 
Grandpa's Portal  
by Steve Messman

2nd Ed. Copyright 2011 by Steve Messman and Messman Family Enterprises, LLC

Published by Steve Messman at Smashword

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### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

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### Quick Comments From Readers

"I loved reading this! Ashley loved it, too! She was disappointed that she couldn't finish it and things you need to visit Mrs. W's classroom as a guest author!"

"I enjoyed your book thoroughly. When I finshed your book I said WOW! Talk about expanding one's horizons. It was an excellent book!"

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A Quick Description of Grandpa's Portal

Grandpa's Portal is multidimensional science fantasy for anyone, preteen to adults. On the surface of the novel is a fun story of a grandfather who dives through a magic portal into the tiny world of insects. Because he left clues and puzzles that need to be solved, he is followed a year later by his grandchildren who battle giant mice, vicious insects, and killer spiders to bring their grandpa home. The deeper story surfaces when the ants show this family "The Book of Promises." This mysterious book prophesies that five humans will overcome evil and bring balance to the world. It also promises that supreme evil can bring the dead back to life. Moral and ethical decisions force the kids in different directions. Three kids are forced home where they have to explain to their parents what happened. One chooses to live with the spiders where is seemingly swallowed by the evil that promises to bring his dead grandfather back to life.

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### Table of Contents

1. The Beginning

2. Grandpa

3. Grandpa's Final Trip

4. The Portico

5. What's a Springtail

6. Brian and Sarrah Are On Their Own

7. Brian's Disappearing Arm

8. The Next August Visit

9. Thomas's Logic

10. Thomas's Plan

11. How

12. And Why

13. We've Got To Go

14. Gone

15. Through the Gate

16. The Springtail Armies

17. The Ants

18. The Mountain

19. Grandpa is Found

20. Why Are We Still Alive

21. Holy Jumping Spiders, Grandpa

22. Captured and Back in Prison

23. Back at the Chamber

24. The Huge Maple

25. The Glowing Orb

26. The Book of Paths

27. The End of the Book

28. Thought and Reflection

29. Hannah Goes Back to the Orb

30. Another Promise

31. The War Continues

32. Other Battles

33. Grandpa Dies

34. Upon Waking

35. Resurrection and Pure Evil

36. The Dead Shall Be Given Life

37. Insurrection

38. And Now There are Three

39. Getting Past the Obvious

40. Finding the Right Questions

41. The Real Battle Begins

42. The Battle Continuers

43. The Battle Moves Outside

44. The Battle Inside

45. Going Home

46. There is Always a Choice

Study Questions

*****

**1. The Beginning**

We're here, Debbie. It's hot, and it's humid, and we both stink of sweat. I know it. You know it. Even the deer know it. I'd apologize for the inconvenience, but my Grandpa taught me something a long time ago. "Don't make choices you'll have ta apologize for," he would say, "and never apologize for the stuff ya have no control over." So, thank you for being such an understanding daughter. The heat and I are testing your patience, I know, but I had to bring you here. Grandpa loved this path and these woods more than life itself. He worshiped that ancient maple tree as if it were a cathedral. The sounds of rustling leaves and waving grass, the smells of rotting wood and molding dirt were, to him, a sacred harmony. When the air is just right, you can smell something different, faint and acrid, like vinegar. The smell comes from that giant ant mound. A special tree stands just a few feet to the left of the mound. See it? That peculiar looking one over there with all the space beneath its roots? That's the portico: the magic portal, a doorway to a world only seen by a handful of people. Grandpa went through the portal. Your Uncle Thomas and I went through it too, along with your cousins, Brian and Sarrah. Only three of us came back. It's a long story, and everything you need to know begins in this magical spot: the place where Grandpa vanished from the world over twenty years ago.

*****

**2. Grandpa**

The week was special from the moment Thomas rang the doorbell. Grandpa opened the door, and his smile lit the porch. His ocean-blue eyes twinkled with the flashing light of the fireflies he chased during an Indiana boyhood. Without a single word, with a smile and the simple wave of his hand, Grandpa welcomed us all. Mom and dad stood clear while Thomas and I tore through the door and gave Grandpa a giant hug. We kissed Grandma on her oven-warmed cheeks, and we inhaled the meld of wonderfully sweet aromas that wafted from her kitchen: a mix of chocolate and vanilla that draped the air and screamed "Cookies!" Instantly, all of us were home.

Cousins Brian and Sarrah arrived the next day with their parents. As he always did, Grandpa wasted no time in separating us from our parents. Grandpa made it his life's purpose to teach everything he knew to his grandkids, to pass on his considerable knowledge of the world. It was as if he wanted us to carry on after he left. He wanted us to know everything he knew, to be everything that he was, and to do everything that he did. Grandpa wasn't just book-smart. He knew something about everything. Grandpa would talk to us about birds, about insects, about how not to get lost, and about how to find our way home if we did. And the questions! There were always so many questions that he actually expected us to answer! What kind of bird is that? Why is that important? If one kind of bird, then what season? Why is that bird always seen in the brush? Why is that other one always seen in the trees? So many questions!

On this trip, Grandpa led the four of us kids on a strangely difficult outing. We hiked across freshly cut logging roads, and through deer trails that you could barely see. Grandpa pointed out the logging crews, the clear cuts, and the old forests that were about to be harvested. He showed us how the deer and elk had been eating the young shoots of vine maple, and how the alder trees were growing so quickly where giant fir trees had been just weeks earlier. We had been hiking and climbing for what seemed like hours. Little Sarrah, the youngest of us all, was holding on pretty well for a seven-year old. We were all tired, hot, and sweaty. We started the hike with plenty of water, but the four of us kids sipped it far too often. When we ran out, Grandpa simply gave us one of his sideways glances, a shrug, and a half a smile. Lesson learned. We needed to get back to the house, but Grandpa had more to teach. We all sat on the ground in a grassy clearing not far from where we are right now. It was shaded by trees at least a hundred feet tall. Grandpa agreed that we might be tired, but he also reminded us that we were not lost and that home was not far away. He told us that we needed to rest a little and that we could afford the time. "Tough times don't last. Tough people do," he said. The winds seemed to whisper agreement through the treetops while Grandpa spoke. We all sat for a long time and chatted about our parents, our schools, and how hot it was. Sarrah suddenly jumped up and groaned something about being miserable, getting back to Grandpa's house, and running through the lawn sprinkler. I had to admit that sounded refreshing! Now that we imagined the fun possibilities of cool water and a rattling sprinkler, we were excited to head back. Grandpa sensed that. "If you're all rested, we can go," he conceded. "Isn't it amazing how clearly we can think after we stop ta rest for awhile?" With a tone balanced somewhere between disdain and sarcasm, Grandpa added, "Even without food or water?" We all heard what he said, but I don't think we were quite ready for that lesson. Cool well water was calling our names, and my stomach was telling me that food was calling, too. I'm pretty sure I was thinking about those cookies that Grandma had baked only the day before.

But, as always, every time we went for a walk we headed not exactly toward home, but toward Grandpa's favorite place in the woods. This place, Debbie. Right here. The five of us walked single file down an overgrown deer path toward that ancient maple tree. Thomas ran ahead, chased by Brian. Sarrah was last, mostly because she was smaller and slower, but also because she took precious time to look at every pretty weed that grew in the trail. For most of the trip, we battled nettles, blackberry vines, wild roses, and just about every other plant that had thorns. After what probably wasn't more than twenty minutes and at least a thousand thorn pricks, we stood in the shadow of Grandpa's maple tree. Even back then, that maple tree was one of the largest trees I had ever seen. The area in front of the tree was overgrown with grass that stood at least four feet high; Sarrah's crown of fine, brown hair was barely visible over the top. We may have been only minutes from the house, but any one of us could easily have believed that Hansel and Gretel were about to come bounding through the trees with a half eaten loaf of bread. Two more steps would certainly have landed us directly at the door of the witch's cottage. Scary and thick as it was, this was Grandpa's special place.

At the time, we didn't know what made this spot so extraordinary. To us kids, it was nothing but more trees, more grass, and more dead leaves. Whatever it was, and for whatever reason, this place filled a spiritual hole in Grandpa's heart. We always ended up here, and it was always very much like going to church.

This path we are standing on was created when those two, giant trees fell next to each other, probably more than a hundred years ago. You can see that four trees are growing on top of one of the fallen trees, and those are very large, very living, and very old. Grandpa called each of the two fallen trees a colonnade. He told us that each of those would rot for many more years while the trees that grew on top would live off of their nutrients. "It's the circle of life," said Grandpa. "It happens with people, too. As us old folks die, we've hopefully given you young people all the nutrients ya need ta survive." Grandpa told us that maybe hundreds of years from now, the trees that are on the ground would be gone, having rotted away, and the trees growing on top would have nothing but air between their roots where the rotted tree used to be. It would look like the trees were growing several feet off the ground. Look over there, Debbie, to that tree I already showed you; the one I called a portico. That's a perfect example. That single tree appears to be standing on legs. Grandpa would point to that exact tree every time we visited this spot. "Look over there, but don't go over there," he would admonish. We were used to that warning. We had heard it often, and we would hear it again.

This place that surrounds the colonnades was always so different than the rest of Grandpa's property. Most of his acreage had been mowed, or cut, or manicured. In this section of the woods, Grandpa did nothing; he wanted this part of the woods to remain completely natural. It also came with his very stern caution—ALWAYS. Grandpa told us many times, every time we stopped here, "This, kids, is a very special place. Never, never walk inta those woods." He would point into the thick woods on the other side of this colonnade; the look on his face was unusually stern. "Never cross ta the other side, and never go through the portico. The springtail armies might getcha. If they do, ya sure won't be able ta make it back home." Not once did Grandpa tell us what a portico was, or even what a springtail army was. He just told us not to cross to the other side, the side where _that_ tree is, the one that stands on its roots. More unanswered questions! Always! But, about these woods, and about that portico, Grandpa was deadly serious.

*****

**3. Grandpa's Final Trip**

A few days later, Grandpa asked us to go on another hike. This was our final trip with Grandpa, and those of us who returned will remember it forever. What made this trip so unlike the hundreds before it? From the first step, Grandpa behaved strangely different. We all agreed that Grandpa began the hike with a sense of mystery, but it was the end of the hike that created the lasting memories, or more likely, the nightmares.

We hiked up an unused logging road into the foothills. We slogged for what seemed like miles through any number of trails; some were gravel roads that had long been overgrown by weeds and trees; most were nothing more than animal trails worn through tall grass and shrubs. Grandpa was oddly quiet for this entire part of the hike; he barely spoke a word of advice, guidance, or admonishment. Very strange, indeed. While Grandpa was unusually quiet, we certainly were not. The four of us kids startled more deer than we could count, and we tossed pebbles after them as they bolted smartly into the tree lines. We chased butterflies, threw rocks, picked flowers, and in general, had a ton of fun.

This day, unlike the previous few, was not a normal summer day. It was cloudy, warm when the sun was shining and cool when it wasn't. In fact, the day was downright dreary when the clouds covered the sun. They were thick and dark, and they shadowed the entire earth in damp coldness. I remember that Sarrah constantly complained about the cold. In fact, on this day she complained constantly about almost everything. I think that was really to be expected since she was the youngest and Grandpa demanded the same of her as he did of the rest of us. At the time, Sarrah was pretty frustrating. Every time the clouds would cover the sun, she would whine. Every time the sun broke through, she would do a little dance, then she would gripe about why the sun couldn't just shine all the time.

Sarrah complained about the cold one more time, and Grandpa suddenly seemed to wake up. Grandpa picked Sarrah up and held her close as if to share his warmth. He stroked a couple of fir needles and flower petals out of her hair and said, "What's the important thing ta remember about clouds?" He may have asked Sarrah, but he looked at all of us. It didn't really make any difference how long he waited. He wasn't going to get an answer from any of us this time. We all wanted to go home; we just weren't complaining about it like Sarrah was. Grandpa finally did something he rarely did; he provided the answer. "Rare is there a day without clouds. The important thing ta remember is that, behind the clouds, the sun is still shining." I don't know about the others, but _Duh!_ was the thought that crossed my mind. Like we didn't already know that! I must have looked at him with one of my quirky, cross-eyed glances, because Grandpa just smiled. "One day you'll understand," he said, as if he could read my thoughts. Then he put Sarrah back on the ground so we could continue our walk. The sun broke through the clouds just as Sarrah's feet touched the earth, and Sarrah hugged Grandpa's thigh in thanks. The sun remained bright and warm for the rest of the day. To this day, cousin Sarrah swears that Grandpa made the clouds disappear just for her.

With the sun now warm, and with kids that needed to go home, Grandpa directed us down the mountain on a shrub-choked foot path that led directly to, you guessed it, this special place. Now, as we walked, Grandpa did what he always did. He made us stop to see where the sun was, and based on the position of the sun, he asked us to point in the direction of the house. He stopped us in mid-trail just to ask us to study the trees, and he quizzed us about what kind of tree that one was, or that one. Grandpa stopped us in our tracks many times and asked us to do nothing but listen. "Whadya hear?" he would say. We heard the wind, cars, chainsaws, birds, unrecognizable things. For Grandpa, everything we could sense was a clue about something. As far as he was concerned, everything was available to teach us important lessons. Chainsaws meant people. Cars meant roads. Winds carried smells or sounds. "Everything provides ya with some kind of direction." Grandpa would say. "Sometimes, a simple direction is all ya need ta know which way ta go." Grandpa would often teach us things that were just too far over our heads. He had a lesson for that, too, which we heard many times through the years. "Someday you'll understand."

As soon as he said that, we kids turned and ran toward the big maple tree. We plopped down in the shade of that huge tree and waited for Grandpa to catch up. As soon as he joined our circle, he began. "This is my favorite place in the woods," Grandpa said for the zillionth time. "Just stay here for a minute. Don't say anything. Just listen. Just feel the magic." We had all heard this before too, more times than we could count. And like always, we all sat there feeling something, but I think what we felt was the cool of the deep woods. I sure didn't feel any magic.

Grandpa was wearing one of his favorite t-shirts; the brown one with the wolf print, and as always, he wore his three-day beard. Grandpa belonged here; he belonged to this place. I watched him stand there, one hand on that big maple, leaning into it with his eyes closed. He stood, I don't know, loosely is the best word I can think of. He propped himself against that tree looking as if he were holding it up. In truth, I think he was asking the tree to hold him up. I watched him breathe deeply and ever so peacefully. Maybe he was praying, or maybe he was talking to the tree, or maybe he was listening to it. Whatever he was doing, it was really strange. When he finally opened his eyes, Grandpa said, "Now, I'm ready ta go."

Thomas asked, "Ready to go where?" Grandpa didn't answer. He simply walked into the woods using this very path between the colonnades that he had taken us to so many times before, and then he stopped. We stood in absolute silence for what seemed like minutes, but kids can't stay quiet for long. Thomas got busy doing what Thomas normally did. He was already on his knees searching for bugs or anything else that held his scientific interest. Sarrah was sitting on her butt not doing anything, probably cold in the shade and thinking about complaining. I was standing beside Grandpa and holding his hand when Brian started the whole thing. I saw the mischievous glance he gave Sarrah. He had the cutest way of cocking one eyebrow higher than the other and smiling full and toothy when he was about to do something he knew he shouldn't do. Brian began running back and forth on top of that dead tree, the one that forms one side of this colonnade. He spun himself around the newer trees so hard that his wavy hair flipped from side to side. It looked pretty normal to me, like something Brian would be doing, but Grandpa reacted very differently. He yelled! "Brian! Get down! Now!" Brian may have been ten, but he wasn't too old to cry. Grandpa hardly ever yelled. When he did, you understood that something was wrong.

After our emotions had settled some, Grandpa lowered himself to the ground one knee at a time. We always thought it was funny; in fact, we chuckled at the sound of Grandpa's knees popping and cracking when he bent so low. When he finally reached the ground, he used both hands to help straighten his body out. Grandpa passed a muffled groan as he settled, and he beckoned to Brian without a single word. Brian crawled in close, and Grandpa hugged him more closely than he had ever hugged any of us. It was as if Grandpa had found some precious thing that had been lost, as if he needed to hold Brian forever, so he would not be lost again. I thought that Grandpa physically could not let go, but finally he relaxed. I saw tears in Brian's eyes, but we never talked about that. I think he felt what Grandpa had tried to teach us all these years—fear of the other side.

We sat with Grandpa as he talked to us for the umpteenth time about what a colonnade was. Again, he told us not to crawl through the portico. Again, he warned us about the springtail armies. And, even though we had asked him every time what a portico was, and what a springtail army was, he said again, as he always did, "One day you'll understand." But this time, there was more. We held deep understanding of something we could not yet describe.

"We are all defined," Grandpa began after a very short pause, "by the choices we make during our lives. The largest problem is that those who simply stand by and watch us make our choices are the people who do the defining."

_That_ came out of nowhere. Grandpa talked to us about many things, but he never preached to us. This was just another one of those things that made the day strange. So, we listened.

"Everything we do. Everything we are. Everything we say. The person y'are is defined by the choices ya make. Sarrah chooses ta whine, so you define her by that choice. Thomas chooses ta carry a microscope with him on these walks. You define him by that choice. I choose ta be good at what I do. I choose ta try ta teach ya skills that will get ya through life. I choose ta love my kids. You define me as the person you believe I am by the choices I make. You probably aren't old enough yet, but one day you'll find that some choices are very difficult ta make. One day you'll hafta choose between right or wrong, and you'll not even be able ta know the difference. You'll hafta choose based on the feeling in your gut, or more likely, the feeling in your heart. You'll simply hafta make the best choice ya can with the information ya have."

Then, Grandpa did the strangest thing. He put Brian on the ground, stood as if pulled by invisible ropes, and walked us to the patch of devil's club that guarded the most direct path to the house. "Look at this," he said while he broke off a needle-sharp thorn that was maybe an inch long. Then he started dancing around like an aging sword fighter with this tiny, pointy thing. He parried and thrust and pointed and stabbed and poked. When Grandpa finally stopped dancing, he was almost panting. He held that tiny sword at about eyeball level and gave it the most thoughtful stare; all the while he breathed deeply and forcefully. At last, with the thorn still held in front of his dreaming eyes that glittered once again with the light of years ago, Grandpa said "Ya know? This would make a really great spear for a person about the size of a ladybug." Then, almost reverently, he lowered his hand and mini-spear, bowed, and returned his thoughts to us.

Grandpa's mood was clearly different that day. He was sad, or deep, or thoughtful. Melancholy would be a good description, but there was no good reason that any of us could see. When he finished staring at the devil's club thorn, he asked us if we knew the way home. We did. Grandpa asked us to point toward home. We did. He asked us to show him the trail. We did that, too. Grandpa always tested us, but on this trip, he tested us three times. Something was definitely strange.

"Okay, kids," Grandpa said. "This time, you lead the way home." Thomas jumped up and started running toward the trail. "Me first! Me first!" he yelled. Brian darted close behind, but Thomas beat him to the path. Speed made absolutely no difference, though, because both boys stopped dead and started screaming when they hit the patch of devil's club. Those thorns were sharp! Sarrah and I caught up a few seconds later and helped extract the boys from those long, pokey stickers, many of which had found their way into soft boy-flesh. I heard dad yelling from the deck, asking us if we were OK. I yelled back to assure him that we were.

The four of us worked to clear the path for Grandpa; we figured he was a little slower than us and would be slightly behind. We used sticks to hold the patch of spiny branches back and create a path for Grandpa to walk through, but he didn't. Didn't walk through, that is. We looked back to see where he was, but he was gone. We hollered for him, but he didn't answer. We ran back to the maple tree, but he wasn't there. We back-tracked the trail that we had just used, but Grandpa was nowhere to be seen.

We fought our way through the devil's club and laughed all the way to the house, fully expecting Grandpa to be on the deck waiting for us, fully believing that he was testing us once again. Grandpa wasn't there. Grandma had not seen him, and neither had our parents.

Grandpa vanished in these woods, Debbie. He disappeared from this very spot! We didn't have a clue where he was.

*****

**4. The Portico**

It's impossible for me to describe just how terrible the rest of the day was. Dad called the local police. They brought dogs. While the dogs were searching for Grandpa, other detectives asked us kids a thousand questions. They took us into separate rooms; asked us the same questions over and over for what seemed like hours. We all told the same story. We told them the truth. None of us saw Grandpa disappear. None of us knew anything. The police were unable to find Grandpa or any sign of him. The dogs found a scent trail that disappeared in the woods as mysteriously as Grandpa had. Those dogs sniffed every side of that tree Grandpa called the portico, but the scent stopped right there. Before he left, the policeman in charge spoke to dad for a few minutes. I saw dad's head slump; he shook the policeman's hand and closed the door. The house went silent. Whispered phone calls went out to a couple of neighbors. It wasn't long before people began to arrive at the house: friends that came to comfort Grandma on this tragic day. Grandma cried long into the night. Sometimes her tears were silent. Sometimes we could hear her sobs throughout the house. We kids disappeared to the deck for awhile, then to a back bedroom. All four of us sort of passed out in a huddle. I don't know about the others, but I do know that I cried myself to sleep in the starlit blackness of that room.

I remember exactly what we were talking about as tears and stress dragged me into blissful unconsciousness. What the heck is a portico? Grandpa told us a dozen times not to crawl through the portico, but he never told us what that meant. Why had his scent ended at that tree when Grandpa had warned us about it so many times? That was exactly like him. Grandpa often taught us lessons that we didn't understand. And always, he recognized when we didn't, so in the end he would say something like, "You'll understand when the time comes." Grandpa knew that the two most important skills we could have in life were asking questions and learning to find their answers. We were kids, though, and we often took shortcuts. Thomas, The Answer Finder, my brother was thirteen that summer. He was only two years older than me, and we kids already considered him to be a scientific genius. No one knows where he got his thirst for science; our parents went to college, but they were both far more interested in the social sciences than in the hard sciences. If we had a question, all of us kids went to Thomas. We were certain he would either know the answer, or he would find the answer. The answer he needed to find this time was, "What the heck is a portico?" It would have to wait until morning.

The smell woke me up. Bacon. Then I became aware of the sounds. Sizzling. Crackling eggs. Hushed whispers. I uncoiled from the huddle, took one of Grandpa's T-shirts from a pile of laundry, and pulled it over my wrinkly, slept-in clothes. Then, I joined the crowd that gathered in the living room and kitchen. More friends had already come by to help Grandma. She was still in her bedroom, but neighbors and friends had already arrived to provide any support she might need. This morning's breakfast, Grandpa's favorite meal, was going to be a social event. I gathered my hugs from family, shook the hands of friends I didn't know, and sat at the table. I'm not sure how much time I had spent with friends and family, but apparently, and unknown to the rest of us, Thomas had been spending that time on Grandpa's computer.

"YeeeeeHaaaawwwww!" Thomas' enthusiastic howl sliced through the wake-like mood. He vaulted from the den, sprinted through the hallway, and skidded to a stop in Grandma's living room. It made no difference to Thomas that the house was filled with strangers. All of them shot wide-eyed stares at the brash, young man dressed in a wrinkled and dirty T-shirt, tighty-whities, and gray socks that were supposed to be white. Their jaws dropped another notch when he yelled, "I've ascertained what a portico is! It's a particular type of colonnade!" I watched a couple of people I didn't know gawk as if to say, "Whaaaa?" I was almost embarrassed. "Shhhhhh! Thomas! Some respect, please. Grandma is still asleep," I scolded. But she wasn't. As I said the words, I looked toward the hallway to see a sleepless, red-eyed Grandma hiding behind a forced smile. She practically floated to Thomas. She hugged him from behind and kissed the top of his head. "Good morning," she cracked. I could feel her voice shake. Thomas tucked his chin while Grandma hugged him tighter. At first, I thought he was expressing some remorse for yelling like a wounded rabbit, disturbing the house's unnatural silence. Soon, his bright eyes peeked from below his dipped forehead, and I could see the excitement straining to be released from Grandma's morning hug. "Apologies," Thomas said as he raised his head while flashing Grandpa's knowing smile, "but, I've discovered relevant information about what Grandpa was teaching us. He didn't enlighten us about everything. I can further develop his thoughts." No one knows how he found all those answers over the years, but Thomas had his ways. Still does, for that matter.

Our parents and Grandma looked at us as if we were crazy. They had no idea what a portico was, or a colonnade. More to the matter, they had no idea why we kids even cared. They had no idea that this discussion was about a secret world that Grandpa shared only with his grandkids. My excitement level shot straight up like the strong-man's bell at a county fair. I shoveled my last bite of egg into my mouth, stuffed in a whole piece of bacon, threw six more pieces of bacon on three pieces of toast, and I ran. I couldn't catch Thomas, though. He had already broken free of Grandma's hug and had flashed down the hall to gather Brian and Sarrah. I remember thinking how it was fortunate that Grandma had moved out of the way. I'm sure the adults in the room were totally confused. Regardless, I think they were happy that our young minds were occupied. They didn't have to deal with two problems at the same time: a bunch of kids, and Grandma.

Thomas was very smart. I think he got his brains from Grandpa, but there was a big difference. Grandpa had what mom and dad called hard-earned wisdom. Thomas had book smarts. Thomas always tried to convince everyone that he was as smart as Grandpa, but he wasn't, at least not yet. We let him think he was, sometimes. But all that's beside the point. What counts now is what Thomas told us about a portico. I gave toast and bacon to the others who had not eaten breakfast. Thomas kept spitting chunks of chewed bread while he rambled in his excitement. "Grandpa explained what a colonnade was in nature. It's a row of trees growing in a straight line on top of another dead, fallen tree. If it were a piece of architecture, it would appear to be several columns in a perfect row. What Grandpa never told us is that a portico is also an architectural structure. It's a special kind of colonnade that screens or surrounds a doorway, presumably a doorway that opens into a building."

Cousins Sarrah and Brian said at exactly the same time, "What the heck are you talking about?" Those two were as different as night and day, but they were also as inseparable as twins. Inseparable is a great word. Grandma and Grandpa were that way. Even our dads are inseparable brothers. They have their different lives, and definitely they have different opinions, but they really are as thick as family. Family is a huge part of why you and I are even standing here, Debbie. But, let me get back to the story.

Thomas started to explain, again, about a portico, but I had no patience for a repeat. I was sure he would use more big words that we could barely understand, so I interrupted. "Are you telling us there's a doorway out there in those woods? One that Grandpa's colonnade is hiding? A doorway to what?"

*****

**5. What's a Springtail**

Thomas didn't have answers to all our questions, but we all knew he would eventually find them. The one answer that we all suddenly did have was that there was some kind of doorway in those woods that led to someplace. It was drivel: an answer that made no more sense to us at the time than Grandpa telling us not to crawl through the portico. It obviously made sense to Grandpa, and if there was sense to be made of it, then we had confidence that Thomas would make it. It would have to happen later, though. It was almost time to go home.

The next day, Thomas and I were on our way to Spokane with mom. It's such a long time to be in a car. Six hours of Washington countryside! If you're into looking out windows, the scenery ranges from snow-covered mountains to desert. But for a couple kids, it's nothing more than a really long, really boring drive. Neither of us was into looking at the scenery during this trip. We both had other thoughts on our minds.

Dad didn't come home with us. In fact, he called his boss to take more time off work. Dad needed to stay behind to take care of Grandma for awhile. There were so many things for him to do. Most of it was legal stuff of course, like following up on the missing person reports, taking care of bank accounts and bills and the like. We kids needed to go back to school, and mom had to get back to both work and school. It had already been an awkward start to the beginning of the school year. Thomas and I had already missed our first week of school. Truthfully, we figured that going back to school was a good thing since that's where Thomas usually did his best work. He was probably the world's biggest teacher's pet. Somehow he always got his teachers to help find the answers we needed. That first day home, the end of the school day couldn't have come soon enough for Thomas. He bolted through those school doors like that last bell was the starter's gun at the race track. He totally ignored one teacher who yelled after him, and he ran all the way home so he could beat the bus. That was a giant waste of energy, though, since I rode the bus. When I finally got home, Thomas was pacing the living room floor, excited, to say the least.

"Hannah! Where have you been?" were the first accusing words out of Thomas's mouth. He stood at the top of the steps with his hands on his head and his mouth wide open while he waited for my answer. It looked like he was giving a silent yell while pulling his hair, which was way too short for him to grab onto, anyway. Mom had taught me well over the short years of my life. I never took any crap from Thomas. He tried, though, and sometimes he would get in a good one, but I could fight back with the best of them. Now that I think about it, that fighting spirit is probably why I'm still alive.

"Don't you yell at me!" I snapped. "Was I supposed to be home at some special time just for you? I'm sorry. I don't remember having a date with you after school. Yuck! A date with my brother! Gross!" I'm sure my almost-teenage hormones were at work that day, but Thomas was too excited to argue. "What's so important, anyway?" I asked after we both calmed a bit.

"I've discovered significant information about springtails!" He shoved a tiny picture of some alien-looking creature in my face. Like I could even see it, stuck it to the tip of my nose like it was. "My science teacher assisted me in the search!" Thomas may have been a little less animated, but for sure, he wasn't any less excited. Now, at least, I knew why he was agitated.

"Calm down, Thomas. It'll make more sense to me if you just slow down." To help Thomas regain some composure, I thought it might also be good to stroke his ego a little. "I can't believe you have an answer already. You're amazing." Thomas was thrilled when I complimented him.

Thomas took two deep breaths and started over. This time, he almost made sense. "A springtail is an extremely small insect," he began. "There are about 6000 different species in the world. In Grandpa's part of the world, most are approximately one sixteenth of an inch long and live on the forest floor under dead leaves and tree bark. They're named springtails because they have a tiny prong that protrudes from their lower abdomen and recoils like a spring to aid the insect in jumping. They survive best in damp environments. That's perfect where Grandpa lives, or anyway, where he used to live. It rains significantly more in western Washington than it does here."

I was basically grossed out by this talk of bugs, and Thomas still hadn't really solved the riddle. The biggest questions still didn't have answers. "That's all really great, Thomas. But, this is a bug for crying out loud. A darned little bug, at that. How's a bug going to keep me from ever going home again?" That's what Grandpa always told us; the springtail armies would keep us from ever going home.

Thomas became almost angry. I think it was just because he had learned so much during the day, and I didn't seem to appreciate it; in fact, I dared to challenge the depth of his knowledge. The look on his face was almost scary, and his voice quivered through tightened lips. "Hannah," he said with a definite note of exasperation, "I'm well aware of what Grandpa always said. Let me finish. Springtails live in large groups. There can be 100,000 of them in a square meter of forest floor, and they consume organic materials, like fungus, or mold, or decaying bodies."

"Gross, Thomas. But, it's still just a bug! How...?"

"I don't know, Hannah," Thomas cut my question short. "All I know is that Grandpa warned us repeatedly not to cross over the colonnades because we might be attacked by the springtail armies. He cautioned, always, that if they got us, we'd never get home again. I'm well aware that they're just bugs. I'm trying to imagine what a hundred thousand of these things could do to me. If I think in terms of those large numbers, I can nearly understand what Grandpa meant, but not exactly. Now, at least, I know what a springtail is. And I can imagine them in huge numbers."

"But, they're so tiny," I repeated.

"But, their numbers are so vast, Hannah. Thousands! Maybe millions! And they consume dead, rotting things. If you were a dead, rotting thing, they could eat you!"

I just didn't understand. I simply couldn't visualize this puny bug as a fearsome insect. How could this little thing stop us from returning home? "I just don't get it, Thomas. I don't care if there were millions of the little critters. I can squash thousands with a single swipe of my hand. I can't figure out what Grandpa was saying."

"Let me try this to add perspective," said Thomas. "Imagine the damage a hundred thousand bees could cause you, Hannah, or even a hundred thousand mosquitoes, or a hundred thousand ants." Thomas tried, but I think my mind was closed to the thought for some reason. This talk of bugs just didn't make sense in my vision of the world.

We obviously had some thinking to do. Clearly, we needed to go back to visit Grandpa's house. Neither of us could figure out exactly what Grandpa was saying, and we weren't going to be able to from our home in Spokane. Don't forget that at this time, Debbie, we still didn't know what the portal was. We needed to find it. We needed to see just how these bugs fit into Grandpa's picture of the world. For the next few days, emails streamed back and forth between us and the Brian/Sarrah team. We needed to figure out how to get back to Grandma's house all at the same time—all four of us.

*****

**6. Brian and Sarrah Are On Their Own**

Our ability to visit Grandma was really a function of where we all lived. At the time, Thomas and I lived in Spokane, and you already know how long that drive is. For us, visits to Grandpa and Grandma happened infrequently. Brian and Sarrah, on the other hand, lived in Vancouver, only about two hours to the south. After dad's first stay with Grandma, much of the responsibility for helping her fell to Brian's dad since he lived so much closer than we did. In a way, that was good for us because Brian and Sarrah got to visit Grandma every month or so. Those two kids sent Thomas and I emails after ever visit, and sometimes they telephoned so we could talk and get the details straight.

Brian and Sarrah had one visit that actually helped us reach a breakthrough in understanding the springtail armies. It happened the February during Sarrah's birthday, a perfect time for Brian's family to visit Grandma. Brian and Sarrah made their plans and used the birthday as a possible excuse for us to come along, but there was no way we could go. That particular winter was absolutely horrible. It was way colder than normal, and the skies seemed to dump foot after foot of snow in Spokane, and even more in the mountain passes. At a minimum, driving through Snoqualmie pass would have been a major pain; in fact, it might have been impossible. Even if we could have made the drive to Grandma's, there was no guarantee that we could make it back. Getting stuck at Grandma's might have caused dad to miss more days of work, which he just couldn't afford to do. He had already missed too many. The forces of nature seemed to be keeping us apart, so the pleasure of this visit belonged only to Brian and Sarrah. And a pleasure it was, too, according to the emails Brian sent us afterward.

