Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) Read online

  Only Jay had gotten up at the appointed dawn hour. As he finished getting ready, head pounding hard but feet itching more urgently, one of the other travelers snorted himself awake. He stared at Jay.

  “I’m still drunk and you drank more than I did,” the traveler said. “But you’re going out there. You… You are the world’s greatest traveler.”

  “I’m just going where I go,” Jay replied, but the other traveler had already fallen back to sleep.

  Jay wondered where Agamuskara would take him today. Jigme’s white alley floated in his mind. “Go to India, to the city with the white alley,” he remembered the moon saying that night at Everest.

  Lots of cities have white alleys, he thought. Doesn’t mean anything. I am where I am, and that’s where I am.

  The clothes he expected to dig for were in fact waiting for him when he opened the backpack. Things like that had been happening more and more lately.

  The first night with the truck drivers, when they’d stopped in Nepal, Jay was going to rummage for some snacks to share. The food had all but jumped into his hands.

  He’d expected a harsh scent to smack him in the face too, from a bottle of whiskey that must have broken after the jostling truck ride down the mountains. But the bottle was intact and waiting. He hadn’t remembered wrapping it up, but there it was, wrapped safe as a baby in a couple of t-shirts—one, a favorite since Ireland, said “I Can See Clearly Now” beneath a pair of eyeglasses with silhouettes of Imperial pints for lenses.

  Money belt secure around his waist, Jay tucked some cash into the zipped pocket of his more or less green cargo pants. He couldn’t resist the russet brown t-shirt he’d found in Austria, with the letters “ID” centered inside the outline of a potato that looked vaguely like his home state.

  The fresh clothes made Jay feel more or less human. What I need now is a hot drink and some breakfast, he thought, and I know just where to go.

  As he slipped out of the Everest Base Camp, he saw no sign of Jade or Rucksack, and he smiled. It’d be good to have a day all on his own, just him and his pack and the world. The way things are supposed to be, he thought. From his daypack, the thing’s noise had settled back down to its usual soft rustle-whisper. As Jay settled the pack on his back, the blunt pain of his hangover lessened.

  The young day brightened, not yet blazing and over-bustling but already beyond night’s cool and quiet. Men drank hot chai from small cups, wisps of steam rising over faces wrinkled or smooth. From front stoop after front stoop came the thck-thck of brooms as women in brightly colored saris swept. No one looked at Jay. There would be time in all the day to sell something to yet another tourist; for now, these few quiet moments were for them and only them.

  The moon may have said the city with the white alley, but it hadn’t been specific beyond that. Every wall of Agamuskara was white. Jay wandered, but not to Jigme’s alley as he’d originally planned. He realized he was walking in the other direction. A ramble before breakfast, then, he thought. The rough edges of his hangover still rasped against the city, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected after all those pints.

  A change in the air perked up his step. He came out from the streets to a wide, open space. To his left and right, the road continued. Before him, stone steps had been cut down to the edge of the river. Centuries of feet had worn rounded corners and a smooth sheen into the yellow sandstone. He stood at the top of the steps, looking up and down the Agamuskara. Little boats sat on the shore. People bathed and children played in the river.

  Why are you standing here? Jay thought. You got up wanting to go to The Mystery Chickpea and check out Jigme’s alley. Why did you come the opposite way instead?

  I decided to come this way, he thought. I always choose where I’m going to go. This is just a change of plans. Where I am is where I’ll be.

  Jay walked down the steps to the river’s edge. The brown-gray, quarter-mile-wide Agamuskara River ran like a vein from the soul of the world. The waters seemed shallow, sluggish. Jay knelt at the bank and dipped his hand in the water, surprised at the force and power of the flow. He jumped a little and nearly stood up, but it was as if the river had grabbed his hand.

  At first, he heard only the sounds along the banks: the gurgles and plinks and shushes of the current, the cries and laughs of the children, the fast speech of the people talking. Then a door opened in the world’s sounds.

