Chapter 7 Chapter Six Through the Wooden Door

Tom slipped into the garden every night now.At first, he was always worried that the garden was gone.Once, his hand had already grasped the doorknob, and he retracted it again, for fear that he might not see the garden after opening the door, and it would be better not to.But that night, he couldn't help opening the door again, and when the door was opened, the garden was still there, and it didn't disappoint Tom. He saw the garden at different times and in different seasons.The best season is sunny summer.In early summer, the hyacinths are still blooming in the crescent-shaped flower beds of the lawn, and the rosy orchids are planted in the circular flower beds.Gradually the hyacinth withered and Luo Xianglan was pulled out.In its place are violets and asters.Next to the flower house is a row of neatly trimmed bushes, and there is a gap in the middle, which seems to have been bitten off by a big mouth. In this gap, there are flower pots full of blooming geraniums.On both sides of the road leading to the sundial, there are bright red poppies and various roses blooming. In the summer evening, the primroses bloom like small moons.At the end of summer, the pears on the pear tree by the wall were wrapped in tulle bags one by one to prevent insect bites.

After all, Tom is not a gardener, he and Peter are most interested in the garden is climbing trees.He never forgot the first tree he climbed in the garden, a yew next to the lawn.He had never climbed a yew tree before, and since he had climbed a yew tree, he thought the yew tree was the easiest to climb.The branches of the yew were low enough to reach the ground, and the trunk was full of knots and fissures.Tom stepped on a knot in the trunk, grabbed the upper branch with both hands and jumped up, pressed his arms hard, and his legs and feet were suspended in the air. There is a branch as tall as a man.

It's easier to climb up, and it's a lot of fun.Sometimes it sticks to the main trunk, and sometimes it climbs up by holding on to the branches extending in all directions.Tom liked to feel the dry bark of the trunk.In places the bark had fallen off and had worn down to a crimson color, as if there were flesh and blood beneath the brown bark. Tom climbed higher and higher slowly, and when he reached the top of the tree, he poked his head out through the leaves, and felt very happy.Overhead is a blue sky and golden sunlight, surrounded by clumps of green foliage.At this time, he had climbed to the same height as the south wall.

Tom sat in the yew-tree across from the building, with a lawn in between, at about the height of the second-story windows.A sound from a room on the second floor attracted him.He found that one of the people in the room was the maid he had met in the downstairs hall that day, and she was cleaning the bedroom.She went to the window, opened the glass, and shook the dust off the feather duster.She glanced now and then in the direction of the yew tree, and she did not respond to Tom's greeting. The maid left the window and walked across the room to continue cleaning.She left the window open so Tom could see better.Besides the maid, there was another person in the bedroom who was standing far away from the window, with her back to the wall and facing the window.Apparently the maid was talking to her while she was working.Tom could faintly hear the two of them talking, but could not see the other's face.All that was seen was her immobile white figure and the outline of her face.Her face was always turned in Tom's direction, and Tom, embarrassed by the look, slowly lowered his head, and finally buried his head in the leaves.Tom later saw more people in the garden.He approached them quietly.He remembered the last time he met the maid in the hall, and the maid couldn't see him, so he became bolder.

Tom knew now that there were more people in the garden than he had known before, for he often had the feeling that someone had just left, and that someone was hiding somewhere in the garden and watching his movements.This made Tom very uncomfortable, and he had to try to think of various reasons to persuade himself to dispel this doubt.Although others seem to be unaware of his existence, when he sees others, he feels more at ease.He saw: a maid, a gardener, and a stern-faced woman in a rustling purple silk dress.Once, Tom unexpectedly met her in a corner of the garden, but she seemed not to see Tom at all.

Can see... can't see... Even if everyone in the garden can't see Tom, at least some animals can see him.Whether they could be seen clearly or not, Tom didn't know.Birds looked up at him sometimes, and flew away as soon as he walked in. Does his body still have weight in this garden?At first Tom thought not, for climbing the yew tree he was surprised to find that it did not bend at all when he pressed against it, and not a single twig broke.Later, he discovered that any door in the garden could not be opened by pushing or pulling in the usual way.Whether it was the door of the greenhouse, the door of the boiler room behind the greenhouse, or the door on the south wall next to the sundial, he couldn't push it open, which made him very frustrated.

