Everyone has their own reality and as a result, the universe is a giant ocean of millions upon millions of realities bumping into eachother enough that there is a giant ocean, if you stepped back enough to see your reality for those deep waters.
Whether you choose to believe this statement is up to your and what you want your reality to look like. I’ve chosen this story today because it is a crossroad of realities and you, dear reader are among those crossroads, choosing now if you wish to follow one road of belief, or another. Where will you go?
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Just before dawn, the boy sits beside the Red Gate, and learns about the paths between all worlds in the universe. His father stands in front of the gate, his hands behind his back as he talks. A lantern sits on the ground by his feet, illuminating the dirt path speckled with patches of grass, and the bottom half of red-painted wood.
The boy is eleven which is the year when all the children of Gatekeepers begin to learn the trade. As his father talks, the boy feels the morning air begin to sparkle and heat up, like the generator at his school.
“Can you feel it?” His father says to the boy who is sitting on a nursery log full of mushrooms. The boy nods. “Good,” his father says. “when you feel this, it means there are travelers wanting to come through.”
The boy nods and waits for his father to continue.
“Focus now. Who does it feel like?” The father asks the boy, “it is imperative that you know who is coming through.”
“Why?” The boy asks, cocking his head to the side.
“It is the duty of a Gatekeeper to know who is crossing. We help give direction and in the old days when there were many crossing back and forth, we had to regulate it. Too many moving through the aether at a time created cracks and humans often fell into them and got stuck.”
“Did you save them?” The boy says.
“No, I did not. That was in my grandfather’s day but once a human falls through a crack to the spaces between, or another dimension entirely, it is very difficult to keep track of them and help them come back because normal humans haven’t developed the same senses we Gatekeepers have, or that fairies have, for that matter. Though, this is important. Do not enter a door without me until you are fully trained. Otherwise, you may get stuck too.”
The boy nods, feeling the seriousness of his father’s words and then listens with all his senses to the energy which is building around the gate. He feels moist earth, gardening, curiosity and old bookish proverbs.
“Is it gnomes?” He asks his father.
His father grins and leans over to ruffle the boy’s hair. “It is,” he says and then he unlocks the latch. As the gate swings open, his father steps to the side and the boy feels a whoosh of energy, like a wind. The wind is filled with the smell of dirt, flowers, apples, old paper and ink.
In the space where the red lattice of the gate was, the air and the ground shimmer and flex like water as one small figure appears, then another and another. There are twelve gnomes in all, each wearing a colourful hat, tunics and holding curved walking sticks.
The first one, wearing a silver hat, looks up at the boy’s father and says in a voice that sounds like birch leaves and a bubbling stream, “thank you Gatekeeper. A pleasure as always.”
“The pleasure is mine Greybeard,” he nods and addresses the gnome by name. “How long is your stay?”
“We’ll be back in three months of your time.”
“Thank you. Ah, and one last thing. There is a crack in the pass of the Dragon’s Teeth. Do be careful.”
“Thank you, Gatekeeper, we will avoid the area until you have remedied the situation.”
“It should be fixed by the morrow. Until next time, fair weather to you and your kin,” the boy’s father says.
Greybeard replies with his own farewell and then, waving his walking stick, the twelve gnomes march away through the field, one after the other. The air shimmers with gold sparkles as they go. The boy frowns at this, wondering why and his father sees this and explains, “normal humans aren’t meant to see those who walk with one foot on this realm and one foot in our inner realm.”
“Faerie?” The boy asks. “But isn’t that where they came from?”
“Yes, and no. These gnomes are from Faerie but they are a particular group of Earthly ambassadors and are often off planet.”
“On other planets?” The boy’s eyes go wide. He knew about Faerie, everyone does, even the mundanes, though they believe Faerie is just a story. But other planets is so much more interesting. There is so much not even the Gatekeepers know!
“Could I go with them?”
“No, we may be Gatekeepers but we can only go as far as the between spaces, not all the way to other dimensions. We are still human.”
“Oh,” the boy is disappointed.
“Your duty is to stay here and uphold the balance. No one must know that all the stories are real. It would upset the balance that is still needed to a degree, at this time,” the boy’s father says with a stern gaze. “Now come, recite for me the Gatekeeper creed while we walk back. It’s near time for school.”
The boy groans, he hates school. He opens his mouth to complain but his father stops him with a raised eyebrow.
“Now, now. School is important. You need to understand the rest of the world so that you can be an effective Gatekeeper. Like the gnomes, you have one foot on this realm and one foot in the paths between and all the worlds and beings beyond.”
