Hanna was waiting for him on the roughly paved asphalt scraping stones free from the black tar with long hard scrapes from the rubber sole of her running shoes. Dust crawled up her legs from her earlier fall, and about a dozen or so bedazzled hair clips twinkled in her hair. 

“There you are.” She said, with a tone in her voice as if she had been waiting for hours. “Are you ready?” 

“Where are we going?” Elijah asked. 

“It’s not far.” She said, “Let’s go!” 

Elijah responded to this with a puff of hot air through his mouth that pushed a few curls away from his eyes. Hanna dashed northwards down the one-lane drive, and Elijah followed after. They left behind the Matthew’s yellow double-wide, and shortly after they passed by the Greenwood’s blue one, in the same lot a couple yards away. Hanna’s mother stood on the porch that overlooked their front yard and waved within the safety of its shadow as they passed by the barrier of fruit trees their families had grown on the northern edge of the lot. 

Hanna strummed the chain-link fence like a harp with her right hand as they passed by, that housed the orange fields of the packing house that both of their fathers worked. Fragrant white flowers the size of their finger nails dotted the emerald bushes, which were slowly transmogrifying into green orbs that would grow and become bright orange valencias that the two children would pick from the branches that were high and heavy enough to droop over the barbed wire. 

A spooked cotton-tail with white hairs peppering its brown coat, dashed out of the tall, sharp grass that covered the fallow field on the other side of the drive, and sprinted in front of the children until it swerved right and squeezed beneath the chain and vanished within the shadow of the grove, and a family of quail, trailing one after another, followed soon after as burgeoning noon began to heat up the world. 

A white tin shed — as tall as it was imposing, jutted from the middle of the field. According to Hanna’s grandfather, it once housed a variety of tools; tractors, scythes and mowers, that were used to keep the population of sword grass at bay, but now only homed pigeons in the high rafters, brown spiders with legs that were much too long, and the perpetual smell of gasoline and oil. 

“Hanna.” Elijah stammered out when they were about three-quarters of the way out of the lane, “C-can we stop for a bit.” He managed to ask in between heaping breaths. 

The girl glanced back at the struggling boy. 

“Mailboxes?” She called back. 

“Sh-sure.” 

At the very end of the drive, right before the mouth of it opened up into Wanderer’s Avenue, was a large refurbished farm house where Hanna’s grandparents — who owned the land they had just passed, lived. The mailboxes were on the sidewalk right in front of it. Hanna slowed to a stop right beside the row, and Elijah pulled up closely behind her. 

“How much further is it?” Elijah stammered out as he bent at his waist to catch his breath. 

“Just down that way a bit.” She motioned eastwards down the avenue, “then up the hill, and then that way a bit. It’s not far.” 

“‘Not far,’ huh?” Elijah sighed and straightened himself. 

“Not far,” for him and, “not far,” for her were two entirely different things. For him, “not far,” meant a block or so. A couple of weeks back she wanted to show him something, “not far,” from home when they ended up clear across town and had to ask a nearby hotel for a phone to call home because it was getting late and they no longer wanted to walk. 

“Are you ready?” She asked. 

“Not yet.” He answered. 

Hanna whinnied. Her shoulders sank, and she began pacing back and forth along the sidewalk. A car passed by and her head snapped towards it. Her wider, hazel eyes, watched it until it passed them, when a cardinal that had come to roost in the emaciated branches of the orange trees nearest to the road, and her head snapped to watch its warble, until that, too, became uninteresting, by then Elijah had stopped huffing. 

“Are you ready now, Eli?” 

Elijah grunted an affirmative response, and that was the signal for Hanna to bolt down the street again; Elijah huffed behind her a couple of steps. No matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to overtake her if she was serious. The strides from her long legs were like a gallop, while his quickest was as a trot. 

She led them over the black tarmac street, near in the middle of the road, rather than the side of the road where puncture vine and burrs grew rampant. On the left side of the avenue, a row of houses as old as the town itself stood alongside the street. Beautiful constructs of old lumber and brick, with slanted roofs and red-brick chimneys jutting from the tops — relics from colder times. They were painted a multitude of colors. Some red, some sky-blue, and some a pleasing cream and everything in between. Oaks and pines and sycamores with limbs as large as a grown up towered from the center of wild-flower spotted lawns. Berry bearing branches reached over the sidewalk to gift passing children their sweet seeds. 

