He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t think of a persuasive way to argue.
A squirrel with one bulging cheek pouch ran into the path. It turned toward the walkers and opened its mouth in a too-wide yawn. The bulge, a bright blue eye, rolled into the open mouth and studied the pair. A red slash appeared in the white fur of the squirrel’s belly, a second mouth that let out a chattering cry before the creature scurried off into the underbrush.
“Was that a…”
“Cyclops squirrel,” Valentina said. “Quite common in this area.”
A lump of something unpleasant pressed on Green’s tongue. He spat, but there was nothing there.
“Ugh. Why does my mouth taste like ashes?”
“It’s a defense mechanism against predators. Suppresses appetite. Effective, wouldn’t you say? Don’t look directly at the eye next time.”
Green kept spitting in the leaves, which accomplished nothing.
The wind changed and there was new warmth in it, morning giving way to noonday. A low-level burn in his ankles and calves told him that walking mountain paths was not the same as navigating sidewalks and subway station stairs. These were not paths built for humans, yet humans were built for them. It was a subtle distinction that manifested as a dull ache in unfamiliar muscles.
Valentina set an unhurried pace. The path forked many times, but she never hesitated in choosing the way. Green fell back and noticed how strange and easy it was to share comfortable silence while walking through the trees. He didn’t feel a need to fill the quiet. There was so much to see, to smell, to hear in the pulse of the living woodlands. Here, a burst of crisp sound as two chipmunks raced through the branches of a fallen sweet gum. There, the drumroll of a downy woodpecker hunting for his lunch. And always the soft march of Valentina’s footfalls while she ducked beneath a storm-tilted trunk or strayed from the path to touch a feathery hemlock bough. He began to mirror her, stepping where she stepped. Touching what she touched. As he did, he realized that there was an entire vocabulary of new textures to learn along with the sounds, scents, and sights of the woods.
It was nearly 11a.m.when they arrived. Valentina halted at a small clearing like a castle moat surrounding an unremarkable stand of gangly young pines in the center.
“We’re here,” she said. “The Hole in Nothing.”
Something about that phrase made Green tingle with recognition, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“Muir’s doorway between two pines?” he asked.
“Exactly.”
He stood beside his teacher.
The first thing Green noticed was the litter.
Sun-faded beer cans gleamed silver from the drifts of leaves. A gold condom wrapper and a smashed liquor bottle marked the boundary of the little clearing. He stepped over them and studied the area. There was a small fire ring made of sooty stones with evidence of a recent burn. It looked like a not-so-secret hangout for high school kids.
Valentina scowled.
“This place has become more popular since I last visited.”
“It’s kind of…filthy.”
“It is profoundly dangerous so, of course, is appealing to young people. It resonates with their feeling of immortality. The same reason they are drawn to abandoned quarries and condemned houses.”
Green walked forward and crushed a can into the soft soil. There was something about the pines in the center of the clearing. He couldn’t quite tell what was off about them and it was like an itch he couldn’t reach.
“Careful, Mr. Green. Do not go wandering until you see it.”
He scanned the trees. A barricade made of branches lashed together with twine blocked the way to an arch where two bent pines met. A cartoonish skull and crossbones done in Sharpie on a white plastic cafeteria tray hung from the barricade. “Hole in Nothing” was scrawled beneath the skull.
“I assume that’s it.”
“That’s it. What do you see?”
“I see the nothing, but I don’t see the hole.”
It looked like a regular space between regular trees. Regular nothing. Only…not quite.
A soft breeze rolled through the clearing, sizzling in the dry leaves and snack wrappers. The pines swayed and softly knocked together where their trunks crossed to form the archway. An electric expectancy ran a current down the back of Green’s neck.
