The next morning I once again set off into the dark woods in search of the secret treasure that Frimost had spoken of. He has been mum on the details, but assured me that I should be thoroughly convinced of his powers with what I should find if I continued as down the old trail.
I worried about that thing I had seen out in the woods when retrieving the hazel wand. I could not tell if I had imagined it or if some real phantom had stood before me. Maybe it was the same as the thing I had seen in the mirror, but why had I seen it before I had performed the operation. I’d hiked long and far enough in the woods and never seen anything like that, and I was wandering in midday, so I tried to push it from my mind.
I walked into the dark woods, past the stream by the waterfront of Echo Lake and up the rocky hills towards the swamp. I crossed the logs lain as a bridge over the running streams and wandered through The Valley of the Elves. From Hekate’s crossroads that forked the path, I chose the left path, unlike last time, and strolled out across the sunny meadow of tall yellow grass and felled trees. Opposite the clearing in the thicket sat a little pond that hosted an impressive beaver damn, though there was no sign of the creatures themselves who I suspected were holed up in their den.
After winding through a patch of thick old trees with heavy bark, the path now sloped down a hill, beside which lay a what was sometimes a verbal pool in the Spring and weeks of heavy rain. Now, in the mid-August heat, it was a barren mud-bottomed depression filled with stacks of stone and debris. In its center, on what would be an island were there any tide at all, sat a single maple tree, in which lingered the looming shadow of the great blue heron who had taken up nest in the desolate pond.
I continued further past an red old wooden shed, long uninhabited but with rusty tools and stack of firewood strewn about its yard. was certain that no one had lived here, but I was still wary of the area.
Frimost had told me that I must ventured further off the beaten path, so I walked past the dilapidated shed and arrived on the paved road that ran through the center of the town. This is where I would normally turn back, as the paths on the other end of the road were less clear and well marked, though I had explored them sometimes on my hikes to Mount Toby. I crossed the road and descended the dark ravine into the unknown.
After a minute of struggling my way past a thorny thicket of bushes and leaves, I emerged out of the woods onto a long strip paved with gravel and bereft of trees. It was the old railroad tracks that run through The Valley up Vermont to Montreal, the same tracks by which the cafe sits about a mile south. Every day, since I was a little girl, I would hear the whistle of the train engine echoing out all the way from the mouth of the paths behind my house as it passed.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
For a few minutes I followed the tracks north, looking for a clear path further into the woods towards the mountains, when something caught my foot, and I tumbled down onto the white stones that paved the railroad. I struggled to my knees, my palm and knee scraped on the stones, and tried to regain my bearings. I looked to see what had tripped me, and sitting beside me was a loose rail spike. I took it up and inspected it wondering where on the track it must have fallen from, but it was old and rusty, too old to fit amongst the grey spikes that held the track in place. It seemed more like an artifact from the 19th century. It was an interesting and ‘arresting’ find, so I stowed it in my gathering bag and dusted myself off.
A few moments later I found a clear path leadings up into the mountains and continued further. I came to a wide gorge that descended down into The Valley. The strange stones and winding shape of the canyon reminded me of Rattlesnake Gutter, a path on the other side of town which had been morphed by the shifting of a glacier during the ice age. It’s winding and sliding walls gave the impression of a titanic stone serpent shifting into the earth.
As I strafed alongside the canyon I finally saw what I had been looking for, a little cave alcove that seemed embedded into the side of the rockface. Frimost had told me to find a place far beyond my recollection and deep within the earth, and now I looked out upon the path leading there, seeing a platform to the hollow formed by the rocks and large boulders that lay draped across the canyon. Still, I walked with trepidation out onto the natural stone bridge and into the cave entrance.
The small chamber inside the rock had glittering walls, and slick stalactites which drooped down from the ceiling. Still, the floor was wet and dirty, as though a thick layer of silt sat upon the rockface. From my pack I withdrew the railway spike that I had found and knelt down to use it as a trowel, scraping through the soil to find some sign of the cavern's previous occupation.
Sure enough, in little time the railway spike had been snagged on a hard surface. With my very own fingers I wrenched up a metallic and rectangular object out of the wet soil, about the size of a small laptop.
It was an ancient tin lunchbox, inscribed with an archaic Boston Redsox logo that looked like it came from the early 20th century. Its edges were already brown and rusted. With the railways spike I banged against the edges until it came loose, laying bare the relics it stored inside. Filling the time capsule was a rich hobo's treasury of bottle caps, a series of baseball cards from the middle of the century, a small personal planner filled with diary entries, and a collection of black and white photographs that chilled me to the bone.