  Bright songs and golden light danced in all his five senses—all glowed. Like scratching away a thin skin, everything in the world around Jay shone with a silver-and-gold light. The light came from inside everyone on the banks, from the boats and the buildings, from the steps and from the river itself.

  The river shone brightest, pulsing with the breath and heartbeat of the world. The murky water turned clear. Muddy brown transformed to the bright blue of the god statues all over the city.

  Jay yanked his hand from the water and stood with a jerk. Once more, he heard nothing but the quiet morning, still and slow in its waking, kids playing by the water, men and women talking, small waves lapping at the wood and aluminum hulls of the boats along the banks.

  He shook his head to try to clear the light out of his vision. The world dimmed, and the skin closed back over the light of the world. Things looked like things again. The river was just a river, murky and brown. Above the water and the city, the hazy pale-blue morning shimmered only with heat.

  “Lightheaded,” Jay said to himself. “Numbnuts. This is what happens when you sightsee before breakfast. All that beer and now this? You’re faint, Jay. You think the moon took you to the top of Everest and gave you a weird little orb. Next thing you know, you’re gonna think the sun took you to the top of a building and gave you a tomato.”

  He ran back up the steps and headed for The Mystery Chickpea.

  The city looked like the city again, with only the slight complication that now everything was gods.

  From shrines at the mouths of alleys to carvings in massive buildings, all the city seemed built not on stone and brick but on statues, carvings, and paintings. Holding sheaves of wheat, scrolls, human heads, tridents, or sunlight, the figures shone red, blue, gold, silver, black, green, and brown. There were gods small for life’s little hopes, and gods large for the universe. The white walls sang with their colors, deeds, and histories, and the gods sang too.

  No one else on the street seemed to hear them—or if they did, it must be commonplace enough that none noted it. As he wandered away from the river, Jay realized each statue, carving, and painting stared at him.

  As their gazes followed him, the songs changed. Instead of multiple songs in his head, like he had heard during the parade the day before, now every song became the same. He listened more closely:

  “White and gold burns to red and black.

  “The secret turns and you cannot go back.

  “The sun burns dark, the sun burns twice,

  “Choose your destiny. Choose your price.”

  The gods stared and Jay looked into the many fixed eyes. All around him, people went about their morning. No one looked at him or seemed at all to notice that he was there, turning frantically, staring at the buildings and walls.

  “You really, really need some breakfast, Jay,” he muttered.

  He stopped walking, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Go away, go away, go away, he thought. The song repeated in his head, but he spoke louder in his mind. Go away go away GO AWAY!

  He opened his eyes. The buildings and walls indeed were packed with carved and painted gods. But their fixed eyes did not stare at him, and they did not sing.

  Jay moved next to a building. After checking for no gods at all on the plaster, he stood with his back against it, trying to breathe deeply and slowly. “Should’ve gone for grub straightaway,” he said. “Who knows what tricks my eyes will be playing on me next.”

  With another deep breath, he looked around again. The city woke, moved, filled. The streets were fuller now. People stared at him as
he walked. A boy came over and said he would be his guide, best places, best price. Another boy approached and said the same thing. Jay shook his head and walked away.

  It’s like no one noticed me till now.

  Jay stopped and got his bearings. On the other side of the road, a small archway led to the side street that led to Jigme’s alley, and to The Mystery Chickpea. His stomach gurgled. He walked quickly, already anticipating the aromas of spices and broths.

  Instead, he smelled old cow flops and the exhaust of a rickshaw that slowly puttered by, asking him where he needed to go, best price, best price.

  Jay waved the rickshaw away and stepped into the side street. A cow stood where The Mystery Chickpea should be.

  Now I’m really losing it, he thought. All I want is something to eat!

  He’d have to do some more wandering, but he shouldn’t have to wander far. Already, he had seen people setting up other food carts, small grills and braziers, and stands for refreshing lassi yogurt drinks.

