Internet down for a few days, so I’m late again. (I should have a Tag for that!)

Wandering Through

By Jeff Baker

I must have been about three years old that Fall when we went into the woods. I’d asked my Dad where Mother was and he said something about her “coming along later.” Then he started pointing out the leaves and places he said a deer might have been through.

The light was slanting through the trees turning the foliage purple and orange. I kept turning around as we walked. It was a wonderland.

“There,” my Dad said. He pointed at a tree a few yards ahead of us. Two trees, one at an angle making a big doorway, the trees darkness contrasting with the triangle of light between them.

I stared. Even at that young age I could tell that the light and the scene beyond the triangle was different than the light where we were; it looked like it was daylight, not the near dusk of the forest.

My dad grabbed me by the arm and shouldered the duffle bag he had hastily packed. I saw him take a deep breath. We stepped through the triangle of light. It was daylight on the outside and the forest was gone. Just a green hill with blue sky and a city with tall, cylindrical buildings in the distance.

I looked up; my dad was grinning. “This is it. We’re safe.”

I wondered what he meant. I glanced back and saw the opening we’d come through. The light was different; it wasn’t showing the forest anymore. We walked down the hill, towards a new lie, something my three-year-old mind didn’t understand then.

As I write this, I am seventeen years old. That’s the Age of Ascension here. We’ve had a good life in this world, but I want to find out what happened to our old one. My Dad told me that the portal shifts between various worlds and only opens every few years. He didn’t want me to try the portal again, but he’s been gone about a year. I have his old duffel bag; all packed. The portal is lit, most of the time it’s just dark. Most people here don’t give it a second glance. They’re satisfied to be here. Not me. I can see the forest through the portal. It’s beckoning.

Here I go.

–end—