Sometimes, an ordinary day can become the most amazing day of a person's life. Sometimes a simple stroll can become a journey to unimagined places. Sometimes an adventure can just happen . . .
It was far enough into the summer to start feeling that it would go on forever. The memory of school was dimming. Every day was a week long.
Alex had gotten into the habit of rising early, to get outside while it was still cool and the day was still fresh. The sounds at that time were birds, not lawn mowers and the rough, dry buzz of cicadas. The grass showed the emerald-greenness of wet dew, and the lawns radiated coolness.
But that was long ago - the morning of this day. Now it was the muffled heat of afternoon, too hot even to think too fast. Slow, lazy thoughts were right, and nothing too clever. Nothing more strenuous than watching a honey bee work his clover field, maybe trying to guess where he'd go next.
Mom and Dad called last night: super-long distance fromEurope. They were combining some of Dad's lawyer stuff with Mom's travel-agent stuff, and visiting a bunch of cities in a month. They'd been gone a week now, and they bubbled their excitement to her. So far, some plays in London, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London. Tomorrow would be the trip in the Chunnel, under the English Channel. That sounded like the most exciting part of the whole trip. Alex knew there'd be about a million pictures to look at when they got back. Dad was a photo-obsessive (Alex thought that her mother probably made up that term). Videos, snapshots, whatever. She was probably the most-photographed kid in the world.
All the photos showed a pretty, cheerful brunette, dimpled, average height for her age, with lively eyes. She liked keeping her hair short because long hair was inconvenient. There was too much to do to mess around with that . She was fourteen, and had just finished the eighth grade. Her name was Alexandra, but she much preferred Alex, except for formal occasions such as writing in her diary.
Because of her parents' trip, she was staying with her aunt and uncle, something she'd done for a week every summer since she was three years old. The week was something she always looked forward to, because there were absolutely NO demands on her for the whole time. She could sit around and be herself, no matter what. Somehow the week was always full, but it was never rushed. Her aunt and uncle lived near Philadelphia, far enough out of the city that it felt like the country. They had a big, friendly home full of light and windows and plenty of space to crash. It always seemed full of people, and Aunt Micki had a way of keeping the place happy and lively and homey.
The house had a big lawn, flower gardens, and best of all a stream. Not really much of a stream, but her uncle had spent the summers trying to make it into a real woodland stream.
Her first memories of the stream (kept vivid by thousands of pictures) were on her second birthday, when Mom and Dad and Aunt Micki and her uncle gave her a big party here. The whole family came and it was (she was sure) a wonderful day. But the picture she remembered most was when she was being towed in a bright- flowered blowup rubber boat. The kid in the picture was giggling, something she'd outgrown (except once in a while).
She'd loved that boat, which was part of her summers for several years. Sometimes it was a boat, and sometimes an inflatable pool, depending on which side the water was on. Mostly it was a boat, because she loved to float. And the stream, which seemed such an adventure when she was three, was now starting to look a bit small. Of course, some of the fault was hers. If there was anything she liked almost as much as the boat, it was splashing rocks in the stream. Sometimes for the splash, sometimes to sink a leaf or stick.
Strange, she thought, how your mind could wander all over the place on a day like this. Her head was bouncing all over, just like that bumblebee who was getting very close now, just close enough for her to be nervous. She knew about "don't bother them and they won't bother you" but sometimes it was hard to do, especially this close, with the buzzing so loud. Maybe this was a good time to take a walk.
She stood up slowly, careful not to step on the bee - never a good idea when you were barefoot. She started up the hill away from the stream, onto the deck, and into the coolness of the kitchen. They hadn't returned home from shopping yet. She stopped to look at the collection of framed pictures which Aunt Micki had arranged on the shelves. Many of the pictures were of Alex, and most of the rest were of her aunt and uncle's grown children, her cousins. Angie was an artist, Pam was a scientist, and Neil was a cartoonist. All were frequent visitors, and all had kids of their own. Their families were usually part of the fun (and commotion) of being here. When the whole family was here, especially for big holiday dinners like Passover and Christmas, Aunt Micki was like an orchestra conductor, keeping things moving and lively, balancing the making of dinner with the entertainment of her guests, keeping her uncle and Great Grandmother feeling useful without actually being in the way, then making sure everyone was stuffed at dinner. The best part of those family holidays was after dinner, when everyone was too bloated to move and they sat around the living room, just catching up on everyone's lives. Many times, Alex's father would play the piano and cousin Angie would sing. Alex just loved when they did that.
Those were nice memories, Alex thought. She poured herself a glass of lemonade, picked up her sneakers, and headed back onto the deck.
She was in a really strange remembering-mood today, almost as though she were saying good-bye to everything. Looking down the lawn through the trees lining the stream, she realized that she had some kind of memory associated with almost every foot of the stream. Starting out at the road, the darkness under the bridge was where she first heard her voice echoing. Upstream a bit was the flower garden, partly hidden by the three giant hemlocks on the near bank. The flower garden was full of all the blooms she had smelled and learned to name; the hemlocks she remembered mostly for being full of white lights at Christmas (and January and February and sometimes March).
A little further on was the rock wall, perfect for sitting and tossing pebbles, then the garden swing under tall old walnut trees. The ground was always covered with walnuts in the Fall and walnut shells (left behind by the squirrels) in the Winter. The bird feeders and wind chimes were here too.
