Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  10

  Travels with Senster and Dexter

  The trail did nothing but climb for the next three days—except for when it dropped into a deep ravine, then climbed out again on the other side. Milo felt quite pleased with how little the strain of such difficult hiking caused him. Days on trails such as these would have left him breathless and moaning before, but now the weeks of travel on the pilgrimage had hardened him to a relentless walking pace. Now he could even think of it as fun!

  Milo and Bori—Bori riding in his usual place in Milo’s pack—climbed the long ascent to the pass that Savoy had pointed out back at the End of the Earth. As Milo walked, he wondered about the other contestants. “Looks like we’re the only ones who came this way,” he said to Bori.

  “We haven’t seen anyone on this path at all,” Bori observed. “In fact, we haven’t seen anyone off it, either.” Both of them had noted this fact, especially when they were getting hungry and hoping to see a farmhouse where they could ask for a meal. Milo was munching one of the biscuits that Ayuthaya had provided him that he really hadn’t needed during the days on the pilgrimage trail. Bori continued his observation: “By the time we’d said our good-byes to Deryl, Teryl, and Beryl, not even one of the Hunt contestants was still at the End of the Earth. They all left as fast as Aulaires and Analisa.”

  “That’s right,” Milo confirmed the cat’s observation. “But remember what Tinburkin and Blai both told me about trusting my own instincts.”

  “Or something like that,” Bori muttered. “Self-preservation—in this case getting a meal occasionally—is an instinct, too.”

  “Don’t complain. You’ve done pretty well on the rodents living in these mountains. I’m the one living on dry biscuits. Besides, I feel certain that the stone cross is my big clue.” He laid his palm on the lump where it rode on a leather thong Savoy had given him off some slinger equipment back at the End of the Earth. He wore it under his shirt where he couldn’t touch it directly, but he could feel it and make certain that it was safe.

  They ceased talking to make the last steep pull up the ridge they’d been climbing all morning. At the top they took a break. As Milo sat down and slipped off his pack, Bori hopped out to do a little reconnaissance. He refused Milo’s offer of a piece of the hard cake, insisting that if it had never had blood coursing through it, it couldn’t be cat food.

  “Remember what Savoy told us to do when we got to Inverdissen?”Milo reminded. “We should find the university and ask for...for...” Milo momentarily forgot the name that Savoy had given them.

  “Samuel. The librarian,” Bori filled in. “I hope he isn’t a banshee.”

  “Savoy said he was an old friend, so I doubt he’s a banshee. Savoy said that this Samuel owes him a favor and I should tell him to transfer the debt to helping us. The problem is showing him the inscription without showing him the stone cross. If I had some paper and a pencil, I could make a rubbing, but since I don’t, I’ve been trying to copy the marks onto this piece of slate I picked up.” He showed Bori the flat rock, about the same size as the stone cross, where he had been making a copy by scratching marks with the point of his knife. “I’m pretty sure I’ve done it just like the inscription on the cross, but what if it isn’t? The marks are fairly complicated, and maybe they won’t make any sense at all.”

  Bori, who was poking around through the weeds, gave a dismissive flip of his tail. “What you humans call books and writing and make such a fuss about seems to us cats like nothing more than a nice place to sit. Besides, those marks you’re making look like what happens to a good scratching post.” Bori had found nothing but a couple of lizards, which weren’t his idea of lunch, either. But now he called Milo’s attention to an old sign chiseled into a marker where the trail started back down the slope.

  “I think it says Inverdissen,” Milo read. “So if this really is the right pass, we’re on the right road, and it’s all downhill from here. Maybe we’ll start seeing habitation again.”

  “That would be fine by me,” Bori grumbled. “I could use a nice saucer of milk to wash the lizard scales off my tongue.”

  It was still a long walk through the mountainous wilderness. There was no sign that anyone lived in these mountains, meaning no chance for hospitality. Bori had to continue to rely on his hunting skills while Milo still made do with the dry cakes.

  It took another couple of days before they had descended far enough for the trail to enter foothills that showed signs of inhabitants. Shepherds with their flocks—herded by dogs, which made Bori nervous—wandered the rolling pastures, and small farms with tiny garden plots and orchards were tucked away along the creek beds.

