Category: stories

Fascinated, you observe the ship for some time. Lost in the starry black above and below, it’s heaving closer to the shore to the left. But although the binoculars lend a fiction of closeness, the galleon is still far shore, and for now you decide to explore the other parts of this cabin.

You decide to examine the map, which covers most of the wall. It stretches almost from corner to corner, and it starts an arm’s length from the floor and reaches all the way up to the opening—where gently waving twigs bend down and stroke its edges. The map is made of some kind of parchment, undated, but old and rather faded. It depicts woods, hills, sea and mountain ranges. But you don’t recognize these lands. In the corner glints a large compass rose denoting the four cardinal directions, the sea lying to the south-west. Are you in the woods next to the sea—and if so, where? You try to work it out, but outside the windows the ink of night is drowning out too much of the faraway landscapes.

Presently you return to the writing desk. The papers you noticed earlier are mostly empty, but a few have some notes in a tiny script that you don’t understand. Along the back of the desk there are small drawers in three levels. But on the desk itself, in addition to the papers, lies a hefty leather-bound book with no writing or symbol on its cover or spine. It’s closed with a lock. Turning your attention to the drawers, you find various writing implements, papers, envelopes, sealing wax, candles, matches, etc.

Then, in one of the last drawers, you find a solitary key. Hurriedly you try opening the book’s lock. But to your disappointment the key does not fit. You find nothing else of interest in the drawers. However, under the desk and to the side, there’s a small cabinet with one door. It’s locked, but there the key fits.

Inside the cabinet, among more sundry items, a tall wooden box stands out. Lifting the lid you discover a decanter filled with a clear liquid. You take it out of the box and place on the desk, and then you realize that its contents are not clear after all, but dark, almost black—a glossy obsidian color. You remember seeing small drinking glasses in one of the drawers. You take one; it looks clean enough. You lift the stopper of the decanter and start pouring.

As you gaze at the dark, watery liquid filling the glass, it occurs to you that you could fall into it and drown deep in its core—but to your confusion, at the same time you find that you can look into and even through it. You notice glittering particles floating around in the fluid, both in the glass and in the stream from the vessel. They seem rather like small shimmering dots of light, because they appear then hide as your eyes chase them. You feel like you have begun something that you should not quit—so you raise the glass to your lips and slowly empty it.

At first you sense no flavor at all on your tongue, but a refreshing, cool feeling spreads from your mouth, down into your abdomen and slowly through your limbs—and then a subtle taste emerges that you cannot place: it reminds you of the movement of the leaves through which you climbed, the smell of the meadow far below, the sensation of rushing water between your fingers and toes from a distant memory, and the salty summer wind by a grassy seaside you can’t recall.

At that moment, a sudden change in the air shifts your attention back to the window to your right. Outside it the breeze is giving way to a gale, the branches are whipping at the walls, and clouds are swirling above and below you. Still your vision is not obscured. Verily there are now more stars out, lending clarity to everything you see. You pick up your binoculars and seek the galleon once more.

The great ship has drawn much closer, and you can descry more detail than before. The sail hung from the mainmast is revealed to you now: a black cloth emblazoned with a white star with four points. The waves are wilder, carrying the ship rapidly to a port nestled among the hills. Strangely, you see no deckhands climbing the rigging nor any lookouts. Are there any crew on deck at all? You look for the wheel, which must surely be manned. But all of a sudden, the star-shaped emblem in the center of the sable canvas comes alive in a silver blaze! You realize that it’s the light from the moon—which, as you surmise, must have hid behind clouds until its abrupt appearance above.

You rise to your feet and close the trapdoor. The house is really just a room with four walls. The wall closest to you has an unglazed window. Circling the central bole clockwise, you learn that the only other window, similar to the first, is in the opposite wall. The first wall you pass is furnished with a writing desk and a chair, while the last wall is clothed only with a large map, except that these two window-less walls are fitted with small lamps that bathe the interior in a dim light.

