“Yeah, it would,” Green agreed. “But I’m pretty sure I did. Maybe Alf made it.”
Valentina sighed.
“Usually, the folks around here have more sense than to poke around this sort of anomaly. There is no shortage of oddities in Appalachia.”
“Well, somebody left all this trash and made that sign on the barricade. I’m guessing you didn’t doodle that little skull. Maybe it was them. Do you think anyone has gone through it? The hole, I mean.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because they almost certainly wouldn’t have returned alive and I hear about that sort of thing.”
Valentina took off her pack, knelt, and began unloading empty jars and sample bags.
A dull pain brought Green’s attention down to his right hand. It was clinched in a rigid claw around the acorn in his pocket, so tight the muscles in his forearm burned. He released the nut and crossed his arms.
“Wait, does this count as cryptonature? Why can people see this thing?”
“Again, it’s a spectrum, not a binary.”
“So, where does it go? You called it a door earlier. Doors lead somewhere.”
“That’s a complicated question. It is not as simple as a matter of where, unless we use that term very broadly to refer to outside our reality.”
Green felt his skin crawl.
“Huh. I hate that. Can we shut it? I mean, we need to shut it, right? I don’t like how this place feels.”
“I don’t disagree. Yet, in this instance, it isn’t an easy matter. The most reliable known method for closing such a doorway involves stepping through.”
“Wow, I think I hate that even more than your last answer. Why would going through that thing shut it? And couldn’t we…I don’t know…just toss a mannequin through or something?”
Valentina smirked and continued organizing her sample bags.
“If only. It’s a gap in the skin of reality, in our time-space. One feature of reality here in our universe is the transformative power of a subjective viewpoint, the presence of an active observer. A sapient being making a willful choice can bring their reality along with them and shut such a rift. Tangible matter and intangible will acting with a unity of purpose to reassert a cohesive, unbroken border of what is real. In short, you step into the gap as something akin to a living embassy of our reality and, under those auspices, you intend the doorway shut. Such is our current working theory of the mechanisms at play.”
“In short? That’s the short version?”
“Exactly.”
Green looked to the hole and back to his teacher. He felt like he was hanging on to the conversation by his fingertips.
“So, if that’s the proven method, why haven’t you done it yet?”
Valentina stood, turned, and looked around the clearing.
“Here, help me with this branch. I’ll demonstrate.”
Green took one end and helped her carry it to the barricade.
They swung it three times and tossed it through the archway.
It vanished without a sound. The space rippled slightly, like a leaf touching the surface of a still pond.
Valentina rounded the pines and searched the ground.
“No. Nothing. It has fully exited. Let’s try again.”