The boy nods, he’s heard this many times, so he begins at the top of the Gatekeeper’s Creed as the sun comes up over the hills.
As the boy is packing is book bag and getting ready for school, his father appears at his bedroom door with a book in his hand. It is a very old book.
“You did well today and for that, I want you to take this. To keep it, for now. It’s a book all about what we do know of other worlds. I want you to read about them. Get to know them. Get to know the way other beings see things, what they call things. Be careful with it. Me giving this to you is as much an education as what is in these pages. Though no one who is a Gatekeeper will understand what is written, take care of this book. It is still a Gatekeeper book and as such is full of our magic. It is the first of your responsibilities as a Gatekeeper. Protect knowledge and truth.”
The boy nods but can’t help the excitement bubbling through his body to receive such a gift from his father.
At the end of the school day, when the boy talks with the nymph who lives in the poplar at the far side of the schoolyard, the bully corners him. The bully is in the same grade as the boy but is in another class. He’s bothered the boy for the whole year since he moved to the village to live in the run-down shack by the river with a grandfather who drinks too much.
The bully grabs the boy’s book bag, upends it and sees the book. “Wow, this looks old. Does it unleash a creepy monster?” He says this as he picks up the book and holds it above his head, this stretches up his flannel shirt full of holes, revealing that the bully isn’t getting regular meals. The boy notes this, feeling a twinge of pity before he focuses on the book being dangled above him. He tries to leap for it but he’s too short. The bully lowers the book and then kicks near the boy, causing him to flinch back. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll rip out a page!”
The boy freezes and the bully laughs. Then, he opens the book and tears out a page.
“I’m not afraid of your words or your monsters, Gate witch! Whatever comes, I will defeat it all!” The bully sneers as he tears out a second page and throws it to the ground. He stomps on it with a foot, pushing it into the muddy grass of the school field.
“I’m not a witch! I’m a Gatekeeper!” The boy shouts as he tries to snatch the book from the bully. The bully laughs and holds the book above his head. The bully continues to pull out pages and with each page, the boy feels a crackle in the air, like when the gnomes appeared through the Red Gate.
Not everyone knows the Gatekeepers. Not everyone is supposed to. Technically, only the spirits are supposed to know the Gatekeepers, but eventually, if something exists somewhere, people outside of the inner circle will find out, regardless.
As a result of few knowing of the Gatekeepers, there are twice as many stories. The truest stories explain how they look after the doors between the worlds and the tallest tales describe the Gatekeepers as mad wizards who summon creatures who eat children. Can you guess from whom that last tale originated?
Family means well. They always do. Even the grandfather of the bully who keeps his grandson in line with too many scary stories about Gatekeepers who will eat naughty children for dinner.
“Stop it!” The boy says. The bully has pulled out ten pages now and they are nothing more than a pulpy mass on the ground, “you’ll break something!”
“Your book, obviously,” The bully sneers and pulls out a page with exaggerated slowness,. The boy is crying now and the bully sighs. “This is boring. You’re a boring witch. I bet there’s more excitement stealing from a stupid giant,” he tosses the book to the muddy grass and stomps away.
The boy pays him no mind, scrambling to pick up the book and the ball of pages. As he stands he looks toward the Mountain of the Green Giant which overlooks the whole village. He knows the Green Giant isn’t just a story. The Green Giant is real and though the Green Giant is friendly and doesn’t have any treasure at all, getting up to his mountain means going through the Inkwood first, and the Inkwood is full of dangers. A swamp, the enchanted river, wolves…
At least, those things are dangerous to normal humans who don’t know the secrets of walking across swamps, breaking enchantments or talking to wolves. He does though. A little. He’s learning anyway.
There are clouds gathering at the peak of the giant’s mountain and the air feels charged, like a lightning storm might rip the air in half like a piece of paper.
The boy is only a minute late getting home, panting and out of breath. One of the boy’s older brothers who finished normal school years ago laughs and calls him a tomato before going back to pruning one of the birch trees which circle their cabin.
The boy can see a tree nymph swinging from a top branch, upside down and giggling at whatever bad puns his brother is making up. He isn’t able to linger more than a second because he hears his father calling from inside their cabin.
He stumbles over his feet as he hurries inside and after a lecture on punctuality he is swept up in tome after tome filled with details about the sasquatch, yetis, nymphs, sylphs, griffons and dragons and more. He doesn’t get a chance to tell his father about the book. He’s not sure if he even wants too.
His father has taken a breath, and the boy is supposed to be sitting quietly and listening to the voice of the wind but his mind wanders over to the bully.
