Skyler Bluestone

It’s Wednesday afternoon. The day Thomas, my Titian school mate, and I meet to go frog hunting. Thom’s ears are large like big orange fans, and somehow, they help him locate frogs when they croak. We stroll up the ancient road, carrying buckets and nets to a lake opposite park bench 46. No laws prevent us from walking together on the ancient road and no one ever comes to the frog lake. As I hold a blanket and a big glass jar under my arm, I think of a good moment to ask him if I can borrow one of his orange tools.

Thom and I became friends in Ms. Bannon’s science class. He irritates her because Titians are intellectuals and Thom questions everything she teaches. Aside from that, I like his humor. I get it. Maybe because we’re both smart.

In class, dissecting caterpillars intrigued us both: Thomas by how their bodies scrunched up and me by how they became butterflies. But when we started coming to the lake, caterpillars and butterflies soon gave way to frogs and toads. But in the last month, he’s been hinting at changing to snakes.

“How can you tell which ones are poisonous?” I ask as we pass park bench 46. “My sister would scream if I brought a poisonous snake home.”

Thom’s large, hand-sized ears start quivering. “Well, that’s one way to keep her quiet. Especially if it bit!” He says, turning to me and chuckling.

A side pathway opens onto a lake teeming with frogs, toads, and flies. The shoreline has squiggly tracks in the mud, where countless worms must have burrowed and where ripples splashed on the banks. From time to time, I hear plopping sounds coming from the middle of the lake when a guppy tries to catch an unsuspecting bug.

I take the blanket to our usual boulder and lay it down as I continue unpacking my frog-hunting equipment. Bisman’s words, You need to get them all, echo in my mind as I listen to a furious concert of ribbiting over the lake.

“Hey, Skyler… I caught a frog!” Thomas says next to me.

I turn to him, searching for the little amphibian. “You did?! You did already?!”

“Yeah! And here it is...”

I see him turn to his side, lift his right knee, and then let out a big fart.

I laugh so hard my stomach hurts.

“Wait, wait, wait…” I manage to say. “I think I caught one too!”

            Though Thomas is in orange and I’m in blue, here at the lake we are just two goofy friends enjoying a hobby. But here alone, when no one is looking, we’ve been using each other’s tools to repair our nets and dig for worms. When our laughter dies down, I watch him take out his scythe to help knit a hole in his net.

“Hey Thom, how can I get one of those?” I ask. “A scythe of my own?”

He knows our secret tool trading is secret and he says he’ll ask his mother. Again, his mother? Why does he just talk about his mother and never his father?

            Around the lake, toads are croaking like crazy, and Thom’s perked ears keep shifting position, picking it all up. However, neither frogs nor toads are stupid. They’re all watchful, fast, and as slippery as a wet guppy. When we get into the lake, I see a big, fat frog on a fallen tree. Don’t move! I think, walking deeper into the lake. Then as slow as I can, I stretch my net out to it, hoping he’ll think it’s an odd-looking fish or even a floating tree branch.

Can you reach him, Alani? I think, remembering the Titian father and daughter I rescued from the well.

He’s too far! I remember Alani shouting.

It’s too far! I think, looking at the frog.

So I step closer, feeling as much buzzing in my stomach as I hear in the middle of the lake. I’m scared he’ll jump. If he does, I’ll have two choices: run after him, making a lot of noise and splashes… or look for another prey. But like the heron at The Blue Lagoon, I’ve learned patience and take a slower step forward, leaving my flimsy net just under the lake surface.

Just stay right there, you warted croaker! I think.

But when I take another step forward, I feel my foot slip on a rock under the water. It slides and I trip. Water splashes everywhere! Now the frog is scared and jumps off the tree. Yes, he’s quick, but I’m quicker. And in that split-second, I stick out my pole and catch it mid-air. It squirms inside my net like a fly in a spider’s web. I got one! I think and yell over to Thomas. 

Ms. Bannon’s pop quiz was not so hard. As an Indigo, Master Indeevar has taught us alot about matter. “Whether an atom is within us, this chair, a forest tree, or a distant star,” he once said. “On one level, all matter vibrates at the same speed.”

Outside, me, Thomas, and Jay head to the village square. As the days get closer to my birthday, it is getting harder and harder to keep Bisman secret from my friends. But I hold it all in, like I have the pressure of one of Master’s lanterns in my head. Just two more days, Skyler, I repeat. Just two more days.

