Travelers

by Alia Hess

  “Look, I don’t know about ‘my people,’ but I don’t have any preconceptions about what Islanders are like. You’re the first one I’ve met. I meant that as a compliment. As in, it’s unbelievable that anyone out here would help me. If I had met someone else, they probably would have just stolen all my stuff and went along their merry way as I rotted in the sun. And that’d be if I was lucky. So, I’d say you’re pretty alright.”

  Trav’s hard face softened into a warm smile. He stood and turned from the campfire. “Be back in a minute.”

  Owl pulled a worn black notebook and pen from her pack, then flipped it open, savoring the sight of the pure, blank white page, just waiting for her thoughts. Unlike much of the paper she encountered, with its dull color and pulpy texture, this book had smooth, crisp sheets. She’d paid quite a few tins for it, but it was worth it.

  The pen was even more expensive, with its reservoir of ink, blacker than black. She scratched the silver nib against the paper.

  November 06, 152—I missed a few days writing. I’m such an idiot. What the hell am I doing out here? How did my life get so far away from me?

  A frown creased her face as she documented her thoughts in a scrawling cursive. Eventually, Trav returned, his face a well of shadows beneath his cowl. Owl closed the notebook, stuffing it into her bag.

  “I think I found a better path out of this place. We’ll have to walk up a short hill, but after that, it looks pretty level.”

  We. “Okay. Good. No more rock climbing for me. Going anywhere with this stupid leg seems impossible right now, though. I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to walk on my own.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why are you really still here? I hate to think that I’m keeping you from other things while you’re busy playing nurse for me.”

  He glanced away. “Do I really look like I have some place to go? Something better to do? Don’t say yes.”

  Owl let out a laugh. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  “Do you?”

  Her eyes unfocused as she stared at the cooling campfire. “I’ve been wandering around for months. No direction, no plan—nothing to do but think about all the things I don’t want to think about.”

  “Three years.” Trav sat across from her, sunlight sneaking past his hood and limning his pinched face. “I’ve been doing the same thing. For three years.”

  “Wow. So if I don’t fix my life, I’m going to end up a sad husk like you?”

  A grin cut through Trav’s dejected expression. “That’s right. You’ll be just like me.”

  “Well, that’s some motivation to get my shit together.”

  Tiny crow’s feet appeared at the corners of Trav’s eyes as he laughed.

  After some small talk, she retired to the cave. As she reclined on her sleeping bag, Owl finished her journal entry, then thumbed through previous accounts. Many entries were boring.

  September 07, 152—It’s been 8 days since I left Waterton. It’s really hot today.

  September 17, 152—I found an abandoned town, but there wasn’t anything good in the houses.

  A few were a bit longer.

  September 22, 152—Some creep grabbed my ass while I was walking down the street today. I don’t exactly remember what happened after that, but next thing I know, he’s on the ground, holding his hand, and all his fingers are bent the wrong way. Woops.

  Owl made a point to write at least a sentence every day. Notations filled about half the book. She avoided the pages in the front—the pages that contained entries from before she left Waterton. Turning those entries into campfire fodder had crossed her mind several times, but even touching them made her sick.

  Trav’s rope sandals padded softly as he walked into the cave. Owl closed her notebook and looked up, gaze resting on the object in his hands.

  “Is that a crutch?”

  “Yep.”

  “You made this?”

  His mouth pulled into a half-smile. “No, I walked around the corner to the market and bought it.”

  “Alright, funny man. Help me up and I’ll try it out.”

  Standing was difficult, even with Trav’s semi-welcome help. Once she was up, she hitched the crutch under one arm and tentatively leaned on it. The lashed, whittled branches gave slightly under her weight. She took several steps, then smiled.

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel special. But seriously, this is really nice. Thanks, Trav.”

  “Trav?”

  “For Traveler. Since you won’t tell me your name.”

  A pink flush crawled up Trav’s pale cheeks. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”

  “So you said. If you want to tell me your real name, I can call you that, instead.”

