Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) (28 page)

Asha nodded. “Silly… So silly.” She coughed. “I caught the step wrong.”

She stood upright with Jigme next to her. His eyes felt hot and anger burned in his gaze.
Why do I feel mad at them?
he thought.
They’re only trying to help.

“They are a help you don’t need,” said the voice. “It’s time for them to go.”

“Would you like us to help you clean?” Kailash asked. “Help you get settled back in?”

When Asha shook her head, Jigme thought he saw a red glint in her eyes. “Thank you for your help and your kindnesses,” she said. “But I think it would be best if Jigme and I had some time alone in our home, just mother and son.”

“We’ll come back around later,” Rucksack said. “We’re nearby if you need us.”

“Thank you,” Asha said. “You’ve done so much already. I’ll get stronger. I want to get stronger. Good-bye.” With a small smile that stabbed the corners of her mouth upward, Asha closed the door.

“Amma?” Jigme said. “What now?”

Weak light collided with the dust in the stale air.

“Now we wait,” she said, her face half in shadow, half in the watery light.

“Wait for what?”

“Wait until we know they are gone.” With that, Asha stood still, her eyes locked on the closed door. Jigme tugged her hand and continued to speak to her, but she did not reply.

Once a few minutes had passed, she looked away from the door. “They’re gone now,” she said.

“Are we going to clean?” Jigme asked. “Would you rather rest first? You don’t want to do too much on your first day home.”

“You’re wrong,” Asha replied, stepping forward into the light. “There is much to do.” The red glint shone brighter in her eyes now. Fiercer. “Starting with you leaving.”

“Leaving? But we only just got home. Where are we going?”

“Not me,” Asha said. “You.”

“Me?”

Asha nodded. “My strength is as his strength, son. If I am not to be as I was, then you must help him.”

“How? I don’t… I didn’t mean…”

“I know. But it’s okay. You didn’t know, and neither did he. That’s why what you did, even though you meant to do nothing, was so right. It made him strong enough to make me strong enough to come back. Don’t you want me to be able to stay here, with you?”

Though he nodded, tears burned Jigme’s cheeks.

“Then you must go,” Asha said. “He is waiting. He knows what you must do.”

“To help him,” Jigme replied. “I don’t want to go.”

“To make him stronger is to make me stronger,” Asha said. “I must tell you the truth, my son. I am not better.”

“But you came home!”

“I am strong while he is strong, but his power is not fully returned. Not yet. Not for a while to come. If he is allowed to weaken, then I will weaken too. If I weaken… he will live forever but I will not. He may fade but he can come back. If I fade, as I was fading before you helped him, then I will die.”

“Amma, please…”

Asha nodded. “I know it’s hard. But isn’t your mother worth it?”

The tears kept coming, but Jigme choked out a small, “Yes.”

“That’s my son,” Asha said, kissing Jigme on the forehead. Her lips burned.

“When will he be strong enough?”

Asha said nothing. The glint faded from her eyes. Jigme began to think she wouldn’t respond. Then the red flickered again.

“He will be strong enough when he tells you to bring me to him,” she said.

“It’s the only way?”

“Whatever he tells you is the only way.”

Outside, the world was still in midday. Around their small room all seemed dim and gray, like pale light under stormy clouds. Jigme stepped into the alley.

“Son?”

He turned and looked at his mother.

“I know you’ll make me proud.”

Asha closed the door. For a moment, Jigme looked longingly toward the living end of the alley, where mothers cooked, where children played, where lives were being lived in the bright light of the day. Jigme turned the other way and returned to the black temple.

“
I
DON’T UNDERSTAND
what the problem is,” Rucksack said, wiping the last bits of grease off his fingers, “though clearly it’s so vexing it’s put you off your samosa.”

The samosa should have looked tasty,
Jay thought as he stood against the wall. He and Rucksack were just outside the flood of people wandering the city’s busy streets in the afternoon heat. The samosa’s warmth permeated Jay’s right hand, and he looked down at the small pasty, its warm weight promising a spicy delight of vegetables, potatoes, and chickpeas. The scent of chickpea dough, fried in nut oil, had pulled Jay by the nostrils to the man’s cart.