Brian and Sarrah told Grandma and their parents they wanted to go for a walk in the woods to visit Grandpa's favorite place and to see if they could find the portico. Both of them had gone back to the woods before, but this was the first time they had called it Grandpa's favorite place. It was also the first time since Grandpa vanished that any of us had mentioned the word _portico_ to Grandma. The four of us had previously agreed that this was the best action to take. We decided that Brian and Sarrah should drop more details this time. It was a test. We wanted to see if Grandma knew about this place in the woods, or if she felt about it the same way Grandpa did. As it turned out, she said nothing and gave no indication that she knew of any such place in the woods. Grandma merely told Brian and Sarrah to be careful since it was so cold and snowy out there. She even made sure that they both had on an extra layer of wool, so she put a heavy sweater on both of them over the winter clothes they already wore. Since Grandma seemed to know nothing of the portico, we also assumed that she knew nothing of the springtail armies. Grandma would be of no help to us, but it was also certain that she would not stand in our way. We already assumed that our dads would also be of no help. Neither of our dads had ever reacted strangely to our being in the woods; neither one had ever shown an interest in Grandpa's travels in the woods, and Brian's dad had no real reaction to hearing that this place was special to Grandpa. Our assumption was clear. None of the adults knew anything that would help us. Brian and Sarrah were on their own. With that knowledge, and bent on answering a set of questions that had been in the background all along, Brian and Sarrah ventured out the door and into the woods. Why had Grandpa told no one but the grandkids about the portico and the springtail armies? Why had he never shared this secret world with his adult family?

The two shuffled hand in hand, directly into the woods. Their tracks were the first to blemish the virgin snow. Sometimes I imagine the postcard scene that Grandma must have seen out of her windows: fields of unblemished snow, fir and hemlock boughs bending under its fresh weight, white as far as you could see. I often imagine myself standing next to Grandma. I imagine the feelings and emotions that must have pounded through her heart as she watched her grandchildren walk toward those woods. I imagine looking through that large window. I imagine seeing two sets of tracks cutting through fresh snow, and at the end of those tracks I imagine two beautiful kids holding hands and bounding toward that special place that Grandpa had given them. I imagine Grandma's pain, and I imagine her fear. Surely, Grandma remembered that Brian and Sarrah had been to this place before: when Grandpa disappeared, and many times after. I'm sure that Grandma felt better knowing their fresh tracks could easily be followed should their trip take too long. I also imagine standing at that window feeling Grandma's hope. Hope that Grandpa would bring Brian and Sarrah back home. He never did.

Once clear of the house, Brian and Sarrah ran directly to the colonnades. They fought their way through snow-squashed ferns that normally stood as tall as Sarrah. They pushed their way past snow-covered tree limbs, and finally through devil's club stickers that pricked them with every twist and turn. From there, the two walked onto the path between the colonnades; Sarrah pulled several stickers out of her sweater, but Brian didn't bother. He was much more interested in learning more about Grandpa's special place. They sat on one of the colonnades and looked across the other and into the space that Grandpa had warned us to stay out of. Of course, both Brian and Sarrah had done this before. Each time, they wrote back to tell us what they saw, but always, it was the same. First, they never saw Grandpa. They saw all the little animals and bugs that one would normally see in these woods. During their several trips, they had seen birds, slugs, worms, mushrooms, the occasional grasshopper, and maybe even butterflies that dared flirt with the shadowed darkness of the woods. They never saw a springtail, but Brian said that he never really cared to look that closely. "How many kids do you know who travel through the woods carryin a magnifying glass?" he asked. Thomas would have responded, "I do." To be truthful, Thomas was the only kid I ever knew to carry a magnifying glass with him. Normal people might carry binoculars, but a magnifying glass? I think not.

This particular day, Brian and Sarrah sat on that log doing what they had done five or six times before. They did exactly as Grandpa had taught them to do. They sat in silence, shivering in the day's snowy cold, listening to every possible sound for any kind of clue. The fresh snow seemed to thicken the silence while it amplified the forest sounds all around them—falling leaves, snapping twigs. They listened. They watched. They studied, all the time never crossing the colonnades. Nothing unusual ever happened—until today. Today they saw the chipmunk run through the tree roots. Over there. Those roots. That tree. The one that Grandpa called the portico. I told you about it earlier. It was the "perfect example" that Grandpa spoke about to only his grandkids: the tree that was lifted three feet off the ground because the stump below it had rotted away. At first, the chipmunk just stood there, right in front of them. Then, it ran through the roots. Not "through," actually. More accurately, it ran right into the space under the roots, but it didn't come out the other side. It didn't come out! That little chipmunk simply vanished!

Brian and Sarrah said they must have been in a state of shock for the first few seconds because both of them just stood there staring with their mouths opened in a silent scream. But then, it was like both regained their senses at exactly the same time. Both suddenly leaped up, and both scrambled to reach the edge of the colonnade. They leaned on it. Pressed their weight against that ancient tree. Strained to see the chipmunk or any sign of it. They stopped exactly as Grandpa had told them to so many times. The colonnade. That was the Grandpa-imposed boundary, but, this time was different. After a pause of some brief seconds, Brian made the leap to the forbidden side.

"Brian! Stop!" Sarrah yelled to Brian, warning him exactly as Grandpa had done. "The springtails will get you." Neither of them really knew what that meant, but they had heard it so many times.

Brian either didn't hear or didn't care. He traversed the colonnade with the agility of a gymnast and sprinted directly to the funny looking tree, the portico. Brian told us that he walked all around that tree, twice, in fact, being careful not to disturb the chipmunk's tracks. Everything looked normal. Everything looked exactly as it was supposed to—except for one thing. The chipmunk was gone. Its snowy tracks entered those roots, but they never came out. Brian said that he kneeled on the ground and looked through the tree roots exactly where the chipmunk had scampered through. Everything that Brian could see appeared to be normal. So, after spending a few minutes to gather all his courage, he looked at Sarrah, cocked one eyebrow, smiled that toothy grin, and stabbed his arm through the space outlined by the tree roots; and well, let me try to quote Brian. In his own words, he said, "AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"

*****

**7. Brian's Disappearing Arm**

Brian ranted about this event in several emails. He couldn't seem to get it out of his mind. Who could blame him? As Brian told the story, he had dropped to his knees in the snow, trying to see the chipmunk or its tracks, trying to figure out exactly what had happened, and trying to be careful not to disturb anything. He could see the chipmunk's path in the snow. Brian said he could see exactly where that little creature came from. He could follow its prints directly into the tree roots where they simply stopped. Stopped! No prints leaving, turning around, or going forward. There were simply no more prints, and there was no more chipmunk.

Personally, I think that seeing a chipmunk disappear into thin air would have been enough to turn me into a cowardly running machine. Brian, however, being the adventurous little cuss that he was, decided that he wasn't finished looking. First he used his fingers to trace the chipmunk's path in the snow. He let his fingers do the walking along the exact path that the chipmunk had taken, and apparently, Brian stopped his finger walking just short of the tree's roots. At this point, he had seen nothing unusual, except for the disappearing chipmunk, so he decided to take the next move. It must have taken a huge amount of courage, but without any warning, Brian thrust his whole arm through that doorway shaped by the tree's roots. That's when he screamed.

Brian told us his version of the story a dozen times, and each time was just as scary as the first. His antics always made us laugh, but the truth was seriously frightening. Every time Brian repeated the story, he would pull his arm deep into his jacket sleeve to fake a disappearing arm. Then, he would poke it back through the sleeve, shake it, and brush it, and run screaming around the room. The tale got bigger and funnier every time, but the chilling truth remained. "My arm just disappeared!" he would say. "Gone! As in, not there!" I couldn't imagine going through this nightmare. Brian finished every version of his tale with the same statement. "My arm was attached to my shoulder one second, an as soon as I stuck it through those tree roots, it disappeared. Yeah, I screamed. What would you do?"

The rest of the story is that Brian was understandably scared out of his wits. He leaped up, and I guess you could say that he scrambled backwards. The fact that his arm was gone scared the heebie jeebies out of him, and he fell away from the tree in an absolute panic. As he fell, his arm reappeared as magically as it had disappeared. When Brian finally took the time to look at his arm with eyes instead of shocked emotion, he saw the bugs. Bugs by the thousands. So thick they swarmed the air around his arm, so tiny they appeared to be a living cloud.

Brian got really animated when he told this part of the story. "Little bitty things! Hundreds! Thousands! Coverin my arm! I had a jacket on, thank God. I couldn't really tell that they were bugs. They were just these little bitty white things. There were so many of them jumpin up an down that they covered both my sleeve an the air around my arm. It was almost like my arm was travelin inside a fog. I shook my arm as hard as I could, but these little guys just hung on for dear life. I tried to brush them off, but that only managed to squash them by the thousands! Bug guts all the way up and down my jacket sleeve! Yuck! It hurt, too. When I smeared the bugs off, I drove a couple of devil's club thorns into my arm. They must have been stuck in my coat."

Thomas took it upon himself to figure everything out. None of us could believe the amount of effort he put into it. Thomas spent hours on the internet searching for other people with disappearing arms. He did a ton of research trying to find stories of disappearing men and springtail armies. He found nothing credible about either. He found nothing about springtails that would lead us to believe they were dangerous in any way. He begged his teacher for help way more than he should have. He asked his friends if they had heard of such things, but most laughed at him and said he was crazy. There seemed to be only one possible answer. Magic.

Thomas had a theory. "That has to be it," he said during one long-distance conversation. "Grandpa always counseled us not to cross the colonnades and not to go to the portico. Since then, we've established that a portico is a colonnade that surrounds a doorway. The portico has to contain a doorway. It's a magical door, obviously, and it opens to a dimension we can't see. And Brian has encountered the springtail army that Grandpa told us about so many times. There's no other possible explanation. It's a door, and we have to go through it, too. Just like Grandpa did." There it was. Someone finally said the words. None of us kids ever believed that Grandpa was dead. We only knew that he was gone. We had finally reached the point where the fantasies of children met science fiction. The point where Thomas's theories faced the test of reality. The test: following in Grandpa's footsteps through the portal.

*****

**8. The Next August Visit**

The four of us conspired almost daily on how to convince our parents to meet at Grandma's house. Conspiring was the easy part. It probably seems like ancient history to you, Debbie, but even then, emails and text messages made for simple long-distance planning. The difficult part was finding a block of time for all of us to be together. When we finally were able to put a visit on the calendar, it happened almost naturally, almost as if our parents had planned it. Our visit to Grandma happened during the next August, the first anniversary month of Grandpa's disappearance. August was the perfect month for us to visit. The weather was warm and dry. The mountain passes were clear. School was still out. Both of our families could arrange some vacation time. It was a perfect month for all of us, and all those factors made it easy for us to convince our moms and dads to get together. In truth, none of us wanted Grandma to be alone at this time of the year.

Spending time at Grandma's house was always fun, but there are two things we did that create the warmest memories. First was when our families gathered on the back deck. The dads and moms would have a drink of some kind. Grandma almost always had juice. At least, that's what she said it was. Grandma usually put salt on the rim of the glass, and personally, I never liked the taste of salty juice. At the time, I didn't understand the relevance, but Grandma always explained it with one of Grandpa's many favorite sayings, "Everything in moderation." Really, I always thought there was something in Grandma's glass that wasn't too fruity. We always had the best times at those family gatherings, and they still provide some of my warmest memories. All we did was talk, and remember, and laugh. Brian's dad told the funniest stories. My dad did too. Put them together and those two men were unbeatable. Our dads told stories of how they did the funniest things when they were young, and how they never got caught. Grandma usually just smiled and shook her head. She always said that if she didn't know about it back then, she didn't want to know about it now. Sometimes they told stories of how they did get caught, like when dad slammed his foot through the living room wall, or when Grandma was swinging a two-by-four while chased young Brian around the garage. Dad and Uncle Brian kept us in stitches with all the stories of their childhood. Everyone laughed; sometimes we laughed so hard we cried. Sometimes, but not very often, we all just cried.

The second thing that was great about visiting Grandma's house was the shed. It used to stand right over there. You could easily see it from any widow in that corner of the house. It was surrounded by huge trees. During one December storm a long time ago, one of those trees fell smack on top of that shed, so it's not there anymore. And really, that's what it was. It was just a shed: no lights, no windows, one door. The door was the coolest! It opened from the top down, like a drawbridge that dropped over a castle's moat. In fact, that's what we called our shed—The Castle—even though it looked more like a small barn. "Let's go play in The Castle," we would say. The Castle was full of tools, old wires and motors, camping gear and lawn mowers, and in our youthful minds, each of those served its own medieval purpose. Mostly, we kids loved The Castle because the adults never went out there. It was the perfect place to hold our secret meetings. It was the place where we devised all of our childhood plans. And on this visit, we had some very important plans to work out.

*****

**9. Thomas's Logic**

Each one of us had our own special seat in The Castle. In the center of our group was the round table. Grandpa said it was a spool, but it was huge. All of us sat on half-full, five-gallon, metal paint cans—except for me. Mine was the only one that was made of plastic. Until this visit, I never figured out why that one was always mine, but the boys made sure it was. They said it was the queen's special throne.

Our August meeting of The Kids of The Castle met during the first afternoon that we were at Grandma's house. I sat on my special throne, and that seemed to start the whole thing. The two boys wouldn't stop giggling for the first fifteen minutes we were in The Castle. The two of them just laughed, poked each other, and generally acted like perfect fools. I shot a questioning glance at Sarrah, but all she did was give me one of those cute smiles and a shrug of her shoulders. I still find myself hoping that she didn't really know what was going on. Finally, after I lost my cool and screamed at the boys, they stopped laughing. Brian cocked one eyebrow and gave me that toothy grin like he always did, this time with an especially bright glint in those saucer-sized brown eyes. Nonetheless, the laughter stopped, and we could finally get serious.

Thomas was first to speak. "Magic. That's the only conceivable answer to Grandpa's disappearance."

I, of course, played the perfect skeptic. "Grandpa is dead and buried, Thomas. He's not coming back."

"No, Hannah, he is absolutely not. You don't really believe that, either. No one ever located Grandpa, alive or dead. He's definitely not buried. No one has any knowledge about where Grandpa is or why he disappeared. The local police department scoured those woods from top to bottom and couldn't find a single clue. No one was with him in those woods except the four of us. We never saw him disappear. We never found him. He's still there; he's out there in the woods where we left him. He has to be."

"I'm thinkin it's magic, too," said Brian.

Before he could finish his thought, Sarrah spoke up. "Yeah! It has to be magic. Remember what happened to Brian's arm last winter. Brian still has nightmares about that."

"I do not!"

"Do too."

"Do not."

"Stop!" I said. "This is going nowhere. Sarrah, let Brian finish." If I hadn't stopped them, those two kids would have done the "Do too—Do not" battle for the next hour.

"So," Brian continued, "I think it has to be magic. The magic has got to be in that tree. Sarrah and I both saw the chipmunk disappear. I could see its tracks right up to the point where he disappeared. Then, I stuck my arm in—an it disappeared!"

"Yeah!" Sarrah interrupted again. "Let me tell them what you s-s-said."

"Stop, Sarrah!" Brian insisted.

But, Sarrah was on a roll, and she would not be stopped. "I think it went s-s-something like 'AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!'"

All of us except Brian laughed hysterically. Somehow, the mental image of Brian kneeling in the snow, staring at a missing arm, screaming his lungs out was funny.

"Stop! Stop it!" Brian yelled. He was almost in tears. Brian's face twisted all up while he tried not to cry.

Sarrah was beyond stopping, and so, I think, were we. She took another jab. "And then, when he pulled his arm out of the tree roots, it reappeared and was covered with BUGS! Then he danced all over the place, s-s-shaking and waving that arm like it was on fire." Sarrah began mocking Brian. She danced all over The Castle, one arm waving in the air, screaming like a mad woman.

I know Brian was hurting, but Sarrah's antics were really hilarious. We all laughed so hard we nearly fell off our paint cans. Brian had told this story before, many times, but the way Sarrah was telling it was sooooooo funny.

"He s-s-squashed those bugs all over his jacket. That was the best part," Sarrah continued between belly laughs. "Bug guts up and down his arm! And then, when he s-s-stabbed himself with those devil's club thorns that were s-s-stuck in his shirt sleeve!" We all doubled over laughing at Brian's expense. Sarrah picked herself up and continued imitating Brian, "They're biting me! They're biting me!" That part of the story was new, and it was hilarious. We were fading fast from laughing so much.

Tears rolled down Brian's cheeks. He plopped his head onto the round table and hid his face in the folds of his arms. The three of us stopped laughing while we watched Brian's shoulders heave and listened to his fists pound the table. We started to feel really sorry for him, but just then, Brian lifted his head, and we saw that Brian was laughing harder than we were. It started—again. The four of us laughed like maniacs.

Suddenly, "That's it! Stop!" Thomas exploded. Then, he double over laughing again. "Stop it! That's it!" He scolded, again. Finally, every one of us stopped laughing and gawked at Thomas, who still had tears in his eyes from laughing so much. We thought Thomas was mad at us for poking fun at Brian, but he wasn't. He had just solved the riddle.

"That's it!" Thomas persisted. "Listen. Grandpa took us to the colonnades at least a dozen times, ever since we were little kids. Every time, he told us never to go through the portico, but he never told us what that was. I discovered that answer, though. Remember? A portico is a special colonnade that screens a doorway. Brian must have found the doorway. A magic doorway. A magic portal."

Now, how much sense did that make? Magic? A magic door? It made enough sense that we all stopped laughing. Actually, after Thomas spoke his piece, we all stopped breathing. If you were listening, you could have heard the sparrows flittering through the fir trees. If you were listening, but we weren't. We were all thinking about the magic portal.

Brian, not Thomas, put very simple words to our more-than-confused thoughts. They were more than just words. They were insight. They answered nearly every question we had for the past year. "By goin through those tree roots, we actually go through the magic portal. It's what Grandpa told us never to do. But, he did it, didn't he? He knew what was on the other side. That's why he always warned us. That has to be it."

Sarrah was a year older since Grandpa had disappeared, and her increasing maturity definitely showed. "I think he did. But if he could've returned like Brian's arm did, then why didn't he? And what about the s-s-springtail armies? What if they got him?"

*****

**10. Thomas's Plan**

It was quite clear that Thomas had put some serious thought into this, but it was Brian's last revelation that seemed to be the final piece of the puzzle. Everything suddenly fit—especially for Thomas. He tried to explain. "Consider this," he said. "Grandpa has always taught us so many things. Most valuable of all, he taught us to ask questions and demand answers. That's what he's done this time, too."

Thomas lost me, and I wasn't afraid to say so. I had confidence that Thomas knew what he was talking about. I just didn't have his logical brain, so I didn't necessarily follow his thought process. "Thomas, I don't have a clue what you're talking about. The only thing Grandpa ever told us was to stay out of that part of the woods. The last time we were there, Grandpa even yelled at Brian for almost going over the colonnade by accident."

Thomas and I were the only ones that talked for the next few minutes. Brian and Sarrah sat mesmerized, listening.

Thomas tried to clarify like Grandpa would have. He asked questions. "Yes. Grandpa made a special trip to the colonnades every time we visited. Every single time, he stood between those two dead logs and told us not to cross over to the portico. Why do you think he told us that?"

"I have no idea," I answered.

Not only did Thomas ask questions like Grandpa, he also insisted that I answer like Grandpa would have. "Yes, you do, Hannah. Think about it."

There was nothing but silence in The Castle for awhile, but Thomas must have been comfortable with that. He just sat there waiting for an answer, and he wouldn't even give us a clue. All of us looked at each other. We tried to find answers in our own thoughts, but what we found were sparkling eyes that flashed from face to face. Not a single word was said between us. I listened for an answer from one of the others, but none came. I waited. After awhile, I realized that everyone else was waiting on me, but I had nothing. I grew embarrassed, but I simply had no answer. Why _would_ Grandpa insist that we not cross over the colonnades? I could hear them all breathing. And, I could hear the buzzing of hornets.

That buzzing sound attracted my attention toward the corner where a small family of hornets was busily building their nest. They were smart bugs. I could never figure out how they did it, but you know, those insects never flew to their hive by way of our big, open door. They entered The Castle through a tiny crack in the wall that opened right next to their growing hive. I could never figure it out. How did those little hornets fly for miles to gather food and still get back to that almost invisible crack? How did they even know that their hive was on the other side? That's when the realization struck! The answer was right in front of me, and I blurted it out as if I had known it all along. "Grandpa knew what was on the other side! We already said that he must have crossed over. That means he knew! He warned us not to cross the colonnades because he knew what we would face on the other side."

Thomas's expression spurted excitement. "Absolutely! He was already aware. He was protecting us from what he already knew was there."

My thoughts went directly to the springtail armies. "Springtails! He knew about the springtails!" That was always the second thing Grandpa would say. First he would warn us not to cross the colonnades. Next, he would tell us that the springtail armies would get us.

Thomas agreed. "And more. I would think Grandpa knew about more than just springtails."

I think I was in some kind of shock, not really wanting to believe the thoughts that were coming into my head. "Thomas, are you saying he saw them? Like Brian saw them?"

"I think he did more than see them. So do you."

I had to give Thomas' challenge more thought. _So do you_ , was really another question that required an answer. I know, now, that all these ideas should have come together much easier than they did. When I think about it, I'm pretty sure that we were all in denial; all but Thomas. Finally, I admitted, "Grandpa was afraid of them, wasn't he? He had gone through the portico before, and he had come back before." We kept repeating that statement over and over again. Grandpa had gone through before. For some reason, the full impact of that truth refused to sink in.

Thomas confirmed my thoughts. We were thinking along the same lines. "He went through the magic portal. He knew about them. He knew what they were capable of doing. I'm not so sure he was afraid of the springtails for himself, but I am sure that he was afraid for us."

Now, it was Brian's turn to talk and my turn to be mesmerized. Sarrah and I sat together with our chins propped in the cup of our hands as if we had nothing more to do than listen. "That's why Grandpa yelled at me. He was afraid I would accidentally go through the magic portal. He knew I wasn't prepared, an knew that if I crossed over, I might never make it back."

Once again, Thomas agreed. In fact, he was thrilled. It was his moment of glory. "He knew you would be attacked by the springtail armies. You were, in fact. Thousands of them assaulted your arm in the time it took you to scream. It was like you dipped your arm in a pool of the things."

Brian was intrigued, especially since the memories of his bug-covered, invisible arm were still fresh. "How can anythin attack you if you're invisible? That's the only question on my mind right now. It seems impossible. My arm was invisible, but those bugs didn't have any trouble findin it."

I remember thinking at the time how Brian's statement seemed so odd. "It seems impossible," he said. Everything we were talking about seemed impossible. Magic doors. Armies of Springtails. Invisible arms. Disappearing Grandpas. The oddity of the statement seemed not to strike Thomas. He stood ready with that answer, too. My brother was so smart back then. He must have filled every possible minute of the last year studying this problem. "Not invisible," he said. "Little. Tiny. Miniscule, in fact."

"Mini-school? What?" Brian questioned. None of us had Thomas's head for big words.

"Miniscule. Tiny. Microscopically small." Thomas answered.

"No way. My arm wasn't little. It was gone," Brian insisted.

Thomas was quick to respond, though. "I don't think so. I believe it was extremely small. Now, it's your turn to think about it. What did Grandpa say right before he disappeared? And what did he do?"

There was silence in The Castle again, except, of course, for the hornets. We looked into each other's eyes, each in our own turn, one person at a time. Our shared looks went from kid to kid. Thomas sat there with an expectant look on his face, and all the time, it seemed that he was staring directly into our souls. He knew we would find the answers. Grandpa had given them to us. Thomas knew the answers already. The rest of us did too, but we weren't ready to put them to words just yet. That's when Sarrah planted the seed that got us going.

"He broke off a s-s-spine from the devil's club plant," she said.

Suddenly all of our thoughts flowed like four streams of warm honey: well joined, thick but smooth and unarguable. It was like admitting these impossible truths opened the door to a deeper understanding. All of us were finally beginning to understand; no, all of us were finally beginning to _believe_ what Thomas and Grandpa had known all along.

Brian added his thought. "He danced with it. More than danced. He used it like a sword. Like a weapon. In fact, it looked like he was actually using it to swordfight."

I added. "And he said that it would make a good spear for a really small person. He said it would make a good spear for a person about the size of a ladybug."

Sarrah followed. "Then, Grandpa disappeared."

And Thomas finished. "Or at least, that's what we thought. I choose to believe that he exited through the magic portal. I think he's probably still there for some reason, ensnared and unable to come home. I'm certain that he's about the size of a ladybug, and I trust that he has a devil's club spear with him."

_Grandpa is alive!_ I'm sure that exact thought went through each of our minds at exactly the same time. It was a confirmation of everything we wanted to believe for the past year. It was some kind of explanation, even a magical one, an answer to the unanswerable question. It was another question, and of course, it was another answer waiting to be discovered.

*****

**11. How?**

As much as I wanted to believe, the monsters of denial and doubt kept raising their ugly heads. I heard what Thomas said. I believed it. I hated it. I thought it was stupid and ridiculous, and I loved it. As bizarre as it was, every word made perfect sense, but only in a magical sort of way. Denial made me do it. Doubt made me play devil's advocate one more time. I had to hear Thomas say it again. I had to believe it. More, I had to hear certainty in Thomas's voice. I had to know that he believed the incredible story we had just built. "Thomas. This is all just stupid. A magic portal? Shrinking arms? Grandpa shrunk to the size of a ladybug? Swords and spears? There's just no way."

Thomas was absolutely certain of himself. He had done nothing but study and plan for the past year. He had an answer to almost every question, that is, if you find _magic_ an acceptable answer. "It's the only way, Hannah. You figure it out. Grandpa was always teaching us everything he knew. He taught us about the woods, insects, birds, tracking, directions, everything. He taught us about life. He taught us how to solve problems. In fact, to Grandpa, everything was either a question to answer or an answer to a question. He never gave us a direct answer. He either gave us a question, or he gave us a problem to solve."

The resulting silence meant general agreement, so Thomas kept going.

"Why would Grandpa tell us not to cross to the portico without telling us what a portico was? Why would he tell us to be afraid of the springtail armies, a bunch of tiny bugs very few people in the world have even seen? Why would he act out a swordfight using a thorn as a sword? Why would he make some off-the-wall comment about that thorn making such a perfect spear if you were small enough? Why would he disappear? And, with all the training he gave us about being in the woods, how could he disappear so completely when we had all been with him only seconds earlier? And, more important than anything, how do you explain the reality of Brian's disappearing arm and the real fact of the disappearing chipmunk?"

Truthfully, none of us had a better answer than Thomas's to any of those questions.

Of all of us, Brian would have been the one to jump through that portal with Grandpa. It only made sense that he asked the next obvious question. "We were right there. Why wouldn't he take us with him?"

Thomas's response was totally out of character. Everything Grandpa taught us over the years said that the person who asked the question should find its answer. Thomas had followed that training for most of this discussion—but, not this time. "I think it's because we weren't prepared. I think Grandpa went through the portal lots of times. He had to figure out how to get past the springtail armies himself. What would we have thought if all Grandpa did was tell us this story about a magic door through some tree roots in the middle of the woods?" It was a rhetorical question; Thomas really didn't expect us to respond. Instead, he provided the answer that we knew had to be true. "We would have thought Grandpa came down with a sudden case of Alzheimer's disease. We all know that. But, he did what he always did. He made us find all the answers ourselves. Now, we believe. We believe everything he didn't tell us. I do, anyway."

The hushed, almost whispered, words, "Me too," were voiced three times, and they carried absolute certainty around the spool.

Brian was full of questions, belief being one thing, but facts being quite another. "What did Grandpa have to do to prepare? Prepare for what?"

I knew the answer to that one. "How to get past the springtail armies," I said. "We have to prepare for fighting the springtails. Thomas is right. If Grandpa had simply told us this story, not a single one of us would have believed him. We would have thought he was just a crazy old man telling us a stupid story. As it is, Thomas spent the last year studying this. Now, we all see the logic of what Thomas is saying. Now, we understand. Now we believe. Now, we are all ready to go."

Sarrah spoke for the first time in a long while. As simple as her question was, it held more emotion than anything we said that entire day. "G-Go?"

Thomas answered. "Yes. Go. We need to prepare as Grandpa had prepared. He gave us everything we needed to ensure we would do so. Yes, we need to go. We need to bring Grandpa back home."

*****

**12. And Why?**

Sarrah posed the next question, too. It wasn't really a question, but more of a horror-struck statement. "Us! Crawl through s-s-some magic portal? Get s-s-shrunk to the s-s-size of ladybugs? Fight off armies of bugs with a thorn?"

As amazing as it sounded, I was the first to answer. "We have to. Grandpa could be out there. No. He _is_ out there, somewhere. We need to find him. We need to bring him home."

Thomas kept teaching us as Grandpa would have done. "I think we have to assume that Grandpa experimented with the magic portal many times. He had to have transported through the doorway several times, at a minimum. He knew what to do and when to do it. Remember that I told you a long time ago that springtails need moisture to thrive? What do we have an absence of right now?"

I think the general level of excitement was getting to Thomas. Earlier in the day, he could have waited for this answer as Grandpa certainly would have done. Now, Thomas couldn't get past more than a few seconds of silence.

"It's August," Thomas shouted, apparently irritated because we didn't spit out the answer before he asked the question. "We don't have any moisture! It hasn't rained in a considerable length of time: weeks, perhaps. Look at that grass! It's long dormant from suffering these arid conditions. Grandpa knew this. It's always dry in August. It's the one time of the year when the springtails would be least active and least in number. But the springtails are still there, and more than likely, so are several other insects. There are a zillion kinds of bugs out there in the dirt. So, Grandpa took a sword as his defense. He taught us that, too. He chose the time, and he showed us the how."

Sarrah was four years younger than I was, but we were obviously thinking alike. We were both very much into this conversation and asked the same question at the same time. "Why would Grandpa leave us?" It was a perfectly good question. Thomas made the logical assumption that Grandpa had gone through the portal many times. Why, this time, did he not come back?

Thomas offered the best answer he knew. It was a less-than-satisfactory answer. "I have no idea. It's the one question that I can't answer, and I've tried for a year. I think it has something to do with everything we know about Grandpa. He was, is, a thinker. His life is full of philosophies that are always bigger than life. Every time Grandpa did something, it was as perfect as he could make it. What did he always say? What did he tell you, Hannah, when he frequently showed us his work?"

"If you're going to do something, do it with passion," I answered.

Thomas continued without acknowledging my answer. "What did he say whenever we got into an argument?"

Brian answered this time. If anyone was going to get in an argument, it was going to be Brian. "It makes no difference what side you're on. A person has to fight for what he believes in."

Thomas kept going. "If Grandpa purposely stayed on the other side, then he stayed because there was some concept he was passionate about. He stayed because there was some philosophy he believed in. I don't know what it was, or what it is, but I do know that Grandpa believed it was important enough to risk not coming back to us. That makes it extraordinarily important."

"There's another, much different answer to that question," Sarrah said. "Maybe he just couldn't come back. Maybe he got hurt or s-s-stuck. Maybe he got killed by the springtail armies."

We were smothered by silence one more time. That seemed to happen a lot on this day. No one could deny that possibility. Sarrah was absolutely right. Maybe there was a different answer. We didn't have time to discuss it, though, because the next sound that rolled across the lawn was a major interruption.

"Kii-iiids! Dinner!" It was Grandma!

As we looked up, we noticed for the first time that the sun was shining directly through the open door of our castle, directly from the west. We had been in The Castle for hours, and we were only now becoming aware of the August heat.

"We have to go," Thomas said. I thought Thomas was still talking about going into the woods. Brian thought he was talking about dinner. Brian shot up and scrambled toward the door screaming, "Foooooooooddddd!" He would have raced all the way to the house, but Thomas stopped him short with a well-placed foot. Brian fell to his face and skidded to the door. Everyone laughed, but I had a strange feeling the boys were laughing about something totally different than us girls. The boys, it seemed, weren't quite finished with the day's funny business.

*****

**13. We've Got To Go**

Something was clearly up. Both boys stood at the base of the drawbridge where it touched the ground. The twinkle in their eyes and the curl in their smiles told me something was up. Thomas whispered some sort of instruction to Brian. They turned face-to-face and put their palms together above their heads to form a human archway. "Queens first," laughed Brian. I was perfectly hesitant, but I had no way to exit The Castle except to pass through their arch. I took a step, then stopped. Took another, then stopped again. "C'mon," the boys yelled. Finally, after working up at least a little courage, I sprinted down the ramp and through their upraised arms. Surprisingly, the boys did nothing. They didn't kick me, poke me, grab me or anything else as I dove through their arch of arms, but neither one of them could stop laughing, either. They pointed at my butt and collapsed on top of each other in hysterics. One of those jokesters had painted the lid that I was sitting on! My entire behind was a cool shade of blue—the same color as Grandma's house. I lunged at the two idiots, but they were already on their feet and running. Unfortunately, the boys beat me to the house. Fortunately for them, the moms got hold of them before I did. Grandma and I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning my backside. My legs were raw from the cleaning and the rubbing. The shorts I was wearing ended up in the trash. After that, there was food. Grandma's food! It was great, even though I could barely sit.

Grandma was such a wonderful cook. Today I find it very difficult to feed as many people as she used to, but she loved it, and she cooked most of the food herself. Maybe it was the night's wonderful meal. Maybe it was the family conversations, or maybe it was our anticipation of what we knew was coming, but this evening held a very significant meaning for all of us. All the moms and dads played one game of Yahtzee after another. We kids ran from room to room swinging plastic swords at each other. When Brian knocked over one too many pictures, Grandma sent us to the deck. Outside, we could run around all we wanted, even in the dark.

