D:L&L - Part 8 | Dot: Going Native

Clearing the perimeter was easy enough last night. Nothing was there. Really. Nothing was there. The well wasn’t out back, which accounted for the situation with the water in the house. The garden was gone. There wasn’t a familiar speck of dirt anywhere around. If the soil now was tillable, it would make for some wild, sparkly plant life. The sandbox that Grandma kept for “my grandchildren someday” was evidently somewhere other than here.

And the jury was out on the exact definition of “here”.

There was water for coffee this morning. Fortunately, the bottled water wasn’t damaged in this little crash into crazy-land. I filled the thermos and packed a few things into Alice. Yeah, I know. The gun has a name. The pack has a name. Time to get going.

If I didn’t believe that quantum physics was more than a theory, this would have scared the shit out of me. But I was used to alien worlds. Afghanistan hadn’t exactly been Kansas, and neither was this place.

Red trees, kind of a cross between willows and cedars, with some kind of varying shades of reddish-gold algae or grass dotted the landscape in every direction. Maybe it wasn’t algae? I didn’t know. It resembled pyrite – fool’s gold – but not the right consistency. Maybe I was the fool.

Where to go from here, I wondered? North, always north. Made sense, if north was even a thing here. The sun was, but it was hiding behind a deep layer of clouds, peeking out here and there, but distinctly — um, that way. What was the landscape? What did a map of Oz look like? No GPS, no Google Maps, no asking Siri. I didn’t even know where my phone was, but I was sure there’d be no signal.

Was Oz like the world I knew? Was West that way and East this? Was is spring or fall or summer? Warm breezes told me something, and I stood there and watched the trees in the distance bend and sway. If the sun was in front of me, was that East? It felt early, and I could see the wild grass sparkling with dew. No map. No direction. No idea. There was only one option. Get high and see what was what. And that meant I was about to climb the hills that rose in the distance on my left.

I decided that West. What else could I do? The only idea of where anything in Oz was, if this was indeed Oz, was from granny, and she’d said she’d landed in a place called Munchkinland, which was south and east of the capital, the Emerald City. I stood there, just outside the door of the house, shaking my head and laughing at myself. Here I was, I’d decided, in Oz. It was a joke. It was a fantasy. It was a dream, for sure. I pinched myself and yelped. It was all I knew, and it would have to do. Time to march.

The hills were farther than I thought, but I had nowhere else to go. If there was anything I needed to be concerned about, it was food and water. I only had a bottle of water. No matter what happened or what I found on those hills, if there was nothing that spoke to that problem, there was going to be trouble. Toto could handle any wildlife — at least I thought he could. He’d never let me down before. But what would wildlife even be like here? Lions and tigers and bears? Oh my!

I giggled to myself and walked, wishing I had my phone, jonesing for my headphones and a little music.

The closer I got to the hills, the more I turned around to make sure the house was still there. It grew progressively smaller, my home base, the only safety I knew here. The whole world was different, but it was still the same, a little worse for wear, but the same. The little chimney was tilted to the side — old bricks not handling the house slamming down. The front window glinted in the sunlight spilling down from the clouds. One end of the porch totally collapsed. There was work to do there once I got back, and that felt comforting.

It was the only thing.

An hour or so later — there was no way to tell how long, but I’d watched the sunlight angling from between the clouds — I heard a little gurgle of water and veered toward some higher, reddish brown grass. The first necessity — survive. And water was number one. It had never been more important in the dry wadis and rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Here, in this odd, but lush landscape, there was no doubt there’d be water. All I had to do was drink it and hope for the best.

I pushed through the grasses, slow careful steps, my eyes peeled for what I might find. The gurgling grew louder, and I smiled. It was definitely a stream, or a something larger. A sudden rush of relief swept over me, and I laughed out loud, more like a bark, a crow, something that reminded me of the usual Marine cry, “Oorah!” And just as I burst into the open, I heard a gasp and a tiny woman in a frilly, rose-pink dress spun around, her face full of fear. And I couldn’t blame her. Toto was in my hand and pointed directly at the forehead of one of the smallest women I’ve ever seen in my life.

“And you are…?” I asked.

She blushed bright red, and she said, “I am only Melsha. I am no one.”

She smiled at me, not a hint of fear on her face, this little round woman, her face flushed, her eyes squinting like little stars as she beamed back at me. I stared at her, my hand still extended, until it dawned on me that she couldn’t possibly know what I was holding or how dangerous it was. Toto, sorry to wake you up twice now, but back you go to bed. I slipped my pistol into its home and let me arms hang at my side. “What are you doing here?

“I come here to visit the water in this branch and remember. Many memories. The water takes my memories and washes them away. The hurt. The pain. The loss. I wash it away, and I go home.”

”Which way is home?”

She pointed up the hill. “And you?”

I turned, starting to point back down the hill toward the house. My eyes lingered there, soaking in the scene. Home. It was so far away. Then I turned back and found her standing there, swaying back and forth, her hands smoothing her dress. “I’m Dot. My home is…” I hesitated, unsure of what to say, unsure if I should give my basecamp away, even though it sounded silly here in front of this doll-like figure. But I’d seen enough jihadis in the ‘stan who were more dangerous than they seemed. “Far away,” I said. “My home is far away.”

“I’m heading home now. It’s this way,” she said, and she skipped over the stream and started trudging up the hill without looking back. “Best not to linger. Such strange weather we’ve been having.”

I stared at her, watching her moving through the grass in a pair of little blue shoes that buckled at her ankles. Her dress swished side-to-side as she walked, and her golden hair waved in the breeze. Was this a Munchkin, I wondered? There was only one way to find out.