Chapter 1: Toby looked to see an Unremarkable Path in a Nameless Wood…

He had walked it once before. It was wide enough for a cart, which suggested it was once used from wherever it had been to wherever it was going for whichever purpose the sojourner had embarked. He knew none of those things. He had simply awoken along its course. No past. No goal.

The path was dressed in autumn colors. The different trees that stood in sentinel-like fashion struck him like a sight he had not been able to explain until now. They were much like knights, clad in their armor of wood and garnished with paintings from the earth in the audience chamber. The Sun was low, the star bending below the canopy to peak at the lonesome boy who wandered the ascending path of the mountain. His feet shuffled along the path, but he wasn't unsure of where he was going. Or rather, the question never arose in his mind. His legs simply moved where his feet took them. His conscious had instead been rocked gently in the notion that his body knew where it was going, that there was something he had to do.

He continued to walk along the path, taking in the crisp, cool air that sneaked kisses at his face as it passed by. He closed his eyes, his arms moving from his sides around each other, as if he was embracing himself. An inhale: the air was clean, its scent sweet, like water good for drinking. He drank a gluttonous breath, a sputtering cough or two retaliating. The air scraped against his nose and lungs if inhaled too deeply, yet he found the bigger pain to be his not having experienced these scrapes all the years that He had lived, for it seemed as if this was the only air Man was meant to breathe. His lungs took another gulp, the tinge of pain less potent this time around as the air pushed his lungs outwards, blessing the unfolding crevices he had previously ignored. His sights ascended to the canopy above. Leaves painted crunchy gold, dried red, and filtered brown shuffled like waves at the wind's passing. He felt the air meander along his neck, as a cat did around one's ankle in love, its voice seemingly whispering dotingly into his ear. Yes, I hear it…

"Hear what?" his consciousness asked. But there was no answer. His skin had fallen quiet, simply marching with its own purpose, its own consciousness. It had something to show him. There was no hurry. His conscious sat silently, observing the path ahead in slightly anxious wonderment, but it could not deny that there was indeed a purpose for this anonymity, and the fact that there was a purpose... was comforting.

Soon, his thoughts were interrupted by the faintest sound. That in itself struck him as peculiar, because up to this point, there had been none. No sparrows or jays in chirp, no squirrels in chatter, no disturbed brush. It had been completely silent, except for the wind. He stopped in puzzling question: Where did that sound come from? Was there someone there? Why is there no life here?

He asked none of these. Instead, he only asked. "Why have I heard this before?"


The thought struck him as odd, but he eventually came to recognize the sound to be a song. It was instinctively familiar, though he had been certain that, at the same time, he had never heard it before. His body leaned towards the direction of the melody: to his left, off of the path into the thick of the wood. Its opening was had been made apparent by the bending of the greenery, imitating what looked like a cave mouth. From there, the single line of notes sailed from a seemingly distant origin. It called to him. Not in the Hollywood depictions of a ghostly whisper that shouted one's name, as he have no doubt some readers had immediately considered with the previous sentence. Rather, it called to him much like open arms call an embrace, or the way the wind nudged at one's back, pushing them along like parents to children to go play with other kids. It drew him in, if nothing else, out of merest curiosity. He had sought not to spite them, but everything--every bone in his body, every wisp of air, had told him that the rules of adulthood had disappeared the second he stepped on that path.

He stepped inside, away from the gentle nudging of the Air. Away from the hollow of the winds hands...

The other side wasn't dark; there were still streams of sunlight pouring in from the canopy. But the trees were older and taller, the canopy seemingly hundreds of feet high, their trunks thick with age and experience. He wondered amongst them for a moment, in silent awe and an unspoken understanding: his body was showing him where to find his way.

