I enter the corridor that leads to the huge weather crystals. The earth trembles. People run about shouting in panic and mortal terror—I hear their screams echoing not just in my ears, but deep within my mind.
I am consumed by a single thought: I have to deactivate the large crystals! The Spirit Masters wanted to use them to influence the weather, but now they are out of control. A dark, terrible crash of thunder resounds, vibrating through my entire body. Knocked down as if by the fist of a god, I hit the ground. It was a ludicrous plan, trying to use the crystals to stop time! The entire land is sinking into the sea: the hall of crystals slowly tilts away to the side, and the corridor turns into a bottomless shaft. Its walls tower before me. I haul myself up the stone slabs, ducking away from falling debris. Water bursts in from all sides. Lightning streaks through the hall. The mighty crystals rise up against the deluge, their death throes making the sea boil.
The horrified screams of millions of dying people echo in my mind. My mother, my sister Nete—their presence flickers brightly in my consciousness one last time before fading away. The loss leaves everything inside me dull and numb.
More and more water rushes into the hall. The stone vault has already sunk deep into the sea, and the air bubble trapped inside is being swallowed up by the invading flood. Should I give up? No! Something unknown inside me grants me strength. I want to live, to climb higher, to escape the rushing water—but a collapsing pillar shatters my left leg. A piercing pain robs me of my breath. I am pinned down, and I am going to drown. Now, there is only one thing left for me…
…I enter the corridor, just as I learned to do from the Spirit Masters as a young child, and descend into my “temple of fleeting images.” At first I hesitate—for weren’t the Spirit Masters the very ones who descended too deep into their inner temples, and with their hubris conjured up the demise of us all? But the imminent drowning and the unbearable pain in my shattered leg drive me to this place where everything is still and motionless.
My “temple,” however, is—an island.
No one was allowed to know about it, since invoking the image of an island in the mind’s eye instead of a temple building contradicts the spiritual law as it is taught to us. Yet, as much as I tried to fight this island, it simply wouldn’t disappear. I didn’t even tell my closest friends about it, so I am profoundly shocked when I see a group of strangers standing there on my little island. An old man, the left side of his face completely scarred, approaches me. Behind him stand eleven men and women.
“I am Ktephaim,” the old man says. What are these people doing in my mind? Or have they come to collect me and lead me to the realm of the dead?
“We are… Wanderers. And we would like to offer you the chance to become one of us.” I want to know what all of this means first, but he motions for me to be silent. “You can save yourself.” With that, he hands me a polished crystal in the shape of a human skull.
I know what I have to do. The other eleven standing behind Ktephaim watch me silently. One of the women smiles encouragingly. I look into the eyes of the crystal skull.
“Concentrate,” the old man says. “You have practiced for this a long time. Now is the moment.”
All at once, I am back in my body. Icy cold water surges around me, and I feel a burning throb in my shattered leg. I take one last breath before the sea swallows me whole. And I concentrate.
My homeland sinks back into the magma. When the sun breaks through the black clouds for the first time again, nothing will be left of it. A new humanity will rise from the mud, a new historiography will unfold, new ancient wars will ignite, and old new inventions and experiences will stir the human soul.
But these are things I will only learn later. Because I survive. With a final breath, using the crystal skull and an unknown will to live within me, I transport myself to another place, another time.
A cushion of moss, massive roots, a clearing.
Slowly, I come to. Enra’daí, the woman from the group of Wanderers who had smiled at me, sits beside me, examining my leg. “Where am I?” I ask her, but Enra’daí corrects me: “Better ask when you are. You are one of us now.”
She explains to me that there are twelve of us, and that we possess the ability to jump to the flipside of time, wandering from there to wherever we are needed. Some of the Wanderers manage to do this five, six, or even ten times. Then the power runs dry. A new Wanderer must be found to fill the gap. “And you are probably the youngest there has ever been,” she adds.
Over the next few days, she heals my leg with herbal poultices and roasts her wild game for us over a fire. I don’t know what is happening to me. Her movements, her touch, her quiet voice: all of it intoxicates me, bringing joy to my innermost self, touching my heart, and awakening entirely unfamiliar feelings—feelings that promise sweetness and pain, which I shamefully hide from her. She nurses me lovingly, but clearly with the care of a mother for her son. How I long to prove to her that I am already a man. I could fell trees and build a hut for us, I would learn to hunt and slay wild beasts for her—but my leg does not yet allow for any of it; I must rest it.