  Jay turned to walk back out of the side street. People walked to and fro in the early morning sun. Bicycles and motorbikes, cows and trucks, people on foot, and people in bumblebee rickshaws, all wove in and out of each other’s paths. Above them all, weaving through them all, the song called. Instead of just being in his head, he could now tell where it was coming from.

  From the end of the alley, the song got louder. He could satisfy his appetite, he knew, but his curiosity would continue to go hungry.

  He didn’t think about walking. With every step the song grew into a call, steady as a heartbeat. It held him. It drew him. And on he came.

  At the mouth of the alley, just as he began to step beyond its threshold, a voice surprisingly soft said, “Jay?”

  The voice cut through the song, the only thing he could hear outside the call. But on he stepped. As he put one foot in the alley, a hand touched his shoulder. The song stopped. Jay fell to his knees.

  “Jay?” the voice said again, but the morning had turned black and quiet in the dirt.

  JADE WOKE in the dark, and the fragments of the dream faded from her waking mind. The dream itself had been disturbing enough, but that was nothing. I’m a Jade, she thought. We aren’t supposed to dream.

  Her wide eyes reached for the meager lager-yellow light that trickled in from her window, the last dregs before sunrise. Few were the nights she wished she wasn’t alone, but this had just become one of them.

  Moving from the bed to the wooden desk chair, Jade clicked on the desk lamp and pulled her knees up to her chin. The chair’s cool wood soothed her naked arse and back, but her mind still raced from the dream’s fire.

  The room’s bare walls stared back at her. No photos brought comfort. No knickknacks or mementos. She found no comfort in memory.

  It was easier this way, that was for sure. There was no need for pictures. She didn’t want to remind herself of people who couldn’t remember her. Knickknacks not only traveled poorly; they were just something else to dust. Mementos kept the past important, but the past could not matter to her. My world is the now and only the now, she thought. Jade closed her eyes and then opened them. The only solace is to deal with what’s in front of me.

  “And what’s in front of me is fire,” she said.

  Much of the dream had dashed itself to fragments when she woke, but every lingering shard and scene remained hot to the touch. She and Jay had walked through the city, discussing their lives and travels. Jade found herself talking with him as if with a long-known friend, except that something more than friendship crackled between them like a fire. When they finished their walk, back at the inside stairs of the Everest Base Camp, Jade took Jay’s hand and led him to her room.

  The rest of the dream had shattered. Except for the fire.

  They woke in her bed and the world was screaming. As the walls of the room sagged and softened, the silver-and-gold light pouring through the window darkened to a dull reddish-black, as if blood had been mixed into shadows. The door fell to flames that began to move toward them. The window began to melt. The tall rectangle was her way to look out at the world, onto Agamuskara’s busiest street, the better to aid the listening.

  Now it could be their escape.

  Jade jumped toward the window with Jay behind her. But the window melted like wax, the rectangle falling into a sharp horizontal crescent. The red-and-black light bleeding through made the narrow curve look like a smile.

  Jay held her hand and said she would be okay.

  Flames kissed them. She woke.

  As she sat in the chair, her eyes drifted over the notebooks and volumes from her training. “You will find,” The Management had said one day, “that you do not dream anymore.” And she hadn’t. Since the day she’d completed her training and become a Jade, she had not dreamed. She would fall asleep and all would go black.

  Until now.

  Jade stood in front of the window and peered at the outside world. Another morning went from darkness to hazy-gray in Agamuskara, as it had throughout her ten years in the city. To the few people wandering the waking streets, this wall of the Everest Base Camp had no windows on the ground floor. Looking down her body a moment, Jade grinned. They’re missing quite a show, she thought. An extended youth and vigor came with the benefits package, The Management had explained. But they’d never mentioned what to do if she dreamed.

  Her thoughts turned to the note that she had kept, despite policy. “The new traveler is not just the new traveler,” it said, clearly meaning Jay. But what had his arrival caused in the city? And what did it mean for her, when she had both a duty to perform and a growing attraction, a sense of connection, with the very person she had to influence?

