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He was 5 years old.
Danny was very tired. After swimming to the shore of the lake, the child almost immediately fell to the wet ground to catch his breath. A gust of cool breeze on this hot summer day made a five-year-old child shiver and still sit down in order to hug his bare knees with his hands. The rubber boots were bought for him to grow up and, to great luck, which his five-year-old brain was still unable to comprehend, flew off his feet almost as soon as he found himself overboard a small inflatable boat at the moment when his father fell asleep.
The child sniffed, rubbing his shoulders and ankles with his fingers and looking at the massive figure of his father with a panama hat pulled over his face. The orange jumpsuit blended in color with the inflatable boat, and from a distance it seemed like it was just a huge inflatable contraption that floated on the water like a rubber ball. Should I have called him? Or was it better to just swim back in silence and try to get back into the boat? Will there be enough room for him there? Will he be able to climb up there now if he failed after he fell?
Sighing, the boy got to his feet and began to pull off his clothes to wring them out a little, rather than sitting on the shore and shivering in the cool breeze. However, his short shorts and space rocket T-shirt were soaked to the skin, and his hands were still too weak to wring things out properly. But he decided that it was better this way than nothing at all. His clothes still clung uncomfortably to his body, his socks squelched under his feet and all sorts of small filth from the forest floor and the earth stuck to them, but the water no longer poured from his body in cold streams.
“I want to go home," — the child thought with a sigh, casting another glance at the boat in which the parent was sleeping soundly. If there was one thing the incident in the basement laboratory with that strange iron statue had taught him, it was that it was useless to call Dad. He won't hear it anyway, especially if he's asleep. They left the car somewhere behind the forest, in a small old and almost abandoned parking lot by the road. Danny seemed to remember the way, and it shouldn't be so difficult to get to the Fenton-rover to get a change of clothes from there, to put himself in order a little so that it wouldn't be so cold, damp and disgusting. And maybe even have a snack, because the child perfectly remembered that his mother gave them a rather large bag of snacks, which his father did not take with him to the boat. Therefore, there was no doubt in the mind of a five-year-old child that this was a good plan and he could easily cope with it. It wasn't far to go.
At least that's what it seemed to him initially. And then, at some point, the path disappeared from under my feet. He didn't even notice how the trees became thicker, and the ground under his feet turned into nothing but potholes, which he constantly stumbled over. The trees were dense, and the sun was barely visible behind their foliage. Once, the boy heard hissing under his feet and barely managed to jump away from an angry snake, which was almost invisible against the background of the forest floor.
― I'm sorry, ― Danny apologized, circling the snake in a wide arc. His mother told him that snakes wouldn't bite him for nothing and that they were usually more afraid of him than he was of them. The main thing is to notice them in time and not touch them. Then everything will be fine.
Suddenly, the forest in front of him became sparser and he saw... a house? In the middle of the forest stood a strange stone building without a roof, part of the walls had collapsed, the rest was held together only by leaning on ancient trees that grew close to the stone masonry, covered with ivy.
It seems that there was something similar to a fence around the house before, but all that remained of it was a small curb with remnants of rusted rods. There were a lot of overripe apples and pears on the ground, which no one had picked for a long time. Previously domestic, the roses have finally gone wild and now their bushes with sharp thorns have replaced the missing fence in some places. Surprisingly, the doorway and a pair of empty glassless windows were still visible on the surviving part of the house, with a young tree peeking out of one of them.
Glancing at the second-floor windows, Danny gasped. It seems that there, in the darkness behind the stone wall, something small and brightly glowing with green light flashed by. It was a ghost! Probably a ghost! After all, who else could live in a strange abandoned and almost destroyed house somewhere in the forest?
The child's heart beat fast with fright and the child ran away from the scary house, completely not understanding the road. He ran until his legs got tangled in something and he fell right to the ground. Very strangely soft ground.
To get up, Danny had to start disentangling himself from the twigs of a strange plant, whose stiff and long stems densely covered a clearing with purple flowers that covered almost the entire ground in a small clearing. They looked thin, but they turned out to be terribly durable, and the child even managed to injure his finger while trying to free himself from the bonds of wild plants.
― Boy, who are you? — The unfamiliar voice made the child jump in fright.
When Danny tried to jump to his feet to run again, he fell again, still unable to free one of his ankles from the captivity of the plants.
― Hush, hush! ― the stranger raised his hands so that the child could see that there was nothing in them except a small bunch of flowers and fragrant herbs, which the man immediately hurried to throw on the ground. — I won't hurt you. Calm down. I can help you. Do you want to?
The man approached the child slowly and unhurriedly, without making any sudden movements, so as not to frighten him even more. He commented on each of his actions before committing it. “I'll come closer now.” “I'll sit next to you and untangle the stems.” It was calmer that way. Danny at least knew roughly what to expect and what kind of movement would indicate that the man would do something completely different from what he was talking about.
That was understandable.
— Are you lost? — the man asked, continuing to carefully untangle the child's legs from the creeping ivy so as not to damage his delicate pale skin, which was already bitten by mosquitoes and covered with cuts and bruises. — If that's the case, then I can help and take you back to your Dad. Do you want to?
