Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) Page 7

  “And the back of your left hand?”

  Rucksack grinned. “You’re smarter than she took you for. The back o’ my left hand, that’d be Ireland.”

  Jay stared at the black leather glove. The left hand was smaller than the right. “What happened to your left hand?”

  “Ah, you wouldn’t want to hear about that. It’s a gruesome tale involving an innovative effort to come up with the world’s first piecrust flattener machine. But the way o’ it is that I’m from the world’s wisest seats o’ wisdom, my lad. I’m born of India and the Himalaya—not necessarily o’ the country, just the mountains themselves, and the land, the water, and the air. I’m Himalayan by birth, Irish by fortune, and myself by choice.”

  “How’d you wind up in Ireland?”

  “That’s a boring story o’ youth and a family that had to flee for their lives. Nothing that would interest you. You must be tired, you devil, and I’ve peppered you enough. Look at this place!” Rucksack swept his arms wide. People sang, danced, played music. Every table was talk, jokes, stories. But Jay’s eyes kept going to Jade behind her bar.

  “Aye,” Rucksack said. “She’s something. More than you or even I know.”

  “Maybe I’ll find out.”

  “Maybe. Few people are more guarded than a Jake or a Jade, lad. Let that stay right in your mind.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “All you need to know.”

  “And what are you, then?”

  “I am the world’s only Himalayan-Irish sage. Now drink up and enjoy.”

  The stout warmed something in Jay. Rucksack was evasive and full of riddles, but Jay couldn’t help but like him. “I’ve been traveling for five years,” Jay said. “Lots of stamps in that passport. I’ve even added pages. The last two years I’ve been in Asia.”

  “Yet this is your first time in India.”

  “It’s a big world. I wanted to see more of it first. Asia... I guess you could say I wanted to save the best for last.”

  Rucksack eyed Jay over a swig of stout. “At least you’re here now. India must seem pretty small beer to a well-worlded lad such as you though.”

  Jay shook his head. “On the contrary. It’s obviously an eventful place, and I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours. The scariest part, though, was the gang of cockroaches in the loo.”

  “How are the roaches?” Rucksack asked.

  “I didn’t stay long enough to find out how much they charge for protection money.”

  “There’s only one thing for those buggers.”

  “Don’t they say roaches would survive the end of the world?”

  “They do. Trouble is, they know nothing about Indian booze. Get yourself a bottle o’ Ram Rum or some o’ that other swill Jade keeps on the bottom shelf. Pour it all over the loo. Corners o’ the walls, around and in the shower drain, under the sink, everywhere. Bastards won’t bother you again.”

  “Why? Does it get them drunk?”

  “Melts their legs off. Roach can’t menace if it can’t walk.”

  “Not exactly a nonviolent approach to one of our fellow creatures, eh, Rucksack?”

  “Please. I have too much to do to muck about with being holy.”

  They laughed. Jay sat back in his chair, looking around the crowded pub. He’s fascinating, Jay thought, and he’s the best conversation I’ve had in ages. He relaxed. Even the noise in the daypack faded from his mind.

  Jay nodded toward the musicians. “I’ve never seen anything like this place,” he said. “You could’ve bet me a year’s travel money, and there’s no way I’d figure that you could play Indian and Irish music on the same stage.”

  Rucksack nodded. “The world never ceases to amaze me with how it brings things together. Your fiddler there is playing a mean up-tempo riff on the song o’ me heart, ‘The Little Beggarman.’”

  “And the Indian player?”

  “He’s playing a sarinda, which in a way is like an Indian take on a fiddle. Or you could say the Irish fiddle is a take on the Indian sarinda. Someone here is probably arguing the finer points.”

  “What song is he playing?”

  “‘Bole Chudiyan,’” Rucksack said. “Wonderful hit tune. The title translates as ‘My Bangles Spoke.’”

  “I’d heard about the interesting songs from the Bollywood films here, but I’ve never actually heard any.”

