Ghosts of the Past

A familiar dream. A familiar place.

An abandoned sandlot, maybe three blocks from Andrew Johnson High School back in Omaha, Nebraska. Skott had been taking a shortcut to get to a parking lot, having just nabbed his diploma. It was to be a scorching but lazy summer before going to a state college in Nebraska. Graduation was done, he’d said a temporary goodbye to his friends, and was just going back to throw his graduation robes in his car, when…

The harsh wind off the Nebraska plains seemed to swerve ninety degrees suddenly. Space warped, then divided itself, some four paces to Skott’s left. A sickening tear or tottering sound accompanied the apparition. The recent graduate leapt backward. His first thought had been that a freak lightning strike had gone off in his vicinity, but it was a cloudless day.

“What the—?” Skott began, but his voice cut out.

There, in a vaguely oval-shaped tear in reality, was another world. A land of thick jungles and mountainous terrain, where on either side there was but subdevelopment, parking lots, and endless plains.

“This can’t be real,” the hapless high schooler said to himself. He glanced to either side to confirm there was nobody else to bear witness to this strange anomaly.

“Okay. I could be hallucinating.”

Skott pinched his arm hard, enough to elicit sharp pain. The illusion did not abate.

“… or maybe not.”

Unless Skott’s eyes truly did deceive him, this was a portal. Of all the times to encounter a bona fide supernatural phenomenon, why mere hours after graduation? He approached cautiously, once it was clear the portal wasn’t about to grow any wider or snap shut on him abruptly. Skott stuck a hand through the portal, felt the steamy, humid breeze wafting through.

“Well, a quick look-see can’t hurt…”

As the first person on Earth to encounter a portal to another world, he needed to jump in and prove it worked. Maybe they’d name this strange new world after him? That was his adolescent reasoning, at least.

Skott put one foot on alien soil, then quickly hopped through. The portal had formed along an overgrown trail, left to go fallow for many years. In this way, it was the equivalent of his disused sandlot on the Earth side of the wormhole.

Don’t think I’m in Nebraska anymore, the young man thought.

Yes, he definitely wasn’t on Earth. While Skott hadn’t been particularly well-traveled at age nineteen, he could reasonably assume there was no jungle full of trees and vines that glowed with blue bioluminescence.

“I should go get my friends,” he said out loud. The first human—well, specifically Earth-origin—words said in this strange land.

Skott turned, only, the portal had shrunken in just the few seconds since he’d entered this world! Just barely enough to squeeze through, he rushed to it just as it closed shut! The vision of Nebraska was gone—as was his way home!

A chill went down Skott’s back. Should have waited for his friends before even trying to check this portal. Should have taken out his flip phone and gotten a picture at least! Now he was stuck here, without a lifeline or any clue what was even edible in this dimension. The air was breathable, thankfully, but could he drink the water? Skott didn’t know!

He’d gone a good eighteen years with only discovering this one portal to another world. How long would it take to find a portal back home?

Out over his skis, Skott took off running. This was a measured response, not blind flight or fight; he was trying to find someone, anyone who might be able to help. Other Earthers who’d come through similar portals, or even just a potentially friendly native to this land. It wasn't like his situation could get much worse!

+++

At least he’d gotten his diploma before being marooned on the far side of a dimensional portal. Things could have been far worse if the school thought he skipped out on graduation. Still, Skott couldn’t help but notice that nobody seemed to know he was here… all traces of Skott's whereabouts and life ended in that sandlot.

The jungle heat grew ever more oppressive. Heavy cloud cover—so unlike home!—obscured his view of the sky. Was it midday or a dark knight illuminated by multiple moons? Evidence would suggest the former, but even that was unclear in this land.

Out of desperation, he tried distilling and purifying water from a stream using some skills he’d learned as an elementary school cub scout. He drank this land’s water and did not die. His immediate need met, Skott went looking for help.

Days passed, with Skott wandering through the jungle. Then, starving, he happened upon his first view of a tree manse.

Five mighty trees, each wider than his home back in Nebraska, waited in a circle. This was no natural copse; the land around it was supremely cultivated with elaborate gardens. Each tree’s branches were intertwined with its neighbors to create an interlocking web of raised platforms amidst a high treehouse.

Whoever dwelt in this world, it appeared that they occupied the trees. He’d camped out several nights without fear of predators, so perhaps it was an aesthetic choice.

A sharp clicking sound came from behind Skott. He stumbled, nearly falling off the ledge. That clicking sound turned to laughter.

A woman sized him up, easily mistaken as an Earth human, were it not for her pointy ears. Older, by his estimate. Maybe twenty-two? This woman clicked out something again, and Skott realized it was a language! The elf-lady tilted her head quizzically, then muttered something else. With a snap of her fingers…

“Does this translation spell prove pleasant to your ears, good stranger?”

Skott gasped. “You can hear me?”

The elf-lady jutted her head towards him; he realized too late this was a local variant of a nod.

“I can now.” She looked him up and down. “There aren’t many of your kind who enter elvan lands. Be you a highland human or a lowland human?”

“Uh, Nebraska’s pretty landlocked. Definitely not at sea level. Awfully flat though, so I guess highland?”

The elvan woman breathed a sigh of relief. “I see. Well, intermingling is not quite so taboo.”

“You’re an, ah,” Skott wasn’t sure how to address the ear situation.

“An elvan, ruling caste of the land of Aeirun.” The woman giggled. “Truly you are not from around here, no?”

“Ever heard of a place called Earth?” Skott asked.

“Why, never.” She giggled. “Would thou like to visit my father’s tree manse?”

Skott looked down into the low valley where that tree-manse was located. “Over there? Well, I’m hardly in a position to refuse.”

As if to punctuate the point, Skott’s stomach growled. Days of traversing the wilderness had left his clothes heavily frayed. Some of the trees here excreted some kind of digestive sap that just shredded his clothing apart…

“Address me as Vivian, good human sir,” said the elf. “You shall dine and bunk in the palatial estate of Auron, my lord father, high king of all elvan in this land, and all other peoples by extension.”

Skott nodded. Already, he’d encountered a pretty elf lady in this new world. Things were looking up!

“Father will surely invite a guest to the new solstice’s traditional goblin hunt,” Vivian said offhand. “Do take him up on the offer. It’s so seldom we get outlanders to visit the estate.”

+++

Skott awoke back in his bed. Back in the present. In the mundane world of reality on Earth. After a year of living in tents, makeshift guerrilla camps, and bungalows on Aeirun, he’d made sure to own the most comfortable beds he could acquire Earthside. Still, the comfiest California King-sized bed paled in comparison to that bed in his private tower of an elvan tree-manse.

He’d returned to Earth after witnessing the aftermath of Crossroad Ford’s destruction with Lucy-Kignora. He’d been gone a bit more than an hour in total, returning just as Nessa was finishing up from her shower. They’d promptly headed out for a night on the town, though Skott’s mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Aeirun.

Nightmares had gradually stopped in the decade and a half since he’d left. Now, though, visions of the goblin hunt returned like they were fresh.

Nessa slumbered, blissfully unaware. Skott left her to her sleep, slinking out of the bed and down to his study…

He’d rather be alone with his thoughts.