Lightning flashed again. What’s out there, Jay thought, beyond the narrow vein of these tracks? There are fields and villages and places that will never know the mention of a guidebook.
He walked back to the car.
“Are you all right?” the man asked.
Jay nodded. “Needed some air. And now I need another drink.”
More drinks, jokes, stories, songs. Jay told his friends his good name and that he wasn’t from anywhere. He was just a traveler and the road was his home. He was not married, and his occupation was to live fully being alive. Laughter and affection glowed from the train car.
Everyone talked about their new friend Jay.
I can go anywhere, Jay thought. I need nothing but myself and my backpack. Nothing else...
Taking another swig of a new bottle—How many fit in that case anyway?—Jay decided the time had come.
For all the years he’d traveled, Jay had never reached into his money belt in public view. Usually, he’d gone into a toilet when he needed to get out a ticket, his passport, or some more cash. Out of sight, out of mind was everything when it came to the crown jewels.
Jay reached around to his right hip and unbuckled the strap that held the money belt in place. Pulling the pouch free, he held it loose in his hand. Thousands of rupees were inside, as were hundreds of US dollars. He thought too of the plane ticket, the fare paid that could get him emergency passage on any plane at any time.
“My friends!” he said, holding up his hand, packed with money. “I don’t need this anymore! May it help your dreams come true!” He threw wads of bills out among the men.
Then he reached into his money belt again, pulled out his emergency ticket, and nodded to the man across from him. “Didn’t you say you wanted to study abroad?”
Wait, Jay thought, he hadn’t said anything. The hooch must be messing with my brain.
But the way the man nodded, Jay knew it was true.
Jay handed him the plane ticket. “Here. Go. Live your dreams. Live the world.”
“But you, sir?” the man said. “Are you living your dreams?”
Jay shrugged. “I’ve got one foot in front of the other, and I’ve got a world to see. That’ll do me fine.”
The men roared and clapped Jay on the back. He handed out money and dreams like a god among men. I’m traveling again, he thought. No, I’m really traveling for the first time. I was a tourist. Now I’m a traveler. I can go wherever I want. Be whoever I want to be. Tell whatever tales I want to tell.
When the money belt was empty of the crown jewels, Jay took out the photo of his parents and tucked it in his pocket. “You’ll still be with me,” he said. “Always.”
He looked at the flimsy dirty nylon in his other hand. “But it’s time we parted,” he said, dropping the money belt to the floor of the train car.
Outside, lightning flashed brown-gold in the heat of the subcontinental night.
As the men began to talk excitedly about their plans, Jay gradually shrank back out of the circle. He slipped his pack onto his back, grateful it was cooperating again.
The man in the robes stared as Jay walked to the door. For a moment their eyes locked, and the man’s gray-blue gaze seemed to crackle. They nodded at each other, saying no more. Jay left before the man could ask the question he knew was burning at his mind.
Jay walked out between the train cars, swaying with the weight on his back and the motion of the train, holding the railing as he watched the lightning flash over the countryside.
“This is all we are,” Jay said to the world. “A moment’s flash, a brief spark against void and nothing. But in a brief flash, I can go anywhere. And I will.”
In his mind, Jade and Rucksack flashed, but he pushed back the thoughts. Look ahead, he thought. Never back. Never again. What’s behind is what no longer matters.
“Wherever. Whenever,” Jay said. “Why, I could jump from this train, have no idea where I am. Ah tomorrow, what a mystery! What an adventure!”
Jay decided.
“What an adventure!” Jay said to the lightning. If he ran fast enough, across the dark, unknown fields, could he catch the lightning, maybe haggle a ride?
The train would run on and on, to the known and done. Behind Jay, all he’d known. Before him…
Jay braced himself, waiting for the lightning. The sky flashed bright against the black. For a moment, Jay could hardly see. Blue and green flecks dotted his vision. His pack felt heavier than ever, as if trying to pull him backward.