  “Trav is fine.” He looked beyond the entrance. Swollen pewter clouds with blackened bellies sat low against the hills. “It’s going to rain. Would it be okay if I slept in here tonight?”

  Her stomach cramped, the smile falling from her lips. “Yep. Sure. But I snore.”

  “You also talk in your sleep.” He dragged his bedroll to the cave’s opposite wall.

  “I do not! And how would you know? Have you been watching me when I sleep?”

  Dust plumed as Trav dropped the bedroll and shook his head. “Nothing like that. I just sat with you for a while the first day. To make sure you were okay.”

  “Oh… So what did I say?”

  “‘Adam.’”

  “Ah.” She sucked in a breath. “Good night.”

  2 ~ Trashdogs ~

  The dull ache in her leg woke her. Owl shifted in her sleeping bag, but getting comfortable was impossible. At least her persistent headache was gone.

  She sat up and ran her fingers through the dark hair draping her face. Soft snoring drifted from across the cave. Trav slept there, his bare, broad back facing her and his own loose hair cascading onto his bedroll in white-gold waves. His arm shifted, the sinewy bicep frosted with early morning light. She looked away, carefully sliding a jagged hunk of mirror from her bag. Her reflection was less gaunt and sickly than the day before, but she still didn’t recognize herself. Where was the sparkle in her eyes? The playfulness? It wasn’t just the fall that had made her this way.

  Dried blood plastered her bangs to her forehead. She combed her fingers through the hair, dislodging red crust. A purple goose egg and healing scrapes hid beneath. Pushing the bangs back in place concealed the lump, but not the constellations of scars on her forehead.

  I’m so ugly.

  She dug through her bag, producing an eyeblack tin from among a tangle of scavenged items. Maybe she couldn’t be attractive, but she could at least be intimidating, tough. Like she belong out here and knew what she was doing.

  Owl rubbed the greasy paste on her finger and spread it across her lids. Although not as dramatic as Trav’s, she still practiced the superstition for safety in the wastes.

  Tilting her head from side to side, she scowled at her reflection. Who was she kidding? She’d never scare anyone with this on. All it did was make her look ghoulish.

  Movement in the mirror caught her eye and she tilted the shard. Trav stood, stretching. Owl put her items away and turned around. “Morning.”

  “Hey.” He picked up his dingy white shirt from the end of his bedroll and pulled it on. “How’s your leg today?”

  “It’s getting better.” She tugged her blue sleeping bag up over her bare legs. “With the crutch, I think I could probably travel a while today. Blow this dump. Find some new dump to stay the night in.”

  “Do you think you’re ready?”

  “Your crutch really makes a difference.”

  “I’ll get things packed then.”

  After Trav rounded the corner, she dressed, carefully pulling on jeans and boots. Her pack and traveling articles balanced precariously over one shoulder as she leaned on the crutch, limping slowly from the cave.

  Trav was busily breaking down his cooking tripod. A cool breeze blew, and the scent of damp earth clung to the ai
r. She pulled her cloak tight and eased onto a rock, spotting the hill Trav had found her at the base of on the day of her accident. Looking up the path she likely took, and tracing the fall back down, made her nauseous. It was a long drop and sharp rocks jutted from the dirt. It was a miracle she wasn’t dead.

  A roll of duct tape sat in her pack’s front pocket. She pulled it out and tore off a large strip with her teeth. Owl lifted her foot and wound the tape around the sole of her dusty, oversized leather boot. The soles were mostly cardboard and duct tape at this point. Doing the same thing to the other shoe was painful. Trav stooped over his pack, watching her with his eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah, I need new boots, I know. These weren’t even mine to begin with.” She gestured to Trav’s sandals. “Doesn’t it hurt to travel in those?”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t it hurt falling down hills?”

  Owl paused, then let out a laugh. “You made a joke.”

  Trav’s eyes crinkled. “You should do that more often.”

  “What? Fall down a hill?”

  “No. Laugh. It looks good on you.”

