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

  For once, Jay’s tenderized rump stayed in one merciful, bounceless spot. After a few kilometers, he relaxed like a roast chicken resting after coming out of the oven.

  The view from the highway wasn’t as interesting. The heat haze dulled the flatlands, and it seemed as if a wink and some rupees had made the scenery vanish. Jay almost pined for the cliffs that, just a couple days ago, had dropped off from the side of the truck. Every rock bouncing down into nothing had terrified him, but the trees, cows, and occasional village had been fascinating.

  “Namaste la vista, baby,” Jay said, mimicking the formerly white t-shirt he was wearing. He lifted the shirt to gain access to the treasures below. Wrapped around his waist and tucked into the front of his tan, dusty cargo pants, the thin fabric of his money belt was already soaked through. But no matter. The treasures would be dry and safe. Jay took out a wad of plastic, then unrolled, unfolded, flipped, and eventually unwrapped his most prized possession: the small, dark-blue booklet of his US passport.

  The formalese of government speak greeted him: “…requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection…”

  Jay wondered how much he still looked like the photo. The green-and-gold eyes were the same, as was the light-brown hair. But the skin of that face? Dust, heat, sun, cold, ice, rain, beer, hot breakfasts, cold breakfasts, no breakfasts had all leathered his face, hardened his eyes, softened his smile. But it was still Jay. Jay, once from Idaho, now of the world.

  He flipped through the pages—past the backgrounds of cacti and mountains, past the important information that addressed everything from about your passport to loss of citizenship. Then he opened the last five years. Visas, stamps, signatures—most of them official and some, to put it mildly, questionable. Jay thought about the so-called visas that had been added not at an official immigration checkpoint, but by hands unsteadied after a bit of backroom blather, boozing, and baksheesh. He flipped through the countries: South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Gambia, Morocco, Ireland, England, Scotland, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, Tibet.

  There should have been a visa for Nepal, but instead there was only a blank page. Before arriving at the border checkpoint between Tibet and Nepal, the men in the truck had hidden Jay under a blanket. Jay didn’t ask why. They’d hardly slowed down since.

  And now—officially—Jay was in India.

  Adventures taken, people met, sights seen—all condensed to stamps on pages. Jay re-wrapped his passport in the plastic and stuck it back in his money belt, behind the photo where the man and woman always smiled at him.

  “I hope you’re still having a good time,” Jay said to the couple in the photo. For a moment, his anywhere voice lost all the twangs and lilts of his globetrotting, and he was just a regular guy from Idaho again. He started to take out the picture, but the truck’s grinding, slowing gears stopped him. The driver stopped blaring on the horn just long enough to slap the door twice. Jay rustled his money belt and clothes back into place.

  End of one road, he thought. Now for another.

  The truck stopped. Jay grinned. He grabbed the pack, ready to lose himself in all the adventures that came from putting one foot in front of the other on an unknown road—a road that could be the one that would finally go on and on forever, as long as he just kept traveling.

  At the edge of the city, Jay jumped out, thanked the two men, and handed them some worn notes. The drivers nodded and laughed at the crazy traveler who thought he’d just stroll into the center of the city. As the truck rumbled off, the indistinct faces of the two men slipped out of Jay’s memory. He couldn’t understand why it was so hard to remember what these men looked like, especially after spending so many days traveling together. Must be fatigue, he thought.

  Jay swung on his backpack, set its buckles, and adjusted its straps. Despite the ringing in his head, the tiredness, the bruises, and the extra weight, the touch of the pack to his back brightened his eyes and straightened up his stooping body. It’d be a good walk. A long walk. A tough, hellish walk, sure, but then again, travel wasn’t supposed to be easy. The pack did feel heavier, though, now that the little... thing spun in there again.

  If anything weighed him down, it wasn’t the road-weary fatigue, the not-quite-remembered moonlit night at Mt. Everest, or the Chinese police and all those Dalai Lama portraits. It was the quiet, slow, incessant shr-shr-shr as the thing turned, rubbing the fabric of his faithful backpack.

