Keeping Holiday (4 page)
Dylan could not believe what he was hearing. “You sound like you’ve been there,” he said. “Have you?”
Not just his father but Dylan’s mother also nodded solemnly. “Of course we have, and our dearest wish is for you be authorized to go as well,” his mother told him.
“Why haven’t you ever taken me?” Dylan wanted to know.
“We’ve taken you as close as we can,” she answered. “The rest of it is a trip you must make on your own. Like your father says, pay careful attention, and make every effort to find the Founder.”
Dylan shook his head. “No, you can’t find the Founder,” he said. “I’ve already been told that.”
“But he has a way of being found, nonetheless,” his mother answered. That was all she would say, except for urging Dylan and Clare to be careful and to be sure to take water with them, as well as some fruit and sandwiches. As she kissed him goodbye before going out the door with her husband to do her shopping, Dylan thought her eyes looked a little teary.
In a matter of minutes, the cousins had packed a few sandwiches and grabbed a few apples. Then they hurried to the church and through the front door (doors were never locked in Holiday). Dylan was heading single-mindedly for the door to the garden when Clare stopped him by calling, “Dylan! Look!” He stopped and looked where she pointed at the information rack. “It’s empty again. Just like it was when we were here the other day. That whole stack of visitor’s passes is gone.”
Dylan saw that she was right. There was no sign of the green passes. “Maybe that man came back and got one after all,” he said.
“Right,” Clare laughed. “And took them all to hand them out to his grown-up friends!” She stopped laughing and became thoughtful. “Maybe the passes are only available when the church is open for services.”
Dylan was already moving ahead again. “Maybe,” he answered. “Come on.” And he opened the door to the small, enclosed garden. There was the gate, just as he remembered it. Today, however, the garden was not empty. A man sat on a folding chair next to the gate. Dylan thought he recognized the same man who had guarded the entrance to Holiday when Dylan had seen it three years ago.
The man did not seem to recognize Dylan, however. “Good morning,” the man said. “Got your passes?” “Right here,” Dylan noddedeagerly, holding up the pass. Was he actually going to get
into the real Holiday at last? “Now, you do understand, don’t you,” the man said, “that you must keep these passes with you at all times?” Both Dylan and Clare nodded. “Lose ’em,” the man continued, “and you lose the right to be in there at all—ever—
and
you’ll get stuck with a hefty fine. And you also understand that once you go in you have a total of four days for using this pass, then it expires for good. After that, you can only get in again if you’ve been authorized. And only the Founder can authorize you.”
“Yes, we know,” Clare answered for both of them. “Do you think we’ll find the Founder once we get into Holiday?”
The little man peered at Clare, as though she had said something truly startling. After a minute of staring, he answered, “You don’t find the Founder; he finds you.” He paused briefly, and added, “He’s not just the Founder; he’s the Finder, too.” He paused again. Then his face broke into a grin, and he opened his mouth to say one more thing.
But before he could say it, Dylan said quickly, “That rhymed.” The man’s mouth snapped shut and the grin disappeared. “It
did
rhyme,” he said quietly. Then, he stood and inspected both of their passes. “Have a nice visit,” he said, and held open the gate that led from the garden.
D
ylan stepped through the gate first, with Clare right behind him. They hurried down the path to the overlook, and looked down. There it lay, the real Holiday, its walls, its towers, and its banners glistening in brilliant shades of red, gold, green, and blue. Clare stood still and stared, her mouth open. She closed it at last, then opened it again to say, “Oh, Dylan, isn’t it beautiful?”
Dylan nodded. “I can only imagine what it’s like up close! Come on,” he said and started off down the path leading to the city. The barricade that had stopped him before was up. He stepped past it, Clare right behind.
Then Clare called, “Dylan, wait.” Dylan looked back to see Clare pointing to a sign just on the other side of the road. “Look.”
Dylan looked at the wooden, arrow-shaped sign. It pointed in exactly the opposite direction from the entrance to the beautiful city. The words on the sign read, “FIRST-TIME GUESTS TO HOLIDAY. THIS WAY.”
“That’s crazy!” Dylan said. “Anyone can see that Holiday is the other direction. It’s not that way at all. Come on. Let’s go the way we can
see
we should go.” Dylan turned back and set out once more toward the city. Clare hesitated, shrugged, then followed. She had to hurry to keep up. Dylan, in his excitement, walked briskly, talking all the while.
“It’s not just that it
looks
pretty,” Dylan said to Clare. “There’s so much more to it than just the way it looks. It’s the way it smells and the sounds you can hear—and just the way it makes you
feel
. I want to feel that way forever. . . .” Dylan’s voice trailed off and he stopped in his tracks, looking at another wooden, arrow-shaped sign they had come to. The sign pointed back the way they had come. “FIRST-TIME VISITOR ?” it said, in large letters. In smaller letters underneath were the words, “WRONG WAY.”