Nights at Grandma's place were especially awesome. Their own property is only five acres of trees and paths, but on two sides are thousands of acres of trees that belong to a timber company. Nights back then were so quiet you could hear field mice scamper through the dry leaves under the alder trees. Nighthawks sang their ghostly trill above the hills. In the very late evenings, you could look straight up and see the Milky Way spread its brilliant ribbon of stars across the entire sky. You could watch satellites play tag amongst the stars, and if they were out, you could see Venus and Jupiter and Saturn with the naked eye. Sometimes, even Mars. For us kids, the coolest thing to do was sit on the deck and shine a flashlight toward the woods to see bright, shining, creature eyes staring back. We didn't always know what kind of little thing might be looking back but, this time, something definitely was.

"Maybe it's Grandpa," whispered Sarrah.

"Could be," I replied.

That's when I became very aware of Thomas. I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime during the evening Thomas's eyes lost their twinkle. He lost his smile. He was unnaturally quiet, perfectly lost in thought. He sat with us, but he wasn't really there. Thomas was a lot more focused than any of us. I was reminded of something Grandpa told us a long time ago. "Focus," Grandpa said, "was like driving a car at night. You're in charge, but all you can see is what's directly in front of you." Thomas's entire body suddenly lurched, like someone snuck up from behind and shook him. He, also, became suddenly aware that he was staring off into the unknown.

"Sorry," Thomas said as he looked at me, "but Grandpa is all I can think about right now. Grandpa and going through the portal." Thomas didn't have to say that. We already knew what he was thinking about.

Thomas's comment took me back to our discussions in The Castle. There was only one more question that needed to find voice. It found mine. "When are we going?"

Thomas's whispered answer was soft but immediate. "Tomorrow. First, we eat a good breakfast. Next, we meet in The Castle to make our final plans. Then, we go. Are you all with me?"

The other three of us, all with our feet dangling in the darkness off the side of the deck, indicated in turn that we were. I wasn't certain about that "final plans" part, but I said, "Yep." My agreement was followed by, "Uh huh." And then came the almost night-shattering, "Breakfast! Cool! I'm with you!" Guess who said that.

*****

**14. Gone**

We almost refused to come in from the deck. The night air was actually pretty warm. The stars were bright, and we were all imagining tomorrow. Dad's final yell, which was right on the edge of anger, brought the reluctant bunch of us in. Spending half the night on the deck was fun, of course, but putting two families of kids to bed was even more fun. Grandma's house only had two bedrooms and an office. Grandma, of course, slept in the master bedroom. One set of parents got to sleep in the other bedroom. My parents and Brian's actually flipped a coin to see who lost. Loser slept on the bed in the spare bedroom. I know that sounds strange, but I think the spare bed was too hard for their old bodies. All of us kids slept in the living room. Sometimes we would sleep on the furniture. Sometimes on air mattresses. Occasionally we actually slept, but not tonight. Tonight we planned, and talked, and played. I loved spending weekends with my family. Those were wonderful and special days. During this visit, there was a giant hole where Grandpa used to be, but together, we generated so much love and fun that we could almost fill that hole—almost.

The first part of the plan became a reality as soon as we woke. Breakfast! Sunday breakfast at Grandma's was always special. Grandma lucked out this week because dad always made breakfast on Sundays. Most of it anyway. Both dads always fried eggs and made some really special pancakes, sausage and bacon. But, Grandma always made the biscuits and gravy. We kids always raved about the pancakes, but the biscuits and gravy were, by far, the best anywhere. Grandma said she always made her biscuits from scratch, whatever that was. All I know is that when you put butter and jelly on them, they melted in your mouth like warm, sweet snowflakes. Everyone else loved them with gravy. I just loved them. Sunday breakfast was as big a family deal as dinner was every day. Grandpa insisted on family time every day when he was still around. Dinner was, by Grandpa-mandate, a family affair. All of us kids believed this morning's breakfast to be special because, when we were finished, we were headed to The Castle. From there it was the portal, and it was anyone's guess after that.

The Castle sat on the edge of the woods a few hundred feet opposite the magic portal. The morning was wet—damp from the morning dew. One side of the dew-soaked castle glistened in the filtered sunlight that was beginning to carve through the ground-level moisture. Thomas tugged open the drawbridge by using a rope that dangled from the top of the door. Grandpa had designed a system of weights inside The Castle to counterbalance the door, so it would open easily. Thomas entered first; the rest of us filed in after him. Even inside The Castle, all of us noticed the cool dampness that hung in the air. Today, at least, the boys weren't pointing at me and giggling. I made sure that no one had taken the time to smear more paint on the plastic lid that was my designated seat.

Our meeting was actually pretty short. Thomas ran it like a pro. I don't know when he developed this level of maturity or such obvious management skills, but they worked. Thomas had aged so much in the year since Grandpa had disappeared. Today, he talked. The rest of us listened and, when the time was right, we answered his single question.

"We talked about this most of last night, guys. Today has to be the day. It could be the last day our families will be together for a long time. The plan is that we go to the colonnades, choose our weapons of devil's club thorns, and crawl through the magic portal. Am I right?"

That was the single question. Our unanimous answer: "Yes!"

"You said it, but...," Brian had to add the "but."

"But what?" snipped Thomas, almost on the attack. No one expected Brian to have a problem, but there was apparently something he needed to say. As it turned out, it was something quite intelligent.

"I think we should wait an hour or so. The springtails need moisture. They got it last night. Even the sides of The Castle are still wet. Not rain, just dew. We should wait until the sun has a chance to dry things out."

Three sets of eyes examined Brian. "Smart" was very unusual for him. Not that he wasn't. He was. Plenty. Far more normal for Brian would have been emotion, energy and action. This morning he was both logical and correct. We needed to wait.

*****

**15. Through the Gate**

We took lots of extra time while walking to the portal. We played, actually. To our parents, everything must have looked perfectly ordinary. They were quite aware that Grandpa had disappeared a year ago this month. They looked forward to things returning to normal, as if life without Grandpa could ever be normal. It took us about an hour of play time, but we soon began to notice that our sneakers were drying; the grass was dry; and now, it was time. We headed toward the colonnades and the magic portal.

The deep woods were, of course, still heavily shaded from the morning sun. We could all sense the moisture that still hung in this shadowed air, and even though we shouldn't have been, we were quite surprised. We all knew that this meant the springtail armies might be quite active even though we had waited, but really, we had no idea of exactly what "active" meant. We were about to find out. The only thing we knew for certain is that today we were going through the portal. Armed with devil's club needles that we picked along the path, Brian led us to the exact spot.

The four of us stood in an uncommon silence that was brought on by mouth-drying fear. Not one of us knew where we were headed or what the next five minutes would bring. We had as our guide the words that Grandpa had given us as he danced and poked with his thorn-sword. We knew only that Grandpa had disappeared. We only guessed at knowing where he went. Among the four of us, only Brian had experienced the portal, and so it was he who took the first step.

"Gather round," Brian said. "Watch closely."

Brian took his place in front of the portal, exactly as he had done last February. I swear that I saw him shiver, too, as if we stood in the dead of winter. Thomas, Sarrah, and I kneeled beside him. I positioned myself carefully on the ground. I could clearly see Brian in front of the portal; the distractions of the forest were well behind him. I waited, anxious for Brian to take the next step, which he did within a few seconds. He raised his right arm. He waited just for a split second, and while he waited, he looked at his arm as if it were about to be cut off. At first, he wasn't afraid as much as he was apprehensive. I think the instant that he waited was actually too long, because by then, terror was beginning to take control. Brian's face contorted in a way that I can't accurately describe, the way a young boy might watch a butcher hack at his arm with a dull meat cleaver. He shook his head to erase the image from his mind, squinted his eyes, and looked at his tiny spear just as Grandpa had done. I think Brian was scared to death, but then, you could see him reach deep inside to find some source of pure determination. He groaned, gritted his teeth, and thrust his arm through the roots of that magical tree. The next sound was the stifled yelp that barked from my own mouth as I watched Brian's arm enter the space between the roots, and I watched absolutely nothing come out the other side.

Brian's yell was much louder than mine. "Holy crap!" He jerked his once-missing arm out of that doorway-to-somewhere and started running and jumping all over the place. Almost certainly, Brian's energetic antics were the result of a huge surge of adrenaline, but also, they were the result of the dozen or so tiny insects that bounced all over his arm. Finally, he brushed the springtails off, stopped dancing, and collapsed onto the nearer colonnade.

"A dozen or so won't be difficult to overcome, I don't think," Thomas said. His analytical mind was always at work.

Brian's response was, understandably, energy charged. "How the heck do we know what's too bad an what's not? What makes a dozen of those things good, anyway?"

Sarrah answered. "It makes no difference, Brian. Good or bad, I'd rather face a dozen springtails than the thousand or s-s-so that you gathered the last time you did that trick. It's good that we waited. Now, it's time."

We were all in shock. I'm sure the three of us stood with our mouths hanging open. Young Sarrah could show moments of brilliance and determination for one her age.

Thomas closed the discussion. "Brian has accomplished this feat twice, and both times led to the same result; his arm disappeared, and then it reappeared when he jerked it back. Both times, he brought living creatures from the other side, so it seems that it should be possible to get back after we go through. I agree with Sarrah. It's time."

"It's time," Brian agreed. He lowered himself to his hands and knees and prepared to crawl through the portal. You could have heard the trees breathe; it was so quiet in the woods right then. The rest of us joined the silence and held our breath as we gathered in single file behind Brian: Thomas, Sarrah, and last in line, me.

Brian raised his tiny, devil's club sword, and with one last word, led the four-kid assault through the portal and to worlds unknown. "Chaaaarge!"

The four of us scampered through the portal one after the other, all following Brian's lead. I don't know if only I heard this, but as each before me passed through the gate, the air sizzled with an electrical warning of the perils to follow.

*****

**16. The Springtail Armies**

The forest vanished in that sizzling instant. We flailed through a liquid tunnel that was filled with tiny balls of light and electricity, and we pinged off those like out-of-control pebbles held captive in a tsunami. We were immediately and unmercifully pelted by a storm of electrical hail stones, and any sense of muscular control we had was replaced by a constant, head-to-toe electrical tingle. We were being towed downstream toward some unimaginable end by the overwhelming power of that flowing tunnel, and the farther we were dragged, the greater our pain was. Those electrical hailstones quickly grew to a size many times our own, and as they grew, the tingle was replaced by an ever-increasing, crippling pain. The forest reappeared in another sizzling instant. The landing was not pleasant, but at least the beatings stopped, probably, I felt, just before we were to die. Each of us tumbled across the ground as if we had been tossed from the roof of a three-story building. I skipped along like a balled up pill bug and tumbled head over heels through the moldy dirt of the forest floor. I crawled out from under a giant, dead leaf, spit out a mouthful of dirt, and started fighting for my life. Fighting isn't exactly the right word; running and dodging would be a lot more accurate. For all these years, I've wondered how we were even able to move after that grueling punishment, let alone defend ourselves. I still don't know the answer, but I'm sure glad we were able to fight after we stopped.

None of us had time to complain about our aches and pains or even figure out if we were injured. The second we were dumped out of that pinball tunnel and rolled into the dirt, the giant bugs were on us. At the time, only Thomas realized that they were giant springtails that stood about half as tall as me. They were creepy things, white and squishy, like a crusty chunk of Brie cheese with legs. The things fell all around us like leaves falling from trees during an autumn wind storm. These were obviously much more dangerous, and surely they would have killed us if we had not kept dodging. I felt like I was inside of yet another hail storm, defending, trying not to get hurt, trying not to die. As these creatures landed, I could see what appeared to be a seventh leg coming out of their butts, except that it was sharp, and it wasn't a leg. Thomas knew it all along, but I realized only later that it was the spring that gave these bugs their names. Springtail. Get it?

These creatures sproinged back into the air almost immediately after they hit the ground. The things weren't falling; they were jumping! Dozens of bugs were jumping and bouncing in all directions. The four of us continued to dodge these giant insects that pelted us from the sky. It became apparent that they couldn't aim themselves but relied more on large numbers and mindless bombardment. The biggest problem was the springy spear coming out of their butts. If they landed on us and speared us with that, we surely would have died. Brian was the first to remember that he had a weapon. He raised his devil's club spear that seemed to have grown to at least two feet long. Brian started stabbing every bug he could reach. The rest of us caught on in short order. We stopped running and dodging, and the battle began. All four of us jabbed and poked just as Grandpa had done that last day we saw him. We killed springtails as they fell near us, as they began to leap, and as they sat and waited for their butt springs to release. Dozens of them fell under our swords. Our timing had been good. Sarrah's assessment of the springtail situation proved to be right on.

"If we had chosen to go through the portal during the rainy season," Thomas said later, "there would have been thousands of these beasts attacking us." We could not have survived. Grandpa was right.

We killed these insects at will, buy the cheesy nuisances just kept coming. There may not have been thousands, but there were enough. We had to find cover. Before long, we heard Thomas yelling our names, and we saw him jumping and waving his arms to gather our attention. He had located a tunnel. Brian, Sarrah, and I fought our way that direction and killed a great many springtails on the way. Actually, Sarrah and I mostly ran. Brian killed as many of the insects as he could get to. At first, the four of us stood at the tunnel entrance and made no attempt to enter. There was an unspoken, yet serious, question. Did we really want to chance entering yet another tunnel? A renewed onslaught of springtails convinced us. We plunged head-first into the tunnel and rolled boulders or logs or anything else we could find to block the entrance. The springtail army kept leaping into the air and landing. They bounced all over, but they couldn't reach us behind the cave's entrance.

We used this little bit of time to catch our breath and try to figure out what the heck had just happened. We also thought that, at least for the moment, we were safe.

I took only a fraction of a second to peek outside beyond the boulders we had rolled into position. I think I was just beginning to realize what was happening. I saw the giant insects still dancing around. I saw giant, mold covered sheets that were many times larger than me, and those looked exactly like old, dead leaves. The ground we walked on was no longer fine dirt, but huge rocks and boulders. In fact, we could no longer simply run. We constantly had to navigate around or over rocks, boulders, and giant limbs. Everything had grown to huge proportions. Grass grew to many times my height, so tall I could climb it if I had the time or the inclination. We had no time to discuss this or even think about this strange new world we were in.

We couldn't see into the depths of our new tunnel very well, but its darkness told us that it was long and deep. Our only light was the sunlight that filtered through the blocked entrance. In front of us were giant, bouncing, cheesy insects. To our rear, there was practically infinite darkness. If we walked into that darkness, there was only more darkness. What little we could see in the cave was definitely not appealing. The smell of moldy poop assaulted our noses. The feel of the tunnel walls was coarse; boulders and logs and all kinds of itchy things poked at us from all directions. In the very weak light, we could see that the cave was really a tunnel bored through loose rocks. There were no reinforcements, no beams, no structure except things that looked, in the gloom, like the roots of giant grasses and weeds. We feared that the tunnel might cave in at any time. From where we stood, the tunnel sloped downhill. None of us wanted to go in that direction. None of us wanted to return the way we came, either.

The more I think about it the more I'm amazed that none of this had soaked in: not the giant bugs, not our spears that were suddenly two feet long, not the tunnel that appeared out of nowhere. And, there were the giant mats that I had seen, the fact that we ran and walked over large rocks instead of soft dirt, the giant grass so tall and strong that we could climb it. Things had been really busy since we entered this world. Busy! Ha! That's an understatement! But, the fact is we had been too darned wrapped up in surviving to notice the strangeness. We needed a minute to evaluate, but we weren't going to get it. The foulest smell, much more disgusting than the smell of moldy poop, suddenly attacked us. The musky, skunk-like smell was so heavy it crushed our chests and stopped our breathing. A high-pitched growl, like that of a tiger with a sinus infection, rumbled through the darkness and scared us all half to death. The earth started to shake. The loose rocks that we stood on began to shuffle and shift under our own weight. All four of us began to slide down the shaft, right toward a gray, snot-covered nose that was about as huge as a basketball.

"MOUSE!" Thomas yelled. The beast crawled closer to us, and we slid closer to it, but not by choice. The dirt moved under our feet like a conveyer belt that ended at a cavernous, tooth-filled mouth. We could barely see in the almost nonexistent light, and that was worsened by the amazing amounts of super-fine dust that we were kicking up in our frantic attempts to scramble backwards toward the tunnel's entrance. The animal had crawled close enough for us to see the whole hairy thing, and that was just way too close. The mouse dug itself along the tunnel. The closer it moved to us, the faster it dug. The thing drew the tunnel's loose earth under its belly with its front feet and pushed it behind with its back feet. The tunnel floor avalanched downhill and we were stuck in that cascading dirt, sliding uncontrollably toward the hungry monster's mouth. We panicked. We screamed. We ran, or tried to run, toward the entrance and our now beloved springtails. All of us were doing everything we could do to scramble back toward the entrance and away from the monster mouse, but instead, we were on a steady downhill slide in a pitch-black tunnel toward the meanest looking animal I could barely see, and it surely intended to have us for lunch.

That thought scared the holy heebies out of me. I grabbed Sarrah and tried to pull her back to the entrance, back to the springtails. "No! S-S-Stop!" Sarrah pulled me backwards, toward Thomas and Brian, who were not ready to escape. Both had scrambled straight past us girls and placed themselves between us and that wild animal. That meant they were first in line to reach the giant's mouth. The thing made a clumsy lunge and caught Brian by the ankle with one sharp-clawed paw. "AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!" Either Brian or Thomas let loose with a guttural rasp that was surely a mixture of fear, or anger, or both. Even though Brian was on the ground and under the animal, he was the first to take a stab at the animal with his spear. He aimed for the obvious target—the beast's nose. The animal's howl pierced the tunnel and caused yet another landslide that trapped both Sarrah and I, and like marbles in a chute, we rolled further downhill and uncomfortably close to disaster. I thought, at first, that Brian had really hurt the monster, but actually, I think he just made it furious. Undaunted, and seemingly fearless, Thomas joined in the fight. First he stabbed the mouse's paw. The beast released Brian with his injured foot but quickly grabbed him with the other. With one good foot and one bad, the thing tried to shove Brian into its mouth, either to eat him or to hold him for safe keeping. Brian stabbed at its tongue. The whole thing was horrific. Thomas screamed and stabbed. I screamed. Sarrah screamed. So did the mouse. Both of us girls were still trying to claw a path back to the entrance. The thing hadn't managed to eat anyone, yet, and Brian was now stabbing anything his sword could reach: the mouse's nose, lips, tongue. Thomas jabbed its paws, then went for its eyes. The battle went from bad to worse. A bright shaft of light suddenly pierced the tunnel. None of us knew why, but suddenly, the light was bright enough for Sarrah and me to see that the giant beast had pounced on both boys. We could clearly see both Brian and Thomas pinned to the ground, held by the clawed paws and the massive weight of a mouse that appeared as large as an elephant. The giant mouse stabbed at Brian with its two, tusk-like teeth. Brian twisted and turned. The mouse jabbed again and again, each time missing, but each time also getting closer to having Brian for lunch. If he had been stabbed by those teeth, he would have been split nearly in half for sure. Thomas reached across to set the butt of his devil's club spear into the ground with the point directly in the path between Brian and the gray giant's mouth. The mouse lunged at Brian but ended up jamming the spear into its own lip. That accomplished two things. It took the monster's mind off of Brian, and it made the thing raging mad.

Its roar almost drowned out the new clicking and scraping sounds that Sarrah and I were just beginning to hear. Something began kicking up even more dust and dirt. Brian and Thomas sputtered some indescribable sounds, something between speaking and gagging. Both raised their hands and arms to shield their faces from more flying rocks. An even brighter light drew all of our attention up the tunnel toward its entrance, and to the ants. For a few seconds, I could hear nothing. Not the giant mouse. Not the boys. Not Sarrah. Not the falling rocks. I stared in terror at any number of somethings: the mouse, the ants, the darkness, the shafts of light breaking through dust-choked air. For those seconds, none of us had any idea of what to do next. As terrified as we had been, the magical world that we entered had only just begun to show us the meaning of fear.

*****

**17. The Ants**

Sarrah and I were shocked back into our strange reality by the scraping sounds of the living bulldozer behind us. The giant mouse had suddenly begun a frantic retreat. The tunnel was far too small for the mouse to turn around in, so the smelly beast began a clumsy, rearward skid and, in the process, nearly pulverized Brian and Thomas between its huge paws. It stepped on its own tail, and its backward-brushed fur bunched up like Velcro brakes against the walls of the tunnel. The clicking sounds created by the onslaught of ants had become mind racking. There were millions of individual clicks that ran together to create one monotonous hum. It was like being locked inside of a running machine. What I heard were millions of clicks and scrapes that, when put together, became the harmony of a living, meat-eating machine. What I saw were ants. Ants as big as we were. Bigger. Thousands of them. Millions, maybe. I suddenly understood the mouse's retreat. That elephant-sized monster was trying to escape. As huge as it was, the thing feared for its life, and the ants were the cause of that fear.

I know it sounds like Sarrah and I did a lot of screaming, but I'm sorry to say, that's what happened again. Our screams sure didn't slow the ants. Those things advanced like a mechanized horde of six-legged robots. We watched in horror as they easily tossed aside the boulders and logs that we struggled to roll across the entrance. The light poured in from behind, so mostly I saw silhouettes. Every now and then, the light would hit their eyes just right so that I could see directly through their bulging eyeballs, like looking through thousands of neatly fashioned pieces of glass. With the lenses of their eyes backlit as they were by bright sunlight surrounded by the tunnel's darkness, each reddish glow seemed to be outlined by a black halo. I have to admit, as I look back on it, the scene was strangely beautiful. At the time, however, I watched in horror as wave after wave of ants surged into the tunnel. Their antennae fumbled with each other in the ruckus. It seemed like each ant had to stroke the antennae of every other ant. Their legs clawed relentlessly at the ground, at each other, crowding hundreds at a time into the tunnel's opening. Dust filled the air, and that seemed to have no impact on the ants. They heaved logs and sticks out of the way. They crawled over each other like prisoners on their way to freedom. Nothing would stop them. Nothing could stop them. With the speed and strength of a moving train, one of the giant ants grabbed Sarrah in its huge jaws. Sarrah was a champion. She didn't panic; she fought, twisted and turned. I could hear Thomas yelling directions from underneath the stuck mouse's paw. "Stab it. Stab it." Sarrah must have heard him, because that's what she did. Sarrah stuck that ant a dozen times. She jabbed that ant in the jaw. She stabbed it in the head. She stabbed it in the eye, but nothing worked. The ant's shell was just too hard. It appeared that nothing would hurt them. The ant held on to Sarrah, not tight enough to harm her, but for sure, tight enough that she couldn't break free. And then, it was my turn.

One of the armored beasts grabbed me from behind, just as Sarrah had been grabbed. It held me between two huge jaws, each as big around as a baseball bat and sharp as a sword. As much as I struggled and fought, there was nothing I could do. I stabbed and poked with my spear, as well. Nothing worked. I couldn't twist out of its grip. I couldn't hurt the beast with my devil's club spear, or for that matter, even get its attention. All the while, over the roar of the zillion clicks and the grating sounds of twice that many antennae rubbing together, I could hear Brian and Thomas still shouting instructions from underneath the mouse, "Sarrah! Hannah! Stab them! Stab them in the eyes! Jump! Run!" The two ants simply lifted us off the ground and stood to one side of the tunnel to allow the army of others to file through.

I kept yelling back to the boys, but I was pretty certain they never heard, "We can't run! Nothing hurts these things!"

The two boys were about to find that out for themselves. The ants attacked in no orderly fashion. They clogged the entire entrance, again, and clamored over each other in a no-rules race toward the mouse. The mouse must certainly have realized what was going to happen. It tried, again in vain, to scramble backwards, but it was perfectly stuck thanks to its Velcro fur. It pushed and shoved in total desperation. The mouse could see its future. He raised his mighty head toward the ceiling of the tunnel and released its last, mighty wail. That's when Brian and Thomas broke loose.

The boys were finally able to stand. When they did, the looks on their faces said everything. They faced a marching militia of ants that was advancing straight toward them. Each of the boys knew exactly what to do as if they had done it all their lives. They both started yelling like warriors and swinging swords and sticks as if they were broadswords. They swung at the ants' eyes, their antennae, and their leg joints. The boys were as unsuccessful as we were. Maybe one ant tripped over their mighty swings, but the boys' future was exactly the same as ours. One ant grabbed Brian; another hooked Thomas; both boys were held tightly, regardless of the extraordinary efforts they expended. Those two ants lifted the boys and then rushed through the dust-filled gloom toward us, toward the tunnel's entrance, against and over the throngs of advancing ants that were attacking the mouse. There seemed to be no end to the ants' strength. The ants that held Sarrah and me apparently sensed the other two coming our way. In almost rehearsed unison, they turned to carry the two of us toward the entrance, as well.

The cave was flooded with ants and the agonizing sounds of a defeated mouse. With the four of us humans under control, the ants were, clearly, focusing on the mouse. The mouse was red. Red with ants. Red with blood. When I looked backwards, I could not see even a tiny bit of gray, unless it was a chunk of freshly clipped fur falling to the ground. This poor mouse was dying very slowly, and very painfully.

Outside of the tunnel, the light was blinding. Once my eyes adjusted, the only thing I could see in any direction was a moving column of red and black armor; all around, a mass of ants undulated toward a mountain. Three or four dozen dead springtails were being carried along the living river that crested reds and blacks. Two or three, sometimes four ants locked their jaws into a dead springtail and heaved the white, cheesy thing along the surging path. I saw a half dozen still-living springtails bounding straight up, a jump that seemed at least several feet. It was the last jump that each bug would take. A dozen ants waited at the end of every vertical trip, and each one of those ants locked its jaws into the juicy body parts of a once lively springtail that would soon become ant food.

The ant that was carrying me stopped in the crowd. I don't know why mine chose to stop, but those carrying my brother and cousins kept walking. Mine turned around, as if it wanted me to see what was behind. The mouse had emerged from the tunnel as a gray corpse that walked on marionette legs controlled by the movement of a hundred ants. Blood ran out of its empty eye sockets, out of its mouth, and out of its ears. Every soft body part seemed to drip blackish red. Huge patches of fur were missing, yanked out or cut out by the sharp, cutting, pointy jaws of a hundred clicking ants. The giant mouse, elephant sized as it may have been, was being carried out of the tunnel and along the living path toward the mountain, just as I was being carried, and just as the other three were. The only difference was that we, for some unknown reason, were still alive.

My ant turned back, toward the mountain that grew menacingly close. I couldn't hear their words, but I could hear the other three shouting to each other. I was worried that they were being killed. They weren't. I strained to see as deep into the melee as my eyes would allow, beyond the forest of antennae, and beyond the movement of a hundred ants that crawled on top of a thousand more. I saw all three of the other kids kicking, hitting, poking, stabbing. Nothing they did had any consequence at all. The ants remained unharmed, unhindered, and uninterested. We drew nearer to the mountain while an endless army of ants kept pouring out of the tunnel that, just minutes ago, held us and a giant mouse. Except for us and the ants, everything around me that was once alive was now dead. That's when it occurred to me. The ants were keeping us alive on purpose. Certainly, all the other creatures that the ants touched were definitely dead.

*****

**18. The Mountain**

It seemed like we were about a hundred yards from that mountain the ants were taking us toward. As big as it appeared, the mountain was dwarfed by the largest trees that I had ever seen. In short order, the leading edge of the ant column actually began to climb while the rest of us followed. Thousands of ants scampered into various cracks and holes; all traces of them disappeared, all swallowed by the earth. The good news was that I could see more clearly now, having less mass to see through. The mountain was composed, not of rocks, but of stacked up piles of who-knows-how-many-millions of logs. At least, that's what they looked like, at first.

As we drew closer, I began to see that the mountain was a miracle of craftsmanship and anything but random. Each log was nearly identical to the other. Each was nearly the same size. Each had what looked like a vein running directly down the middle. Each was bluntly pointed on one end but smoothly squared on the other. It looked as if someone had taken the time to make each one. Even more, it seemed that each log had been intentionally positioned in order to hold and support those around it. Then it hit me. These weren't logs! These were fir needles! This wasn't a mountain. It was an ant hill! I didn't know anything about these ants, but I suddenly realized that I had seen this exact hill in Grandpa's back yard. This mountain-mound was actually a large anthill made by thatch ants. Only the day before, I would have guessed this hill to be no more than two feet tall. Now, I saw it as a mountain.

My mind staggered. Why did I think that the mound was a mountain? How is it that the trees were many times larger than I had ever seen? What were those giant mats that looked like leaves? Why were the grasses suddenly a hundred feet tall? Where did an elephant-sized mouse come from?

I don't know where it came from, but suddenly, my mind felt like reality hit me with a bat. Up to this second, I simply couldn't conceive of the reality of our situation. Now, I knew the answers to every question. To this day, Debbie, I don't understand why I didn't get it right away. Thomas told us this would happen. So did Grandpa. Maybe I had been in a state of denial. Maybe I was just shocked and confused. But there it was. The answer to why the mountain wasn't really a mountain. The answer to why the trees dwarfed the mountain, to why the springtails and the mouse were so huge, and even the answer to why our thorns grew to a length of almost two feet. Everything around us had not grown. We had shrunk! We weren't in some different world. We were in Grandpa's back yard, and we were, by Grandpa's estimate, about the size of a ladybug while everything around us was still normal. I'll never know why it took me so long to understand all this strangeness. Thomas had already told us. The four of us had talked about this before coming through the portal. Grandpa's warning was very clear. Remember? Just before he disappeared, he held that devil's club thorn to his face and said "You know—this would make a really good spear for a person about the size of a ladybug."

As that realization struck, I yelled to Thomas. "Thomas! I have the answer! I know!" He turned to look at me. His mouth opened, about to respond. I saw his face for a second, and then he and his answer disappeared into the thatch ant hill. So did Sarrah, and Brian, and then, so did I. We were plunged into perfect darkness, blanketed with a thick layer of black. I tried to see my hands, the jaws that held me, anything, but seeing was impossible. The smells of rot and vinegar became overpowering, and again I was immersed in the scraping, clicking sounds of a living machine.

My eyes began to adjust to this new environment. Before long, I could see a very dim light, a mysterious glow that appeared in splotches along our path. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness of that greenish glow, I tried to stretch my gaze as far as possible into the tunnel. I could make out the three ants that held Brian, Thomas, and Sarrah. Hundreds more ants were ahead of them. Dozens were behind, between me and my family. The ant column snaked its way along this unending tunnel almost as smoothly as a living rope. Then, almost impulsively, two ants broke formation and stood in front of a doorway, a hole in the wall that appeared out of nowhere just to the left of the main pathway. The rest of the column continued its forward movement as if nothing had broken its ceaseless rhythm. The ants that held the other kids captive arrived at the doorway only seconds later. Those also broke formation, but instead of stopping at the door, they passed through.

In the darkness, and over the din of clicking armor, I could hear another voice that was difficult to recognize, but only because it was difficult to hear. It was muffled by the dirt tunnels and by the ceaseless sounds of the ants, but I'll never, as long as I live, forget those words. "Thomas! Brian! Sarrah! You made it! But, where is Hannah?" My heart leaped. I came to life. I struggled and fought, trying desperately to escape, to drop to the ground, to run ahead of the marching ants, to run through that door. I failed.

Then, I very clearly heard the three-person harmony, "Grandpa? Grandpa!"

We had found Grandpa, Debbie! These ants took us directly to Grandpa!

*****

**19. Grandpa is Found**

By the time the ant that carried me had marched through that doorway, the other three kids were already free and hugging Grandpa. Hugging is quite the understatement. Sarrah was the first to leap onto his lap, and she held the poor man in a strangle hold that had him speechless—literally. Sarrah had wrapped every bit of her body around him while the two boys jumped in what remained of his lap, knocking him the rest of way over. They held his hands and hugged what body parts they could reach. Grandpa was effectively hogtied. All three kids were jabbering up a storm, and Grandpa remained unwillingly silent, still held in Sarrah's inescapable choke hold. It was like listening to three different songs at the same time, and it was impossible to make sense of any single conversation. As Grandpa was about to succumb to breathlessness, Brian, Thomas, and Sarrah stepped back to tell their stories, and Grandpa was finally able to sit up and breathe.

Grandpa gasped for breath while the other three spit out a still incomprehensible mishmash of mixed up details. "The springtail army...." "A giant mouse...." "I thought I was dead." "It was just like you said...." "We missed you s-s-so much..." "They bounded and recoiled......" "s-s-stuff fell all over....." "I thought it would consume...." "They killed...." Then I heard Grandpa say again, "Where's Hannah?"

My ant had set me down long ago, but the others wouldn't allow me to get a word in edgewise, so I climbed to the top of a large, flat rock and hollered above all their disjointed noise, "Grandpa! Where have you been?"

Yes, I know it was a really stupid question—but it did get his attention. Grandpa raised his eyes and saw me for the first time. Even in the darkness, I could see the twinkle in his eyes, and I could see Grandpa's brilliant smile. That smile was special. It was mine. It made me feel important, and it told me that I was Grandpa's favorite. The other kids had gone surprisingly quiet. All had turned their heads to look toward me when Grandpa said, "Hi Little Girl. I knew you would follow me. What took ya so long?" I saw Thomas's jaw drop just a little. I knew what he was thinking.