  “One foot in front of the other will put it out of your head,” Jay said, the Idaho gone from his voice and replaced by the patchwork of places stamped in his passport.

  The city center couldn’t be that far. Once there, he thought, I’ll beeline to a pint, a shower, and a bed—in whatever order works best. For once, I even know where I want to go.

  Backpack-laden, his skin and clothes were so soaked he wondered if sweat glands could get sore. With every step, Jay tried to understand how the Indians did it. Children ran, laughed, smiled, circled him, joked, and asked for a pen or a piece of candy. Women, wrapped head to toe in yards and yards of sari fabric, walked everywhere carrying baskets. Men in pants and long-sleeve shirts held hands with each other and talked like they were all brothers. Their animated voices and gestures defied the dulling, steaming humidity.

  Jay had no idea what the men said. The women didn’t look in his direction. The kids tired of him and returned to their games.

  With every step, the age of the country seemed to whisper alongside the shr-shr-shr. All around him, in every pebble and blade of grass, in every buffalo-dung patty drying as fuel on the sides of shacks, Jay saw and felt the gods whose presence and personality had shaped all people, all moments, all things.

  The acrid scent of burning tires stung the air. A cow rooted through plastic and garbage. Jay wondered why the gods couldn’t have made things smell better.

  As he pressed on, the heat melted his resolve. He was now wearing a boulder, not a backpack. Sweat poured and feet dragged, but Jay kept going. Some old saying about single steps and thousand-mile journeys flitted through his mind. It had to be close, though, had to be. The miles pounded the bottoms of his worn boots, and the scene around Jay changed. At least the ground was flat. Other than a tall hill off to the west, the land here was even, with hardly a rise at all.

  Covered in drying dung-fuel patties, the shacks gradually gave way to one- and two-story buildings. Shops. Homes. Offices. Sometimes distinct, often all jumbled.

  The humid floating dust changed character too. The scent of fields, cow dung, and fires still clung to his pores and his soul, but a new layer of sound and soot settled on him: car and rickshaw exhaust, cooking food, open sewers. Jay had always heard of India as a land of diversity. Walking it now, he understood they meant the smell.

  Stopping a moment to rest, Jay had hardly stood still when an open-sided, three-wheeled black-and-yellow rickshaw taxi pulled up next to him like a buzzing, rattling bumblebee.

  “You need a ride?” the driver said. “Get in. I will take you to my friend’s hotel.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Jay replied, but the driver was already running over to him.

  “So tired,” the driver said, reaching for Jay’s backpack. “Let me put that in for you.”

  Jay’s eyes widened and he stepped back.

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, his voice flat and final. “No taxi.”

  “Cheap ride.”

  “No taxi.”

  “Special price, my friend,” the driver said.

  Jay flung out his hands, shook his head, and started walking away.

  The driver shrugged. “You tourists.”

  “I’m not a tourist,” Jay replied. “I’m a traveler.”

  The driver smiled. “You tourists. Always walking around with houses strapped to your backs! But it is okay, my friend. Sooner or later, you alwa
ys need a ride, and when you need a ride, I will take you.”

  Jay left the taxi behind, but the taxi didn’t leave him. As he trudged onward, the taxi would flit beside him or buzz behind him or singe Jay’s nose with a whiff of putrid blue-black exhaust.

  A few kilometers later, Jay stepped wrong and tripped.

  Banging his knee on the rough asphalt, he winced and his eyes watered.

  When he looked up, the rickshaw had stopped in front of him.

  “My friend,” the driver said. Something about the man’s indistinct face seemed familiar.

  Jay sighed. He looked past the driver to the skyline of the city proper.

  “The heat makes things seem closer,” the driver said, “but it is still far.”

  “How far?” Jay asked.

  “Farther than your feet.”

  The rickshaw’s back seat looked soft. There weren’t any springs poking out, and the roof would keep the sun off him. Jay’s knee throbbed. His feet threatened mutiny and blisters. Jay sighed and surrendered.

