PARTY AT THE ICE PALACE. I decided that I had better keep hold of the money that I had and not spend what was my only means of passage to the Ice Palace. “Well now I think that I know why I am going to the Ice Palace; but why am I going to the party when I have nothing to give?” I would have loved to have sampled some of the delicious smelling food that the hot dog vendor was displaying and the hot coffee would have felt warm going down my throat. I supposed that there would be plenty to eat and drink at the party so I continued my walk to the large Iron Gate that had blocked my entrance to the road to the Ice Palace.
I arrived at my destination in mid afternoon and stopped to lean upon the gate and was startled by a voice that said, “To enter the gate place 600 Smubles into the slot in the red box.” There was no one there that I could see, yet the message was continually repeated. I thought that it was a recording at first; triggered by my leaning upon the gate. The sound of the voice came from out beyond the gate and not through a loudspeaker. It was a strange puzzle indeed, just as the name of the newspaper had been; IT’S HAPPENING in SOMEWHERE ELSE. I knew of two things that were happening in Somewhere Else, a party at the Ice Palace and strange voices from out of nowhere.
I opened the leather bag and began to remove the coins from the bag, placing them one at a time through the slot in the red box. I put the smallest one in first and it clinked around and finally fell out of a hole on the left side of the box. I tried the other small coin and got the same results. With each successive coin I received the same results and there was now a small pile of coin lying on the ground below the red box. The only things left in the bag were the three red discs with the yellow spot in the middle of them; and if these didn’t work perhaps I should wait for other travelers to go through the gate and then I could sneak in with them; yet in the whole day I had not encountered even one other person. Clink, the first disc went into the box and I watched the hole on the side for the disc’s exit, nothing. Then in went the second disc and it remained in the red box as well. I took the third disc, kissed it, and with a hopeful thought dropped it into the slot. “YOU MAY ENTER,” the voice from nowhere said. I bent down and scooped up the coin from the ground and walked through the Iron Gate.
I journeyed onward and off in the distance I could see the shining glow on the horizon, that must be the Ice Palace, I thought to myself. The fields to the left and right of me were filled with a great number of trees; they were so tall and dense that they formed a sort of canyon down the path. I entered a section of forest where the tree tops overshadowed the roadway and gave me the idea that I was leaving the canyon and entering a tunnel to a new destination. Up ahead I saw a fork in the road and did what any traveler in my situation might do; I picked it up and put it into my pocket. I also did the same with the spoon and the knife that were lying by the fork; you never know perhaps I would find the meal that goes along with this grouping of dinnerware.
The pathway through the tunnel made a left turn into another tunnel of trees; and this path was a wooden walkway that went on as far as I could see; which wasn’t far because the light was blocked by the trees with an occasional sunbeam poking in through a hole in the tree tops.
I stepped to my left and something moved under me. It was a loose board and it sent me staggering ahead into the darkness. Pain, then I awoke in a small hut on an island in a strange land. At my feet lay a bag with some unknown coins in it; a note said 600 Smubles for you to enter the ice palace. I looked around as the four walls began to surge in and out keeping time with the thumping in my head.
I rose to my feet and looked out the window of the small thatch hut that was surrounding me. Directly in my line of sight was a white sandy beach and beyond that was the bluest of blue waters that I had ever seen. There were palm trees lining the beach to the left of me and to the right was just more sand as far as the eye could see. The thumping in my head had stopped now as I began to recall where I had been and what I had been doing.
I had been on a journey to the Ice Palace for some sort of party; travelling through a tunnel of trees and somehow was now in this small hut on a beach. The situation puzzled me even more because I knew that the Ice Palace was still part of the plan due to the other bag of money that I had found lying at my feet; but where it was, how I would get there and when was another matter; one that caused the thumping in my head to return, so I decided to shelve that idea for a while and check out my new surroundings.
I picked up the bag of coins and went out onto the sandy beach to explore my new surroundings. It had been a very trying day and I decided that a swim in the water would be good for me and so I jumped feet first into the crystal, clear water. The surface of the water had been very deceptive as I found that the water itself was very, very cold and not at all what I had expected to find. That ended my morning swim and I realized that things in the last few days were not what they appeared to be; rather the circumstances could not be trusted at all. I wished that I could remember who I was and where I was supposed to be. Bits and pieces of what I assumed were vague memories came and went, (boss, boss where are you? The image of moving down a black-topped road at a very high rate of speed, and with a large soft bed) but they were not enough to give me a clue as to what my former life was or even where it was. I knew this though, that I had been to a town called Someplace Else, wherever that was and I had found some strange money, wandered down an unknown path, and found myself in a grass hut surrounded by the most awesome scenery that one could wish for; only to have my beautiful day trashed by some very ice cold water.
The icy water triggered something in my brain, something about a party at an Ice Palace; again I had no idea where that was or even why I was supposed to be there. I thought about the money in the leather bag, and a memory of climbing an unending fence came to mind. Now that I had somewhat of an idea as to where I was going and that this money had something to do with it, a new sense of purpose came over me.
An Ice Palace would be a very large place indeed, something that could be seen from miles away and that became my mission for the moment; to find the highest point and seek out my destination. There was one problem that I faced in securing this goal and that was the hundreds of trees that were blocking my view; yes indeed, they made a wonderful postcard picture and had my mission been to secure fantastic scenery for a post card then this would have been the end of my trip. The feeling crept over me like a spider looking for a place to build a web, that this journey would not soon be over or would it be as easy as I had hoped for.
Two pathways were laid out before me at the edge of the forest and I chose to go to down the one on the right. Something blocked me from entering this path, a force field or something like that; the same invisible force also hindered my entrance into the trail on the left. This being the case I continued down the tree-line until I found another pathway; again I could not enter into the tropical forest that ran alongside the beach. From somewhere amongst the trees I heard the sounds of birds, and other jungle creatures. I heard some small insect sounding noises along with the roar of a lion and it occurred to me that this out of sight sentinel that prevented me from entering the forest at my previously chosen points was also keeping these wild creatures at bay; which I decided was a very good thing.
If I could have seen where I was from the comfort of an airplane then I would have know that my current position was on an island and that the Ice Palace that I sought was in fact only one-hundred yards down the beach in the opposite direction of the one that I had chosen to explore. One-hundred yards from what I sought as my destination and I chose the wrong direction; a direction I was following that would take me days out of my way to the Ice Palace.
“Will, it is now 5:00pm and the boss is still not back, I think something is wrong, we should call the police or something, “said Terrie. “You guys call the police, I’m going to look for him,” said Wilbur. “Where are you going to start Wilbur?” questioned Mary while fighting back the tears of wo
rry. “Like I said before, perhaps he fell down a manhole cover and is stuck someplace else.” “Brother would you quit playing around and be serious?” Will saw from the look in Wilbur’s eyes that he was serious and so he pushed the topic no longer. The police were called and the employees’ of 64 Pickles were given the standard answer that “nothing can be done until they are missing for twenty-four hours.”
The daylight was fading away and giving the night the ruling hand over this tropical land. I was a wanderer in a strange land and had no idea of what the dark hours would hold for me. I was thankful for the few banana trees that I had found which allowed me to dine on something of substance, although I thought that if I didn’t find something else to eat soon I would tire of eating this monkey food. The water in the ocean near the beach was very cold and surprisingly enough was fresh and not salty; yet I longed for a cold soda or a hot cup of coffee. I was lost in my complaining when my eyes sent a signal to my brain, “look to the right on that bush.” There on a bush I saw the biggest bunch of berries I had ever seen;