Young Writers Society

It had been confided to me. His keepsake. And not only had I damaged the jewelry as it was displaced from its roost about my neck, it seemed the symbolic trinket would also be lost forever.

Since it had been a part of me on the flight, it was headed in the same direction. I figured that gave me a decent chance at repossessing it. But because of the force with which it was dislodged, the time before it would eclipse my reach was withering.

There was an awful screech as if two colliding vehicles had crushed a giant glass balloon betwixt them. It registered in my mind, but my worries about matters of loyalty trumped that of possible impending danger.

I had one gloved hand free. One shot.

It sparkled. I swiped. It wriggled. I knocked it. It tumbled. I swore. It hummed. Something exploded. Blue flash. My eyes bounced. I was redirected.

I, the arrow, had been splitting the air right beside the wall. My nose had strayed from the target, concerned with Vinny’s necklace, so I had no idea how close I was to the crescent when the jolt came. In a flash of crystal blue, the air pressure let up, and my lungs swelled to normal size with a certain spice while my ears went a-throbbing—queerly, I hadn’t noticed the air pressure building in the first place—and left my awareness hanging by a thread. As I tried to cope with that pain, my back smacked into the wall—an exponentially greater pain. The metal did not give as it met the base of my skull. Actually, it felt like it went out of its way to try and touch my brain.

Drowsily, I slid across the wall. The room was pitch black again, all except for the Tap’s light, I found, as my body rolled over to face down once again. Something screeched and roared amidst the darkness like a bloat of hippos clashing over river territory. I was now around twenty feet from entering the Tap. And on the ground next to it, right where the portal’s bubble of light gave way to darkness, a figure stood in the shadows. It looked like Malibu. How nice, I thought woozily, he did think to wait to jump in with me.

Until a tongue rolled into the light. A tongue that had to be over a foot long. Then a hand with knobby fingers emerged into the pale light. The ebony claws attached to it slashed through the Tap’s luminescence, and there, space curdled black, leaving streaks of dark pollution that hung solid in the air. It was as if the fingers' toucherased the light. The hand was open, awaiting. I squinted to pinpoint whatever it was that the looming entity could be expecting.

I saw a little oval with strings swaying on either side. It glinted, seeming to hover in the air—just inches above the open hand.

The elongated fingers started to swing shut around Vinny’s locket. I got the feeling that when slammed shut it would be permanent, wrested away in an undying clutch. I fell with horror, watching the entity’s tongue rupture into four as the first parts of the jewelry brushed against the flesh of its palm, watching it snatch up the symbol I was supposed to keep from harm, while I helplessly flew toward the mouth of a portal that now strongly resembled a grin, having suddenly slipped on its side.

And right as all hope died within me, right as the hand was condensing into a clench and I thought I saw red lining the back of the horrid fist, the real Gutterson appeared out of the dark yawn of space, running at full boar.

He had been waiting for the perfect moment. He had probably been watching my fall, and mentally palming his face thinking how clumsy I was. Had he known how I was pretending to be an arrow he’d probably claw at his frosty blue eyes, or ask if I could treat nothing with the proper attitude.

And Malibu had no idea either just how dynamite his timing was. I couldn’t believe he was hot-footing it. Because he should’ve boinked the sinister figure square on the rear with the swinging bag at his side. But it went straight through, zero effect. No normal effect that is.

Since Gutterson didn’t appear to see the being that had been so wholly invested upon securing the necklace, neither saw the other coming, and the thief had its groove thrown completely out of style as Gut unintentionally blasted its behind. Its tongues snapped back into its hidden face and the hand went into a spasm. The bag cut through its presence, and in doing so caused the mysterious visitor to mist out as if it were only an apparition.

Next thing I knew, my eyes were drawn away by a shifting of light in my peripheral vision. The crescent-shaped portal had been resurrected to its original vertical position. There was no time to adhere to its will in the air. Beneath me, Gut vanished as we were flung into the portal together.

We had overcome the separation being thrust through the Spinal Tap’s center, caused by the heart of the magnetic field. We were reunited. Nothing stood between us and going home, except perhaps, our physical bodies that still had a sojourn to get there.

The journey back was every bit as tantalizing as the first, quite pinchy this time actually, but nothing that couldn’t be tolerated. I was suddenly staring at my own backside. I was back among the somewhere-between-a-liquid-and-a-solid-state sandy substance, bent like a pretzel, soaring through a pleasant breeze with my butt shoved right up in my grill. If that feature was permanent it would not be entertaining for very long. Hopefully, the fall had supplied enough momentum so I wouldn’t get stuck in here.