  In the back of her mind, she felt the stirrings in the hostel. Jay was awake, agitated, and hung over, but he wasn’t letting that stop him. Jade was impressed. Usually, people who drank with Faddah Rucksack didn’t wake up for a day, but here was backpack boy, getting ready to sightsee.

  Often on a day off Jade would let herself stay in bed, sleep longer than usual, maybe spend a casual hour or two gliding her thoughts over the city, listening to this or that of the daily lives of the people who shared Agamuskara. But this morning, there was too much happening. She washed and dressed. She needed to follow Jay, understand where he was going and why, and what it meant for her city.

  I’m the Jade of Agamuskara, she thought. Jakes served one area for their entire duty, but The Management usually moved Jades around, depending on the times and the need of a particular place. But once when Jade had asked where she would go next, The Management had said simply that they could see only that she was needed the most in Agamuskara. She wondered if they knew why that was or if it was or if they simply had chosen not to tell her. Jade Agamuskara Bluegold, she thought. Is that who I will always be? Is that who I will only be?

  But I was nearly something else once.

  As she dried her face and dressed, the memory kindled: the churning inside her, the adrenaline as she had walked to the gardens where he had been waiting for her. She did not know for sure, but she felt like she loved him, and she believed that he was going to propose. But she didn’t know what she was going to say. She loved him, but she loved her independence. She loved him, but she loved who she was and did not know if a partner, a husband, was something she wanted. She loved him, but she did not know if he was right for her.

  Then the dream shifted and she was in the plaza beneath the blue dragon carved into the wall. He had just taken out the box, shown her the ring, and asked her to marry him.

  Then the world had stopped, except for her. And The Management. They appeared and gave her a choice. She could go back to the life she was living, forget this encounter with them, and live out her days as an ordinary woman. Or she could become a Jade and help turn the world.

  She saw his face again, frozen in time and space, his hand outstretched, a glint of afternoon sun on the gold ring with the inset jade stone. He couldn’t even hear me, she thou
ght, and I still couldn’t tell him no. With a nod to The Management, all that old life was gone.

  Jade had never asked The Management about him, and over the years she had thought about him less and less.

  Until now. Until there was someone else around who sparked similar feelings.

  And bigger questions. As Jade finished dressing, she watched lives through the window again. Children in uniforms skipped toward school. Women walking in groups talked about their families, about movies, about the toils of the day.

  Did I choose right? she thought, standing in her lonely little room, her one luxury in all the world. I keep the world turning, but what keeps me going?

  The dream was love and fire, and the dream was the need to know. She was where she was supposed to be. Home was a little room and home was behind the bar. Home would never be what lay beyond that man with the ring in his hand. Home would never be Jay. Home was duty and duty was Jade’s only true partner and companion.

  She left her room and went out into the streets of Agamuskara, following Jay. With every step, she told herself it was all for duty.

  Bent women swept stoops, their twiggy brooms going thk-thk as the dust flew. Though, as Rucksack said, all that sweeping really sent the dirt on its long northward journey to build the Himalayas. Pots clanged. A bicycle bell ting-a-linged its slow way through groggy throngs. Prayers rang.

  She stayed far enough behind Jay so he wouldn’t notice her, but close enough so she wouldn’t lose track of him. The backpacker seemed single-minded as he walked, and Jade knew he wasn’t going to turn around. He didn’t even pause until he had arrived at the steps leading down to the slow, meandering waters of the Agamuskara. Jade sat at the foot of a blue statue and watched him walk down the stairs. Jay touched the water.

  He vanished.

  Jade stood up so fast she whacked her head on the statue. For a moment, the blue god seemed to stare at her, annoyed. Then her head cleared, and the statue was just a statue again. She looked back toward the water, and Jay reappeared. At least, he mostly reappeared. He seemed hazy and indistinct, as if he wasn’t quite in the world anymore, but she was instead seeing him through the skin of reality, like cloudy glass, and he was in some hinterland just beyond the world where she walked.