Modern fantasy might be the official designation for this story, but it's more of a fairy tale. This is the first chapter of four that I have finished, and they're constantly being revised. Enjoy.
(NOTE: I'll be posting these in installments so you won't have to read too much at a shot. Besides, it builds suspense. ^_^)
The Land of Things That Are as They Seem
Chapter One
Simon was eight when he walked all the way to the bottom of the dead end. He had never been that way before and he was a little worried, but more interested than scared. He was a quiet boy with large glasses which he was continually pushing up his nose. He never disobeyed and always did his chores when he was supposed to. In fact, he was so normal, and so quiet, that grownups almost always forgot he was around, and ignored him completely. He didn’t mind this at all, because it meant he was never asked to do any other work beyond his normal chores, and was generally left to entertain himself. Which he did, easily.
He decided to walk to the bottom of the dead end after one of his toy soldiers broke, the one named the General. He always spoke about him as just “the General” around grownups, because they became uninterested watching him play and quickly left. To himself the General became General Todd Green: the most intelligent, light-footed soldier to ever fight a battle, who went rogue after the battle of Redstone Hill and became a pirate. He had been left on the porch overnight and had been stepped on by Simon’s father. Simon gave him an ornate burial with full honors and soldiers in attendance.
Then things got boring after that and Simon felt a little depressed about the General. For once, he was a little bit tired of being left alone, but his father had gone to work and his mother was on the phone. He kicked a stone around the yard, staring moodily at the grave, and finally went inside. He thought about playing on the game system in his room, but didn’t feel like it: the adventures on the screen paled beside the rough, piratical, swashbuckling life of Todd Green. And General Green was gone for good. He went back outside and stood on the steps looking towards the dead end.
No one that he had talked to had ever been to the bottom. There weren’t any stories about it like there would have been about an empty house: no ghost stories, murders or dark secrets. It was just a dirt lane that used to have concrete on it, and no one (especially parents) paid any attention to it. Simon had meant to take a walk down it to see what was at the bottom all summer, but the time just seemed to be so full of things to do- swimming, soldiers, games and visits from relatives. Almost as if every minute of summer had to be packed to make the most fun before school.
As always seemed to be happening at the end of summer now, things got really slow. It was hot, and lazy, and everything seemed extra slow. Even the flies buzzed slower. Simon began walking slowly towards the dead end, kicking a rock and following it to kick it again. He was a little nervous- his mother had warned him about wandering off, but everything was moving much too slowly for anything dangerous.
He stopped at the top of the dead end and looked down into the gloom. There were sharp beams of light cutting through the shadow and leaving green dapples on the ground. Moss covered rocks leaned over on their sides and cracked, grass grown concrete covered bits and pieces of the road. All in all it looked pleasantly shady, quiet, cool, and better than the muggy, lazy day outside. He kicked his stone off into the grass and began to walk down the sloped old road thinking about General Green. He kept half an eye out for another place to build a battle ground or a port, and silently decided that the General’s second-in-command would step up to the position.
The new general would be hard put to fill the rather large shoes of the infamous General Green, but he might be able to do the job. The ground took a slow turn to the left, and Simon followed it, contemplating the demise of the late, great, Gentleman Pirate. He kicked at the grass and looked at the trees and barely noticed the rock in the middle of the road until he was right on top of it.
The rock was firmly planted in the road, straight into one of the last large pieces of concrete. There were scattered chunks of concrete around it as if it had fallen and smashed into the road, rather than having been dug up or arriving by more mundane means. Moss grew all over it, except for a large patch right on the front. Simon stopped and carefully read the words that were carved into the empty place on the rock. They read:
Beyond This Stone Lies
The Land of Things That Are as They Seem
Returning to the front is not leaving.
Simon read this twice through, slowly. He thought it was funny, funny-weird and funny-ha ha at the same time, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you pondered over at great length. It was just a rock in the middle of the road with something strange written on it, and it was just there. He walked around it slowly and looked at the back. On the back was another cleared patch of moss with three small wavy lines, and below that it said:
Find the road to leave.
Simon looked at it for a minute, kicking idly at a tuft of grass. It didn’t seem to make any sense for anyone to put such a big rock in the middle of the road. And then go and write crazy stuff on it. He pushed his glasses up his nose and his eyebrows pulled together. It didn’t make any sense at all.
Then he looked up at the road and it wasn’t there. He froze, looking carefully where he had just come from, and saw nothing but bushes and tumbled rocks. The light shone the same way, but he was almost certain that it had shone a different way just a second before: slanting from the left to the right instead of the other way around. He didn’t know what to think- he wasn’t afraid, but he didn’t feel the slow, calm muzzy feeling he had felt a moment before.
He scanned the road that wasn’t there anymore, and turned to look behind him. The road was stretched ahead of him as if it had never changed. Now Simon wasn’t very different from any other boy or girl his age, or even very much more intelligent. But he was sure. And right then he was sure, absolutely, positively sure, that the road had been on the other side of the rock. He hadn’t been turned around and he hadn’t imagined anything. A grownup might have begun to doubt his sense of direction, but Simon knew where he was, and he knew where the road wasn’t, and it wasn’t going that way.
