The Forest

Risk of Entry

He came tumbling into his dream, head over heels, landing in a muddy pit.  At first he thought he was drenched in the deep tracks of his favorite mountain bike trail, a tumble he took all too frequently, but something felt different. The air was dense, the trees were wild and the world around him seemed lonely. Wiping away the mud from his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve, he roamed around to see that he was right, he wasn't where he thought he was. In fact, he was someplace he had never been before and it wasn't even remotely familiar to him.  He was tired and his breath smelled of last night's dinner.  HIs clothes clung on to him tightly, trying to survive the grand entrance.  Placing his hands at his sides, he gently pushed the ground away to find them sinking even further into the muddy mess that was luring him deeper.  He was cold, wet and confused.  His strength, once a treasure, left him as his arms gave way and sent him collapsing back down to the earth.

The wind ripped and swirled above him as he tried to shelter under its path. The air, too heavy on his back to move, and the ground like quicksand, made him motionless. He grasped for a tiny morsel of safety in his futile attempt at escape but the angry display of nature was relentless and all consuming, leaving nothing for him to cling to.  

Jack landed on the edge of a rotting forest, rich in the language of riddles that flourished on weak minds and despair.  Once a place of beauty, its walls were lush and green with desire, tall with pride, deep with wisdom and gentle with affection.  The ground was not angry and the wind was not brash.  The soil was generous with life but the mysteries of its character unraveled a story that now haunted the world of its new existence.

The dream he entered was a ruthless enemy to the ripe world of its predecessor. It was damaged and hardened.  It held secrets.  It was full of misfortune and loss.  It was cunning and coarse, cold and lost.  The authority of power it once held became a dominating menace of evil.  It thrived on the weak and projected its venom at the very source it needed to stay alive.  

The wind, still howling around him in long, sweeping motions, began to circumvent its departure by forming small clouds of energy, each creating its own force and redirecting its power away from him.  He began to feel the weight of the air soften as he regained his awareness and sat up to look around.  His feet were wet and teetering on the murky waters of a shallow pond.  It was dusk now and he sat in stillness next to the edge watching the blades of grass resurrect from where he had been lying.

Plucking a piece of grass, he gently licked each side and placed it carefully between his two thumbs and began to blow through the open space. The vibration from the air echoed through the forest and he felt like he wasn't alone. The forest whispered back.

"Can anyone hear me?" he replied.

His words provoked a symphony of the senses and just then, the surface of the water produced an orbit of ripples in the center of the pond before him and the wind began to roar again in unexplained patterns of confusion. The clouds opened up above and shared their riches in a generous display of tears raining down on him.

"What do you want?" he yelled into the wind.

He watched his words being carried by a swirling pattern of energy as it gently whispered the same words back to him.

"Who are you? Why am I here?" he demanded. 

The downpour of rain had begun to swallow up his legs as the pond was expanding its reach closer toward him.  The mud had since disappeared from his face and clothes leaving him primed for more torture and it felt to him like the wind was stealing his breath as it thrashed against his frigid body. 

And then, a voice that startled him, "Your words are ruptured in the wind." 

"Who is it, who's there? he asked again. 

"It is you," it said boldly.

Closing his eyes and dropping his head in defeat, he was quiet, and the rain, anxious to continue, finally relented. He sat in silence for a moment and hearing a chatter of life from above, he glanced up.  Long vines of tangled branches, intertwined with tiny sprouts of leaves high above this dark shelter were rattling against each other in amusement. It sent a shiver down his spine and left a pit in his core.  Although the thought of life here was a hopeful prospect, the fear rummaging around him made him sense threats of the unknown.  He stood up, proving his bravery, slowly canvassing the skies. His eyes wandered, following the vines as they snaked around the trees and branches like tentacles until he traced their origin to a sign etched on a tree. Threads of bark spiked on a raw, exposed tree trunk spelled out words in a strange pattern of influence.  The rain drenched wood made it hard for him to decipher but as he approached, he noticed the words were very clear but they made no sense to him.

Tread Ahead.

Steady on Stones.

Lightly on Leaves.

Clumsy on Caution.

Masterpiece Believes.

He spoke the words aloud and wondered what they meant. These words didn't just spill out unintentionally, but with careful thought given to the interpreter.  Were they meant for me or for someone else?  Who else is here?  What does this forest want from me? His racing thoughts were determined to scare him into action.

By now, the wind had retreated and the air was calm.  The words he read on the tree would circulate inside him with a hypnotic tension of confusion as he tried to find a way out of the forest that held him captive.  He kept repeating the words over and over with the rhythm of his walk as he carefully backed away from the tree and out of sight.