Before Grandpa would let me answer, he pointed to something going on behind us. All of us turned to witness the strangest event we had ever seen, which, based on everything that had happened to us today, was saying something quite significant. The four ants that carried us into this chamber backed away. They huddled and began to rub their antennae together. The motions were almost erotic, as if each ant antenna needed to touch all of the others, all at the same time. It was an orgy of movement. The ants were moving ever so slowly, wrapping themselves around each other almost as Sarrah had wrapped herself around Grandpa. Each ant weaved its antennae through the others with intricate precision; then, each was unwoven in movements that were equally exact, if not intimate. Finally, the ants lined up four abreast and faced the five humans. They pointed their antennae toward us, lowered themselves onto the joints of their front legs, then raised and turned one after the other to leave. I was in awe. The ants had just bowed to us with reverence, maybe even respect. Ant admiration aside, the two that had originally stood outside the chamber's door remained there, and both of them turned to direct their abdomens toward the door, and toward us.

"If they hafta, they'll spray us with formic acid," Grandpa said. "It's one of their most effective chemical weapons. For some reason they don't want us ta leave, but they don't wanna hurt us, either. In all my time here, it's been the same. There's always been this constant conflict: reverence versus force. I don't know why, but I do know we've been kidnapped."

For the first time since we found Grandpa, no one said a word. All of us sat there in that ant chamber blanketed in near darkness and in total silence—except, of course, for the unceasing sounds of the living machine. We were surrounded by the sounds of a million clicks and chirps, the stench of rotting earth, and the acrid smell and taste of vinegar. There was a light of sorts that was extremely dim. That greenish glow that I had noticed before seemed to be coming from some kind of slime that oozed from the walls of the chamber. And yes, we were in a chamber, one with no way out except through the two ants that were prepared to spray us.

"I think it's called foxfire," Grandpa broke the silence. "I saw it once in the swamps of Georgia when I was in the army. It's a mold or a fungus that glows in the dark, the same kind of glow produced by lightning bugs and glow worms and such. I've never seen it before in Washington. Didn't know it grew here." Grandpa told us what the light was, but that was the only answer he gave us. That was very "Grandpa-like," as was his next question.

"Have ya figured it out, yet?"

Scientist Thomas had figured out most of it. "I think so," he said. "You had given us most of the clues. I really apologize for taking a complete year to get here. But, you probably expected us to arrive about this time, anyway. We had to calculate that August was the most appropriate time, but then, you were probably already aware of that. We had to learn what a springtail army was. We interpreted your dancing antics to determine the need for weapons. Brian figured out the portal and how to get through. He accomplished that mostly by accident, and he had to experiment a couple of times."

That was my opening. "Thomas was the brains behind us getting here, Grandpa. He figured out most of the answers by himself. Before we started to look for you, Thomas told us that we would shrink. For me, it really didn't sink in until the ants carried me to this hill. It should have been obvious, but I was just too busy to think about it. In fact, you told us that, too. 'The size of a ladybug...' Everything around us is still normal."

Grandpa beamed. "Very good, Thomas. I owe ya a huge thank you." In that moment, Thomas's smile was as grand as I had ever seen. Grandpa smiled back. It was a warm, loving smile that was meant only for Thomas, and then he continued. "Very good, Little Girl. You've all done well. Brian's developed inta quite the warrior, and Sarrah's done a lot of growing, too. All of ya have done so well. But, do you know the answer to one more very important question?"

"What question is that, Grandpa?" asked Sarrah.

"Why are we still alive?"

*****

**20. Why Are We Still Alive**

"Do you know why, Grandpa?" Little Sarrah asked the question, but Grandpa didn't answer. He sat there. We all sat there in that glowing darkness, surrounded by dirt that smelled of mold, trapped by ants that smelled of vinegar, and surrounded by a world of hums and clicks that no human being had ever heard. Grandpa's eyes stared into a time and a world long past. He searched for an answer, but he couldn't find one we would like.

This entire day, it seemed, was a day of dawning. We had crawled through some magic doorway into a world stranger than any in the known universe, but yet it was one that was also eerily familiar. The business of survival got in the way of instant recognition. It took awhile for things to sink in. Disorientation was perfectly understandable. But what was really starting to sink in right now was Grandpa. I really started to look at him. Grandpa was a great deal thinner than I remembered. He was dirty. His brown-and-gray hair was a year longer, and his beard was as ragged as his clothes. The t-shirt and jeans he wore the day he disappeared were now little more than rags. I'm pretty sure that Grandpa was a great deal more focused on survival than he was on appearance, not that he had a fresh change of clothes or a razor hidden away in the dirt, anyway.

It took some time, but Grandpa finally answered Sarrah's question with the best wisdom he could muster, but this time, that wasn't much. "Why are we still alive? I wish I had a good answer for ya, Sarrah. I don't. The ants captured me much the same as they did you. They brought me here. They kept me here. Ya told me that I've been here about a year. It seems more like a lifetime. I'm fed well, if you can call eating crickets, mold, and aphid droppings good. They give me enough water ta drink; sometimes it's enough ta wash with. The food seems nutritious. I've lost weight, but I'm still strong and healthy, and for some reason, I've never been sick. Truthfully, I have no idea why the ants are keeping me, us, alive. Everything I know tells me that we all should have been ant food, just like those other creatures ya saw."

Okay, so now I thought it was time to say yuck—really. "You eat aphid droppings? Yuck!"

Thomas almost laughed. "So, Hannah, did you consider the mold and crickets as sounding good?" He asked that question as if he were expecting me to say "Yummy," or something else that was equally disgusting.

Grandpa laughed. It was such a beautiful sound, so full of life and joy. His eyes were bright, and they glowed eerily green; none of us had seen that happiness in so long. I was overcome by a sudden and deep feeling of warmth. I felt secure, and that felt strangely good after being scared for such a long time. Then, for some reason, we all just cracked up. There we were, all being held prisoner by these gargantuan ants, and all sharing a good laugh that was surely more stress relief than humor. But, for whatever reason, eating bug poo struck us all as really funny at the time. Can you imagine us gnawing on a cricket leg, or lapping up aphid honey? At the time, we couldn't. We were just happy to be alive; we were happy to be together; and we were happy to have found Grandpa. Now, we needed to find a way to get home.

"Funny stuff aside, kids," Grandpa said, "it's great that ya still have your weapons. Believe it or not, these are one part of your keys to getting home." At that, Grandpa leaped straight up and literally dumped us all on to the ground. We all smacked the ground pretty hard, right on our butts. Grandpa chuckled while he grabbed one of the spears, then he began to dance around just as he had on the day he disappeared. He kept stabbing and poking, spinning and thrusting. The whole show was as dramatic as he could make it. Finally, when all of us were thoroughly shocked at his speed and agility, he spun completely around and smacked Thomas pretty hard on his right ear. A sharper edge might have taken his ear right off. Thomas let out a pained yelp, then reeled backwards about three steps before grabbing his ear and falling to his knees. It must have smarted. Thomas just looked up at Grandpa with red eyes and a wounded puppy look. Without any kind of apology, Grandpa said, "Remember that. "Don't lose these." Then, Grandpa twirled on his toes and made a huge, arching, back handed swing toward Brian. Poked him right in the middle of the chest so hard, I think, that he may have drawn blood! Brian's face turned red at the sudden sting. While his hands instinctively grabbed the little prick hole in his chest, his wide-opened eyes turned straight to Grandpa. Grandpa stopped all motion as suddenly as he started; the sword's point still poised at Brian's chest. He looked Brian right in the eyes and said, "And you." He glanced quickly at the other three of us, "All of you." Then he stared into the depth of Brian's mud-puddle eyes, "But especially you! Remember the goodness of your hearts."

Brian added a thought that seemed out of place, like he was in shock and didn't know what else to say. "Thomas lost his sword in our battle with the mouse. Actually, he saved my life, but the mouse got the spear in his lip, an it stuck there."

Grandpa was not quite finished, not quite ready to change the subject. He jabbed the point home one more time to help Brian remember. "You! Remember the goodness of your heart," he repeated, and then he pulled the sword from Brian's chest. He continued Brian's conversation as if nothing had happened. "That's okay. If everything else works out, all ya need is one. Butcha need to have at least one. You'll notice that mine is gone. I lost it at the beginning of this trip, somewhere between too many springtails and too many ants. This time, I wouldn't have been able ta get home even if I could have tried. The ants made certain of that."

I was hanging on every word that Grandpa spoke. His wisdom got us here. He had obviously been here before, and his wisdom would get us back, but not yet. I was about to ask what he meant when he told us that we needed our devil's club swords to go back home, but I was distracted by a deep thud and a low rumble. The rumble grew in intensity, so much so that the ground began to shake.

It seemed as if the end of Grandpa's sentence was the signal to start the destruction of the world. Everything around us began to quiver. It wasn't a shake or a little bump up and down. This was like the earth's surface had begun to shiver, and we were shivering with it. In fact, everything was. It didn't slow, and it didn't end, at least while we were still in that chamber. All of us had been shaken to the ground and were crawling on all fours trying to get our balance, get up, and get out before the roof caved in.

The glow-in-the-dark mold quivered like scoops of lighted Jell-O. Huge, slimy patches of it fell to the ground. Some of it splattered on our heads with a sickening sound that I had heard only once in my life, and that was when Grandpa butchered a rabbit for supper and dropped the intestines to the garage floor. I ran and hid that day, too. Anyway, when we tried to scrape the mold off, it only smeared deeper into our hair and clothes, and it stuck to our hands like glowing body paint. The quake worsened. The sides of our chamber began to disintegrate before our eyes. Huge chunks of dirt and rocks fell just like the mold did. Those chunks were really heavy, and it hurt when they hit us. The ceiling was next, so, once again, we found ourselves dodging things that fell from the sky. This time, we had to do it while trying to maintain our balance on a trembling earth. We were being pelted to death with falling debris, sticks, rocks, dirt, and slime.

If we wanted to stay alive, we had to leave the chamber. There were only two additional problems, and those still stood fast in front of the chamber door.

*****

**21. Holy Jumping Spiders, Grandpa**

Rather than face certain death, we scrambled for whatever safety we could find. Brian, Sarrah, and I grabbed our weapons. All of us scuttled toward the door as fast as we could scramble. We crawled, or jumped, or climbed over giant masses of earth and timbers that fell all around us. We finally clawed our way to the entrance, and there, we met the two ants that still guarded us. Getting sprayed with formic acid? Getting dismembered by giant ant jaws? Being crushed by a falling ceiling? All of these were, of course, perfectly unacceptable choices. Since recent experience told us the ants were actually trying to keep us alive, we continued stumbling toward the door; the ants seemed less of a threat than the stuff falling on us. We had to make it. We had to get through the door, past the ants, into the tunnel, and into whatever unknown still waited for us.

Brian was the first to reach the door. He skidded to a stop so suddenly that the rest of us slammed into him and practically shoved him out the door. That was a tiny commotion compared to everything else that was happening, but, for some reason, it caught the attention of both ant guards. They began to charge us. The closer ant signaled a bloodcurdling warning by slicing those red, massive jaws through the air like some alien marauder wielding a pair of living swords. The trembling earth knocked Brian to his knees just in the nick of time. Those giant jaws swooshed right over his head, missing by mere inches. Brian rolled out of the way of the ant's jaws, thank God. I swear he would have been sliced in half by those slashing, red tusks. The animal made no sound of its own, not a scream or warning roar; there were only the slashing and grating sounds of those gnashing jaws, like concrete bricks being rubbed together. I was as terrified as I had ever been—ever—that is, until the second ant vanished. Vanished! From right in front of my eyes! It was standing right there, and in an unfocused blur, it was gone! I had no idea what happened to it. None of us did.

The ant that was slashing at us seemed just as shocked. It jerked its head away from us, probably to find the missing ant, or maybe so it could determine what the heck was going on. In the split second that followed, that ant, too, was attacked by a great hairy something. The attacker hit the ant broadside; the two rolled over and over through the tunnel. They finally stopped as their conjoined bodies piled on top of the missing, already dead ant. The realization struck me that the first ant disappeared for the same reason. It got hit by something too, only harder and faster. We didn't even see it happen. Since the ants and whatever hit them were occupied, the five of us chose that moment to escape through the door.

"Jumping spiders!" Thomas screamed. "Look!" He pointed to the second ant, the one that we saw get hit. The animal that attacked the ant had black and white stripes and so much hair it looked like a forest on legs—eight of them. These creatures weren't quite as large as the ants, but it became quickly apparent that these hairy brutes were much more ferocious than the ants could ever hope to be. I couldn't tell if they were actually stronger, but for sure, they were faster. The one we were watching murdered the ant that guarded us in a matter of seconds. Those huge spider fangs stabbed directly into the head of the ant. Between the poison and the punctured brain, the only thing that poor ant could do was spaz. Its body just laid there on the ground jerking and twitching for a few seconds while the rest of its nerve cells died. And now, both spiders stared in our direction.

"They're jumping spiders," Thomas explained, again. "They're larger than we are, and they're able to jump twenty times their own body length in an instant. Perhaps more. That's why they seem to disappear. They don't, really. They just jump great distances, like they flash from one place to another; they're much too quick for our puny eyes to follow, especially in this darkness."

Great _,_ I thought. I just love being attacked by invisible, hairy spiders that can jump twenty times the length of my body.

Watching those two ants die was the perfect signal for us to panic. We all knew that we needed to run, to hide, to escape, but we were nearly paralyzed from fear. We stood there like stammering idiots unable to do anything that we should have done—like run. Thomas finally grabbed two of our arms and broke the trance. One of those arms belonged to me; I'm not even sure who the other person was that he grabbed, but I know both of his hands were full. He pulled us back toward our prison chamber. The three of us began scrambling in that direction, and the other two naturally followed. The earth continued to shake violently, so our movement toward the chamber was not easy, but it made perfect sense. We might be able to defend the tiny opening of our chamber, but for certain, we could never defend ourselves in the open tunnel. I looked back at the two spiders. I could see one that was following our every movement with the two largest of its eyes. Those eyes seemed to rotate inside of themselves. They looked like black beach balls that rotated inside of plastic domes. "The monster could surely follow our movements," Thomas said, "with deadly precision." I wondered at the time if they could see us more easily because of that glowing slime that stuck to us like fluorescent body paint. Both spiders stood perfectly still for awhile, sensing, staring, waiting. We stood our ground at the tunnel entrance. We huddled five abreast, fully prepared to defend ourselves. Thomas ripped the devil's club sword out of my willing hands. He, Brian, and Sarrah moved to our front, weapons and hearts at the ready. I stood behind them with Grandpa behind me, and we waited. Then, in less than a single heartbeat, both monsters were gone. Vanished. Just as the first ant had done minutes earlier.

We decided to make a cautious run for it. We peeked outside the entrance of the chamber. The coast was clear, or anyway it seemed to be. At least, the spiders were gone. We ventured a few feet out of our chamber and into the tunnel. It probably took us five minutes to move those three feet. We were all holding onto each other, each taking a step only after the person in front did, too. It had to be a comical sight. If it's possible to hold onto four other petrified people and crawl at the same time, then we were doing it. Suddenly, one spider reappeared in a vague blur as quickly as it had vanished. It landed facing away from us at first, but with one or two jerky, indistinct movements that made it look robotic or mechanized, it turned around to ready itself for the attack. Our total attention was on the spider in front of us. Then, we felt the soft thud that suddenly came from behind us. Something about the tunnel magnified the sound of those eight hairy legs that hit the ground between us and our chamber. The spiders had set a trap! We were fenced in with no path to escape on and no place to escape to. Our group automatically took a back-to-back defensive position. Thomas and I turned to watch the spider to our rear. It watched us as well, this time with eyes that were as steady as rocks. Other than its landing, this latest addition to our monster list made not a single sound. Its front two legs were raised high over its head, waving slowly, purposefully. Black and white stripes moved back and forth through the air, constantly to and fro as a flag might wave in a light breeze. The spider seemed to be thinking, getting its bearings, calculating exactly how far it had to jump to kill as many of us as possible on its first attempt. I wondered if it even cared about the puny weapon that Thomas held in his hands. We, Thomas and I, glanced toward the others. We could see over our shoulders that the other spider was making the same movements. The two spiders could easily have been mirror images in both looks and intentions. We were about to be eaten, or at the very least, killed either by spiders or the still-falling roof.

Brian had other ideas. He charged directly toward one of the freakish, hairy things while waving his sword all around and screaming like a Viking warrior. That seemed to cause the striped beast a moment of confusion. It skipped backwards, and then it vanished again. It reappeared almost as quickly to our other side. Brian's attack initially caused the spider to take the defensive. But now, it was behaving in the same way it did before: sizing us up, judging its distance, getting ready for the kill. I didn't know what to do. Run? Try to dodge something that could jump a hundred times farther than I can? Hide from something with eight eyes that could see our every move because of this glowing goo? With hair that could feel the movement of the air? Maybe even taste the smell of our sweat? How do you hide from a creature like that?

Brian sprinted back to our group. Thomas was pumping himself up, jumping up and down, yelling, getting psyched to attack the other spider as Brian had done. Brian was getting ready to attack again, too, when we were all suddenly overcome by the smell of vinegar. Six ants flooded the tunnel and leaped onto the closer spider, the one that was clearly our greatest threat. They sprayed their own poison on the spider as they landed on it, and then their giant sword-like jaws went to work. The spider did not die easily, but he was outnumbered, and he was going down.

Thomas and Brian attacked the second spider by themselves. They stabbed into the spider's mouth without consequence, except to make the thing angry. Thomas almost got sprayed with a fang full of venom. The spider ejected it when Thomas's spear jabbed its mouth. I guess you would call it more of a drip than a spray, but at any rate, both boys thought it better to get out of the way of the monster's mouth, so they ran to its rear. Each jabbed two feet of sword into the spider's abdomen. I kept expecting a roar of pain, but none came. The spider, silent as moving fog, spun on its legs trying to bite the boys. The boys crawled directly under the spider's rear and used its own body as a shield. While they crawled they stabbed again, and again, and again. The spider weakened but refused to die. Two warrior ants left the dying spider and rushed to our rescue. Grandpa, Sarrah and I were in their way, but it made no difference. We dodged as those warriors ran right through us and attacked the now weakened spider. Luckily, the boys managed to escape through an unimaginable flurry of legs, antennae, and giant fangs while the wounded spider continued its struggle toward a certain death.

We decided to make another attempt at escaping through the tunnels. The spider threat had been removed, at least for the moment. That bought us some time, some freedom, and the chance to run. We hoped we could find our way back to the Magic Portal. We had no idea what direction to go, but we leaped into the tunnel and began to run. Other than the dim light we carried only because it was stuck to us, the tunnels were as black as a coal mine during a power outage. We ran straight through until we came to the first of many intersections in the tunnels. We were lost. We had no idea which direction to take, so we decided to take the tunnel that seemed to contain more light. Every time we got to another intersection, we chose that path; we ran toward the light. Light had to mean out. It was the only guess we had.

*****

**22. Captured And Back In Prison**

The light we followed was nothing more than a whole lot of that glowing slime; it guided us deeper into the mound rather than out. I noticed, too, that the ground shook much more violently as we ran deeper into the tunnels. The glow eventually led us to a chamber that must have been near the middle of the mound. This chamber was a good many times larger than the one we were being held captive in. It was also a death chamber: an underground coliseum that housed a ferocious battle between ants and spiders. We all found hiding spots in the tunnel behind rocks or other lumps in the dirt so we could watch the melee, but at the same time, we desperately needed to avoid detection. Even during the unrelenting madness of the battle, I could see that uncountable numbers of ants were dead, but I saw not a single dead spider. I watched as thousands of ants clamored over each other almost aimlessly, seemingly without guidance or direction. Each ant was trying to attack a spider, but mostly, they managed only to crawl all over each other. The difference between the way these ants fought the spiders and the way they killed the giant mouse was alarming. When they killed the mouse, these same ants were completely organized, perfect killing machines. Now, facing an enemy of equal number and strength, they couldn't organize themselves to kill a single spider. The ants seemed panicked and unable to defend themselves against so many attackers. These spiders were anything but vulnerable. They were, in fact, ruthless. Even I could see that they double-teamed the ants in a way that was perfectly deadly. With the spiders, one would attack; the second would defend the attacker. It was a perfect killing tactic. The spiders had poison, speed, and strength. Above all, they had the ability to act beyond instinct. They could organize, and they could carry out a plan against vast numbers. The hairy, eight-legged beasts were simply too much for the ants. The ants were losing this war. Unless they could organize themselves, their numbers would be of absolutely no help this time. The ground shook violently, uncontrollably to a rhythm that mirrored the falling of dead ant bodies.

I'll never be able to explain it, but rather than make our escape, we stayed to fight. Thomas started it. He began to stab at one spider's abdomen, its softest spot, as he had done in our prison chamber. The resulting pain only angered the spider. It didn't jump, though. Instead, it turned around and bore down on Thomas. Thomas didn't run or hide. Instead, he danced, turned circles under the spider's body, and crouched close to the spider's abdomen to avoid its bite. Brian joined Thomas. The two boys fought together, just as they had done in our prison, just as the spiders were doing. Now both were stabbing and dodging, double-teaming against the spider. The spider's eyes spun inside of its lenses. The boys' erratic movements confused the spider, as did the pain of each of their many stabs. It wasn't able to focus on either boy; it couldn't size either up for a kill.

Grandpa shouted instructions. "Coat your swords with acid. Stick your sword inside a dead ant's bottom." Surprisingly, Sarrah was the first to understand and to do that. She stuck her sword deep into a dead ant and drew out its poisonous goo on her sword. Then, she did the bravest thing I have ever seen her do. She ran beside that spider, the one that tried to focus on the boys, and jabbed all two feet of that poison-tipped sword into the spider's abdomen. The spider, now out of control, immediately started to spin like a hairy top. Sarrah somehow got caught in the flurry and failed to remove her sword from the spider's abdomen. She hung on, though, but was being spun round and round inside the dancing circles of a whirling spider. She held onto the hilt of her sword and spun with the spider at least a half dozen times before the spider dropped dead to the floor. Sarrah bounced to her feet and ran back to Grandpa. By this time, the boys had made their escape from the prison of flashing legs and coated their own swords. Their intent was to make sure that the next spider met the same fate. Brian was there with his poison-tipped sword before that spider could react to the first one's death. He pounded his acid-coated sword all the way into that spider's body, pulled it out, and ducked for cover before the spider could spin even once. The monster died quickly. We, Grandpa, had just discovered a new weapon. The death tide was about to turn.

Thomas did the same thing with his sword. It seemed wrong to be stabbing the dead ants, but it worked. Sarrah reloaded her sword, and the three of them each attacked the nearest three spiders. Soon, the three hunters discovered just like the spiders did, that teamwork gave them the greatest advantage. The easiest spiders to kill were those already busy with other ants. Every time they stabbed poisoned swords deep into those spiders, the spiders died. In fact, they died rather quickly. We just needed to get some of the concentrated acid from a dead ant. Thomas suggested later that it might have worked so well because we put the formic acid deep into the spider. The ants just sprayed the acid on their victims, and that mostly caused confusion or pain rather than death.

We watched as the ants changed tactics. The ants began to understand the concept of the double team. They seemed to understand that the easiest spider to kill was one busy with another ant. While one ant was being attacked by a spider, five or six would attack that spider, then ten more would attack its partner. The ants learned quickly and soon realized that they might actually win.

The spiders, on the other hand, began to see that they were losing this battle, and they retreated from the ant hill in a big hurry. The five of us started chasing them, waving our swords and yelling like the things could actually hear us. I'm pretty sure that we attacked the spiders to chase them away. I'm certain also, that it would have occurred to us soon enough that the spiders knew the way out of the tunnels. If we had been thinking more clearly, we could have escaped by following the spiders, but the ants had that part figured out before we did. A wall of the red and black ants suddenly appeared between us and the retreating spiders. We ran right into that wall. The ants captured us, again. Each of us was locked tight in the jaws of a single ant, and as before, we were never harmed, but carried directly back to our chamber. Indeed, the ants were taking care of us, even protecting us, but still keeping us prisoner. I couldn't help but wonder why. There had to be a reason.

*****

**23. Back at the Chamber**

The trip back to our chamber was strange in many ways. All five of us were along for the ride; there was nothing else we could do. Not one of us struggled or fought; we had already learned that there was no escaping the super strong jaws of the ants. We didn't talk, so I don't know what the others were thinking. Personally, I was lost in awe. What we had seen and done beginning the second we arrived in this world was way beyond truth, beyond even nightmares. I also realized during the ride that the trembling of the earth brought on by battle had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

The wave-like rhythm of six walking legs takes a little getting used to. As we rocked closer to our chamber, it was easy to see that the ants had already begun their work; the chamber's entrance was even smaller than it was before the quake. Apparently, the ants wanted to make it more difficult for us to escape. The ants that carried us lined up in single file to deposit us into this newly remodeled home. There was a definite logic to the way we were carried in, almost a ranking of sorts. Grandpa was first. Sarrah was second. Thomas was next, followed by Brian. I got the feeling that the ants realized that Grandpa was "the elder," the one in charge. He had, after all, been here much longer. Then, they brought in the true warriors before they brought me in. I know this could have been a total accident, the result of random selection, but it sure didn't seem like it.

After the ants had so delicately released us, they went through the same routine as before, which was, undoubtedly, a show of reverence and respect. The five ants that carried us here, along with the six that were doing repairs, all participated, and all bowed to our group of tiny humans. Their movements somehow signaled the entire mound. The walls began to rumble again, but this time it was more like a cat's purr, more of a feeling than a sound. We could all sense the mashing of a million jaws vibrate the air; we could hear the sandpaper grit of two million rubbing antennae and the chanting clicks of every ant in the mound. I could sense that the ants were thanking us for helping, all of them at the same time.

The eleven ants that were in our chamber waited until the mound stopped purring. When it did, they left one by one in single file through the tiny hole that was now our door. Only two remained close at hand: the two that posted themselves outside the chamber door. The reality was that for all the good that we had done, for all of their reverence, and for all of the gratitude, we were still prisoners.

That was okay for awhile. Actually, I had hoped that things would slow down for awhile so we could finally have some peace. There hadn't been any earthquakes or spiders or mice for the last few minutes. Clearly, we were not going to be allowed to go back home. I just hoped that we could sit long enough to talk. God knows that there was plenty to talk about. I had a huge list of questions. In fact, I had more questions than the others. While they were busy fighting, I was busy watching.

None of the others spoke up, so I began. "Did those six ants really protect us from those two spiders?"

Grandpa answered. He had actually begun to talk about this before. "I toldja that the ants have been taking care of me. They've never had the opportunity ta protect me before, but they've carried me without hurting me. They've fed me obviously nutritious food, and they've supplied me with clean water. They must be doing this for a reason that we don't yet understand. Seeing as how these ants have gone ta such lengths ta keep us alive, I don't think it's too far of an imagination jump that they would also protect us."

"So, all this fighting with the spiders has only begun since us kids arrived," I commented, but my question was unheard.

Thomas cut me off. He didn't exactly follow Grandpa's line of thought, but what he said was almost more interesting and raised even more questions that we had no answers to.

"I know that ants are extremely intelligent in their way, but these ants are demonstrating a certain appreciation. They've thanked us for assisting them. They've displayed something akin to emotions or feelings. They bowed to us with reverence, and that was before we supported their fight against the spiders. Why would they do that, unless they somehow know who we are and why we're here? Someone, please explain that to me."

"They think you're a god," snickered Sarrah.

We all got a small chuckle out of that, but Brian brought that moment of humor to an end when he said, "No, but they might think that you are, Sarrah."

Brian, normally the funny man in our group, was being quite sober. He stared straight at Sarrah without so much as a blink. His lips showed not the slightest beginnings of a smile. His look was concentrated; his words focused. Brian was totally serious, but none of us had a clue what he was talking about. Sarrah moaned in a tiny, unbelieving whisper. "What?"

"Think about it," said Brian. The ants had to line up single file to bring us in here. Grandpa was first. You, Sarrah, were second. Grandpa told us to use the dead ants as a source of poison. You were the first to do it. The ants saw that happen. It was the turning point of the battle. If Grandpa hadn't shouted those instructions, an if you hadn't followed them, all of us, including the ants, would be dead."

I agreed with Brian. "I noticed that too, but I didn't interpret it the way you did. Way to go, Brian! Did you also notice how I was the last one in the door?"
This time, it was Thomas's turn to throw in the jab. "Gee. I wonder why that was, oh swordless one."

"You took my sword away from me, Thomas! It's not my fault I don't have a sword!"

"Took it from you? It's far more likely that you threw it at me! Hah!" he laughed. "Like you would have known how to use it, anyway." Thomas had given me a good-natured jab, but you and I both know it was an open door to great argument. Grandpa knew it, too.

"Stop, you two," demanded Grandpa, who was a little on edge. "We need ta be together. Even if your argument begins in fun, it will surely end in pain. All arguments, even those that were born in fun, can get out of hand way too easily. That's exactly what we don't need ta happen right now."

Thomas helped Grandpa by changing the subject. "Who among you noticed the spiders' strange behaviors?"

"Like the fact that their big eyes rotate inside themselves?" I asked.

"No," said Thomas. "That would be perfectly normal. But, since when do spiders hunt in packs? That's not all, either. Spiders are predators. They hunt for food. That's not what was going on. These spiders were attempting to devastate this ant colony. For what purpose? Why kill for a reason other than defense or food?"

Brian was quick with his next statement, which was as thoughtful as any of Thomas'. "That's a good question, Thomas. Supposedly, people fight wars because there's somethin to win. What do the spiders have to win? For that matter, what do the ants have to win? An if they were fighting to win somethin, I wonder when they'll be back to finish the job."

"At least the ants let you keep your spears," Grandpa pointed out.

Before anyone could answer, Brian nudged Grandpa lightly in the ribs. He pointed at Sarrah, who was sleeping so soundly that she was drooling. She looked quite comfortable, resting her head on Grandpa's thigh. She had snuggled up there without anyone really noticing.

Just then, the two ant guards moved out of the way while two different ants delivered food and water to the chamber.

Brian quickly put some food and water aside for his sleeping sister, and then, just as quickly, he grabbed some for himself. "Grandpa," he squeaked while picking up what looked like a springtail appendage with a big chunk of butt attached. "Help me," he whimpered.

We all laughed hysterically. The memory of Brian holding that springtail butt in the air will stay with me forever. Watching him try to eat it was even more hilarious.

*****

**24. The Huge Maple**

Brian held that chunk of butt at eyeball level and went cross-eyed as he stared at it. When he sniffed it, his whole face convulsed. He looked at it once. Looked at it again. Stared at it for what must have been a full minute before he finally decided to close his eyes, hold his nose, and attack that bug butt with his teeth. Part of the show was Brian's style of theatrics, but we all cracked up when he took a huge bite and immediately bolted for a dark recess on the far side of the chamber. Brian could turn any situation into a laugh. That's exactly what we needed after what we had been through. If we had not all been together; if we had not found Grandpa; if we did not have Grandpa, or freedom, or home to fight for, I'm not sure what would have happened to us. As it was, I looked past my stack of cricket eyes toward the glowing goo that grew from our walls. I suddenly found comfort in the glowing darkness of that den that was also our prison. For just the shortest of moments, I wanted to cry. My eyes were wet; my lips quivered, but I held on. I remember thinking how strange that, up until now, none of us had shed even the first tear. Up until now, we weren't thinking about home, or imprisonment, or giant ants, or even terrifying spiders. We were thinking about survival. We just felt good because we were together, and for this entire day, we had been depending on each other for our lives. I shifted my glance from Thomas, to Grandpa, to Brian, to the sleeping Sarrah. I discovered a new meaning, a new understanding in my life. I found that we were more than just relatives, more than brothers and sisters, more than cousins. I discovered that we were family. About that time, Brian shattered my thoughts. He had finally gotten down to the business of eating.

All of us except Grandpa watched while Brian chewed some of that springtail behind. It was truly comical. It took everything Brian had not to puke. In fact, he did puke during his first try. Believe it or not, an ant came in right away to clean away that mess. I won't tell you how it did that. That was even more disgusting than eating dead bugs. Can you imagine it? Brian had crushed thousands of those bugs off his arm months earlier. They had attacked us all in an attempt to kill us. We watched the ants slice them up with their giant mouth parts. And now, Brian was eating one of those big, cheesy, bug butts for dinner. Brian broke the tail off and used it as a knife to slice off chunks of cheesy meat. He almost gagged again while chewing another bite of springtail, but he was determined. He actually forced this one down, but he sure wasn't making it look easy. Brian's chest heaved a time or two as if he were trying to vomit, or maybe, he was trying not to. His cheeks kept filling with air, or chewed up food, or something. He had to dam his mouth with the palms of both hands. If he hadn't, he probably would have heaved that bite of bug meat all the way across our chamber. Finally, he managed to swallow the stuff. After Brian had choked it down, the rest of us stared at him with wide-eyed wonder. All of us expected to see him spew chunks into the nearest corner. Instead, Brian's face contorted into some kind of nauseating Halloween mask, but he managed a devilish smile just before he managed to say to the whole group, "Mmmmmm. Tasteee! Like chicken. Really! Trust me!" We all laughed until we cried. We had grown so much closer as a family. We had been through so much, but in the deepest recess of our hearts, we feared there had to be more to come.

Grandpa wasn't watching Brian or his newly discovered feasting antics because, I guess, he was hungry. Grandpa had no trouble eating anything that had been dumped onto the floor of our chamber. He had his choice of all the food he wanted. It was a sure bet that none of the rest of us would eat more than our share. There was a healthy supply of springtail butt, aphid honey, water, and two other kinds of smelly, dark meat that appeared to come off a cricket head or some other kind of head. I don't even want to think about those thick, meaty sections with black and white hairs on them. Grandpa stuffed this raw bug meat into his mouth as willingly as he did Grandma's lasagna. I thought I heard him mumble something about wishing we had brought ketchup, but I really couldn't hear that well over his chewing. Between mouthfuls, Grandpa showed us the finer points of eating the springtail flesh and using the skinny part of the tail as a toothpick. I thought I was going to heave. Brian already had—again. Thomas would have nothing of it. It was bug meat, and it was raw! We all did fine with the aphid honey—as long as Grandpa didn't tell us what it really was. The ants also brought us some water, and that, by itself, was wonderful. Through it all, Sarrah slept.