  She rubbed her face, smiling. “Yeah, well, if you’ve got more jokes in those bags and pouches you carry around, you’d better pull them out.”

  They left camp behind, heading out along a narrow path between high hummocks. The incline, though not steep, aggravated Owl’s injuries; Trav kept a tight grip to help keep her balanced. The discomfort of his touch made her forget her physical wounds.

  “Ugh, this sucks.” She scrubbed sweat from her brow. The sun stared down, half-concealed by clouds like a lidded eye.

  “Do you want to stop? Go back?”

  “No. I can make it with you helping me.”

  “But you wish I didn’t have to help you.”

  Did she cringe when he touched her? Stiffen every time he sat next to her? Did he think she did it because he was an Islander?

  Of course he does. Islanders don’t interact with Mainlanders unless they have to, and who could blame them when they’re treated like shit here?

  A memory rose in her mind: her and Corvin sitting at the dinner table as their father spoke angrily, mouth full of food, about an Islander in town. The woman standing in line in front of him at the general store had somehow been a grievous sin.

  She gave Trav a tight smile, unsuccessfully trying to ignore his touch. “I’m grateful for your help, truly. And if I’m going to wish for something, it would be not having a giant gash in my leg. Not wandering aimlessly after leaving Waterton. Not… not moving to Waterton in the first place.”

  They reached the hill’s peak in silence. The desert stretched before them as a lonely beige smear, a clear, level path to the south. Remnants of a road ran to the horizon.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  Trav took his arm from her waist and stuffed his hands in his pockets, pursing his lips. “You ask that a lot.”

  “Yeah. Been asking it since I left town.”

  “Well… you don’t need my help anymore.”

  “Probably not.” She squinted at him. If anyone else had found her crumpled at the bottom of that hill, the outcome would be much different. This was a gentleman. A tall, formidable gentleman with a ghostly aura and sharp teeth. He was more intimidating to potential reprobates than her eyeblack and machete would ever be. Maybe she did need him.

  “Actually, I think I could still do with some company. If you’re up to it. I know you don’t have anything better to do.”

  He frowned, a hand guarding his face from the sun. “You sure?”

  “You’re alright.” She let out a deep sigh. “And wandering aimlessly together might be better than doing it alone.”

  Trav’s intense blue eyes studied her. He nodded and followed her hobbling form toward the broken highway. They walked for several hours, stopping to rest at intervals, until finding a suitable shelter. Owl could have walked longer, but Trav didn’t want her to exert herself. That evening, they sat at a rusted metal picnic table on the outskirts of a large, ruined city, eating jarred pickled vegetables and some leftover rabbit meat from Trav’s snare catch earlier in the day.

  Beyond Trav, the city’s ruins jutted up from the horizon like a mouthful of crooked teeth. Wreckage from cars and other vehicles littered the road, some dangling from crumbling overpasses. Tall buildings leaned on each other like broken blades of grass.

  “Do you ever wonder what happened?” Owl crunched on a pickle. “I mean, The Collapse?”

  “The what?”

  “You know, the thing that made everything look like this. I know you’re not supposed to talk about it, but it drives me crazy that no one knows. Or they do and won’t say.”

  Trav squinted at the ruins. “Why aren’t you supposed to talk about it?”

  “Because”—she glanced at the sky—“the god of drones will hear you and send another one.”

  Trav raised his eyebrows and let out a short laugh. “What?”

  “You’ve never heard someone say that?”

  “Mainlanders don’t really talk to me.”

  Owl traced her finger around a rusted bolt jutting from the picnic table’s top. “Well, everyone believes that. But I don’t.”

  “You rebel, you.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not really one for religious superstition. Some people pray to those drones and ask them not to bring The Collapse. I just want to know what happened. My grandmother used to say that scientists did a lot of experiments—on people, animals, plants… And that it all went awry. She said if nature had just been allowed to run its course, things would be different. Boofalope wouldn’t exist. Creeping sugar corn wouldn’t slowly be taking over the country. The Collapse wouldn’t have happened. But my grandma was kind of senile, and she said a lot of weird things.” Owl shook her head. “Claimed she could talk to dogs… and that they replied. And whenever we mentioned the North, she’d correct us and say it was called ‘Canada.’”