  “I hope there’s someplace to get something to eat soon,” Milo said as they dipped into a valley, the largest so far. There was a farmstead near the road at the place where the trail crossed the stream. It was a low building built of fieldstone with a red tile roof that looked close to caving in at one end. A part of the roof that had already collapsed had been repaired with thatch. There was a breezeway with a similar structure on the other side, but it hadn’t been as fortunate—based on the condition of its sagged-in roof. A few chickens ran across the courtyard between the house and the shed.

  During the pilgrimage, Milo had become confident of approaching strangers whenever he needed a meal or a place to spend the night. The cardinal rule of this dependency was to receive whatever you got with good grace. “Some hard cheese and a chunk of bread would taste pretty good right now,” Milo told Bori, shaping his appetite’s expectations to match his economic impression of the area.

  “Would a saucer of milk be too much to expect?” Bori added to Milo’s wish list.

  When a woman came out of the shed, following the flutter of chickens, Milo called out to her. Her head was covered with a scarf, and she carried a pail, giving him encouragement that Bori’s wish for milk might come true.

  “Good day!” he called. “Does this road lead to Inverdissen?”

  The woman stopped and stared at him without setting down her pail. Milo waited a moment, expecting an answer to his question, and then an invitation to sit down out of the sun and an offer of cool spring water or even fresh milk, if that was what she had in the pail. Instead all he got was a suspicious look.

  Seeking to break the impasse, he followed up his first question with a second. “Is Inverdissen a long ways yet?”

  The only answer she gave was to scamper the rest of the way across the courtyard and into the dark door of the farmhouse. She slammed the door behind her.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait for that saucer of milk,” Bori commented.

  “Maybe being an ordinary traveler doesn’t entitle us to the same sort of hospitality that being a pilgrim does,” Milo observed. “Bori, if everybody here is this unfriendly, then we’re in trouble.”

  In his pocket, Milo knew, was not a single kuzurian, if that was the currency here. Without the ability to be generous, he was no better off than the homeless people he saw in the streets back in his town. He and Bori had no choice but to move on. Milo smarted a little from his humiliation. Being rejected like that made him feel like a beggar, a feeling he’d never had as a pilgrim.

  It was well after noon when, hot and parched, they passed an orchard. The trees were small and gnarled, but the fruit on their limbs looked tempting after a diet of crackers. He stopped, looked one way and then the other, and, seeing no one, slipped off the pack and hopped up onto the dry-stacked rock wall in order to go over it.

  “Hey!” came a shout. “What do you think yer doin’!”

  A man brandishing a hoe appeared from among the trees. Milo jumped down just before the first stone whacked into the rock wall he was on. He grabbed his pack and started to run. Bori, who had hopped out of the pack when Milo put it down, bounded along beside him as a puff of dust in the road just ahead of them announced the arrival of the second stone.

  By the third stone, they were almost out of range, but they kept on runnin
g anyway. When Milo felt safe, he stopped to catch his breath and get Bori back into the pack before slinging it onto his back. “Guess we can’t expect much hospitality out here in the countryside,” he said, heart and hopes sinking. “Maybe it’ll be different in town.”

  On they trudged. As they turned a bend in the road, they saw some sort of cart rolling slowly along up ahead. Simultaneously they heard it: a tinkle, clatter, rattle-clunk. Despite the heat and Milo’s weariness, he picked up his pace out of curiosity to see what this odd conveyance might be. Coming nearer he saw a high, two-wheeled green wagon that looked like a cottage on wheels. It clunked and creaked as the wheels turned on their single axle, and the pots and pans hanging underneath provided the musical accompaniment. The little house had a door in the back with steps that hung suspended partway to the ground.

  An RV with no engine, Milo thought. Instead of a motor, two large bovines pulled it, and driving them, sitting high up on the box at the front, was a man. Milo couldn’t see him very well from behind, but he could hear him singing. A deep and happy-sounding voice, singing as if the rattle/clank/clunk of his cart were all the accompaniment he needed.

