Running. I was running. The underbrush of the forest snagged at my already soiled and ripped clothes and left thin scratches on my exposed skin.
The trees here reminded me of the towering Douglas Firs from back home. Except instead of glistening with sunlight through fresh raindrops, they were chilled and grey. My footsteps hit hard on the ground where the frost had taken hold, and banks of snow created slippery obstacles.
A man's face haunted me, dark furs encircled the head and mouth so the eyes and the small patch of skin surrounding them were all I could see. The eyes were such a light blue they practically glowed, and the skin was pale as ice. Dark black kohl, or something similar to it, was smeared around the eyes and stretched out towards the ears like war paint. I could just barely see the glimmering hilt of a large sword over his shoulder. He was a hunter, and I was the hunted.
The farther and harder I ran, the more the cold air ripped at my lungs and throat until they burned. A stitch in my side had developed long ago, but with another baying howl, I pushed myself harder.
I had heard the wolves first. Earlier in the night, I sat in a small clearing, a measly attempt at a fire in front of me to keep me warm from the chill. Hours of wandering this frozen landscape had led me to try to find some way to warm myself up and stave off frostbite. My girl scout's campfire badge was finally useful other than being a pretty patch on my sash.
A howl in the distance made me shiver from fear, but it sounded far away, and I was just so cold. A few minutes passed, and another howl – in response to the first – came much closer. I hurriedly choked out the fire and kicked apart the embers. I wasn't about to be a wolf snack. I took one glance around the clearing, and that's when I saw him – the hunter. His eyes and complexion stood in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness. They were mesmerizing, and I would have been stupid enough to stand and stare for quite some time if I hadn't also noticed the reflective glow of yellow wolf eyes right next to him. With self-preservation the only thing on my mind I ran and ran and ran.
Ahead of me was an icy brook, and I crashed through it with a gasp. The stones were slippery, and the water was so cold that my feet immediately felt numb. I stumbled and fell. My hands broke the surface of the water first before my face hit, and the chill spilled into my mouth and lungs as I gasped underwater. Resurfacing, I choked and coughed up whatever water I could and scrambled out of the brook and onto the other side. A deep bone-wracking shiver began as my running turned sluggish, and I stumbled through the forest as if I was drunk. The trees started to thin ahead of me just as the howls sounded closer than ever, and I tried to pick up my speed.
Soon the trees were nearly gone, and I was staring directly at a cliff edge. The view was utterly foreign. I had been in this land many times, and I had always recognized that it was not entirely my own, but I had never seen it from this viewpoint before. Every inch of the land's overwhelming beauty was laid out before me I knew the image of the starry aurora sky illuminating rolling forests; grand, terrifying mountains; an undulating sea; and glorious cities would haunt me.
I was paused about ten feet from the edge when I heard yips and growls behind me. Three terrifyingly large wolves all midnight black crept from the tree line. It took me a moment to realize that they were flanking, almost protecting, the hunter. He held his sword loosely in his hand as he studied me. I studied him back. It was hard to make out the details of his figure with a coal colored cloak tangling around his body. The fabric snapped angrily in the bitter wind. About the only thing I knew for sure was that he was huge, and not in a beer belly kind of huge. Huge as in he must have been a foot taller than me, well-muscled, and frankly just took up a lot of space.
The thought of him trying to fit through a doorway amused me for only a moment before the gravity of the situation hit home once more. Either he or his wolves were going to kill me, and I had to escape fast.
My teeth were already chattering – I had entered this realm wearing only my pajamas. Coming here had not been part of my plan. I simply wanted to fall asleep and wake up and go to my literature course in the morning at the University of Portland. But instead, I woke up in this dark, foreign forest.
I wish I could say that this was the first time this had happened, but I couldn't. I looked around frantically, trying to find a way out when I saw it – the shimmer. It reminded me of the way heat radiated off the road in the dead of summer. A slight wave to the air that didn't look quite right, and you weren't sure if your eyes were playing tricks on you. And who knows, maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but it was all I had. Of course, it was also right on the cliff's edge.
Looking back at the hunter, I noticed the wolves were now noticeably closer. I figured it was now or never. I took off towards the cliff right where I saw the shimmer. For a split second, I saw my feet suspended above open-air – nothing but death below me. I heard the hunter yell, "Wait." And then I was landing in the soft, wet grass of my backyard and somersaulting to a stop.
The sun was only just starting to rise, giving a glow to the snowcapped Mount Hood. I shivered from the chill and the memory of the snowy peak I had just escaped from.
My parents would be up soon to get ready for work, so I had to hurry inside and get cleaned up. This was my routine. This was the aftermath of falling into this world. Eight times – eight times I had found myself standing upon those foreign lands. The name Erivale whispered across my mind just as it always did when I thought of it. It was like it was calling to me and I didn't know why. The only thing I knew was that I was either absolutely insane or that another world, the world of Erivale, was real, and I somehow found myself there when I went to sleep.
