Stacy--Part Forty-EightA Chapter by Wayne VargasSplog # 179Forty-Eight Stacy looked around. There really wasn't very much to see besides grass and the one tree. "Yesterday, before I met you, I was looking over here from that marble bridge we were on last night and I saw houses and trees and a road and mountains..." Stacy looked at Lane and Johnny and gestured at the landscape all around. "How come there's nothing here but one tree?" "The view from the Fe-San can be a little..." Johnny paused trying to find the word he wanted. "Misleading," Lane interposed. Johnny nodded. "Not that those things aren't here," she quickly added. "Except for the mountains," Johnny put in. "Right. No mountains. But the other things. Well, you can see a tree. And, as Johnny said, there are others, although fairly widely scattered. As for the houses, you probably saw some of the cells." "Cells? You mean like jails?" Stacy asked in surprise. "Oh, no!" Lane seemed as surprised as Stacy. "They're for the animals." "What animals?" Stacy asked. "When I looked over here I couldn't see any. Not even a squirrel or a bird." "There haven't been any for about six months," Johnny explained. "But before there were plenty and the cells were feeding stations where surplus food was left for them to forage. Although, I guess you can't call it foraging if the food is right there for you. Anyway, if you saw houses scattered at intervals, it was probably just the cells." "And the road? And the mountains?" "That's the other thing!" Lane burst out. "I knew you said two things this morning that surprised me but I could only remember Bones! You said something about an underground river!" Stacy thought of the raft and the ants and the tiger. "Did you dream about the river?" Johnny asked. "The ants led me to it." "Ants?" Lane and Johnny exclaimed together. Stacy didn't say anything, just looked at them with a bemused expression. "The old man and the little girl followed ants to an underground river," Johnny explained. Stacy looked at Lane who was nodding silently. "C'mon, we'll finish the story in the tree," Johnny started walking to it. Stacy was still wondering about something else, so she didn't ask about the move to the tree. "What about the road?" she asked Lane as they followed behind Johnny. "The road is a sort of a dirt track through the grass. It meanders over the whole plain following the exact track of the underground river, which flows right beneath it." "Who made it?" "So it goes along the same way as the river?" "Uh-huh." No one said anything else until they reached the tree. It took longer to reach than Stacy had expected, being misled by its size to think that it was nearer than it actually was. When they reached it and she saw how enormous it was, her head fell back as her eyes searched for the top. Johnny was standing near a wooden swing hanging by two thick ropes from a stout branch, "Have a seat," Johnny said, "and hold on tight." As soon as Stacy had seated herself, the swing began to ascend into the tree. She let out a little yelp when she felt herself rising and quickly followed Johnny's advice. She watched her companions receding below her and, just as she was getting used to the ascent, it stopped. She waited a moment, holding her breath, to see what would happen next. From slightly above her, she discovered a flight of steps unfolding until it ended practically touching her toes. "Go slow," she head from below, and balanced herself onto the first step. © 2010 Wayne Vargas |
Stats
171 Views
Added on July 12, 2010 Last Updated on July 15, 2010 Previous Versions Author
|