  “They could teach the world a great deal about what to call things. There’s also ‘Chand Mera Dil Chandni Ho Tum,’ or ‘The Moon is My Heart, You are the Moonlight,’ and one o’ my favorites, ‘Mera Man Tera Pyasa,’ or ‘My Mind is Thirsty for You.’”

  Jay drank half his remaining pint. “Nothing like an Indian love story, from what I hear.”

  “Where you hear that?”

  “India Through the Third Eye,” Jay said. “Big section on Bollywood movies. ‘Love transforms,’ it says. It transforms so much, a scene can go from the middle of a city like Agamuskara to a man and woman singing in a flower field in Kashmir or dancing around each other with the erotic temples of Khajuraho in the background. The movies are larger than life because India is larger than life. If they seem over the top, it’s because they are trying to get at the bigness of the feelings and morals beyond what we normally deal with, what we share and experience in our day-to-day lives.”

  “Maybe we should write a song,” Rucksack said.

  Jay smiled. “You’re on. How many drinks do you think it takes to write a hit Bollywood song?”

  Rucksack laughed. “At least two an hour till it’s done. That would give you a helluva tale you’d be dying to tell the folks back home.”

  Jay’s face darkened. “There are no folks back home.”

  Rucksack’s pint arm froze halfway to his mouth. “I’m sorry, Jay.”

  Jay shrugged and looked toward the stage.

  Rucksack set down his glass. “I lost my mum and dad,” he said, clenching and unclenching his gloved left hand. “Long time ago, but sometimes it still hurts like it just happened.”

  Jay nodded and looked back at Rucksack. “Do you think Jigme will lose his mum?”

  In the silence between Rucksack opening his mouth and actually speaking, the train of Rucksack’s thoughts leaped to another track. “I don’t know. I’ll keep doing what I can, if the doctors can’t do anything else for her. But at this point they have a better shot at healing her than I do. Her malady… there was a time where I could have set her right, just about no matter what it was.” He flexed his left hand. “But not so much these days.”

  Jay let the hyperbole pass him by. “These doctors are good ones, though, right?”

  “The best in the city.” Rucksack drained his pint. “I have to admit, when I first saw you I thought you might be another Annoyican wanker, parading his Americanness and expecting the world to part and smooth before you. I understood you being mad about your pack being stolen, but you know as well as I do that for a relatively well-to-do foreigner such as yourself, the theft meant an inconvenient day while you replaced your belongings, especially since the crown jewels weren’t in there. No trouble at all for you, really.”

  “What changed your mind?” Jay asked, setting down his emptied glass.

  “When you took her to the hospital.”

  “He what?”

  The men looked up. Jade stood over them, holding two pints on a tray.

  “The lad from earlier, Jigme, who stole Jay’s pack,” Rucksack said. “We visited his mum, Asha. I did what I could for her.”

  “Are you a doctor too, then?” Jade asked

  “I’m just a man who does what needs doing,” Rucksack replied. “But in this instance I couldn’t do much. Asha was thin and feverish as could be, and Jigme explained they couldn’t afford any doctors or medicines. Jay stared long at her. Next thing I knew, Jay had arranged transport for Asha and helped her get settled in at the hospital. He said he’d pay for everything.”

  A red, hot flush crept down Jay’s cheeks. “It was the
right thing to do, that’s all.”

  Jade locked her eyes on Jay’s. “There may be something to you after all, backpack boy,” she said, setting down the pints and going back to the bar.

  “You didn’t have to tell her,” Jay said.

  Rucksack smiled. “You’re going to fit in well here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Some countries focus on the mind, the voice, or the appetite. But India is a country o’ the heart. It’s beautiful and bewildering. As long as I’ve been in and out o’ the place, I’ve yet to understand it. Indians aren’t perfect. They’re no better, no worse than anyone else. But they lead with their hearts. You can tell at a glance. The movies. The dreams. The look in the eye o’ people as they walk down the street. And I can tell it about you too. You’ve got years o’ travel on you and hardship from before you ever put on a pack. You’re armored in all the thick skin, old scars, and dusty layers that entails.” Rucksack raised his brimming pint. “But beneath all that, you’ve got heart.”

