Secret No. 3

The following is the conclusion of Secrets. This is my last posting for the next six weeks. I am leaving in a couple hours to meat up with the team that I'm going to Wyoming with. I will be virtualy cut off from all comunication during this time. I will be back, and i will be changed. I hope that all 'yall are well and continue to be well. Talk to Jesus an awfull lot for me, and ask him to bring you adventure like you've never known.

Anyway, that's all i got to say, i gotta pack, and finish school stuff, so take care!
And i love you all.











Winter still tugging at his bare skin, the dark shop sucked him up as the door closed behind. He stopped, and breathed deep a moment longer, then searched.


He found the old crate, squeaking as he moved it aside with his toe, under the shopkeepers workbench. Empty. Packed with dried grass. The thin kind, tall kind that grows in the deserts of the south.


Crowbar still sat near the door. Coffee scorching on the burner.

He left the lights out and let his eyes expand. Then he turned over this and that, looking in old gray file drawers, behind hanging animal heads and paper piles.


Eventualy he found it. It was just a matter of time.

Stuffed behind a stack of books under the counter was a battered briefcasse, enamle worn off the handle and clasps, ripped and worn. The shopkeeper had forgotten to lock it. Maby it was a moment of quick thinking or carelessnes, but the clasps sprung open. The book was under a small pile of old pens, worn documents and papers, maps.
It was beautiful.

It was slender and tall, longer than his young forearm, and dusty. It wafted of an old dry dust, thick dust. The front cover was plated with filigree, fine metal lace and thorns, curves and shapes, eyes and hands and books. In the center of the cover was a large round seal, rimmed with words he didn't recognize.

He sat on the floor unable to speak. He stared for a long whyle.
He smelled the leather. touched the cold metal. Then his fingers split the covers open.



Hazy blue light filled the room, spilling past him onto the wall under the counter.
His arm covered his face and the book dropped, open, to the floor.
He stood rubbing his eyes, head bent down.
For a moment he couldn't move. A strange realization that this was no normal book made him think twice. Hepeaked through his fingers at the book at his feet. Sure enough, the page was glowing merrily. No, not the whole page, a part of it, a section at the top. A panel.

He leaned in close, then dropped to his knees.


In this moment he wasnt sure wether to be amazed, terrified, wether he should run or dance. There on the page was a spinning image of a sunlit forest, strange rocks climbing high from the canopy, all topped with windows and chimneys. Smoke puffed into the sky as the image dipped down into the treetops. Bellow the leaves, the trees glowed with amber streaks. The ground rushed at him in the paper, and buildings emerged. Twists of old tree trunks carved into houses, streams dammed off with strange machines, pathways pooled in golden lamplight, then the ground rushed away. The sky burst into view, and he could see mountains. As the image rose higher, past the rock towers, he could see and endless sea of mountains.

His eyes dialated. His fingers twitched. The shadow of his open hand passed across his face.
He couldn't believe it. "Just like a movie," he said to himself. "Just like one."



No.


Not just like one.




Danger was waist deep in that moment. And he never saw it coming. Never would have thought to guess the peril.

His fingers brushed the glowing image.

Flaming sparks shot through his skin, electric haze swathed his mind in an instant. He tried to jerk back his hand, but it took only the blink of an eye for the book to work it's magic.

And the boy was gone.












`~haze.







blue haze. burnt coffe. maps and adventurous memories.
books...

...were all that remained in the old dark shop in the mountains of Montana.





______~