“Whoa, did I do that?” Ron hurries over to a nearby boulder and examines it. The gigantic piece of granite has been neatly split into two by some powerful force. Ron’s fingers run up and down the smooth surface. “And all without use of a wand.” He smirks. “Wait till Draco sees this, eh Harry?”
Harry shakes his head quickly. “No, we’re never to use our Theo powers in our own realm.”
“Why not? I’d love to see Malfoy running away from me, scared out of his wits.” Ron grins and holds up his hands, palms facing outwards. “What’s the use of having this power if we can’t use it when we want?”
“Because that’s Death Eater talk, that’s why,” Harry mutters.
Ron sighs. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Hermione frowns, “How much longer until we get to the Land of Nod?”
“Gabriel said that it’s not too far from the gates of Eden,” Harry replies. “Nod is directly east, and that’s where we’ve been heading.”
“Hang on, what’s that?” Ron points out a paved path which is cutting through the desolate wastes.
“I don’t know,” Harry frowns. “But it’s on the way. Should we take it?”
“If we do,” Hermione says, “We should be very careful. No telling what might be lurking on it.”
“I’m ready for anything,” Ron says. He gingerly places one foot on the path. Nothing happens. “I think it’s all right.”
Harry and Hermione exchange glances before stepping onto the path themselves. After a few moments of just standing around, they begin to follow the path.
We must leave our intrepid band of adventurers to explain a little more about the small path that they are traversing on.
The Trial Trail was a creation of Adam, back in the days before he had had his falling out with Eve and they split up. Originally, Adam had built this path from Eden to the Land of Nod solely so that he and Eve could go and visit Cain. Cain, in exile for killing his brother always received visits from his parents. When Cain was released into infamy, the trail began to fall into disuse. No one travelled on it anymore, and so the path, lonely and bored and wondering what to do with itself, began to redefine its job.
No longer was it just the only path into the Land of Nod, which it still is. The lonely path created puzzles for itself. It amused quite easily, since, being a path, it had very little brain to begin with. Therefore, the puzzles it created were never too difficult for it to solve, but since no one ever came down the Trial Trail, the path thought that it was the cleverest path in the After.
The path can only truthfully claim that it is the cleverest path in the After because no other path in all the realms became bored enough to become self-aware.
The path cannot speak because it never met anyone who could teach it any sort of recognizable language. And so the path, being an extra-clever path, decided to create its own. It was a wonderful language, filled with beautiful sounds and imagery and metaphor and two hundred different synonyms for the word “paved.”
Unfortunately, what sounds like language to the path is too high for human ears to hear properly. So as the path is actively trying to communicate with our intrepid band of travelers, giving them greeting and asking them not to trod on it to heavily, all Harry and the others hear is...
“Ow!” Ron rubs his ears.
“Is something the matter?” Hermione asks.
“I dunno, it’s kind of like a sound’s not quite reaching my ears. It’s annoying!” Ron shakes his head, trying to make the ringing in his ears stop.
Harry looks around. “Something’s making noise, but I don’t see anything.”
The path, being a path, tries to wave itself frantically, but alas, it was too sturdily paved for it to be able to rear itself up and catch the attention of the Trio.
“Weird,” Hermione sighs. “Anyhow, we’ve got to hurry. Watson and Becca might be in great danger.”
The two boys nod and the three break into a swift run.
The path shrieks in protest, but to no avail. The Trio cannot hear its frenzied cries. “Aha!” exclaims the path. “You shall never be able to pass the first Trial!”
“Careful,” Harry mutters as he points up ahead. “There’s a loose piece of rock there.”
The teens clear the rock with an easy jump.
“Here now!” says the path. “How were you able to clear that?”
Unfortunately, the path, being a path, has no real perception of depth. It only knows how wide it is, and how long. It has a strictly two-dimensional mind.
“Hah!” the path continues. “I know you won’t be able to pass the second Trial!”
“There’s a pile of rubble in the path!” cries Ron.
“Hah!” barks the path again.
“Oh, just go around it!” Hermione says as she veers off the path, runs around the rubble and then gets back to the path on the other side.