Having returned to the first window, you look out. Far below, you can make out the dark forest canopy undulating in the wind. The air is quieter up here: just a light and cool breeze brushes your face and rustles some papers lying on the writing desk behind you. The sound makes you turn around and go back. A small pair of binoculars rests on the stack of papers. You bring them back to the window. Looking through them you scan the landscape, from the near, where the meadow meets the forest, to the far, where the blanket of treetops melds into a barren land that grows craggier and rises to a dark mountain. You linger there. Suddenly your eyes catch a small glimmering point, right there in the ashen slate, as if the rock had been punctured with a needle to let light escape from behind it. You focus the spying glasses and sharpen your eyes. It looks like a cave, darker than the gray of the mountain, and in that cave a shivering, silvery glow, almost pulsating. Could it be a fire with people dancing around it, or maybe a lamp, even a beacon sending some obscure signal to an unknown recipient?

Realizing you can’t glean more information to solve this mystery, you move your gaze to the right, and then it lands on something closer and even stranger: another impossibly tall oak, which you deem to be very similar to the one you have climbed. Even from this distance you cannot determine its highest point as it disappears in the night sky, but judging by the frail stars visible high above, you presume that its crown dissipates up there. You lower your binoculars to inspect the tree more closely. To your surprise you spy, half-hidden among branches, a wooden hut like this one, with a window facing your way—and in it a figure, silhouetted against a faint amber light. It’s a person, apparently holding something with both hands, but then raising one as if to salute you. You return the gesture. Your mind tries to divine who this could be as you feel an urge to connect. You lower your hand and raise it again, and you get an identical response. But after a while you realize that further communication is impossible at this distance in the dim starlight, so you withdraw into your room—while you observe the other doing the same.

You then decide to cross to the opposite window, which offers an altogether different view: the forest continues until it reaches a glittering expanse below the deep sky. It’s the sea. You lift up your spying glasses and see that the forest dissolves into a hilly landscape to the left, rising steeper near the dark waters. The lenses seem to draw you even closer into the landscape until you can make out little roads and houses by the shore, and waves crashing against the cliffs nearby, and there, further out—a ship roiling towards the port. It looks like a large galleon, but its size is difficult to gauge. Curiously, its central mast towers above the other two and carries a grand and singular sail. The sail looks black or dark blue, save for a design in its center that you cannot discern. But the canvas seems to catch the shimmering of the waves—or the starshine itself.

The meadow is surrounded by trees. But in the middle there stands a lone oak, its thick trunk like a tower shooting up into the sky, and its lower boughs laden with deep-green leaves and bending softly down.

You reach up to a bough stretching out above you—and are able to lift yourself onto it. Grabbing hold of the branches sticking out, you manage to make your way along the bough until another one is within reach overhead. Feeling an urge to climb higher still, you keep grabbing the tree’s boughs in such a manner.

But suddenly you lose your grip and your balance, and fear grips you as you fall. For a moment you rush through the air—then drop onto a cluster of twigs and leaves appearing below. From there you tumble down through a series of springy branches, like ferns catching and releasing you with their fingers—and finally land among herbs and flowers. Lying on your back you look up into a clear sky with some scattered clouds. The sun is hurrying towards the west. The oak’s waving foliage is calling you from surprisingly far away. You promptly decide to try again, and head back to the bending boughs.

Soon you are climbing once more, finding your footing and learning as you go. After a while the boughs seem to be retreating, and you are forced to make your way towards the interior of the oak’s greenery. Before long its bole appears as a wall in front of you. You are surprised to find short rods sticking out and placed diagonally at even intervals around it. You chance stepping on one, then the next, and find that you can climb these steps as on a spiral staircase of great circumference—as long as you keep a steady pace to not lose your balance. For this purpose you convince yourself that if you fell, you would surely land softly as before. You walk like this for quite some time, while to your astonishment the bole never seems to diminish in girth.

The sky with its sun isn’t visible through the layered leaves. And although you’re climbing ever upward, the brightness of the day slowly gives way to enveloping shadows—each branch higher dimming the air a little more. At length, the thickness of the oak’s torso slowly decreases, while still being so great that three men could not reach around it.

Then you notice an obstacle at some distance above you, seemingly square in shape. As you reach it from below, you see that it’s a platform made of wood and pierced by the tree trunk. Strangely, the encircling rods continue upward as if the climber could mysteriously glide through. Then, upon further inspection of the platform, you notice that there is indeed a trapdoor right above and the rods would lead you through it. However, it’s difficult standing in place and looking up in this way, and you feel your balance failing. Your hand desperately reaches for something to  hold—and finds one of several metal handles mounted in the trapdoor itself. Steadying yourself, you grab hold of another handle with your other hand, and try pushing the door up. It swings open effortlessly, almost lifting you up with it, and before you know it you land on the floor of a small square house.

