I COME across another structure at the end of the old cobbled road, facing the wide causeway. People mill about its exterior of wood slats and wide scuffed signs, puffing smoke and chattering undiscernibly. I lie on my stomach glancing into my spy glass on the hill, getting a close look at the casual men standing sheltered from the wind, inspecting their jackets and collars. "What are you looking for?"
"Men in uniform. They may be looking for me."
"It's not likely that they've even found out what we've done as of yet." Navi says in my sleeve. "It would however be unwise to let anyone see that vehicle."
"Agreed." I say, crawling back down the hill. I turn to the motorcycle, lying quietly on its side, covered in fresh gashes and painted in a coat of pale dirt. It sits in a forest of tall reeds two paces and a half from the mouth of a man-made pond. I want to ride it to the city, but the bike is emblazoned with bright symbols that people will recognize and ask questions about. I look in the road's direction and try to consider the bike's visibility from it and elsewhere. I get up and walk the long way out of the basin back to the road. When I reach the point where I am aligned with the bike's resting place, I look to it and see only the swaying tips of reeds against the pale sky. I continue on down the road until I come to the building where the men smoke. My maps are also unreliable, ancient, treated skin and dead ink, labors devoted to a land of no more. The building stands off and away from the old road, facing out to the black stone surface of the causeway, hot air swirling and waving up in the sun's heat. I watch a vehicle drive by and into the world of waves beyond. I lessen my pace and lift my shoulders as I pass the smoking men, their conversations quieting or stopping altogether as their eyes fall on me. I fix my gaze on the batwing doors and proceed across the gravel until the building corner obscures them and they are out of my sight, and I am out of theirs. Standing on stomped wood slats before the entrance, I push only one of the batwings with my elbow and shuffle into dim room beyond. Around the room, people sit hunched around dark wood tables, others recline with arms hanging off the furniture, all either muttering in groups or drinking silently. I stand in a sunbeam burning into the relative dark, particles and dancing spots swirling about me. The door is pulled to return to its position of origin, so I hold it with my hand to prevent it from slamming. I walk around it and guide it back to its home to prevent any noise that would rouse the patrons to my presence, myself now very knowledgeable of my status as an alien in these lands, a marked being wandering from the woods and singular in a vague secret purpose. I begin to come up with a fake name standing there, a fake story, more lies to free me from the burden of suspicion. At the far end of the room, a man stands behind a long counter and rubs a glass with a rag. When my eyes fall upon him, he meets my gaze. His eyes narrow and his brows furrow, I notice him eye my gun and pack and his mouth twists up and down. I walk to his counter and keep eye contact while he begins to mutter things and shake his head. "Unbelievable what you farm kids are allowed to do. Walkin' around with cannons, filthy clothes and knives."
"I need directions."
"Well I ain't giving you anything else. You ain't even allowed in here, boy."
"Sorry."
"Where you goin'?"
"Shigmiya."
"What in the hell for? Go home."
"I can't. I can't go home."
"You one of them poverty refugees? Farm go under and you run?"
"I just need to get to Shigmiya, I-"
"Well I'll tell you straight off that there's nothing for ya there, you and all those sods riding the rails to find work. You're the youngest I've seen though. Hard times falling on everyone like they're prone to I suppose."
"I just need to get to Shigmiya, I have no home to return to." His eyes scan me up and down, stopping at the dry blood of my shoulder and the dirt around my arms. I tighten my scuffed hand on the sling as his eyes get to that, and his face contorts as he processes and consumes my image. The fairy sleeps in my sleeve, her breathing audible to me in the silence between the big man and me. His hand lowers to the counter and he looks away from me to the door. "I don't know where you come from, and I don't know if you can go back or not, but I think you should. But if you can't, if there ain't no way no how, then don't head up this causeway. They have police on the roads. They see vagrants, they catch them."
"So where do I go?"
"You got a map?"
"It's out of date."
"How out of date?"
"Out of date."
"Well damn." He steps back and walks into the dark space through a doorway behind him. When he returns from out of the dim space, he slaps a folded map onto the bartop. He sticks a marker in his mouth and pops the marker from its cap in his teeth. He unfurls the map and runs his hand over the paper until it sits rather flat, the folds of the paper standing raised from the image like mystic razor-edge mountains. The marker's black tip hovers over a corner of two coloured roads. "We're here." He mutters, words distorting as his tongue lashes against the plastic in his mouth and he snarls his lip to annunciate. "Causeway Four is right outside, that blacktop. It'll take you straight north." I turn around and look at the billowing ripples of heated air rising above the road. "It'll take you straight to Shigmiya, but like I told you they been shackling vagrants all up and down that road." The tip runs up the line as he speaks. I see other clusters of lines representing real close arrays of city streets all along the road, the clusters increasing in size for every farther longitude that the pink graphic artery wired through. "So this way is a no go for you, boy. You look like the son of a garbage bag. You'll be in a camp by tomorrow morning."
