If she stood in just the right place, she could see the tunnel. It was perfectly round, arching as high above as it dug below. Anyone else would have seen a bridge reflected in the waters of the lake, but when she stood just where she stood, she knew it was much more than that. And she would have gladly gone through the tunnel to discover the new world beyond it, but she knew, somehow, in order to do that she would have to walk on water.
She was still young. The world was strange and interesting, with unexpected dramas every hour of every day. She was certain, in such a strange world, that somewhere someone knew how to walk on water and would teach her. But she knew what Alice had gone through in Wonderland. She knew she might both have the key and be the right size, but never at the same time, so she might never get through the door. "It may be years before I find someone who knows how to walk on water," she thought. "By then I might forget this tunnel is here." So she took the fancy blank book her sister had given her as a dream journal and wrote on the first page:
"The park has a tunnel to another world. You'll see it if you stand under the basswood tree. Walk on the lake. This message brought to you by you at ten years old."
Satisfied, she shut the book and gave it a new place of honor on her highest shelf.
Years passed. She read a book about a man who, as a young boy, dreamed of being a pilot. One day he saw a barnstormer's plane come through a cloud and dip his wings to him. Thirty years later, he achieved his dream, he was a pilot who flew a little Cessna from field to field. One day as he broke through a cloud, he saw a little boy standing alone in a yard, and he dipped his wings to him. He knew at once it was his younger self he was saluting and encouraging.
She remembered the tunnel and the message in her dreambook. "This time it's the younger me encouraging the older me," she thought.
It was still possible; she knew it. Someone could walk on water and could teach her how. But more and more she was coming to know how most people saw the world, how there were "laws of physics" and set ideas about the way everything worked, how it was and always would be. Prevailing opinion being what it was, those who could walk on water were keeping very quiet about it, probably for good reason. She imagined them living far in the country or up in the mountains, away from highways and airplane flyways, rising late at night to practice their skill under cover of darkness. There were armies of them, perhaps, all solitary--or maybe they all knew each other, could find others like themselves by a certain word or the way they held their heads.