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

  “No,” Jade said. “Everything in my life changed that day.” Wetness stung her eyes and she looked away.

  “Two out of three is very good,” Rucksack said.

  “I’m glad you approve, my dear boy,” Kailash replied. “You are wily and not easy to impress. You are old too, I know, but compared to me you are still a child. I have failed only twice of three times, though. Your disbelief will not be my last failure.”

  Jade dried her eyes and turned back to the people in the room. I’ve never seen anything like this.

  She stared hard at Kailash. The longer Kailash spoke, the younger her voice sounded. The old woman’s dark brown skin reminded Jade of earth and trees, with hints of sunset and gold. When she was young, Jade realized, she was beyond beautiful. Even now, as Jade looked at her, the old woman didn’t seem as old as before.

  Did I simply get caught up in the idea of her being an old woman?

  “Never made claim to being the most ancient slightly-not-human in the world,” Rucksack said, staring hard at Kailash. “But you’re not yet rocking me with your specialized knowledge.”

  Kailash smiled. “Maybe because as you aren’t sure who I am, I am not entirely sure who you are either. How can you be who you say you are when everyone knows Faddah Rucksack died in The Blast?”

  Rucksack held her stare. “My parents died in The Blast, along with millions of others. If you want proof of who I am, I can tell you that my father died first. I thought I could shield my mother with my body, but the way she screamed… Before the world went black for me, her scream was the last thing I heard.”

  “That does sound like Faddah Rucksack,” Kailash said. “If so, there’s something you can tell me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What did your mother wear around her neck that day?”

  Rucksack replied without hesitation. “I still see it in my mind every day. Around her neck was a silver-and-gold necklace with a simple pendant of a rare jade that shimmered both blue and green. She always said—”

  “She always said,” Kalish interjected, “that this rare jade was found only in the Heart of the World, deep in the Himalaya, where she had grown up. The necklace was lost after The Blast, just as she was lost to you.”

  As Kailash spoke of Rucksack’s mother, Jade saw that the woman now looked like a mother herself. Her face had smoothed over, but lines of worry and laughter were lightly etched around her eyes and mouth. Her breasts seemed full of milk. Kailash’s back was no longer stooped under the weight of time. She stood like a queen. A fire burned in her brown-and-black eyes.

  Rucksack said nothing, and silence fell over the pub. At last, Rucksack looked at each of them, and he stared again at Kailash. “You know who we are. Who are you?”

  “You’re not ready yet,” Kailash replied. “I am sorry I have to come to you now. I had not wanted to reveal myself, but it was destined to be otherwise. I will tell you only that I am here to help and that if we are to survive what is to come then we must trust one another.”

  “What changed?” Jade asked.

  Kailash nodded at Jay. “He carried the dia ubh past the guardian—first yesterday and now today too. He should not have been able to pass at all. There are old protections there that should have prevented this, but they did not work. The guardian was there to prevent passage of anyone who sought to wake the Smiling Fire, and that was our failure.”

  “But Jay walked down the alley today,” Jade said.

  “No,” Kailash replied. “He first walked into the alley yesterday.”

  Rucksack nodded. “Asha.”

  “Yes,” Kailash said. “When he came to the alley, it was with concern for another in his heart. The protections could not stop him because his intent was pure. But his pure intentions could not prevent what happened, though he did not intend it. All these years and it all is undone by an accident.”

  For a moment, Kailash seemed old again, weak and bent. But with a breath the strong mother reappeared.

  “The Smiling Fire felt the presence of the dia ubh, the first to arrive here in many generations,” she said. “It woke hope in his flaming heart. Even now I can feel him gathering strength.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jade asked. “What is this Smiling Fire?”

  “When the world was new, born in fire and heat, there was a being that lived in the world. How he came to be, I don’t know. But he dominated the world, bent its forces to his will. He wandered the world and had a grin that was as of flame. Nameless, he became known as the Smiling Fire.”