  “Everest Base Camp,” he said, limping into the rickshaw and setting his pack between his grateful feet.

  “OY! JADE!”

  The laughter-laced shout blasted through the pub door and nearly made her drop the glass she was polishing.

  Ah, Jade thought. Rucksack must be ready for his next pint. She brought a fresh glass to the tap. As she did, The Management’s strange warning rang in her head, the way it did every time Rucksack was around: “This man is dangerous.”

  She thought back over the last few months to when the three hooded figures had appeared in the pub. It was just minutes after the letter had arrived and she’d read it. Later that day Rucksack had come in for the first time—but The Management had visited first.

  The surprise had made her drop the letter. The Management hardly ever came to the Jakes and Jades in person. Or in being. Or whatever they were. “Why is he dangerous?” she had asked, picking up the sheet of paper. “Who is he?”

  “Some say he’s a broken hero,” said the figure in blue and green.

  “Some say he’s the world’s only Himalayan-Irish sage,” said the figure in brown and black.

  “Some say he’s just a freeloading drunk,” said the figure in silver and gold.

  “None of these things has ever been proven,” they all said together. “All we know is that he is an unknown quantity.”

  “An unknown quantity?” Jade had said. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means he has no destiny. He is as a ghost to us. He is outside of us all.”

  “How is that even possible?” Jade had looked at each of the three figures. If they could look sheepish, this was the closest they had ever seemed to it. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Your duty has many guises, Jade Agamuskara Bluegold, and some are more dangerous than others. We know little about Faddah Rucksack and far less about his path. Be wary of him but watch him. Learn from him but keep your distance. Stay close but do not get involved. A man without a destiny is a man who might do anything.”

  The Management faded away into nothing, as they always did. Jade stood alone, still holding the letter.

  She came back to the finished pour. Who are you, indeed? Jade thought. Blinking at the glaring midday sun, she carried the brimming glass out into the bright world.

  The white walls of Agamuskara collected light, stored it, packed it tightly, and shot it back into the world like munitions. People, bicycles, vehicles, and animals trudged and flowed—a river of thousands moving past one-story, two-story, and three-story buildings.

  The brown-and-black sari was a shadow amongst the white glare and the thousands of colors. The woman caught Jade’s eye for a moment. Then the woman was gone, downstream in the river of flesh and steel.

  Scooters, rickshaws, taxis, trucks, cows, dogs, children, men, and women teemed through the streets. Many things tried to occupy the same place at the same time. Not even a square of dirt or pavement showed beneath the slow incessant press of tires, feet, and paws. From the people rushing and meandering to the buildings that seemed to shimmer and wobble in the light, all the world moved.

  Except for him.

  Faddah Rucksack sat at the black iron table, the pub’s single table outside, to the right of the door and near the corner of the building, where two wide streets met at an acute angle. His back to the pub and dressed all in black, he sat like the city’s shadow—the only shadow amidst the white walls and brilliant colors of the people and trucks. Clad in a black leather glove, his left hand rested on the table next to an empty pint glass. His bare right hand seemed simultaneously earth-brown and cloud-pale.

  He read a sheet of paper covered in a scrawl whose language Jade couldn’t determine. As she approached, he turned it over and set it down. Rucksack looked toward the roving people. Jade couldn’t see his eyes, but everything in how he stared said that the man sitting right here was also hundreds of years and thousands of miles away. He set his left hand on top of his right.

  Jade blinked. Coming from the low lights of the pub, it was hard adjusting to the sunlight. She looked at his hands again. Maybe it was the glove, but his left hand seemed smaller than the right.

  “Rucksack?” she said. “Are you okay?”

