Chapter 3 - A Secret Private Garden in the Sky:

The profoundness of the spell broke once the door was out of view. The old man gently persuaded him wearily up the hardwood stairs with a comforting arm around his shoulder.

In airy, tired, descending scale he stated firmly: “You have traveled far,” and added with a taming, balanced musical quality, ”Mmperhaps even farther than you imagine possible, in such a disturbingly short amount of time. Your disorientation must be devastating.”

He felt like he had been dropped out of a helicopter into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Not tied or weighted or anything constructive like that, but simply dumped in the infinite sea and left to sink or swim by his own choice. Bobbing up and down with nothing to hang on to. The waves seemed to make fun of him.

“You have traveled so far, and yet have traveled not,” he continued with contrast, pausing at an open window. Bits of his shocking white hair fluttered, bobbed and swooped on his head in the calmly flickering breeze. With the sun silhouetting him through the window, it looked like an albino fire with electric blue eyes. “This is your home, you were born just over there, all those ages ago” gesturing with the tip of his nose at a carved stone spiral that could be seen outside, on the ground. “You and I even built this place the last time you were here. …As we built the place before it”, he added with an afterthought, looking at the pale walls around them.

Sensing that his audience was teetering on the edge of the infinite abyss, he turned, and continued climbing, changing his song to something slightly more bite sized. “Please, make yourself at home while you are here. You are, of course, completely free to come and go as you please. In fact, you are not even obligated to stay. We are not holding you prisoner. There are many wonders that must be explored, and I do encourage you to explore them freely. Your apartment is here, on the third floor, I’m sure you will find everything that you need there” he motioned towards the second of two doors that was just coming into view down the hall at the back of the building. The stairs continued on to the ceiling. The old man continued on up the stairs.

Looking up, he grabbed a hidden handle with his free hand, and pushed with a slight grunt. A well-camouflaged door attached right to the roof popped open, letting in a thin, golden beam of sun, carrying fragrant earthy smelling air. The beam rapidly grew to a near blinding flood of nice smelling white as he swung the door completely open, and dropped it with a thud on the flat roof of the building. They ascended the remaining stairs as he did.

“This is the rooftop garden. It really is quite nice you know. I do quite like it” he offered, almost dramatically. It sounded like a complement.

They had made their exodus from the confines of the interior walls onto a path that spiraled once around the roof, and ended in the center of the garden. From the stairs on the left of the building, it curved around to the front of a rectangular, pyramidal shaped greenhouse on the rear third of the roof. From there, around to a surreal sculpture of what appeared to be two stone heads growing out of each other, to a colorful flower bed in the front, and completing the perfect golden spiral shape where there was a stone obelisk in the center that sprouted a fountain. The water seemed to glow as it spouted out the apex, and flowed down all four sides into a circular basin that surrounded it. From there it drained into numerous stone channels that curved and meandered around the roof, supplying water to the various plant beds, gardens, and the greenhouse. Small, low, wooded bridges carried the arcing path over the stone water channels where they crossed. There was a wooden bench placed at the four corners of the circular basin. The rest seemed like an ordered chaos of various colorful, flowers, plants, shrubs, and smaller trees. By apparent design, none of it could be seen from the street. The façade of the outside walls of the building continued up past the roof, making a waist high railing around the whole garden. His jaw hung open as looked around, taking in the breathtaking chaotic simplicity of it all. It looked as if it had been masterfully designed by nature itself, built by man, and gardened by the numerous buzzing, hopping, flapping, crapping, climbing and crawling creatures that seemed more than willing to share it with them.

They followed the circle shaped stepping-stone path along its curving route, passing the greenhouse. “This is the greenhouse. Marvelous, really” the old man pointed out with his hand and excited musical voice, “it grows most of the food for the people in the building, cleans our water and recycles our waste, and the list goes on.” Not a bit of space looked to be wasted in it, from the outside all that could really be seen was an explosion of various green leaves just on the inside of the glass, with barely visible racks, and pipes, and things the messenger couldn’t make out. Not stopping, they spiraled down the path.

Up close, the surreal stone statue was striking. A war between two smooth grey stone faces facing different directions. They seemed to grow and struggle to climb out of each other, in the same single head. One was the face of a near savage with burning, angry eyes, and a scowling desperate mouth, while its eyebrows seemed to delicately portray an underlying fear mixed with sadness. The other had intensely passionate eyes, framed by a courageous expression of determination and silent strength. Neither really looked happy. In fact each seemed to want desperately to escape the other. The other that itself was growing out of.

‘Unreal!’ thought the messenger, with an indescribably ironic feeling. He felt a connection to the statue. It haunted him.

“Fascinatingly grotesque, isn’t it” remarked the tall, thin old man with calm wonder and awe, noticing how his companion was taken with it. “It always makes me stop and ponder the reality behind the illusion. I often find myself planted on that bench,” he stated, matter of factly, pointing vaguely in the general direction of the bench facing it from the fountain, “in the wee early morning bits of the day, contemplating this and that. It always seems to energize my thoughts.”

After a lingering investigation of the two faced statue, the two men continued on, to the central fountain. The water flowing from just beneath a crystal sphere perched atop the capstone of the obelisk made a bubbly burbling sound as it spouted and flowed down the sides and into the stone trough in the center of the receiving basin at the bottom. From there, out the various stone channels which were fed by it. The polished white stone of the inside of the pedestal basin was parabolic shaped, and mirror smooth, without imperfection, and seemed to reflect and focus any light that struck it right at the crystal sphere of the obelisk. The ball itself was almost blindingly bright. The whole thing looked quite stunning, really. “This is actually our old power generator. It’s mostly out of date now. We call it the obsolete obelisk. Although the building does still get most of its daytime interior lighting from it and it powers the fountain, which it was converted into, and the greenhouse. Personally, I think it makes for a rather unique fountain”, he added, almost defending it. “The water’s gurgling and burbling add quite a nice sounding white noise to the overall song of the garden, don’t you think?”

Now that he mentioned it, the water babbling by definitely did add a certain calming quality to the overall dynamic energy of one of the most interesting gardens the messenger had ever seen. An almost zombie like “yes” fell out of his mouth. He was still short on words, although the tranquility of the spiraling rooftop garden path was having an unwinding effect.

The old man floated over to the wooden, three-person bench overlooking the stone statue. “Please,” he said invitingly, placing a hand on the back of the bench, “take a load off. You must be exhausted from your travels, for you have indeed taken the journey of a lifetime.”