Dylan looked at the sign suspiciously, as though he suspected it of playing a joke on him, but he said nothing. He shook his head slightly and continued on, without changing direction. The children walked on in silence for a few more minutes until they came to yet another sign, again of wood and in the same shape, pointing back the way they had come. This one read: “WARNING! WRONG WAY FOR FIRST-TIME VISITORS!”
“Maybe we
should
go back the other way,” Clare suggested. “What you really want is to get authorized so you can come whenever you want and stay as long as you like, right? If you keep ignoring the signs and someone finds out, you might not get authorized.”
“But going in the
opposite
direction is just plain silly!” Dylan replied shortly, and continued down the path. Clare did not argue and walked with him in silence.
Soon, however, their path stopped in front of a high wall with a gate. Dylan tried the gate. It would not open, but a small screen in the wall lit up. Words came onto the screen with these directions: “To open the gate, give proof of LIFE and insert your visitor’s pass into the slot.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dylan asked. “What does it want to do, take my pulse?” He found the slot and thrust his pass inside.
After a few seconds, the pass came back out. The screen lit up with these words: “Rejected. First-time visitor. Proof of LIFE required.”
“Look how LIFE is in all capitals,” Clare pointed out. “Maybe LIFE is a place that other path leads to. Maybe once we get there, we get some kind of stamp on our pass or something.”
This made some sense to Dylan, but before he could answer, Clare pointed at the screen. “Look,” she said, “it’s saying something else.”
Dylan looked. The letters had changed and now the screen read: “Warning. Attempts to ignore posted signs may result in permanent loss of visitor’s passes.”
Dylan gave up. “All right. I guess there’s no other choice. We’re going to have to waste who-knows-how-much of our four days going in the
opposite
direction from where we can see we ought to go.” He cast one last, longing look at the city with its rich jewel colors and turned his back on it. Together, the cousins began to retrace their steps. Before long, Dylan and Clare were back where they had started, at the first sign pointing the way for first-time visitors.
They passed the sign and followed the road through the woods, then across a grassy meadow, and up a little hill. From the top of this hill, Dylan and Clare could see another hill across from them. Nestled between the two hills lay what appeared to be a garden park. In the park, a footpath wound through tall, stately cypress trees. Stone statues and small markers dotted the park’s open spaces. Twisting up and over many of the statues, ropes of ivy grew wild and untended. Near many of the markers, golden flowers added flecks of color. A black wrought iron fence enclosed the whole park, its gate standing open. Dylan and Clare’s path led through this gate. Pointing in, one more sign read, “FIRST-TIME VISITORS. THIS WAY.”
The cousins descended the hill and passed through the gate. “This is all very pretty,” Dylan muttered, “but I really didn’t want to visit a garden. I wanted to get to Holiday.”
“It is pretty,” Clare agreed, “and peaceful. Almost too peaceful. It feels very serious, like a place for having some kind of ceremonies.” She and Dylan were walking on the footpath now, as it wound in and out among the trees. The only path to be seen, it led the two deeper and deeper into the garden, toward the base of the second hill, where it appeared to dead end. Once they reached the base of that hill, though, Dylan and Clare found that the path continued, leading into a rounded opening that had been cut in the rock.
Dylan and Clare peered into this entrance. The path seemed to go straight back, through a long hallway or tunnel, into the hill itself. Clare looked at Dylan. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
“I guess we go in,” he answered. “The sign at the gate said, ‘First-time visitors, this way.’ There’s no other path. This must be where we go.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” a man’s voice asked.
Dylan jumped. He turned to see where the voice had come from. Off to the side, on a bench half hidden by a bush, Mr. Smith sat watching Dylan and Clare.
“I didn’t see you there,” Dylan said, once he got over his surprise. He held up his green visitor’s pass. “Are you using one of these too?”
Mr. Smith stood up and came over to Dylan and Clare. He flashed his usual pleasant smile. “Oh,” he said, “are
we talking about going to the
real
Holiday again?” He looked around. “Are we there now? Is this it?” And he smiled again.
“No, this isn’t it,” Dylan said, “but all the signs point this way. They say first-time visitors need to come this way first. You must have seen the city when you came down the path.”
“So you
haven’t
been to the real Holiday?” the man asked.
Dylan and Clare shook their heads. “Not yet,” Clare said.
Mr. Smith nodded. “Of course not,” he said. Another pleasant smile. Then he said, as if to himself, “Children always want a bigger and better Holiday.” He shook his head. Then he put his hand on Dylan’s shoulder and gazed into his eyes. “There’s only one way to have a bigger and better Holiday,” he said earnestly, “and that is by hanging on to the good feelings and the brotherly spirit you have while you’re in the Holiday we visit on vacation. Some day, when you’re older, you’ll understand that.” He let go of Dylan’s shoulder and gave it a little pat.
“But for now,” Mr. Smith said, “I heard you say you were going to go through that doorway. It’s okay to be childish sometimes—it’s charming, really—but even children should understand about safety.”
Dylan peered through the doorway again. “What’s unsafe about it?” he asked. “It’s a good, wide path; it’s even paved. It just goes straight; you couldn’t get lost. And there’s plenty of light.”