The Silver Chestnut
Whenever two subway cars speed side by side through the city’s dark tunnels, I always feel like I’m looking into a parallel dimension. Or at least what I’m seeing reflects how it all works. There’s a sensation in my body that maybe I’ve been in this kind of situation before, a déjà vu of metaphysical proportions. But even without any understanding of the subject of other worlds I think I understand it nonetheless. You can peak in through the lit windows, occasionally catch a stranger’s glance, maybe have some sort of subtle influence or be influenced yourself, and then within seconds the worlds split off and follow fate on their own private tracks. Sure there can be that mild interaction, but really any more intrusion would result in disaster.
I got off at Columbus Circle and walked up the west side of Central Park, sneaking into the city’s attempted woodland. The foliage never really tamed the lust I had for wild springs and dense forest, but the yearning was abated for a bit by the green surrounding me. I just wish the towering buildings weren’t so overbearingly present overhead, acting like a looming pressure on my shoulders, weighing me down. After six months of living in New York I felt that I had lost something within me, something vital that I could only get back from a place that wasn’t this city. I wondered if I should take a trip sometime soon, if that would help the emptiness that had cemented itself within me. Spring was just budding, I could see it in the trees. Maybe a beach in the Mediterranean, or a mountain in New Zealand. But would such typical tourist destinations really possess what I needed? I felt like I wanted to be somewhere new for a while, but the newness had to have something, well, unusual to it. Like I was the only one who could ever experience it.
I still don’t understand what happened in that moment when everything changed. I remember pain. I remember feeling as if something had bitten my leg by my ankle, a dog or something else with fangs. I remember I lost my balance and was dragged in excruciating cadence along the ground. I remember my foot dripping blood as it hung in the air, my shoes ripped and shredded. I remember there was no creature. But I felt the jaws clamped onto my flesh.
I’m sure I was screaming, and I’m sure that there should have been more people around to come help me. This was Central Park. But the only soul that spared a moment looked like a heap of torn clothes and black trash bags that smelled potently of body odor. As it rushed past me it made some kind of screeching noise that hurt my ears, much like a dog whistle would have sounded if I could have heard it, I imagine.
My leg was free, I stumbled to stand. I was in shock at that point, and I didn’t really hear what that homeless person was saying. I stared at my destroyed shoes, feeling the pain and also feeling pissed that I’d spent $200 on them only to have them slashed apart. I guess it was the disbelief that drowned out any rational thinking. Like, you know, had an invisible dog just attacked me?
“Shit.” It was all I could say. I tried putting some weight on my injury. “Shit.” The bag lady tried to put a hand on my arm to steady me. “Shit, get away!” Then I looked at her and found a child’s face watching me and I jumped back and fell with another curse. I decided it would be better to stay on the ground this time.
She crouched over me and I took the time to get a better look at her. Gray eyes, gray hair, a dark skinned child no older than eight or nine. What I had thought were tattered clothes was a dark cloak of tattered feathers. The pungent smell was not so disgusting any more, more like a primal scent of the earth. When she spoke her voice was unnaturally mature with some kind of foreign accent I couldn’t place.
“You need aide.” She motioned to my foot, which was still bleeding. I could see that my blood was streaming from the set of puncture wounds. “Let me see to it.”
It all started to sink in at that point. I realized I couldn’t hear any sounds from the city. No pulses of traffic, no murmurs of conversation, no shouting of people on cell phones who didn’t care what strangers thought of their personal lives. And the trees and the grass and the brush all seemed blurry somehow, random points of sight fading and dimming from focus even as I watched. All around there hung a shimmering silence, and a little girl who spoke like a woman.
She took my taciturn moment as the question I couldn’t form. “I had to interfere and I couldn’t let anyone else see me. You’re almost out of your own world, it was the only thing I could do.”
“A-Almost?” I felt like I was in a sinister Wonderland.
“It’s…difficult for me to explain,” she started, gingerly lifting my foot and wiping it with a piece of cloth she had on her. “We are in my world, but running in your world’s time.” She caught my thoroughly puzzled look, and a small smile glanced on her face. “Exactly, don’t think about it too much. What you need to know is that a beast of my world attacked you in your own.” She paused. “That isn’t supposed to happen. You aren’t supposed to be aware of our world existing under your own.”