All doors were closed to Tom, and Tom's curiosity was not satisfied.Later, he came up with a simple solution: the gardener often went in and out of the boiler room and the south gate of the flower house, as long as he followed the gardener closely, he could go where he wanted to go. Tom's first target was the South Gate.It seems that entering the south gate is the easiest, because the gardener always goes in and out of the south gate with tools.Presumably there is a tool shed outside the south gate.But the gardener moved in and out of the south gate so quickly that he shut it behind him, and Tom had no time to go in after him.Tom thought: the gardener moves slower when he pushes the wheelbarrow in and out.so.He decided to wait patiently for this moment to come.But when the gardener pushed the cart to open the door, he first stretched out an arm, pulled the door open, quickly pushed the cart in, and then hooked his toe, and the door closed again with a bang, and Tom was still shut out.

Tom looked wistfully at the door that barred him.In desperation he pressed the lock again.The lock is the same as in the past and cannot be opened.His fingers seemed to be made of paper, weightless. Tom was angry, frowned, and pressed all his strength on the door lock to see if it would help.Sure enough, a miracle happened: his fingers inserted into the lock, and the lock seemed to be turned into dough. With another effort, his hand passed through the iron lock from top to bottom and returned to his side. He lowered his head to take a closer look at that great right hand, and gently stroked it with his left hand, for fear of being crushed or hurt.But the right hand was intact, exactly the same as before.He looked at the lock on the door again, and it was exactly the same as everywhere else.

An idea flashed in Tom's mind: this door is probably like a lock, and as long as you use enough strength, you may be able to squeeze in.So, he turned sideways, using his shoulders, hips and heels, to hit the door hard together. At first nothing happened.He pushed it with greater strength, and slowly developed a strange feeling.At first he thought it was his own numbness, but later he realized that it was not the numbness of his body. "I'm in!" gasped Tom, surprised and delighted. On the other side of the wall, the gardener finished unloading a load of weeds, parked his wheelbarrow in front of the potting hut, and sat on the handlebars for lunch.If he had been able to see Tom, he would have seen a very strange sight: the shoulder-to-toe body of a small boy passing through the closed solid wooden door.At the beginning, the whole body was moving inwards.The upper body seemed to have stopped moving.The feet go in first, then the legs, and then one arm goes in first, and the other goes in as well.In the end, the whole body went through the door except the head.

It turned out that after Tom's body went in, he became timid again.In order to pass through this door, he spent a lot of effort, and there was also an indescribable strange feeling.At this time, the head who hadn't entered the door said to himself: "I'll rest for a while! In fact, he knew in his heart that he was nervous and hesitant. When his stomach went in, he already felt very uncomfortable. If What would happen if the head—and the eyes and ears—were put through it? On the other hand, a more terrifying idea came to his mind: If he was like a locomotive that lost its steam pressure, it lost its momentum when it stopped. And strength, what would be the result? If so, he would be in a dilemma. Maybe he would be as he is now, with his neck stuck in the door, forever unable to move, if someone happened to come by at this time.

