The Portal
It seemed no different from any other stand of trees,
except maybe that it stood alone on a barren slope,
hundreds of feet from any other trees.
But it was different.
It was a very special stand of trees.
It was a magic stand of trees.
Not for everyone.
For hardly anyone,
actually.
For the few who could see,
even from a distance
that those trees had something to say.
And when one of those few, special people
approached those trees,
she could hear the voices, the tune;
words and music,
haunting and inviting.
Just below the trees,
on the northern facing slope of the hill
was a huge rock,
with a base, a pedestal and a flat top,
longer than she was tall.
It very clearly was an altar.
She might be tempted to lie down upon this rock,
this altar,
to see how it felt to lie upon the sun-warmed stone
there in the clear air,
under the wide-open sky,
backlit by the afternoon sun.
She might want to imagine
how it would feel
to be a sacrifice to the gods.
But then she would be drawn,
enticed, as it were, by the music,
again, again,
by the trees themselves.
She would rise from the rock,
the altar, and turn and face the trees,
and would approach them slowly,
quietly, with awe.
She would notice mundane things about the trees;
that they grew in a perfect circle,
like a fairy ring of mushrooms,
as if there had been one huge old tree in the center,
and when it died
all these smaller trees had grown up around its grave.
But once inside the circle of trees
all thoughts of the physical,
of the mundane--
all thoughts really, were gone,
and only the magic remained.
She would be moved to walk in a circle,
a spiral around and around the inside of the ring,
from the outermost edge,
touching each tree in turn as she passed it,
ever circling, ever smaller,
into the center of the ring.
And when she reached the center,
she was gone.
For that ring,
that stand of trees alone on the barren hillside
facing the not-too-far-off ocean,
seemingly growing from the rocks themselves,
that circle was a Portal,
a doorway to otherworlds,
other places,
other dimensions...
open wide for those who could see,
for those who believed...
© copyright 2002 Maggie Wilson
