Behind the Oak

Behind the biggest tree at the back of the park is where you could find the way in. You probably wouldn’t know what you were looking at but it’s there. At one point there was a grand gateway that has since become overgrown and hidden. But if you knew what you were looking for, you might be able to make your way through that gateway and into a new world. Long ago the gateway that connected our world to the fae realm was a commonly used thoroughfare for mortals and fae alike but all that has changed, both worlds have forgotten each other and now the overgrown gateway will only allow through those fae descendants who happen to know what they’re looking at. Do you want a spoiler? Today, the gateway is going to let Elle go through and she has no clue why.

Elle was a perfectly normal mortal from a perfectly mortal family. Today she was spending the afternoon at the park, enjoying the sun and mild weather after her morning shift. As it was pretty crowded she kept walking and walking through the park trying to find a secluded enough spot to comfortably sit and read and it felt like miles before she made it to an area where the crowd began to thin. She enjoyed walking through the grass and the trees though, the sun warming her skin as she searched. When she had walked as far as she could, she stopped and searched the forest wall for a comfortable spot.

She found a giant, ancient-looking oak towering above the others. She sat in its shade and for a minute she just sat. She gazed out at the busy park, the parents herding children, the dogs fetching sticks, the squirrels skittering from tree to tree, the birds flitting and singing. Before she could crack open her new book, she felt an odd sensation in her chest, like a tightening. A pulling? No it couldn’t be that. It must be a tightening. She thought it was an odd moment to feel anxious in but since when did anxiety make sense. She stretched her torso and took a deep breath and the tightening strengthened. She put down her book and stood, thinking she might try some bigger stretching. It would’ve been a perfectly acceptable thing to be seen doing on the grass in the park but the thought of being watched while doing anxiety yoga in jeans made her self-conscious. She decided to walk around to the other side of the tree and hide herself while she tried to get as much fresh air in her lungs as she could.

She picked up her book and turned around the massive trunk and stopped when she saw the foliage behind it. It wasn’t quite what she had been expecting to see. Wasn’t it though? It was forest vegetation. Surely that should be expected at the start of a forest. There was something off about it. Not quite off really, but odd. Unknown but familiar? She stared trying to make sense of what she was seeing, trying to figure out why it didn’t make sense even though it probably looked perfectly normal. She noticed the tightening again. No it was definitely a pulling. Something made her feet begin to move forward. She stopped them. They moved forward again. She held her hand out to touch the vines that grew over the trees around her as she moved past them. They felt so out of place. Not just here in these woods but they felt like they didn’t belong to this world. So many different shades of green and blue met her eyes. She became overwhelmed with emotion in a way she didn’t understand as she swept her fingertips along her path. She followed the pulling in her chest until, underneath the vines, she felt stone. She stopped and looked up around her and suddenly she saw clearly that she was standing underneath a stone arch that had been overgrown with the emerald vines.

The pulling in her chest began to loosen as it spread out through the rest of her body. If you asked her she wouldn’t be able to tell you why but she knew in that moment that if she continued through the archway she wouldn’t just be walking into the forest that she could see through it. She knew that she would be going somewhere new. Her bones could feel it, her blood could feel it. Without hesitation she walked on.

As she passed through the gate, the pulling stopped as she felt a rush of pressure and cold that ended as abruptly as it had started. She looked up, knowing it wouldn’t be the forest behind her favorite park but not knowing what exactly to expect. What she saw would have surprised you, and Elle had expected to feel surprised too. She wasn’t though. She looked up and saw a world similar enough to ours but also vastly different. There were trees and grass and creatures. But the trees and grass were bigger, more lush, and quite different shades of green. The creatures were also vaguely similar though vastly different. Not just different to mortal creatures of our world but also different to each other.

