The Magic Portal is going to be a delightfully wonderful book.  I gave you a taste of the first chapter the past few times you visited this web site.  I have replaced that with a little of a following chapter, one where Noah and Elizabeth are finding the answer to Grandpa’s disappearance on their own.  Enjoy! The following is copyrighted by the author and Messman Family Enterprises, LLC, 2008

 

6. Noah and Elizabeth are on their own

 

Visiting grandma was really a function of where we all lived. Dylan and I lived about six hours away, on the other side of the state. Visits to Grandpa and grandma happened infrequently. Noah and Elizabeth, on the other hand, lived only about two hours away. The responsibility for helping grandma fell onto Noah’s dad, for the most part, because he lived so close. That was good for us, though, because Noah got to visit grandma every month or so. He kept us posted on his adventures in the four or five times he’d been back since Grandpa disappeared. “Kept us posted” is something Grandpa would have said. He was a retired Army officer, and some of that stuff actually rubbed off on his kids and us grandkids. Anyway, Noah’s most recent visit was the best.

 

That visit was the one that provided our breakthrough. It happened the February during Elizabeth’s birthday, a perfect time for Noah’s family to visit Grandma. Noah and Elizabeth made their plans. There was no way we could get there. This particular winter was terrible with way too much snow. Driving over the pass would have been a pain, if it had even been possible, and it might have caused dad to miss some days of work, which he did not want to do. Anyway, the forces of nature seemed to be against us, so the pleasure was all Noah’s and Elizabeth’s. And a pleasure it was, according to all the emails Noah sent us.

 

Noah and Elizabeth, who was now eight, told Grandma and their parents they wanted to go for a walk to visit Grandpa’s favorite place in the woods. Both of them had gone back before, but this was the first time they had ever mentioned this special place to the adults. The four of us kids had talked about this in the past and decided that Noah and Elizabeth should mention it this time. It was a test. We wanted to see if grandma felt about it the same way that Grandpa did. She said nothing: gave no indication that she knew of any such place in the woods. Grandma only told Noah and Elizabeth to be careful since it was cold and snowy out there. She even made sure that they both had on an extra layer of wool, so she put a sweater on both of them over the winter clothes they already wore. Grandma seemed to know nothing of the portico, and she knew nothing of the springtail armies. She would be no help to us. We already assumed that our dads, grandpa’s sons, would be of no help either, as they had never reacted to our being in the woods. Only Grandpa had. The two were on their own. With that knowledge, Noah and Elizabeth ventured out the door.

 

The two walked hand in hand directly into the woods. It had snowed just that morning, so their tracks through the snow were perfectly easy to follow. There was no chance they would get lost. Besides, Grandpa had taken them to this place before. They had, themselves, visited it often since Grandpa disappeared. I think they just felt better knowing that someone could find them if this trip took too long. It wouldn’t.

 

Once clear of the house, Noah and Elizabeth ran directly to the colonnades. They fought their way through the ferns, the snowy tree limbs, and finally the devil’s club stickers. From there, they walked to the colonnades; Elizabeth pulled several stickers out of her sweater, but Noah didn’t bother. He was much more interested in getting to Grandpa’s special place. The two sat on the side of the far colonnade looking across the other and into the space that Grandpa had warned us all to stay out of. They had done this before. Each time, they wrote back and told 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 saw birds, slugs, worms, mushrooms, the occasional grasshopper, and maybe even butterflies that dared venture into the dark woods. They never saw a springtail, but Noah said that he never really cared to look that closely. “How many kids do you know that travel through the woods with a magnifying glass?” he said. Dylan said, “I do.” To be frank, Dylan 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 day, Noah and Elizabeth sat on that log doing what they had done five or six times before. They just looked. Nothing ever happened, nothing, that is, until they saw the chipmunk go through the tree roots. There it was, right in front of them. Across the colonnade that they looked past was what Grandpa had called the tree with square roots. I’ve told you about this tree before. It was the “perfect example” that Grandpa had told us kids about: the tree that was lifted three feet off the ground because the stump below it had rotted away. The only thing under its roots was air. Grandpa taught us about that tree, too. Years and years ago, this tree took root on the decaying stump of another dead tree. The living tree kept growing, sending its roots to the ground. The decaying stump kept decaying until it disappeared altogether, giving the living tree its nutrients. What remained was that tree, the one that Noah saw, a tree that stands about three feet off the ground with nothing but air under its roots. That’s what the chipmunk ran through. It ran into the empty space under the roots, but it didn’t come out the other side. It didn’t come out! That chipmunk vanished!

 

Noah and Elizabeth both jumped up and ran to the other colonnade. That was Grandpa’s stopping point, the boundary we were never to cross. Both of them stopped, as Grandpa had warned us to do so many times. This time, after only a moment’s pause, Noah made the leap to the other side.

 

Elizabeth yelled at Noah, warned him as Grandpa had done. “Noah! Stop! The springtails will get you.”

 

Noah either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He jumped and ran directly to the funny looking tree. Everything looked normal. Noah told us that he walked around that tree. Twice in fact. Everything looked exactly as it was supposed to except for one thing. The chipmunk was gone. Its snow tracks entered those roots, but they never came out. Noah said that he kneeled on the ground and looked through the tree roots exactly where the chipmunk had scampered through. Everything looked as it should. So, he stabbed his arm through the space outlined by the tree roots, and well, let me try to quote Noah.

 

In his own words, he said, “AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!”