Guy--Part Four

Splog # 13

Four

   As Guy stood before the woman, gazing into her eyes, he became aware of soft music gently stirring in the mist around him. He first thought of the singer with the guitar but this music was very different. Instead of rhythmic, happy guitar chords, what he seemed to be hearing was a solemn tune played on violins or other stringed instruments with which he was unfamiliar. The woman put out her right hand to him so he let go of her other hand and took her right in his left. As she started to rise, he stepped aside and she took a step forward. When Guy turned to walk with her, he found himself at the top of three broad marble steps. He descended them at the woman's side and now they were on a wide marble path that led in a long arch away from their meeting place. The woman paced slowly, in time to the music and, after a few steps, Guy found the rhythm he needed to match her stately walk. She was taking small steps so he had no trouble keeping in stride with her. The mist seemed to be melting away but it wasn't getting any darker, though he knew he had seen the sun disappear. But there wasn't much around him to look at. The path they were on had nothing bordering it, as if they were walking the crest of a hill. Ahead, it was curving slightly upward so that, at the moment, there was nothing to see in that direction either. Then he thought he heard a footstep behind him. A quick glance showed him the odd man he had seen just when everything had so mysteriously stopped. He was walking in the same stately rhythm as Guy and the woman and, when Guy took a second glance, the man made a quick circling motion with his finger that Guy assumed meant he should stay facing forward.

   The mist continued lessening as the path curved downward and, once it had leveled off, Guy found himself approaching a very large tree trunk. As he examined it, he saw that it was quite wide in girth but seemed to have been somehow broken off towards the top. There were jagged shards of bark sticking up around the area of the circumference visible to him. There were also branches growing up near the top that seemed to bend and cross over each other at the summit. The path led up to the tree and then veered to the left but the marble ended at the turning and the path that went on was only of dirt. When they reached the end of the pavement, the woman let go of Guy's hand, turned to him and made a deep curtsey. Guy didn't know what else to do so he bent his right arm at his waist and his left behind his back and made the best bow that he could, without any experience of such formalities. The woman stood up, took his head in both hands and lightly placed a kiss upon his brow. Then she turned with a sigh and started slowly walking down the dirt path, never giving a backward glance.

   Guy was trying to make up his mind whether he should follow her or not when he heard a light whistle and saw the funny man beckoning to him to follow him to the back of the tree. There he found that branches had grown around the trunk so as to make steps of a sort, which the man was climbing. When he got to the top, he again beckoned to Guy and then disappeared. When Guy reached the top, he found that the tree was hollow and open to the sky and he was standing at the top of a chute or a slide that went all around the inner wall of the trunk. The man was standing at the bottom of the slide and yet once again beckoning for Guy to follow.  So he sat down and, with one swift and pleasant glide, found himself standing on a dirt floor, very firmly packed, inside a hollow tree.

 

Reviews

[AmandaDh]

It was well written, but,I think that there needs to be more names and less confusion.