  Milo pressed on to pass around the cart until he could see the face of the driver perched up on the seat. He wore a battered felt hat, and his full beard was grizzled. He wore a tan coat, ragged at the collar and the sleeves, over a red shirt, baggy black pants, and deeply scuffed boots. He held a whip in one hand as if it were a badge of his status as the driver.

  Two enormous oxen plodded along in their traces, pulling the cart as if its weight meant nothing to them. Flies swarmed their muzzles and their rumps, and the animals seemed completely absorbed in their pleasant bovine boredom and the singing of the man who sat behind them.

  The man didn’t seem to notice Milo until he pulled slightly ahead of the wagon. “Hello!” Milo called. The man stopped singing and looked down. “Good day!” Milo added.

  “And a good day to you, too!” the man called back as if this were the first greeting he’d ever heard.

  “Does this road lead to Inverdissen?” Milo inquired.

  “Indeed it do! Where would yuh be hopin’ it would lead?”

  “Inverdissen is good,” Milo replied. “Is it far? Inverdissen, I mean.”

  “Oh, far ‘nuf, I spose, but not too far if yuh like a nice walk. Or might yuh be carin’ for a lift?”

  That was just the sort of invitation Milo was hoping for. He unslung his pack as the man reached down for it, and up it went, Bori and all. Milo grabbed the rungs of the ladder to the box, and climbed up without the cart ever changing its ponderous progress. The man scooted over on the seat to accommodate Milo and the pack as Bori hopped out of the pack and jumped onto the roof of the house just behind the man’s shoulder.

  “That’s Bori,” Milo said in introduction. “Boriboreau. And I’m Milo.”

  “Milo, then. Glad to make yer acquaintance.” He offered his hand and he continued his introduction as they shook. “I’m Einter. And this one here”—he flicked the whip out toward the rear end of the ox on the left without touching him—”is Senster. That one’s”—and he flicked toward the one on the right—”Dexter. They’re brothers, but yuh wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at ‘em.”

  Milo thought they looked identical except that the one named Senster was white and Dexter was black.

  “An’ what would be bringin’ a young traveler such as yerself to Inverdissen, if yuh don’t mind my pokin’ inta yer business?”

  Actually, Milo wasn’t eager to reveal those details. “Oh, just on the suggestion of a friend of mine,” he said, wishing to keep a long story short. “Do you”—he continued quickly, trying to head off more questions of this sort—”travel this way often?”

  “Often, dependin’ on how yuh look at it,” Einter replied good-naturedly. “As yuh can see, I’m a tinker, an’ my travels take me on the roads. I travel over a regular circuit, so I comes down this way, oh, ‘bout twice a year.”

  “A tinker?” Milo asked, having never met one before. “Like...you fix pots and pans?”

  “That an’ other things made of metal. An’ I trade in ‘em, too. It’s a livin’ and lets me breathe the good country air. What trade would you be a’followin’?”

  “Ahh...” Milo stalled. “I went on the pilgrimage, and now that it’s over, I thought I’d see some of the world before I settle down.”

  Einter nodded sagaciously. Apparently Milo had offered a plausible answer. “You’re still a young feller, so it’s a good time to be a’wanderin’. I was like that when I was a striplin’. Never felt right sittin’ still fer long. Reckon as how I still feel that way, happy on my wagon with them two fellers fer company”—he gestured toward the oxen—“an’ always curious ‘bout what’s around the next bend in the road.”

  He glanced at Milo before continuing. “But I wouldn’t of pegged yuh fer no vagabond. More of a student type. Reminds me of somebody with a purpose, even if yuh haven’t got it nailed down yet. I would’ve guessed you was on yer way down to the university in Inverdissen. It’s sposed to be a crackerjack one, yuh know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” Milo answered. “I don’t know much of anything about Inverdissen, except my friend said that it lay down this road.”

  “Well, I’m told that if a person wants t’ know a thing or two, ‘specially ‘bout the Old Times, Inverdissen’s the place to go. Got the biggest, oldest library what is.”

  Milo was getting a little uncomfortable with the way this conversation was moving. This man either knew a lot about him already—how could he?—or he was far shrewder than his simple looks and mannerisms revealed.