After we ate, relaxed, and laughed, we all slept. We slept until the ground shook, and that caused us to jump like we had all awakened from the same nightmare. As time went on, as we became more clearheaded, all of us realized that this was not the same kind of shaking that we experience right before the spiders attacked. This time, the ground vibrated rhythmically; the beat was countable, like a soft drum beat, a living mantra.

The ground pulsated around us; its vibrating softness conformed to the shape of our bodies as if the earth had decided to swallow us. We were unable to fight the moving earth or the increasing strength of the vibrations. Our bodies just sank deeper into the shifting ground that behaved like dry quicksand. I heard Sarrah scream something at Grandpa, but couldn't make out exactly what she said because her mouth was full of dirt and dust. I heard Brian and Thomas: strained, incoherent grunts as they tried to fight seemingly unnatural, definitely invisible forces. They could barely stand, let alone run. The vibration quickly evolved into more than a feeling; we began to hear it, as well. The sound, like the dirt, engulfed us at first; it meandered, as if alive, and it soon drew our attention toward the entrance.

Turning our heads was all we could manage, but there, at the entrance, was the cause of our horror. Half a dozen ants were busy tearing our door away, enlarging it, making it practically burst open to the outside. Beyond that entrance, the tiny tunnel that once led to our chamber had been replaced by a vast assembly area. I can't imagine the amount of work that reconstruction took, and the ants accomplished it in the time we had been asleep. The ants that had been assigned to guard us were gone. In their place were two columns of moving ants, all marching in exact cadence with what could best be described as military precision. When the columns stopped marching, the ground stopped vibrating. It was incredible: one more miracle to add to the rapidly growing list.

Finally, we could stand. As soon as we were able, the five of us darted to what used to be the entrance. It was like standing under the giant umbrella of the Tacoma Dome, but what came next was even more impressive. On our far left, two ants touched antennae, then two more, two more, two more, until the wave of thousands of antennae rippled the entire width of the dome from left to right. Then, on our extreme right, two ants clicked jaws, then two more, then two, then two, until the ripple of clicking sounds rolled from right to left. The ants were not finished. Two ants peeled away from the right side of the column, and three peeled away from the left. Those five ants marched directly to where we stood, and like clockwork, all simultaneously faced directly toward us. For some reason, we were not afraid when one picked up Grandpa, then Brian, then me, Sarrah, and finally, Thomas. Each turned to the left and passed in front of the waiting body of ants. As the five of us passed the ant columns, every ant in every column faced to the right in a single movement, and they began to follow us. Again, the ground pulsed with the six-count, military precision of thousands of marching ants. At least this time we weren't being swallowed by dirt.

The tunnel complex was filled with way too many ups and downs and rights and lefts, so many that the five of us became hopelessly lost. The ants weren't. They followed some invisible map that took them to exactly the right place: to the outside. It was the first fresh air we had breathed in who knows how long. The air felt cool and damp, as it does in the early morning. That's when it dawned on me. We were outside! Sarrah had it figured out before I did. She started screaming her lungs out. "Help! Help!" Brian began to yell for help, too. The ants remained focused on their objective, whatever that was. They certainly didn't try to stop those two from screaming. The ants just kept marching, marching to a rhythmic sound that they could hear, and we could feel. Grandpa, on the other hand, tried to get Brian and his sister to be quiet.

"Ya might as well save your strength and your voices," he said. "I've been out here before, too many times. No person could ever hear me. No one can hear ya except the spiders, the springtails, the pseudoscorpions, and maybe the birds. Believe me, if ya didn't like fighting the spiders, ya really won't like fighting a jay. Ya need ta be quiet. If ya make enough commotion, you'll bring all kinds of monsters down on ya. And when you're the size of a ladybug, everything is a monster."

Only one word caught Thomas's attention. "What's a pseudoscorpion, Grandpa?"

"Trust me. Ya don't want ta meet any. They're small, and they're vicious. They're little bugs, about the size of the springtails, except they have eight legs plus two extra ones with pinchers. They look a lot like real scorpions, but they are very small, normally. Guess what they eat. Other little insects—like you."

"Great!" I said. "Do you know where the ants are taking us, Grandpa?" I wasn't sure why, but it seemed almost normal to have this discussion while being carried by ants during some kind of insect ritual.

"Nope. This is strange," Grandpa said. "They've taken me outside before, but never with this much ceremony. Normally, they just clear out a small circle on the ground, kill off any little bugs, and let me get some exercise and fresh air. Sometimes they dump me by a small pool of water after a rain, and I get ta clean up. This is different. This is more than different. It's special. These guys are taking us somewhere and, judging by the ceremony, they're doing it with some intent."

To me, everything looked familiar, but different. I guess the different part was the fact that everything around me was gigantic. My guess was, though, that we were headed toward the big maple tree, the one that Grandpa liked to touch.

As it turned out, I was right. The ant columns turned to enter the base of that ages-old tree. From the viewpoint of a bug-sized kid, that old tree looked to be as big as any castle and twice as mysterious. The tree had its own tunnels that seemed to be just as old, and they were huge. The entrance hallways were lined with the skeletons of hundreds of bugs: ants, spiders, things I didn't recognize. Each skeleton had been placed inside a small shelf-like area that had been carved into the wall of the tunnel. Clearly, the intent was to place these skeletons on display. Past heros? Dead enemies? I wasn't sure. I thought that these had to be symbols of ancient battles. In our mound, the ants had spent a great deal of time cleaning the remnants of the spider battle away and caring for their own dead. I reasoned that, in these hallways, the dead lay in tribute to some victory, or maybe they mark the passing of a solemn event, or mark sacred ground. The ants passed reverently through the hallways of their dead, and then they headed deeper into the tree. Always, the huge tunnels were lighted with that special, glowing mold. The soft, green light gave our surroundings more than a touch of eeriness; it cast dull shadows that veiled bug ghosts in the barely lighted darkness.

We had been marching for what seemed at least an hour. That's what my body was telling me, anyway. My arms had begun to hurt, and my sides had gone numb long ago, squeezed as they were between the jaws of my six-legged taxi. Suddenly, the marching column came to a stop directly in front of another entrance. The ants that carried us stepped to the sides of the entrance. I could see inside the door. The five of us, held tightly by our captors, were finally allowed to rest with our feet on the ground, but we remained imprisoned by jaws. The remaining columns of ants arranged themselves to enter this new chamber in sets of two. We watched thousands of ants enter the chamber before us. For every pair of ants that marched through that entrance, one turned right; one turned left. The columns of ants and the time we spent watching them seemed endless. This room had to be colossal if it were going to hold this massive army.

Finally, the end of the line arrived. It was our turn to enter.

*****

**25. The Glowing Orb**

Magical is the best word I can find to describe what we saw. To this day, I have never been in a cave, but I've seen pictures of those huge, glowing caverns that fill a person with both wonder and fear at the same time. I was filled with both of those emotions as I entered this wooden ant chamber inside Grandpa's giant tree.

Thousands of ants circled the cavern in row after perfect row. Ants filled the entire chamber all the way to the outer edges, but here at the entrance, they very neatly fashioned a living tunnel: one very long, very straight corridor for us to follow through the throngs of spectators and into the center of the coliseum. Thousands upon thousands stomped the ground ever so softly as we were carried toward a stage. Their insect cadence felt like thousands of spectators stomping the bleachers at a football game. The vibrating ground only added to my fear and anticipation. My eyes and my wonder were drawn to another fact that's still impossible for me to explain. Not only were the ants in perfect concentric circles around the coliseum but, from this new vantage point, I could see that they also formed perfectly straight aisles. Those extended like the spokes of a very large bicycle wheel from the center of the chamber. This was only one more chapter into the unfolding book of bizarre happenings. Even after being faced with this unexplainable, perfectly choreographed behavior of thousands of insects, I could never in my wildest imagination have anticipated the next series of miracles.

In the exact center of the living mass, at the focus of the ant-formed aisles, was a round altar of perfectly polished stone. Slightly above that altar floated a radiant, rotating orb that seemed unaffected by either gravity or the earth that trembled under the cadence of thousands of pounding feet. The surface of the orb reminded me of every movie of the sun that I have ever seen. It was a bubble: a thin, liquid layer that flowed and ebbed as if governed by its own currents. Inside the hollow of that magical orb was a perfectly formed, eight-sided, blue stone that reminded me of a sapphire. That glowing stone was suspended inside the sun-like bubble, centered there by some invisible force so that it, also, remained unaffected by gravity, the trembling earth, or even the magical effects of the orb itself. The orb seemed to be in constant motion; the blue stone, or whatever that thing was that floated on the inside of the orb, remained perfectly motionless. My mind could barely comprehend the enchantment, the magic of this event that we were quickly becoming a part of.

In the short time since we had entered this extraordinary world, it had become quite clear that the ants were protecting us. It was perfectly evident that the ants were keeping us for some purpose and that they held us all in high regard. I felt certain that the question of why was about to be answered. I was sure that this orb, this altar, this ceremony had to be the corner pieces of that puzzle.

I could now see that five stone tables were arranged symmetrically around the circular altar. One was taller than the other four. The ants that still held us entered the center of the spectators with great ceremony and in the exact order that we had departed our prison chamber: first Grandpa, then Brian, me, Sarrah, and Thomas. They began to circle the altar. As the first ant stepped into the circle and carried Grandpa to the tallest table, the rhythmic pounding of thousands of ant feet intensified. The crescendo increased four more times as each of us kids also entered the circle. The upsurge of bone-jarring sound reached its climax as Thomas was carried to the front of the last stone podium, but the instant that Thomas's feet touched the ground, the pounding mantra ceased. Silence smothered us all, profound silence, so unfathomable that I could hear my heart beat and feel it pound against the inside of my chest. I watched the vision of that mystical, glowing orb from across my own polished, stone podium. Seconds later, no, maybe minutes later, I took my eyes off the orb and became aware of the rest of my surroundings. I saw that the surface of each stone podium was polished as finely as the circular altar. I saw that a shape had been harshly beaten into the center of each: the shape of a human hand.

We had been brought here for a reason that was not yet obvious, but I was growing used to that feeling of uncertainty by now. My body was frozen in place, but I allowed my eyes to travel the room. I looked across the glowing orb, past grandpa and the others. I could see that the entire coliseum was lined by tall, stone pillars. Some of those were in pairs, and the pairs had long, bridge-like caps. Suddenly, I remembered a picture on Grandpa's bedroom wall, the picture of Stonehenge, and suddenly the reason that picture was there began to make some strange kind of sense. I looked beyond the stone fence and quickly scanned the walls of the tree we were inside of. Then, I stared directly at Grandpa. His eyes caught mine, and then his sight turned to each of the other kids in turn. There was a feeling of awareness. Awareness of the vast silence of expectation. The ants were waiting. At last, Grandpa did the only thing that made sense. He placed his hand on the podium, directly inside of that coarsely pounded shape of a human hand. The rest of us didn't even question his action. It was as if we all had been programmed by some unknown power. It was as if we all knew that placing our hands on that stone was exactly the right thing to do. Each of us, in our turn, did as Grandpa had done. We placed our hands on the pillar, directly on that stone-cold shape of a human hand. We did so with reverence, one after the other in the order we had been carried to this place, one after the other in the same direction as the orb's rotation.

Thomas was the last. As he placed his hand on that cool, damp stone, a thousand feet pounded the dirt floor, followed by a thousand more. A thousand ant jaws clicked, followed by a thousand more. The uproar was incredible, and deafening, and it scared the crap out of me. Then, it was quiet once again. As silent as death. The five of us stood there not knowing what to do or what would come next. We only knew, who knows how, that we needed to keep our hands on those podiums. So, we did.

It seemed that the orb was measuring us, testing our commitment. We stood there, hands on those podiums, for measured seconds. Suddenly, the blue stone began to rotate faster and faster. Its edges blurred; its facets disappeared, and it looked as smooth and round as the orb, itself. Its color became brighter, deeper, the richest color of blue I've ever seen. The orb changed, too. Its visible currents became more linear, like moving, continuous lines around a globe. Its colors became deeper. The globe became less bubble-like: more solid, and more opaque. A sudden and brilliant radiance masked the stone and made it much more difficult to see. When it became nearly invisible, the most inconceivable sound thundered inside the cavern as if God, himself, spoke these words.

" **BEHOLD, THE BOOK OF PATHS"**

Living shafts of light flashed color, shape, and shadow onto the sides of the chamber. More words came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Those seemed to explain the otherwise undecipherable holographs that began dancing in the air directly above the orb. I remember that every creature in that giant coliseum was held captive by the orb, that reverberating tone, and those dancing lights. I remember the precise details of the holographs and the exact wording of the book, but I have no other memories of the moment until the book ended. The details that I do remember must have been etched directly onto my brain.

*****

**26. The Book of Paths**

"Behold," the voice bellowed, "The book of paths."

I've given you paths upon which to walk  
and choices to light up your way.  
Gift or not, you might not know  
till time has added a day.

You own both gift and anti-gift  
and choice to choose which one.  
Gift and not will co-reside  
till love from hate does run.

Good and evil must live in balance  
as all and none must too.  
But gift or not you might not know  
till outcome gives you clue.

The battle for balance is most import  
since gift and not must thrive.  
But easy it is to ignore that fight  
for one's own right to strive.

The choice of paths is not quite easy  
as gift and not do lure.  
But warnings come with everything  
to help provide a cure.

When evil serves life greater than good  
then life to dead will come.  
And gift or not, you'll learn that fact  
when love and hate re-strum.

Then man and child will play their hands,  
and one will step between.

Yet man will have one lesson to teach  
fore enemies do cut him keen.

The battle will cease, but not for long.  
Understanding will find its place.  
Three will leave but one will not,  
memories not wanting to chase.

I've given you paths upon which to walk  
and choices to light up your way.  
Gift or not, you might not know  
till time has added a day.

*****

 **27. The End of the Book**

That was the end of the book, or so it seemed. The shafts of light flickered a little bit. Another page began to take shape as each had done before it, but that page quickly dissipated and dazzled out of existence. The thunderous voice stopped as abruptly as it began. The orb returned to its original state. The entire show ended as quickly as the last page vanished. There remained only the dim glow of the living slime and the weighty silence of thousands of ants. The five of us stood in front of our stone pedestals in shocked awe. We were unable to move; it seemed we were awakening from a kind of trance. We had not been given time to think about what had just taken place, but later we would come to believe that we had been entrusted with some of the world's most significant secrets.

Deciding to move, and deciding to lift our hands from the stones, were not issues that we had to face. The ants made those decisions for us. The ants that brought us into this chamber approached our backsides, enclosed us in their jaws to lift us, and brought us all to a line facing the crowd. As we came to center stage, the uproar became impenetrable. Every ant in the coliseum drummed all six feet in perfect unison. The ground rumbled; glowing slime fell from the walls. That's when the ants stopped stomping. That's when they began to open and close their jaws, and that's when thousands of movements were accomplished in wondrous, perfect unison. The result was a wonderful, living harmony, like rubbing your wet finger around the rim of a crystal wine glass. Suddenly, again, silence. The next exhibition began directly in front of us. Each ant's antennae touched those immediately adjacent to it, first to the right, then to the left, then to the right. That movement was repeated in sequence through the coliseum once, twice, three times, more. The living wave flowed in eerie harmony without a single sound, without stopping, without hitch, frictionless, faultless, as poetic as a single ripple from the center of a pond. Finally, a new ant stepped in front of us. It stared at us for just a second and then it turned to face the crowd. In that instant, everything stopped. That ant opened and closed its jaws making a few clicking and scratching sounds. It waved its antennae in some kind of strange, intentional pattern. The rows of ants moved from their positions, stepped to our front, bowed, and exited the room with both precision and what could only be described as admiration. We were held in place while each ant paid its respects until, finally, the room was empty. Then we were removed from the room, and you know where we were taken. To our cell.

*****

**28. Thought and Reflection**

"Holy crap!" Brian yelled. "That whole show was about us! Not FOR us! ABOUT us! Not just the ants, but _The Book of Paths_ , too! It's ALL about us!"

I wasn't as quick as Brian to catch on. I don't know why; it should have been obvious. I suppose I could have been in denial since everything else had been so totally overwhelming. "Us?" I said. "What do you mean it was about us?"

"Are you kiddin me?" Brian began. He was almost indignant. I was sure a verbal attack was about to follow, but Grandpa was quick to cut him off.

"Brian's absolutely right," Grandpa said. I could see the little imp's eyes light up with the energy of Grandpa's praise. "The poem was about us, and it explains so much."

"Indeed," Thomas cut in. "As a matter of fact, _The Book of Paths_ explains nearly every incident that has happened to us. With a little effort and research, using _the book_ as a basis, I could most likely explain how we got here through the portal. As a very minimum, and quite obviously, _the book_ explains why the ants are keeping us alive. It explains why they and the spiders are fighting each other. It even provides a prophecy with us as its center, and those predictions are, in fact, pretty dire."

"I don't understand," I said.

"Like anyone could understand that gibberish," Brian interrupted. "Look Hannah. Let me make it easy for you. That orb said that everythin has to live in balance, even good an evil. It said that when good an evil are out of whack, there will be lots of fightin, as the ants and the spiders are now doin. It said that man an child will intervene. I have to guess to restore balance. An it said that one of us will get in the way."

I was just beginning to get a grasp on everything when Sarrah chimed in. "It s-s-said s-s-so much more than that, didn't it Grandpa. That book isn't s-s-so much about us as it is about the choices and the paths we take through our lives."

Once again, I found myself in awe at the wisdom coming from the youngest of our group. Where did that even come from? I still have no idea.

Grandpa agreed with Sarrah, and that helped me gain so much understanding. "Yes, Sarrah. It did talk about choices. It said that we all had paths ta take and choices ta make. It said that the choices were never easy, that some might be gifts and some might be nothing more than traps. It said that we might not ever know the difference until...."

"Consequence tells you so," Thomas finished. "The poem is clearly about balance and imbalance, choices and consequences."

"Life an death," added Brian. "It said the most wonderful thing. That life could be given to the dead. That explains the battle between the ants an the spiders." Brian sat in the silence of our cell with a strange, almost blank stare.

"Wonderful!" I screamed. I couldn't believe that Brian or anyone else could believe that life being given to the dead was a wonderful thing. "How is that wonderful? The orb even gave us a warning! To help provide a cure! Life will be given to the dead only when evil serves life greater than good."

It was no use. Anything I said on this topic was already too late. Brian's eyes focused on a point somewhere out there, somewhere between him and all of us.

"Don't be too hard on him, Hannah." Grandpa stopped me before I lost my temper. "Ya know without being told by some magical orb that life's decisions are never easy. Even the orb implies thacha might not know the difference between right and wrong until after ya decide a path, until consequence or outcome shows ya the result. It even says that about the life ta death choice—and it is presented as a choice. Brian is right again. It looks ta me like the spiders are trying to create an imbalance where that choice can be made."

"So how does anyone decide anything, Grandpa? How do we ever know the right path or the right choice?" This was a difficult concept for me. Not black and white. Not yes or no. Not concrete.

"The only thing I can say," Grandpa continued, "is thacha simply make the best decision ya can and move on. A lot of life's decisions are made after studying the evidence, gathering the data, testing the possible outcomes, and then making a giant leap of faith. Sometimes, more often than you would like to admit, ya simply have ta do what your heart tells ya ta do, check afterward ta see if things are still in balance, and make adjustments."

"Life after death..." Brian was waking up from his dream; his eyes were just beginning to focus again, and he was trying to return to the conversation.

"That," said Grandpa, "has ta be a huge topic of choices and consequences."

I think Grandpa stopped short of what he intended to say. We felt the rumble in the ground and up our feet, and by now we had begun to recognize that rumble as an extremely bad sign. Something was happening at the door. Something big.

Sarrah finished our conversation. "The orb also s-said one of us wasn't going home."

*****

**29. Hannah Goes Back to the Orb**

I have to tell you, Debbie, that what followed the rumbling was the single defining moment of my life. Everything I am, everything I was to be, changed from this moment forward. From that moment to this, My life was put on a path that left me little choice.

The low rumble we felt became a deadly uproar at the door of our prison. All of us leaped behind the nearest protective cover as the walls resonated with a din that sounded something like a huge stampede of miniature cattle. All of us wiggled toward the entrance and tried to protect ourselves by crawling close to the ground. Try as we might to see what was going on, we couldn't squeeze through our prison door far enough to see anything except the gnashing of a dozen ant jaws.

The boys and Grandpa had already grabbed their weapons, and Sarrah and I headed back for cover. It would make no difference. A single ant bulled its way into our prison chamber over the fierce protest of others assigned to protect us. The rogue was my ant. I had begun to recognize the small differences in each one. Mine had a small bulge on its head, right between its two huge eyes. I'll always believe that what happened next was my fault. The men relaxed right after I yelled out, "Stop! This is my ant." Their weapons hung at their sides. Unprepared, Grandpa and the boys were stunned by the horror that came next.

My ant raised its head like a bull elephant on the war path. If it could have trumpeted, I'm sure its roar would have echoed off the walls of our chamber. The beast was terrifying. With jaws and head pointed toward the ceiling, the ant opened his jaws in rage. Then he closed and opened those jaws a dozen times in a half a second. Chitinous blades whooshed through the air, grating and scraping against each other like knives against sharpeners. Those sounds were as terrifying as any elephant screaming on the rampage. The beast attacked the unprepared men knocking all three of them to the wall with one swing of its mighty jaws. Grandpa literally bounced off the wall and crumpled to the ground like a tossed potato chip bag. I screamed at him, but he never got up. Somehow, Sarrah managed to grab a plate of water and scamper successfully through six rampaging legs and a pair of slashing jaws. She splashed the water directly onto Grandpa's face. It didn't work. Thomas and Brian returned to the brawl, but it was wasted energy. Both were quickly overpowered by the six-legged beast that, earlier, had gained my trust. It took out Thomas with one final, colossal blow. The monster smashed Thomas's head with one of its jaws. Thomas reeled and went down. He rolled to his back as the ant rushed to stand directly over him. The ant dropped low on all six legs and crushed Thomas with its weight, then the beast hoisted Thomas's limp body and tossed it directly on top of the attacking Brian. The force of the blow must have been tremendous. Brian went down like an overstuffed pillow. I heard every ounce of air blast its way out of Brian's lungs as Thomas's dead weight landed on him. I thought Brian's rib cage had surely been crushed. I wouldn't have the opportunity to find out. As soon as Grandpa and the boys were taken out of the picture, my ant came for me. Sarrah made herself as small as possible and was hiding in a corner. It would have made no difference if she were sitting in the middle of the room. The ant wanted me. Only me.

There was nothing I could do. No place to go. Nothing I could even crawl under or hide behind. I ran from corner to corner. I dodged and weaved and tried very carefully to stay clear of the hiding Sarrah. I grabbed one of the swords the boys had lost, and I slashed out aiming for the ant's mouth or its eyes, but as we had discovered before, that tactic was hopeless. The ant outlasted me. I was exhausted, slow, and uncoordinated as a three-legged chicken. I fell over everything, and I had to stop far too often in order to catch my breath. It only took a couple more minutes before the ant grabbed me with its jaws. This time, it squeezed so hard I couldn't draw a breath, not that I could breathe anyway. The pain caused me to drop my sword. Using what little strength remained, I struggled against the strength of the ant, but failed to escape the vice-like grip it had on my chest. I passed out and have no idea what happened next. The last thing I heard was Sarrah screaming from her corner. After that, I remember nothing until I came to.

*****

**30. Another Promise**

When I finally regained consciousness, I was inside the huge coliseum and lying flat on my back. I could see the orb from that position, and I could also see that I was directly in front of one of the polished tablets with the carved human hands. The orb was suspended on its layer of nothingness, still glowing like the sun. The blue stone still hovered inside the glowing bubble and still added more mystery to the miracle. I almost expected to hear some kind of mechanical hum, that low-level background noise that you hear in all the science fiction movies when the spaceship rumbles by, but there was none. No low rumble. No low-frequency vibration. There was only a nearly solid, cosmically immense silence while the orb rotated on its invisible axis, each object perfectly independent of the other. If I stopped breathing, the only sound I could hear was the rush of blood through my ears.

I was still a little groggy, and I was very emotionally lost. The best I could hope for was to remain calm and to try to absorb and understand all that had happened to us, and apparently, all that was still happening. There was something new every minute, no, every second. I remained flat on the ground, and so my perspective of the cavern was very different from that of my first visit. While I remained on my back, I slowly rolled my head from one side to the other so that I could see the entirety of what I knew to be the inside of a tree. I'm sure that I took at least three full minutes to scan completely from right to left. The vastness of this cavern inside the maple tree was impossible to describe. It appeared hundreds of times larger than I remember the tree being. It was a grotto: a perfect, supernaturally beautiful castle of nature. I could see ants at work mending cracks in the walls. Some seemed to be tending fungus crops while others were herding smaller insects. Miniature plants, the result of another group of farming ants, glowed like carpets of living emeralds in small shafts of light that poured through tiny cracks. Mosses hung from the ceiling in great, pointed clumps, much like stalactites in an underground cave. Every corner, every curve boasted a different texture of wood. The unique shafts of colored light, the brilliant tans, the reds and browns of thousands of tiny mushrooms, the greens of every possible shade on a hundred mosses, and the earth tones of yet another hundred kinds of fungus literally painted the walls and ceilings of this cavern inside a tree. It was more beautiful than any cathedral had the right to be.

My ant stirred. I couldn't see it, but I recognized the grating sounds of its jaws and the creaking of its neck joints as it turned its head. Then, I heard a clicking sound that I didn't recognize. Somehow, I jerked myself up. I don't remember passing the sitting position, but I found myself with both feet and one hand on the ground, like a runner in her starting position. I was adrenaline charged and ready to race if I found the noise to be a spider. Click. Click. Click. I heard it again, three times in rapid succession. Then I saw it. The noise was coming from my ant tapping the pointed ends of its jaws together. The ant had my attention, and it took hold of my free hand with the greatest of care. It lifted my hand so that I had to stand, and it placed my hand on the cold, polished stone.

The coliseum darkened as suddenly as the orb and its blue stone began to spin. Every shaft of light that had shined on those emerald mosses suddenly disappeared behind a living cloud of ants. The light changed to a warm glow, tinted by a rotating, much colder blue. Now, I heard the hum, not mechanical, but the harmonics of two rotating bodies, one inside the other. They spun together, faster and faster, until the voice began once again.

" **The being sends greetings to the queen mother. There are many secrets yet to be learned. This is the secret of the second promise. Listen carefully. Act accordingly. Remember. The second alone will give the first. The first given will be most versed. That one alone will know the way to bring the child home to stay."**

It was over as abruptly as it began. The orb stopped spinning, as did the blue stone. The voice stopped. The light shafts began to flow once again onto the green plants. Bugs resumed their duties. And six new ants appeared at the entrance. One immediately attacked the ant that brought me to the coliseum. A second grabbed me before I could run, and it hurt. This one meant business. This ant jerked me off the floor and would have tossed me straight up had it not pinched me so tightly in its jaws. It ran for the entrance tunnel. As I twisted and turned, I watched the end of the battle between my ant and the remaining five. My ant was on the ground, pulled and splayed in four directions. The fifth ant was on top, savagely twisting its jaws between my ant's head and body. My ant looked in my direction and stared directly into my soul. The light shaft that hit its face looked exactly like a tear.

Why? I screamed to the orb. WHY? The orb flickered ever so briefly while I and the ant that now carried me disappeared into the tunnels. At the same instant that darkness surrounded me, so did the dull snap of a head separating from its body.

*****

**31. The War Continues**

I felt it pretty quickly, long before I heard anything, and long before I saw anything. The ant suddenly changed from its normal pace to one slightly more hurried. I was being jostled pretty hard, being carried inside what was more like a bouncing steel trap than a living mouth. We were traveling at a six-legged gallop, but not for too long. The trip went from bad to worse as the ant shifted gears again. By now, his gait was more consistent with running panic. The thing might as well have been bouncing me off the walls. In fact, it might have been doing exactly that. I could feel the bruises growing already, and I'm not so sure that I wasn't bleeding from several scrapes that I could feel but couldn't see. Regardless of injuries that I might have been sustaining, the ant seemed focused on getting me back to my prison, but at the same time, he appeared awkward and indecisive. The ant waved its antennae continuously in all directions. It jerked its head up and down, right and left, back and forth. This new ant was trying to sense something that he could not get a fix on, something that came from a direction it couldn't quite sense, something it was afraid of.

Then, I heard it: a soft hum at first that grew quickly into the deafening roar. Imagine a jet engine in a wind tunnel. The buzzing din seemed to pervade every inch of every tunnel the ant ran through. The louder it grew, the faster my ant sprinted through the tunnels. The ground began to shake, and like the buzz, this also was slight at first, but soon it quaked so fiercely that my ant had difficulty maintaining its balance until it finally stumbled and fell. Before it hit the ground, the ant opened its jaws, and I was able to escape. As quickly as I was back on my feet, the ant was on his. The buzzing grew intense, in fact, painful. I covered my ears, but the ruckus was deafening; the vibrations were inescapable. The ground trembled even harder. It became nearly impossible to remain standing. Shaken, practically deaf, fearing the worst, and without a single weapon, I had never felt more vulnerable.

A few seconds later I could feel a wind blowing on my face. I had no idea where this was coming from, but that answer came to me when I saw the wings. The wings of mosquitoes! I have no idea how these mosquitoes made their way into the ants' chambers, let alone how they could be flying in these tunnels. Nonetheless, the ant that dropped me was back on top of me. It covered me with its body and captured me inside the bars of its legs, intentionally protecting me. The mosquitoes attacked. Two, three, four of them were all over the ant, but they could do it no harm. They knew that, though. It wasn't the ant they were after. It was me! These flying vampires stabbed their bloodsucking tubes between the ant's legs, past its antennae, between its jaws, every time aiming at me! They didn't want the ant, and they didn't care what happened to it. They wanted me! The ant stood its ground, swaying, dodging, slashing the air with its tusk-like jaws, all the time vigorously defending me.

The spider came next. Not the jumping kind that we fought before: a new one. Larger! Meaner! Much more massive than the others with powerful, long legs and a bulbous, black body. There was only one, but it was taking the lead in the attack against the ant that protected me, and it was doing so successfully. The black monster stomped only one of its giant feet on the ant and handily crushed it to the ground, nearly trapping me inside of its folding legs. The rest was simple. My ant was trapped and unable to move. The spider crushed my ant's head between its massive jaws. One huge bite and my ant died. I found myself soaked in bug blood. The mosquitoes intensified their efforts to kill me, but for the moment at least, I was still protected by the dead ant's armored body. The spider tried to solve that issue, too. It pulled and yanked the much smaller ant to lift it off me. I didn't know what else to do, so I hung on for dear life. I latched onto that dead ant's body like a leech. I had no weapon, and I had no help.

No help, that is, until the other ants appeared. A team of six more ants rushed to my rescue. Five of them attacked the huge spider; the sixth started grasping for me and I started grasping for it, but we still couldn't reach each other. Mosquitoes began to attack me from all sides and all angles. They tried to poke and jab me to hold me in place, to kill me, but they actually accomplished no more than adding wind and confusion to an escalating situation. Their sucking tubes were no match for the ants' body armor, but the spider was a real threat. It was at least as large as any four of the biggest ants. It had already killed one of my defenders as quickly as it had dispatched the first one that protected me. But, undaunted, the others were all over it. One crawled on top of its back where the spider could not reach. Two more had the spider around what I would call its throat. One was tearing chunks of flesh from the spider's abdomen. The remaining ant worked its way through my dead ant's body and tried to reach me.

The moment was mine; the time was now. I dropped from the body of the dead ant and ran for all I was worth. I wasn't totally sure where I was, but I knew what direction the ant was initially running, so I went that way, too. I was certain that was the way to my family, and that's where I wanted to be. My flying feet hadn't pounded the dirt more than a dozen times before some strange ant scooped me up in its jaws and sprinted faster than I could ever have run. The mosquitoes and the spider were busy. As I looked behind, I could see that one of the mosquitoes was already in the super-quick jaws of an ant. For some reason, one for which I have no explanation, I had a memory flash of a panda bear trying to catch flies with chopsticks.

*****

**32. Other Battles**

This ant sprinted along the tiniest of paths. I had not seen these hallways before, so I assumed he was taking me to the safety of my family through a back, perhaps a secret, way. At any rate, the ant obviously knew where it was going. These paths were so tiny that the black spider couldn't possibly pass through, and neither could the mosquitoes fly. I could barely see a thing, but the size of the tunnels made me feel slightly safer in one respect. The immediate problem was that my shoulders constantly scraped the walls on both my right and left sides. That hurt! Even so, I had no other choice except to add that experience to the other cuts, scrapes, bruises, and recent injuries that were probably still bleeding. When the glowing goo was available, I could see just how small these passages were, but not much of the glowing slime grew in these tiny tunnels. I could hear nothing; nor could I see anything. The one thing I could sense beyond the ant that carried me was the rumbling of the earth. It was similar to what we all had experienced during our first battle with the jumping spiders. It was also enough to tell me that something else was going on. Something was attacking the ants!