Jay sniffed in the aroma of the carrots and peas, simmering beneath a cloud of steam. After a morning of looking over half the streets in Agamuskara, they hadn’t even eaten lunch before meeting up with the others at the hospital.

Now, with Jade getting the pub open, with Jigme and Asha back home, and Kailash doing, well, doing whatever Kailash did, he and Rucksack could get back to what mattered most: hunting the city for Mim and Pim. It was as if Jay could sense his passport. Somehow it always seemed near, though they had yet to catch so much as a glimpse of Mim and Pim.

By the time they began churning through the busy streets again, Jay’s stomach protested like horns in the city’s daily traffic jams. Holding two fingers up to the man at the samosa cart, Jay began to drool, not just for the food but also for his favorite part: the haggling.

The past couple of weeks in the city had been just the sort of exercise he needed. Lots of walking and lots of negotiating over the prices of gifts for Jade, meals, and rides all over the city. The haggling had always been one of Jay’s favorite parts of travel.

“It all comes down to who wants it more,” someone had told him so many years and passport stamps ago. “If you want it more, they will win. If they want you to buy it more, you will get the price you want.”

The man at the cart wrapped each samosa in a small square of newspaper. Jay stared at the wrapper as grease absorbed into today’s news. From the photo, it looked like some story about the sun. The newspaper was fresh, at least.

“Jay?” Rucksack asked. “Are you okay?”

“He charged me four rupees,” Jay replied.

“Quite a bargain you struck.” The straight line of Rucksack’s mouth made it clear he had overdone the haggling.

“That’s the thing. I didn’t strike a bargain. We didn’t haggle.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t haggle? It’s not as if he gave you the local price straightaway.”

Jay bobbed his head.

“He charged you the local price? No haggling?”

“I couldn’t so much as express my outrage at his prices.”

Jay thought about the exchange again. Bringing forth his mastery of international language, Jay had arched an eyebrow and rubbed the tips of his thumb and index finger together in the opening salvo.
How much?

Instead of asking forty rupees—a far more typical price for the foreign traveler, from what Jay had come to understand from previous samosa purchases and from talking with other travelers at the Everest Base Camp—the man had charged Jay what he would have charged a local.

“It’s just not done,” Jay said. “I was going to counter with ten rupees. Not that he would accept that, of course, but there’s a process to this—a time-honored tradition of someone trying to get extra money from the bloke who clearly isn’t from around here. I respect that tradition. It’s a thrill, even. I love telling someone their prices are outlandish and then walking away.”

“Aye,” Rucksack said. A nostalgic wisp brightened his eyes. “He lets you go a few paces, then he shouts, ‘Wait my friend! Wait my friend!’ You come back, of course. That’s how it’s done. And he’s clearly happy that you understand the rules and he can engage in a proper transaction.”

“It’s not like these fresh-faced backpackers you get nowadays,” Jay said. “All wet ink behind their passport stamps. They would’ve just left, denying both people a chance to talk about his kids and how expensive good fresh ingredients are nowadays.”

“Even if he’s not buying good fresh ingredients,” Rucksack replied. “Then he would’ve said his usual price is sixty, but you’re a guest. Special price for you.”

Jay nodded. “So, of course I’d counter with twenty, knowing full well he’s talking poo.”

“Anymore so, you could pat his words into a cake, chuck it on a wall to dry in the sun, and burn it for cooking later,” Rucksack said.

Jay shrugged. “I tried to tell him to charge me more.”

“You didn’t try to speak Hindi, did you?”

“Eventually. At first I think I told him he had chickens on his ears. After a few goes, he understood that I was trying to make him charge me exorbitantly so we could agree a fair price like gentlemen. But it’s like he had decided the rules didn’t apply.”

“What do you mean?”
 

