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

  The path soon sloped upward and narrowed. As the trees thinned, Jay saw they were going up the hill. It rose sharp and steep out of the ground, more like a mossy potato standing on end than some gently sloping wave in the earth.

  Rucksack looked back at him, saying nothing, but the question in his eyes was clear enough. Jay answered by returning his stare. Yes, I’m up for it, Jay thought. I’m up for anything.

  Depending on which part of the world they faced as they wound counter-clockwise up the narrow path, they could see the forest, Agamuskara the river, Agamuskara the city, or the plains that rolled off toward the north. I’m only separated from all that scenery by not jumbling my feet, Jay thought, questioning his bravado. But he continued following Rucksack, trying not to fall behind.

  The walk had been quiet. Neither man spoke, preferring instead to look out from the hill or down at his feet. The air was still again, warmer as the sun rose higher. The exertion made Jay sweat harder and harder as they climbed the high hill. We’ve got to be over five hundred feet up by now, Jay thought as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. As usual, Rucksack seemed dry as a desert.

  In shadows on the shady side of the hill, a sound almost like giggling brought a slight coolness, as if the temperature had lowered a degree or two. Near knee level, a thin stream of water trickled out of the earth, making the path damp and muddy.

  Rucksack slipped.

  His gloved left hand shot out, but the withered hand couldn’t grab onto anything. Losing balance, Rucksack’s legs went out from under him as he spun around. Empty air waited to catch him.

  Jay shot forward.

  Reached out quickly and desperately, Jay grabbed his friend and pulled him away from the edge. They slammed into the side of the hill, the earth damp in Jay’s face for a moment. The impact made Jay bounce backward. His feet left the ground. The empty air beckoned again.

  Great, he thought. Is it my turn now?

  Rucksack’s arm came up. Both men pressed each other into the damp earth, breathing hard.

  “Thank you,” Rucksack said.

  “Friends don’t let friends fall off hills,” Jay replied.

  Rucksack’s rumbly laugh pealed over the world. “They don’t indeed,” he said, clenching and unclenching his left hand. “Useless shagging thing. Sorry about that.” He nodded. “Up we get.”

  “How high is this thing?”

  “Nine hundred ninety-nine feet. Technically speaking, a hill as opposed to a mountain.”

  “So we’ve got only, what, a couple hundred more feet to go?”

  Rucksack shrugged.

  I don’t know if I believe you, Jay thought as they reached the top of the hill, maybe a hundred feet later or five hundred or a thousand. Hands on his knees, Jay bent over, breathing hard.

  Rucksack seemed no more winded than he would have been if they’d walked to the pub for a pint.

  Jay coughed and stood. “I hope it’s easy to keep fit at your age,” he wheezed.

  “You’d be surprised,” Rucksack replied. “But I’m sure the shock will fade with time.”

  “What do you mean?” Jay said.

  Rucksack plucked a water bottle from a pouch on Jay’s daypack and held it out. “Have some water first. Get your breath back.”

  Jay drank deeply then poured water over his head. Goosebumps puckered his neck and back. “That’s better,” he said. “It’s like I feel alive again.”

  “The best thing life can do is get on with living,” Rucksack replied. “Might as well feel refreshed in the process.” He looked out over the world. “Many’s the time I wondered why I was as I was. Mum and Dad never wanted to tell me, even when I came o’ age and began doing, well, what I used to do. Now I know.”

  “Is this your way of telling me things?” Jay said.

  “I’ll give you answers,” Rucksack replied, “but I’ll do it my way.”

  He looked out at the world then back to Jay and continued. “Mum pulled the Smiling Fire’s power out as a dia ubh. When its light fell on me, unborn, the fire o’ life itself was put into me. It changed me, Jay. If it hadn’t, who knows what I would’ve been? Maybe it was destiny or something chosen in that decisive moment. Maybe I was just going to be an ordinary child who would’ve grown up to live and die as an ordinary man.”