The path sighs. “Oh, these must be the cleverest travelers in the realms of the After to be smart enough to pass my trials. But you shall not be able to pass the final Trial! Yes, I had to spend hours and hours devising something so clever and dastardly difficult to pass...”
“Whoa, watch out!” Ron skids to a complete stop on the path.
Hermione almost smashes straight into Ron. “What’s wrong with you.”
Ron points to the path. “There’s a fork in the path, see? Which way should we go? Left or right?”
Harry looks down both paths. “I don’t know. They look exactly the same to me.”
“Hah-hah!” says the path triumphantly. “You are not as clever as me! I am the cleverest path in the realms of the After!”
Hermione frowns. Then she grins widely. “We go straight.”
“Straight? But there’s no path there!” Ron says, pointing to area between the fork.
“Yes, there is.” Hermione walks down to the fork and crouches. She wipes some of the sandy dirt away and reveals the straight path underneath. “See, how the pattern of the bricks on the path changes on the left and right, but not in the center. Those two paths on the sides were made after the original path was built, and probably not by the same builder.”
“Clever Hermione!” Ron exclaims.
“Noooooooooooo!” cries the path. “All right. You are the cleverest explorers in the After. I shall defer only to you.” It grunts grudgingly.
“Great job, Hermione!” Harry says. “Look, I can see something at the end of the path!”
The three dash off again and reach the end of the path.
“This must be the Land of Nod,” Ron looks around.
“The Land of Nod was always thought of as the realm of human dreams,” Hermione says. “This must be a place where people’s dreams become real.”
“And nightmares too, I suspect. Keep an eye out.” Harry looks around. “Watson! Becca!” he calls. The desert itself is silent. “Where could they be?”
“Here!” a distant voice calls out.
“Did that sound like them?” Ron asks.
“I don’t know. It’s too far away,” Harry shrugs. “Where are you?” he calls out.
“Harry, is that you?” the voice calls. The voice is just out of reach.
“Yes, it’s me!” Harry continues. “Watson?”
“No!” the voice says a bit louder.
The voice sounds too deep to be a woman’s voice, but Harry tries anyway. “Becca?”
“No,” the voice is closer, but the source of it is still no where to be found.
“Harry, I don’t like this,” Ron says, frowning deeply.
“Neither do I, Harry. Something’s not right. It doesn’t feel right,” Hermione glances around. “There’s nothing about here but sand.”
Harry suddenly sinks through the sand and out of sight.
Ron’s eyes widen in shock. “Harry!”
Hermione rushes to where Harry, until so very recently, was standing. “Where did he go?”
“I, I don’t know!” Ron’s voice is frantic. “One minute he’s standing right there with us and the next minute, he’s gone! It was like he fell into a deep hole, or something.”
Hermione crouches and begins to dig away at the sand. “Harry! Harry! Come on, Ron, help me dig! Harry!”
“Hermione, stop! THere’s too much sand! We’d never...Hermione!” Ron begins to shake her. “It’s too much to clear away. We’d never reach him. Something, something must have taken him under.”
“Oh, no...” Hermione raises her hands to her mouth.
“Harry!” Ron calls down towards the sand. “Harry!”
“Here!” cries a distant voice.
“He’s there!” Ron exclaims. “Harry?”
Hermione covers Ron’s mouth quickly. “Don’t shout.”
“Mmmfff mffff mfffff...” Ron says before Hermione removes her hands. “Why not?” Ron asks in a bare whisper.
“You saw what happened to Harry. Something’s below, in the sand. And it’s following our voices.”
“But, if Harry’s down there...” Ron starts.
“Whatever’s down there already got to him,” Hermione says.
“We can’t just leave him down there!” Ron says. “He, he needs our help!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Hermione answers. “I just, don’t know what to do.”
“Well,” Ron says slowly. “He’s a Theo, and he knows how to use his powers. I hope he can take care of himself.”
“Meantime, we should look for Watson and Becca ourselves,” Hermione says.
“How? We can’t shout or anything. Whatever’s down there will here us, surely.”
“We walk, Ron. We walk and look.” Hermione sighs, trudging away in the sand.
“I was afraid of that,” Ron says, following Hermione closely.
Posted by Michelle at November 25, 2002 8:17 AM