The music continued to lead him. He trekked carefully along the shrub and untamed wood, the entire time, his mind seemingly hypnotized by the most delicate of songs. Soon, Toby came to a clearing, where the oldest and tallest oak tree had indubitably resided. After seeing it, he froze-- underneath it’s branches was a man, sitting quite comfortably on a gigantic root. He was old, though he did not look it: his face was youthful, and his hair, though mostly gray, had more than enough auburn color in it to suggest below middle-aged. His beard was mostly gray stubble, and he had eyes so vibrant, so brilliant, that they had been the reason He stopped. The music had come from his voice: the sound of his whisperings and thoughts were music to him. Too afraid to move closer, but still fixated on the man; Toby stared from behind a spruce. He couldn't understand everything he had said, but each word, each inflection of his voice, was like a piece of twine wrapping around him towards him, not spoken, maybe not even real, but understood.

Eventually, he looked towards him. A stab of fear stuck him, preventing him from running, held him terrified that he had spotted him. With a smile, he gestured. "Come out, my friend."

He did not know why, but Toby simply moved out of the wood. He moved, and happily too. His fear at that moment had proved as effervescent as the wind... as the man’s voice. He stood before the man on the pedestal, and, almost instinctively, he felt nothing but safety.

He didn't ask anything of him. He almost didn't say anything at all. But, Toby suddenly had questions. So many things about the past. So many fears and doubts from when he was asleep. He didn't know which one to begin with, but suddenly, he found myself unable to do anything. He looked towards him, so full of doubt. In the presence of this vision, he had lost himself.

He turned to leave, his body suddenly wretched to him. As he turned, something had stopped him. A girl, a little shorter than himself. Her hair caped alongside her cheek, its skin soft and slightly pillowy-looking. She was pale, her eyes, though dark in color, stared at him, bright and narrow. She was yards away, her hands at her side, her eyes looking at him in puzzlement. What beautiful eyes...

They are interrupted by the man on the root, for he had started signing once again. They turned, looking at him, their collective curiosity, he had realized, being the source of those words. Those words and that music...

Music?

He opened his eyes again, unaware that they had been closed. Yes, there was music. It swayed the trees and the fabric of his shirt. It ran across the quiet streams and his bald scalp. It gave him goose bumps, those of which raced up the small off his back, along his spine, and over his scalp. There was something sacred in what he sang, one that lifted the leaves off the ground, which encircled him, and lifted him off of the ground.

He did not meet this revelation with fear, but rather, he simply turned back to the singing man. He continued to sing, sing like the he was Pan himself. The music grew louder, awakening the Jays and Sparrows, drawing out the Chipmunks and the Squirrels. He looked back to the girl--she was aloft as well, her eyes widened slightly at the sight of her feet floating on air. The leaves on the floor stood lightly, propped by the wind that was the singing man's voice. Left, right, They swayed below his toes, left, right. He found myself watching their dance sordidly, the way two of them would roll about each other, and how they would join in circles of three or four or five. The way they had lifted off of the ground, swirling and spinning about his floating ankles. He felt a sort of giddiness, one birthed only from the rare unabashed love of the spontaneity of spirit back in the world of his dreams, where everyone had to follow rules.

He swayed. Stepped. One, two, three. One, two, three. The air had become his ballroom floor. He was waltzing alone, the leaves the wooden floors, the music his only partner. He opened his eyes again, looking again towards the girl only a few feet away. She had begun to twirl, her waltz beautiful and lonely, a single leaf blowing along a whispering meadow. It was then Toby had found his mouth soundlessly saying the words "Olive Juice."

The leaves were ecstatic, jumping off the branches to join them. They gathered beneath the two of them and elevated them. They spun, danced, waltz along the souls of their feet. Pushing him towards her, pulling him away. He began to understand, what this bard beneath him had brought him. He looked up from his root, now dozens of feet below them. He closed his eyes, his voice singing into his mind, into hers. Their voices singing along.


"Winter has come, and gone, you know... Winter has come, and gone, you know... But I’m way too young and free... for a Dance.... 'Round the memory tree."