Issyk Ata, Kyrgyzstan.

Part 1: Glass For Seeing

Part 2: Where the Peaks Meet Sky

Part 3: Circle of Seven

Part 4: Homefamily

Part 5: Tinderdeer

Part 6: The Water Voice

I talked to the Tinderdeer only when no one else was looking. With the box in my pocket, and the water-voices in my ears, I was collecting secrets like a river tumbling sharp stones into a deep, dark cove.

All of the deer could talk to me, but only one really wanted to most of the time. She had a small dark spot on her nose and her horn curved back so far it almost touched between her long ears. She told me her name was Akula.

She also told me the deer understood everything people said, and always had. We had some good laughs behind Wes’ back when Akula stopped one day and wouldn’t budge until he said “please.” Somehow, that made me feel better.

We’d been walking for weeks when we passed the first statue. It cast a long shadow across the path, and I was the first to stop and stare. The others soon gathered around, all but Y’nessa who stayed bundled in her cart. She’d been complaining of cold constantly lately, even though the summer sun felt hot to the rest of us.

“What is it?” Enid asked, her hand on Kilton’s arm. The statue was carved out of a hollow tree trunk, taller even than Kilton who towered over the rest of us. It was like someone chopped all the branches off a tree, then dug out most of the middle, and made this. Around the wood of the trunk, five figures stared out.

“Who cares what it is? Who made it?” Wes wondered. He had a good point. We’d always been told that nobody lived past the Long River, and we’d crossed it a week ago.

“Look, there’s a child,” Enid pointed to a small boy’s head, nearly hidden by a pale green weed growing up beside the carved wood. Enid brushed the plant away and we could see the mother’s hand curved around his face.

“Come away from there!” Y’nessa’s crumbling voice arose from the cart.

“Why?” my brother Rolph asked.

“Yes, what is the harm, here, Mother of Stones?” Trill was the first back at the cart – she lay her hand against Y’nessa’s wrinkled face just like the mother on the statue.

Before Y’nessa could answer, I felt something in my head. That same spider-creeping darkness I’d felt weeks ago before we even left home. Where was it coming from?

My eyes skipped from one carved statue face to the next. They stared out, smiling, peaceful. But inside the trunk, in the dark center where the sap of a living tree had once flowed, something rotten was spreading.

“It’s behind the trunk!” Akula’s voice splashed into my ears.

Everyone else was backing off now — everyone but me and Enid. Even if they didn’t feel the spider thing, there was Y’nessa’s strange warning and there wasn’t anything left to see, anyway.

“Come away, Enid,” Kilton urged. “You heard the Mother of Stones.”

But she just stood there, frozen. Staring at the little boy’s face. I ignored the salty fear building in my throat and forced my feet to obey and walk me around the back of the old tree trunk.

Black, oozing, reaching–legs everywhere like spiders. It was there in front of my eyes, but also in my mind, creeping out from the corners and tugging at my thoughts, mixing them up. What was I doing here? My hand lifted up like it wanted to touch the rotten darkness. No! I screamed, but no sound came out.

“Enid!” I heard Kilton scream, but I couldn’t turn my head to see. My gaze was captured, paralyzed, sucked in by the spidery tendrils.

The next thing I knew, Akula charged straight at me, knocking me away from the statue and scattering her load of food and lightstones across the path.

Bailey Island, Maine. June 20, 2009.

As an explorer of far off planets, I know it’s best to steer clear of green slime. Never a good idea, getting too close to that stuff. Best case scenario: it slicks onto your boots and seeps through your suit and you stink like a Kerplusion Sludge Crawler for two weeks. Worst case scenario: death.

So when I clambored down the red cliffs on Eden 2 — great name for a planet made entirely of rocks, huh? Not one green thing for miles and they name it Eden — anyway, when I climbed down, parched and starving from a week with only recycled water to drink (guess where THAT comes from) and stale fortified rice crackers to eat, the last thing I wanted to see was slime.

I was looking for life. That’s my job — I crawl all over desolate worlds of sand and sludge and rock and smoke searching for something with a brain that won’t devour me on sight.

So far, the record is planets – 12, Ferdinand the Great Explorer – 0. At least I haven’t been devoured, unless you count the time this huge tentacled thing on Recess ate my boot and three toes, too.

Here I am at the bottom of the red cliffs, and there it is in front of me — laid out like a hall of gorgeous glass mirrors — water! Every two year old knows… water = life. This could be my chance.

