Grandpa's Portal by Steve Messman
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 s
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 stom
*****
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.”