He ran forward anyway.
From the speeding train, Jay jumped into the unseen world before him.
For a moment he flew.
Man of the world. Man above the world. The backpacker of all time. Jay the legend. Jay the myth. Jay of the road. All the world, all his past fell away, dregs of a life long since drained. He stared toward the sky.
Then his pack twisted, and Jay was turning every which way in mid-air, limbs loose and confused as he began to fall.
Where am I looking now? Jay thought. Where am I going? I’m falling. How far away is the ground? What if we’re traveling over a bridge? Or along a gorge? What if there are rocks below?
He flailed in the air as he tried to right himself. He turned around and around in the air. But no matter what he did, the weight of the twisting backpack kept him off balance.
Lightning struck.
Jay saw the flash in the same moment he heard a crack. The thunder, the only thunder this whole night, split the sky from the earth, split past and present and future, split Jay from himself and the world.
The sound faded but the lightning did not.
Jay realized the lightning had hit him. Fire and blue pain, fire and a silver void, fire and a green oblivion, fire and a shimmering gold, pain and pain and pain.
Unable even to scream, all Jay could do was fall.
His burned body broke upon the brown-and-black earth.
The train clattered on toward Kolkata, leaving behind it only the silent night and a traveler who lay still.
III
UNDER THE HEAVY GRAY-AND-BLACK CLOUDS, two bodies lay in rubble that had once been the white walls of Agamuskara. The blackened walls and charred bones lay jumbled together with burned wood, plaster, skulls, and ribs. Here and there, flecks of white showed through, a futile reminder that there had been a time before the fires—a time when the bones were part of people who lived, who breathed.
Who loved.
The fingers were part blackened flesh, part bone. But in death the two bodies had held hands. On one of the hands, the gold ring was warped from the heat of the flames, but it flashed in the meager daylight. On another left hand nearby, more gold glinted.
How long had they shared that love? How long had they worn those rings? When they knew they were going to die, what comfort did they take in knowing that at least they would leave this world together, just as they had wandered through it?
A tear fell on a ring.
The woman stood before more tears came, but as she stepped her foot brushed the body. Ash fell away and blew off as a hot wind crashed through the street.
Blue shone.
The man leaned down and pulled the postcard free. A large script in the top left corner of the card said, “Godhpur… Go find yourself!” The famous blue-and-gold sandstone buildings of the city shone out from the photo covering the rest of the card. Compared to the black ruins of Agamuskara, Godhpur might as well have been in another world.
“It’s incredible,” the man said. “The rest is ash yet this survived.” He turned over the card and read out loud, “Godhpur brought us to marriage, but you brought us together. Here is a photo of our wedding. Thank you.”
The words flew through the woman’s memories, past the agonies and horrors of the last month, through the fog of the days that were lost, past all that had happened before the night the fires came, back to the simple sunny day when everything had changed.
Rucksack leaned down and dug through
the ash with his gloved left hand. Part of the photo had been burned away, and the bottom edge was ragged and iridescent. She took the photo from him and stared at the bright eyes, the warm smiles of the newlyweds. They had been so glad they had found each other in such a random heartless world.
She could feel him staring at her. “Jade?”
The tears came back. “That was for me,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you remember the day Jay arrived in the city? These two came into the pub. I was to bring them together and I did. They’d only just met, Rucksack. Now they’re dead. Because of us.”
“No,” Rucksack replied. “They’re dead because o’ the Smiling Fire.”
“We should have prevented it!”
“I don’t think we could have. We still don’t even know how he became strong enough to escape.”
“We were helpless then,” Jade said. “We’re helpless now. For nearly a month we’ve been running around this city, trying to help people, but all we do now is find charred bones and burned buildings. Agamuskara is dead, Rucksack. So is everyone in it. The mirror eclipse is three days away, and the Smiling Fire has the dia ubh. We might as well be walking corpses.”