I began to wonder what was in the street cart food I’d eaten for lunch. Minus the aching ankle it was proving to be an interesting hallucination at least. “So how did this happen then?”
She stopped for a moment, reaching under her strange cloak and giving me a look like a teacher who thought I had more potential than I was letting on. “Tell me, as a child did you see things? Unusual things, that is? Things other people couldn’t see?”
“Of course, all kids have an imagination.”
She produced a length of fabric and began wrapping my wound. “But not all children are brought to one of your talk doctors so often. Or put under, what do you call it, hypnosis? Or had a priest come to your house and--”
“Stop.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop working on my ankle. “Those so called imaginary creatures. They sometimes gave you nightmares.”
“I said stop.” I pushed away but cringed from the pain. She had me cornered. I stayed silent.
She went back to tending my injury after a moment of consideration. “Now in my world we have a unique currency, you could say. We take from your world the things you won’t remember. Or in your case, what you were forced to not remember.” Her hand snuck back into the mountain of feathers around her body. For a second they looked as if they were even attached to her, but I was quickly distracted by the item she held out to me. A chestnut, gleaming as if dipped in silver. It instantly reminded me of the chestnut tree I always played under as a child. “When I procured this, I knew the person who lost this memory was rather important. It was from a girl who could see into my world as I could see into hers. But without the memory, she was as blind as the others.”
The gray eyed girl refused to let me touch the thing as I found my fingers seeking it impulsively. I needed it, it belonged to me, I had no idea what it was.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” She sat back with concern spreading across her face.
I started to speak but paused to let my thoughts connect. Somehow everything she told me made sense, but the kind of sense you feel as a child where you just accept things as you come up with them because it forms the most illogical yet reasonable explanation. “You’ve been following me. From your world.”
Her eyes glowed. “Exactly.” Her posture relaxed and she leaned closer. “Something is happening here, and you’re involved somehow. You’re a connection between my world and your own. And I fear you will be attacked again and again unless we figure out why you have this ability.”
She offered me a choice when I really had no option. I reached for that silver chestnut without hesitation. It seemed stupid but so right, and as the chestnut simmered and steamed in my hand, sinking into my skin, I was transported to that new and familiar place to which I’ve always yearned to go.
I got off at Columbus Circle and walked up the west side of Central Park, sneaking into the city’s attempted woodland. The foliage never really tamed the lust I had for wild springs and dense forest, but the yearning was abated for a bit by the green surrounding me. I just wish the towering buildings weren’t so overbearingly present overhead, acting like a looming pressure on my shoulders, weighing me down. After six months of living in New York I felt that I had lost something within me, something vital that I could only get back from a place that wasn’t this city. I wondered if I should take a trip sometime soon, if that would help the emptiness that had cemented itself within me. Spring was just budding, I could see it in the trees. Maybe a beach in the Mediterranean, or a mountain in New Zealand. But would such typical tourist destinations really possess what I needed? I felt like I wanted to be somewhere new for a while, but the newness had to have something, well, unusual to it. Like I was the only one who could ever experience it.
I still don’t understand what happened in that moment when everything changed. I remember pain. I remember feeling as if something had bitten my leg by my ankle, a dog or something else with fangs. I remember I lost my balance and was dragged in excruciating cadence along the ground. I remember my foot dripping blood as it hung in the air, my shoes ripped and shredded. I remember there was no creature. But I felt the jaws clamped onto my flesh.
I’m sure I was screaming, and I’m sure that there should have been more people around to come help me. This was Central Park. But the only soul that spared a moment looked like a heap of torn clothes and black trash bags that smelled potently of body odor. As it rushed past me it made some kind of screeching noise that hurt my ears, much like a dog whistle would have sounded if I could have heard it, I imagine.
My leg was free, I stumbled to stand. I was in shock at that point, and I didn’t really hear what that homeless person was saying. I stared at my destroyed shoes, feeling the pain and also feeling pissed that I’d spent $200 on them only to have them slashed apart. I guess it was the disbelief that drowned out any rational thinking. Like, you know, had an invisible dog just attacked me?