Two cul-de-sacs had been cut into the fields bordering Hanna’s grandparents property, and terminated at the abandoned, rusting rails that ran alongside the highway on the other side. Half built houses of cheap wood and white plaster that would stick to the bottoms of shoes for days on end, sat along newly minted sidewalks. Shiny cars sat in the porcelain white cement drives of the few fully constructed mono-colored buildings. Impossibly green and impeccable lawns sat at the front of each of these, and all had the same, almost slanted roofs, and were all painted the same dazzling white. 

At the end of the street, the tarmac turned southwards and continued until it reached South wood Avenue where Hanna and Elijah’s elementary school was, where she went to Mrs. Fen’s sixth grade class, and he went to Mr. Ramirez’s fifth grade class. Hanna hopped over the curb that separated the turning section of the wood, from the climb up to the railroad.  She hopped over the barbed wire fence strung between two ancient deadwood posts jutting out of the slope. Elijah followed suit on his belly; pushing himself under while keeping a hold of his shirt so that no loose cloth snagged on the teeth of the wire. 

“We’re about halfway there.” She said. 

Elijah once again responded with a grunt as he pushed himself off the dusty ground. Hanna continued; overcoming the slight climb in a step and a half. A feat that required three steps for Elijah.  They crossed the tracks and continued the slight climb until they came to a stop at the road that led out of town, or through the main street, depending on if one was heading north or south along it. 

They waited there for a second until a lull in traffic before sprinting across, just in time for another pair of headlights to pop up over the horizon. They continued up the climb across the highway. After they climbed up and down a ridge so that they were invisible from the road Hanna slowed to a walk and turned around. 

“So what book were you reading?” She asked. 

She tucked a stray strand of hair that managed to break loose from her hair clip behind her ear. 

“A book about Apollo.” He answered as he watched his steps for stray stones. 

“Like the sun god?” 

“No, idiot.” He snapped at her, “The space program.” 

Hanna’s eyes trailed to the ground and her shoulders sank. 

“I’m not an idiot.” She about near whispered and turned around. 

Elijah felt his heart wringing like a wet rag over a sink. He fought with himself to mutter an apology that never quite broke free from his pride. Watching how carefully she stepped now, and how low her shoulders seemed caused his stomach to flutter and his heart to sink lower and lower into his gut, and so he relegated himself to trudge behind her in the pall of silence that had fallen over the two. 

They continued cutting through the grass for another five or so minute in that heavy quiet until a wooded grove came into view along their path. The grass grew longer and thicker as they approached it. White and gray boulders that stuck to his palms and clothes as he passed by jutted from the ground in clusters as they neared the trees. Hanna’s steps grew quicker, and quicker until she was in a full on dash over the grass and through the woods, navigating through the confusing maze of oaks, sycamores and willows; picking out the barely trod path at her feet. The sound of trickling water made her move all the quicker. Birds flittered by overhead, and squirrels scrambled up the trunks to hide in the leaves from the trampling giants. 

Eventually, the trees thinned out and opened up into a circular clearing. In the middle of it was a small body of water that bordered on the boundary between large puddle and pond, fed by a trickle of water rushing down a rock face that grew off the side of the hill that continued its climb on the opposite side of the clearing. Small barely-fish darted beneath the algae-covered waters, leaving just as small ripples that spread to the dust and mud covered banks. A couple of feet from the muddy banks was a rather large shed, with its door banging inward against something inside. 

Hanna’s feet sank into that mud as she stood in front of the pond and motioned above the stinking water. 

“It’s a lake!” She said proudly. “Last time I was here I saw a fish this big.” She extended her arms in either direction as wide as they could go. 

“It’s a pond.” Elijah corrected. 

Hanna rolled her eyes in as exaggerated manner as possible and spun around and stormed to the shed. 