  He turned his head and noticed her for the first time. It took but a moment for the faraway man to return. Rucksack’s face was everyone and no one, everywhere and nowhere; he could’ve been from Ireland, Tibet, Kenya. For all Jade could tell, he could’ve dropped out of the clouds. His tight face let loose a wide smile, bright as the city walls. “There’s never a fear, as long as there’s beer, there’s only smiles and glee,” Rucksack sang. “Now that you’re here, let’s drink in good cheer. Hey, barkeep! How about a couple for free?”

  Jade laughed. “Have you ever paid for a beer?”

  “It’s like a dog, only more loyal and useful,” Rucksack said. “I cannot help the extensive credit that insists on following me wherever I go.”

  And that comes ahead of you too, Jade thought. The letter had arrived an hour before he had first walked into the pub all those months ago. The Deep, Inc. stationery was familiar enough, having appeared on many an invoice and letter accompanying kegs of Deep’s Special Lager (“Thank you for making Every Night Special!”) and Galway Pradesh Stout (“The World’s #1 Beer!”):

  One Faddah Rucksack, a traveler of worlds and doer of deeds, does come to Agamuskara for an indeterminate length of time. Mr. Rucksack’s purchases are free of charge and will be reimbursed to you. Thanking you in advance for your understanding.

  The scrawled signature had been as indecipherable as the strange language on the paper Rucksack had been reading, but the money had come every week. Good thing too, she thought. It’s so bloody hot here, I hardly ever carried GPS until he arrived. I swear the man could put a straw in a keg and drain it.

  Jade set the pint on the table. The beer’s white head wobbled just above the rim. “I’ll never understand how you drink stout in this heat.”

  “A pint at a time, my lass,” Rucksack replied. With a tilt of his head, he raised his glass to her. “Besides, o’ all the barkeeps from Ireland to India, not a one pours a GPS as fine as you do, Jade. And believe you me, I would know.”

  Jade couldn’t help but grin. All these months and they had hardly spoken, except to exchange pint orders, natter about the weather, or discuss the day’s headlines. “Such a compliment,” Jade replied. “You’re not... drunk... are you?”

  Rucksack dimmed his smile, a seeming seriousness in his eyes. Then he winked. “There are two things I never do,” he said. “I never stop drinking. And I never get drunk.”

  “It’s just that when I came out here, something about you seemed off.”

  Rucksack looked at her in a new way. His gaze moved from Jade to the paper, then back to her. “Have you ever lost someone, Jade?” he said. “Someone close to you? Someone who mattered more than all the world?”

  For a moment, sh
e was there again: painted concrete, his outstretched hand, the shape of his mouth, the glint of the ring in his fingers—and then all the world had gone still. “Yes,” she said. “Long ago. In a different life.”

  “In a different life.” He nodded, clenching and unclenching his left hand. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it. I have too,” he said. “Lost someone. Long ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And I thank you, as I am for you too.” Rucksack traced a bare finger over the sheet of paper. “I got a letter recently, saying that the someone I lost, I only thought I lost. And that if I came to Agamuskara, I’d find her.”

  A lover? A wife? she thought. A sister? Jade took a step toward the table. “Who was she?”

  Rucksack opened his mouth to reply, but the words froze. All the world seemed to hold its breath.

  Both Jade and Rucksack doubled over, as if they’d each been punched in the stomach. On the two streets, everyone and everything stopped moving. No one spoke. Thousands of eyes only looked around, wondering what was so suddenly different about the world.

  The glaring walls of the city grew brighter yet softer. From the Agamuskara River, a breeze blew whispers and wet earth, caresses and cool summer nights. A million dawns rose from every soul in the city. Every dream shimmered like gardens in the first morning light, dewy green leaves scintillating. Though it was midday, the world seemed like the slimmest golden glimmer of sunrise, like the birth of a child, like the first time you see the person you fall in love with.

  Jade fell onto one knee, her right hand grabbing the other chair at the table. All that had happened, all the doubts, all the wonderings and questions, all washed away. She was only Jade, no longer a Jade or the Jade. Just Jade. Just herself. Not her decisions and her destiny, only her possibilities. I can do anything, she thought. I can be anyone. I can choose anything and nothing and everything.