Despair hung between them like a body in a noose. “I can’t do this anymore,” Jade said, looking at the photo again. “Whatever keeps you going, I don’t have it. It’s not in me.” The eyes in the photo see only the long future in front of them, the possibilities and choices, she thought. But all that had waited for them was a fiery death.
Rucksack’s smile was soft as he took her hand. “Now you look at me, Jade Aga—”
“Don’t.” She looked away from him. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“You are who you are,” Rucksack said. “But suit yourself. Look at me, Jade.”
“We should have run away,” she said, “like Jay did.”
“But we didn’t,” Rucksack replied. “Because we stayed, we have saved hundreds, if not thousands. The people we saved have saved others. The Smiling Fire has decimated the city. He has destroyed the buildings and carts as much as he has killled the people and animals. Everything is gone. Oh, to be sure. We mourn every death. We mourn every destruction. And we add it to a big feckin bill. He will pay for all he’s done. Those he murdered will be avenged. I don’t know the how or the path anymore than you do, but I tell you true, Jade o’ herself, the Smiling Fire will fall. While we still breathe we will take that bastard down and help all we can along the way.”
Jade met his gaze. “That’s more like it,” Rucksack said. “No matter how much he’s burned—and by now it’s safe to say he’s burned damn near the entire city—as long as we live, we are not helpless. Overpowered and outmatched, completely. Likely to fail, without a doubt. But against all odds, we are also alive. Life is opportunity. As long as we’re alive, we have a chance.”
Rucksack squeezed her hand. Courage and hope spread through Jade with gentle warmth. “Just because you give me a dose of your courage doesn’t mean it will last long,” she said.
“Do you feel braver?”
Jade nodded.
“I gave you nothing you didn’t already have,” Rucksack said. “I just got the other stuff out o’ the way.” He nodded at the photo and the card. “Keep these. Remember those people. Remember what was, because it can be brought back. Cities can be rebuilt. People can be reborn, in this life, in another. As long as life lives, he’s going to fall.”
Jade put the photo and card in her pocket. “We should keep going,” she said, continuing down the street toward where the alley used to be.
As they walked, Jade thought back over the last few weeks. She had woken up in Rucksack’s flat, bruised and scraped up but alive and healing quickly, to Rucksack’s surprise.
At least my Jade healing hadn’t left me yet, she thought.
The day she woke she had ignored his protests, gotten out of bed, and gone out into the city with him. What tears she had, she had left sputtering on hot rubble. She’d been unconscious for three days. While she was asleep, the city, her city, had been little but panic, fire, death—and Rucksack.
He didn’t say a word about it. But as they found survivors, tended the wounded, and helped people leave the city, every person stared at Rucksack with awe and gratitude.
The stories came to Jade from person after person. The smiling fires were coming, they would say. There was nowhere to run. Then he was there. Suddenly, somehow, we were safe before the flames caught.
Or, our son and daughter were trapped inside. The building started to collapse. Then he appeared, rushed inside, and came out with them, alive.
Or, as he walked through the city, all the animals—down to the last dog and cow—followed him through the rubbled streets until they ran free across the fields and plains to the north.
Or, he stands on the hill and watches the city. His tears make the grass grow. When the cries rise up with the flames from Agamuskara, he comes as if flying. The air roars like a tiger. The flames flee as if the ocean had come for them.
Rucksack. Bumbling, stout-swilling Rucksack. There’s more to you than I’ll probably ever know, Jade thought. Turns out that when there’s a crisis, though, you turn into steel. You’re loud, evasive, and annoying, but you’re a bloody hero.
And Ruckack and Jade forgave one another. The arguments and anger from when Jay had left, they let them go. There were more important problems to deal with.
They stopped for a moment. As Rucksack looked around, he seemed to be listening, seeing, and feeling much farther out than what he could perceive with his physical senses.
