Chapter 2: Into The Woods

Immediately everything was dark. The bathroom disappeared as if the lights had been snuffed out. Slowly a green light faded into appearance above, just as we expected. Clara released my hand and floated upward towards what seemed like the surface of a lake or a pool. We stumbled out of the water and fell on our hands and knees onto the ground. 

We found ourselves, as we knew we would, in the woods. Green light filtered down through the branches of every tree you could name. Straight birches and gnarled oaks grew side by side, along with twisted cedars and quivering aspens. The ground was carpeted with pine needles and gold and brown leaves. I took a deep breath in inhaled the rich scent of earth and growing things. “Can you hear anything?” Clara whispered to me. 

“Just you. Why are you whispering?” 

“This just seems like…a…whispering place,” she replied. Slowly we got to our feet. She was right. I had walked the sanctuaries of hundreds of churches in a dozen countries across Europe. But this was the most holy place I had ever stood. We began to wander away from the pool from which we had emerged, until Clara had the good sense to mark an “O” for “Oxford” in the dirt with a stick. The woods stretched on as far as we could see, and it was hard to choose where to begin. According to “Magician’s Nephew,” each pool would take us to a different world. Could we get to Narnia? Hogwarts? Neverland? And which pool was which?”

“I don’t know which one to choose.” Clara frowned, staring around at the wealth of pools around us. 

“Did you think they would be marked like the woods in Nightmare Before Christmas?”

“Of course not! Well…yes…kinda…” we laughed.

“Well, just pick one and go. This is your adventure.”

“The guys are never gonna believe this. Oh wait! Does your camera work?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. No bars. No surprise. But the camera did come on, and I took Clara’s photo by the pool she had chosen. Maybe if her brother and father saw the picture, I could convince them it was THIS wood and not just some park in London. I turned the phone off, not knowing what kind of effect a magical journey would have on a battery. “Is your green ring ready?” 

“Absolutely. Green ring in my left pocket, yellow in my right.”

“How does that make any sense at all?”

Clara shrugged. “I just figured we would be here more than we would be anywhere else, so right hand for the place we will go more.”

“Well, it’s logical. I guess Lewis would approve. Ready?” We put on our green rings and stepped into the water.

**********

We found ourselves, again, in the woods. “I don’t think it worked,” Clara said. 

“No, these woods are definitely different. It’s much hotter here. And not flat. The Wood Between is smooth and almost tended. This woods has roots sticking up everywhere. Plus, you can hear things.” Cries of birds, croaks of frogs, and possibly the howls of monkeys filled the air. Compared to the near silence of the Wood Between, it was almost deafening.

“I wonder where we are, then.” She walked up a rise to our right to get a better look at the landscape, then dropped quickly to the ground. “PIRATES” she whispered loudly back to me. I crept slowly up the rise to join her and peered over the edge of the rise. We were crouching on the top of a hill looking down on a crescent-shaped island. A three masted pirate ship lay at anchor in the bay in the center of the crescent. The wind picked up and an unmistakeable black flag, painted with a skull and crossed swords, waved in the breeze.

“Do you think these are fun pirates or not-fun pirates?” I asked. 

“How are we gonna tell? Get closer?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Well, we did put on yellow rings that we dug up from under a bench in Oxford.”

“Fine, we’ll get closer. Just be very careful. There’s a big difference between Captain Hook and Long John Silver.” 

Suddenly a flock of birds burst out of the trees above our heads. I gasped, then clapped my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound. “Birds flying signify danger cliche!” Clara muttered. The last bird out of the trees was an enormous blue parrot. “PIECES OF EIGHT, PIECES OF EIGHT!” it shrieked.

“These pirates are definitely not fun. We should get out of here!” But it was too late. Before we could move, eight burly men came out of the woods singing “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest—Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” The first man in line was shorter than we expected, and walked with a limp because of the wooden leg reaching up to his right hip. “Halt!” he cried out, and the rest of the men shuffled to a standstill, staring right at us.

One of the men reached down and pulled me to my feet, while another grabbed Clara’s arm. “Leave her alone!” I shouted, fighting against my captor. He wrapped his arm around my middle and held me close to his stinking shirt. I turned my face away, trying to breathe, and stomped on his foot. He yelped in pain and shock and let me go; I threw myself at the pirate who had Clara in his grip, but she had elbowed him in the ribs and he was doubled up in pain as well. 

“For a bunch of pirates, they don’t fight very well,” Clara muttered under her breath.

“They’re probably not used to girls who fight back,” I answered.

The pirate leader shoved the other men aside, bellowing at us. “Where did you come from? There’s no way you were stowaways on my ship, by thunder!” I bit my lip to hold back a chuckle at my favorite exclamation.

Clara was quicker to answer. “We’ve been on this island for weeks. We were…shipwrecked here. My mother and I were the only survivors.”

“What was the name of the ship?”

I answered with the first ship that came to mind. “The Enterprise.” Clara rolled her eyes and groaned. 

“There’s no ship called the Enterprise from London.”

“No, we launched from…um…the colonies” I forgot when in history Stevenson had placed his pirates and didn’t want to take chances on them not knowing about Texas.

“Hmm.” The one-legged pirate grunted at me and shoved Clara and myself into the line of pirates. We were handed shovels and told to follow along.

After trudging for about a mile (up, down, across a stream, and around too many trees to count) we came to a ring of trees nestled together on top of a small hill. “Huzzah, mates, all together!” shouted one of the men, and they all took off at a run, headed towards treasure that Clara and I knew was not there. Clara and I held back as the men ran off. “Do you want to follow and see them not find the treasure?”

“No, I don’t want Silver mad at me. Yellow rings ready?”