“Papa, why are we the only ones who get to talk to the Faerie realm and other places?”
The boy’s father looks sharply at him, “you should be listening to the wind,” he sighs, “what is the seventh article of the Gatekeeper’s Creed?”
The boy recites the seventh article of the creed with a slow and careful tone, thinking of how he said it only this morning.
“Always uphold the truth within yourself, but as the bridge between all worlds, take no opinions and accept all beliefs as they are expressed, for each has its own place and world. The truth will be known when it is meant to be or if they choose to seek it.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with him?” The boy says with a frown.
“It means, son, that normal humans, all have their own beliefs and in their world, fairies don’t exist so the fairies never show themselves and so, no one will believe any different, until they are meant to or they choose to seek it.”
“Like going to look for evidence of the Green Giant?” The boy asks thinking of the bully’s comment.
“Yes, which is why we exist,” the boy’s father says, “we keep the balance and the illusion in place until the time is right for each person to begin seeing the truth. After all, if everyone stumbled into the Green Giant’s cave by accident or because they thought there was some truth in all the fairy tales, then we’d have a lot of unnecessary panic and fear.”
“But why? Fairies aren’t scary and neither is the Green Giant.”
“No, but regular humans didn’t grow up knowing the truth, so it’s scary to them.”
The boy scrunches up his nose, not understanding how fairies could be scary.
“Magic is there for those who wish to see it. That is all,” the boy’s father says with a finality that ends the discussion. “Now, focus on the wind. What is the wind saying?”
The boy focuses and gives a perfect answer. His father is over-joyed, and the boy wishes he could just stay at home all the time. He doesn’t tell him about the torn up book.
The boy has been asleep for many hours when he hears the wind knocking on his window. It says, “help, help, there is a little one who needs help.”
The boy sits up in bed and rubs his eyes, trying to focus and asks, “why not Papa?”
“You go, you go, seventh son. You are needed. Help the little one, help, help.”
The boy frowns, that is still not an answer, but he is used to never getting a straight answer, especially when talking with an element like the wind. It doesn’t think in the same way humans do. The boy slides out of bed and pulls his jacket from off the back of his bedroom door before padding toward the window where the wind is knocking. It is a fully moon tonight and the outside world is illuminated in a bright, silver sheen.
“Where do you want me to go?” The boy whispers to the wind.
“Through the woods, over the hill, and under hill, to the home of the giant.”
The boy crosses his arms, “why me? It’s that bully isn’t it? He got himself stuck. I’m not helping.”
“Help, help, seventh son of Gatekeepers,” the wind says, and it shows him the bully, struggling through the Inkwood in his ratty, hole-filled flannel shirt. The bully is missing his shoes and looks cold and scared. For a moment the boy thinks it’s only fair that the bully feel like how he felt today when he remembers the seventh creed of the Gatekeepers. He sighs. The bully didn’t know any better about how special the book was. Keeping the book safe is the boy’s responsibility, and he didn’t. He can however go help the bully, be a good Gatekeeper keeping the balance so he hops out his bedroom window and follows the wind toward the tangled Inkwood.
Once he reaches the edge of the forest the boy slows down, he feels the wind pull away and the air stills. He steps in to the thick undergrowth and closes his eyes for a moment, imagining a bright warm light. When he opens his eyes, he is covered in a yellow light that fades a second later. Next he whispers to the trees, “help me find a boy, he looks like this,” the boy says and he places his hand on a tree and closes his eyes, imagining the bully in his mind. When he opens his eyes, he feels a tug and begins to walk in that direction. A wall of energy swoops down in front of him, stopping his forward motion some time later and he feels the words, “danger, danger” dance through his head. He bends down and pokes a finger into the dark space in front of him. Though the full moon’s light is strong enough to penetrate the Inkwood, it’s still dark enough for the world to be defined in dark shapes rather than clear objects. His finger drops through the matter in front of him. It is wet and cold. He’s at the edge of a swamp.
Now he asks the fairies to make his steps light so that he can walk across the swamp without sinking. This time he sees a whole manner of rainbow lights fly from between the dark trees and they swirl around him, urging him forward. The boy trusts the fairies and begins to walk. He crosses the swamp safely and repeats this process twice more when he hears shouting,
“Help, help, someone, help me!” It is the voice of the bully. The boy asks the fairies to help him get to the bully quickly. He starts to run, and he does not trip or fall as he moves through the dark undergrowth. Up head he sees the bobbing beacon of a flashlight, the shouts are much louder.
