Chapter 3: The Ladder

The next morning David woke at the crack of dawn. He dressed quickly and left the house quietly. He wanted to make it to the book store and back before Solomon got up. Solomon never woke early at the cottage; he was often out past his curfew and felt no need to rise before 10:00 am.

The small town of Fairview was about a mile and a half from the Barbarout's summer cottage. It wasn't much, but it had a short main street with a pharmacy, grocery store, hardware store, and a few other things that one might expect to find on any main street in small town America. It was drab and ordinary, but that was okay with David because hidden on the last block of Main Street was a small book store called The Best-Seller Book. David was a regular customer at the Best-Seller.

The shop was owned by a delightful woman named Mrs. Treatise. "David!" she said warmly as he walked in the door, "I'm so happy to see you back." Her smile lit up the room, and her round face and soft eyes were a welcome sight.

David liked Mrs. Treatise a lot, not only because she loved books, but because she was the kind of adult that understood when a boy was in a hurry. David had spent many hours in the cool recesses of her book store discussing novels and killing time while hiding from the older boys that sometimes hung out at the 7-11 across the street. Today, however, he simply wanted to replace his destroyed book and find a safer hiding place to read it before Solomon's gang awoke. He found the book quickly and handed Mrs. Treatise a ten dollar bill to pay for it while filling her in on the previous school year. "Yeah, my grades are okay," he said, "mostly A's and B's." There really wasn't much else to tell. David didn't find school to be very exciting.

Mrs. Treatise gave him a twenty-five percent discount, saying it was because she was so glad to see him back in her shop. Really, he thought she probably just felt sorry for him. She knew that his life wasn't always easy, but she graciously never asked too many questions.

David started back to the cottage with the paperback curled tightly in his hand. He was just going over the previous chapter in his head, trying to remember where he had left off, when he heard an unfriendly giggle in the woods to his right. Hidden in the shade of a thick clump of trees were the five people he least wanted to see right now, Solomon and his crew. Judging by the nauseous smell wafting out from the trees, one of them had nicked a cigar, and they had all gotten up early to try and smoke it before their parents started lurking about doing yard work.

The situation really was quite comical. Five fourteen-year-old boys were standing in a circle. Each was trying to look as though they were really enjoying an activity that was clearly making them sick. A putrid green color had taken over the boys' faces, and several of them were coughing into cupped hands but trying to make it look like laughter. Before he could stop himself, David gave a short barking laugh at the scene. The boys looked out from the shadows and saw him.

"David!" yelled Solomon, "you tell mom and you're dead!" He started running at David, but David, who had a ten foot head-start, was already moving as fast as he could. The other boys, momentarily forgetting their prized contraband, took off as well, joining in the chase.

David knew he had no chance of out running them; he was by far the slowest of the group. His best bet was to go somewhere they wouldn't follow. He spotted a tall, thin pine tree ahead and decided to climb for it. He knew that the tree was bound to be sticky with sap, and the sharp needles would be far from appealing to the older boys; evergreens like this were nearly impossible to climb. They weren't particularly appealing to him either, but he was in no mood to lose another brand new book, and he thought a few jabs from the pine needles would be an improvement over the broken nose he was bound to receive if they caught him.

David darted under the bottom most branches and made a jump for it. It was surprisingly dark in the tree, and he had trouble finding the first few hand holds. He could hear the other boys coming. He was just out of reach, climbing furiously, despite the jabbing branches and pine needles.

"Come here, Monkey Boy!" taunted Solomon.

"Come down! Come down! Sissy Boy!"

David climbed higher.

"You can't climb forever!"

Suddenly, it seemed to David that he could climb forever. He thought he should be nearing the top of the tree by now, but all he could see above him were more thick, sappy branches. They seemed to be making an excellent climbing path, a ladder with rungs that were spaced perfectly apart, so that a boy just his height could climb at great speeds.

David climbed faster and faster, and it seemed as though the taunting voices below were growing fainter. He thought they should be giving up soon.

After what seemed like a very long climb, David could no longer hear the voices at all. It was then that he stopped and straddled a fat branch, catching his breath. He tried to look down, but he could no longer see the base of the tree. The branches had grown so thick that he could barely see five feet below. "How high am I?" David wondered to himself.

He shimmied out as far as he was confident he could go, without the bough below him breaking from his weight. He reached out and pushed the branches apart. With a gasp, David beheld the most breathtaking site of his life.

