Imagine awakening not to the soft but solid pressure of a mattress at one’s back, but the coarseness of dirt against one’s palms and the tickle of grass blades along the fingertips. And when vision swam back into view, it brought with it a bright mid-day sky carrying feelings of disbelief and suspicion—not because there was anything wrong with the sky itself, but rather with the way it had replaced the white painted ceiling of a bedroom with an endless blue tapestry and the drifting pearl foam of clouds. No, that in itself was not strange, for surely there were people in the world, somewhere, who slept and awoke outside.
But of all the people who had wandered onto the mysterious isle of slumber from the ever so great outdoors, not one of them was a Miss Lucy Lockhart with nineteen years to her name.
And so, it came as no surprise that this expanse of idyllic, grassy fields offered only confusion to a Miss Lucy Lockhart meant to awaken to a bedroom, a bedroom housing a desk, a desk topped with textbooks and notebooks and pens, one such pen having written “Notes for the Mid-Term” on a sheet of paper the night before this rude awakening. Could this place be the park down the block? Could this be some kind of practical joke, like that one episode (a fan favourite?) from a particular sitcom (that inescapable sitcom) where a major character awoke to find his bed afloat in a river (cue laugh track)?
Alas, there was no sand-stained swing set, nor cherry-red slide gleaming in the mid-day sun, nor dirt pathways stirred up by barking beagles and tottering toddlers to confirm that yes, this was indeed the park down the block. Or even that this was a park at all. The only park-like thing present was the grass, and the grass certainly wasn’t saying anything to that effect.
Whatever the grass was saying, it likely only said to each other, as there was a whole lot of it. In fact, its sheer uninterrupted abundance would seem to suggest that, somehow, the entire world consisted of nothing but grass. Grass, and the sky above it. Green and blue. Blue and green. Like the pastorial paintings one might see of the summertime prairies, paintings that elicited a sense of fantasy and escapism and wholeness before being brushed back to the back of the mind and then, eventually, oblivion as focus went to schoolwork and family problems and world problems and…so many other things a painting couldn’t fix.
But for as nicely as the grass complimented the still and serene dullness of the sky, those blades of green were cheekier than they looked, for in a certain direction there lay above them something that wasn’t more grass. It was familiar at first sight, and then an illusion, a trick of the light once the finer details were made clear, and then a not-so-small indication that this whole space may not exist within the realm of the waking.
For surely, those awake would never, ever see a floating staircase.
Much less one that reached higher, and higher, and higher, so unceasingly through the sky that a broken neck was a sure thing when one set their gaze to follow it to its end (if it had one). Is this a dream?—might be said by footsteps approaching the staircase in a confused and anxious daze.
And what is the point of asking that?—the staircase might say in its stubborn presence, its refusal to dissolve as a mere mirage or hallucination. There is nowhere else to go, so why not climb me and see?
Thus the grass laughed and cried at being crunched underfoot, but the staircase remained obstinately silent and proud at Lucy climbing up onto its first levitating step. Well, there may have been a slight giggle at the shivers elicited from the coldness of that step’s surface, welcoming bare feet with a Cheshire grin. That step, and all the rest of its kind, shined a proud marble white with a visible tint of baby blue, swallowing up the colour of Lucy’s pyjamas so that, to those higher powers peering down from on high, there was naught but the staircase itself and a small, barely-perceptible speck moving along it.
This staircase was featureless, as most staircases were, for it was the destination rather than the journey that justified their existence (contrary to what clever adages had to say). But unlike most any staircase, this one was so stupendously long and high no mere human gaze could observe the destination. Where, then, does the eye wander when it grows bored of seeing another step, same as the last fifty? Why, it wanders down, down, down, to those lands that this enormous and impossible staircase rose out of and lorded over. Such a thing would be unfortunate for individuals beset by acrophobia, but fortunately the small, timid mouse of a woman who had spent her lifetime shrinking away and was now climbing these steps did not fall into that category of fear. Nor was there any actual falling happening, despite how the gaps between the steps were large enough to afford her downcast gaze a view of the far, far below.
Far, far below, past the grass standing with an effected, almost impossible healthiness and liveliness, barren desert lands stretched out farther than the farthest expanses. So devoid of life it was! And what little remnants littered atop the dunes were signs of life faded: leafless husks of trees, the deep brown tangles of bushes that were no longer bushes, dry sedimented valleys holding only the faintest memory of water. It was, of course, impossible to see the whole world from just this vantage point atop the stairs. But featurelessness and repetition went on and on, chattering their confusing words around the walking young mouse of a woman named Lucy, never revealing any secrets as to where anything else was, nor whether there was anything more out there to begin with.
But these were weak lies, for the infinite desert’s surface soon procured a bizarre configuration of tiny cubes and enormous blocks. The trickery of extreme height and distance obscured it, but with some imagination and some recollection of the real world, the truth became clear: these structures were homes. Either massive, garish mansions with too many floors and too many wings and side houses to count, or dilapidated little shacks threatening to collapse at the smallest gust of desert wind. Their extreme disparity spoke of an intense desire for symmetry, or perhaps balance in a less geometrically-strict sense, at least to the mind of the one continually climbing the stairs far above these exaggerated abodes.
Stolen story; please report.
