Beneath a Smiling Sun Read online

even more confused.

  "Knock it off, you bastard morons," said Jerome. "Can you stand?" he asked, gesturing at me with his pipe. "It's time for us to go. If we don't get back home before the sun is fully risen, then we've gotta stay outside all day till its night again, and they unlock the gates, and I'm starvin' to death." He rubbed his plump little belly for emphasis.

  "Yeah, me too," said Billy and Bobby in unison. They looked at each other with a sour look of revulsion.

  "I hate it when we do that," said Bobby. He spat with heavy emphasis on the road, and replaced his pipe between grinding teeth. "Dammit," he said, relighting his dead pipe.

  "Me too," said Billy. He reached in his coat and brought out his own pipe, a blue plastic one shaped like a wol-eyed fish, quite unlike the one I remembered him having before, when he was still a statue.

  "Dammit! Dammit dammit dammit all to heck. I'm all out of bubbles." He looked sadly to the ground.

  "Bubbles," spat Bobby, and he spit on the road again.

  "You've got more at home," said Jerome impatiently, "So if you don't wanna be locked out all day with an empty belly and without yer precious bubbles, lets go!"

  The gnomes headed for the woods. I stood, and followed. A narrow path cut through the oak and pine and brambly bush, the gnomes jogging lightly down it. I had to increase my gait a little to keep up, but not much. The thin curving trail began to straighten and widen a bit, with yellow wild flowers stretching their stalks toward the mostly-risen sun ahead, bathing the trail in its slowly brightening light. Without warning, the gnomes suddenly broke into a dead run, and I had to jog fast to keep up. Damned if those little legs of theirs didn't boogie right along!

  The trail soon straightened a bit, and a multitude of yellow and orange flowers of every shape and size rose gradually on either side of us. It reminded me of the hot flames of some fiery hell, and the nursery where I once worked.

  The trail gradually meandered into a cobbled walkway, and about a minute or so later we found ourselves standing before a hulking wall of impassible, neatly-cut shrubbery. Jerome reached out, his hand disappearing into the thick of it. The leaves of that tall broad thicket began to rustle and quiver, and from an unseen seam in the middle of that living gate the two sides parted from one another, and what my eyes beheld. . . I still can't believe it sometimes, even as I look around me now.

  I said --

  "I know what you said," interrupted the sweet, tender voice of the Dryad Princess. "You were almost yelling when you said, and I quote, 'What th -- I don't believe this shit. This is fuckin' impossible!' And I said, 'Nothing is impossible in the garden of the Infinite, of which this land is but one little niche', and you said, 'Who the hell said that?' and that's when I unmade myself from my tree form and -- "

  "And who's tellin' this story, you or him?" asked Billy, who had sat quietly and patiently (a marvel) through the whole story. He pointed his bubble-filled pipe at each of them for emphasis.

  "I was," said Daron, and he sighed. He looked upon the beauty of the Dryad Princess, and smiled a sad smile. Then he stood, and walked to the cave in the east of the wood, and pondered upon the question of whether or not he should walk into that dark labyrinth, and find the light within. Again he decided to stay, and walked to the babbling brook, with its cool clear water caressing the rocks as it traveled beneath the bridge downstream. He sat on the soft loam under an ancient elm that stood on the bank, and lay his head back on a clump of roots, listening to the songs of the birds in their trees, beneath a smiling sun.

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