Leaping to the flipside of time saved my life. I doubt our Spirit Masters knew of this ability. Enra’daí hesitates when I ask her what becomes of a Wanderer who loses the strength to jump. Her voice sounds fragile: “They remain where the new Wanderer was taken from.” I want to ask her if Ktephaim was transferred to the Hall of Crystals in my place, but Enra’daí grimaces painfully and turns her gaze away. That makes me falter, and I leave the question unasked.
“I must move on,” she says finally, looking a little sad. “We Wanderers are loners.”
I want to protest, begging her to stay, claiming my leg hurts again. But Enra’daí cannot be swayed. To say goodbye, she only touches my arm briefly and then quickly looks away. I want to call out after her that I love her, but she has already vanished between the massive trunks of the trees. Tears well up, and I begin to weep bitterly.
It is a goodbye…
All the dead—an entire people! My friends! My mother! My little sister! Not until dawn breaks do my tears dry up, and I fall into a restless sleep.
“I enter the corridor, which is said to be in a house—my house—located in a small town…”
“Grandpa,” one of the two interrupts—it must be Julietta, since she’s the one with the cowlick on the left side of her forehead—“why do you always start your stories with ‘I enter the hallway’ instead of ‘Once upon a time’?”
“Because the two of you are very special girls, and I tell you special stories that no one else tells—not other grandmas or grandpas, and certainly not the ladies at the preschool.”
“They aren’t ‘ladies,’ Grandpa. They’re our preschool teachers,” says the other one, Juniper.
“Storybook ladies, I mean. Anyway, my stories always begin in the hallway outside your bedroom. Because, unlike the other fairy tales you hear, mine are all true. Now, may I go on?” Both nod with wide eyes, looking as if they couldn’t hurt a fly. Well, we’ll see.
“So, I enter the hallway, which is said to be in a house—my house—located in a small town, in a region that belongs to a continent, which in turn drifts across the surface of a planet over geological timescales. Or so they say. But then I think of the garden of my childhood—the garden belonging to your great-grandparents, whom you never met.
When I was little, there was a giant tree in our garden. It was so tremendously big that I thought entire countries existed up in its branches, and the people living there probably had no idea they were living in a tree.”
“There’s no such thing as a tree that big.”
“Oh, but there is. I should know. You see, one day I climbed it. And do you know what I found up there?”
“A bird’s nest?”
“No. A colossal, old, gnarled branch with meadows and forests, deserts, mountains, lakes, and entire seas. It took me many years to explore even a small part of those lands. Incidentally, that’s where I met your grandmother—God rest her soul.”
“Grandma?” Incredulous looks. “In the tree in your garden at home?”
I nod. “I built her a house in a village, in a country on that branch. This very house. The one where your mother was born.”
“But that’s silly, Grandpa. We don’t live on a tree!”
“Maybe we do. I should know. After all, I’m the one who climbed it.”
“But Grandpa, we live on a planet, not a branch. Just look at Google Earth. When you zoom all the way out, you see the Earth.”
“And who says that has to be true? In the Middle Ages, Google Earth would have shown the Earth as a disk—and if you weren’t careful, you’d fall right off the edge.”
“Grandpa!”
“But in reality, our countries and continents are nothing more than the bark of a colossal, old, gnarled tree. When the nights are very still, you can hear the wood creaking softly in the wind.”
“Oh, Grandpa, those are just stories.” — “And your stories aren’t even real fairy tales; otherwise there would be heroines and princes…” — “…and horses and squirrels and dwarves.” — “And no corridors.” – “Exactly. Definitely no corridors.”
“Not even the ones in a fairy-tale castle? Well, tell you what, you two heroines. I’m through with corridors anyway. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m setting off to climb back down.”
“Climb down?” Two pairs of wide, apprehensive eyes look at me.
“Yes. Back down from the tree that stands in the garden of my childhood. You see, my father had hung a swing from one of the lower branches, and if I remember correctly, that swing was the most beautiful place in the whole world to be.”
“You’re leaving?!”
“Well, we’ll talk more about it at breakfast—about whether you believe me about the tree, or if you’d rather trust Google Earth.”
“We believe you about the tree, Grandpa!” — “Google Earth is just trying to trick us!” — “You can easily use Photoshop to make a branch look like a planet.” — “Don’t go away, Grandpa!”
“No, my angels, don’t worry. I don’t even think the swing is still there. Now, close your eyes and let the wind that blows through the branches of the world night after night lull you to sleep.”
