Eric--Part Twenty-Two

Splog # 106

Twenty-Two

 

   But when he opened his eyes, nothing was as he had thought it would be. To begin with, it wasn't all that dark. It was rather shadowy but the sky was the light gray of an early morning and he had a fairly clear view of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that the fountain and the statue were nowhere in sight. He was looking at a clearing surrounded by trees. But it was uninhabited. There was a small mound lying on the grass not far away and there was an animal inspecting it, mainly via the sense of smell. The light wasn't quite good enough for him to identify either the item or the animal.

   By this time, he had noticed that, although his eyes were roaming around the clearing as far as they were able, his head hadn't moved at all. Neither did he seem to have the ability to move it, no matter how he tried. He wondered if he could have injured his neck in some way and, as he did so, he realized that his memories of the immediate past were rather confusing and jumbled. He had taken the sword and then there was light and a feeling of energy and voices in the air and he had felt as though he was sharing his mind and body with someone else. He remembered walking across the clearing and then...what? He was going to do something. The sword...The sword was taking him to the voices. But something had stopped him. The sword again. It had...What had happened. The sword had...flashed! There were lights - red and green lights - glowing and fading and blazing. He had closed his eyes and when he opened them...wait! Before he had closed his eyes he had been looking at the statue. The sheep's eyes had shone so brightly that he had to close his own. And now he had opened them and it was day, or almost day, and everyone who had been in the clearing was gone and he had somehow hurt his neck so he couldn't turn his head. All these things had happened in the short time he had his eyes closed?

   And now he realized that, during the time he had been puzzling over these occurrences, he hadn't moved once. He hadn't blinked his eyes or opened his lips or lifted a single finger. And thinking about it he found that he couldn't do any of these things. Somehow he had been rendered completely immobile. What was going on here? His eyes were the only part of him that retained any motion at all. And because he couldn't move, all he could look at was that area of the clearing directly in front of his face. And the only movement he saw was a rabbit (Bev had had a rabbit, was this the same one?), a rabbit that was exploring, and probably trying to break into, his knapsack. But...how had that ended up where it was? He'd been wearing it so long that it had become a part of his anatomy. Had he taken it off to drink at the fountain? And where was the fountain? Behind him? Or had he been moved to a different clearing where there was no fountain? While pondering these confusing circumstances, he saw movement in the grass and watched as a frog laboriously inched its way in his direction, usually in unenthusiastic spurts and occasionally by dragging itself for a bit with its rubbery limbs. He realized that the frog seemed to be quite a distance below him and this led him to wonder how he had reached his present height. Was he up in a tree? Sitting or lying on a branch?

   More confused than ever, he now observed a deer emerge from the trees, pause to inspect the clearing both by sight and smell, and then come straight towards him and start lapping at water which seemed to be directly beneath him. He couldn't see it very well but he could hear the sounds it made as it quenched its thirst. The rabbit and frog had both frozen at the first appearance of the deer. But now they returned to their respective endeavors. Forcing his eyes as far downwards as they would go, Eric could just make out that the deer was lowering its head over a stone barrier of some kind that must be retaining the water which it was imbibing. So he wasn't hanging over a pond or a river, but some kind of artificial watering hole. Then the deer looked up and into his eyes. And, a moment later, the frog hopped up onto the wall and did the same.