  Jay sat up. “Isn’t that what ‘Agamuskara’ means?”

  “Yes,” Kailash said. “The Smiling Fire made the volcanoes pour lava. He made the seas boil. He made the sunlight blaze over the world. He craved all fire, and he hungered for it to burn in himself and only for himself. He succeeded, too. He had things exactly as he wanted them. Until the day life appeared.”

  “I’ve heard similar stories,” Rucksack said, nodding to Kailash. “All life has a spark to it, a fire o’ its own. You, me, everyone. Every bacteria and bovine. Everything. And our little fires, when they first started burning in the world, weren’t the Smiling Fire’s. Whatever that first primordial goop was that came to life in this world, it was like dunking the Smiling Fire in the coldest part of the Arctic Ocean. He wasn’t as warm anymore. Beyond that, he was furious that there was a fire o’ life outside his control.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Jay said. “From the beginning of the world, there’s been some sort of devil thing that ruled the world, hated living things, and wanted all the fire of life for itself.”

  “I wouldn’t call him a devil,” Rucksack said. “Brings too much religious credence to someone who was really just a non-mortal feckin bastard with a mean streak.”

  “Every time we’ve learned of life nearly going extinct due to volcanoes, asteroid impacts, you name it,” Kailash said, “that being was behind it. He strove to extinguish all life.”

  “But you say ‘strove,’” Jade said. “Is this being no longer alive?”

  “If only,” Kailash replied. “For eons, the Smiling Fire has battled life, seeking always to take back control of all the fires of life. Sometimes he has come close, and life has hung on by the barest thread of existence. Always life has rebounded. Eventually, humans began to flourish. As you may know, for many generations humans wandered the world. Thousands of years ago, this region was one of the first parts of India to be settled by nomads. They made their home here, along the river in what would in time become Agamuskara. They were peaceful people but hardy.

  “Like many others, they had encountered the Smiling Fire before. As life proliferated and endured, despite his attempts, life kept getting stronger. And he kept getting weaker. But the Smiling Fire still could strike out. Yet for many years, there was no sign of the Smiling Fire. Those early settlers hoped they could now tend their crops and animals in peace, and raise children in a world where life was no longer constantly under such a threat.”

  “But it never goes that way,” Jade said.

  A sorrow fell over Kailash’s eyes. “No, it doesn’t. One day in the village, beneath the dark light of a mirror eclipse, the Smiling Fire appeared. A tall slender figure he was, as if your longest shadow had stood up from the ground. Wreathed in black, as if his clothes and flesh were made of smoke and shadow, he murdered dozens of villagers, consumed them and their fires of life, before the alarm was even raised.”

  “And this happened here?” Jay asked.

  Kailash nodded. “Not far from where we are now, just outside of the main city. Back then, a woman and a man led the village, and they quickly gathered together everyone who had survived. You see, over the years, humans had learned much about battling the Smiling Fire, and people knew powers then that are long forgotten now. Humans could sense when life became precarious, but so great had been the Smiling Fire’s concealment and silence that none knew the growing threat against them until it was too late.
That day in the village, all learned that over the long years the Smiling Fire had regained enough of his former power to once again threaten the world. He came to strike the first of his last blows against life. The village was life’s only chance. If the Smiling Fire killed the villagers—especially the woman who was pregnant and soon to give birth—then the Smiling Fire would be powerful enough to destroy all life. And this time, he would succeed.”

  Kailash paused a moment, closing and opening her eyes as if some great pain and sorrow were washing over her. Jade studied her carefully. She began to look even younger. And there was no doubt now. Before their very eyes, Kailash’s appearance had changed. There was even something familiar about her.

  “The Smiling Fire surprised everyone that day,” Kailash said. “No defense held him. He swooped in fast, beyond the eye’s ability to follow. Soon he held the woman leader against him. A heat radiated from him, like a walking volcano. Once he had consumed her fire of life, and the growing spark of the child inside her, he would be unstoppable.