On second thought, being stuck in here wouldn't be bad. Far from it. Again, I was robbed of all fear, doubt, and bias. For once it felt awesome to be robbed, in fact, I’d want nothing less!

Every now and then, you can get relaxed, distracted, or maybe complacent enough, to be without doubts and fears. But bias, bias is inescapable. Except during the ride in this portal. The least proud and vain people still want to feel equal, if not a little better in some aspect in regard to others, or possess something that could be thought of as unique.

Yet here, I was content merely to be. It would be stupid to be covetous, and downright delirious to be envious with libraries of knowledge being dumped into my ear with each gentle gust of wind. I almost wanted to be sad that I could not stay long enough to listen to all the wind had to reveal, but the wind’s words tickled me so much in the moment, that the smile could not be ripped from my face, and I forgot any sadness as soon as it tried to creep into my head. The wind tossed some of the sand into my face playfully, and in accordance to the gesture, I looked below.

Before, nothing was around save the sand and the metallic-looking stuff. This time I could see a landscape beneath me. But don’t get me wrong, there was no sky above; there was not even blackness above; there was non-existence, and if I had even thought to stop and inspect it, there would be nothing to imagine whatsoever. It would be like trying to catch yourself giving conception to a thought.

Only from me down, was.

Below was a region packed with obsidian mountains. Correction: most were volcanoes. All was turbulence. Miniscule forms were traversing along places where the magma had crusted over. They were using them as bridges. Temporary bridges. Every so often a fresh river of magma would wash away the footholds. If the forms were on them, they were in the way, collateral damage. Or maybe the bridges were the collateral damage.

It appeared the name of the game was to dodge each new wave. It didn’t look like any fun. Especially since there was more than just broiling rivers to avoid. The forms that got swept away thrashed around in fury, tearing at the heels of passersby on any given bridge. These sore losers were resolved to take the so-far-succeeding down with them, even sabotaging the very groups they had once flocked with for strength and safety. Once their game was over, they had no allegiance except to themself (yeah, not even themselves).

The wind sounded deflated, maybe shaking its head, when it came back saying, “‘Tis the mainline. But look again. The struggle is one of thoughts.”

Some of the forms were going up the mountainside. That way they didn’t have to deal with the sabotagers, and could focus on the thing they had been dodging in the first place. These had realized the volcanoes were the enemy, and quit competing amongst themselves. Some fell, or were fried by magma. Some fell in saving another climber’s life. Some put themselves in the path of the magma to help another out of its path, giving their life for a fellow. Unlike the forms at the bottom who suffered on after being overtaken by the lava, those that fell departed as smoke. After they would climb a ways, they would pause and call down below, encouraging others to follow the same route.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

“Lend me your ear,” spoke the wind.

“I’m listening.”

“Then you are already listening,” rustled the wind. And as the words blew around my ear, it was pulled off and swirled up into the current.

“Come along,” spoke the climbers. “The right move is to the core. Down there it is unstable, temporary, fleeting. It just takes one slip up and all your right moves will have been for nothing. Besides, you aren’t coming up with a solution to stop the suffering. Surviving to survive has no aim. I beg you: don’t torture yourselves by running in circles any longer.” The forms at the mountains' base literally kept passing from one steamy slope to the next, transients in search of an oasis; I guess from down there, they couldn’t see the curvature of the horizon, and all I could see along its length was volcano after geyser of magma puckering up like canker sores.

“Quit going around; expand your dimensions; face Up; it’s the only way out. Up here you can’t sink in the ocean of faces. The climate is cool, clear save the occasional cloud, not so heated and rushed. Up here our steps are deliberate. Oh dear friends, don’t let the size or the roaring of the mounts intimidate you; don’t you see that glow so golden at the top? Even a fall from the heights will serve you better than remaining in perpetual consternation at the feet, unable to see around these giants. Though the roar intensifies the further the ascension, the less the distance grows to the top, towards, but above the heat."

