Not Your Ordinary Alien Story

CHAPTER FOUR

The first rays of sunlight glimmer at the top of the mountain range turning the sky a robin's egg shade of blue. In the kitchen, I put together a light pack to take with me, a zip-lock baggy of trail mix, a cut-up apple, and a protein bar. I add it to the two bottles of water, the compass, and my Swiss army knife that I had already put in my backpack. I check the satellite map with the latitude and longitude coordinates one more time on the computer making notes about it on a piece of paper. About the location, I feel okay. I have a fairly good idea of where I'm going. What I don't feel okay about is what might be waiting for me when I get there.

I leave a note on the kitchen counter that says Out Hiking then draw a little smiley face below the words. Shutting the front door quietly behind me, I run down the stone walkway leading to the road. The wildflowers and bulbs GranAna plants every year are blooming. The yard looks like a brilliant blur of quivering color the way the flowers vibrate in the early morning mist.

After crossing Redwood Highway, I climb the embankment then disappear into the forest. Only but the strongest rays of the sun make it through the thick green canopy and the white blossoms of the western dogwood look bright against the dark pine needle covered ground. As I make my way through the forest, I wonder about the coordinate numbers in the blanket. I wonder why that particular blanket was wrapped around me. More importantly, I wonder why I was left in the forest in the first place. Was there was something wrong with me that my birth mother would just leave me there like that? Did she know from the start that I was different from everyone else?

With the sun moving higher in the sky, shrinking the shadows beneath the trees, I forge on. Any semblance of a trail disappeared hours ago. I take a bottle of water from my pack and I guzzle half of it down. Then I study my scribbled notes and glance at my compass. I'm getting close to the spot. I know it. It's not just by my notes and the compass, somehow, I can feel it.

My pace slows. The leaves flutter. A pine cone drops to the ground. Straight ahead, sheets of sunlight gleam between the trees growing brighter as I draw near. I creep towards the light until the low canopy of trees opens up into a perfectly round clearing spliced in half by an immense fallen redwood.

The air crackles, the dense sunlight moves in a transparent pattern, and the colors appear brighter than ever before. Moss and young ferns grow along the sides of the redwood with the roots of the tree reaching for the sky. I walk to it sliding my hand over the ridges of rough red bark until I get to the middle. There, I climb on top, surveying the clearing and the surrounding forest.

A silvery-gray fox leaps into sight, his paws landing soundlessly on the ground. He raises his head, his facial features sharp, and sniffs the air. I sit perfectly still as he tilts his head down and stares into my eyes. He's trying to tell me something. Something strange has happened here. How do I know? Do I smell it like an animal smells a human in the wind? Do I hear it like an animal hears danger in a snapping of a branch? No, it's neither of these. It's something more, something deeper, like the way I've always known I was different. The fox studies me for several seconds more before he crosses the clearing and disappears into the trees.

I scramble down from the massive trunk and take my cell phone from my backpack. There's no cell phone reception out here. That doesn't surprise me. I place the phone back in the pack then walk to where the roots are sticking up in the air. Four or five feet from the roots, the tree has been slashed completely apart. There's a large gap between the base of the tree and the rest of the tree. I walk into the gap and run the palm of my hand along the wood. On both sides, the wood is completely smooth and shiny. I've never seen a tree cut in two look this even and this smooth. Plus, it would have been difficult, almost impossible, to get that large of a chain saw to this remote area of the forest.