“It’s a witch’s hut.” She said just as confidently, “Last time I was here there was this reall old woman with a crooked nose and tall, pointy hat.” 

“Really? What’s in it?” 

“I dunno.” She said, as she stepped towards the door and pushed it open. 

Elijah joined her in peeking into it. Wind whistled and rustled through the tattered curtain over a shattered window; shards of glass shimmering beneath the dust on the floor. On the opposite side of the wall from the door. Rusted tools — spades, and scythes and hoes and rakes, and old, broken fishing poles hung on small rings bolted to the wall. A long dresser table took up the entirety of the wall space just opposite of the door. Old tools sat on its top covered in a layer of rust and dust. The door was banging against a chair wedged between it and the couch. 

“It’s a tool shed.” Elijah said. 

A frown creased Hanna’s face as she pushed past the boy and out. 

“One last thing.” She said. 

She led him across to the opposite side of the clearing where they had entered, and back into the woods. The climb got more intense the further they went in; following parallel to the sound of trickling water. At some point Hanna turned northward, heading towards the crick, where the slope rose sharply into an unclimbable wall. Granite boulders jutted out from it like a waterfall of rock, and Hanna began scrambling up. 

“Are you sure it’s safe?” Elijah called up. 

“Yeah, I did it before.”

Elijah lingered at the bottom of the scramble, and tested the holds with his hand; pulling at the stone. When it held and didn’t pull from the ground like a rotting tooth, he looked back up. Hanna was already halfway to the top, and quickly covering the remainder of the way. She looked down towards him. 

“Hurry up, Eli!” 

“Shut up! I’m coming.” 

He looked forwards again at the white and gray granite, then back up. Hanna had already pulled herself over the ledge and was waiting for him at the top; so far away. He swallowed hard, that pea sized lump of fear in his throat.

“Hurry!” She called down to him. 

“I’m scared!” 

“Don’t be! Just do it! It’s not far!” 

Elijah’s heart beat around in his ribs like a rabbit trying to break free from its hutch as his hands gripped at the sticky rock. 

“It’s too far!” He called up. 

His voice rolled off of the stone. 

“No, it’s not!” She called back. 

Her voice echoed back. 

Elijah squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. 

“Okay.” He said through chattering breath, “I’m coming.” 

He held his breath once again, and reached up as high as he could, and grabbed hold of one of the stones. With a heavy grunt he pulled himself up, and set his feet against one of the lower stones.

“There you go!” Hanna called down, “you can do it!” 

Again he pulled himself up, and straddled a good-sized boulder and caught his breath. Hanna peered down at him from above; knocking handfuls of sand and soil down the slope. 

“Be careful!” He called up while shielding his eyes. 

“Sorry!”

Elijah looked up. She was still so far away. Dozens of feet. Hundreds. He slid down prone on top of the boulder he was on and dangled his foot off of the edge. As his other foot began to join it Hanna leaned forwards and stretched her arm out; calling to him as she dangled off of the edge. 

“You’re almost there, Eli.” She said. 

Elijah looked up from the ground. The top of the wall seemed much more reachable now that her arm had measured the distance. He pushed himself to his feet and steadied his footing on the boulder and turned to face the wall once again. 

“Just a little further.” Hanna groaned; stretching her arm to its limit. 

Elijah pushed his heels off the ground and stretched his calves as he stood tip-toe with his right arm extended through the spaces between the boulders. Their fingertips brushed against one another and Hanna tried to grasp his hand. 

“You have to climb a bit more.” Hanna said. “Can you do it?” 

Elijah nodded and lowered his heels back to the ground and grabbed hold of one of the boulders above him. He scrambled up the boulders like a dog trying to climb a tree. When he was halfway up the scramble he reached up once again and Hanna grabbed hold of his hand and swung her other arm over to grab his arm with her other. Both her and Elijah pulled until he was up and over onto the slope of the hill. 

Hanna fell backwards, and Eli huffed on his side. Both lay on the duff in silence for a moment before Hanna broke it by laughing loudly. 

“You were so scared!” She said, as she rolled over and sat up, crossing her legs. 

“Shut up.” Elijah said as he did the same.