Sagaria by John Dahlgren

something I’m not going to tell you out here in a boat. Chances are you’d go leaping around and we’d both end up in the water. Now hold your wind until we’re back home.”
    And Sagandran had to be satisfied with that.
    For now.

    Once they were home, Grandpa Melwin did a few odd jobs around the house, then peeled some potatoes and put them on the stove for their supper. They were to go with some chops he would grill later on. By this time, the birds had hushed in readiness for the setting of the sun, which couldn’t be long away. Sagandran felt that if his curiosity got any stronger, he’d probably catch fire. He couldn’t settle to doing anything; all he could think about was this tremendous secret he was finally grown-up enough to be told. He tried guile on Grandpa; it didn’t work. He tried being so irritating that Grandpa would give in just to get some peace; it didn’t work. He tried bluster; that really didn’t work. He tried charm, but all it won him was an affectionate, sympathetic smile that he’d have willingly torn up and trampled into the lakeside mud.  
    He set the table for dinner without being asked.  
    He was that desperate.  
    What had induced him to think that he actually loved this frustrating old curmudgeon?  
    It was only when they were sitting in front of plates of chops and potatoes, the steam rising between them, that Grandpa condescended to put him out of his misery.  
    “I’ve been living for nearly fifty years out in the forest,” he began. “Do you know what it is I’ve been doing?”  
    “Yes,” said Sagandran impatiently. “You were a forest ranger for thirty-something years, and since then you’ve been living out here and …” He waved his hand vaguely, unaware that it was holding a fork with a lump of boiled potato pronged on its end. He hadn’t thought much about what Grandpa did. If someone asked Sagandran, he’d probably reply something like, “Oh, just being a forest ranger still, I guess. Only an unpaid one these days. Means he doesn’t have to do everything the bosses tell him to.”  
    That didn’t seem like the kind of answer Grandpa was about to tell him.  
    “Well, yes,” said Grandpa, seemingly to the chop he was just about to cut in half. “That’s true in a way, and it’s probably what your mother told you. That’s the official version, if you like, but it’s not the whole truth.”  
    Sagandran, agog, had forgotten all about his supper.  
    “You see,” his grandfather said, “the whole time I was a forest ranger – and still today, as much as I ever was – I was doing something else as well.
    “I’ve been guarding a … well … I suppose you could call it a gate, or a portal. But it isn’t just any ordinary gate or portal. It’s a …”
    He put a forkful of pork chop in his mouth and began to chew thoughtfully.
    Sagandran squirmed in his seat, but knew better than to say anything. When Grandpa went into one of his reflective moods, it was best to leave him be until he was finished. Sagandran took a mouthful of his supper, but it wasn’t until he was swallowing it that he discovered it was potato.
    “No,” said Grandpa at last. “That’s not the way to tell it. You eat up your meal, my hero, and I’ll start my story from the proper beginning.”
    He gave a gentle belch and looked toward the forest, as if he were seeing across to the far side.
    “It was a year or two after your grandma had died, God bless her soul, and I was out walking in the woods feeling kind of lonesome, I suppose, when …”

CHAPTER 3
G RANDPA’S S TORY
    t was a year or two after your grandma had died, God bless her soul, and I was out walking in the woods feeling kind of lonesome, I suppose, when I fell down an old well. If I hadn’t been feeling so sorry for myself I wouldn’t have done anything so foolish, but grief does funny things to a man.
    I was lucky the well wasn’t very deep because, though landing on the dry bottom