"So where do I go?"
"West." He returns to the original point and traces another imaginary line toward himself. "A hacienda called Lon Lon." He circles a small word on the map loosely. "About 5 miles down the Midland way. You'll need to go a ways south from here to hop on the trail, see?" He traces the route by dragging his finger on the paper.
"What do I do when I get there?"
"Catch a train." Dragging his finger still, he traces along a dashed red line northward. "One comes to pick up auto parts they fabricate and vehicles they repair at the factory there once a week. It's one of the last private stations on that line, with so many of the old farms going under. I imagine finding a way onto that train'd be a heck of a lot easier than making your way up the highway without some form of law putting his hand on you." I cannot connect with some of the terms he uses, when he says 'train' like I'm supposed to easily understand what he's talking about, he's using lingo that rolls with his body language and spills naturally. All I can do is make him and everyone around believe that I am at least not completely alien. I nod along at the breaks in speech and say 'yeah' in the silences that linger for too long. I pick up the basics of what he is trying to make me understand here. The road West goes through what he calls open country, grassland essentially untouched; where one could stand in one place, walk for miles, and find themselves in a place under the sky nearly indistinguishable from where they began. "Okay." I say standing straight and stepping back from the high bartop.
"You should be able to reach the place in about a day walking." I nod and walk out. I make my way back to where the bike is lying in the reeds. The long blades tickle and poke my skin as I walk through them and right the machine. I walk the machine farther down the road so as to start it away from anyone, and I ride straight past the place down the road in the direction over which the sun hangs. In my peripheral I believe I caught a flash of big grey blue men at the building's front, and I speed up to escape the thought.
THE TENDRILS of the wind grow colder as twilight approaches in the open country. For the first time I break my concentration and look around at everything rushing past and I begin to slow. Watching the sky I inadvertently come to a complete stop. The fairy stirs in my sleeve, apparently having fallen asleep there on the ride despite the belching roar of the engine and the ceaseless shaking from the engine passing through my whole body. "Captain? Why have we stopped?" I hear her in my sleeve, muffled and grumbling. "Is something the matter?" I don't answer her and pull the goggles from my face and down around my neck. The sky is wider than I had ever seen before in my whole life in the forest. I feel as if it's almost too big, unable to hold itself up, precarious. It is lit like a fire; the clouds overhead are dyed the strange purples and blues from the tips of tongues of flame, the ones around the sun are the orange and lively red of the heart's gentle embers. Only once before have I ever seen the sun actually touch the horizon. I had been sitting in a high hunting blind near to the tip top of an ancient tree, watching for signs of trouble over the deep woods where rangers were walking below. There I was seemingly in the sky, above the trees and on a whole other plane of the world, and I could see beyond for the first time. I could see these rolling grasslands then, and on them the sun sank swollen and blushing orange. That which had been a searing point of white-hot power to me my entire life in the living walls of the forest, now appeared to beautifully die in the impossible distance, its blood pooling in the sky and tinting the late world the colour of the end. The fairy slowly drifts out of my sleeve and into the evening air, lolling in the breeze. "Goodness." She sighs. I wonder if she has lungs or even breathes at all. Her wings face me as she rises to the sun, flitting at a gentle tempo. The moment is silent and I find myself gripping my tunic about my chest almost desperately. I open my hand and let it fall to my side. I see the fairy shake violently and spin around to me. "We delay needlessly, Captain. Come let us resume." And with that, Navi darts into my sleeve once again. I sigh and bring the goggles up to my face again, pushing the rubber rims against my eye sockets. I twist the throttle and the bike rolls and the engine pipes up once again. I hurtle toward the sun, but will never reach it in this road. Sunsets are considered dangerous in the forest. They are only visible when there are no trees to obscure them. Whether the danger of this is the lack of trees, or the glow that hints at the beauty of a wide, beckoning world, is as unclear as ever.
