He filled his lungs with the scent of the forest floor, pipe tobacco and compost, pine and rain, then he rolled to his back.
There was the sky he’d seen through the Hole in Nothing, a glossy field of too many stars. The night sky Green had known most of his life was a faint twinkle through smoked glass, not this jeweler’s display of vibrant gems.
What has it done to me? Where am I?
He sat up.
Catskill was no longer turning up the contrast on woodland night. Now, it was truly dark.
A sinking realization hit him. He hadn’t worn his pack through the hole. He had no supplies. No food. No fire.
A fragment of poetry fell from the trees and landed in his lap.
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it…
He rubbed his eyes and combed fingers through his beard, raining leaf litter on his chest. He stuffed Dancer’s now-bent cup into his coat pocket.
Green grappled with an odd, claustrophobic feeling, as if he were a new captain tasked with piloting a body and he found the vessel’s quarters too tight for comfort. He focused on taking slow, deep breaths. The sensation passed.
Automatically, he reached for the acorn. Its absence felt like a missing tooth.
He settled for pulling out his cell.
No service.
He considered turning on the flashlight function, but decided it would be better to let his eyes adjust.
Pocketing his phone, he sensed a warm glow nearby and searched for it. The mountainside was uniformly dark, but there was a glimmer in his awareness that had no relationship to sight. Steadying himself, he concentrated on the radiant idea. He found it within, standing near the place Catskill’s mind had recently occupied. There was an image of a huge, spreading oak standing tall in a pillar of golden sun. At the tree’s base, deep within the wood, he could see an acorn ringed in emerald brilliance. It wasn’t there with him in the dark woods. It was elsewhere, a beacon on a distant horizon, a recent addition to his internal landscape.
That’s new.
A skitter drew his attention back to the world of tangible things.
A fat squirrel the size of a cat scuffled out of the trees and sat in the nearby dark like a charcoal drawing. A bulge in its cheek distorted the silhouette of its pointed face. Gimlet eyes considered Green.
“Hello,” Green said. “I could use the company.”
The squirrel opened its jaw wide and the bulge rolled into the black O of its mouth, white as a pearl before the dark limbal rings rose up like a sunrise revealing the orb to be an eye. The eye looked very human. It flitted up and down, taking in the prone man.
“Hey, I know you. A cyclops squirrel.”
A mouth opened in the squirrel’s belly and it spoke in a rich rolling baritone.
“Hark ye, groundling, do not bury yourself like a nut here, your hull to be cracked in winter’s jaws, lest the squirrel queen pluck you up and punish your fraud. Look not upon her. See not her whiskers. Perceive not the arching fountain of her tail.”
The taste of ash settled on Green’s tongue.
The taste I remember.The talking is new. Sure. Why not?
He clapped his hands together and chuckled.
The squirrel scurried back a foot.
“I may not have my pack, but I can’t leave you creatures behind. That’s a comfort, I guess.”