“Ready.”

And with that, we left Treasure Island behind.

Chapter 1: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bodleian Library

 “You’re not crying, are you, Mom?” Clara asked quietly as she stepped next to me. “Mom?” She paused. “MOM. PEOPLE ARE WATCHING,” she whispered loudly.

“I’m not crying,” I said with a sniffle. “It’s just, it’s…it’s…LEWIS.” We both chuckled and sniffed, trying to look like we were not, indeed, crying. I blew my nose and shoved the tissue back in my pocket. Then we meandered through the rest of the churchyard. It was a perfect Oxford summer day, the temperature a breezy 25 degrees…Celsius…as my phone had decided to go metric on me. 

Clara and I had fled the brutal Texas heat for a week in London, and we had set this day aside for a pilgrimage to the home of our favorite author. To sit where Lewis sat…to walk where Lewis walked…to touch the doorknob Lewis touched…to squeal over the typewriter which Lewis’ brother Warnie had use to type the Narnia books. To try the wardrobe, of course. (We were disappointed to find only coats). The final stage of the tour of the Kilns was to visit the churchyard where Lewis and his brother were buried next to their mother. And I tried, again, not to cry.

The cabbie who had driven us to the Kilns met us at the Six Bells pub and drove us back to the center of town (it was only four miles…6.5 kilometers, thank you) but we would be on our feet the rest of the day and enjoyed the drive. Plus, we drove by a house where Tolkein had once lived, just for some extra nerd cred.

Clara absolutely insisted on eating lunch at the Eagle and Child, Lewis’s favorite pub in town. She didn’t have to twist my arm to convince me to indulge in fish and chips, as well a pint. Honestly, did we have any other choice? The pub was crowded as rain was threatening, but we managed to grab barstools and counter space in the sacred Rabbit Room. 

“What’s the plan after lunch?” I asked Clara as she wrestled the Rick Steves guidebook out of her backpack. 

Clara flipped to the sticky notes she had in the book for Oxford. “I’d like to see the Radcliffe Camera if we can, and then I think we can get tickets to the Bodleian Library and the Divinity School. After that we can…wander around Hogwarts, I guess.”

“Wandering sounds fantastic. Oxford is the place where so many adventures have begun!”

“Oh, I know. Lewis and Tolkein, obviously, as well as so many other great minds who studied here. Plus, the Divinity School is literally Hogwarts.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, they filmed parts of several of the movies there.”

“Oh fun! Will totally have to see it today. Are you about ready to go?”

“Oh, yes. What do we do with our rubbish?”

We tossed our rubbish in the bin and stepped out of the pub into the cool, cloudy afternoon. Clara pulled the map out of my backpack and we walked up to the Radcliffe Camera, but sadly there were no tours that day. “Oh, you have to be a special reader to get in,” she said. 

“Well, kiddo, I think you’re pretty special, and you are definitely a reader.”

“Ha ha mom, I don’t thing that counts.”

“Well, their loss. Selfies anyway!”

We got our tickets for the tours and found we had 30 minutes before the Divinity School visit. My shoe was untied, so I sat down on a bench facing Radcliffe Square.

Clara knelt down to but her book back in her bag. “Wait…what’s that?” she asked, reaching under the bench.

“What’s what?” I knelt down too, and saw that she was prying something small and square out of the dirt under the bench. She unearthed a dark brown wooden box, brushing dirt off the sides and the lid. The box rattled and rang when she turned it over.

“Can you get it open?” She handed me the box and I pushed and pulled on what seemed to be the top. Then I noticed a ridge on one side. I pushed on the ridge with my thumb and the center third of that side of the box slid down.

“Oh! It’s a puzzle box!” I was finally able to slide the top of the box open and I gasped at what I saw inside. Four simple rings rattled around in the box, two of them obviously gold and two of them with a greenish tint.

Clara gasped too and we stared at each other, mouths and eyes wide open. 

I recovered first. “Nope. No way. I have read too many books…no way am I putting on these rings.”

Clara’s eyes were shining with delight and the prospect of adventure. “Ha. I’ve read all of those same books. Hand ‘em over.” 

I slid the pieces of the box together and wrapped my hands around the box, then looked around the square to make sure no one had seen us. My mind was whirling. How could we have found THESE RINGS? And yet, it was Oxford, the place where the best adventures began. I took a deep breath and made a decision.

“Fine. We’ll do it. But not out here. The muggles are watching. Come with me.” 

Clara followed me to the nearest bookstore where I picked up a copy of “The Magician’s Nephew.” “I can’t believe we’re going to try this,” Clara said, giggling. 

“Me either. Now, where can we get supplies? We need snackage if we’re actually going on an adventure.”

We found bottled water, a wedge of cheese, a small loaf of bread, some dried fruit, and a package of beef jerky at a shop across the square. “Where’s the loo, please?” I asked as we paid for the food, and we found our way back to the bathroom. We divided up the food between our backpacks and then pulled out the box again, setting it on the bathroom counter. I slid the side down and the top across and carefully tipped the four rings onto a paper towel. 

“Don’t touch them yet! I don’t remember which is which!” I cautioned her. I flipped through the novel to check which ring was which, then wrapped each green ring in a piece of paper towel. “Here, put this in your pocket, and be careful with it!” I took a deep breath and put the ring in Clara’s hand, and she shoved it in her pocket. I did the same with my green ring. Then we stared at the yellow rings. 

“Twenty minutes ago we were buying tickets to go the Bodleian library,” Clara said. “I think this is going to be more fun.”

“Yeah. Me too.” We grinned at each other. Clara took my hand, and together we reached out and touched the yellow rings.