The ant that carried me ran ceaselessly, for what seemed like hours. More likely, it was only minutes before he broke into a larger chamber. That was my first hint of the intensity of the battle, but it was enough. What I saw was beyond description. Mosquitoes buzzed through the chamber like planes bombing Pearl Harbor. Tactically, that seemed to add confusion to the battle and provide a distraction to the ants that slashed at the flying beasts instead of the more dangerous spiders. The spider threat was much more perilous now that the jumping spiders and the bulbous ones had joined forces. Speed, strength, and now size were stacked against the ants. As my ant hurried through the melee, I could only cringe as I watched ant after ant die as a result of the poisonous bite of any single spider. The new bulbous spiders bit, crushed their enemies, and threw ant carcasses across the cavern. I watched a few spiders die. The ants had figured out that three or four of them could win against one, but the spiders had also figured that out.

I recognized this cavern! I had been in it before, several times actually. We were close to my own cell, and we were close to my family. My ant continued to sprint. For some reason, he had not been attacked by the other spiders. The mosquitoes found us, though, and began to buzz us as we ran. Three! Four! Five of them flying all around. Behind me! In front! To my sides! At first, it appeared that these flying menaces intended no harm. That thought probably gave me a false sense of security. In fact, what they did was attract attention. I became aware of that just a little too late as one of the flying beasts decided to aim its sticker right at me. The air fairly sizzled as it whooshed in for the kill, and there was nothing I could do about it. My ant saw it too, and it skidded to a halt in an effort to create a near miss. At the same time, I saw an ant's tusks erupt from a mountain of fighting insects and grab the mosquito in mid air. Three more ants launched themselves into the air and hit the struggling mosquito broadside. All of them toppled to the ground; one tumbled over the other in a massive, rolling ball of legs and wings. In the end, the ants sped away to rejoin the ruckus. The mosquito didn't. The extra attention caused the riot to move in our direction. Ants by the hundreds moved in on me. Spiders moved too. The fight raged on, but over the battle's roar, I heard it. I heard the cry.

"Hannah! Hannah!"

Grandpa stood in the doorway of our prison and waved to me, yelling my name again and again. I was home! That's when it happened. Grandpa took two steps outside of the prison. I suppose the ants that normally guarded us were involved in the fight; at least one of them would normally have been there to stop Grandpa from leaving. Two mosquitoes were on him in an instant. Both mosquitoes landed and simultaneously brought Grandpa to the ground. I remember the whole thing in slow motion. I remember every wing beat, the position of every mosquito leg. I remember the panicked looks on the faces peering out the doorway. I remember that one mosquito pinned Grandpa to the ground. The second stabbed him right in the center of his chest. I remember the mixture of pain, and fear, and sorrow on Grandpa's face right before he closed his eyes.

"Grandpa!" I screamed. But I was too late. What happened next seems, even today, to be a dream. The mosquito that held Grandpa to the ground looked directly at me right after I yelled. I don't know if it heard me or if it smelled me or what, but I know it sensed my presence. I know that it intentionally turned to look at me. It stared directly into my soul right before it took flight. That must have signaled several more of the things to launch and head right for me, attacking me, trying to kill me—again. I saw several spiders move in my direction too, and I saw the giant legs of at least two of those black spiders stomping toward me. That's when everything went red and black. What must have been a million ants swarmed directly over me. Immediately, six million legs interlocked leg-to-body to form a living tunnel that led directly past Grandpa and into my cell. The ant that still carried me sprinted toward the relative safety of that cell. I watched Thomas and Brian drag Grandpa. My ant deposited me in my room just a couple of seconds after the boys got Grandpa through the door. The living tunnel dissolved as quickly as it formed, and just as suddenly, the attackers retreated. I could see from the doorway that ants, spiders, and mosquitoes lay in towering stacks of dead. The surviving ants immediately began to clean the mess and remove the dead and injured. Our cell was, once again, guarded by those that held us prisoner. And Grandpa was on the ground—dying but not yet dead.

*****

**33. Grandpa Dies**

Thomas, at least, tried to do something while all the rest of us just stood there like inanimate, eye-bulging Gumbies. None of us knew what to do, and all of us were in shock. Thomas tried to stop Grandpa's bleeding and keep him comfortable. I guess he picked that knowledge up from television or from the internet. Where else? "Grandpa," he said, "you're going to be alright. Just stay still. Be quiet. Don't try to speak." Thomas sounded exactly like a script from some television hospital show. When Thomas opened Grandpa's ragged and blood-soaked shirt, our eyes must have bulged like the rounded side of a helium balloon. The hole in his chest was as large as a water main. It was truly a wonder that Grandpa was still alive. We could hear the sound of gurgling blood in Grandpa's labored breathing; foaming ooze streamed from both corners of his mouth. I'll never forget that, Debbie. We all knew what was happening. We all saw pending death in Thomas's eyes when he turned them away from Grandpa and toward us. Grandpa knew, too.

"Hi, Little Girl." The words bubbled through blood-soaked lungs. Grandpa opened his eyes and looked directly at me. It wasn't difficult to see his pain. It was evident in the sagging skin beneath his eyes, in the sweat that soaked his forehead, and in his trembling lips.

"Hi, Grandpa," I sobbed through flowing tears. "I'm sorry. They used me as bait. I couldn't stop it. I didn't even know it was happening."

"It's okay. It's okay. No guilt, Little Girl," he whispered. "I didn't see it, either. I was just so happy to see ya. None of us knew where you'd been taken or if you were safe." The words struggled through the hole in his chest and the blood in his lungs. The simple matter of talking sounded more difficult than anything Grandpa had ever done. We heard the gurgling first, then the cough that ended in choking and spattered blood.

Thomas was still working, trying his best to control Grandpa's bleeding, but there was really nothing anyone could do. We all waited for what we knew the next few minutes held.

Grandpa's eyes rolled. He turned his head so that he could see all of us one more time, so that he could talk to us one last time. "Remember what I've taughtcha over the years," he choked through blood and very slight breath. "Follow your hearts. Fight for what you believe in. Fight with passion. But, above all, fight for family."

Grandpa looked straight at Brian. "Remember. You. Make good choices." That was it. The last thing he said. We listened as Grandpa's final breath caused him to choke; then he was gone. Thomas closed Grandpa's eyes. Had Grandpa said something to Brian while I was gone? I didn't know. But, for now, it made absolutely no difference.

Grandpa died peacefully. We all cried. We cried for hours, for what seemed like days, until we eventually slept from fatigue and grief. I remember hearing something just as I was too exhausted to remain conscious. Clicking, so solid, so intense that it was almost a hum. Another chant. The ants, too, knew that Grandpa was gone.

But it was Sarrah's final words that closed my eyes. "The orb told us that one wasn't going home."

*****

**34. Upon Waking**

I was the first to wake up and the first to realize that Grandpa's body was missing. Grandpa was gone! I distinctly remember wanting to scream. The sound had positioned itself against the back of my throat, but it resembled a smothered gargle when I tried to release it. I'm not sure what held that scream in. Maybe the dryness of my throat. Maybe fear. Maybe even the fact that the others were still unconscious, still inescapably captured by emotion-induced sleep. I was beginning to think that escape of any kind was a good thing. I began to wish I was still asleep, but then I noticed that Thomas was moving, just beginning to wake. As he was, so was that damnable earth beginning to quake so hard that it drew my attention from Grandpa's absence. I was definitely beginning to hate that. Every time the ground shook, something horrific happened. This time, however, the quake was worse than we had ever experienced. The glowing slime began to fall in large splotches, and large boulders began to vibrate loose from the walls and ceiling. This was going to be dangerous. Really! A major understatement! It was already dangerous! Thomas was suddenly fully awake, startled into conscious by the unquestionable strength of this quake. Sarrah and Brian were about to be.

Almost instinctively, Thomas glanced quickly and methodically toward every corner of our cell. He studied every wall, every crack, and every crevice quickly, but thoroughly. He was doing a very rapid assessment of our present state of danger. It didn't take long for him to realize this could be more than devastating; it could be downright deadly. The falling rocks and boulders were the largest ever. Thomas looked at the ceiling just in time to see the enormous stone working itself loose, and it was directly above both Sarrah and Brian. Thomas hollered and pointed, "Brian!" Brian, still barely alert, looked straight up, saw the falling boulder and immediately rolled to his right. Debbie, I remember seeing Thomas's face as clearly as I can see that tree. His short hair, now darkened by a few days of dirt, slid forward to shrink his forehead. His eyes squinted in concentration, then closed. He rolled to his feet, cocked his legs, and was gone. Thomas rocketed through the air. He landed on top of Sarrah like a splash of quicksilver, cocooned his arms and legs around her, and rolled to the left and out of the way of the falling boulder. That giant rock hit the ground and bounced higher than my head. It thundered downhill, alternately rolling and bouncing, finally smashing into a wall of our cave and leaving a huge depression in what wasn't very soft dirt. That boulder would surely have squashed both Sarrah and Brian. We would have lost them both. But, the reality of the situation was that we had survived—so far. We were still alive. Grandpa may have died, but we had not. We needed to move, though, or we would soon be joining him.

So, move we did. Those of us who had them grabbed our weapons and headed for the door. Brian tried to take mine, but this time I wasn't giving it up. He stole Sarrah's, instead. But, since Thomas was actually lugging her like a sack of potatoes, that was just fine. Sarrah was beginning to stir, but she still wasn't fully aware of our situation. We were lucky to get as far as the door. Rocks, no, boulders were falling all around. Many barely missed us, and they wouldn't have if we weren't so adrenaline charged and alert. The ground shook constantly with more energy than ever before. Rocks and great chunks of earth fell from walls and ceilings at our every step. It soon became impossible to dodge the onslaught. Sarrah and Thomas both got hit more than once by rocks that gave a glancing blow. In fact, I think the pain actually brought Sarrah back to us, and Thomas was able to put her down so that all four of us could run on our own. So far, Brian and I managed to escape the barrage, and that was by pure luck. The earth shook so much we could barely stand, let alone skip and dodge. Once again, we believed that if we stayed in our cell we would surely die. The door was immediately ahead, and we were met there by ants that wasted no time in capturing us and getting us the heck out of there. We didn't fight this time. It was ants to the rescue, and every one of us knew it. In fact, Brian didn't waste precious time waiting for the ant to pick him up. He mounted his ant and rode it like a horse, hanging on for dear life right behind the beast's head. Outside the prison, the scene was nothing less than astounding. In my short life, I had already seen hordes of mosquitoes, autumn gatherings of lady bugs, migrations of butterflies, and hatches of caddis flies, but I had never seen anything like this. Never had I seen so many bugs, or so many _kinds_ of bugs, gathered in one place. Spiders! Pseudoscorpions! Ants! Springtails! Grasshoppers! Mosquitoes! More. They were clamoring all over each other, each fighting the other, flinging body parts, slurping up half-digested intestines, stinging, biting, stomping, jumping, killing and dying. Who could win such a battle? Winning or losing aside, the battle raged. The ants that carried us scurried past most of the fighting, or at least they tried to. Brian hung on as tight as his arms and legs would allow as he rode that ant like a bronco through what seemed like acres of dead and dying bodies.

Somehow, in the confusion of the skirmish, the mosquitoes sensed our presence and soon began buzzing us. Once again, this seemingly harmless attack was really a signal to the much larger spiders. After a few seconds of being buzzed by the mosquitoes, I began to feel the earth tremble. More, I could see it shake with each pounding step of one giant spider that was heading directly toward us. Every step it took caused more stuff to fall, caused our ants to trip and slow, caused more mosquitoes to buzz us with ever-increasing intensity. The spider drew within inches of me. I could see its mouth parts and, if I wanted to, I could have counted the hairs on its gross legs that now waved in the air so close to my face I could smell their rotten filth and the death they stepped on. I thought we were dead, but in just the nick of time, the ants ducked into those same small, dark tunnels as before. Brian ducked just in time, too. He was riding a lot higher than the rest of us and had to be much more careful. I think that if ants breathed through their mouths, Brian's death grip around his ant's neck would surely have killed it. Nevertheless, we were all safe for the moment. Nothing else could get in those small tunnels, or so I prayed.

I soon realized that we were in the same small tunnels I had been in earlier; we had to be heading back to the maple tree. We were. That became quite clear as we exited the tunnels and broke into the light. I knew where we were, but I still could not believe my eyes. Even today, nothing compares. In all the movies I have ever watched, in all the pictures in all the history books, I have never seen such a mass of death and destruction. I couldn't help but wonder what would make all this loss so important. Out in the open forest there were even more kinds of bugs and insects: beetles that seemed to serve a purpose similar to tanks, huge dragonflies with so much size and speed they could as easily have been passenger jets.

The ants that carried us headed straight to the maple tree and the coliseum. A horde of mosquitoes saw us from the air. I wasn't certain how they saw us so easily when other insects didn't, but every time our location was discovered, the mosquitoes were the culprits. Thomas later told me that it was because we were warm blooded; the mosquitoes could sense the heat. Anyway, the damned flying horde headed our direction. I suddenly knew what the pagan warriors of old felt when they raised their eyes to a sky darkened by millions of Roman arrows. My God, Debbie, I thought we were dead for sure.

*****

**35. Resurrection and Pure Evil**

The mosquitoes came at us from every direction, this time with an intention far more devastating than raising a signal. There was no escaping the fact that we were about to die. All I could do was duck and try to dodge their aim. Just as I released what was my life's most bloodcurdling scream, the butterflies came out of nowhere. Hundreds of them, all over the place, all above us, all boasting brilliantly colored wings. "What the..." I heard Sarrah yell. Before she could voice the rest of the question, the answer became obvious. The next mosquito offensive found butterfly wings rather than ant-riding, warm-blooded people. It was the neatest sound ever. Thump....thump....thump.thump.thumpthumpthumpthumpthththththuumppppp. I instinctively knew what I had heard, and I looked up to see butterflies with mosquito tubes stuck harmlessly in their wings. Living shields that protected us from an onslaught of enemy arrows! From somewhere beyond the remaining horde of mosquitoes came the dragonflies. I heard them first; I even felt their wings vibrate the air. I could easily have believed that some general had mobilized the entire air force. The scene was truly unbelievable, like any of what I'm saying is believable, anyway. Each of the dragonflies was a hundred times larger than a mosquito, at least twice as fast, and much more maneuverable. They could fly like hummingbirds: up and down, back and forth, and super fast. Besides size, speed, and maneuverability, the dragonflies had one more unique weapon. They used their legs to form a basket under their hulking bodies. They flew directly at the mosquitoes and literally used their legs to snare those enemies right out of the air. With the mosquitoes fully enclosed in this airborne trap, the dragonflies simply bit their bloodsucking heads off while still in flight and dropped the headless bodies to the masses below. After each drop, they returned to the foray for more; their attacks were perfectly successful. On the ground, at what were apparently cleaning stations, thousands of insects that met Grandpa's description of pseudoscorpions snipped the heads off still-living mosquitoes stuck in butterfly wings. Red ants, which were far smaller than the warriors we were used to seeing, jerked those bodiless heads from the butterflies' wings, stacked up dead bodies, and allowed the butterflies to return to the air. Similar ants, or those not busy repairing wings, scampered through every crack and crevice cleaning up debris of all kinds: bodies, wings, heads, limbs, all the victims and spoils of war.

It was an amazing, miraculous sight to behold. The dragonflies were the first of the ants' allies that could actually do any real harm to the enemy, and this time, they saved our literal butts. Besides saving our lives, they also allowed our ants to charge through the still-raging battle and into the maple tree coliseum. Our ants charged through the hallways at a fast, six-legged gallop. I don't know if the others saw it, but I saw a human hand sticking out of a shallow grave in one of the hallways with the carved shelves. It was Grandpa. I was certain of it. How could it be anyone else? How many other humans had ever come to this world? How many other humans had ever been the size of ladybugs? The ants had very reverently buried Grandpa in these halls alongside their other heroes. If I could have, I would have stayed. If I had time, I would have cried. That cry would have been very short lived, because a dozen or so ant steps later, I saw what I still believe was a different human hand buried under a thin coat of dust and dirt. I can't say for sure, but I swear it was human. Before I had time to take a second look, we passed through a doorway and entered the major chamber of the coliseum where the war raged more fiercely than ever before.

Here, wrapped inside the spiritual solemnity of this special chamber, the number of spiders was tremendous. It was more than tremendous; it was horrendous. As soon as we entered the cathedral, spiders intentionally clogged every possible exit. None of us could get out, and by their massive numbers alone, nothing else could get in. This place was clearly the center of the battle. Here, ant after ant succumbed to the spiders' attacks. Their poison and their ferocity were overpowering. In every corner, on and under the altar, adjacent to the orb, under the towering Stonehenge columns, against the walls, and on the ceiling, ants died. Then, I saw it. The largest, black, bulbous spider I had ever seen was headed directly toward the altar. He had warriors clearing the path of ants before him, and a following of minions behind. Regal, king-like, this giant spider walked on a carpet of death, and now I could see why.

The altar and the orb were directly to his front. They were his destination. I saw the orb. It didn't take a genius like Thomas to figure out that something was different. The orb floated in space like it always had, but the stone inside glowed a strange, golden hue. The closer the giant spider got to the orb, the more it changed color. Golden to red, the stone spun inside the orb like a slot machine. Flashing gold, red, gold, red. The spider stepped closer. Red. Red. Closer. Red again, maybe to gold. The spider placed one foot on the altar. Red. Red. Red as Grandpa's blood. The stone spun wildly. The monster stepped closer. Every behavior of the orb signaled that something was different; something was going to change. Then, what should have always been obvious, hit me. Evil was about to serve greater than good.

The spider stared at the orb and its now red stone as if that spinning thing were a god. All around this giant, ants and spiders were in a constant state of fighting and dying, yet the giant spider could not remove his eyes from the jewel. How do I describe the way a normally cold, emotionless spider looked at this this symbol of indescribable evil, the foreteller of unspeakable devastation? Admiration comes close. It was more in the way that he fondled it, as if the orb and its stone were sacred. The spider behaved more like a priest carrying the Blessed Sacrament during mass. Reverent and filled with biblical awe. The more I think about it, admiration or awe might not be adequate words to describe this spider's behavior. Addiction might be a more accurate description.

That spider was clearly bent on retrieving the orb, but for a reason I didn't understand, it apparently wasn't ready. The spider walked slowly but purposefully around the altar and kept circling the orb. The altar was kept clean of ants by any of a dozen or more smaller spiders that actually fought the war before and behind their lord. Those laid out a thick, red and black carpet of dead ants. The beast had only one focus, to retrieve the orb when it was time. Some ants broke through the spider's defenses, yet ant after ant that charged the giant spider from the side, or even from above, failed to kill it, failed to rip open that huge abdomen with their steely ant mandibles, failed to so much as slow the spider's unswerving, trance-fixed stride. The black monster simply tossed those aside like last week's garbage; tossed them aside to dozens of jumping spiders that waited for those cast-aside morsels; tossed them without even looking, without even breaking his concentration or his focus. Suddenly, inexplicably, I spoke from The Book of Paths.

When evil serves life greater than good

Then life to death will come.

And gift or not, you'll learn that fact

When love .....

Thomas must have been captured by the same thoughts. Before I could finish the words, I heard him yell, "The orb! It's evil! He wants to replace good with evil! Stop him! Stop him!" Now, it was certain that all of us knew what was going on, but we had been in these jaws before, I had seen those giant, black spiders before, and I knew there was nothing we could do to stop that beast. We all knew it was impossible to escape from the ants that carried us, and even if we could have, we all knew that our chances of survival were almost nonexistent. Nevertheless, Debbie, we tried. We all tried.

I watched Thomas and Sarrah struggle with all their might against the ants' jaws, but they couldn't win. They hit. They squirmed. They tried to lift themselves, tried to squeeze themselves like toothpaste out of those jaws. But nothing. The ants were far too strong. I watched Brian, too. He did nothing but stare, and I had seen that look in Brian before. He stared at the huge spider. He stared at the ants. He stared at the war. But more than anything, he stared at the orb. He wasn't fighting, but he wasn't indifferent, either. I looked at him again, and I immediately discovered an even higher level of fear. Brian was focused and concentrating. He was perfectly silent, unmoving, learning, as addicted as the giant spider.

For whatever reason, the ants that held us would not release us. After I had a chance to think about it, I came to believe that they had to know what was going on. They had to know that evil was about to serve greater than good. It's probable that the ants assumed the inevitability of the spiders' attacks. This sacred chamber had become a death pit, and for some reason, we were being held prisoner and being forced to watch. The strange fact is that both the spiders and the ants were allowing us to watch. The ants wouldn't let us fight, and the spiders didn't rush to kill us.

We all heard it, but we have no explanation. It was a moan of sorts; ghostly, to say the least. Then the screeching sound of brakes, of steel grating against steel, when the orb, the stone, and all around it turned black, as it had cast a beam of blackness onto the altar. We could make out the large spider as it began to dance in jubilant victory. At that exact moment, when some underling plucked the orb from its nest, I felt the world change. I can't explain how I knew, but I could feel the world get cold and dark. I sensed the sky fill with clouds, and I felt the sun became as dark as my heart. The lesser spider tossed the orb to his king. He didn't set it down or show it respect. He tossed it like some unusable piece of junk. The orb clunked to the ground in defeat, nothing more than a colored rock, the solid thud of its fall a drum beat, a heartbeat, a reminder of the last breath of fallen warriors. The darkness lifted as if some magical switch had been toggled. The orb had changed, too. It no longer resembled a living sun, and it no longer had the blackness of death; it more closely resembled a cold moon: pock marked, gray, lifeless. Everything had changed.

Six barely living ants crawled toward the orb in a futile attempt to protect it. Those heaped themselves onto the stone-like thing, but their efforts were basically meaningless. The king spider tossed those ants aside to grab hold of the orb, and he held it with two giant arms high in the air. You and I both know, Debbie, that I don't go to church often, but that action reminded me of a religious ceremony. If you remember the Disney movie, think of that scene where the monkey held the lion cub in the air, and all the animals in the jungle looked on in solemn hope. That's what this moment was like. Every spider in the coliseum looked up at the stone. Every one of them had hope in its ugly eyes. That was their one moment of united reverence; it was the end of the battle, and it was the beginning of their destiny.

In one sudden, spine shivering second, the giant spider killed that underling who had tossed the orb so irreverently. Snapped the head off that little spider with a single move of one arm. Then, the giant spider replaced the orb back onto its nest. The orb began to glow black once again. Its outer shell became translucent; the inner blackness began rotating again, became solid and alive again as it once had been. But different. There was no goodness. No warmth. No feeling of pleasure. No light. No color. I sensed, once again, a change in the outside world, like the passing of a storm cloud. But my heart grew even darker. The giant spider was fully aware of what he had done. He raised his two front legs in the air and waved them like ceremonial flags, and then he reared his head and opened his mouth parts in a venom-soaked, very surreal, very silent roar.

Brian began to fight, slowly at first, as if he were waking up from a deep sleep. Two seconds later, he was fully awake and beating his ant on the head, stabbing, kicking, screaming. It was the first time I had seen him react this way since Grandpa died. Brian knew what was going to happen. So did I. We were about to see life returned to the dead.

*****

**36. The Dead Shall Be Given Life**

There was a creepy silence in the coliseum, save for the hum of the changing orb and the clicks of a few ants that still hadn't died. The orb rotated on its nothingness just like it did before: frictionless and gravity defying. Its black glow intensified. We could see swirls, like miniature black holes taking form as the globe became stronger and more active. Suddenly, along the side of one edge, the globe began to change colors. White! Perfectly, brilliantly white. The orb's new radiance spread slowly across its circumference from one horizon to the other. It was eclipsing, or rather, un eclipsing. Before long, the radiant eclipse was total. The large spider pranced around the altar, showered in luminescence. He took a single victory lap to display the joy of his success. He took a second lap, slower than the first, to soak up the admiration of the other spiders in the room. He took a third, even slower, to motivate the crowd, to excite his minions, to gain their interest and their support for what was to come.

Every lesser spider in the chamber faced the one that was now king. They formed a jumbled crowd around the altar, but the king's encouragement definitely worked. Every spider began to stomp one foot to the ground in perfect rhythm with the one on stage. They may have looked like a jumbled crowd, but they sounded organized, and they sounded strong. The black spider stopped; he hovered next to the sun-globe. The others continued their rhythmic stomp. The king raised his two front legs high in the air. The spiders increased the pace of their rhythm and the volume of their stomp. The king raised his second row of feet, and he directed them, both at the same time, toward the globe. His movements were slow, deliberate, designed to incite both excitement and reverence. As the hairs on his feet touched that globe he froze; he simply stopped moving, and the stomping ceased, too. The minions crushed tightly around the altar, so tightly that I thought some would surely be squashed. They focused every bit of their attention onto that globe. The entire show was more than scary; it was heart stopping. This entire population of spiders was locked in a trance. They gazed far deeper into the jewel than its mere surface; more likely, they stared straight into the depths of hell. Every spider was held captive by the hypnotic magic of the orb and by their anticipation of a near and certain future.

Three new spiders separated the crowd and marched to the center of the chamber. As one, the three raised a dead spider in offering to their king. The giant spider reared and stood horse-like on its four hind legs. The thing waved its front legs through the air and beckoned the crowd's support while his third and fourth legs nestled the orb. A strange sound filled the chamber. It's a hard sound to describe, maybe like thousands of hairy sticks being rubbed together. The king had what he wanted—their confidence. And more—their craving for total victory. His head swayed back and forth in a dreamy, fluid motion, and with still flowing arms, the king gestured to the three with the dead spider. By simple motion alone, the king directed the others to deliver the dead spider to his altar. They did. The giant spider lifted the lifeless lump and held it directly over the radiant orb. Ribbons of light jettisoned from the orb. Those penetrated the dead body like spears of solid light, passing entirely through the dead spider. Soon, the body of that lifeless spider began to glow as the orb had originally done. The dead spider rose from the arms of the king and floated weightlessly in mid air, appearing to be supported only by the power of those strange lights. The spider's body turned over and over as if it were on a barbeque spit; it was rolled by some unseen force ever so slowly from its stomach to its back, back to stomach, stomach to back, again and again. Thirty seconds later, we saw the dead thing's abdomen expand and contract a single time, as if it had just received the breath of life. The dead spider's legs began to move, stiffly at first, then rhythmically as if it were walking on air. The light beams lowered the newly living spider to the altar, and then, with a weird sound straight out of some scifi movie, the lights were slurped back into the orb. The once-dead spider took its new place among the living as if nothing had ever happened. Except for the glow. There was a definite, visible aura that surrounded the living dead. It was the yet another indication that something was not right, not normal, not good.

Brian's attempts at freeing himself started again, this time with more strength and ferocity than ever before. He had seen what he needed to see. Something else had changed.

*****

**37. Insurrection**

The spiders' celebration abruptly halted. The sounds arrived first, the scraping and clicking of thousands of ants cascading through narrow passageways. Silence then. The calm before the storm. The spiders were clearly confused, not knowing what to expect, or where, exactly, to expect it from. They walked in circles, both on and around the altar, as if preparing to defend from every direction. The reek of the explosion brought every living thing to its knees; even the spiders lost their footing and dropped to the bulk of their bodies. Caustic chemicals blasted through the doorways like the superheated exhaust of rocket ships. Every spider that had been protecting the main entrance was ejected through the air. The stench was more than mere nose wrinkling, and the burn of this chemical attack was remarkably painful, especially to our human eyes and lungs. Thomas and I were closest. Both of us covered our mouths and noses, I with my hands, Thomas with his stretched t-shirt. Nothing worked. Whatever it was nearly choked us unconscious with something that smelled and felt like a really bad fart mixed with pepper spray. Our eyes filled with tears; our lungs practically ripped themselves out of our chests, but through the pain, and through our tear-blurred eyes, we could see two giant beetles tank their way through separate entrances. The largest portion of the ant army had strategically placed themselves behind the beetles like tiny, six-legged infantrymen tromping behind their armored cover. With the entrances open, and with cleared paths into the coliseum, the ant torrent kicked into high gear.

The first arrivals headed directly for the glowing orb, still being protected by the giant spider. There were too few of them, but they were also being assisted by the beetles. Those huge and powerful creatures had bullied their way into the room and were able to heave every opposing spider out of their way. It was an unbelievable spectacle. The beetles pushed like bull elephants against tiny enemies and smashed them against walls, against the altar, against whatever was in the background. There were only two, but the effect of their combined attack was mindboggling, especially to the spiders. They were unstoppable. Several spiders attacked the beetles with their venomous fangs, but those simply broke off against the thick armor plating of the beetles' wing coverings. Spiders by the dozens crawled over the beetles, but, at best, they were only able to slow their progress. The beetles shrugged, and the spiders scattered. What the beetles didn't handle, the ants finally could. With numbers turning against them, many spiders viewed running as a viable option. Hundreds faded through cracks and holes that I never knew existed. The battle's tide definitely turned, and it did so within seconds after the spider retreat began. Thousands of ants sealed off pathways and cracks; hundreds, if not thousands, remained to kill the king spider, any of his henchmen, and the one other that didn't retreat—the one that was the living dead.

All of us kids were still helpless, still held captive by our ants and now protected by a dozen more. Brian was the most active of all. His energy was renewed by the successful attack of the ants. Brian fought. He fought hard, twisting, turning, yelling, hitting, trying to get out of the jaws that held him. The rest of us watched Brian's struggles. Suddenly, I realized what he was doing, and I knew why.

The living-dead spider moved through the ants like they weren't even there. Nothing could stop him: not jaws, not beetles, not teams of ants, nothing. He walked through it all. Everything he touched died. Ants attacked. They were simply repelled, and they were simply dead. One of the beetles tried his bullying tactic. It died, as well. The walking dead spider didn't have to bite, struggle, or even lift a hairy foot. Whatever it touched just died. Every time something died, the abomination grew stronger and more focused than it was mere seconds earlier. The monster had been given new life, but now it was infinitely more capable of taking life. Every time it killed something, Brian fought harder than ever to escape. The rest of us were happy to stay with the protection we had.

The ants increased their efforts as well, but their tactics changed. If the ants lost this battle, there was only one possible outcome. The king spider had already begun the ceremony, this time without reverence, but definitely, he had a mission: to raise as many dead as possible.

A hundred ants charged the living dead. A hundred died. The king raised another of the dead spiders over his head, but a pack of ants brought it down. The king looked to the living dead for help. That glowing monster was crawling toward the central altar, scrambling over the bodies of a hundred dead ants toward the living jaws of a hundred more. Hundreds, thousands of ants died in order to succeed in the one possible way. Mass suicide! They intended to build a mountain of bodies between the king spider and the living dead. It worked. The king lost the moment. The orb began to glow black. The king saw, and his confidence failed. He tried to lift another dead soldier, but another horde of ants was quickly on top of him. The huge spider swung around, knocked several from the altar, but numbers continued to stem the tide of this battle. The orb changed; it took on a reddish glow. More spiders scattered through secret, unprotected cracks in the walls. Two ants finally reached the orb and knocked it from the hands of the black spider. Those two rolled the orb off the altar directly toward the remaining beetle. The red glow became intense. The beetle was their best safeguard, or so it seemed. Success was right around the corner. The ants that had attacked the newly living spider suddenly collapsed onto nothingness. When they organized themselves and raised themselves from where they had fallen, the spider was gone, evaporated as if it had never been there in the first place. The orb glowed blue with flashes of red.

There had to be a reason: astonishment because of a disappearing spider, joy over winning this battle, mission accomplishment. Whatever the reason, the ants loosened their grip on us. Brian was quick to notice, and he took perfect advantage of that instant to slip through the jaws of his ant. He became nearly invisible among the piles of dead. He scampered through the dead and through the groups of confused living, and he sprinted directly toward the beetle. Brian found protection between the beetle's legs, just as we had when we first learned to fight the jumping spiders. We didn't understand, but Brian ran in and out using those stout legs as pivot points to change directions—instantly. The beetle was both awkward and unsuccessfully in its attempts to corral Brian. During one of those passes, Brian snagged the orb and clutched it to his chest. Thomas, Sarrah, and I could do nothing but watch as both Brian and the orb vaulted through those beetle legs toward one of the secret passages. As he turned to face us, he held the orb up as the kind spider had done. In its glow, I swear that I saw Grandpa's face. He looked so sad and so very fearful, as if everything he was and everything he dreamed was destined to be lost. Everything was being taken from him: his family, our Grandma, his life, and now his death. But in Brian's face I saw victory, until three ants attacked him and knocked the orb to the floor. The thing rolled itself toward the altar as if it belonged there. The ants, all three of them, sprinted after the orb, and Brian lowered himself into a crack in the wall. The last thing I saw of him, Debbie, was his face, all twisted with anger and confusion. The last thing I heard was Brian yelling, "I'll be back, Grandpa."

The battle was finished. The ants were holding their own for the moment. The orb had been rescued. It had returned to its normal state and color, and it was, once again, resting in its place on the stage. And now, we three were all that remained of the orb's prophecy.

*****

**38. And Now There Are Three**

Then man and child will intervene

But one will step between.

My recollection of the next few minutes is vague. Visions of death, murder, desecration, and evil had my mind wandering in a hundred directions and in no direction all at the same time. I was in a complete daze, probably bordered on breakdown. I heard nothing except the voices inside my head, and those kept repeating parts of that stupid poem from _The Book of Paths_. I kept hearing Brian yell at Grandpa over, and over, and over. I saw Brian fading into that secret crevice, and I saw the anger and hatred in his face as he disappeared. I remember wondering what Sarrah must have been thinking when Brian sank into that crack in the tree.

Three will leave but one will not,

memories not wanting to chase.

I could only imagine what other thoughts must have boiled in her mind.