I didn’t even see the slime at first. I know, it was staring me in the face, all bright green and slimy, but I only had eyes for the water.

Down I ran, whooping and screaming and punching the methane-clouded air.

My boot plopped right into the worst of the slime. Wham! I came crashing down, knees smacking into slime-coated rocks, hands stretching out to catch myself and slipping through stringy green stuff.

This is the end, I thought. Here on Eden 2, Ferdinand the Great Explorer meets his doom.

The stench was already rising up around me. Was it poisonous? Was I drawing in breaths laced with other-worldly toxins?

Something squirted me in the face, and I coughed.

It squirted again, and I swiveled my head to gulp the cool, clear water… only to find my saviour was none less than the slime itself. The puddle had made a pair of arms out of itself, and now they were splashing me like two feisty garden hoses.

When a pair of eyes rose up on a third arm, I blacked out.

Bailey Island, ME. June 20, 2009.

Part 1: Glass For Seeing

Part 2: Where the Peaks Meet Sky

Part 3: Circle of Seven

Part 4: Homefamily

Part 5: Tinderdeer

I might actually get used to this traveling thing. For one thing, all I’ve got to do most of the day is walk. That’s better than running after a wayward homebrother or scrubbing dirty clothes or practicing stone spells I can never get right.

And I get to walk right behind Wes if I want. He obviously knows I’m shadowing him, and finally he talks to me.

“See that tree coming up? Don’t let the tinderdeer eat any of those flowers.”

Well, it wasn’t a “how are you?” but I’ll take it. I prance ahead to the tree and pluck one of the ruby red blooms. It smells faintly sweet, like sugar.

“For you, sir! As a token of my favor should we run into any horrible beasts.” I present the flower to Wes, touching my forehead with an outrageously exaggerated gesture of respect. Either he’ll think it’s a joke and laugh, or maybe he’ll actually accept it.

My heart thumps as he stares at me in surprise. I guess he wasn’t expecting humor from the boring, hopeless girl. One of the tinderdeer turns a curious nose toward the flower, and I snatch it away.

“You don’t think I would actually eat that, do you? I just wanted to smell it.” The water-voice swishes past my ears, so I hold the flower out for the deer to smell.

“Rune!” Wes grabs my hand and drops the flower on the ground, crushing it under his boot. Everyone turns to stare at us. Even Y’nessa peers out of her cart. “She was trying to poison the tinderdeer!”

“It said it just wanted to smell it!”

“What?!” Wes finally laughs, only it’s not the happy laugh I was hoping for when I offered the flower. It’s a dark laugh like he thinks I’m crazy. “The tinderdeer told you that?”

“Yes.” I back away from the tree of blazing flowers, and I can hear Wes slapping the deer’s rumps as he steers them all to the far side of the trail.

“Rune thinks the deer can talk!” he jokes to Rolph, who just shrugs his shoulders.

Thanks for the support, little brother.

“Crazy kids.” Kilton brushes past me with Enid, and soon I’m behind everybody but Y’nessa’s cart. Still I don’t move.

I bite my lip. Maybe I’ll just turn around and go home. It’s only three days away. I could make it.

“Come here, child.” Y’nessa’s crackly voice beckons me. “The deer spoke to you?”

I let the first set of wooden wheels roll past me, and I look up to see the old woman’s creased face frowning at me from her seat on a pile of rain jackets.

“I was just pretending,” I say. “I wouldn’t have let the deer eat it!” I couldn’t stand to have her send me home. If I chose to go home, that was one thing. But if I failed so bad that even the Mother of Stones didn’t want me any more… I’d have to become a hermit living in the trees.

Y’nessa nods. “I suppose it is too much to hope for.”

“What? What’s too much to hope for?” The back wheels of the cart roll past me, and I have to trot to catch up.

“It’s been a hundred years since the last time a stonebearer found a bondmate. Such gifts are beyond the likes of me.”

Something was beyond the Mother of Stones? Something boring little me might be able to do? Wait, I wasn’t just pretending, I wanted to shout. The tinderdeer really did speak to me.

But Wes and Rolph were jostling each other up ahead.

“That tinderdeer wants to go to the bathroom! It told me so,” Rolph joked.

“Hey, Rune! Come translate for us!” Wes shouted back. “Was that blart sound a tinderdeer fart or a ‘how-do-you-do’? I can’t tell.”

