Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) Read Free Page A

As the truck rumbled off, the indistinct faces of the two men slipped out of Jay’s memory. He couldn’t understand why it was so hard to remember what these men looked like, especially after spending so many days traveling together. Must be fatigue, he thought.
    Jay swung on his backpack, set its buckles, and adjusted its straps. Despite the ringing in his head, the tiredness, the bruises, and the extra weight, the touch of the pack to his back brightened his eyes and straightened up his stooping body. It’d be a good walk. A long walk. A tough, hellish walk, sure, but then again, travel wasn’t supposed to be easy. The pack did feel heavier, though, now that the little... thing spun in there again.
    If anything weighed him down, it wasn’t the road-weary fatigue, the not-quite-remembered moonlit night at Mt. Everest, or the Chinese police and all those Dalai Lama portraits. It was the quiet, slow, incessant shr-shr-shr as the thing turned, rubbing the fabric of his faithful backpack.
    “One foot in front of the other will put it out of your head,” Jay said, the Idaho gone from his voice and replaced by the patchwork of places stamped in his passport.
    The city center couldn’t be that far. Once there, he thought, I’ll beeline to a pint, a shower, and a bed—in whatever order works best . For once, I even know where I want to go.
    Backpack-laden, his skin and clothes were so soaked he wondered if sweat glands could get sore. With every step, Jay tried to understand how the Indians did it. Children ran, laughed, smiled, circled him, joked, and asked for a pen or a piece of candy. Women, wrapped head to toe in yards and yards of sari fabric, walked everywhere carrying baskets. Men in pants and long-sleeve shirts held hands with each other and talked like they were all brothers. Their animated voices and gestures defied the dulling, steaming humidity.
    Jay had no idea what the men said. The women didn’t look in his direction. The kids tired of him and returned to their games.
    With every step, the age of the country seemed to whisper alongside the shr-shr-shr . All around him, in every pebble and blade of grass, in every buffalo-dung patty drying as fuel on the sides of shacks, Jay saw and felt the gods whose presence and personality had shaped all people, all moments, all things.
    The acrid scent of burning tires stung the air. A cow rooted through plastic and garbage. Jay wondered why the gods couldn’t have made things smell better.
    As he pressed on, the heat melted his resolve. He was now wearing a boulder, not a backpack. Sweat poured and feet dragged, but Jay kept going. Some old saying about single steps and thousand-mile journeys flitted through his mind. It had to be close, though, had to be. The miles pounded the bottoms of his worn boots, and the scene around Jay changed. At least the ground was flat. Other than a tall hill off to the west, the land here was even, with hardly a rise at all.
    Covered in drying dung-fuel patties, the shacks gradually gave way to one- and two-story buildings. Shops. Homes. Offices. Sometimes distinct, often all jumbled.
    The humid floating dust changed character too. The scent of fields, cow dung, and fires still clung to his pores and his soul, but a new layer of sound and soot settled on him: car and rickshaw exhaust, cooking food, open sewers. Jay had always heard of India as a land of diversity. Walking it now, he understood they meant the smell.
    Stopping a moment to rest, Jay had hardly stood still when an open-sided, three-wheeled black-and-yellow rickshaw taxi pulled up next to him like a buzzing, rattling bumblebee.
    “You need a ride?” the driver said. “Get in. I will take you to my friend’s hotel.”
    “No, I’m fine,” Jay replied, but the driver was already running over to him.
    “So tired,” the driver said, reaching for Jay’s backpack. “Let me put that in for you.”
    Jay’s eyes widened and he stepped back.
    “I’m fine,” he repeated,