As during your previous ascent, you soon start losing your sense of time. Several other doors seem to go by behind you as you climb. However, scaling the ladder is effortless, as though you are buoyed by a radiant power from the liquid you consumed, and the gray shadows around you gradually recede.
Finally you reach the end of the tunnel, and emerge, warily, onto a carpet of clouds. Here the air is still, and the lantern of the night hangs low overhead, even now mingling its silver with gold—but the stars appear even brighter in the naked firmament.
Bewildered and dizzy you steady yourself and look around. What you are actually standing on is the deck of a small wooden lookout—a crow’s nest enclosed by low railing—encircled by cotton lying at your feet as far as the eye can see: violet clouds to one side, golden to the other. If your sense of direction here on top of the world isn’t failing you, you surmise that just now the sun must be peeking over the hills by the sea, painting these clouds with pale amber from below.
No part of the oak can be seen from here save the very top of its trunk, now barely more than a ribbon around the shaft whence you came. You can only guess that this crow’s nest is somehow supported by branches from below. You spy three narrow hanging bridges starting from your perch. One leads in the direction of the other oak, into the amethyst twilight. The other two lead in directions opposite to each other, whither you could not previously look due to the windowless walls. The bridges are just wide enough for your feet, and they have ropes on the sides for holding. But the far ends are lost in the distant shroud of the clouds, and the binoculars are lying on the writing desk far below.
A thought forms that you will return to that observatory, and its desk, book and map, in due time. Now you look up at the stars for a moment, then choose a bridge and step onto it.
THE END