The sun shone down on the road almost in the exact same way. The leaves on the trees blew almost in exactly the same way, and the road wound up the hill almost the exact same way. But it was just almost the exact same way. The same way the reflection of trees in a lake is almost exactly the same- except that the shadows are darker, and the sun looks brighter, and behind it all, there are fish instead people. He looked at the stone again to see if it still had the words on it, but the stone wasn’t there; instead of a stone there was a gully where the road had washed out. He nodded in a kind of nervous satisfaction and pushed his glasses up sharply. It was all a fake, and the rock proved it.
Simon began to walk up the new road, looking around at the woods. He didn’t know how it had been done, or if anyone had actually, intentionally caused it, but he knew for sure that this wasn’t the road he had come down. In fact, it looked almost like the road he had been on if it had continued on- if it had been made to look like a mirror image of the first part.
When he got to the top where the first road would have trailed off onto the main road past his house, this road just turned to the right and continued on. It looked like it was following the path of the main road, except that there was no main road.
He stood where his house should have been, looking around at the glade. The little clearing was shaped almost exactly like his house, but there wasn’t a house. There wasn’t anything except grass and trees, and so far, it looked like there wasn’t anything else. He sighed and sat down on a stump right where his bedroom would have been, and looked out over his backyard. There was a tree growing where he had buried the General, and it was carrying little green apples. He sat and thought.
Maybe if he went back down the dead end he could find the rock again and walk around it. Again. Then he would get back. But the rock might not even be back, and he would have to walk back up the hill. Just as he was thinking about doing it anyway, and looking at the toes of his sneakers, a funny voice spoke out from right behind him.
It was funny-weird and funny-ha ha at the same time, like the rock, but he got the funny (funny-weird) feeling that this voice wouldn’t be going anywhere unless it had a long and rather involved say in the matter. It said: “You’re only the second, you know.” It said this in a tone that was drawling and clipped at the same time, so that “you know” came out more like “ya-now” and ended with an audible period. Simon lifted off the stump almost before his feet touched the ground and found himself half-way across the glade in a split-second.
He spun in midair for a minute and then fell to the ground. Luckily, the grass was soft and he didn’t take any bruises, but he got a grass stain down the side of his shirt. He was too busy staring at the creature leaning against the recently vacated stump to notice.
The man was no more than three feet tall, and looked young, but in an older way. When he turned his head to follow Simon with a barely suppressed grin, he could only have been about a year older than Simon himself. As soon as he stopped moving though, his age seemed to catch up; and though he didn’t move a muscle and still had that perpetually young grin, he suddenly looked as old as the moon. Simon stood up and brushed himself off, keeping a wary eye on the… well, the creature.
The creature in question continued to grin at him as he brushed himself off, and seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. After he dusted himself off, Simon began to walk slowly back towards the stump. In a vague sort of way he was amazed at how much ground he had covered in such a short amount of time, but most of his attention was on the boy-man person. The person leaning against the stump was as strange as anyone Simon had ever seen.
His eyes were the first thing you would notice if you met him, because at first you would think they were a really strange color. After you looked at them for a minute, you would realize why- they were like mirrors; around the pupil where normal people have an iris of a color with maybe streaks of darker colors, this person had perfect little round mirrors. They reflected whatever he looked at, which meant that they were reflecting green with a little blue at the top right now. Way down inside they had two little Simons.
His skin was perfectly white and almost clear, but he didn’t have veins like a human person would. Simon knew almost immediately that this creature wasn’t human, and it didn’t bother him much. It didn’t seem out of place at all, sitting in the middle of the woods; in fact, he felt as if he was the one out of place, and this thing was the one who fit in. Its hair was as white as its skin and came down to its shoulders.
Simon stood carefully in front of the stump, looking straight into the face of the creature. Only when he was right in front of it did he realize that it was wearing mechanics overalls. They had a little patch on the right shoulder that said “Eli’s Repair Shop.”
After a minute of watching the person lean against the stump (with that unfading grin) he realized that he would have to talk first. He cleared his throat. Still the little man said nothing, his grin just beaming out with no sign of wavering. Finally Simon pushed his glasses up and spoke first.
“What…I mean, what did you say?” His voice trailed off. The creature didn’t say anything, his nose still wrinkled up above his grin.
It was quiet for a couple of seconds.
“I said, ‘you’re only the second’, that’s what I say, because that’s what’s true.” His voice sounded even stranger the second time around. It was drawling and slurred, and the words were snapped off, but now that he could pay attention, Simon realized that the ends of the words sort of turned up, as if he were used to speaking a different language.. In fact, he sounded like every person Simon had ever heard rolled up into one person.
“The second?” Simon asked, still watching the little mechanic carefully. He didn’t look dangerous, but the road hadn’t either, had it?
“The second to walk around the rock and see the other side, of course.”
“Who was the other?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it.” If possible, the mechanic’s grin widened, but it had begun to look strained. Simon thought for a minute, and finally asked the most important question.
“How did he get home?”
“He didn’t.” The grin was gone in an instant, and the mechanic was old again, and tired looking. His hair looked less like an interesting feature of an interesting person, and more like an old man’s grey hair: as if each white strand were earned in some particularly tiring and brutal labor. He sighed and sat on the stump.
“He wasn’t able to find himself again. And so he never went home.”
The little mechanic looked so tired and worn that Simon sat down next to him. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing seemed right, and after a minute the little man raised one hand.
“My name’s Eli.” They shook hands slowly.
“My name is Simon”
Eli stood up carefully as if he were cradling old bones inside.
“Well Simon, I had better get you into town. You’ll want to find a place to sleep, and whatever you do, you’re not going to be getting home tonight.”
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