  “I can’t imagine there being anything ordinary about you,” Jay said. “Maybe that’s the point. It was both your destiny and your decision.”

  “I could say the same thing about you.”

  Jay shook his head. “What, because I travel? When I began, it was to honor my parents’ dreams, their memory.”

  “Why keep on now?”

  “It was hard at first,” Jay said. “There was a point a couple of years ago when I thought seriously about settling down. In Ireland, actually.”

  Jay looked off toward the north, over the flat plains and beyond to where, in his mind’s eye at least, the Himalayas would rise over the earth. “Travel came to be part of me,” he said. “I realized I love it more than being still. Even when it’s hard or scary or uncomfortable, I love the thrill of the road. Travel is an ultimate love. To see the world is to see yourself reflected everywhere you go. Yet it’s also about letting both the world’s light and darkness shine into you, show you things about yourself that you never knew. Above all, I came to see what was inside me: this special, boundless, shining love for the road, for the world. I learned I held it inside like this precious jewel. I held it close and no matter how dirty and dusty I got outside, that jewel, that love, stayed gleaming and pure.”

  The men stood side by side and stared out over the plains. Jay wondered about the world beyond the city, the vastness of India, the depth of its land and people, the length of its history and life. This country is alive like no other I’ve ever known, he thought. So varied yet so cohesive. I’ve never felt so alive as I’ve felt here.

  How did I not notice the mountain before?

  It bloomed from the edge of the horizon, looming like a moon over the flat plains. Even from this far away, Jay could see the gray-brown rock of the sides of the mountain, the same hues he’d seen in the Himalayas.

  “Jay?” Rucksack asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess I’m just confused,” he said, but another part of his mind yelled at him and fought for control of his mouth. You aren’t confused, it said. You know what this is. “Mount Everest is the world’s tallest mountain, right?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m having trouble understanding how I’m seeing it here. You’d think it’d be set too far back in the Himalayas to be visible. Plus, we’re too far south to see even the foothills.”

  Rucksack peered toward the horizon. “Humor an old man,” he said. “Where exactly are you seeing this mountain?”

  Jay pointed. You’d know it anywhere! screamed the part of his mind he kept trying to ignore. The blasted thing’s been following you since Ireland.

  “I need you to understand something,” Rucksack said. “You’re right.”

  “About what?” Jay said. “That it’s weird that you can see Mount Everest from here?”

  Rucksack shook his head. “You’re right that you aren’t seeing Everest. And I think you know that.”

  “That mountain is huge, Rucksack. The summit looks like it’s touching the sky, like it’s the roof that holds up the world.”

  “The mountain is huge. I can’t even see it, and I know it’s huge. But I don’t have to see it to know it’s there or to know what it really is.” Rucksack sighed. “You began to travel because o’ what happened to your parents, but you continue traveling because it’s who you are. Your travels revealed that. The world is in your blood, in your soul, Jay. Seeing the world is your reason for being. It’s who you are. It’s no wonder the dia ubh came to you.”

  “You’re talking like now there’s some special destiny that I’m deciding,” Jay said.

  “You wanted answers,” Rucksack replied. “I’m going to rem
ind you o’ that and something else: the price o’ demanding answers is being strong enough to accept them.”

  Rucksack swept his arm over the world. “The mountain you see, the mountain that is the true largest mountain, is Mount Meru.”

  “Meru. Another name for Kailash. It’s real too?”

  Rucksack grinned. “Mount Meru is just as real. Even more real. All reality, all existence, comes from Mount Meru. No wonder it’s been following you around, though the fact that you can see the mountain at all is what’s most amazing.”

  “Following me?” Jay said. “How do you know that?”

  “Mum and Mount Meru are connected. I don’t know the how o’ it, but I know the what. She told me how she’s followed you, in her dreams, seeing you in Ireland and onward as you’ve made your way east. You coming to Tibet, to Everest, you getting the dia ubh and bringing it to Agamuskara, where the Smiling Fire has awakened and is a threat again—these things are no accident. This is destiny at work.”

