the pipe out of his mouth and watched as a rather large frog floated away. “I think I will, but only because you are distressing me in my own home.”
Ambrose lit up. “Thank you sir.”
“Don’t go doing that yet. I haven’t told you how I would help.”
“Well . . .” I said nicely, not wanting to get him anymore distressed.
He leaned back in the chair. “As you probably know the world around you changes frequently. There is a way you can control where you go.”
“There is?” I whispered.
“Of course. Now it’s not an exact science. What you have to do is collect something from each place you go and that will change where you end up next. When you leave here you will be on a nice dirt road. You will find a Spoon in the road.”
“Do you mean a fork in the road?” Ambrose asked.
“No I mean there will be a spoon sitting in the road. You will take it. Shortly after that you will arrive in a frozen wasteland. There you will find a hat. Put the hat on and you will end up near a small city. Go into the city and stay one night in the hotel. When you wake up you will be in the place where your secret lies. I will meet you there.”
“And you are sure this will work?” I inquired eagerly.
He sighed. “I know it will.”
I could barely hold in my excitement. I was only a little ways away from getting home and sitting back on my couch in my little apartment. I was even happier for Ambrose. Soon he would be back with his family.
“Thank you so much. I am so sorry that I helped Heradus instead of you.”
“None of that matters now.” He said kindly.
I started for the door. Ambrose stayed back.
“Why can’t you just get us there yourself?” He asked.
The wizard leaned towards him. “Because then you won’t learn anything for yourself, now carry on.”
We left the hut and let a few floating frogs out when we opened the door. I watched in amazement as they went up in the air and disappeared.
I was on my way and for the first time I had an itinerary and a destination. I was so pleased it took a few seconds to notice that we were in fact on a little dirt road. It curved up a hill. Fences lined fields on either side. The breeze was nice and the air was warm. It looked to be shaping up into a fine day with my new friend Ambrose.
11. The Spoon and the Snowman
The path took us up the hill and gave us a great view of the road ahead. The fields and fences stretched endlessly into the distance. A few trees were scattered here and there in the fields. There were no houses and no people or animals. It was just Ambrose and I scanning the ground for a spoon. We missed a lot of the beauty around us because our eyes were only focused on the dirt road. Occasionally I would spread my arms wide and take a deep breath of the wonderfully tasty air. It could take all day to find that spoon and I wouldn’t care. I was just happy to be doing something I knew was productive.
Ambrose had cheered up as well. He didn’t look like the sad little kid I found lying on the ground. He chatted away about what the spoon might look like and was already guessing as to the style of the hat.
“I’m going to say a party hat.” He said excitedly.
“I’ll say it’s a bowler then. I always found those funny.”
We spent a good bit of time talking about the spoon and the hat. We even went into how the hotel room might be. Neither of us could remember staying at a hotel, but it was probably just one more thing that we forgot. I can’t overstate how nice it was to have someone to talk to that was in the same position I was. It made me want to figure this out even more, for his sake. When it was just me I could go around and not care much. With another person I felt like the brave leader who knew the most, though unfortunately not much. It made me care more.
The road flattened out at the bottom of the hill. There was nothing spoon shaped around, but we didn’t falter in our hope.
“He did say it would be in the road, right?” Ambrose asked me.
“I believe so.” We both kept our eyes on the ground. “Hey, what is the first thing you are going to do when you get home?”
He shuffled his feet. “I don’t remember much about home.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember something about my family, but not much. And something about school, but not much about that either.” He stopped and thought for a second. “But there is something, deep down, it’s more of a feeling though. It’s just a great feeling, and I know I only get it at certain places. I haven’t gotten in while I’m here, but I remember it.”
“That sounds nice.” I said dreamily. “I wish I could remember good feelings. The only ones I remember are bad.”
We walked a little ways without finding anything. The excitement we felt as we left the wizard’s hut soon dwindled.
“What are you going to do when you get home?” Ambrose asked.
“That’s a good question. I remember a few things. I know I had a couch in a little apartment and worked at a department store. I guess I just want to be back on my couch.”
“Did you have an exciting life?”
“I don’t think so. I think it was actually pretty boring.”
“Then why do you want to get back?”
I took my eyes off the ground and looked at him. “I suppose because it is still my life and I want to be a part of it.”
“But this is your life too.”
I took a deep breath. “True. You know what? I’m so confused about what’s real and what’s not that there are times when I don’t care if I get back.”
“At least we know this is real.”
“Do we?”
He nodded. “It seems real enough, doesn’t it?”
“It does look real.”
The sun, which I could not see, must have been dipping for the horizon because the sky was now filled with orange and red. Before long it was evening and the sky darkened.
“We must be getting close.” I said; wanting to find the spoon before it was too dark to see. With no civilization nearby I assumed the sun was our only light source.
“I can feel it.” Ambrose whispered. “We will find it before dark.”
And so with rejuvenated vigor we searched faster. Ambrose ran ahead and I stayed back scanning the ground carefully. There was a small part of me that believed the wizard tricked us into believing his story. When the thought came into my head I reminded myself that he was right about us finding a dirt road, and so at least was truthful about something.
Ambrose called to me. I ran to meet him. He pointed at something on the ground. With what little light was left I saw something poking through the ground. I knelt down and studied it. It didn’t look metal. I pulled it up. It was a plastic spoon.
“You know if I wasn’t looking for it I probably would have passed right by it.”
“What do we do now?”
I looked the spoon over. “We wait to be transported to a frozen wasteland.”
I tapped the spoon against my leg and waited for things to change. I glanced around expecting things to warp and morph.
“None of the places changed without something happening.” I thought aloud. “Usually I died, but occasionally I would go through a door, like we did earlier.”
“Then let’s look for a door.” Ambrose proposed.
There wasn’t a single sign of anything that could have a door. “I don’t think that will work this time.”
The light was just about gone. And that’s when I thought of it.
“It has to be dark.”
“What?”
“I remember when I first got here I was going through the water and it got dark. Next thing I know I am in a swamp. I think it has t get dark. That way the stagehands can change the sets.”
“The who?”
“The stagehands. This is like one big play. Things change when the set is dark.”
He pretended to understand me. “And so we wait for it to get dark?”
“That’s all we have to do.”
I took a seat on the ground and waited. The light rapidly weakened until we sat in absolute darkness. I held the spoon close. It was silent. Sometime when I wasn’t paying attention the ground changed. It was harder, colder. I smiled. This was it. Light started again behind us. The new landscape was completely different. The ground grew colder every second and I jumped up.
We were no longer on a pleasant dirt road. We were now freezing in a new environment. The ground was light and covered with a thin layer of snow. To our left was a range of great mountains, all covered with snow at the top and ice down the sides. There was nothing but more flat land to our right.
Jackets replaced whatever we were wearing before. I zipped mine up and put the hood on. I helped Ambrose with his. Even with the jacket it was still cold. An icy wind chilled us. There was no place to get away from it. I was afraid a hat would blow all around in those conditions. This was beginning to look like a much harder task than simply finding a spoon on a nice dirt road. But there was no way around it. Ambrose and I lowered our heads against the wind and started on our way.
The path we had chosen was not marked in any way save for where we had been and the prints we left. It took us near the mountains where we hoped to avoid some of the gusts that took their toll on our bodies. The closer we got the harder the wind hit us. It was hard to keep our heads up long enough to see something as small as a hat. I told Ambrose to keep his face as covered as he could while I searched the ground and the air.
It was a desolate scene. If anyone was around they would