The three of us were practically alone in the chamber, alone with hundreds, maybe thousands of ants. But it was different, so very different. These ants were cleaning, farming, building or repairing tunnels, tending to business. Normally, incredible events accompanied our presence in this chamber, but now things were different. We stood there, but _incredible_ seemed to have vanished. There were no bowing ants. No wave after wave of rhythmic stomping. No ants standing in parallel rows to form wheel spokes. No magical choreography. What was present was the crushing sight and stench of death and the work being done by the cleaning crews. Dead bodies littered the floor from wall to wall. Bodies of ants, spiders, mosquitoes. Dozens of ants, saddled by virtue of birth with the job of cleaning, stacked bodies on top of bodies if that were possible, and they chopped larger ones into smaller pieces if need be. I was certain that those pieces of dead were being taken to some storage room deep inside the bowels of the ant hill. I was just as certain that they could very well be part of tomorrow's lunch. Nothing went to waste in this world. I had the strange thought that I would probably be seeing, and maybe eating, more of these dead bodies in the near future.

Some invisible signal caused our ants to carry us toward the altar. These three ants were the only ones interested in the fact that we puny humans were still here. With us in their mouths, they carried us along the few paths available, frequently over piles of dead bodies that had been stacked by the cleaners, and over several of the live ants that were stacking the heaps of dead bodies. They delivered us to the orb, which once again was nestled in its resting place, and loosening their grip ever so slightly, they put each of us in front of our own stone slab: the same one we stood in front of during the first ceremony. This time we could not follow Grandpa's example; he was no longer there to lead us. I knew what to do, and I knew it would work. I put my hand on the stone. As soon as I did, the orb began its job, started to change, to glow in its amazing array of colors, to begin its magic. I saw Thomas's jaw drop, and I saw Sarrah's eyes dart directly to mine. Neither of them knew that I had been here before, alone. Neither of them knew that I could bring the orb to life.

Once again the orb and its stone began to spin. Once again, the stone became an intensely deep blue, and the spinning globe assumed the look of a living sun that changed with each revolution. Spears of light stabbed at the walls of the coliseum, and once again, we awaited the orb's words. The working ants ignored the harmonic hum, the warm glow of the orb, the rotating blue stone. The ants added no splendor to the orb's magical act. Their deep respect and their majestic ceremony had been replaced by our sorrow and the tremendous weight of some responsibility that I had yet to understand. As before, the voice began.

" **Once again, greetings to the queen mother. I know that home is where you should go. You must know that the price is low. Find the orb's secret. That you must know. That and the key will allow you to go. The secret is easy. It's not hard to know. But essential it is for all who will grow."**

"Queen mother?" I barely heard Thomas whisper the words. I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or if he was truly surprised. Sarrah remained blank and emotionless, or maybe it was nothing but emotion. I'm certain she was nearly, if not totally, unaware of everything that had just happened. She was lost in a different way than her brother was lost, and I could only hope that we could find her again.

My thoughts returned to the orb. Now it was changing again, back to its unexcited state. The spin slowed. The shafts of light were sucked back inside. The blue stone became a lighter blue. I was actually angry. The only thing it did was give us another riddle. It never gave answers. It only gave questions. More questions. There was one thing that was perfectly apparent, though. This time, it gave us a riddle we had to solve if we wanted to go home.

The cleaning crews worked steadily while the orb said its piece. When the voice stopped, the cleaning crews remained at work as though the orb had never begun spinning. These ants behaved as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. Our ants had never completely released us, and now they simply lifted us and we were on our way yet again, heading back to our prison chamber. This time, there was no turning back.

*****

**39. Getting Past the Obvious**

The entirety of the return trip to our prison was exactly as it had begun: different than any before, long, and dull, and thoughtful. There were no spiders, no mosquitoes, no wars or battles. Far worse, there was no Grandpa, and there was no Brian. There was only pain, sorrow, and another riddle.

The ants deposited us in our cell much more abruptly than ever before. Three sets of jaws opened, and three people thudded to the floor like living rag dolls. Totally without respect. Without any of the reverence or fanfare that was so unmistakable before. I had no idea what brought this change in the ants' attitude. These were more like ants as I knew them to be. Unemotional. Knowledge and behavior that was innate, inborn. Reacting according to instinct and chemical communications. I could feel it growing: a heavy weight inside my chest that pressed against my heart, probably created by the bothersome thought in my head that said we needed to find our way home before we found ourselves at the bottom of the food chain. Earlier, I had begun to trust the ants and have confidence in their appearance at our door. Now, that trust was disappearing quickly. Yes, I know that I have often referred to our chamber as a prison or a cell. Even so, I had begun to grow comfortable there, to feel somewhat safe. Now, it was truly a prison, and my comfort level was sinking rapidly.

The ants that brought us to our cell remained after they dropped us to the floor. I became very uncomfortable, very quickly. I watched their heads sway slowly on what should be their necks, twisting and turning with a certain evil. They were sizing us up exactly as the jumping spiders had done earlier. Their antennae carved the air slowly, intentionally, as if being arranged and rearranged to catch some secret that passed invisibly through space. Their jaws opened and closed for the entire time they stood. The grating and clicking sounds of those gnashing swords scared me more than you can imagine. Even though I knew it was impossible, I swear I could see saliva drip from their bony mouth parts. This only confirmed my growing distrust and my ever increasing fear of becoming ant food. My heart rate was definitely on the increase, but finally, two of the ants turned and departed through our exit one after the other. One stayed too much longer. Thomas had already assumed a perfectly defensive stance: legs planted for stability, sword at the ready. He must have been reading my mind all along. I followed his lead and wished that Sarrah could do the same. Of the three of us, she was most vulnerable. I heard the clicking of jaws come from outside of our door. One of the ants that had exited returned to find the one that remained. Those two rubbed antennae and mouth parts for what seemed like an eternity. I wished, then, that I understood what they were saying to each other, but I could only imagine. _Yes, dear. I know you want to eat them. They do look delicious, don't they? But, we can't. Not now. Save them for dessert._ The thought of becoming bug food wasn't really pleasant, but it did have its humorous side. Finally, though, they both headed for the exit. A wave of relief washed over the length of my spine. I'm sure that Thomas had the same reaction. Thomas stayed put, but I went to the door. I needed to peek outside to see what was going on. Two guards remained at the doorway. Apparently, the need to guard us still existed. I wondered why.

I returned to the center of our chamber to be with the others. Thomas plopped onto the ground, but he was sitting erect and aware, expecting me to join him. Sarrah had already taken a seat on the floor next to Thomas, but she was still in what I would call a state of shock. She wasn't quite as far gone as earlier, but she was still not really aware, not really awake, not quite accepting of either Brian's disappearance or Grandpa's death. I remember that moment like it was yesterday, Debbie. I had never felt so alone, even though I was with two very important members of my family. My emotional state was far different from just being alone. Deeper. Hurtful. A huge part of me had died. I missed Grandpa's wisdom. I missed Brian's antics. I missed the laughs. I wanted them back. I began to see Brian's side of the argument, the importance he associated with the ability to bring the dead back. I wanted Grandpa back. I wanted Brian back. It just was so...so quiet. So dark. That was the emotional side of me. The rational side of me knew what I had experienced. Knew that the spider that had returned to life wasn't really alive. Knew that he was fueled by evil. Knew that it could never be.

The chamber was as quiet as falling snow, at least until Sarrah sobbed in the dim, slime-green shadows. She, at least, had found the courage to let her feelings come to the surface. But, as a family, I knew we had to do more. Thomas and I both crawled closer to Sarrah. It was definitely time for a group hug. The three of us hugged each other, got as close to each other as physics would allow. I could feel their warmth, and I could feel both of them shaking. I probably was too, but, for now at least, the feeling of that closeness, of that simple hug, was very comforting. All I wanted to do was embrace that closeness for as long as possible. Sarrah began to hug me much tighter than Thomas did. I could feel her begin to calm. It took a long while, but eventually I could feel Sarrah almost relax, as if she were beginning to accept what she had experienced. Sarrah was actually the first of our group to speak, though she did so with difficulty through sniffles and through sinuses plugged by long periods of semi-controlled crying.

"I wish Grandpa was s-still alive. He would help us find Brian. He would bring Brian back. I know he would," she sniffed.

Her words were much more than voiced emotion; they were an open door. Actually, it was more like an open dam. Apparently, Thomas had been taking mental notes, and he had been waiting.

"It's only the three of us now, but it's no different than before," he began. "Look at what we've done, what we've been able to accomplish. All of us. We found the door. We found Grandpa. We fought insect battles and killed spiders. We taught the ants how to do the same. We have all survived—even Brian. We've been able to do that because of everything Grandpa taught us over the years. We still have that. We always will. We just have to regroup, to get it back together. We still have one thing more to do. We have to go home."

"We s-still have what?" Sarrah asked. I wasn't sure exactly what she meant, but Thomas answered her question. It was one possible answer. Maybe it was the right one.

"We still have what Grandpa taught us, Sarrah. We still have those skills. We still have that wisdom. Most importantly, we still have each other." Thomas always was the logical one. He could always bring us right back to the beginning, give us a fresh start, get us on the right track.

"Where do we start?" I asked. The task was formidable, way too big for me. I was still lost in my emotions, still lost in the fact that Grandpa was dead and in the fact that Brian had disappeared.

"Where do we start?" Thomas repeated. "How do you think Grandpa would have answered that question, Hannah?"

I knew that answer. I knew it from deep inside. "Grandpa would have said we need to start at the beginning."

By now, Sarrah had dried her tears and was watching the exchange between me and Thomas. "Yes. Yes, that's exactly what he would have s-said," she whispered with a muted excitement that hinted at hope.

"But, where is the beginning? The beginning of what?" I said.

Thomas was uncanny; he always had the right answer, even if the answer was a question. "Where do you think the beginning is?"

"It started a long time ago," I began. "It started with Grandpa when we were very young. He was constantly teaching us. Constantly pointing things out. Constantly asking questions. Even more, he was constantly expecting us to find our own answers."

I could have gone on, but Sarrah broke in, full of life, and full of confidence. "Grandpa was always teaching us how to find our way home. Every time we went into the woods, he would stop, ask us to listen, ask us what we had seen, what we had passed, what we had heard. He always asked us to point towards home. There was a reason for that. "

The energy began to grow. It was exactly what we needed: that nudge, that simple direction. "You're right. Both of you," Thomas continued. "Grandpa taught us a lot. He taught us how to point toward home. He taught us how to ask questions and how to find their answers."

"He taught us how to learn, didn't he?" It was one of Sarrah's most profound statements. It was true. And suddenly, it was clear. Grandpa taught us the most valuable lesson in the world. Exactly what we needed to get home. He didn't teach us things. He taught us hows. How to ask questions. How to find answers. How to venture out on our own. How to learn. How to gain wisdom. How to get home.

"Now you're getting somewhere, Little Girl." I heard the voice as clearly as I could hear our conversation. "Grandpa?" I cried. "Grandpa?" But, he wasn't there. The others must have thought I was crazy.

"Who are you talking to?" I really can't remember who said that, either Thomas or Sarrah. I remember that I answered, though. "Didn't you hear that? Didn't you hear Grandpa? He said that now we're getting someplace. He called me Little Girl."

"Grandpa is gone, Hannah. Grandpa is dead." I wished at the time that Thomas hadn't said that. It only brought back the hurt.

I answered through barely controlled tears, "But I heard him, Thomas. I heard him as clearly as I can hear you."

"He's here," Sarrah said. "Grandpa is here. He never left. He may be dead, but he's with us in our heads and in our hearts. He always will be. We'll always hear him. We'll always remember him, his kindness, his laugh, his questions, his teachings. He'll always be with us in our hearts and in our thoughts. To us, Grandpa will never be dead."

"Giving life to the dead." It was just a whisper. I don't think that Thomas meant to say it to anyone. He might not have even meant to say it loud enough to hear. I remember looking at him as soon as I heard those words. It was as if time just stopped. His eyes were focused somewhere out there, not on anything or anyone in particular. I saw sadness, a deep sadness in Thomas's eyes for the first time since Grandpa disappeared over a year ago. I don't remember how long it lasted, but Thomas eventually refocused on the present. And when he did, I saw a flicker of growth.

"Grandpa taught us everything we needed to know and everything we needed to do. We just need to focus. He taught us how to ask questions. He taught us how to find answers. Now let's point toward home, and let's ask the right questions so we can get the heck out of here."

"And while we're at it, let's not forget about my brother," added Sarrah. An emotion vastly greater than sorrow blanketed her eyes.

*****

**40. Finding the Right Questions**

"What would Grandpa be doing right now?" Sarrah's comment about her brother simply glanced off Thomas. Brian would not be easy to find, and even if we found him, it would be difficult to bring him back home. Brian had made his choice.

"Good question, Thomas," I said, trying to bring myself and Sarrah back on the track of finding our way out. "That answer is much too easy. He would be asking us to point toward home."

"Given where we are, how do we do that?" Thomas was doing the same thing that Grandpa had done for all those years, and he was skilled at it. This was the same plan we used to find all the answers to get here. Question. Answer. Question. Answer. It worked for Grandpa. It was going to work for us, too.

"Work it, Thomas," I said. "Grandpa would be proud."

"So, answer the question." Thomas cracked the tiniest of smiles meant more for Grandpa than for us. "Given where we are, how do we point toward home?"

That's when Sarrah spoke up. What a character she was back then. Often, she just sat and watched the rest of us. She was often quiet, but lately, when Sarrah did speak, she was on target. It was times like this that Sarrah made perfect sense.

"Maybe pointing isn't what we need to do. Maybe knowing the direction of home isn't as important as knowing how to get there."

"What do you mean?" Thomas asked.

"Even if we knew where home was, we don't know if we have what it takes to get there. The orb said there were two keys. We don't have two keys."

Thomas and I both did a double take. "What?" We both said at exactly the same time. I couldn't understand for the life of me how Sarrah knew what the orb said. She was so out of it when the orb spoke last, but bless her heart, Sarrah knew, and she continued.

"The orb said that we had to find the secret. It said the secret and the key will allow us to go."

"She's right," Thomas said. Then, he repeated the orb's words exactly. "Find the orb's secret. That you must know. That and the key will allow you to go."

I knew from my private trip to the orb that we needed to listen to it and retain what it said. It's rantings were important. I just didn't know how important. Nonetheless, it seemed that the best thing we could do for now was to remember and think. Think. Think. Then, I remembered!

"I got it! At least, I have part of it. Remember when we found Grandpa? Remember what he said about our thorns? Do you remember how Grandpa made such a big deal of us still having those weapons?"

Thomas remembered. I could tell when he reached up to put his hand over the all-to-real memory of his stinging ear—the one Grandpa smacked. "Oh, my God! How could I forget? He told us to remember that those were the keys to going home."

"They're only one part," I emphasized. "What was the rest? What is the orb's secret?"

This time, Sarrah grabbed her chest, right where Grandpa poked Brian. It seemed that Grandpa was, in fact, still living in us so vividly we could actually feel his lessons. "He told us to remember our hearts. He especially told Brian to remember his heart."

There was a moment of silence. The unearthly silence of sudden insight. Of growing understanding. Sarrah spoke, again. "He's forgotten, hasn't he? Brian has forgotten his heart."

The battle will cease, but not for long.

Understanding will take its place.

"I think that he has, Sarrah. I don't know what Grandpa meant, exactly, but I know that it has something to do with us as a family, how we support each other, how we help each other out, how we love each other. I'm sure there's more that we still have to learn. It'll come," I said.

Sarrah smiled when she said, "I guess that falls into Grandpa's category of 'Someday you'll understand.'"

At first, we all smiled these big, toothy grins. Then, slowly, the three of us broke into a tearful laugh.

It was a short-lived laugh.

*****

**41. The Real Battle Begins**

I know my eyes popped out of my head and must have looked as round as dinner plates. My hands covered my mouth. I'm not sure what that accomplished; you could have heard the air hiss through my fingers as I sucked in a gigantic volume of air. It was that damnable signal—again. The earth shook. Rocks fell. Cracks formed in the floor where we sat. I couldn't believe it. This time was worse than it ever had been. I had no idea how that was even possible, but apparently it was.

The three of us did what we had grown so accustomed to doing. Two of us grabbed our remaining weapons, and three of us headed for the door. This prison was not a safe place to be while the ceiling was collapsing. Being inside that small cavern was like being inside a cathedral during an earthquake, except that there wasn't a single hiding place to be had; not a chair, or a table, or a single acorn cap to hide under. If the shaking and rolling didn't kill you, the falling ceiling certainly might. Up to now, we had managed to escape serious injury in similar situations because we could get out of our cell. This time, however, escape was not possible. We didn't have the two guards watching our every move. Instead, we had a doorway plugged by what looked like dozens of ants stuffed into the entrance. I have no idea how they did it, but too many ants to count had jammed their behinds, their bodies, their legs and heads into the now impassable opening of our cell. The ants had formed a living cork. My guess was that our cell must be the center of activity, the target of yet another clash between the ants and who knows what. Every possible ant was making sure we were safe, and as certainly as cricket heads were edible, ants were giving up their own lives to do it.

None of us realized it at first, but later we understood that the ants plugging our doorway must surely have known they would die. Some could see it coming; some couldn't. It didn't matter. These ants were going to do what they had to do in spite of the obvious consequences. You wouldn't believe how tightly these ants were squeezed into that hole. Their jaws and legs were nothing but a tangled mass. There was no way they could take an offensive stance; they couldn't even defend themselves. They plugged that hole for one reason. Eventually, every one of them paid the ultimate price to protect us, and we still weren't sure why. We were only certain that we weren't ant food, yet. These ants were still protecting us. Our purpose in serving them was not yet finished.

The plugged exit had two edges. The good part was that we were protected for the time being from whatever was outside trying to get inside. The bad part was that we were trapped, and whatever was on the other side surely knew that.

The intensity of the battle outside our chamber must have been astonishing. The earth continued to quake harder than it ever had. The ants had not foreseen this outcome, but our prison promised to become our tomb. Huge boulders fell from the ceiling and thudded all around us like giant billiard balls. Before long, there was no room on the floor. The place began to look like a landslide in a rock quarry. Boulders tumbled on top of more boulders until our prison contained its own matrix of tunnels that all led to nowhere. At least those offered protection from the still-falling rocks that could easily have squashed us like the bugs we were.

As we cowered in our hopefully protective tunnels, the ground suddenly heaved straight upwards, then fell as quickly straight down. All of us hung in the air along with all the boulders we were hiding next to, but as gravity would demand, our bodies and the boulders soon tumbled to the floor with simultaneous thuds. This was far worse than being bombarded by the springtails. None of us had been seriously hurt, but this experience gave new meaning to the phrase "shook up."

I thought that nothing but ants and gravity were strong enough to move these boulders, but apparently I was wrong. Something else was much stronger, and whatever it was hurled us and those boulders straight upwards—all at the same time. Suddenly, something new—again. The dirt floor of our cell rolled like the wake of a fast-moving freighter, and we were nothing more than dinghies caught in the surf.

"What the heck was that????????????"

I don't know which one of us said it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't me, but I wouldn't swear to it. This unseen thing moved without effort just below the surface of our floor. It slashed through every inch of our room knocking boulders around as if they were air-filled beach balls, and we didn't even know what it was. For sure, it was something living, and none of us liked the feel of it. Thomas started roaring like a mad man and running all over the room, stabbing his spear into the ground time after time trying to kill this thing as it slithered under the floor of our tomb. He stabbed it three times, four times, five, but the thing wouldn't die. Every time Thomas stabbed the thing it shuddered and stopped, but only for an instant. The thing recovered almost immediately and tore through the floor of our cell like a tsunami crashing through an ocean resort.

The rolling wave undulated its way across our entire cell and back, all the time kicking up an absurd amount of dirt, rocks, and dust. It could move in any direction: backwards, forwards, sideways. Finally, some part of the thing broke the surface. Finally, we could see it! A worm! The greenish glow that filled our cell caused that giant earthworm to look like a grass-stained slug. All I could think was _Great! A living tunneling machine_!

As it turned out, that's exactly what it was, and it wasn't on our side. The worm obviously had our cell located. It could dive at will straight into the ground to escape the ants, to create new tunnels, or for any reason it chose. It could tunnel straight into our room from any point outside. The ants that plugged the normal entrance had done so in vain. This thing could create any number of entrances to allow a dozen spiders into our room through new tunnels that the ants would know nothing of. And, guess what! It did exactly that!

The floor suddenly stopped heaving. Within seconds, the opposite wall began to tremble and collapse. All we could do was watch from our boulder-created niches, which rapidly lost their appeal as safe places to be. Nothing was safe anymore. For crying out loud! How do you escape a rampaging worm that's a hundred times bigger than you are?

The best answer is—you don't. In a mere heartbeat after the wall began to shake, worm lips began to take shape in the shifting dirt. It had broken through. The lips turned into a head, and the head turned into a body that was squirming through every crack and gap between our fallen boulders. Big as it was, the thing squished itself into any and all of those tiny crevasses. Its backside may have still been in the hole it created, but its head was hunting for us!

"It's blind!" Thomas yelled. It can't see you. "It only feels vibrations!"

Long, dark, and slimy might not have been able to see, but it was great at locating motion. It didn't make a lot of difference anyway, because the spiders that came in through the earthworm's newly formed tunnel could see perfectly well. Worse! The one that entered first had a rider.

Brian!

*****

**42. The Battle Continues**

It was Brian! Riding on the back of that spider like a general on his horse. Brian was definitely in command. I could see him pointing, directing, leading the charge. I couldn't explain it then. I can't explain it now. How had he mastered this ability so quickly? Yet there was another, more important fact to consider. There was no one in the room except us, and you have to understand what that meant. Brian was after us!

Brian burst into the room and brought two additional spiders with him. Those seemed to respond to his every twitch. His commands were wordless, yet perfectly effective. He pointed to one side of the room and gave his pointing finger a series of twitches. The spider that he directed took a position by that far wall and reared on four legs. The creature's free legs pointed up as far as he could reach; they waved like flags, like warnings to us not to move a muscle. His eyeballs spun like the blue stone in the orb. That spider waited. Waited for either of us to move just the tiniest fraction of an inch.

Brian directed the last spider into a similar position on an opposite wall. It also adopted that offensive stance, ready to strike at our smallest move. Brian, still riding his spider, was to our front. There was little we could do except cower and brandish our two, perfectly laughable swords.

"Brian! What are you doing?" I screamed. "What are you doing?"

Nothing. Silence.

"Brian! Stop. We found the way home, part of it at least. We can go home soon."

Nothing.

"We just need one more part of the secret. Just one. We need you to help us find it." I tried so hard to understand, to communicate, to stop Brian's attack and get him to talk to us. Nothing worked. His face wore only a mask of anger and resentment.

Brian twitched one finger on his right hand and a different one on his left. The two spiders he commanded responded instantly. The one on our right dropped two legs and inched closer, stopping next to us and standing well within easy reach. The one to our left remained reared, remained poised to jump; its eyes rotated faster and faster, sizing us up, getting a fix on distance and alternatives. Using one finger on his right hand, Brian tapped his spidery steed on the head directly between its larger eyes. Then, using his left hand, he covered one of the beast's lesser eyes. The spider stepped slowly in the opposite direction. Our circle of safety continued to shrink uncomfortably smaller.

"Brian! Please! Listen!" Thomas pleaded. "We found Grandpa. You're right. He's alive. Alive in our hearts. He'll be with us as long as we're alive. Everything that he said. Everything that he taught us. All of our time together will be in our hearts, in our memories. He's part of us, and he always will be."

In all my life, I had never heard so much anger as I did in Brian's rapid-fire response. He almost spit the words. "You lie! Grandpa is dead and buried in that God-forsaken bug crypt in the maple tree. You saw him, Hannah. I know you did. There's only one way to get him back. I'm goin to do that. I'll kill anyone and anything that gets in my way! And right now, you are in my way!"

This was not Brian. This was some shell crammed full of loathing and hatred that could only have been inspired by the double-edged promises of the orb, or by the devil himself. Brian's next words were an echo: a punctuation mark added to make sure that we understood his intent. "You three are in my way!" he shrieked. He tapped his spider on the head one more time.

Brian's spider inched forward. Slowly. Cautiously. Steadily moving forward.

"It's true, Brian. Grandpa talked to me. He called me Little Girl. I heard him as clearly as I can hear you." I pleaded with all my heart. I could not believe that Brian had turned on his family. I would not believe it. He had to hear the truth.

"Liar!" Brian yelled. "There's only one way!" His spider continued to creep toward us. Brian pointed and twitched several fingers all at the same time. The other two spiders went on heightened alert dropping their stance much lower. Muscles tightened. Eyes focused. All were ready to attack. All waited on Brian's directive.

Sarrah said the only words that caused Brian to hesitate. "I love you, Brian. You will always be my brother."

Brian's hands covered two of the lesser eyes of his spider, and it stopped. The earthworm, however, did not. That skinny freak from the depths of some slimy hell crawled through the smallest of crevasses and headed straight for us. I've never seen anything move so fast. That blind worm headed straight for me at full speed. I dodged. It missed, but it also smashed the wall behind me. The wall had been thinned by the work of a thousand ants on the other side, and the worm finished the job. An opening! Our way out!

The jumbled mass of confusion that followed was incredible, but it did serve to give us a means of escape. I grabbed my sword, and Thomas did also. Both of us dipped them into the butts of the dead ants that plugged our original doorway. Just in time, too. The closest spider jumped in response to Brian's twitching finger. Thomas and I stabbed our swords into its chest at exactly the same time. The spider died on the spot. At least a dozen ants crashed through the new opening and attacked the spider that was farthest away. The last thing I saw of that one was a bodyless, hairy leg falling to the dirt. The last thing I saw of Brian was his back. He and his spider made a hasty retreat through same the tunnel that they came in; half a dozen ants were in close pursuit.

Thomas, Sarrah, and I raced in the opposite direction.

*****

**43. The Battle Moves Outside**

While Brian and the remaining spider sped off in one direction, the three of us sprinted in the opposite direction and through the hole created by that idiot of a worm. Worms are probably not the brightest of creatures anyway, but you would think they would have enough sense not to bash their way into a den filled with a zillion ants. After all, what is a worm to an ant but a huge hunk of fresh meat?

The immediate spider threat was gone. The ants were making short work of the still-writhing worm. We had someplace to be. We had to get to the orb. That's where Brian was heading. We were all certain of that.

The three of us ran as fast as our legs would carry us over stacks of dead things and through tunnels that were now becoming almost familiar. Even so, the route was still confusing to us. The light was just too dim, and we couldn't recognize all of the landmarks well enough to follow them with any certainty. Besides all that, the tunnels and the landscape was always in a state of change. These ants could carve new tunnels quicker than Grandpa could take a nap. We faltered more than once; made more than one wrong turn; entered more than one wrong chamber. As fast as we tried to be, we were just too slow.

Suddenly, the three of us skidded around a dark corner only to run into three lone ants. They were there for us, and we simply trusted them and allowed them to do their jobs. The ants picked us up with care, turned, and ran directly toward the orb. As we had done before, we broke into the sunlight. This time was different in the sense that we knew what was happening. We knew where we were going. So we looked. We studied. We saw. To our left we could see one of the fallen trees that formed a colonnade. On top of that were the four smaller trees, each still alive, still growing, perfectly nurtured by the long-dead tree. To our right rear we could see the magic portal. To our front, we could see what we originally believed was a cave, the place where we met the mouse. In front of that was the huge maple tree. Our size no longer hindered our recognition of the place we had visited dozens of times with Grandpa. Our eyes had been opened. Suddenly, this world didn't seem to be nearly as large, or nearly as strange, as it was only minutes before. We could finally point toward home.

For the moment, pointing toward home wasn't the most important thing we had to do. If we really needed the second piece of the puzzle to go home, we didn't have it. We were in the jaws of ants. We were headed into the battle of our lives, one that we were definitely not looking forward to. One that was also heading right toward us.

The attack reached us almost before we realized it. Mosquitoes buzzed us at speeds and in numbers that were mindboggling. Dragonflies were so numerous and so fast that their beating wings whipped the air, often forcing an attacking mosquito off course by the sheer force of their wind. Springtails bounced by the thousands. Beetles spread their super hard wings above our heads like protective helmets. Worms undulated under the ground that we ran on, and they tripped our ants all too frequently. Spiders tried to jump, to attack, to kill us, but the ant colony was prepared and fended them off by the force of sheer numbers. It was like all of nature's tiny creatures were either for us or against us. Thousands died for some notion that they believed to be good, or great, or necessary. I couldn't help but wonder about the futility of it all. They fought for the orb, but as far as I could see, the orb was nothing more than a container that spurted hopes and fears through its cracks, a glass that magnified either love or hatred, an engine fueled by whatever emotion was contained in the hearts of those who possessed it. A sudden sound snapped me out of my deepest thoughts. I glanced at the others, but they showed no sign of having heard anything. I did. I heard him. It was Grandpa! "Remember your heart." Again, I looked backward to study Thomas, but he showed no sign of recognition. He held no look of astonishment. I don't believe he heard Grandpa. Only I did. Those words were meant for me. The entrance to the maple tree coliseum was directly ahead.

*****

**44. The Battle Inside**

If the battle outside the cavern looked like all of nature's creatures were fighting each other, then the battle inside was definitely not of this world. The violence of the war was incomprehensible. The sight, unimaginable. Spiders, worms, mosquitoes, butterflies, springtails, pseudoscorpions, cockroaches, millipedes, all were here; all were fighting; all were killing, or dying, or both.

As fierce as the battle appeared, we stopped it, but only for a second. That happened as soon as we entered the coliseum when all attention was turned toward us. We became the focus. Every creature in the room targeted us: some to kill us, some to defended us. The ever-present springtails bombarded us from all directions. Their aim wasn't great, but they did keep us off balance, defensive, and dodging. The best we could do was to hide. It was impossible for us to fight. At first, numbers seemed to be on our side. Ants, butterflies, cockroaches all seemed to fight off those that seemed to be our enemies. Soon, that too changed, and the one factor that changed the status quo was Brian.

Brian entered the coliseum from somewhere behind us, still riding his hairy steed, still able to assume total control of the spiders. His hands went to work as quickly as he entered the room. Every spider in the place responded to his finely tuned movements, as if each spider was a marionette controlled by Brian's strings. The gyrations of Brian's fingers and hands were as complex as you can imagine. Not only did he direct the motions of individual spiders, but he also directed their behavior, and more importantly, he directed the tactics of the battle. He pointed to one spider, shook his fingers in some kind of secret code, and suddenly the thing was herding a hundred springtails. He directed others to gather additional earthworms, which they did with ease. Dozens of spiders herded the slimy things into the fray. How strange that these creatures were so perfectly willing to do the bidding of some small, previously insignificant human. For some reason that I will never be able to explain, Brian was in total control. It was a feat that was as mystical as the orb, itself. Clearly, though, Brian was in charge, tactically, strategically, perfectly in control. Why Brian wanted worms would become more than obvious in only a few minutes. The battle's toll quickly turned when he directed the spiders to release the worms.

You would think that worms were incapable of doing much, but you would be wrong. They squirmed mindlessly, slashing long, muscular bodies across the width of the floor, constantly sliding on slime trails and writhing in new, unpredictable directions. They could have been dangerous just because of their size and weight. Instead, it seemed that Brian's plan was even more devious. The worms did nothing more than provide the ants with giant targets that took hundreds of ants to control. The ants viewed the worms as a threat to be defeated. Brian viewed them as strategic distractions. While thousands of ants focused on the worms, a few hundred spiders went to work on the ants that didn't. Their power and strength was more than the ants could stand, and soon, ants died all around. They were unable to defend against this increasingly powerful threat. I began to wonder at the limits of their brain power. You think that ants are smart, but in reality they only have what they are born with. Their innate knowledge of growing, walking, building, fighting, defending, tunneling is remarkable. Their ability to incorporate new knowledge is less than exciting. Everything we had seen them learn about killing spiders, how to double team, how to use their acid to inject it inside their enemy, all that was gone. They were like really old people: great memories of ancient history, but no recollection of yesterday. This seemed to me like a flaw that could easily wipe them out.

The ants defended the three of us kids with their lives, but they were losing. Other creatures helped, but Brian studied those as well, and he moved his forces accordingly. I couldn't take my eyes off him. This was probably my greatest moment of weakness, that moment when my body was vulnerable to attack, when my heart was vulnerable to breaking, and when, for the first time since we had come to this land, I was ready to give up, to quit. Brian stared at us with hatred; his eyes were full of fury and crazy desire. He could see the end, and that's exactly what he wanted.

Brian directed three spiders to surround us, exactly as he had done earlier. This time, he did not take part in the attack; he managed it. The spiders circled us, closed in on us, forced us together. Our ants stood butt-to-butt and turned round and round in a last ditch attempt at defense. We could do nothing more than watch in horror as Brian directed six other spiders to protect the three that surrounded us. He was the perfect general. He had the calculating foresight of a master chess player, something that the animals, with all their knowledge of survival, could never have had. Brian made certain that nearly every ant in the arena was busy. Busy fighting a herd of suicidal worms. Busy tearing apart a thousand mindless springtails. Busy fighting off hundreds of spiders that intentionally remained far, far away from the orb. Brian knew that he was about to win.

The spiders that surrounded us continued to squeeze the circle and continued to ensure our capture. Our ants eventually put the three of us on the ground. Thomas, Sarrah, and I surrounded the orb, the ultimate flag of victory. Our three ants surrounded us while they circled slowly and intentionally around us, defending us, protecting us from the spiders that closed in ever so slowly.

An aerial view would have been an astonishing thing to behold. One glowing orb in the middle. Three kids around that. Three ants that circled. Three spiders that circled those. Six more that defended those. Spiders busy in a dozen other areas. Ants around those with the major centers of actual fighting far and away from the object of victory, far away from the orb. Brian had done well. Fighting continued everywhere, but the real focus was us and the orb. Brian was focused on the center, yet he directed and manipulated every other creature in the coliseum to keep the center free and clear.

