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

  If the narrow stairways didn’t get you stuck, there was always a turn in the steps, some small landing that would make sardines claustrophobic. That always resulted in a few embarrassing moments of shifting back and forth, trying to turn a little to one side or the other, anything to get you free and trudging again.

  Due to some twisted law of the universe, Jay had concluded, getting stuck on hostel stairs also compelled someone from an upper floor and someone from a lower floor to need to use the stairs at the same time. Then came the tricky negotiation of who continued on their way first, while the other two hapless travelers tried to squeeze themselves into the wall so the other could pass.

  In these inevitable situations, the laden backpacker always lost.

  As the first traveler passed and then the second traveler passed, Jay breathed out hard and extricated himself from the wall. His legs shook. His feet throbbed.

  There was still one more flight of steps to go.

  “Leave the pack with Jade,” Rucksack had encouraged him as they went with Jigme. But Jay just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t letting the pack out of his sight until he fell asleep—and even then, he was seriously considering chaining his wrist to the pack, just to be on the safe side.

  Bollocks, he thought, in a part of his mind that seemed far away and somehow not fatigued. He tried to ignore that part of his mind, but it persisted. It has nothing to do with the pack, he thought. You just couldn’t deal with seeing her again.

  Jay started up the last landing. He was almost to the third floor.

  His memories of Jade weighed him down more than the pack and the fatigue. When she’d first come outside, three pints on her tray, one look had washed away every bump, bruise, exhaustion, and hardship of the day. Of the last three days. Of the last five years. Both calmness and excitement had settled over Jay, as his gaze caught her blue-and-gold eyes. Now, their second encounter bewildered him. The air had all but crackled between them. And the brush of their hands? His skin still tingled. This day has been strange in so many ways, he thought, but maybe it will make more sense once I’ve slept. He trudged up the steps, trying to put Jade, Jigme, Rucksack, everything out of his mind.

  When he got to the door of the dorm room, Jay listened a moment before opening it. Loud arguments, loud hangovers, loud attacks of food poisoning, louder sex, and some particularly loud masturbation had all taught him never to open a hostel dorm door quickly.

  Not so much as a snore. Maybe my luck is changing.

  Jay opened the door and sighed. Not that he’d expected better. Cheap hostels were always packed, and most backpackers felt lucky to be able to lie on their backs. Still, Jay had hoped to be able to turn over in his bed and not bang his shoulder on the bunk above him. Judging by the number of made beds to big packs and general let’s-spread-out-a-bit clutter, the dorm was only half-full.

  Thank goodness it’s not full-on tourist season.

  Inside the room, Jay counted two rows each of three sets of bunk beds. There was bed space for twelve. The door opened at the long end of the room, and the beds stretched off toward a short wall at the other end, with a doorway cut into it. Backpacks, clothes, and various effects of six travelers covered beds, walls, and floors, but their travelers were nowhere to be seen. They were probably out seeing the fire temples, buying silk, noshing on street foods, and wandering the streets of Agamuskara. They’d be checking out the locals, talking with the locals, and maybe, for a moment in their hearts, feeling like they were locals. Good for them, Jay thought. At least for now I can get some quiet sleep.

  Right across from the door, the first row of beds had an empty bottom bunk in the middle. Dogs pee to claim territory. Backpackers just set down their stuff.

  The air didn’t smell too rank or stale—a good sign that no one was terribly unkempt, habitually hung over, or regretting eating that dodgy curry last night. However, he would understand if his dorm-mates were all crazy. The green of the cinderblock walls was mint gone wrong, neon past its prime, a bucket of paint rejected by a prison. Stark shadows scrabbled around the walls, making them foreboding and slightly psychedelic. Three bare bulbs hung from the ceiling like travelers who’d stayed in the room too long. Yellow light dribbled like an incontinent cow.

  In the middle of the far wall, a thin door opened to the lone loo, and Jay’s bladder pulled him toward it. The budget for building materials must have run low, Jay thought as he groped for a light.