— I don't want go to Dad, ― Danny sobbed involuntarily. He was tired of his father's company, because he didn't even want to go on this stupid fishing trip. It was entirely the idea of the head of the Fenton family, who felt that he needed to spend more time with his son, who began to “fade away” in the company of his own mother and sister. ― I want to go to home. To mom.
― Okay, let me try to take you home, if that's what you want more, — the man immediately agreed. He seemed to have untangled the boy's legs a long time ago and was now just picking small bouquets of bright purple and purple flowers. — Do you know where your house is? Do you remember the name of the street so I can walk you out?
Danny was taken aback for a second. He walked from home to the nearest park many times to go for a walk with his mother or sister. I often took the bus to the doctor in the city center, a lovely woman in a colorful dress and pink glasses who smelled of sweets. But he did not remember the name of the street where he lives. He didn't even remember the house number. Just the fact that it's all located in the Amity Park. Time dragged on, and the man kept looking at him and waiting for the answer, which the kid did not know and did not remember, although there was more than enough time to learn. If Jess had been there, she probably would have answered the question herself, but she would have called it stupid. Mom would sigh in disappointment, but Dad would...
Tears began to flow from his eyes by themselves, and the stranger, slightly shocked by his reactions, began to comfort the child, asking him to stop crying, because everything is fine. That nothing terrible is happening yet and that he will help him come home if he remembers at least something that is near his house. There may be some notable building or park. The man stroked boy's hair and wiped his tears with a handkerchief with a pattern in the form of a night sky with a large moon and a bunch of yellow stars.
― T...There's a Park-K, — Danny stammered. — There... There's also an old fountain with coins. S-swing. And a path made of small stones.
― You see, it means we're almost there and we can walk at least as far as the Park, — the stranger encouraged him. — And you're getting upset.
While the man was comforting him, he managed to weave something similar to a Christmas wreath, which his father hung on the door. Only completely composed of pale flowers, which overgrown the entire clearing. He handed this wreath to Danny as a small gift so that he would be a little distracted by the unusual decoration and stop crying and stuttering so much.
Danny picked up the wreath. Its base was woven from the roughest stems in which it was entangled, but they were tightly entwined with soft flower legs and their stiff leaves, similar in shape to slightly elongated hearts.
― Tell me, would you be able to find your way to your house from this park if you were in it? ― the man asked, picking up his strange bouquet of grass and flowers from the ground.
— I could! — The child nodded confidently, wiping away his tears and clutching the wreath with his fingers.
— Then we're lucky, because we're right next to this Park, — the stranger smiled, taking the wreath from Danny's hands and putting it on his head like some kind of strange decoration.
— Really? ― the child was surprised, quite sincerely believing the man's words.
― Yeah, ― the stranger nodded. — And if you hold my hand tight and don't take off your head the wreath until I tell you to, we'll get there even faster. Do you want to get home faster?
― Very much! — Danny almost jumped with excitement.
― Then give me your pen, ― the stranger smiled and for a second it seemed to the child that stars sparkled in his eyes. But just for a second.
Danny tightened his fingers on the man's broad palm as much as he could wrap around it, and together they walked through the forest clearing. The trees surrounded them tightly again, but not for long, and very soon they became much taller and denser. First, tall grass appeared under his feet in dirty and already slightly torn socks, and then something that looked like a mowed park lawn. The man gently released his hand from his fingers and parted the branches of a tree growing too low in front of him.
And before Danny's eyes appeared the same old fountain with a bunch of coins that people threw into it to make a wish.
— Were we really that close? ― the child exclaimed joyfully, running out onto the path covered with fine brown gravel leading to the fountain.
― Very close, — the man nodded. ― Will it be easier for you to remember where your home is now?
— Yes! We need to go over there. There will be no gate and the road will pass by a small vegetable store. Mom's buying broccoli there, — Danny began to chatter actively, not even noticing that the stranger took his hand again and walked with him in the indicated direction.
It was only a short walk from this park. Passersby looked strangely at a man with a bouquet of herbs and flowers leading a chatty child without shoes and with a strange wreath on his head. But Danny didn't care, because he was almost home. Far away from the fish with bleary eyes, the cold lake and the snoring of his father, who probably still hasn't woken up.
When he reached the house on the corner, Danny released the stranger's hand and quickly climbed the porch steps to ring the bell from the wide stone railing of the house. After all, it was only by climbing on them that he reached for that stupid button.
― Danny? — Maddy exclaimed in surprise, opening the door and dropping some half―assembled device from her hands. — Honey, how did you get here? Weren't you supposed to be fishing with your dad?!
— I just fell into the water and got wet, — the child quickly began to explain. ― I wanted to go to the car and change my clothes, but then I found myself in a clearing and fell, and that man helped me get here.
— What man? — Maddy asked, removing the strange wreath from her son's head and casually tossing it aside.
— That one... — Danny turned to point at the man with the bouquet of wildflowers, but the street behind him was completely empty. A purple flower that had fallen out of his wreath lay on the asphalt at the threshold of the house, and a little higher up in the sky a fast dragonfly was circling, which was rapidly flying higher and further away from their house.