“Shit.” It was all I could say. I tried putting some weight on my injury. “Shit.” The bag lady tried to put a hand on my arm to steady me. “Shit, get away!” Then I looked at her and found a child’s face watching me and I jumped back and fell with another curse. I decided it would be better to stay on the ground this time.
She crouched over me and I took the time to get a better look at her. Gray eyes, gray hair, a dark skinned child no older than eight or nine. What I had thought were tattered clothes was a dark cloak of tattered feathers. The pungent smell was not so disgusting any more, more like a primal scent of the earth. When she spoke her voice was unnaturally mature with some kind of foreign accent I couldn’t place.
“You need aide.” She motioned to my foot, which was still bleeding. I could see that my blood was streaming from the set of puncture wounds. “Let me see to it.”
It all started to sink in at that point. I realized I couldn’t hear any sounds from the city. No pulses of traffic, no murmurs of conversation, no shouting of people on cell phones who didn’t care what strangers thought of their personal lives. And the trees and the grass and the brush all seemed blurry somehow, random points of sight fading and dimming from focus even as I watched. All around there hung a shimmering silence, and a little girl who spoke like a woman.
She took my taciturn moment as the question I couldn’t form. “I had to interfere and I couldn’t let anyone else see me. You’re almost out of your own world, it was the only thing I could do.”
“A-Almost?” I felt like I was in a sinister Wonderland.
“It’s…difficult for me to explain,” she started, gingerly lifting my foot and wiping it with a piece of cloth she had on her. “We are in my world, but running in your world’s time.” She caught my thoroughly puzzled look, and a small smile glanced on her face. “Exactly, don’t think about it too much. What you need to know is that a beast of my world attacked you in your own.” She paused. “That isn’t supposed to happen. You aren’t supposed to be aware of our world existing under your own.”
I began to wonder what was in the street cart food I’d eaten for lunch. Minus the aching ankle it was proving to be an interesting hallucination at least. “So how did this happen then?”
She stopped for a moment, reaching under her strange cloak and giving me a look like a teacher who thought I had more potential than I was letting on. “Tell me, as a child did you see things? Unusual things, that is? Things other people couldn’t see?”
“Of course, all kids have an imagination.”
She produced a length of fabric and began wrapping my wound. “But not all children are brought to one of your talk doctors so often. Or put under, what do you call it, hypnosis? Or had a priest come to your house and--”
“Stop.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t stop working on my ankle. “Those so called imaginary creatures. They sometimes gave you nightmares.”
“I said stop.” I pushed away but cringed from the pain. She had me cornered. I stayed silent.
She went back to tending my injury after a moment of consideration. “Now in my world we have a unique currency, you could say. We take from your world the things you won’t remember. Or in your case, what you were forced to not remember.” Her hand snuck back into the mountain of feathers around her body. For a second they looked as if they were even attached to her, but I was quickly distracted by the item she held out to me. A chestnut, gleaming as if dipped in silver. It instantly reminded me of the chestnut tree I always played under as a child. “When I procured this, I knew the person who lost this memory was rather important. It was from a girl who could see into my world as I could see into hers. But without the memory, she was as blind as the others.”
The gray eyed girl refused to let me touch the thing as I found my fingers seeking it impulsively. I needed it, it belonged to me, I had no idea what it was.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” She sat back with concern spreading across her face.
I started to speak but paused to let my thoughts connect. Somehow everything she told me made sense, but the kind of sense you feel as a child where you just accept things as you come up with them because it forms the most illogical yet reasonable explanation. “You’ve been following me. From your world.”
Her eyes glowed. “Exactly.” Her posture relaxed and she leaned closer. “Something is happening here, and you’re involved somehow. You’re a connection between my world and your own. And I fear you will be attacked again and again unless we figure out why you have this ability.”
She offered me a choice when I really had no option. I reached for that silver chestnut without hesitation. It seemed stupid but so right, and as the chestnut simmered and steamed in my hand, sinking into my skin, I was transported to that new and familiar place to which I’ve always yearned to go.
