventy feet wide, and there had obviously been a double-door set therein, long
ago, because a massive hinge hung at the far left side, with what looked like a
tree trunk dangling from one last iron screw. The top of the hollow was
blackened by fire, going up at least thirty feet. Looking over the edge Jack
could only see tree trunk, going down, hundreds of feet, into deep darkness.
A
bridge stretched across the chasm between the stone and the tree, probably
fifty feet across the distance, and then abruptly ended in a ruin of stone and
rough-splintered woodwork. There was a gap of about ten feet or more to the remaining
portion of the bridge on the tree-side of the abyss, and there wasn’t much
bridge at all on that side.
He
walked out onto the bridge. This was no thin Indiana Jones suspension bridge,
with creaking boards tied to fraying rope by string, this was some ancient ruin
that had stood here unchanging for thousands of years. If he jumped up and
down, the bridge would hardly notice his weight. The beams set into the stone
framework were four feet wide, and probably four or more feet deep, and thirty
feet across, and the stonework was probably the same stone in which the
staircase was carved. Jack could drive a VW microbus onto this bridge and not
worry about the weight even making the bridge creak, let alone collapse.
Still,
he was a little bit terrified, strolling alone in this vast, silent stone hall,
before this massive tree that would make the biggest sequoia seem a stalk of
bamboo. He went to the very edge where the bridge had been shattered away. He
stomped his boot. It was solid, no worries there. But that gap between him and
the other side. Yeah, that was worrisome. Given a little time and effort, and
he could slide a log out over that ten-foot gap (over a bottomless pit). But he
had seen no such logs lying about as a handy solution to this predicament. This
was not a puzzle in a game.
Jack
grinned. Maybe it was, just that—a puzzle in a game. Although none of this
seemed like that, as if he were playing a quest in an adventure game.
He
stripped off his pack and swinging it underhand, he practiced a few times, and
finally released the pack and was satisfied when it easily cleared the ten-foot
gap and slid across the other side of the bridge, neatly, almost as if he were
bowling. The backpack came to rest just on the other side of that part of the
bridge—up close like this, he could determine that there was only about ten
feet of bridge on that side of the gap, with the ten feet of empty space between
it and Jack, on this side.
He
paused for a moment, considering his bow, and quiver. He didn’t like the idea
of tossing them across, but then again he was more attached to his backpack
than his weapon, but the loss of either would be a tragedy. So he practiced a
few times and then sent the bow across, to neatly slide into and stop against
his backpack. Then he repeated the trick again with his quiver, and made
another perfect toss. High dexterity guy, that’s me, Jack laughed.
Now
unencumbered, he could make the leap, easily. That was his theory, anyway. He
did things like this in the real world, all the time, including walking a
distance of thirty feet at a double-decker shopping mall, tightrope walking the
bannister with a twenty foot fall on one side (hey, George Alaska had dared him
to make the walk, and Jack did it, hardly sparing a thought). He had considered
taking up Parkour, but it had struck him as a little too hipster (was athletic
hipster even a thing?).
Jack
moved back thirty feet along the bridge, and looked at the gap. Okay, he better
practice this a little bit, and so he made a loping dash toward the fall and
drew up short, a few feet from the edge. Yes, he could certainly do this, no
problem. He trotted back thirty feet, turned, took a few calming breaths, and
then without second-guessing himself he charged at the gap, clearing his mind,
picking up enough speed so that he could not change his mind, and when he got
to the very edge he jumped, with all his might, soaring across the expanse, and
came down lightly with a foot to spare.
He
burst into laughter and then snagged his foot on his quiver and tumbled end
over end, right over his bow and backpack, and then shakily, cursing himself an
idiot, he shakily climbed to his feet and collected his things. Well, in
reconsidering, it had probably only been a nine-foot leap. He piled his stuff
well off the bridge and then strode back out onto this side of the bridge, looking
over the edge, and seeing the vast distance beneath him, he suddenly vomited, surprising
himself, and stood watching, hands on knees as his snack from earlier now
plummeted the depths into darkness below. Again, he had vomited into the face
of the abyss.
Stare
at that stuff, Abyss. He stood, wiping his mouth. Then, to reassure himself
that he was not a complete idiot, he jumped up and down several times, testing
this side of the bridge.
Solid,
as a rock. Yep, no danger here. In another thousand years a family of grizzly
bears could have a cook-out right here, on this spot. Completely solid, yes
sir! He turned his back on the Abyss.
As
he strolled to collect his belongings, he heard a crumbling sound behind him,
and whirled, his heart jolting in his breast. He watched, with wide eyes, as
this side of the bridge fell away—just vanished, like a magic trick—crumbling
almost silently into the Abyss. Jack gawked as the last bit of bridge on this
side fell away. Then he heard the smack and crash of the stone and wood
crashing together, erupting into the volume of an explosion, far away, the mass
of bridgework thundering into the immense expanse of the sentinel tree, far
below. The crashing and smashing seemed to go on and on, even as the sounds
faded further and further into nothingness.
It
sounded as if the Abyss were laughing back up at him.
Vomit on me? Little
turd! I don’t forget, not ever.
Then,
from high above, Jack heard the tinkle of laughter. He looked up, shading his
eyes. He could see many knotholes that served as windows, or portals, and from
one of these he saw locks of golden hair receding even as he glimpsed them.
There
was a little girl up there, inside the tree!
He
untied his cloak. He felt suddenly chilled. He didn’t know what was creepier,
the Abyss chuckling up at him, or the little girl above, laughing down at him.
Oh
well, soldier on, Laddie, Just soldier on.
Jack
slipped into his backpack, and armed himself, nocking an arrow, and entered the
Sentinel.
© Copyright 2016 Douglas Christian Larsen. Vestigial Surreality. All Rights Reserved by the Author, Douglas Christian Larsen. No part of this serial fiction may be reproduced (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews) or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the publisher, Wolftales UNlimited, but please feel free to share the story with anyone, only not for sale or resale. This work is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental (wink, wink).
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