But traversing the shifting bridges of cooled magma was what they had grown accustomed to. The majority remained clinging to the strategy that they could identify with. A strategy that only bred calamity, seeing it would eventually and surely end in death. Rock climbing was a tricky, delicate, and long undertaking which put the low-landers out of their comfort zones; they were expecting a bridge to come along that would lead to a place of rest. Rock climbing was seen by the mass as dangerous: "The ground is unstable, could give way at one wrong step, of which there are a countless number, it is irrational, to try requires false hope, which stems from false promises." Skeptics said such things.

Despite this, some of the forms broke off out of the clusters, even as critics railed them for it, to try their hand on the slopes. Apparently, the goal was to face the volcanoes head on. And those that made it to the rim around the bubbling pits dove in without hesitation.

“What? Those frauds! The climbers are full of false promises!” I vilified in disbelief. “They’re leading the followers to genocide!”

The breeze came back with my ear, and reattached it. “It was I who guided them; I am no fraud. Some mistook me for the wind. Other ears were filled with more than wind. Those that took me at my word left it all behind in honor of my judgment, and did not accredit the understanding of a new direction as their own wisdom, thus their deaths are far from abdication: it is concession. They surrender to my voice and I grant them access to peace of mind: Me.” breathed the wind.

Oh. I should have noticed before that with all those smoke stacks boiling over their tops, there should have been vast plumes of ash blotting out most of the view. But it was only every great now and then, when a climber completed their act as a diver, that a puff, more like a burp than a vomit, arose out of the cauldrons. The crimson puffs floated away.

"Why does it matter with what intent they do it?" I fired.

The breeze tousled my hair. “Why, dear, silly boy," The wind chuckle-gasped, "Attitude shapes very worlds."

It gathered the most recent smoke puff, promptly blowing it ahead of myself in the sand. It collected it so tight it became a red sphere. Lightning flashed so constantly within the ball it was like the string of beeps and bleats in Morse code. Over the orb I could see something coming into view. I looked down again and saw that we were leaving the first place at our backs, approaching a new domain. And this one was full of beauty.

Majestic white mountains. Snow covered everything, but there were no clouds, and it wasn’t snowing. We were still a little ways off. And then I noticed there was a division. A valley cut a border between the two provinces. We weren’t over it, but so high above it that I could see down into its belly from this far. A trickle of grey noodled across the valley floor. At the far end it branched to either side. And when I say branched, I do mean like a tree’s branches, several, and a proportional amount of shoots to both sides.

“Ah,” came the voicelessness of the wind, “You behold the weeping lead.”

I wanted an affirmation. “The metal, lead?”

“Precisely. It is essential. But not now.”

I didn’t argue. The wind was always right. And I knew I wasn’t.

I could figure out for myself that the weeping lead was some sort of entrance but… the valley it ran through was a barrier in itself. A barred entry just around the corner, just out of the forms' sight? I couldn’t crack it. I found that more than a little counteractive. Why censor the centerfold of a magazine? Something was being withheld from me, purposely. But the wind said I didn’t need to understand it yet, so I didn't push the matter.

The smoky sphere picked up speed and dipped away on a streamlet of sand stuff that branched off from the mainstream I was riding on. Miles were whipping by as we sped, so miles weren’t really a measurement to ogle at here, but the ball zinging scads of miles to pass over the entire ravine in the time it took to snap off back-to-back blinks was a feat to ogle at. When it passed over into the white land there could be seen a tiny pop high above the mountains. Were I up next to it, it would’ve been like a feather pillow rupturing after one too many rounds of pillow fighting. Considering the size of the sphere, the burst was tremendously insignificant.

But it set off a blizzard.

We were right up near the lip of the gorge now. The blizzard was more than strong. It was like nothing ever seen. And I guess for the storm’s ferocity, it has never been seen, still. I could hear though, hear blustery winds. They were only hurricane force winds, stirring up a white wedge that washed away all depth. Another noise fell upon my ears as well. No. It was the same noise I mistook to be wind. The sound of cheering. Wow. One tiny puff ball and it receives a celebratory confetti so thick, the puff ball wouldn’t be able to open the presents all the guests had placed before it.

The wind giggled. “That I s-al-l-ay–” but its words were jerked away as a coal mountain on the outskirts of the Lavaland, one of the last as we soared up next to the canyon’s mouth, abruptly lifted and jabbed its peak, dissecting the wind’s lisp. Then it was my turn. The jagged rock bit into my side and lava oozed out where the gash opened. Without the wind, fear burst back into color all around me, and the more I feared as I stared up at the still rising mountain, the more lava poured out of my side until I was consumed and began to drip down the mountainside.