  “The villagers were helpless. The man leader looked long at her face, and a rage of love burned in him, but he could not help her. The woman leader too was helpless. The Smiling Fire was stronger than life. He stood tall, one arm like a shadow wrapped around her swollen belly and his other hand pressed against her head like a sun. Behind her, his mouth opened and he made ready to devour her. And then,” Kailash said, laying her right hand over her stomach, “the woman’s unborn child kicked at the Smiling Fire’s arm.”

  Jade’s gaze went to Rucksack and Jay. Jay sat straight and wide-eyed, like a child at a campfire listening to a story. But Rucksack was pale, and his hands clenched the tabletop. His glass was empty.

  “If you’ve never felt a baby kick you through the womb,” Kailash said, “it is quite a surprise. It surprised even the Smiling Fire. His hold on the woman loosened. And she, feeling not only the threat to herself and the world but the threat to her unborn child, turned and struck with a ferocious love.

  “It was a desperate blow, but it was her only chance. The world’s only chance. Her baby’s only chance. She called up the old powers but also her hopes for herself and her beloved, her hopes for her child, her love of life and the world. She aimed as best she could at the Smiling Fire’s chest, and her aim was true. She reached through, plunging her hand into smoke and shadows. She clenched her fingers tight and pulled. When her hand emerged it was as if she held all the fire and light in the world. The Smiling Fire sagged and she caught him. On his knees, he looked up at her. A chill came from him, as if he were made of ice.

  “’For all you burn,’” she said, “and for all you do not know, I pity you and your empty, hungry smiles.’

  “’This world is mine,’ he replied. ‘You stole it from me!’

  “’This world is ours as well as yours, but you want all of it only for you.’

  “’The heat! I must have the fire!’

  “’The fire is not yours. The fire is not ours. The fire of life belongs to itself. We belong to it, not to you.’

  “’So… cold…’

  “’Cold you must remain, as long as you believe this world is for you and for you alone.’

  “’Kill me, then. So cold. Kill me.’

  “But the woman shook her head and said simply, ‘We are not you.’ She leaned down and kissed his forehead. He slumped onto the ground, which despite the heat in the day felt cold as the Himalayas. Then she stood tall, looked at her hand, and smiled. She raised her arm and opened her fingers.

  “A small globe, the first dia ubh, floated in the air. At first it looked like the world. Then, under the gray light of the mirror eclipse, the dia ubh itself turned gray and a crack ran down it.

  “The dia ubh opened, and warm, golden light poured down on all who remained. The woman, the man, the surviving villagers—even the unborn child. Many things changed in the world that day, but especially us. We no longer aged as normal people. We were not gods, but in many ways we could act and live as gods. In each of us, our purest essence of self shone forth, and we were remade in that image,” Kalish concluded.

  “What happened to the Smiling Fire?” Rucksack asked.

  “Jay has seen it,” Kailash replied. “The black wall at the heart of the city. From the ground we raised obsidian, the black glass made from the world’s fires. We made both a temple and a prison. A temple where the Smiling Fire could be remembered. That was my first failure. The world has forgotten. There are songs sung by those who do not know what they mean. A river and a city carry a name that should be writ like flame on the soul. But these memories have fallen out of us or burned to ash.

  “But inside the temple, we dug deep into the earth, past the crust that sustains us, and into the molten rock that flows around the core of the world. There, we made a chamber of obsidian, with a black pedestal where the Smiling Fire could lay. We had no desire to kill him. Killing and destroying were all he knew and all he was. It may be that even then, weak as he was, we could not destroy him totally. We knew only that we were changed, and we feared that killing the Smiling Fire would be the first step on a path to becoming like him. In time, we hoped that perhaps this being of fire and hatred could find a way to coexist with life and love. We laid him on his pedestal, and but for one message we left him to the smooth black walls, deep in the earth, where he could still feel warmth.”

  “What was the message?” Rucksack asked.