“‘Ware the willow, ‘ware the willow,” the boy hears in his head from the fairies. Sure enough, as he gets close enough to see the bully, the bigger boy is tangled against the trunk of an old willow tree that tightens long branches around him.
The boy runs closer and asks the willow, “Mr Willow, what is wrong. What has this boy done?”
“He tore one of my brothers without asking. He is rude,” the willow tree says. The boy notices then that there is a long stick, like what could be used for walking that is on the ground by the willow. It is covered in swamp water.
“He does not know the rules Mr Willow. He is new,” the boy says.
“Seventh son, if you vouch for him, you must go with him. Teach him proper manners,”
“I promise,” the boy says. Though a part of him wonders if the bully will agree to it. “I promise,” he says a second time, with more conviction. “I promise to guide him through the ways of nature,” he says a third time, to complete the oath.
The willow’s response is to loosen its hold on the bully and the bigger boy drops to the ground with a shriek. The bully looks up at the boy with wide, frightened eyes and yells, “witch, witch, witch!”
The boy sighs and asks the fairies for help. The bully is pulled to a standing position by a series of fluttering green lights and pushed toward the boy.
“If you’d rather stay in the woods, stay but I can help you get home,” the boy says not looking at the bully as he starts walking away from the willow.
“I was on an adventure and perfectly fine. I’m going to steal treasure from the Green Giant,” the bully says. The boy who hasn’t turned around imagines the bully probably has a scowl on his face. Despite the promise made to the willow, the boy knows a few loopholes, and he never promised to drag the bully anywhere, so he starts to walk away. A wolf howls in the distance and the boy feels the air crackle, like a lightning storm or like when the Red Gate opened. He puts the feeling out of his mind, wanting to get back to bed as away from the bully.
“Wait! Wait! Where are you going! Witch! Witch! Help!” There is the sound of crackling underbrush and the bully chases after the boy.
“I’m going home,” the boy says.
“Scaredy cat,” the bully sneers from behind him. The boy doesn’t flinch. After having seen how afraid the bully was of the willow, a tree, whatever the bigger boy does isn’t scary to him.
“Hey, witch! Are you listening to me,” the bully says, still following behind the boy.
“I’m listening to the fairies,” the boy says. “They helped me find you.”
“Fairies. You’re such a baby,” the bully says. The boy doesn’t respond, he bends down to test the ground. They are at the edge of another swamp. He calls the fairies and asks them to help him across. Once more, they gather around him and he feels his weight lighten as he begins to step across the murky water. Behind him the bully is panicking.
“The fairies are helping me,” the boy says with a grudging tone over his shoulder. “They can help you too, if you want.”
There is another howl, it sounds much closer than the last. At the sound of the wolf, the boy hears the bully scramble to his feet, breaking twigs and underbrush as he does so. The bully mumbles something the boy can’t hear and a moment later the bully is running past the boy, with a face full of fear and a thread of excitement. The bully stumbles and falls into a bush with a crash, having reached the other side of the swamp. The boy follows more carefully and waits for the bigger boy to get out of the bush. Here the boy noticed again, the feeling of crackling air and this time he listens.
“Gate witch,” the bully grumbles beside the boy, but the slur lacks the usual angry heat though the boy is only half aware of this as he realizes the crackling means there is a hole opening up somewhere nearby. A hole between the dimensions, and not a natural door like that of the Red Gate, but a tear, a rip, like what the bully did to the book. He listens to the wind, and learns the tear is beyond the Inkwood, up on the Mountain of the Green Giant.
“Uh oh,” the boy says out-loud, not thinking about the bully in that moment, but about the book and fact it is a Gatekeeper book. A magic book and wondering if whatever is physically done to it, manifests into this reality. And he didn’t tell his father. His father is not going to be pleased.
“What?” the bigger boy snaps and then he shrieks, moving close to the boy as a wolf howls. The sound is very close now.
“That’s it!” The boy says, an idea dancing across his mind that will solve the problem of the tear without his father ever having been the wiser. Though he’s going to have to take the bully, as per his promise to the willow.
“You wanted an adventure? You’re about to get one,” the boy says, and he sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles. The wolf howling increases in volume and then there are three that appear in front of the boy and the bully. The bully shrieks and falls on his bottom.
“We’re going to see the Green Giant,” the boy says, “and the wolves will take us,” he moves toward one of the wolves, petting it between the ears and slips onto its back. “Come on!”
“But, but, but, it was only a silly dare. I wasn’t, really. I just wanted them to like me!” The bully starts to whine and cry and the boy feels his chest tighten. To get rid of the feeling he blurts out, “well, I like you. Now, come on!”