I clenched my fingers around the timebox in my pocket and walked as slowly as I possibly could in the tracks Y’nessas cart dug into the dirt.

Oil on paper. June 20, 2009.

I like how the figure in this painting kind of hides at first… you see the wave, then see someone sitting on the rock. I wasn’t sure I could paint a wave when I started this painting (they don’t hold still…) but with a little patience, I was able to figure it out.

Oil on paper. June 19, 2009.

I just returned from a vacation in Bailey Island, Maine. The weather was mostly cloudy, foggy, and rainy… but the wild roses were in bloom and scenting the air. The churning sea and cliffs of colorful rocks inspired two paintings. I wish I’d had time and space in the car to paint more!

New Boston, NH. September 7, 2007.

Hop knows all the horses’ names. He crouches behind the rusty pole near the center of the Merry-go-round and listens as streams of kids come and go. Shouting and pushing, they choose their favorites and give them names.

This is prancer! Mine’s called Red. My horse is the fastest! Oh yeah? Red can run a million miles an hour. Oh look! That one has a purple mane. She’s a princess-horse. Is there a unicorn? I want to ride Black Beauty!

So many different voices, but to Hop they are one–A voice of dashing through meadows and down racetracks. A voice of free. A voice that brings the plastic horses to life.

His mother sees him crouching behind the pole and drags him out. “Them kids pays a dollar each to ride. You got a dollar?”

It’s pointless to argue, even though Mom’s the one who collects those dollars and tucks them away in a hidden belt night after night.

“Get over to the hot dog stand. I told Oscar you’d take the late shift.”

Hop drags his tiny feet across the fair grounds. He’s tall for his age, but for some reason his feet stayed small. Like horse’s hooves.

He also has a mane. Bushy dark hair that’s never been properly cut — just snapped at with cheap scissors. But then it grows back practically overnight.

“Hey kiddo. Five dogs, one chili.” Oscar patted his shoulder. He was so huge he barely fit in his hot dog stand. Hop never could figure out how he managed to juggle so many orders without knocking anything over. Oscar had to step out of the booth so Hop could squeeze in.

As hot dogs and sausages sizzled and popped, Hop kept glancing through the tiny window toward the Merry-go-round. It was getting toward closing.

The magic time.

Finally, the fair began to close. Like a giant machine settling down to sleep, tent flaps closed, lights winked out, rides shuddered to a halt.

Hop went obediently to the sleeping bag back of his mother’s van. Someday, they were going to get a mobile home. A nice one, like Oscar’s.

Mom wasn’t there. Hop grinned. This meant he didn’t have to wait for her to fall asleep. He rumpled up his sleeping bag for a while — just in case she was nearby — then jumped out onto the summer-warmed grass.

The horses were waiting. One by one, he greeted them by name.

“Hello Red! Prancer, how’s the chipped leg? Aww, Princess, you have gum on your mane!”

They whinnied and rubbed his cheek and warmed him with their breath. Always, their anwer was the same.

When? When can we go free?

“Soon.” Hop stood up on the plain carriage-seat. “We’ll go together.”

As moonlight glittered off the horses shiny plastic coats, Hop could see them dance with excitement.

Oil on paper. June 7, 2009.

This tree grows by the Charles River where it flows past our apartment.

This is based on my novel in progress, The Seaweed Solution. Only I’m writing this scene as if the person reading it knows nothing about the rest of the book in order to get back in touch with the main character, who has been evading me lately.

Rabbits don’t eat seaweed.

At least, that’s what I had conjectured before I saw our pet bunnny chowing down on a pile of the slimy green stuff. That was the last time I ever saw him.

At the time, I would have told you I’d be happy if he ran away or got stolen. It was never my idea to adopt a wild rabbit, and besides, he always pooped on my notebooks.

But then Mom got all weepy and Dad started writing songs about how much he missed the furry guy, and now it’s up to me, Aspen May Wicklow, to find him.

I reach out to tear the green frond from the rock. This will have to be the bait. Wish I had some lettuce, but who knows where I’d find some of that. Lettuce might even be extinct!

Oh yeah, should have told you. The missing rabbit is actually problem #2. Problem #1 is the rabbit got stolen by someone from the future, and I’m actually sort of 500 years ahead of when I’m supposed to be. So it’s kind of tricky to tear a stupid piece of seaweed off a stupid rock. My hand goes right through it.

