Chapter the second - Arrival in Harvest Valley

“But I wanna ride the elephant!” Jack moaned.

 

Sarah opened her eyes. That’s funny, she thought, the ceiling wasn’t usually that blue.

Then it all came flooding back. She had never believed Jack when he told her about the giant mouth in the sky, and he had never pushed the matter, but sometimes she did wonder if there was any point to her life, if any of the time she had spent on that little sandy stretch of infinity would be remembered. But now the Mouth-God had sent them on a mission.

Back at the beach the six of them, Jack, Sarah and their four friends had all lived in that little house, made pizza and surfed. They grew tomatoes, went to the market in the little village down the beach for other food and  had everything they would even need. There was little difference between waking and dreaming, and the whole thing seemed to be some lost delusion in the face of this utterly different world around her.The people were nice, and utterly forgettable, and she couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been there, sleeping, eating, surfing, or out in the little paddle boat fishing for food.

 

Everything was always the same, a perfect little paradise in the back of the Mouth’s mind, an endless stretch of beach, good friends, and nothing else. She had never been further than the village a mile down the road. The occasional change came along, like a piece of metal dropping from the void above in the sky. Jack supposed it was something of the Mouth-God’s. Most of the objects that fell were metallic or crystalline. None of them ever seemed to be sort, and they almost always had sharp, cruel edges.

 

“Jack, wake up” Sarah said, shaking him awake and looking around. The scene was a strange one. They sat on a piece of rock, which tapered to a point at its base and was lodged in the soil of the surrounding countryside. The place was a patchwork of fields and hedges, and a cow wandered past clanking its bell with a bored expression on its face.

Mountains rose, snow capped, in the distance in all directions and the place seemed to be an island of low ground in a sea of shining white peaks. The ground formed a slowly curving bowl in the nest of the mountains, and the whole land was green and yellow. Corn seemed to be growing in some places, and stalks of wheat surrounded the rock on which Sarah sat. The place had a certain feel to it like a late autumn harvest. The smells were rich and wholesome, and the scent of nuts and acorns whisked through the breeze. Apple orchards could be seen in the distance.

The cow began to chew its food, apparently for the second time, and Sarah wondered if it was supposed to be in that particular field, but something about the beast’s easy manner told her that it was as used to this field as any man.

Jack seemed to be waking up, and the thin trail of saliva running from his cheek made Sarah notice the layer of sand on top of the rock. Apparently this was part of the beach, maybe the whole beach and all their friends had disintegrated with the collision with this strange new land. The thought made Sarah feel strange, a sort of sinking, emptiness inside her chest. A voice in her head told her it was called sadness. Perhaps that was what Jack had meant when he said the great Mouth spoke to him.

 

“Oh no.” Jack groaned clearly coming to the conclusions that Sarah had just come to, and as the confusion slowly cleared from his face Sarah contemplated the life she had led. Perhaps she was just one of the Mouth’s creations, just a character, but that didn’t seem to take away the reality of the situation she faced. She didn’t want to leave the rock, the little slice of home. It was all she had left, the last piece of this thing she loved so dearly.

Again she heard the whispers in her mind. They called the thing she was clinging to summer. She had no idea who “They” were, but the voice had begun to tell her things about the world she had just entered, and somehow it just made sense.

 She knew about seasons, but she had never really seen them. Summer was all she knew, and now she was being cast into this new place, this “Autumn”. It was all too much.

 

 

Somehow the death of summertime was crushing her. She felt overwhelmed. The other seasons seemed so cold, brooding and unhappy, like the waiting periods for the next summer, but this world seemed to be different, and something told her that time would continue to march on inexorably, whether she was ready or not. So she decided to prepare herself, rather than be caught unawares, and pulled her clothing closer, to guard against the wind that was rushing across the plain, seeming to strip the heat from her very bones.

 

Gradually the cracks began to grow in the rock, and summer began to slip away lost to time. The sand sank through her fingers and the crumbling began. The soft clay of the land around them began to devour the sandy golden bastion of warmth, swallowing it in dark earthy loam, thick with moisture and life.

The stone faded to dust.