  The men drank. As Jay lowered his glass, he said, “Rucksack, are you a man who fancies his chances with the ladies?”

  One eyebrow went up. “That’s a random question.”

  “Not really,” Jay replied. “Behind you, at a table along the wall, there’s a woman sitting alone.” Rucksack sat still. “Usually when someone says that,” Jay said, “the other person starts to wheel around and try to look. Of course, that gives the whole thing away to the person doing the secret staring.”

  “Let’s just say I’m old enough to know better. What’s she doing?”

  Jay shrugged. “She alternates between reading a piece of paper on her table and looking up and staring at you. I’m guessing she’s not reading a menu.”

  Rucksack’s brow wrinkled. “What’s she look like?”

  “About my age. And hot. Luscious, really.”

  “You’ve been sleeping in dorms too long.”

  Jay smirked. “You asked.”

  “In case you’re forgetting, there’s more to a woman than her attractiveness. Is she older, younger? How is she dressed? Where does it seem like she’s from?”

  “Maybe this would be a good time for you to turn around,” Jay said.

  “What, and spoil it?”

  “No, because she caught me looking. She’s leaving.”

  Rucksack turned around. The woman didn’t need to push or shove to make her way through the crowd. She walked with a litheness that could move her between the raindrops of a monsoon without getting wet.

  “I can’t see her face,” Rucksack said. “Where is she from?”

  “How am I supposed to be able to tell?”

  Rucksack stood, watching the woman until the pub door closed behind her. “Dammit, Jay.” He sat down. “People spend so much time talking about how seeing is believing, only to notice nothing when it counts. You might as well not have eyes.”

  “You don’t have to be such a jackass about it,” Jay replied. “Just a pretty lady leaving.”

  Rucksack looked away for a moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Jay nodded, then stood up and walked away. “Jay?” Rucksack said, but Jay ignored him.

  No one had yet sat down at the table where the woman had been. Drops of lime-scented water remained in her empty glass. Over the stink of unwashed travelers and sharp booze, the scent of jasmine flowers lingered.

  Jay looked at her chair. Nothing.

  Then he looked underneath and smiled.

  Sitting back down, he explained the glass and the scent to Rucksack. “That was the only trace of her. Believe it or not, some of us have senses other than our eyes.”

  “That was everything?” Rucksack asked.

  “Yes,” Jay said. “Except for this.” He slid an envelope across the table. “It was empty, but it must have contained the paper she had been reading. Since she was in such a hurry to leave, it must have fallen under her chair.”

  Eyes wide and mouth closed in a tight line, Rucksack stared at the envelope. Handwritten in black ink that reminded Jay of Hindi and Tibetan scripts, one word stared back: “Kailash.”

  Rucksack finally looked up. “Did you see her face?”

  Jay nodded. “I couldn’t say where she’s from, though. Long black hair, deep brown skin, brown eyes with hints of amber and black. The closest I could say is she looked Asian, but that’s so general it’s meaningless. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet. I just have this.” Rucksack pulled an envelope from his vest and set it on the table next to the first envelope. The word “Rucksack” was written on it in the exact same script and hand.

  “I take it there’s a letter in there.”

  “Not just a letter,” Rucksack said, nodding. “It’s the reason I’ve been here for months, waiting, watching, wondering.” He stared hard at Jay. At last, Rucksack said, “Can I trust you?”

  “You’re bewildering, but you’ve shown I can trust you,” Jay replied. “Besides, I owe you one. So yes, you can trust me too.”

  “Open it, then.”

  Jay pulled a thin sheet of blue paper out of the envelope. Something about the color seemed familiar. For a moment, his memory flashed back to his arrival in the city and to the strange things he kept seeing out of the corners of his eyes. He blinked and his vision cleared. Written in the same script as the envelopes, the letter said:

  Rucksack of the World:

  Before the eclipse, in the city of Agamuskara, by the river of the same name, what began it will end it, and you will find again Kailash.

