Hide and Seek, Dream and Wake

“How do you describe what magic feels like, or how do you know when you're in it?"

Leif Erickson considered his mother's question as the two of them pulled into the driveway of their new country house.

He stepped slowly out of the car and considered the forest he was about to claim as his own.

"I think it's kind of like waking up," his mother continued. "You know when you get out of bed in the morning, and your eyes are groggy and your mind is still kind of snagged on that last dream? A bowl of cheerios, some jelly toast, and you're ready to go, but what if you could wake up again after that? What would you wake up into?”

The 12-year-old explorer breathed in the smell of birdsong, allowing it to stir every wild impulse within him.

“Close your eyes,” mother said. She led him, squinting, around to the back of the house. “Okay, open!”

Only the grin that slowly cracked across his face could begin to do justice to the sight that met his eyes. There, in his own backyard, lay a forest thicker and wilder than any he had ever seen. There were tall pines with their tips tickling the sky, stately spruces smelling of Christmas, and broad junipers with vivid clumps of blue-colored berries. It was a bright morning, and the sun seemed to catch the dew on every leaf and branch, turning the entire wood to jewels.

“Diamond Forest, we’ll call it.” said Leif, for it was his nature to name things.

“So be it,” said Mom. Then she leaned into his ear, "We must explore it all."

"Will there be climbing?" asked Leif.

"And tree houses," she replied.

It was decided they could do nothing else that day until they had had a game of hide and seek in Diamond Forest.

Leif Erickson ran into the thicket while Mom counted 60 Mississippi’s with her eyes closed. As he crunched along on the dry pine-needle carpet, he felt a change in the air; something like breathing fruit and pine cones and sunlight all at once, and as he breathed in, his senses heightened like they never had before. He absorbed the chittering of the tree-top birds, and the laughing of the leaves, and the "nack nack nack" of squirrels cracking nuts on the branches. He bathed in the pockets of light where the trees were wide enough apart, and the forest dust that danced in ribbons within them. All together, he smelled the fragrance of magic.

There was a crashing further up, and a bobbing patch of white fluff that diminished away into the thicket. Leif Erickson bounded after it. The fluff paused after a few yards, and he discovered that it belonged to the back side of a little wide-eyed doe. She had especially huge ears that flopped a bit when she darted and twitched when at last she stopped from a distance to look at him.

“Hello you,” he called, but not loud enough for Mom to hear. “Now if you’ll show me the greatest hiding spot in Diamond Forest, I’ll let you graze in our garden!”
Her big ears twitched forward involuntarily when he said this last bit, for what is harder for a warm-blooded cervidae to resist than a juicy bit of vegetable garden?
And so he found himself crashing after her again, weaving through trees and over shrubs, until he broke upon a clearing that made him forget about everything else.

The ground was completely covered with roots. Not small, normal sized roots like you might find arching up from the base of an oak or juniper, but thick, damp, twisty roots that wove and dove around each other. Gnarls and gnarls of them twisted so tightly that you couldn’t see the ground.

But it was the very unusual and very large trunk which arose from their center that had caught Leif’s attention. Trunk, I call it. Really it was more like a hundred trunks, for all the roots came together in the middle and rose straight up in a dense tangle so wide that Leif had no doubt it would have taken up their whole house. After about Mom’s height, they splashed outwards in all directions and began sprouting branches that bore green leaves broad enough to wrap yourself up in like a blanket. At the base of each leaf was a clump of dark, orange berries. They were as fat as small plumbs, or large grapes, and made you think of cobbler and jam just by looking at them.

He found the little deer at the foot of tree, munching from one of the lower clumps of berries. She looked up at him casually, and spoke out loud with his mother’s voice, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Leif Erickson laughed.

The doe bounded forward and began dancing in circles around him. Laughing still, Leif made for the tree, for though in this new twist, he had already been found, it seemed they both understood that the game had just begun, and a whole forest of hiding spots remained within the tree itself.

Scrambling up the tree didn’t prove to be difficult because the mysterious roots bent graciously as he squeezed inside. The bark was mostly smooth, and gave off a distinct fragrance that sank into his lungs with a kind of living weight. I can't think of any comparable smell on earth, but Leif thought there was something rather filling about it. Like how you feel after consuming a large piece of hot apple pie.

Can a smell be filling?

When at last he reached a thick branch that poked out the top, he forgot to breathe, for here again, he had passed through into another place. Here, he realized, was the source of the magic that overflowed through all of Diamond Forest. No longer was he in the forest, but it stretched below him in all directions with only the tallest pines matching his height. And no longer was it morning, for all the world now rested quietly under the moon’s silver blanket. So quietly, in fact, that not a sound could be heard. No wind blew through the tangled branches of a tree. No twig broke beneath the fleet foot of a fox. No cricket chirped its nightly prayer. All creatures of the night seemed hushed as if before the start of some great celestial show.

Leif, who had begun to feel strangely affectionate for the color of fire, had the sudden, curious sensation that the stars were watching him with interest. They burned with such clarity he thought he might just be able to reach his hand up and touch one.

Against that sky, a clump of glowing orange berries hanging farther up the branch caught his eye. The same berries, he realized then, that had given the deer his mother's voice.

He plucked one of them off and held it out in his hand. As it passed into his shadow, the orange glow faded. He put it back under open starlight, and the glow returned.

Star berries.

Leif Erickson put the fruit in his mouth. It was warm and sweet, and settled rather quickly into his stomache. As he felt the juice tingling down his throat, he noticed that one star directly above him appeared brighter than the others. He stared at it closely, and blinked hard. Had it grown brighter still? In a moment, he was sure of it. It wasn't until it had taken up a third of the sky that he realized he was no longer clinging to the branch, or to anything at all.

The star spoke to him in his mother's voice.

“How do you describe what magic feels like, or how do you know when you're in it...

I think it's kind of like waking up.”