There was a stretch of velvet lawn under big, old trees, bounded by blue spruces. In the Spring this picnic grove was dotted with skunk cabbage, a name she loved. Past the lawn was the path leading down to the bridge. Under the bridge was a dam, whose waterfall cascaded into a deep pool. Above the dam the stream became a pond, with a narrow island in the middle. The island was a mound with grass and a bright white birch at the upstream point. Daffodils popped through the grass in the Spring. Around the island, the water was deep. The banks jutted out over the water, and there were mysterious dark spaces beneath the overhang. Aunt Micki had once told her that there was a muskrat that lived under there, and they watched him swimming and feeding in the pond, graceful as an otter. On land, he lumbered along like a groundhog.
In the pond around the island was where Alex did most of her "yachting" as a youngster. This was where she'd sit on the bridge, legs dangling, trying to catch sunfish with the little plastic fishing pole her uncle optimistically bought her when she was only a year old.
Upstream, where the pond narrowed back down to a stream again, was the swing her aunt and uncle had built for her when she was three, just a board on long ropes hanging from a high branch. The board and ropes had been replaced several times over the years, and each time the board was slightly bigger as there was more of Alex to hold. The swing was at the edge of the high bank on the far side, so she could swing out over the water which, to a three-year-old, was excitingly far below. Beyond the swing was a big, shaggy weeping willow tree. When she was tiny, she loved playing hide and seek inside its branches. It was clear all around the trunk, and the branches hung down to the ground completely around the tree. And somehow her uncle could never find her when she hid inside that magic circle.
The grass ran up a small hill ending at a wall rising up out of the stream. There were five narrow steps built into the wall, giving an easy way to climb down into the water. An old black cherry had, years before, blown over in a storm and fallen across the stream, reaching half way to the far side. Somehow it stayed alive and continued to grow. It was an easy climb to get onto the tree trunk and sit over the stream. The horizontal trunk, backed by sturdy branches rising upward, formed a natural chair into which she could safely snuggle.
Across from the sitting tree the banks were filled with thick, heavy bushes. Upstream, the water quickly disappeared from view. Trees and old, gnarled rhododendron bushes crowded in on both sides. Brambles were twined through the undergrowth like barbed wire to keep out trespassers. Wild grape vines hung in lazy loops from the highest branches of the tallest trees. It was dark in there, full of growing things. She'd never gone into the darker woods beyond. As far as she knew, her uncle never went in there either. If he did, he never told her anything about it. She made up her mind to ask him later.
Now, her curiosity aroused, she slipped off her sneakers, walked carefully down the rough-cut stone steps, and sat on the lowest one with her feet in the cool, clear water. She felt colder water coming out of the small pipe near her left big toe, colder because it was coming from a small underground stream. She cupped her chin in both hands, both elbows on her knees, and watched the water wash the sand and pebbles. Across the stream, a school of tiny minnows did minnow things, darting back and forth. A dragonfly with bright blue wings, two pairs of them, skimmed the surface, laying eggs each time it touched the water.
A Monarch butterfly examined the small patch of yellow and orange day lilies that grew on the opposite hillside.
The day was getting thicker and her head was getting heavier. It was cooler down here in the water, with the rock wall and steps behind her and the dappled shade from the trees overhead. Suddenly a brief puff of icy cold wind blew down from the upstream shadows and brushed her legs with its stinging breath. Startled, she stood up suddenly and banged her head on the bottom of the sitting tree. Dizzily, she leaned against the stone wall, then slowly slid down until she was sitting, dazed, in the stream. Luckily, it wasn't more than two or three inches deep where she sat, just enough to be uncomfortable. For the first time ever she saw stars from a head-bump.
From this position she could see further into the darkness upstream, and now noticed what appeared to be fireflies flitting along both banks. That explained the stars. But this was puzzling, because she knew that fireflies only flickered at night. She also knew that they seemed to jump erratically about at night - part of the fun was trying to guess where they were going next. These lights seemed to be moving steadily upstream, at least as far as she could see.
By this time, her clothes were wet enough that getting wetter didn't matter. She got onto her hands and knees, slowly because she still felt dizzy from the bump. She gasped at the unexpected cold wetness, then crept forward to put her head through the bushes just above the water, the only place there was any break in the solid wall of rhododendrons and brambles. She could see further upstream, and the line of flickering lights trailed on into the dim twilight.
Keeping low, holding her sneakers and her chin just above the water, she slid forward along the soft sandy bottom. After a few wiggles, the overhanging branches began to thin, and she was able to raise her head. The stream was thick on both sides with mean-looking brambles, but it was clear above the water. High above, the trees formed a nearly-solid canopy. She could see three large, black crows high in the branches. One looked at her, and cawed shrilly.
She rose to her feet, but could not see over the bushes on either side. As her eyes became accustomed to the twilight, she could make out the thick grape vines hanging from the tallest branches, sometimes reaching all the way down to the ground. She splashed along the stream, and saw the lights well upstream from her. Then she noticed that, rather than continuing along the waterway, the lights trailed off to the right, up a dry gully.
She walked faster now, trying to catch up. Gradually, the bottom changed from sandy to pebbly, then to rocky. Walking was becoming more difficult, until she reached the cutoff to the right. She stepped out of the stream into the dry gully, and stopped to slip on her sneakers. The banks reached up to the level of her head. Moss hung over the tops of the banks, and cascaded partway down the sides. She saw no further sign of the lights.
She walked for some time over the thick, mossy floor of the gully, which now slanted slightly uphill. As she walked, she saw a number of holes in the banks, as though big rocks had fallen free. Some were only inches deep, some a foot or more. Shortly, she came to one in the left bank which was deep enough that she couldn't see the end, even though it was just at her eye level. And, once again, she felt the cold draft that had caught her attention and brought her here. It came from the dark hole!