We stop at The Five Gates sign. Each time I read it it has more depth. Like blue cheese, it ages and becomes more rich. I think of my grandfather, who would no more put on a pair of sun goggles than he would swim in an amethyst aquarium or climb treehouses with red jewels embedded into their bark. He would tell me how I broke village law after the first domain I visited, where orange tigers played in the snow.

Would Thom or Jay ever go with me to visit other domains? I wonder, as we walk past the wooden gate. I feel guilty for not asking them, but I needed to go fast and if someone was with me, I don’t know if I’d have all fifteen tools by this time.

            We pass the Lion’s Gate at park bench 12 and I start thinking of Zengar, Xanthe, and Sunny. I imagine sunflower fields and riding Goldy’s head over a cascade. Then when we walk past park bench 23, a group of Crimsons walks out of The Red Gate and I start thinking of Keegan, Rooney, and Harkin. I imagine Rufus clinging onto Keegan's back as they swing through the twelve oak trees.

            Up ahead Thomas, Jay, and I see the Blue Gate and two Indigo guards standing in front of it at park bench 32.

Bisman has got to be there today. I have all the tools he’s asked me to get.

Just nineteen days ago I was sneaking blueberries out of the house and feeding them to him at the hollow tree. I was slipping away from our group to have a few precious minutes with my dead twin brother and trying my best to keep our meeting secret from my family and friends. Three weeks ago, I was terrified that time was going to run out and I'd never see him again. But now, I've gone through a wind tunnel, walked over molten lava, swam through a whirlpool, and battled red monkeys to get all these tools for him. I was so lucky to find that red brush hook in my waist bag! I remember, thinking of the twelve Treehouses and patting my waist bag and reaching into it. But the brush hook isn’t there. As Jay says goodbye to Thomas and walks up to the guards, I stop.

“Where is it?!” I say, searching my bag. “It’s gone!”

“What are you looking for?” Jay asks, as my mind races back to carving my figurines up in my bedroom.

“I have to go home,” I say, turning back. In record time, I run back down he ancient road, through the square, and into the Naterra neighborhood. Up in my bedroom, the forgotten red-handled brush hook is there—right on my desk.

“Whoa!” I say, out of breath, as the Grotto's village clock strikes twelve.

            I rush back to the Blue Gate, but now I'm exhausted. When I realized my brush hook was missing, my heart started buzzing like someone had tapped a hornet's nest with a broom. My legs feel like jellyfish as I walk to an empty park bench marked with the number 26. When I sit down, I look around the vacant road and find it strange that I have not seen a single person since passing The Five Gates poem. What if he’s not there today? My most formidable enemy—my own fear—whispers in my ear. What if Bisman can't make our Rainbow Crystal Cane? It's a voice I can count hearing on before an exam. The pessimistic voice that makes my breathing stop and who often tells me I'm alone in the world and have no friends. Stop, Skyler! You'll bring him back, another voice shouts, as a sudden chill rattles my spine like a ladder on one of the twelve Crimson oaks.

            To calm my fears, I pull the five colorful feathers out from my waist bag. I've tied them together and they look like a little bouquet of bird feather tails. I start twisting them back and forth between my thumb and forefinger. The faster I spin them, the more their pigments seem to blur together in a colorful cloud.

The abundance we see everywhere around us is an expression of the vitality we feel everywhere within us, I think, remembering what Indeevar once said.My mind wonders as I keep spinning the feathers, blending the colors into one, as the forest trees across from the bench remind me of abundance itself. The abundance that has given the forest so much life—So many trees! Pine, elm, oak, birch, and redwood—all unique, all different, and all united at the same time.

Then, something strange happens. The leaves of three of the trees facing me start to change color. Like watching the sun rise or a blooming flower, I see their leaves turn red, yellow, orange, purple, and blue. My thumb and forefinger press harder on the feather quills spinning between them as all three trees seem to bloom an inner rainbow.

I stand up in front of the bench, watching the trees blossom with a sudden and continuous kaleidoscopic vitality inside the green, abundant forest.

But more curious than that… As the leaves fly off the trees’ many branches, I watch them fall to create a long, multi-colored pathway that leads deeper into the woods.

I’m pulled into a place where there is no sound.

A world with no walls. No one. No color.

A dimension with neither a sky above nor a forest below.

There is just white. All white.

Where am I? How did I get here?! Help!

It’s like I’m floating under a blanket of snow or lost in the middle of a porcelain cloud. And as I drift within all this white that is above, below, and all around me…there is only silence. Complete, absolute silence.

I look around for the golden door, but it’s not there. That’s when I panic.