Worse, what would happen if they could see Tom?They'll see his ass sticking out on the other side of the wall.They could taunt him and spank him as much as they wanted, but he could only be beaten, not paid back. Thinking of this, Tom made up his mind.He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and squeezed his head into the door.Suddenly, Tom's whole body was on the other side of the wall from head to toe, and he stood dazed and bewildered.When he regained his composure, he realized that he was standing in front of the hut where the flower pots were placed and the gardener. Tom had never seen the gardener face to face like this before: he was a heavyset young man with a sunburned face and sky-blue eyes.Looking straight through Tom into the distance.He was stuffing a huge chunk of sandwich into his mouth.After eating, he closed his eyes.Pray aloud "Thank you my Lord for everything and may my Lord keep me safe!" The gardener spoke with a strong accent.Tom had to listen carefully to understand what he said. The gardener opened his eyes and took out another sandwich from behind.Tom wondered, did the gardener pray after every sandwich?Maybe he doesn't know how many sandwiches he eats for a meal. The gardener went on eating his lunch, and Tom turned to look around.It's an orchard, but it's also where chickens are raised, clothes are dried, and leaves and twigs are burned.Beyond the orchard are pastures and trees.Rows of roofs could be seen through the trees, and there must have been a village. Tom looked around, noticing what the gardener was doing.After lunch, the gardener pushed his cart and continued to work in the garden.Tom was standing right next to him, and this time he didn't want to feel the pain of walking through the closed wooden door again, so he thought of a good way.He nimbly hopped on the gardener's wheelbarrow, sat comfortably on it and went back to the garden. It was a long time before Tom went through the wooden door again.In any case, he had already seen the orchard, and it was enough to go to that place once. As for the other gates, he could wait until later.In this period of time.He climbed over a low wall of the garden, and wandered around in the woods beyond the wall.On the other side of the garden.He climbed out of the fence and across the pasture, but was unexpectedly blocked by a small river.The small river is shallow and clear, with gurgling water, and green reeds and aquatic plants growing in the water. There was nothing unusual about the garden and surrounding scenery at that time, and Tom was not alarmed by his supernatural powers.But some questions kept coming to his mind again and again: Why is the weather always so good?Why do the seasons of the year and the time of day change so quickly?Moreover, Tom always felt that someone was watching him. One night Tom's fears came to a head.He jumped out of bed and, as usual, crept into the hall around midnight and opened the back door. It was also dark night in the garden and the moon rose for the first time.Dark clouds continued to gallop in, covering the moon.Dark clouds rolled in the sky, but the ground was quiet and still, the garden was silent, and it was hotter than at noon.Tom unbuttoned his pajamas, and walked in the garden with his chest open. He felt a storm was coming.Before he had reached the end of the garden, a great cloud covered the moon.Then there was a flash of lightning, which split the sky in two from top to bottom, and suddenly there was thunder. Tom hurried back upstairs. As soon as he reached the back door, there was a strong wind, heavy rain, and a sudden drop in temperature. It seemed that all the demons and ghosts in the air had descended on the garden to harass the garden at once.The pagoda-high fir tree at the corner of the lawn was also swaying back and forth in the wind.Its ivy-bound branches danced wildly in the storm like the outstretched arms of a swaddling baby. It seemed to Tom that the fir trees were shaking more and more.He comforted himself. "It won't fall down. Big trees generally cannot be blown down." God seemed to have guessed Tom's mind, the wind blew harder, and a white lightning struck the fir tree from the sky, followed by a deafening thunder.The flash of lightning made Tom blink, and when he opened his eyes, the fir tree had turned into a ball of fire and was slowly falling down.When the big tree slowly fell to one side and finally lay down on the ground, the wind seemed to be too frightened to hold its breath. In the silence Tom heard a cry of "Ah!" from a window on the second floor.He was filled with fear. Tom stood dumbfounded for a long time before he realized that the fir tree had fallen and lay across the side of the asparagus patch in the kitchen garden.It fell in darkness, and the storm blew up again. Tom was shocked by what had just happened.He went back into the building and closed the back door.The big clock was still ticking peacefully, and the hall was quiet.Tom suspected that what he saw outside just now was his hallucination.So he went back and opened the back door to look out, only to see that the storm was still going on, and the lightning had moved far away.The falling of the tree was terrifying enough, but the screaming upstairs was even more terrifying. Something that surprised Tom even more happened the next night.He opened the back door as usual and looked around. At first he found the garden somewhat unusual, but could not explain why.Later he realized that it was strange that the garden was the same as it had been in the past, and that the trees around the lawn still intersected.The ivy-encrusted firs still towered into the sky, standing unharmed.