  In the dim glow from the dorm room he could make out the squat toilet, a concrete pad with a rough oval hole cut in it, surrounded by what looked like a dirt floor. After spending so many years on the road, Jay didn’t think twice about squat toilets, though he still shuddered at the memory of the toilet at the other base camp, its stalagmite of frozen poo rising from the hole.

  Then he realized why this toilet bothered him. This is the third story of the building, Jay thought. So how is the floor dirt?

  Waving his hand high and in front of him, he finally caught the thin string of the light’s pull cord. The heavy light of the bare bulb must have been carefully calibrated to look exactly like urine.

  Jay looked down. Roaches glared back at him, but they ran from his feet as Jay stepped forward.

  As he released the stout and water from the day, a roach crawled up onto the rim of the toilet hole. Something about its waving legs and antennae suggested a taunt, a threat. The other roaches were still, listening, waiting. An antenna waved and then so did the thousands of antennae of the assembled roach army. Jay stared back at the menacing roach general. “Point that somewhere else,” Jay said, blasting the roach off the toilet.

  The other roaches glared at him with revenge in their tiny compound eyes. Jay realized his ammo had run out. Zipping up, he retreated as tactfully as he could while walking backwards, not taking his eyes off the roaches until the door was shut.

  Jay lay back on his new bed and folded his hands under his head. “It’ll do fine,” he said, grinning as he slipped into a deep sleep.

  His body rested, but in his mind the travel never stopped.

  In his dream, the white alley glowed, but the dull red door looked like smeared blood. “Hope is inside,” Rucksack said. The small backpack that was his head slowly revolved on his neck.

  “Hope is dying,” Jigme replied. A turning backpack had replaced his head also. Around them, the white walls of the alley faded into a gray mist. Only the red door remained. The air smelled of ash and old fires. “Will you help?”

  “I don’t know how to help,” Jay said. “I couldn’t help anyone. I didn’t even know they were gone until…”

  “I can’t open the door,” Jigme said, his hands straining at the bolts.

  “I can’t either,” Rucksack said.

  “But it’s easy,” Jay replied, moving between them and touching the door.

  Blood cascaded down his feet. Jay was certain his t-shirt was ruined, but he didn’t look down. Where the red door had stood, an open doorway showed them the small room where the sick woman lay undecided between living and dying.

  Jigme pointed to the frail sticks on the bed and said, “Amma. Say hello, Amma. Please.” The sticks had been woven into the shape of a woman, but there was no skin, no breath; this woman was hollow inside. She had no mouth so said nothing. Though there were no eyes, the stick woman seemed to watch them.

  “What is her name?” Rucksack asked.

  “Asha,” Jigme said.

  “It means hope,” Rucksack said to Jay. “Where there is a mother, there is hope.”

  “But there is no hope here,” Jay replied. “She is empty. Asha is gone. Hope is dead.”

  Heat welled up in the air around them. The scent of fires grew fresher, hotter.

  “She has a fever,” Jigme said. “It burns.”

  Black and red flames flickered around the walls, eating the room from the ceiling to the floor. When the room burned away, the rest of the world stretched out around them. Where the white walls had gone, ash and rubble lay
smoking. The sun had been eaten like an egg yolk. As far as Jay could see, a black world smoked.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Jay said.

  “Where there is a mother,” Rucksack repeated, “there is hope.”

  The flames gathered around the bed. “No!” Jigme said. “Don’t let them!”

  “There is nothing,” Jay said. “Nothing.”

  The flames gathered into a red-and-black crescent of shadow and blood. Sharp points stretched into a grin, then widened over the sticks that were shaped like a woman. The sticks moved. Organs and blood appeared inside. Wicker whitened into bone. Skin stretched over muscles. Eyes opened.

  Jade stared at Jay.

  “No!” he shouted, leaping forward as the fires lowered.

  Her scream went out in a whoomph as the mouth of black flames swallowed her.

  Jay reached for her, tried to leap forward, but Rucksack and Jigme pulled at his arms. “The moon told you,” Jigme said, pulling Jay away from the black mouth. Flames flickered like shadows.

  “The moon told you,” Rucksack agreed. “Oh, and now look.”