“It’s as I thought,” he said. “The Smiling Fire is on the far outskirts of the city. He’s probably got another old whiff of Jay from when he carried the dia ubh. That’ll buy us the time we’ve been wanting.” He smiled at her, as if they were out for a pleasant morning walk, then started off again.
He’s always like that now, she thought. Not once have I seen him despair. How does he do it? These last few weeks, he’s pulled me along with him, never the other way around. He’s always found a reason to smile. He’s always found a way to make me laugh. He’s kept me strong. I just leech off him.
Rucksack looked at her and asked, “Did I ever tell you why I don’t drink anything but stout?”
The question surprised her.
“Other than to keep people like me from influencing you?” Jade replied. “I always figured you just really liked it. And no beer tastes better than free beer, after all.”
“Aye, that helps. Some have joked that if you cut me, I’d bleed black. But the main reason is despair.”
“Other drinks make you despair?”
“Hard liquor affects me differently from other people. I lose my will. I lose my hope. A shot will make me seem like I’ve drunk half a bottle. A bottle would…” Rucksack shook his head. “Let’s just say there are things in this world that would be all the better off had I never touched a bottle. It was a hard lesson learned.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“After the Smiling Fire destroyed the Everest Base Camp, I woke on the other side o’ the street from the pub, groggy and unscathed but for a scratch on my arm. I couldn’t find you. I searched for hours, Jade. I shifted hot rubble that would’ve burned the flesh off a regular man, trying to find you. But the only thing I could find was a damn bottle o’ single-malt scotch that had somehow survived the explosion.”
“Why haven’t you ever mentioned this?” Jade said. “What happened when you drank it?”
“I stood awhile, holding that bottle, smelling the sharp whisky inside.” A hunger shone in Rucksack’s eyes. “I wanted to down it, world be damned. That damn Smiling Fire was going to have his way after all. He had the dia ubh, the only person who could stop him was gone, and you were likely dead. There was no hope in me. When there’s no hope inside, you might as well fill the void with any alcohol that comes to hand—the stronger the better. I tilted my head back and lifted that bottle to my lips, ready t
o upend it down my throat. Maybe this time I’d be able to drown myself.”
She could picture him standing there, the fires crackling around him, smoke rising from the rubble of the pub and hostel, bottle raised. A battle raging in his soul.
“Maybe I’d finally learned my lesson, Jade,” Rucksack said. “I took that bottle and poured some o’ the scotch on my scratch. When I looked up, I saw a hand. There you were, behind and under some rubble, not moving, but when I got to you I could tell you were breathing. If I’d taken a drink, I wouldn’t have seen you, and who knows what would’ve happened.”
“I can say you definitely have my gratitude.”
“No, Jade,” Rucksack replied. “You have mine. Seeing you alive filled me with new hope. Filled me with strength and power. It was the closest I’d felt to my own self in a long, long time. I don’t despair, I won’t despair anymore, because o’ you. If you think I’m giving you strength or hope, I’m not. I’m just paying you back.”
“Thank you,” Jade said. Inside, hope welled up. A new strength bloomed. “If you can do that, maybe I can too.”
They smiled, passing by a pile of rubble that was almost a small hill. Their smiles quickly faded.
Rucksack said, “Isn’t that—”
“Yes,” Jade replied. “I’d know that paint anywhere.”
The red door’s color was tinged black with soot. Out of all the walls and doors of the alley, only this remained intact and standing. Even the building that had surrounded it, and Asha and Jigme’s room behind it, was gone.
“Jade,” Rucksack said softly, “can you still do that listening thing your lot do?”
“Technically speaking, all my Jade abilities should be gone by now.”
“I’m willing to test the actual beyond the technical,” Rucksack replied. “Maybe this can tell us some o’ what we don’t know.”
“I’ll try, but no promises.” As if she were about to knock, Jade stepped close to the door and laid her hand on the wood. “It’s cold,” she said. “All these fires. How can the door be cold?”
Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) Page 31