For good measure, the boy asks the fairies to pick up the bigger boy who shrieks as he is lifted into the air and deposited on the back of one of the wolves. Then, they begin to run and any crying from the bigger boy is lost to the wind as the boy laughs and enjoys for a moment the freedom that riding a wolf offers.
Too soon, the wolves slow down as they climb the steep rock of the mountain and then they stop entirely in front of a great, dark maw. The entrance to the cave where the Green Giant lives.
In front of the cave however is a swirling, stretching mass of air, just like this morning when his father opened the Red Gate. His father hasn’t taught him anything about closing cracks, let alone the mechanics behind how they open. He only knows that the Red Gate is a special, permanent one that Gatekeepers can close and open for any travelers across dimensions.
The boy is snapped from his internal panic when he sees the bully walking toward the crack in a trance. The threads of loose astral stretch out and tap the bigger boy, curl around his shoulders and he walks quicker.
“Hey, hey!” The boy shouts, realizing then he’s never heard the bully’s name, “don’t look at it! Don’t look!” Nothing he shouts stops the bully however, and he’s getting closer to the crack.
The boy asks the fairies for help. They always have and then he goes back to shouting. He doesn’t dare get close to the crack. He doesn’t want to risk being sucked into the unstable space. The crackling is getting stronger however, and it feels like moving through mud just to take one step away from the tear. He asks for help in his mind once more and through his panic he hears a roar and the ground shudders. A great figure appears from behind the tear, out from the dark maw of the cave. The Green Giant, who is more akin to a great, green tree than human. The giant reaches through the tear and picks up the bully. The threads of astral that were pulling him closer and closer snap off and shudder like wild snakes.
Then the giant steps through the tear, as if it is not even though and reaches down. The boy feels the ground lurch and the giant’s other big hand closes around him. It feels like he is engulfed in a moss. The giant then turns to the tear and speaks in a language the boy has not heard of. It sounds of rock and stone and ancient bones layered deep in the earth.
The crack snaps shut, and the air is still. It is so quiet now the boy can hear his breathing, coming in great big gasps. The boy feels himself being lowered to the ground and a second later he feels the bully next to him. The Green Giant looks down and speaks,
“Seventh son of a seventh son, your father was dealing with this on the morrow, there was no need to come near it and aggravate it more. Whatever is he teaching you?”
The boy winces at the reprimand which comes in a deep, slow tone, so much worse than one that is loud and sharp. His mind flashes back to the morning, and he recalls a warning his father gave the gnome, Greybeard.
“Oh, oh, so this wasn’t from the book? This was already here?”
“Yes, young one. There have been many of late. The barrier between worlds is thinning. Not a bad thing but you humans must still yet be careful. Especially those outside,” he nods to the bigger boy who is shivering and quiet but his eyes wide with awe as he looks up at the Green Giant.
“Oops,” the boy says, feeling foolish. A book is a book, perhaps it wasn’t nearly as magic as he thought. Any further line of questioning is cut short however with a shout of the boy’s name from his father. What follows is a flurry of blankets, explanations, apologies and the bully being sent off back to a run-down, quiet apartment in the care of one of the boy’s older brothers.
The next day, the boy receives an extended lecture in the place of lessons and is sent off to school with further reprimands to mind himself and not get himself or any others into trouble. After school he walks out to the poplar tree to tell the nymph all about what has happened when he hears the familiar tread of the bully behind him. He is in a different class from the boy so he’d managed to avoid him all day.
“I’m Timothy,” the bigger boy says to break the silence when the boy stares at the ground and doesn’t say anything. He has no idea what to say. When the boy still says nothing, Timothy adds, “I’m sorry about what I did to your book and… all the other stuff…” he adds, scuffing his shoe on the ground and now it is his turn to not look the boy in the eye. “You’re pretty cool, actually,”
“You didn’t freak out too much,” the boy admits, finally looking up.
“Friends?” Timothy asks. “I’m really sorry, I just, I…”
“You don’t fit in either. Friends,” the boy agrees. It’s not just his duty as a Gatekeeper that makes him want to help out the bully now. This is the first friend the boy has outside of his family and it feels exciting, like a real adventure. A similar smile fills Timothy’s face.
They leave school together that first day and all the days after, passing the poplar tree where there is now a smaller tree with strange black and white bark, patterned almost in the shape of letters.
From this point on, the seventh son of a seventh son of a long line of Gatekeepers and the bully who came from almost nothing at all, became close friends who regularly hiked to the top of the Mountain of the Green Giant to visit another friend who had always been just a little misunderstood.
ARR
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