  Trav raised his eyebrows, then took a bite of meat.

  “So what do you think happened?” she asked.

  “Do you really care what I think? Or do you just like to think out loud?”

  “Yeah, I care. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you.”

  “I honestly haven’t thought about it much. I’ve sort of accepted that this is how the Mainland looks. On my island, everything has always been life as usual. We don’t have these rotting buildings and rusty cars. All I really know is that the Islands used to be bigger a long time ago. But then the Earth got warmer and the seas rose, making the islands shrink. I think the coastline of the Mainland was probably bigger too, before the sea took it over.”

  “That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.” A smile crept onto her face. “It’s nice to have someone else to listen to. Talking to myself was getting really old. …You wanna walk with me tomorrow too? Make sure I don’t fall down any hills?”

  “I don’t know. You’re so pathetically slow that I could have made it to Cadestown by now by myself. But… I suppose someone has to keep you out of trouble.” He smirked.

  “Good luck with that.”

  The table creaked as Trav stood. “I’m going to go check out this building some more.” He thumbed behind him at a small building labeled: Mountain City Visitors’ Center. “Will you be okay here?”

  “I’m fine.” Owl sighed, gazing at the horizon.

  The sad, disintegrating skyscrapers in the distance felt like kindred spirits. Abandoned. Empty. Still somehow holding on after a catastrophic event.

  Eventually, Owl eased up from the table and headed into the building. Jumbled postcard racks and broken display signs lay around the small building. Brittle papers, like autumn leaves, sat in piles among unravelled carpet snarls.

  She sat on her sleeping bag, flipping through a stack of faded and creased postcards. The snow-capped mountain ranges were yellowed and torn, and the rolling hills, likely once verdant and colored with flowers, had dulled to an unassuming brown.

&nbs
p; The next card depicted an animal—its original color was hard to guess—a powerful creature with satiny hair, a flowing mane, and long, bony legs.

  She turned the image toward Trav, who leaned against the counter, rearranging items in his bag. “Look at this thing. Weird, right? The back says it’s called a ‘horse.’ That how it’s pronounced, you think?”

  Trav squinted, then took the picture. He tilted his head and flipped the card over. With his accent, the word rolled from his mouth as, “whars.” He handed the postcard back.

  “What do you think this animal ate? Grass? Berries? Was it smart? It looks like it could run fast.”

  “You sure are a curious one. They don’t exist anymore as far as I know, so what does it matter what they ate?”

  She flipped the postcard onto the dirty floor and shrugged. “It doesn’t, I guess.”

  Trav sat and retrieved the picture, studying it. “I think it ate leaves.”

  Owl smiled.

  “It has hooves like a cow.”

  “Yeah.” She exhaled a laugh. “I grew up on a farm. I’m trying to imagine having a whole field of these things in different colors running all over the place. Ridiculous.”

  “Owl the whars rancher.”

  She laughed again. “I like your pronunciation better than mine.”

  Trav’s eyes crinkled. He gestured to her thigh. “How you doing?”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  He nodded and went back to reorganizing his pack.

  The brittle postcards were only entertaining for so long. Owl flipped open her journal to the next blank page.

  November 07, 152—This crutch has been a lifesaver. Without it, I’d probably still be stuck in that damn cave. I think Trav is happy that someone wants his company. He still makes me a little nervous, but I think he’ll be good protection until I reach somewhere safer. He’s nice. Staying with me until I felt better—actually caring about what happens to me.

  The pen paused over the paper.

  But I don’t even know anything about him. Why did he leave his island? Is he running away from something that happened to him, like me? Is he on a religious journey? Or maybe he was exiled? Did he murder someone? God, am I traveling with a serial killer? That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it?