  Kailash smiled. “A reminder,” she said. “I carved the words myself: ‘Life belongs to the world, and the world belongs to life.’ Then we shut him in his prison. But that has been my second failure. Either his penitence or the presence of a dia ubh could allow him to leave his prison and go inside the main temple above the ground. Now he is in the temple. I can feel his dampened fires, his chills, his hatred. There is no change in him—only the desire to resume where he left off, to try again, to find a way to succeed this time.”

  “This is the greatest story ever,” Jay said. “And you were there.”

  Kailash shrugged.

  “You couldn’t be,” Rucksack said.

  Jade understood. “You’ve spoken for a long time,” she said. “Let me get you a glass of water with lime.”

  The mother had become younger, but the metamorphosis had stopped. Her figure had tightened and the lines around the eyes had softened. Before everyone stood the woman who had fled the pub the night before and had vanished before Jade and Rucksack earlier.

  The scent of jasmine filled the air.

  “I am thirsty,” Kailash said, “and I was there in the village so long ago, under the mirror eclipse on the day the Smiling Fire fell but was not vanquished.” She touched her stomach again. “You see, Faddah Rucksack, you never remembered me from when I was this young. I may have never found my pendant, but on the day of The Blast, you did save me. Just as those long years ago, when you saved not only me, but the world—and all before you were even born.”

  “THERE IS NO CHANGE. I’m sorry. She may simply need more time. She has not been here long. But we cannot yet say if she will ever wake up again.”

  The doctor squeezed Jigme’s shoulder as he left, but the doctor’s face recoiled with surprise when he looked Jigme in the eye. The door closed, leaving Jigme and Asha alone in a dim room full of deep shadows.

  Jigme pulled a chair over to his mother’s bedside. Her hand had a fire inside, yet at the same time it felt cool as wet stone. The elation from the alley still held a grin over Jigme’s face, but as he looked at his mother, that grin, that elation seemed smaller now, less sure. The powerful certainty that had all but flown him here had faded the moment he saw his mother, as unmoving as the statues all over the city.

  The doctor’s words echoed in Jigme’s mind. He squeezed his mother’s hand. “I believe you can come back, Amma,” he said. “I would give anything to help you come back.”

  He sat back in the chair and watched his mother. Time passed but he did not follow time. The room darkened bu
t he turned on no lights. Rucksack said he would come, Jigme thought. Why isn’t he here?

  A deep longing welled up inside. Speaking with Rucksack must be what it’s like to speak with a father, Jigme thought. I wish he were here. The world seems so much bigger and brighter when Rucksack is around.

  But there was no Rucksack, and his mother was as a shell.

  In time, as shadows consumed the room, Jigme let himself slump back in the chair. He still held his mother’s hand as his eyes closed.

  The alley no longer had white walls—or rather, the walls held the memory of white but no longer could show them as white. The shadows had consumed all the light and brightness here too. Only the black wall at the end of the alley seemed real now; the rest appeared as insubstantial as a burning dream.

  The two statues stood as silent as Asha lay. The gray globes seemed to hover just above the hands that no longer held them.

  When he was here with Jay earlier, Jigme had been so afraid, but he no longer understood why he’d been afraid. Jay had been brash, and he did not know what he had done. Jigme understood now. He stood between the statues, reached out his hands, and touched each globe, all the while staring ahead at the black, featureless wall in front of him. It had already begun.

  Jay had changed the world.

  The alley and the statues vanished. Even the black wall was gone. Vertigo passed through Jigme. Where am I? he thought. There’s nothing here. It’s like I’m nowhere.

  His vision began to adjust, and he realized the black wall wasn’t gone. He saw more black walls, a black ceiling, and a black floor with a rectangular hole in the middle. The chamber glowed with a red-and-black light like coals in a campfire.

  I’ve gone where Jay couldn’t, Jigme thought. A spark of excitement flared in him. Who’s brave now, Jay?

  The black wall isn’t gone, he realized. I’m on the other side now.