THE BUILDINGS come into view now, standing black against the twilit sky. They are all built low and wide. Bulky piles of things indiscernible at this distance stand on the grounds. I continue until I come to the unpaved road snaking through the grasses toward the hacienda. I turn onto it and bike bumps aggressively along up the way. My legs are numb by the time I come to a stop and kill the engine. I walk the bike under a wood archway as light bulbs flicker to life on it and illuminate the bright optimistic letters painted on the wide sign hanging from it. Lights come on all over the compound and reveal men strolling downhill to a cluster of arranged domiciles standing on wood stilts and painted a white that seems to glow in the low light. I hear a hissing to my left and look over to see a plume of smoke twisting into the inky sky. Through brick archways I can see a darkened mass of metal spewing steam onto the painted ceramic tile floor of the open structure, white wisps floating up to the lights hanging from the cross beams. There is a sudden smash at the rear of the bike and I turn to see a wiry man with a tremendous moustache smack the bike's rear fender again with a pitchfork. "You best turn right around and go home, punk. There's no work here for you now or anytime soon, you hear me?" He glares at me with tired eyes that his flesh seems to be falling away from. He hits the bike again and the senselessness of it agitates me. "Stop that, stop. I'm not here for work." The man spits a black load of saliva onto the packed earth of the yard and rubs his bulging upper lip. "The train then?" He waves a dirty hand up at the open pavilion and the hissing metal monster on the other side.
"I suspect that is the 'train'" Navi murmurs, peering through one of the many holes somewhere on my tunic, I surmise.
"Yeah, I'm here for the train." The man scoffs at this and spits again, this time volleying it over the bike.
"You got a ticket?"
"No."
"Any cash?"
"No." I don't understand the phrase, but I can see this man's contempt for me and don't doubt he has all intention of doing wrong by me.
"Well looks like your journey's at an end, then. Get lost you little punk." He goes to strike the bike once again but pauses mid swipe. He cocks one of his bushy eyebrows and spits again. "Then again, this bike of yours might just suffice." He rubs his moustache and surveys the vehicle, eyeing me with visible arrogance periodically as I mull over the proposition.
"Captain, this trade is sound. At this stage in our journey we no longer require the motorcycle and desperately require passage on that vehicle. There can be no more time wasted with this man. Accept, and let us depart."
"Sure, fine. It's yours then." He flips out the kickstand with his boot immediately and begins to step around to me. "Alright then, get lost. Find a car and crawl into it." I turn and walk to the train but he catches the butt of the rifle in his dirty palm. "Whoa, whoa hold up, you were holding out on me." He grips it tight so as to prevent me from running whilst I kept the rifle slung.
"I wasn't, I've had this slung in the open the whole time."
"Yeah well not in a visible way. That's dishonest." I grab hard near the end of the barrel and take a step toward the train and away from him. His thick brows burrow close together and shroud his haggard eyes. "The deal's gonna need some reworking I think. Gimme the gun." I take a step again and yank once. He grabs the butt with both hand and narrows his eyes at me. "Gimme the damn gun punk."
"Captain!" Navi yells. Across the compound a loud whistle bellows and machinery begins to lurch and revive. "Our window closes! Resolve this with due haste!" A single chug sounds out now, followed by another a time after. I turn and grasp the barrel with both hands and stab the rifle forward. The man's arms fling with the rifle stock into his gut and he lets out an animal gurgle as I then yank it back toward me and pivot on my feet until the gun is freed from his grip and swinging away from him. I pivot more still and let the momentum of the gun as I swing it hard spin me around until the butt strikes the man square on the cheek. A meaty clap rings out and his head whips to the side and scatters a cascade of spittle and tooth fragments into the dusty light beams glowing all around. He twirls and collapses hard as I spin halfway around again and sling the rifle in one move. The chugging rhythm picks up by the moment and I dash for the train. My eyes fix on the dark monster slinking away into the night and soon the chugging picks up to half the pace of my footfalls on the tiles. More and more of the vehicle's long body slips away as I draw closer until I turn my course to in the hopes of at least intercepting. I run full out and now the train is faster than me. I thrust my right arm out at the earliest possible moment and my fingers brush against a metal pole on the rear of the train, and then, twisting my body and lunging, I grip it with my left hand. I swing myself around and onto a metal ledge that my feet bang onto. I let go of the pole and step back against a wall. I slowly slide down, letting the rifle clatter against the steel plate below me, and sighing and resting my head back as I come to perch. I come to realize the chugging filling my ears at a tempo that still increases and the fairy reveals herself from out of my sleeve to perch on a bar adjacent to me. "That was a real spot of excitement!"
"Yeah, it was. I think I'll sleep now." I mutter, nodding at the luminescent creature's body cutting the darkness of the young night. "Alright, Captain. I will keep a vigil then, and will wake you at the sign of any trouble."
"I appreciate that." I say, grinning at her. As I close my eyes, I realize that that had been the first time I had ever showed her an expression like that, and the thought carries me off to sleep.