  Jay gripped the straps of his daypack. “I decide my life.”

  “I don’t consider the two mutually exclusive. Your destiny is to decide your life. But the decisions you’ve made have brought you here. Your destiny wasn’t just to carry the dia ubh, Jay. You’ve stayed in Agamuskara, with a mirror eclipse ticking closer and closer.”

  “Then what’s my destiny?”

  Sadness and hope mixed in Rucksack’s eyes. “It may as could be argued I should’ve done this sooner. I’m sorry I haven’t. The only thing harder than living destiny is talking about it, especially when the path is so difficult, and the person involved has become a dear friend.”

  Rucksack sighed, as if steeling himself for what he was about to say. “On the day o’ the mirror eclipse, Jay, the dia ubh will open. It will shine with a brilliant, golden light. If what Mum and I believe is true, then the Smiling Fire will have regained enough strength to break free o’ its prison. It will stand in that light, regain its full former strength, and destroy all life on the planet.”

  “No!” A heat washed over Jay’s face. “That can’t be right. I’ve carried this damn thing all this time, only so it can help destroy the world?”

  “That’s the destiny,” Rucksack said. “You, me, Jade, Jigme, everyone you’ve ever known, everyone you haven’t met yet, will all be reduced to ash. The world will go from lush and living to burnt and dead.”

  Jay saw them all. All the people he’d shared time with over the years, friends from school and from growing up, a flash of red Irish hair, Jade and her brilliant eyes. He saw them all. Then he saw them all burning.

  “There has to be another way,” he said. “I can’t let that happen.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Rucksack said. “Because there is one other way. But only one.”

  “What is it?”

  “When the dia ubh opens, instead o’ the Smiling Fire standing in the light, you must stand there.”

  “What happens to me?”

  “The dia ubh will transform you. You will no longer be human. You won’t even be like me. You’ll become a god, Jay. The divine wanderer, here to save the world, here to save all that lives and loves.”

  A god.

  The two words crashed through Jay’s mind, knocking over thoughts of his future, thoughts of his loves, thoughts of what it was to be a living, breathing person.

  “What, like, all-powerful and living forever?” Jay said.

  “Somewhat,” Rucksack replied. “Gods are almost but not quite either of those, despite what some religions would tell you. Generally what makes a god is becoming the total personification of what you truly are, the pure form o’ what matters most at the core o’ the core o’ your being. You live what you love, and what you love lives through you. As for living forever, you won’t age or get ill, and it’d be damn near impossible to injure you. But not totally impossible. You have to have a world, for example. Gods come from life. No life, no gods.”

  “Funny,” Jay said, “I’ve seen more gods than rice around this city. Shouldn’t they be banding together in some sort of big divine army to put this smiling thing down? Bust into his temple and take him out while he’s not at full power?”

  “If only it worked that way,” Rucksack replied. “The Smiling Fire is the only god to have existed outside o’ life on this world. He’s not the same as other gods. He can’t be killed in the sense that mortals think o’ it. Every other god could stop everything they’re doing—which is a lot more than you might think—team up against the Smiling Fire, and they would still lose. They’re not the right kind of gods.”

  “Why would I be the right kind?”

  “You are the world and the world is you. It’s no accident or coincidence that the dia ubh starts out looking like a globe. The fire o’ life is the world itself. You don’t have to have seen every corner of existence to be every bit of it. Besides, ultimately, you aren’t the only one who makes decisions. The world makes choices too, and the world chose you. You are the champion, Jay. You are the guardian. If you stand in the light o’ the dia ubh, you become the one thing that can destroy the Smiling Fire. You become the one thing that can save us all. I suppose the only question is, do you decide to accept your destiny?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Believe it or not, yes, you do. I’m not saying the alternatives are nice. You can choose not to stand in the light and let all happen as I’ve said it would. Or you could stand in the light but then do something else—not destroy the Smiling Fire, I suppose. You could leap off this hill right now, and who knows what would happen. Destiny is not the only path, Jay. It’s only the most likely one—or, in cases such as this, the preferred one.”