Remember how I described our first introduction to the jumping spiders? Remember how fast I said they could jump? These three were faster. I didn't even see it happen. The three spiders that circled us were on top of the three ants that defended us. Those died before I could even take a breath. Two spiders attacked Thomas and me. We had our spears, but those were gone in a heartbeat, simply ripped from our hands by the fangs of a spider. The third spider jumped on Sarrah with all its weight and speed. Her body hit the ground with a sickening thud, followed by the audible exhalation of every ounce of air. That spider stood on Sarrah's chest so that she couldn't draw a breath. Her face showed fear more than anything; agonizing, wide-eyed fear. The spider stood above her and flashed its fangs, just waiting for the right moment. Waiting for the signal from Brian. Venom dripped like saliva. Sarrah was about to die.

Thomas could see it happening. "Sarrah!" He leaped directly under the spider that held her. By now, the spider reacted simply from instinct. He would kill them both. Fangs slashed through the air and headed straight for Thomas's head. But, I jumped in there, too. I was able to roll onto the tossed weapons and grab them. I jumped under the spider and positioned myself on my back directly on top of Thomas who was directly on top of Sarrah. I could see directly into the spider's mouth. I could see its hairy body with a close-up detail that I never want to see again. The spider jammed his mouth straight down, straight toward me, but I thrust my spears upward. The thing hit those first. The giant creature screamed, probably the sound of air escaping from the wounds I created. The pain caused him to rear and jump away from us. That should have bought us the second we needed, however, and almost instantly, another spider took his place. I tossed one of my spears toward Thomas. He was able to stab it into the abdomen of one of our dead guards and lashed out a split second faster than the spider that attacked him. The poison did its job. That second spider died. Two remained; two that we knew about; two that Brian had moved into position to kill us. Thomas and I reloaded our weapons with ant poison. We had to stay ready.

"Brian! Stop this. You're going to kill us. You know that Thomas and I can't win this fight. Why are you doing this?" It wasn't much, but it was the best plea I had.

"I want the orb. The orb has to be mine. I have to use it to bring Grandpa back."

"Then take the orb. You can have it. But it won't give you what you want." I don't know where that came from, but suddenly I knew the answer. At least, I thought I did. It was too simple.

One of the two remaining spiders began to size us up. Everything was there. The stance, the rolling eyes, everything. We knew how close we were to death.

Brian touched the spider he rode, placing one hand on each side of its grotesque head as if he were closing its ears. When he did that, the others stopped in mid stride. The battle also stopped in mid stride, and we were still alive.

"What do you mean? What do you mean that it won't do what I want? You saw it. You saw what it did." It was the first time that Brian appeared to be distracted from his obsession. The first time he wanted an explanation.

I knew the answer, the secret. Suddenly, everything made sense. I don't know how or why, but it did.

"Brian, the orb is a farce. Its power isn't real." Those were the only words I could think of, probably not the best thing I could have said at the time. Then I did the unthinkable. I reached out, grabbed the orb, and did as the king spider had done before me. I held the orb as high as I could reach, and I offered myself to it.

The blue stone began to spin wildly, taking on, as it had, the look of the sun. Shafts of light exploded from the orb and shined brilliance onto every color inside the coliseum. Emerald greens, browns, blues. The coliseum, itself, became a beautiful gem. Then, mists gathered around my feet and raised themselves to a point above my head. The gem was perfectly and precisely cloud covered. Nothing inside the tree was visible except for me and Brian. Then we heard it. Grandpa's voice. His perfect tone filled the room; it probably filled the woods. "Do what you have been taught to do. Follow your hearts. Fight for what you believe is right. Go home." Surely, all of us had to have heard Grandpa.

Most certainly, we all heard the orb.

Three will leave but one will not,

memories not wanting to chase.

I looked at Brian. He looked at me, expectant, but not knowing. Still captured by the mist, I turned my eyes toward my hands, and without stopping to think, I let the orb slip through my hands and onto the stone-hard altar. It broke like a ripe melon. The blue gem crashed to the ground. Rolled into the open. Lost its glow. Laid there. Its glow slowly disappeared as if its magic, the magic of my heart, bled out. The mists disappeared, and both Thomas and Sarrah stood with their mouths agape.

I looked at the ceiling of the coliseum. I suppose I expected it to fall. It didn't. The sky didn't grow dark. The world didn't end. The only thing that happened was that Brian yelled at me.

"Hannah! No! What have you done?" Brian's scream was agonizing. His huge eyes welled with tears, and his stare terrified me. To be truthful, I'll never understand why he didn't kill me on the spot. He was so terribly angry. I had begun, though, and I needed to finish.

"I told you, Brian. The orb isn't the real magic here. The orb's magic is pure illusion. Don't you see? The only true magic is that in your heart. That's what energizes the orb. That's where its magic comes from. The orb may have represented something. It may have represented good or evil, hope or despair, dreams, or even nightmares. But it only represented those things. It only gave us a focus for our beliefs and our hopes. True hope is in your heart. True goodness and true magic are in your heart. Grandpa is in your heart. The secret is simple. The real magic of the orb is contained in the heart of the person who holds it. The way we need to live our lives comes from the heart. It's all about the choices we make. It's all about how we make those choices. We need to live with passion. We need to love, to build, to study, to grow, to be with passion. We need to give ourselves to others so that they can learn, and grow, and thrive. We need to be giving, supporting members of a family, of a community, just like these ants. We need to live with our hearts, and we need to give our hearts to others. That's the magic. That's the secret we need in order to go home. We simply need to do what we have been taught all these years. We need to go home—so we can help keep balance in the world."

Brian wasn't ready to listen. His heart was lost and would not so easily be recovered. "You're an idiot," he said. "Who are you to judge? How do you know what the truth is? How do you know what's evil and what's not? All you have is the story as told by some glowing orb. Where did that come from? Why do you take those words as truth? How do you know the ants aren't evil instead of the spiders? How do you know? You already said the orb contained no real magic. What other lies are there?"

"Some of the orb's words are correct, Brian. Balance is necessary in this world. We know that, now. But it was also deceiving you. The magic you want isn't in the orb. It's in your heart. That is where you will find Grandpa." I tried so hard to reach through his armor, but Brian wouldn't hear a word of it. He sat in perfect silence. Waiting. Finally, I said, "Brian, we're going home. You should come with us. We've found the magic that Grandpa wanted us to find. Now, we need to do something with it."

"Then, go," Brian spit. "There are others." Those were his final words. Then, from atop his monster spider, he stared straight into my soul. Hatred crossed the chasm of that huge distance between us. Hatred. Fear. Hopelessness. I saw it only for a second, and then Brian turned away from me and looked directly at Sarrah. His stare softened as he cocked that one eyebrow as he had done all his life. This time, there was no smile. With a mysterious sequence of magical finger taps, he and his spider vanished through one of those secret crevices, and so did the herd of spiders that followed him. Now the place was filled only with death and the clicking sounds of oblivious ants bent on slicing up worm meat.

I can't tell you how intently I watched the crevice that swallowed Brian, and I hoped beyond hope that he would return. He didn't, Debbie. He didn't come back. He was gone, and I had no idea how to get him back. None of us did. Sarrah just cried; bawled, in fact. I think she sensed the finality of what she had just seen. Thomas and I both stared toward the hole in the wall that swallowed our cousin, but no matter how hard we wished, he did not come back through.

Restoring balance to the ant kingdom was such an easy thing to do. I had simply removed the object that caused the fighting. That was the simple, but still very incomplete, answer. I knew that a much deeper change had to follow. "Someday, Brian, you'll understand." I said those words aloud, but I don't think that Brian heard them.

*****

**45. Going home**

Debbie, there is so much about this adventure that I still don't understand, and I probably never will. For example, who kept communicating with the ants? How did they send their secret signals back and forth with such precision? And the next thing that happened: what caused those three ants to leave their work with the dead worms and move toward us? Thomas and Sarrah had reclaimed our weapons and stood ready to defend. Sarrah held her sword in one hand and wiped tears and a snotty nose with the other. The ants weren't there to attack us, though. They were there to force us out of the coliseum, without Brian.

Nothing we did helped the matter. Thomas and Sarrah swung, yelled, kicked, tried to stand their ground, but the ants simply deflected their weapons, were deaf to their yells, and herded us without effort toward the door. They simply pushed us through the doorway and continued forcing us through the tunnels. Again, I saw Grandpa's uncovered hand, but the ants would not allow me to stop, and they would not allow us to take him with us. The ants pushed us out of the maze and into the outdoors, and then they stopped. Those three ants guarded the entrance to Grandpa's grave, to the coliseum, and to Brian's disappearance. They were not about to allow us back in.

This time, we knew the way home. Everything had suddenly become so very clear. Sights and sounds were growing more and more familiar, just as Grandpa had taught us so long ago. We ran past the tall grasses, the mountain that was the ant mound, the cave that was the mouse hole, and we could see the portal. I really don't think we could have gotten lost. All three of us could see back into the woods. All along our chosen path, we could see ants silently guarding, guiding, waiting for us to step off the path; they were there to force us back on the trail, and back home.

The three of us reached the portal. At first, we stood not knowing exactly what to do; we were lost somewhere between a dream and a nightmare. We came across as four. We found grandpa. We were about to go back as three. It didn't seem right. It wasn't right. But, that was the way it was going to be. Sarrah turned her back to the portal. It was, after all, her brother we were about to leave behind. Thomas and I both heard the little yelp burp out of her mouth, a sudden and definitely sharp exclamation of surprise. The ants that had remained just out of reach lurched toward her like a set of trained guard dogs. If they could have barked, they would have. I'm certain of it. The intent behind this perfectly menacing movement was quite clear. These ants had no intention of allowing us to return to the woods, and they stopped their attack the instant that Sarrah returned her attention toward the portal. I watched the ants for a few seconds more. Then, past the ants, in the distance far behind, I saw a set of eyes peering at us through the ferns. Human eyes! Clear, shining, reflecting the blue of the sky and the brightness of the sun. A ghostly shiver flowed through my veins, but, just like earlier when I saw that hand that was not Grandpa's, I had no time to look twice.

The ants ensured that we had only one choice to make and one direction to go. The three of us, as unwilling and as sad as we may have been, stepped through the portal. Once again, we were pelted with the balls of solid light, exactly as we had been on our first trip through. Physically, the pain was excruciating at first, but it diminished as we got closer to the exit. The mental pain was quite the opposite, increasing by leaps and bounds as we got closer to home. In the fleeting seconds that preceded our arrival as full-sized human kids, all I could think about was what we were going to tell our parents. What would we tell Grandma? That thought was excruciating. What were we going to say? How do we explain the impossible?

I had no answer to those questions. I had no idea how long we had even been gone. I had no idea if our parents even knew we were really gone or just out having a good time. We bounced off the forest floor, this time back to our full size. I was about to face my fears in a very real way. Nothing we had experienced could ever prepare me for facing Grandma or our parents. I discovered that there are choices in the world far more difficult than facing death.

*****

**46. There is Always a Choice**

We all lived through it. We survived the pain and agony of telling our parents about finding Grandpa, of explaining that Brian stayed behind. We all lived through the fact that no one believed us—ever. We had no choice in that, either. I said that wrong. We really did have another choice. One was just more appealing than the other. This was actually our first real life lesson. We always have more than one choice. The consequences of the choices we make are what matter. Sometimes the consequences are very significant, so much so that it's too easy to believe there's only one choice. But there's not. There never is. There are always choices.

Even after all these years, I know that Grandma never believed us. It is a pretty amazing story: one of shrinking people, giant mice, and intelligent ants. If I were in Grandma's shoes, I know what I would have believed. Grandma humored us kids, but I know she never really believed us. Believing us, or not: it was a choice she had to make. I guess it was easier for her to believe that Grandpa had been dragged off by a cougar than it was for her to believe he walked through that portal because he wanted to. Me personally? I would have believed Grandpa went through the portal. That's who Grandpa was. He owned life. It was his passion. The next thing to build. The next leap. The next adventure. That was your Great Grandpa, Debbie.

Brian and Sarrah's parents never recovered from Brian's disappearance. Even today their faces are hollow; their enthusiasm for life is gone. Life for them is just one lonely day after the other. That's the choice they made. They could have made different choices, too. Sarrah lives that truth every single day.

Choice. That's what brings us to this point, Little One. This is the perfect place to have told you this story. The colonnades are still visible in the forest just like they were when we were kids, not overgrown or hidden. There's the portal. You can see it today just as we saw it the day we went through. And there, Debbie. There is the giant maple tree, even larger now than it was so many years ago. That's where I think you'll find Brian, and if he's not there, he will have left a clue. He did say there were others. He'll have looked, or he'll be looking. And here are your swords, two of them. One for you. One for Brian. You have to have at least one in order to return, and after all these years, Brian may have lost his. Before the three of us left, Brian found other weapons far more to his liking than these swords. He probably sees no need for them anymore.

I've watched you so closely, Debbie. I've watched you grow into a beautiful young girl these past twelve years. You are so beautiful. So smart. You grew up having insights no other girl your age could even come close to. You know what it means to make good choices, selfless choices. You know what it means to live. To love. To have passion. I have dreaded this day. But it's here. I told you the magic of the orb was an illusion, and I still believe that with some exception. The value of the orb's teachings, as in all teachings, isn't in what the instructor says; the true value is in what the student ultimately chooses to do. The orb had a roundabout way of teaching me the importance of our choices and the magic of what's in our hearts. Grandpa already knew that; and we just had to learn it.

A little while ago, I told you that the orb said something to no one but me. Remember?

" _Greetings to the queen mother. There are many secrets yet to be learned. This is the secret of the second promise. Listen carefully. Act accordingly. Remember. The second alone will give the first. The first given will be most versed. That one alone will know the way to bring the lost one home to stay."_

I remember those words as if they were given to me yesterday. I dream about them. I have always dreaded the day they would be made to come true. This day. The day that you, my first, must be given. Brian never came back on his own. That means it's up to me—and to you. Me to give. You to bring the lost one home. Both of us to choose. Both to make the selfless choice.

I know you can do it. I just hope you find it an easy task. I'll be waiting for you on Grandma's deck. Remember that I'll always love you. Remember your heart.

###

**Study Questions**

Time and time again, our heroes found that if they remained inside their prison they would surely die. Is this significant?

Why was it so easy to get into this insect world, yet so difficult to get out?

The orb's prophecy indicated that one adult and four children would intervene, presumably returning this world to balance. The adult died. One child disappeared. Has the prophecy been fulfilled?

Why did the ants kill the one (ant) that took Hannah (alone) back to the orb?

How does the requirement of knowing the orb's secret before going home help fulfill the prophecy?

What did Hannah experience that caused her to conclude that the orb was not what she (they) thought? Was she correct? What evidence supports your answer?

Brian seeks to bring Grandpa back to life. Wrong or not, Brian seems to be following his heart. Is this a good choice? Why?

Discuss the importance of the selfless choice.

*****

### About the Author

Steve Messman has had quite the life which can be summed up in a few sentences. He was raised in a small town in Indiana, graduated from Indian University at Bloomington, spent twenty-one years in the U.S. Army while being married and raising two wonderful boys, and spent ten years teaching the middle-school grades. Since that teaching experience, he has had a change of heart—twice.

The first change of heart was when he decided to become an author. Steve self published two novels. The first was a very"dark" and suspenseful crime novel: Double Sided. The second novel was the not quite as dark, but just as suspenseful The Gas Conspiracy. Both of these novels met with critical acclaim with readers.

The second change of heart was the day Steve decided to write fantasy and children's books instead of crime novels. He has spent three years perfecting two novels in a genre he calls science fantasy. Grandpa's Portal takes place in your own backyard, thus the fantasy. And if you liked this one, Debbie's Choice, the sequel, takes you to an entirely new world inside of time and space.

You'll find an excerpt from Debbie's Choice next.

*****

### Excerpt from Debbie's Choice

1. Choice

Her hair soaked up much of the sweat that dribbled in tiny rivulets down her forehead and off her nose. Those strands, those that were soaked and stuck, weren't really blonde at the moment, but more of a soggy brown. The dry parts of her hair were a beautiful blonde, though, and it wafted lazily in the gentle breeze and the softened sunlight that filtered through maple leaves and fir trees. The structure of Debbie's twelve-year old face was just beginning to change. Adulthood was approaching all too fast. She was still a child, though, dressed in her ever-present t-shirt and jeans. Sometimes, more often than not, she wore either a vest or a jacket, but not today. She was aware of this trek with mom before her day began, and she knew the trip was going to be hot. Today, she dressed strictly for comfort, but it wasn't working. She wasn't comfortable.

Debbie stood directly in front of that strange tree and stared straight into the heart of its roots. This was the tree that her mom had been describing for the past who-knows-how-many hours? This was the tree with square roots. The one that supposedly contained some sort of magical power that only a handful of her relatives, and no one else on earth, even knew about. She stared through those tree roots for a length of time measuring a dozen heartbeats, and then she allowed her eyes to trace the path that led out of these woods and back to the house. _Choice!_ Debbie recalled the end of her mother's story. "Choice!" she repeated to herself, this time aloud. "My choice to make." She began to formulate the opinion that normal people probably thought her mother was just a tiny bit crazy. _Maybe mom IS a little crazy;_ she thought. _After all, mom did just spend most of the day describing her own passage through this magical gate. She talked about taking sides in wars between giant ants and enormous spiders. She told this fantastic tale of nearly being killed by those same monster spiders as they followed the murderous instructions of some long-lost cousin I'm supposed to rescue. Before that, mom went on and on about practically being eaten by a mouse the size of an elephant. And then of course, there was the orb and all its idiotic prophecies and powers!_ Debbie's thoughts turned into words, and with each word, Debbie grew more powerful in her resolve and more certain of the choice she was about to make. "I'm supposed to believe all that stuff! I'm just supposed to take all of this and believe it on faith alone! Believe the prophecy spouted by some floating Christmas tree ornament that appeared out of nowhere! Just because my mom says so? I don't think so."

Maybe mom is a little crazy. After all, mom did just spend most of the day describing her own passage through this magical gate. She talked about taking sides in wars between giant ants and enormous spiders. She told this fantastic tale of nearly being killed by those same monster spiders as they followed the murderous instr...Debbie suddenly stopped. Her mind went blank, and her eyes focused on nothing at all. She stood as if to await a blast or a shot or some other devastation. _Wait! I just said that!_ She thought to herself as she paused again. _Exactly that!_ Debbie turned to look at her surroundings much as an owl does: head only; not a single other part of her body moved. Between shallow breaths, she could see that everything appeared the same as it was seconds ago; no bomb exploded; no bullets whizzed past. Everything looked to be normal, but something was definitely different; she could feel that deep inside. _This place is just too weird_ , she thought as her mind shook off the sudden and unexplained interruption.

Debbie continued the game of reasoning with herself. _And mom wants me to go through that gate by myself? To face the same dangers she supposedly met? Possibly even dangers she didn't meet? Alone? Why would I ever want to do that?_ Her thoughts turned to words. "Why would I ever go back in there to save a cousin I've only heard about in far-fetched stories? Who even knows if any of this is real? MOM! C'MON! I'M ONLY TWELVE!" Those last words practically echoed off the giant maple tree. Debbie shrugged deeply; her head sank between her shoulders as if to dodge the bouncing words. She glanced around; her eyes darted quickly, but they held furtively to each tree for the tiniest fraction of a second. Finally, after checking behind one more tree, Debbie was certain that no one else was around. No one heard her tirade. Of that, Debbie was certain—sort of. She took one more fleeting glance just to make sure there were no tiny creatures either staring at her or listening to her angered rampage.

"Really, mom! Really! Face all those unknowns alone? Go somewhere I don't know? Do something I can't imagine? Convince a person I've never met to come home. After how many years? Twenty years? Twenty-five? You're really asking me to do these things? Really?" There was no response other than the one in her head. She chose to ignore that one.

Debbie kneeled down in front of her mom's magic gate, the portico, that strange-looking tree with the empty space between its roots. Her hands and her knees pressed into the dirt. She felt the earth give way to her weight; cool dampness pressed through her jeans; leaves, twigs, and specks of dirt stuck to her hands. She lifted her hands to her nose and breathed in the strangeness of the air. She could almost taste the aroma of dank mold and rotten dirt carried by the tiniest waft of earthy air. In a tiny tantrum, Debbie slapped at a nearby mushroom and sent the cap crashing into one of the dead trees her mom called a _colonnade_. It collided with the rotting bark. The fragile thing fractured into four pieces, not unlike the results of some catastrophic, but perfectly silent, plane wreck. The dichotomy of such a collision was not lost on Debbie. This is a strange world, this world of the woods. There were things that she knew and things that she didn't know. Things that her mom wanted her to do and things she did not want to do. Choices she could make—or not.

From her hands-and-knees position, Debbie stared through the roots of the portico. She noticed nothing unusual. On the other side, through the opening in the roots, she saw trees, grass, ferns, flying insects, all the signs of nothing going on. "Magic portal my eye! Disappearing arm! Right!" Debbie said the words aloud in the hopeful knowledge that no one could hear her. "I'll show you, mom!" Debbie pinched the tiny devil's club thorn that Hannah had given her. The finger tips of her right hand turned white from the pressure. Full of strength and anger and frustration, and determined to show mom just exactly how NOT true her tale was, Debbie stabbed her tiny sword through those roots as if her enemy's heart were the only target on the other side.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH," she screamed! Debbie pulled her invisible arm back with all the strength of Superwoman. She fell backward onto her butt, rolled completely onto her backside and tumbled head-over-heels for twenty feet to the colonnade. She looked exactly like a half flat volleyball that had been given a solid kick into the net. She crashed to a stop on her behind, her spine askew against the dead tree. Debbie stared with basketball-sized eyes, first at her right hand, then her left, then her right, and back again. She patted her right arm with her left and touched every inch from wrist to shoulder. Finally, she whipped her once-missing arm around in the air to make sure it was actually connected, and really hers. Both arms were present and completely intact; however, Debbie's sense of reality was, suddenly, not.

"It can't be," Debbie spit out moss and dirt in some semblance of a controlled panic. "Mom was telling the truth!" Her voice rustled more than the dead maple leaves at her feet. "It can't be. My arm was there. Then it wasn't. Now it's back." She spat again, another chunk of dirt, and she brushed the bouncing bugs from her arm without giving them a second thought. "Mom can talk about her orb and her prophecy and her tiny world and her cousin all she wants," Debbie said, "but I am NOT going through that gate! I don't care how true that fairytale is!"

She lifted and reassembled herself from the semi-twisted heap that she was, and she brushed off the smooshed mushroom, the dirt, and the broken sticks. Her head was jumbled with too many unknowns to count, and her heart was filled with the only emotion that did count. Debbie stumbled through the trail and toward the house. For the length of the trip, she mumbled incomprehensible words and kicked ferns and stumps, more than once stopping to massage injured toes. It felt like hours, but only twenty minutes had passed since Debbie's arm disappeared; then, Debbie saw her mom sitting on GG's deck.

Hannah smiled as Debbie approached, at first excited to see her daughter returning safely. Then she saw, and she understood. Hannah's eyes clouded with tears. "Y-You didn't go," she sobbed. "You're not going to bring him back."

"I chose," Debbie answered. With her head held high and her eyes piercing the space directly ahead, Debbie trotted straight into the house. "You can stay on the deck, mom, and you can cry as much as you want for anybody and anything, but I am not going through your precious portal."

Hannah's chest heaved repeatedly, and it ached from deep inside. Hannah wiped her eyes and forced herself to take control. She thought of the orb and the words that it had etched into her soul. She was certain that she was correct, certain of the orb's meaning, and certain she had done what needed to be done.

" _Greetings to the queen mother. There are many secrets yet to be learned. This is the secret of the second promise. Listen carefully. Act accordingly. Remember. The second alone will give the first. The first given will be most versed. That one alone will know the way to bring the lost one home to stay."_

*****

**2. The Bedroom Closet**

Hannah felt two doors crash closed behind her, one mere seconds after the other: first, the door to the house; second, the door to the room where Debbie would be hiding. Hannah knew that particular room all too well. It was the bedroom Debbie was using during this visit. It was also the bedroom that Grandma shared with Grandpa when he was alive. Grandma hadn't touched that room since August, twenty-two years ago; in fact, she had not been in it since the day that Hannah and her family drove back to Spokane after Grandpa disappeared. At that time, Hannah's dad stayed behind to help Grandma through the trauma of Grandpa's disappearance. Hannah's dad, in fact, helped Grandma move out of that bedroom. That was the day she lost all hope. Grandma had not entered her old bedroom since that day. She had not cleaned it, nor had she slept in it. She had not even put clean sheets or blankets on the bed. Those who chose to sleep in Grandpa's bedroom were saddled with such jobs. Grandma, Debbie's GG, wanted nothing more to do with that room; it held far too many memories. GG wanted only two things to fill the rest of her life: to forget the day that Grandpa disappeared, and to remember all the days prior. Since GG no longer used her old bedroom, she slept in what was once the office. That's where she was now. Grandpa disappeared in his woods nearly twenty-two years ago. GG suffered through every one of those years, and now she decided to spend her remaining years asleep, dreaming of the past and hiding from the present.

Debbie wedged her body against her bedroom door, securing it against anyone who might try to enter. Minutes passed. No one tried. She sulked across the room and swung the armoire doors open revealing Grandpa's ancient television set. She pointed the remote at the television to turn the set on. It took quite some time, so much that Debbie wondered if the thing actually worked, but the set's fuzzy glow finally turned into a picture. The news was on, but Debbie had no interest in it. She didn't even listen to it. In fact, she muted the sound altogether. Debbie watched a video of two spots moving slowly across the sun. She watched the words that scrolled across the bottom of the screen. _Mercury and Venus won't transect the sun again for another 67,000 years._ She turned the set off without understanding why she had turned it on.

Perhaps it was the sudden sense of feeling alone, or maybe it was the drapery-muted light of Great Grandpa's bedroom that prompted Debbie to consider the consequences of her mini-tantrum. She certainly disappointed her mother. She shattered the sobering peace and quiet that GG expected. _Well, it's certainly too late for a redo;_ she thought. _What was done was done._ _I'll apologize later_ , she reflected, _when I'm finished._ She stood for a moment to absorb the nearly perfect silence that surrounded her. There wasn't a human sound to be heard. A jay thumped on the skylight above her, pecking ants, Debbie presumed. A slight breeze brought song to the wind chimes that hung just outside the bedroom window. Other than the tapping and tinkling, Debbie believed she could hear the dust settle. Suddenly, the girl shivered. _Great Grandpa's presence is everywhere in this room. It's like I can feel him._ The thought came from nowhere. _Every single thing in this room is of him and by him. Great Grandpa even designed and built the bed where he and GG once cuddled._ Debbie permitted herself to touch the wood and feel its soft warmth and smooth texture. Even though she had slept in this bed many times, even snuggled in it with her parents when she was younger, she had never really looked at it. It was a simple and beautiful creation. Constructed of pure alder, it was perfect in every way, right down to its natural glow. Debbie stood quietly with her hands on the footboard—until she jerked; a small yelp escaped when she felt the pull of Great Grandpa's hands guiding the sandpaper along the wood's grain. Shock caused her legs to crumble beneath her. She settled on the floor and in front of the cedar chest that resided at the foot of the bed. Great Grandpa made that, too. She slowly stroked her hands across the varnished cedar; she felt its smooth softness through gentle finger tips, and she felt her heart settle into a more comfortable speed. It was almost as if Great Grandpa were consoling her, comforting her. She cracked open the lid and inhaled the waft of cedar-scented dust that escaped.

The chest was crammed with what Debbie thought of as simply "stuff." Hannah and Debbie spoke of this many times: GG always had a tendency to store lots of things: lots of memories in boxes, in totes, in chests. Now, those memories remain stored and mostly unseen. They remain out of sight and out of mind, but they are never lost. This room was like that: memories hidden behind a closed door. This chest was exactly like that. It contained dozens of memories that GG didn't want to remember, but also, didn't want to lose. All these memories remained exactly as she had left them: letters that Great Grandpa had written, trinkets he had made, baseballs, cards and notes from their boys, tiny boxes of who-knows-what. Debbie chose one box that especially caught her eyes. It was leather bound and very old in appearance, tiny—about three inches square—and she shook it. She wondered at its softened rattle, but she replaced the box exactly inside its dusty borders without opening it. Debbie closed the chest lid. At the sound of its locking 'click,' she sat on the floor absorbing the sum total of the room and all that was in it. "Holy Crud!" She whispered. "He even made the closet doors."

Debbie stood and moved toward those doors as if she were being drawn to them. She touched each one, expecting to feel his hands as she had earlier. Strangely, what impressed Debbie most about these doors wasn't the workmanship. It was, instead, the papers that Great Grandpa stapled to them many years earlier; so long ago, in fact, that everything on the door was yellowing with age, growing fragile and brittle, even beginning to fade. There were photos of Stonehenge, maps with lines and circles and pushpins, questions that only Great Grandpa knew the answers to—and he was gone.

Debbie rolled open one door and entered the closet. At first, she saw this as the perfect hiding place, and yes, it was another wall between herself and her mother. She sat on the closet floor, pulled both doors closed, and covered herself with darkness. She sat with her back against the wall, knees tucked to her chest, face and shoulders covered by old, hanging clothes and the dust that shook off them. Her eyes peered between pant legs to the blank backside of one closet door. Now, she was ready. Debbie allowed herself to be weak and permitted herself to cry. It was, however, a short cry interrupted by an unexpected vision.

She thought it was an optical illusion; perhaps it was caused by eyes growing accustomed to the feeble light that snaked through cracks between doors and walls. Maybe it was a trick of the light-starved shadows, or possibly it was a blur seen through tearful eyes. She tried shaking her head; she blinked to pry loose the wetness from her eyes, but the illusion remained. There was definitely a crack in the wall adjacent to the closet door, and it appeared to be intentionally hidden by two sets of drawers on wheels. She rubbed her eyes again; the crack still lingered; it was not going away; it was definitely real. Debbie looked closer; she strained to focus. It wasn't really a crack, she saw. It was more of a cut. She didn't know how else to describe a perfectly fitting straight line that was nearly invisible and hidden inside the almost-straight grain of the closet's wood paneling. Whatever it was, the cut was intentional, not natural, and definitely man-made. Debbie crawled from her hiding place behind the pants. She rolled one closet door past the other, and she relocated the two sets of drawers into the bedroom. It was clear, now, unhidden and in better light. It was a hidden panel, a secret vault that had been built into the wall. Debbie tried smacking it with her hands. _Oooh! Way too loud_ , Debbie thought, _and it didn't do any good, anyway._ Debbie stopped breathing and listened for any sounds of her mother coming down the hall. Nothing. She went back to work and tried prying at the crack with her fingernails. She even jammed one of Great Grandpa's belt buckles into the crack to use as a lever. It broke. Nothing worked. The door was locked; it was solid, and the lock appeared to be very special. "Darn you Great Grandpa!" Debbie whispered. "Mom always told me how good you were at making everything. You just had to be perfect!"

Debbie stared hard at the lock. It was similar to a safe dial, but different, more like two concentric dials from Grandma's antique telephone. There were two wheels, each as big around as a soup bowl, one directly on top of the other. She didn't know what the upper wheel was made of. It was a glossy black, and smooth as oiled steel, but it felt more like hard plastic; it was cool to the touch, but not cold like metal might be. Debbie rotated the wheel around its center point. It moved freely, but rotating the wheel accomplished nothing. There were holes in this wheel, each about the size of a nickel, each positioned in a way similar to the hour symbols on a clock. Debbie counted them. There were fourteen.

Directly beneath this steelish, plasticish wheel with the holes was another wheel of polished stone. It was the purest of whites, glossy, hard, and definitely cold. This stone wheel was exactly the identical size as the black one, and it rotated on precisely the same center. Etched into the stone wheel were ten depressions that were perfectly smooth and flawlessly formed. Each depression took the shape of a letter, and each letter was perfect: not block letters, but script; not chunky, but clean and flowing and smooth. Debbie visually measured the depth of each depression, and therefore, the size of each letter. She saw that each was approximately a quarter of an inch deep. She also noticed that each of the letters was placed as the holes were placed; one could position a hole in the upper wheel directly above a depression in the lower wheel. The letters and the holes were so smooth and so perfectly formed that Debbie believed they must have been engraved by an artist elf who wielded a magical blade.

Debbie took inventory of the lettered depressions on the wheel. Starting at the twelve o'clock position, and going clockwise, were the letters. **L** , **E** , **C** , **I** , **V** , **F** , **O** , **H** , **I** , and **C**. Between the **L** and **E** , the **I** and **V** , the **O** and **H** , and finally, the **C** and **L** , were empty holes. These were perfectly round, and they, also, had been etched deeply into the stone, looking much like someone had sliced a hollowed marble in half. Debbie rotated the two wheels so that each letter and each hole in the lower wheel was placed precisely beneath a hole in the upper wheel. The two wheels matched perfectly.

"Debbie," Hannah called. The name came softly, muffled through closet walls and dusty clothes. "Debbie!" Her mom's voice was closer now, and decidedly sharper. Debbie knew that her mother could find her within minutes if she wanted. She flicked both wheels for a final spin, first the upper wheel with the holes, and then the lower wheel with the recessed letters. Debbie didn't know exactly what to expect. Perhaps she was hoping for luck, hoping that the door would spring open, but she got nothing.

"Coming, mom," Debbie called into the darkness. "Be out in a minute." She stood and wiped her eyes with the sleeves of the single button-down shirt that her Great Grandpa owned. She quickly replaced the moveable drawers that first hid the secret panel; she was certain to place the wheels exactly in their carpet indentations. Finally, probably thirty seconds later, Debbie opened the bedroom door to face her mother.

*****

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