The sun was setting over an awesome, blue ocean; the evening star was blooming on the horizon. He was high atop a shear cliff that appeared to be made of solid granite. It was white, but the setting sun lit the smooth reflective surface with a rainbow of warm colors. He leaned forward, breathing in the cool sea breeze and hearing the cry of a gull below on the beach.

"How can the sun be setting?" he thought to himself. "It can't be later than 10:00 in the morning."

He had, at first, mistaken the clear, blue ocean for the muddied waters of Lake Erie, but there was no mistaking the white, granite wall that dropped down to the sea. There were definitely not cliffs like that in Pennsylvania.

When he came to his senses, David realized that he must have fallen from the tree and hit his head or been caught by his pursuers and beaten to death. This was a wonderful dream, and certainly the most realistic of his life, but this couldn't be real. He turned his head to the left and saw the sap-covered trunk of the old evergreen behind him, covered with needles and pine cones. But, when he turned back, he saw that the tree changed somehow, half way up the branch. The part closer to the trunk was a distinctive Frasier Fir, but as it extended further out, the tree became a leafy deciduous tree, a tree he could not name.

David's mind was racing. He'd of course read about a whole host of fictional explanations for the miracle before his eyes, but this didn't feel like fiction. In fact, this felt more real than anything he'd ever known. There was a tingling sensation in his arms and legs; he could feel the blood pumping through his body one cell at a time.

"So what should I do?" he said to the leafy branch in front of him. "If I climb back down, where will I be?" Saying it aloud, even to himself, suddenly gripped his heart with fear. He was thrilled to have found this place, but what if he couldn't get back to his own world? True, there were a few things he wouldn't miss, but the prospect of being completely alone in a new place, even in a world as magnificent as this, was terrifying.

Near panic, David scrambled back down a few branches and listened. Barely audible, he could just make out the sounds of lawnmowers starting up and the laughing of his brother's gang. All around him were regular old branches just like the ones he decorated every year at Christmas. He moved back up the tree, and he could still see where the branches began to change. Now he understood why he hadn't noticed the difference right away. The blending of leaves and branches happened very gradually as one moved up the tree. The leafy tips were barely visible at the ends of the lowest branches, but the higher one climbed the more prevalent they became. "A very strange tree indeed," David thought.

So then, if climbing back down the tree led back to his own world, how could he get into this new world that he could only see at a distance? He settled himself on a higher branch with a clearer view of the world below. He had, at first, thought that his tree was one of many along a steep ridge that fell to the ocean, but now he realized that this was the only tree. Odder still, it wasn't a ridge at all, but a great wall, less than twenty feet wide and steep on both sides. It had to be over two hundred feet tall. One side of the smooth granite wall did stretch down to the ocean, but the other side fell to an equally impressive sea of flowers. As far as the ocean stretched to one side, rolling hills covered in vibrant flowers stretched to the other. David sat stunned at the top of the tree, simply trying to catch his breath. "How incredible," he thought. The beauty of the place was simply amazing.

To David's dismay, the sun was setting quickly, and his fantastic view would soon be fading away. The darkness was already blurring the horizon, making the land indistinguishable from the night sky. The night air was cool, and the wind came in forcefully from the ocean, making the tree sway uncomfortably beneath him. He would have no choice but to climb down and hope that he would still be able to reach this place in the morning. But when was morning? David knew he had only left his bed two or three hours before, but time was clearly different here.

"I'll come back," David whispered into the fading light. For a moment he expected an answer to be whispered in reply, but all was silent.

David climbed back down, out of the tree. He was confused about the time, but he could not hear Solomon and the other boys, so he hoped that they had grown tired of waiting and had moved on to other things. He cautiously crept out from under the tree and looked around. He was alone. He took a few minutes to examine the tree itself; he wanted to see if the change in the leaves was visible from the ground. Craning his neck back, he squinted into the sun. "It's almost noon," he thought, but he could not see the high branches where he had been. The tree was simply too tall and too well hidden by the surrounding forest.

He walked slowly back to the cottage, thinking over the morning's experience in disjointed pieces, each new thought interrupting the previous thought. He decided the best course of action would be to climb the tree every few hours to determine what time it was in the other world. He also realized that he couldn't call it "the other world" for very long. It would need a proper name, although he had no intention of sharing the name or the world with anyone else. This led him to the problem of keeping his bullying brother away from the tree. How could he climb it every few hours without being seen?