It sounds like a dream, and sometimes I think it is, but Erivale is just as real as the ground beneath my feet and the air that I breathe. I could get hurt in Erivale and I could die in Erivale. The longer I stayed in that land, the more danger I found myself in, and as of late I had been coming back with scratches and bruises from clumsily traipsing through forests and plains.
Tonight was no different. As I stripped off my destroyed pajamas in my bedroom while shivering violently, I took note of my bleeding feet, the scrapes and bruises running the lengths of my arms, and a few small scratches on my face.
Creeping into the bathroom, I wet a washcloth with warm water and began to wipe the cuts down to clean the dirt and debris from them. It was too early to take a shower; my parents would be suspicious of me being awake at this hour. They were blissfully unaware of my nighttime travels.
I made the fateful mistake of telling someone of my dreams when I was younger. Leave it to a fourteen-year-old to destroy your trust in humanity. Within days of telling them the entire school knew, and I had quickly been thrown into the category of a social outcast. That was the first and last time I had ever told anyone of my secret – Erivale.
With the cuts cleaned and bandaged, I flopped back into bed not long before my parents' alarm went off, and I heard them begin to shuffle around the house getting ready for the day.
Sleep would not come again for me. Instead, I lay awake, watching as the sun slowly rose and filled my bedroom with a soft morning glow. My mind was awash with memories of Erivale some from tonight, some from other "trips," and some were not my own. They were memories without experiences, foreign intruders inside the confines of my skull. But I knew they were real.
When my alarm sounded at 7 AM to get ready for the day, I pulled my stiff muscles from the warm sheets and winced as my feet touched the floor - they would take a while to heal. I washed the dirt from my hair and tried to ignore almost dying at the hand of the hunter last night. I hoped the next time I ended up in Erivale, it was far away from him. A shiver ran across my skin as his eyes flashed through my mind once again.
The hot water of the shower both stung my cuts and relaxed my sore, aching muscles. I spent a little longer than I should have until my father rapped on the bathroom door telling me to hurry and stop wasting water. I sighed, regretting having to leave the warmth. After nearly getting frostbite from the chilly winter mountain of Erivale, I never wanted to be that cold again. Eventually, I left the steamy bathroom and got ready for school. I took extra care to bandage my feet and took a few painkillers. I chose a shirt that covered my arms and applied enough makeup to hide the scratches on my face. No one could know of my nighttime travels.
Feeling ready, I made my way downstairs for breakfast. My first class wasn't until 10 AM, so I had some time to enjoy a bowl of cereal and toast. I wasn't much of a chef, but it worked.
"How'd you sleep?" My dad asked.
"Not bad," I lied.
"Have you talked to the finance office at the University about adjusting your tuition yet?" My mother immediately asked.
I wanted to roll my eyes but refrained, knowing it would lead to yelling if she caught me. "No, I'll do it sometime this week."
"Do it today, you need to get it done," she demanded. "And make sure they know your permanent address is here and not your dorm from last year if they need to mail you anything."
"Okay, Mom." When she turned around this time, I took my chance to roll my eyes. I appreciated her taking care of me, but she was a lot. Part of me wished I was still living in my shitty dorm on campus, but it was a lot cheaper to live at home, and it wasn't a long commute to get to school. I didn't have much of a social life anyway, so what did it matter if I was 20 years old and living at home?
I care for my parents, and I know they gave me a good life, but there has always been a level of separation between my mother and me because I was adopted. No one knows where I was from other than the fact that I showed up screaming and crying on their doorstep with bleeding ears. From then on Joanne and Steven Marston decided to take me on as their own.
Eventually, my parents left for work, leaving me alone in the house with nothing but my thoughts. I didn't have much to do, so I simply found myself camped out in my room with Netflix on my laptop before I headed off to school.
The bus ride to campus was a dull one filled with the pitter-patter of rain hitting the windows. I took this time to work on my sketchbook, which was part of an assignment for a basic sketching course. I reached down to the backpack, pressed against my calf, and rummaged for the black hardcover.
At a young age, I loved art – drawing and painting – and as I got older and started having my trips, it became the only way I could express what it was like. I could draw what I had been experiencing or seeing much better than I could speak it.
I flipped through page after page of sketches and painted pieces before getting to a blank one. To the tune of the hydraulics of the bus and a morning radio station, my pencil began to give way to the lines and shapes of his body. The sliver of his face and those chilling, pale blue eyes soon stared back at me on the page. I was just finishing the outline of a large wolf when I had to pack up and disembark the bus with Erivale firmly on my mind.