One thing I’ve figured out is that time traveling turns you into a sort of ghost. It’s like you’re actually still in the present, but everything around you is in the future, and none of it is quite sure you’re really there.

“Take that, algae!” I shout, and punch a button on the cell-phone shaped shifter that got me into this whole mess in the first place.

Now the seaweed comes off easily, and I wave it triumphantly. “Here, bunny bunny bunny! I’ve got a treat for you…”

I make my way off the beach and up toward the town. My town, 500 years in the future. It actually hasn’t changed much. At least, the main road is still in the same place. The buildings and houses are all totally different – built with some weird reflective plasticky stuff instead of wood or brick or whatever.

And the cars are totally crazy–so low to the ground you can barely see the wheels, and they each have this huge computer screen taking up half the windshield. It’s gotta be like this GPS-autopilot-thingy since the drivers don’t seem to do much.

One benefit of being half-ghost is that most future people don’t quite see me and none of them can hear me. I guess sound doesn’t time travel very well.

Up main street not far from the beach is a large plasticky building in the exact same place my school used to be. A sign near the entryway flashes from images to faces to a name: Yadwod Research Center

If my rabbit were anywhere, he’d be here. A poor, helpless research subject.

The frond of seaweed is cold against my fingers. Do I just go in?

Someone else approaches the doorway, and a voice calls out: Authorized entry. Welcome oceanographic research 10-4.

I’m definitely not authorized, but I’m also kinda transparent.

Here goes nothing…

I walk toward the door, ready for a clanging alarm to sound, or maybe some future laser to freeze me in place.

The door speaks: Authorized entry. Welcome Aspen Wicklow, phD.

Totally weird.

Oil on paper. June 6, 2009.

I was trying to capture the look of light shining on patches of grass growing on the forest floor. It looks a little like white flowers instead… but I’m happy with it either way. I actually drew out the composition before painting this time, and set down three bands of thin color: bright green  on top, light blue-green in the middle, and brownish-red in the front. I’m really loving this grass technique I made up a while ago of scratching little lines with the palette knife.

Issyk Ata, Kyrgyzstan. October 17, 2004.

Eggar’s fingertips drift over the broken shards, hover, then drop, lifting up a squarish piece and holding it against the wall. Perfect fit. His other hand lifts a trowel of fresh paste and slops it in behind. Then comes the delightful squishhhh as he presses and holds.

There. One more empty space filled.

But the wall is seemingly endless, and Eggar only has so many ceramic pots to shatter in the exact right shade of orange.

I know! An idea occurs to him. I’ll switch over to yellow slowly, then green, then blue… I’ll fill the wall with a rainbow of colors!

But he still wouldn’t know what was behind it.

That was why he chose this work. The closer he was to the wall every day, the more likely he was to hear something or see something that might be a clue as to what was on the other side. So he fit his tiles and looked and listened while passers-by laughed or stared.

Some said the wall needed no embellishment – leave it raw cement and naked wooden boards – but louder voices argued that the wall must be beautiful, for it was built by their ancestors, and to honor the wall is to honor the past.

Eggar sees it differently. “I honor the future,” he says, not really noticing that he is speaking out loud. Usually, no one comes up close to the wall but for the painters and tilers. “I honor those who will see this wall after me. If it is lovely enough, they will wonder. Perhaps one will find a way through.”

If there even is a way. Many have tried to climb over, and though the top is visible, the boards up high are slicked with some unknown substance as slippery as wet tile after rain. One tried to dig under, only to discover that the cement foundation had been poured down many yards into the Earth. And going around… even after hiking for miles in either direction, the ends have not been found.

“Why not you? You could find a way.”

Eggar drops his trowel, surprised by the musical voice. It belongs to a child. A girl no older than ten, and wearing half of one of his unbroken pots on her head!

“Um, I’ll be needing that pot…” Eggar reaches out to for it, but she steps back.

“What pot? You have so many here! Such beautiful colors. What a shame to smash them all!”

“I’m making the wall beautiful.”  He stands up and lunges for the girl’s ridiculous hat.

She’s too quick for him, and just giggles. “Silly. Why keep slopping tiles on the wall? You’d rather just go through.”

“Fine, then. You show me how, I’ll go through.”

She takes the pot off her head and holds it out to Eggar, eyes wide as her smile. “Okay.”