The stranger reached out his arm, and in his hand he held a long bamboo walking stick in his hand, white and slender in the fading spring light. Now he beckoned Andrew using the stick.
I can feel its pull, Andrew thought, his heart racing. Why shouldn’t I follow it?
With the gun hanging loosely in his left hand, the boy began to walk toward the figure. He quickened his pace to a brisk jog as the cloaked figure turned toward the river. Instead of following the river and rounding the bend, the figure ran down the river bank and disappeared from Andrew’s sight. Andrew hurried towards the bend, and by the time he reached it, he saw the cloaked stranger across the river, moving south in the forest. The boy looked north down where the river bent and slowly faded into the wooded horizon. At the bank of the river where Andrew stood the water flowed slowly but steadily thanks to the sharp downhill curve ahead.
The hooded figure, almost out of sight now, turned and beckoned again for Andrew to follow. The boy spotted a few rocks in the water he could jump on to cross the river, and prepared to cross. His mother’s voice nagging in his head stopped him.
How would your father feel about you following a stranger in the woods? How’d he like to hear, after a long day’s work, that some hooded drifter led his son deep into the forest at nightfall? Andrew pushed the voice out of his head. His father wasn’t around to notice either way. Andrew didn’t know who he resented most: his mother, his father, or the drought.
It didn’t matter. The boy crossed the river.
IV
Andrew made it across the river without much trouble, and continued his pursuit of the cloaked man. He had an idea of where the stranger was headed, of course: due south. Andrew followed in his path. The terrain began to slide downhill at a suicidal rate, and Andrew had to descend sideways to avoid stumbling and flying forward. The slope continued for a few hundred yards, and while most of the hill was littered with trees and sharp rocks, the path Andrew took was clear of all impediments. It was if the cloaked man had cut the path clean. Despite the safe path, however, Andrew still led with his feet in front of him and his body turned to the side to counter the steep terrain.
After descending for what felt like hours, Andrew saw the bottom of the hill. Most of the terrain around him flattened, but his own path did not; it dove into a deep grove, shadowed by tall, thick trees. Andrew headed down into this opening, below the flat terrain. After a few seconds of descending he came upon stone steps that twisted and descended deeper into the earth. Andrew grabbed the earthen sides of the passage to slow his descent and straightened his body so he could safely run on the steps. The steps were narrow and thin, only large enough for the foot of a child. Andrew was thankful his feet were still small, but still he slowed down to a near walking pace to avoid stumbling.
The steps descended into the earth further and further til Andrew felt he was miles below the forest floor. The stairs ended with a stone wall with a small hole in the bottom, only large enough for a child to fit through. Andrew, not quite five feet tall, squeezed right through the opening. He came into the grove, expecting it to be shrouded in darkness as the staircase had been. However, several rays of light pierced through the darkness from the canopy above, illuminating the patch of green grass he stood on. Around him a circular grove, surrounded by thick oak trees, rose up to the sky. At the far side of the chamber sat a small, plump boy. He was staring at a tree at the center of the grove, with what appeared to be a sketch drawn into it. As Andrew drew nearer to the door he saw it was no sketch. An actual oak door stood in the center of the tree, begging to be opened.
V
The strange boy turned as Andrew drew near. He was clad in a dark green tunic and dark leggings, with a mess of curly dirty blond hair on his head.
“Hello,” Andrew said.
“Hullo,” the boy said, with a thick accent that reminded Andrew of some foreign film he’d seen about Ireland. The boy climbed clumsily to his feet, which were gigantic in comparison to the boy’s body. Andrew gauged him to be no older than thirteen.
“Name’s Andrew Tollson,” said Andrew, stepping forward and extending his hand as his father had taught him. As he stepped into the light, the strange boy gasped, catching sight of the revolver in Andrew’s hand. The newcomer stopped dead in his tracks and bent down to one knee.
“Forgive me, sir,” the boy said, his eyes staring down at the ground as he stumbled over his words. “Pleased to meet you, Andrew, son of Toll. You can call me Nickolas, Son of Smith, he of the field and the scythe. I… give myself to your service? Wait, I don’t think that’s it…” The boy trailed off and shook his head. “I don’ remember it, no sir.”
Andrew didn’t know what to say. He called me the son of Toll, he mused. That amazed him the most. His father’s name was David, not Toll. Just where in the hell is this kid from? He’s acting sort of weird.
When was this kid from? Andrew realized was the better question.
In his silence, Nickolas, son of Smith, looked up. “Beg your pardon, sir, but isn’t this where you usually say somethin’?”
Andrew shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you.”
Nickolas furrowed his brow. “Wish I knew how this was suppos’d to go… it’s jus that I never met one of your kind before.”
“One of my kind?” asked Andrew.
“A man of the gun, you know,” Nickolas said, motioning to the revolver in Andrew’s left hand. “You look young, but you must be one of them. Them of legend!”
Andrew raised his eyebrows and stepped back. “A man of the gun?”
“Yea!” Nickolas cried with a grin, and lifted his hands to the sky. “A legendary gunfighter!”
VI
Andrew Tollson was no gunfighter. He was adventurous, more than most boys his age, but he knew he was no man of the gun. In his head flashed images of gunfighters he knew, like Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, and Lee Van Cleef. Those were true gunfighters, serving the law of the gun and the law of the light. They enforced that law in the old west; could such knights of western cinema really bring peace in the modern age? Could gunslingers even exist in the 21st century? Andrew had his doubts.
Andrew remembered something his mother had said when he had started reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “All good stories,” she said, as he sat back on the porch and she kneeled down in the garden, “start when a character takes on a new part.”
Andrew, nine years old, didn’t get it. “When they step into somebody else’s shoes, and leave their own behind,” she explained. Her pale face was beautiful in the spring light, as her crisp brown hair blew in the wind. It hurt Andrew to think about now. Her words echoed in his head. Suddenly Andrew wanted to leave his beat-up Nike’s behind in this grove and don a pair of cowboy boots. He straightened and addressed Nick.
“Rise!” He cried in his deepest voice. Nick looked up in surprise. “Rise, Nickolas, son of Smith. I accept your service and thank you for your blessing.” Andrew felt ten feet tall. Nickolas climbed to his feet, his eyes locked on the gunslinger. The twilight beaming into the grove from the canopy illuminated Andrew’s face as he beamed.
Andrew looked around. “Uh…” he shifted somewhat uncomfortably. “So… what is this place? Did anyone come through here?” He turned to survey the grove, expecting the cloaked stranger to pop out of the trees. He didn’t.
Trees surrounded the grove, in a neat circle. No leaves littered the ground- the grass remained untouched and green. On the far side of the grove, not ten feet from where the boys stood facing one another, stood a door. The oak monolith was attached to the largest tree in the grove, though the door’s frame exceeded the tree’s girth. Andrew thought it had a funny look to it, as if someone had propped a door upright against the tree.
Sensing Andrew’s eyes on the door, Nickolas shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “Not sure what