On and on over the relentless desert arose more peculiarities. A big splodge of yellow declared itself, shyly, to be a massive field of wheat. Hurrah!—one might think, until catching sight of the sharp glimmer of silver all around the field, bisecting it a million times in an interlocking grid, trapping the would-be happy wheat in a cage with a massive, complicated lock.
And then there was the gigantic pit where specks of what first appeared to be sand fell, rose up, then fell again, endlessly. Noise from the pit travelled up even as far as the surface of the staircase, and in that noise it was clear that it was not dumb, meaningless sand cursed to fall over and over. The noise was an amalgam of human voices, crying for help, but oddly spoken as if none of them were aware that other people were falling beside them. Lonely screams, cried in unison. Oh, if only the stairs beneath her feet could be given to those doomed to fall again and again.
And when did these stairs come to an end? They had, in their staunch and proud silence, bragged about their sheer length, but the further these steps were travelled, revealing more and more of the unsavoury world below, the longer and larger these stairs appeared to be—or perhaps they made one small Lucy ever and ever smaller. Each step increased in size and in its gap from the previous step, almost as if straining the possibility of making it one step further. The faint promise of reaching a destination still echoed from the unseeable end, but this was challenged by the ever-increasing draw of despair and alarm of the sights far below. For how could one ignore the sight of such a sad, defeated world, even as one has no choice but to continue walking over it?
Eventually, the stale tans and browns of the desert came to an end, replaced sharply with deep bold blue. Water—it lapped up against the boundary of the desert, crashing violently in waves. Deep beneath its all-encompassing blueness was what appeared to be everything the world was missing: other types of structures, people—who weren’t endlessly falling—milling about and speaking to one another, elaborate congregations of wildlife and vegetation. But they were all totally submerged in blue: drowned and unmoving, trapped in frozen time as if a time-halting bomb had gone off in the middle of an ordinary day.
So distracting was the presence of this voracious ocean that the air past the end of the staircase’s final step was pierced through by the sole of a foot. This was where the staircase would have the easiest time claiming victims, sending them hurtling down the now hundreds of feet of empty air. But the end of the staircase was more gracious than all that came before it—for an extra step materialized to catch the foot that would have fallen straight into certain death.
This new final step was quite different from all the other steps, for it went on and on and on—and it became clear that this was not a step of the arduously tall staircase, but a bridge, a wholly separate and more forgiving bridge, laxly stretching forward through the high air until it ended at a massive wooden door.
No, not a mere door, its enormity said. A gate. The gate. To a massive, white, sparkling castle that stood at the end of the bridge.
How did an entire castle stand aloft so very high up in the sky? It would be advisable not to ask, nor to stare too much at the absence of anything beneath the structure, for migraine-inducing confusion was sure to set in, as had almost happened to young Lucy after two or three bewildered steps across the bridge. Even if one were to ask for such an absurd answer out loud, who would answer? For no guards stood at the gate, nor did the windows and turrets reveal the shadowy figures of distant onlookers. It was really so greedy, the gate, being the only thing that appeared vaguely interactable on the castle’s front face, asking—no, commanding that its sole visitor come up close and rap her fist on its mighty wooden surface.
Was it so wise to knock on the gate of an unknown, floating castle? The gate itself did not resist the idea, reverberating with the echo of Lucy’s meek knocking, but nor did it offer encouragement by opening up even a little bit. Still, there was an empathic deepness to its brown wooden timbers, absorbing and understanding the notions of fear and curiosity and just wanting to be away from the sights of the world below, from the sadness the world evoked and the smallness it cast upon gazers like a silent curse. The door was kind, kinder than the staircase, but still it did not yield.
Nor did it speak, so that the only noise was the howling of the wind, free to roar loudly ever so high up in the sky’s domain. There did, eventually, come a different sort of clamour that came from behind the castle: incredibly loud whirring, the rush of things moving rapidly, and the pristine tone of a bell ringing out several times. There, off to the side, were fanciful ships and tiny, distant people on bicycles—all of them floating in the sky with all the naturalness of jellyfish wandering through the sea’s depths—departing from what appeared to be the rear of the castle. They flew out in different directions and slowly descended down into the world below. Some ships and bicycles—and planes, it seemed as well—rose up from the world below and flew toward the castle’s rear. It was a curious detail, but one that sweated the palms and tightened the throat while standing before the castle’s gate, for now this very castle seemed very central, very important, very potent in its ability to make onlookers feel small, even more so than that ostentatious staircase.
“You may come in.”
Despite all the racket of the wind and the ships and the bicycle bells, that voice pierced through it all. Where had it come from? Since it had said to “come in,” it was logical to assume that the speaker was within the castle walls—and yet, the voice itself had come from nowhere and everywhere, approaching from every direction and zeroing in on the single spot of the one hapless listener. How intimidating that must be in its otherworldliness, and yet it did not inspire fear; for the voice spoke not with authority, but hospitality, and the content of the words constituted not a command, but an invitation.
When the last echoes of the voice faded, the large pair of doors making up the castle’s gate swung inward with a slow heaviness. Though this impregnable structure had now opened itself up to passage and scrutiny, this opening revealed precious little besides a stone pathway covered in luxurious red carpet and massive stone columns, the likes of which were typical and told nothing of what lay further in. If you wish to see more, the red carpet might whisper, then follow me, follow me, deeper and deeper inside.