  Jay read the letter a few more times, then set it on the table. “So I take it that may have been her. And who exactly is Kailash?”

  “Someone I couldn’t possibly meet again,” Rucksack replied. “Not in Agamuskara. Not anywhere in this world.” Anguish passed over his face, and sadness burned in his eyes.

  “Like I told you before, my parents died many, many years ago,” Rucksack said. He looked to the door, then back to Jay. “Kailash was my mother’s name.”

  THE MUSIC HAD DWINDLED, and now only a few musicians remained. For the first time all evening, Jade stood still and had a moment to look out over her customers. The thinning crowd revealed empty chairs. The flow had reversed. As quickly as they had come in, the people had poured out of the pub and staggered back out into the world.

  Jade hoped their hearts were lighter, their eyes brighter, and their spirits happier and resolved. Better be, anyway, she thought. I went through three-quarters of the stock in the cabinet just calming people’s nerves.

  From the first patrons through the door to Jay to the woman who’d left in a hurry to all the murmurs underlying the pub’s congenial air, it had been a strange evening.

  Maybe I can chalk this up to the news about the mirror eclipse, Jade thought, and how there hasn’t been one since The Blast.

  The Blast had happened long enough ago that in some places and cultures the memory had begun to fade. But not in India, where The Blast remained both tragedy and joy, horror and opportunity.

  After the explosion had scoured Ireland and England, the scale of The Blast had terrified India as much as the rest of the world. Nation after nation had suspended wars, negotiated peaceful ends to conflicts, and reduced or even disbanded their militaries. India had joined other nations with shipments of supplies and volunteers sailing to Ireland and Britain to aid the survivors.

  With England decimated in the aftermath, its global British Empire had fallen into disorder. Indians still raised many a glass to the nameless hero who had arisen after The Blast, united the country as it had never been united before, and dismantled the British Empire in India, which some of the Brits had started calling, “The Raj.” The jewel in England’s crown. There had been little violence. Many of the English laid down their guns; they were too scared for loved ones back home to care about fighting, too confused about their place in the world to care about colonies while London burned. After India had achieved independence, the n
ameless hero had disappeared, never to be seen again. But today, when a mirror eclipse was said to be coming, India still shuddered.

  Some flickering shadow, like one caused by firelight, had seemed to hang over the destinies and paths of everyone in the pub tonight. It had been hard to read the intertwining paths of destiny and decision, hard to see as far ahead as Jade normally saw. People expressed uncertainty about this marriage or that job, about a birth or a trip. Life always held uncertainty and indecision, but never had Jade seen it at such a magnitude as tonight.

  The first patrons through the door had confused her the most.

  Jade glanced at their table. They’ll most likely be the last to leave, she thought, the way they’re nursing those pitchers of Deep’s Special Lager.

  They seemed like two old men who should be arguing on a park bench. They could have been from anywhere, though something in their features reminded her of Rucksack.

  Their helixes confused her. Most people’s paths wound out like rivers, with a mix of straight lines, bends, and meanders. These men’s helixes spiraled, spun, crisscrossed, and curlicued. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought the helixes were playing a joke. Luckily, all Jade needed to do was serve them what they ordered. Whoever they were, whatever their business was, they knew their course and needed no steering from her. Jade was relieved. All the zigzags made her dizzy.

  Leaving a table of Brazilians who were traveling around India for three months, a woman came up to order a vodka and tonic. Jade came back to the now. One glance at the woman’s helix and Jade added a few dashes of independence to the drink.

  The woman had traveled too long with the men and women in her group, and now she was bored, felt she had lost her way. A few days doing her own thing, on her own, and she’d not only enjoy the trip more, but she’d give the group some much-needed leadership.

  The woman’s eyes lit up when she took a sip. “This is the best vodka tonic ever,” she said as she returned to her table.

  Jade grinned. When she turned around, Jay was standing at the bar, a small black daypack slung over his shoulder.