  “I knowed a fellar onct,” Einter said, gazing off toward the place where the road met the horizon, “what spent some time down in Inverdissen. Trainin’ slinger players down there—you wouldn’t be a slinger player, would yuh? No? I thought not. Anyway, we got to be good friends. We was much younger then—older than you are now but younger than I am now—and we liked to do that carousin’ around together. Not that I’m suggestin’ yuh ought to try that out. That’s bad business, an’ now I’m wiser than I was back then. My words to young fellers like yerself would be to stay away from that sort of life. Anyway, we was good friends. Wonder where ol’ Savoy is off to these days. He suffers from feet as itchy as mine.”

  This really rocked Milo. He didn’t know what to say.

  Apparently, he didn’t need to say a thing, because Einter read it off his face.

  “Got word from ol’ Savoy just the other day. Said he was sendin’ a young feller Inverdissen way, an’ wondered if I might be on the lookout for him. Said he had a big gray cat.” Einter was patting Bori, who sat on the bench between them. Milo glanced at the cat. Bori appeared to be oblivious to the conversation while enjoying Einter’s pats. But he had one ear cocked toward Milo, as if giving him a signal. Milo didn’t know how to read Bori’s message, if it was a message, so he kept quiet. Einter continued.

  “Ol’ Savoy said I should look after that young feller an’ see that he stayed out of trouble. Said there was good reason to watch after him, though he didn’t say what the trouble might be, an’ I’m not a feller to be sticken’ my nose into other folk’s business. Savoy did say I was to see that the young pup got matched up with another ol’ friend of ours, ol’ Samuel. He’s down at the library in Inverdissen.”

  Milo’s composure was now in tatters. How could this man know all that? How could Savoy have gotten the information to Einter, and if it wasn’t from Savoy, how could Einter know all these details that Savoy had given him with no one else within earshot?

  The cart was drawing near to a farmstead, announcing its arrival with its clink/rattle/groan. People came out to meet it: several kids of different ages, a younger and an older man, and three women wearing aprons and headscarves. They all welcomed Einter warmly.

  For his part, Einter hailed them all by name, even the kids. The younger man took Senster’s halter and guided the oxen
to a halt. Einter rose stiffly from his seat and climbed down from the bench at the bidding of the older woman. He introduced Milo and Bori, and they were welcomed with cool lemonade for Milo and Einter, and a saucer of fresh milk for Bori.

  “Friendlier than folks from earlier,” Milo commented to Bori.

  “They’s friendly enough in these parts when they knows who yuh are, or who yer with,” Einter put in, having overheard Milo’s comment. “Tend to be just a mite suspicious of strangers, though.”

  The man who had unhitched the team of oxen led them away to a watering trough while the rest of the people gathered in the shade of an arbor. Soon a table was set with clay mugs and a pitcher, the pitcher damp with condensation. There were olives and bread, goat cheese, and a plate of plums. Einter sipped his drink between answering questions or commenting on bits of news. The women brought out pots that needed fixing and the men arranged buckets with holes to plug and tools to be sharpened.

  After finishing his lemonade and gossip, Einter got up from the table and rubbed his large, hard hands together.

  “Wup! Time to get some work done. Want to come along an’ help me with my setup, Milo?”

  For the next hour, Einter worked with easy dispatch. Milo marveled at how efficiently he handled the repairs, talking the whole time as if his attention were in the conversation, but with dexterity in his hands that seemed to defy their size. He completed repairs so smoothly that his skill seemed magical. When he finished, coins changed hands and the oxen, still chewing fodder, were re-hitched. Milo helped Einter stow his tools in the cart. Bori, who had made friends with a lady cat, dashed up to the driver’s box and onto the roof of the cabin in three quick bounds, showing off for his new acquaintance. The women brought out a basket with fruit, bread, and meat. Einter thanked them and passed what would be their supper up to Milo, who was already on the box. Einter wished the family a farewell as he climbed up himself. Snapping his whip over the backs of the two oxen without touching them, he called out “Whoop!” to urge the oxen to move into a slow, amiable stroll.