Before going too far she turned back around to look at the gateway. It was overgrown and difficult to see, just as the arch in the park had been. She felt strangely at home in this new world but she needed to see if she could go back the way she came before going any further. She slowly stepped back through the gateway and landed behind the tree in the park. Her excitement was ramping up. What had she found? She turned back into the new world and pulled on one of the vines hanging off the arch. Just because this all didn’t feel totally foreign didn’t mean she couldn’t get lost here. She could get lost literally anywhere. It was a gift she had. She inspected her immediate surroundings with extreme scrutiny, trying to really burn into her mind the exact visuals of her way back home. Once satisfied, she checked her phone. She doubted she would have service but it couldn’t hurt to check and see if google maps had maybe also somehow found this place. It would be convenient.

It occurred to her then that she was in a brand new magical world and she had a cell phone. First, she took a quick video of the area around the gateway because no matter how hard she had stared at it she would never accurately remember all of this. Then she took the most incredible landscape picture she had ever, not just taken, but the most incredible landscape picture she had ever seen. Then what else was there for her to do but explore.

As she walked, she passed first a tiny little human sitting in a leaf. Extraordinary. Then a much larger but still very small human zoomed past her on...a scooter? She couldn’t see it but what else could it have been. It seemed like she was still in a park with people picnicking, kids wreaking havoc, animals going about their daily lives. It was just that the people and kids and animals were all so extraordinary. She couldn’t see any roads from where she was but then she couldn’t see any from her tree in the other park either. The creatures she saw amazed her. They were straight out of her fairy encyclopedia she had at home. What looked like dryads, wood nymphs, and gnomes wandered around, some aimlessly, some with purpose. Pixies, sylphs, and sprites flitted around her. Even the sun seemed different than the one she knew, brighter and more pink.

The vine was ending though and she would have to turn back before finding anything else this way. She had just decided to turn back and go out to the right of the gateway when there was a sharp jerk on her vine that yanked it out of her hands and down to the ground. She quickly dropped down to pick it up again and that’s when she realized that her walking and holding that vine had created a tightrope of sorts and someone had just been clothes-lined by it.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I was trying not to get lost but I totally wasn’t thinking of anything else. How stupid. I’m sorry.”

She could hear the other person angrily mumbling but she couldn’t understand any of what they were saying. She waited for them to gather themselves up before saying anything else (and no she didn’t try to help them up, they seemed perfectly capable and most people don’t want to be touched by a stranger who has just tripped them.) When they had stood up and straightened themselves out Elle tried again.

“I’m Elle. I’m really sorry. Honestly, I have no idea where I am but I just came through that archway over there. It seems like a gateway I guess. Some sort of portal. And I was curious so I wanted to explore but I also pride myself on being relatively intelligent so I brought this vine with me cause I didn’t have any breadcrumbs and getting lost in a place like this would really be less than ideal. But obviously the vine would become a tripping hazard the farther I walked. I don’t suppose you speak English by any chance? I would assume you don’t but I have to ask. Could you tell me where we are maybe?”

The stranger left without saying a word and she hadn’t expected much but she had expected a little more than that. She carried her vine back and made sure it stayed on the ground as she explored to the right. Everything this way and everything to the left of the arch were relatively similar to everything in front. With her vine stretched as far as it could go, she figured this world would be just as good as her own, so she sat on a stump and read. Every once in a while she would look up and admire the scenery and the wonder of where she had found herself, the sweet air making it difficult to remember that she had even come from someplace else.

The vibrating of her phone in her pocket snapped her out of her reverie and she pulled it out to see the alarm she had set to start getting ready for her birthday dinner tonight. She snoozed it and reluctantly begin the short journey back to her gateway. She paused at the arch, trying to consume as much of the scene as she could before going home. She knew that she belonged here though she had no idea why. On the other side, she made her way back to her car and made a game plan for her next visit, determined to figure out what had called her there. The arches intrigued her. Clearly the mortal world had forgotten this world and vise versa, but there was something deep in Elle’s soul that hadn’t and now wouldn’t.