  “The alternative being all life in the world destroyed.”

  Rucksack nodded.

  Jay looked out over the hill. The plains below alternated between brown and green. Behind them, the white walls of Agamuskara shone in the sun, a brilliant light of life and humanity, all existence in a microcosm of India. Beside them, the brown ribbon of the Agamuskara river flowed. Jay for a moment thought he saw past the illusion. Instead of seeing a muddy river cutting east, Jay saw the clear, bright, and blue river flowing north toward the mountains, toward the Heart of the World.

  “The road forever,” Jay said. “Forever the road. That’s what I always liked to tell myself. And now here it is. I could become a god, save the world, and never stop traveling. There’s something to it.”

  He pulled down his daypack and unzipped it. The dia ubh was light in his hand and cool to the touch. “But there’s got to be a catch,” Jay said, staring at the dia ubh. “There’s always a catch.”

  “You’d have to survive,” Rucksack said.

  Jay looked up and asked,“Why isn’t it you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t talk about it directly, but it’s like you were some sort of superhero. I get that something went wrong. You aren’t as you were, but still, why not you? Why me? You’re already practically a god because of one dia ubh, why not use this one to finish the job? You’d be a much better choice.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. I am who I am, Jay. There’s more for me beyond this. At least, that’s what Mum’s told me. Helping you to your destiny, she said, was a way to help me regain my own. I think this job, as you say, has come to you precisely because you are just an ordinary person but one who loves the world and its roads and ways with all his heart. Love and power usually do best with those who don’t seek them out but instead accept them as the brilliance and burden that they are.”

  Jay looked down at the dia ubh’s smooth, gray, featureless surface, turning it in his hands, then stopped.

  “It’s like there’s the tiniest little scratch on the surface,” Jay said. “Like a small crack, no thicker than a hair—that’s what I thought it was at first. Here, see for yourself.”

  Jay tossed the dia ubh to Rucksack, softly but too high.

  Not a very good throw, Jay tho
ught. Oh crap! Is it…

  The dia ubh went off to Rucksack’s left, toward the edge of the hilltop and the big drop beyond. Rucksack leaped up, but the dia ubh bounced off his left hand. Rucksack twisted and shifted, his hands moving in a blur. He stumbled back to the ground, fell to his knees at the edge of the hill. The dia ubh rolled to a stop and rested in the palms of his hands.

  “That was close,” Rucksack said.

  “Sorry,” Jay replied, walking over. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He saw a small shape on the ground. “Oh, you dropped something.” He leaned down to pick it up.

  Jay’s face smiled back at him from his passport information page.

  Rucksack rushed to his feet. “Jay…” he started to say.

  “You had it?”

  “They gave it to me and—”

  “And you kept it? You didn’t give it back to me? How long have you had this?”

  “There’s a reason, Jay.”

  “There’s no reason. You promised me straight answers.”

  “They gave it to me the night the dia ubh changed.”

  Jay stepped backward. A heat and tightness burned in his face and body. “All this time,” he said. “For weeks we’ve run around the city, chasing after Mim and Pim so I could get my passport back. So many times I thought we were close, as if I could sense that it was near. And it was. It was in your damn pocket the whole time.” He flipped through the blank pages. “What have you done to my passport? What happened to all my stamps, all my visas?”

  “I didn’t do this,” Rucksack stammered, his eyes wide and afraid. “They said something about fixing it. I needed to hold onto it for a while. You needed to stay in the city—”

  “You lied to me,” Jay said. “You were helping them.”

  “No.” Rucksack shook his head. “I was helping you.”

  “You were helping me only because it meant helping yourself.” Jay closed his passport and put it in his pocket. “I get it now. You kept me in the city because of this damn destiny. This dia ubh crap, this smiling bonfire thing.” He shook his head. “And I nearly believed it.”