“Secret”

by Christine Timmons

Sitting on the white cement deck, I gaze past the carefully kept gardens and peach trees over the creek and through the empty field to the towering trees and hidden secrets behind the shrubs and beneath the shadows. I feel the forest drag me from my seat, down the slight hill and towards the calming waters. I cross the bridge, leaving the safe havens of a home away from home and entering the shaded green oasis of its backyard. As I walk across the bare acre of grass to the edge of the old oaks, the childhood wonder I had held for the massive trunks overtakes me. Each step draws me closer to the powerful presence of my younger imagination that once held me for hours on end in the dark forest. Finally, I halt in front of two trees, perfectly placed directly next to each other with similar age and height. My eyes follow the bark of the trees as it snakes up into the clouds. And then my mind takes over.

The few feet between the trees are enveloped by a wooden gate, locked and guarded by the soldiers that were once the weeds that crawled up its side. Fearing that they may notice my presence, I follow a highlighted section of grass to a secret entrance of the medieval castle that is slowly forming before my eyes, leading me to a shaded door. I open it and glance down, the deserted path changing into a dark corridor that curves around the corner. As I walk forward and cautiously approach the bend, the silence is broken by a quiet laughter coming from farther in the castle. Quickening my pace, I turn the gloomy corner and see something dart into a hall, laughing louder and urging me to run after it. I sprint into the corridor and hunt for the footsteps and laughter I hear echoing around every bend of the marble path. My heart pounds as my chase finally enters a large room, an empty court of paths woven through gardens and bushes with a single throne in the middle of a raspberry patch with its back facing me. As I enter the room further, I graze my fingers absent mindedly over the petals on a rosebush, glancing at the only red rose amidst many white ones. When I reach the edge of raspberries, I walk around to find the small path that would lead me to the seat. Taking one last step, I slowly look up to see who is sitting in the royal seat, my eyes following the stream of green grass to the foot of the chair as I hear the giggling as loud as I ever would.

Before I can look, a voice shatters the image, the words of my mother calling for me to eat dinner. The throne melts away; the walls fade once again to spaces between tall oak trees, and the gardens are only weeds arranged in squares. However, as I turn to leave the once majestic castle of my imagination, a glimpse of beauty catches my eye. The rose bush, one I had seen many times before, shone with the white petals it always held, but at the very top of the bush was an oddity that I had never considered was possible: a red rose. The realization that I had not noticed this until now seemed to distress the flower as it suddenly began to bleed, its gorgeous color seeping through the bush and killing the olive leaves while dying the white. Then the bush began to die, withering into the ground as each rose slowly discolored and wrinkled up. Finally, when the plant was entirely lifeless, there was still a faded but very much alive rose, now lightly pink, at the edge of the dead branches.

I ran through the trees, over the field of green grass and the red wooden bridge, up the hill and finally to the porch of which I had gazed so longingly into the forest now behind me. Glancing back, I feel myself again pulled towards the trees and the world of my imagination, but I turn away. As I walk into the house, only the scent of home cooked pasta and gravy beckoning me, I hear the faint laughter taunting me from the depths of the dark forest, and I know that I will be back again.

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