Am I stuck here?Can I get out? Where is everyone? Where is every-thing?         My heart starts racing, beating so hard that it makes my ears throb. In this deafening quietude, it’s the only thing I hear.

“Ha!” I shout, waiting for an echo. But there is none.

Am I dead?

“HELP!” I shout again, listening for sound. But still, nothing echoes back.

Under my feet, I don’t feel ground. Nothing solid for support. I’m just hovering—suspended in a void, where there doesn’t seem to be an up or down.

“Help!” I shout. “Jeff?! Petra?!” Silence.

Then suddenly, as if coming from a distance, but at the same time all around, a word echoes from afar.

“Ommmmmm... Ommmm…”

I look around to see where it’s coming from, but it’s everywhere. “Ommmmmm… Ommmm….”

As I keep floating in this vast void of nothingness, that word repeats, closer now, louder, and I feel my body start to vibrate in this bright emptiness of white.

Suddenly, the sound of drumbeats crescendo around me, mixing in with the Om. Then I hear trumpets play and bees buzz, joining the drumbeats.

“Caw-caw! Caw-caw!” A peacock cries as a chorus of frogs ribbit throughout the vacant abyss.  

“BEEP-BEEP!... BEEP-BEEP!” a truck’s horn zooms by, as the sound of a waterfall’s cascade reverberates throughout the void and crashes in my ears.

Then slowly, it all goes silent, ending on a high note of a classical violin.

“Ommmm… Ommm,” I hear again.

Over and over, it repeats, coming from everywhere and nowhere—all at once. Its insistence sounds as if it’s calling me. Beckoning.

“OMMMM!”

I’m confused as the word gets louder.

What does it want? Why is it doing that?

“Om?” I say, simply—answering its call.

Then, I hear a BOOM!

A loud and thunderous explosion.

KA-BOOM! I hear again, as flashes of dazzling colors begin bursting into a rainbow spectrum of clouds around me. Out from the white, endless abyss, colors suddenly flare up, appearing, disappearing, and then reappearing all around me.

“Ommm… Ommm!” I hear as starlight eruptions of reds, blues, yellows, oranges and violets burst into various comets far and near.

BOOM! KA-KA-BOOM!

I see countless formations exploding out of nowhere, mushrooming like blue and orange volcanoes as the sky changes from violet to gold. High up in the technicolored sky, yellow and red cottony clouds appear and then suddenly burst away like in a pyrotechnic light show.

But am I dreaming? Am I flying? Floating? What is this? Where is this?

The clouds start to swell, engulfing me in their twirling lights. Spinning me in a cosmic dream.

The fear I had is gone. Pure joy has transformed it, and, like I did with the piles of colored leaves from the three trees, I relish playing in this beautiful rainbow.

“Skyler,” I hear the voice of an older man suddenly say.

“Huh? What? Who is this? Who are you?”

“Deep in The Forest, there is a sound that resonates with every color, every tree, every-one, and every-thing… Ommmm,”he says.

His tone is familiar and it seems like his words are reverberating from the clouds. Suddenly, I recognize whose voice it is.

“Bisman?” I say.

“Bisman!” I shout.

He’s not dead! He’s not dead!

            My body whirls and spins, searching the kaleidoscopic horizon for that voice. Suspended in the air, tools start flying out of my tool bag and then sail around me.

“Bisman, where are you? Please! Together forever!”

Sudden streams of White Light begin breaking through the clouds, as I hear the voice again.

“All colors come from one source—Pure, White Light. They’ve only been fragmented by the broken prisms of our fear.”

“Bisman?... Bisman!”

It feels good to hear his voice again, and I feel closer to him now in this moment, than I ever have in the last year. I feel I could stay here forever, but then I hear someone new call out to me.

“Skyler… Come this way,” Petra’s voice says.

“What?!” I say, as more white light breaks through the red clouds of cotton.

“Skyler, it’s over here!”she says. “Come!”

I almost wish she would go away, as more white light pours in, drowning me in its warm, gentle rays. Submerging me. Making my body buzz like a dragonfly’s wing.

I lift my arms, spreading them and feeling the light wash over me.

Over here? Over where? I think, as I turn and see my golden door in the distance. It is a curious touchstone of a near forgotten and quickly fading reality. Lost in the chromatic gulfs of bliss, the last traces of curiosity suddenly come back to my mind.

I remember the Forest.

I remember the ancient road.

There’s my golden door! I think, reaching for it.

Instantly, it swings open and, again, I’m pulled through.