  Jay’s feet felt wet. He looked down at his shirt, reddened from the blood from when they had come in—only now the blood flowed fresh. Then the pain hit him. He staggered and his knees hit the dirt floor. He touched his chest. His fingers went inside.

  “You can touch your heart,” Jigme said. “I can’t do that.”

  “Take care not to drop it,” Rucksack said.

  Jay reached into his chest and pulled out his heart. It beat in his bloody hand: red and pink, swelling and condensing with each empty beat. “This isn’t what it really looks like,” Jay said. With his other hand, he wiped away the blood. A small world floated in his hand, turning slowly. White clouds swirled, bringing shadows to the brown and green lands within. He could almost hear the waves of the blue waters rise and crash, rise and crash.

  The mouth opened again, and the black flames moved forward.

  “Run!” Rucksack shouted.

  But the world felt faint and hazy like wisps of ash blowing up from a fire. As Jay watched the little world, grayness and blackness spread out from what looked like a miniature Indian subcontinent. Soon, a charred blackness covered the entire globe, swallowing up the colors of the earth and sky.

  “Don’t let it!” Jigme shouted.

  “Why not?” Jay said. “It’s just a souvenir.”

  He dropped the charred little world into the open mouth. Behind him, the backpacks of Jigme’s and Rucksack’s heads burst into red-and-black flame.

  Rucksack and Jigme sank to their knees. Where the packs had been, there was nothing. The pair fell forward.

  “No,” Jay said. “You were supposed to be there still.”

  He looked at the black mouth. “Give it back!” he said. “Give it back!”

  The mouth grinned widely again then lunged forward until all Jay saw was black.

  His head smacked the bottom of the bunk above him when he sat up.

  The impact knocked him back onto his bed, and pain washed away the dream. “Aaagh,” Jay said to the heavy, hot darkness waiting at the window behind his bed. He touched his forehead. No sweat. If anything, a chill pulsed inside him as he sat up—slowly, carefully this time.

  The dream was quickly fading, until he remembered only vague snippets about a fire, Rucksack, and Jigme. “What were we doing?” Jay asked the empty dorm. “Having a barbecue?” He shook the remnants of the dream out of his mind and rubbed the sharp ache out from his tenderized forehead.

  Fast-paced music wafted from the floor: the sharpness of whistles and flutes, the clatter-clap rhythm of a drum, and the circular sawings of…

  No, Jay thought. No way. I’m in India, not Ireland.

  He kept listening. Then he got a few things together in his smaller daypack, freshened himself up, and secured his large backpack to the bed.

  It is though, he thought as he left the dorm and started down to the pub. It’s definitely a fiddle, or I’m not in India anymore.

  THE NOISES MET JAY on the narrow stairs, washing out the rustling coming from his small daypack. When Jay opened the door, the pub was a different world. Silence had been booted into the streets. The world outside had realized its throat was dry and it needed to come inside. Jay couldn’t even see the floor, much less an empty chair to sit in.

  Different languages whooshed past Jay. He passed by tables of travelers sitting together, Indians sitting together, and Indians and travelers sitting together. Looking around, he identified Australians, Israelis, Swedes, Germans, Japanese, Kenyans, Egyptians, Americans, Brazilians, Canadians, Mexicans, and Scots. The whole world seemed to be at the Everest Base Camp, getting to know each other while swapping stories and clinking glasses.

  A wayward foot made him stumble. Two men sitting at a table caught him by the arms and steadied him. Something about their faces seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Thanks,” Jay said. The men nodded and he continued on.

  He hadn’t noticed earlier, but where the Everest Base Camp’s walls weren’t white plaster, every color of the world turned the pub into an atlas and a scrapbook. Scrawled with signatures and well wishes, flags from over one hundred countries hung from the walls. Postcards. Photos. Maps of states, countries. Across from the bar, a large world map hung on the wall. Jay wove and twisted through the crowd until he stood before it. The map was large enough and detailed enough to show not only the world’s countries, but also states and cities. Much of the map wasn’t even visible, though; it was stuck with pins representing where the patrons came from. Not just travelers but locals too, Jay saw; India itself was covered in pins.