“I don’t know what he was signifying,” Jay said, “but it’s like he traced a triangle in the air, then a circle, then he pointed at me and just said again, ‘Four rupees.’”

Rucksack frowned. Outside the throngs of people, a cow wandered toward the two of them.

“What’s wrong?” Jay asked Rucksack. “I thought it was just some sort of weird local blessing, like I’ve been seen enough or seen with Jade or something, so I was getting the local price. That’s why I finally just caved in and gave him the money. I tried to sneak in extra, but you know what he did?”

“No,” Rucksack said. “He didn’t.”

“He gave me change.”

“It’s just not right.”

“It’s like it’s all been getting easier lately. The traveling. The day to day. I’m used to travel being hard. I like travel being hard,” Jay said. “Now I’m being charged differently. Everyone is deferential to me. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m just another foreign guy with a backpack—no one special.”

“Has there been any change in the dia ubh?”

Jay sighed. To his left he saw the cow, its eyes dull yet bright, as if saying it knew something important, only it wasn’t going to let on. With his samosa in one hand, Jay brought around his daypack with his other hand, unzipped it, and held the black fabric open so Rucksack could peer inside.

The dia ubh sat like a gray rock.

Rucksack shook his head. “So much to tell you,” he said.

“Tell me about what?”

“We’ll get to it. Eat up. Let’s keep looking.”

Jay zipped the pack closed and put it on his back. He held up the samosa, and his stomach sent up something like a cross between a growl and a cheer. “I guess I am still hungry,” he said, opening his mouth to take a big bite of samosa.

His teeth closed on nothing.

“What the?” Jay said.

Rucksack’s eyes were wide as he peeled the newspaper off the samosa. “Sorry, my lad,” he said, “but we don’t want this damaged.”

Rucksack held out the naked samosa, and Jay reached for it.

The cow didn’t even slow down as it plucked Jay’s samosa from Rucksack’s hand, munching slowly as it wandered away.

Jay realized his mouth was hanging open. A stream of drool washed over his chin.

“We’ll get another one in a minute,” Rucksack said. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll do the haggling. In the meantime, well, I’m sure you can hold out a wee while longer.”

Jay sighed. “This had better be good. What’s so important?”

“Today’s paper,” Rucksack said. “I hadn’t gotten to see it yet, what with today’s excitement.” He read quietly for a moment, then said, “Damn, damn, damn.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Confirmation.” Rucksack shook his head. “I knew there was a slim chance it wouldn’t be. Maybe there still is. But even if there is, I can’t give myself the luxury o’ that frail wee hope anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“In about a month and a half, there’s going to be an eclipse.”

“Right,” Jay said. “Agamuskara’s supposed to be the best place to see it.”

“You’re in for a real bloody treat,” Rucksack continued. “Today’s paper has confirmed that the eclipse is going to be a mirror eclipse.”

“A what?”

“Aye,” Rucksack said. “It would make sense you wouldn’t know. They’re bloody rare. Last one that happened in recorded history was… was the day o’ The Blast.”

Rucksack seemed to hesitate. Jade had mentioned something about The Blast always bothering Rucksack. Jay wondered why that would be.
Then again,
he thought,
I could know Rucksack for a thousand years and probably still know only a fraction of who he is and what he’s about.

Rucksack took a deep breath and continued, his left hand squeezing into a fist. “A mirror eclipse happens under very particular conditions. The eclipse must be total—a complete blackout o’ the sun. And there must be clouds.”

“If there are clouds,” Jay said, “how can you see the eclipse?”

“That isn’t understood,” Rucksack replied. “The eclipse still appears in the sky, as if it were lower than the clouds. You look up and there it is: big black and gray clouds. You’d think a storm was brewing that could break the world like crushing an egg in the hand. Right there with all that boiling storm, there’s this big black disc o’ the sun. And it’s not like other total eclipses, where maybe you still can see just a wee outline of light, silver-and-gold lining, around the black. Oh no. This is the total o’ total eclipses. No light at all. Total dark.”