You’re lying on the floor looking up, and see the tree continuing upward as before. This house is built around the trunk, but you realize that it has no roof. Still you cannot see the end of the tree’s crown; it keeps rising up into the distance. But the foliage allows you to see the night sky around it—and it is indeed night now, a deep blue night with pale stars peering out one by one as you’re looking.

I.
You walk through the shadowy woods, searching.
A craggy mountain range rears up.
Your feet take you to the mouth of a dark cave.
Hesitating only slightly, you walk into the darkness.
But before long, the dark gives way to twinkling lights.
Natural crystals jut out from the walls of the cave.
The deeper you go, the more there are,
Glowing with a clear blue light.
You wonder at the eerie beauty of the mineral light
Illuminating every rock and crevice.
You notice that some emit a pale green instead of blue,
Increasingly as you go further.
Then you see a dim pink crystal among its blue-green brethren
And soon spot a few more.
Something about them fascinates you
And one in particular draws you closer.
It’s fixed on the wall at the same height as your eyes.
It seems to glow stronger, and redder, as you come near.
As your right hand reaches up to touch it
It burns like fire and almost blinds you.
Surprisingly, it’s cold to the touch
And immediately fades back to its faint pink hue.
But then you feel that it’s loose
And you instinctively grab it,
Fitting it snugly in your palm.
It seems to pulsate in your hand,
Fierce flames dancing within.
You imagine
That it’s your very own life that rests in your hand.

II.
You keep walking
Until the passageway opens up onto a vast cavern,
Extending in all directions.
The far walls cannot be seen
But for the luminous crystals on them.
The sides of the great hall,
All covered in the shining gems,
Curve up and form a domed ceiling of rock.
The crystals no longer radiate only blue and green light,
As grey white, deep purple and pale yellow shimmer all around.
Amazingly, the walls also curve downward,
Forming a basin as deep as the vault above is high.
It is as though you are standing at the entrance of an enormous orb
With little lamps all around its inner surface.
You walk forward.
After a slight downward slope
You reach the edge of a black lake
Extending to the far end.
You realize that the hollow below is merely the reflection of the ceiling
In the obsidian water.
You ponder how to cross this immense lake,
Because you are reluctant to go back,
Ever feeling a need to press on.
Suddenly swans appear,
Gliding about on the lake like white clouds piercing the night.
At first they move in their own inscrutable pattern,
A dance of a secret language.
But more and more seem to find their way
Towards you, standing on the water’s edge.
Bending down, you reach out your left hand,
Holding it above the swirling surface.
You spot your own reflection below—
A face lit with shifting colors
And filled with wonder, curiosity and purpose.
The birds gather around near to your outstretched hand.
The closest ones lower their necks and rest their beaks on it—
Then, after a moment, break away
And let others take their place.

III.
Then something dark grows ahead,
Blotting out the crystalline lights with its large shape.
It is not black, but iridescent midnight.
Its slatelike surface shimmers darkly
Of the cave’s crystal colors
And its form is of a swan.
The white swans part and let the great one through.
Your heart is beating fast but you do not feel fear.
The dark swan lowers its head
All the way down to the ground where you stand.
Its red-orange beak, the size of your body,
Now rests in front of you.
You carefully sit down, straddling the beak
And the swan immediately lifts you up
And deposits you on its back.
You land on your back,
The large feathers catching you softly.
You wonder if you are supposed to sit up—
But the symphony of the twinkling lights above
Dazzles and soothes you,
So you don’t move.
You feel the giant bird turn around
And glide out on the lake.
Lifting your head you see the white swans
Following beside and behind you.

IV.
After a while you hear a flapping of wings.
One of the white birds is taking flight.
It rises up in the air,
Drops down again
And shoots away close to the water.
After a few moments, the swan comes back,
Descending through the air.
It lands next to you on your avian barge,
Wings still outstretched.
Its eyes seem to ask something of you.
All you have is the pink crystal in your right hand.
Without hesitation you offer it.
The swan takes it in its beak,
Flaps its long wings
And flies off.
You can see your gift blazing red again
As it is carried away ever farther into the cave.
The rest of the silvery birds are still all around,
Gliding along as your host continues onward—
Towards unknown waters—
Where the glittering lights seem to take on completely new hues.