  The countries he had visited were also well represented. Ireland alone had twenty pins stuck in and around New Galway and the surrounding country. Maybe a sign pointed them here, he thought, remembering the red hair and the white sign of a long-ago memory.

  He looked west, across the Atlantic Ocean and the North American continent, until he stopped at Idaho. Other than a couple of pins stuck in Boise, the state was empty. Jay traced the green shape of the state with his finger. The map is not the world, he thought. Still, for a moment he expected to see the river there again, or smell freshly sawed cedar in his dad’s workshop, or hear the excitement in his mom’s voice as she read from another guidebook.

  Instead, he remembered the door opening, the rain pouring in sheets behind the man walking in.

  Jay lowered his hand. “Maps are dreams, hopes, and memories,” he said to himself.

  Beneath the frame a clear, covered tray held pins. Jay stuck one in Idaho and turned away before the memories could come back.

  On the pub’s corner stage, ten people sat in a circle, playing music and singing. The musicians too were local and foreign, though Indian and Celtic sounds and rhythms dominated. People clapped hands, tapped feet, and whooped as a fiddle and a sarinda dueled, their respective players bowing furiously. Other people called out tunes, and the musicians acknowledged each request with a nod.

  Jay trudged to the bar, finally resting his elbows on the polished mahogany. The only person behind the bar was Jade, and she moved so quickly that Jay could hardly keep his eyes on her. He watched her as best he could, fascinated with how regally and gracefully she moved. No glass slipped from her hands. No miscounted change dropped to the bar. No patron even had to repeat a drink order. And Jade never stopped moving. Her every motion was efficient to the point of ruthless yet elegant as a bird in flight.

  Now and again, she seemed to blur like a skip, a bad spot in her motion that Jay couldn’t follow. Jay chalked it up to needing a beer. She was busy at the other end of the bar, mixing five drinks and pulling a pint of Deep’s Special Lager. She bent over to get something from a low shelf. No rush then, Jay thought. I’ll just… enjoy the view.

  And then she was there in front of him. Looking irritated.

  Jay realized he was a few seconds behind events. “Huh?”

  Jade’s hand see
med to twitch toward something underneath the bar, but she stopped herself and grinned razors. “I said he’s over there. With your pint.”

  “What? No… Who?”

  The irritated look sharpened in her blue-and-gold eyes. “Let me know when you unpack your brain, backpack boy,” she said. “Who do you think?”

  Then she was gone, a blur behind the bar again.

  At a table in the middle of the floor, Faddah Rucksack lifted his pint to Jay and beckoned to the empty chair behind a brimming stout.

  “You look rested,” Rucksack said. “Or at least a little less like hell. Now it’s time to be restored.”

  Jay set his daypack under the table as he sat down. He tucked a chair leg through one of the straps and ignored the endless rustle, which was audible over the talking and the music. “I could do with a drink. Thank you.”

  “After the day you’ve had, you’ve earned a pint. Welcome to India, my lad!” The men clinked glasses and drank deeply.

  Rucksack set his glass on the table. “It’s been quite a path for you,” he said. “I think we have a bit in common, Jay o’ the road. Could just about figure we were destined to meet. You do like I do. We follow the path we see and let it take us where it’s going. Destiny.”

  “Never was one for destiny,” Jay replied. “I choose what I want to do, where I want to go. Then I go there. I make my own way.”

  “So you just up and came to India.”

  “Sure. Time for a change. Thought I’d get to know one of the world’s most amazing countries. Figured I could see the eclipse too before I skip out of here. It’s supposed to be a rare one. Besides, after Tibet I could do with some warmer weather and thicker air.”

  “I can imagine. But I envy you too. I miss Tibet. I know the dirt o’ those mountains anywhere, and that stuff’s ground itself into you from your skin to your soul to the fibers and heart o’ your backpack.”

  “You’ve been to Tibet?”

  “I have. As well as Bhutan, northern India, Kashmir and Pakistan. From the Hindu Kush to Assam, I know this country like the back o’ my right hand.”