Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 17

His departure was an emotional affair for everyone, though the people of the fair, accustomed to comings and goings, probably recovered more quickly than Leo. He shook hands gravely with Tiresias, Titius and Jud, kissed the two twins on their cheeks, and was smothered in a bear hug by Ruth. Then he and Mayon walked a little way down the road together.

‘It’s been good,’ Leo said, feeling suddenly shy. ‘They’re good people.’

‘They’re a mixture of good and bad, like everyone else,’ Mayon answered with a smile. ‘But there’s one thing you still haven’t figured out about them.’

‘What’s that?’ Leo asked in surprise.

Mayon shrugged. ‘They’re all you, all a different part of you. Well, this is far enough for me. I hope our paths cross again. Goodbye Leo. Take care, as people say, but take risks too.’ The two embraced, as both felt tears smart in their eyes.

‘Goodbye,’ Leo said. ‘Thank you so much. Good-bye.’

And so it was now Leo’ turn to walk away, as Jasper had done so recently and Mayon’s turn to stand and watch. But Leo’ direction was the opposite of Jasper’s: his route led him inland, where hers had been towards the coast.

It took him some time to get back into the pace and rhythm he had developed before joining the fair. But he was glad to be on his own again, and realised he had been getting stale, physically and mentally.

For the first time in quite a while he began observing the countryside around him. He was still in cleared and arable land, of a type that had become familiar to him, but the further he went from Palatine the more the gradient increased, and the less inviting was the general prospect. After a few hours he was puffing a little, climbing into the hills and gaining height rapidly as the road twisted around. At length he paused at an escarpment and looked out at the plains he was leaving. The city of Palatine lay dark and heavy between him and the horizon. He could see the tents and caravans of the fair but he was able to look at them without too great a sense of loss.

Far in the distance was the ocean, almost flippant in its light blue insignificance. He laughed aloud as he thought of the memories and associations that the sea now held for him. It would be a part of his life forever. Other towns and villages were scattered across the countryside. Most of them were alien to Leo, and he wondered for a moment how it could be that they held individuals and families whom he would never meet or even see. Yet to them their lives were all-important, they were the suns in their local solar systems. How could they be oblivious of him, and for that matter, how could he be oblivious of them? A person’s life, his or her living and dying, were too important to be carried out in anonymity.

Leo sighed and turned away, resuming his journey. He realised that tonight, for the first time in quite a while, he would have to find a place to sleep, and that could be difficult in poor country. And this was poor country. Increasingly scrubby vegetation and loamy soil, large tracts uncleared, houses and settlements well apart. As the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped Leo began to step out, but was unable to see any promising shelter. Finally, as the road ahead seemed to offer no prospects, he left it and pushed through the small trees to a hill, hoping to find a cave or an animal hole. But there was nothing ready-made there.

The afternoon darkened and the rain started to fall; he broke off some branches and combined them with dead wood to make a crude shelter, then crept inside and sat, knees up to his chest, watching the rain thicken into a steady downpour. His shelter did not do much of a job; it screened him from the small drops by catching them and gathering them into big drops, which then ran down the back of his neck. Or that was the way it seemed to him. He unrolled his pack and supped on some sandwiches and dried fruit the twins had given him.

His spirits were high enough, though as the last of the daylight melted he found it harder to maintain his morale. It was too early to sleep so he amused himself by trying to rearrange the shelter so less rain dripped through; then he tried to do some mental exercises. But he found the process dreary.

When it was too dark to see any more Leo lay down and tried to sleep. The rain slackened off but was still persistent. He knew that by going to sleep now he would almost certainly wake up again in the middle of the night but he decided to face that problem when he came to it. He slept fitfully, dreaming that he was floating down a river that flowed, not towards the ocean, but towards a vast inland lake. He woke up, then slept again, dreaming this time of birds who were being chased and caught by savage predators, who leapt up and tore the birds out of the sky. He woke, wanting to urinate and, after some minutes of reluctance and procrastination, crawled out and relieved himself on a patch of grass. He returned to the shelter and fell back into a stormy sleep, in which he was alternately chasing and being chased by bright lights which shone with an intensity that was alluring at times, at times threatening.

The next time he awoke he realised that he was not likely to get back to sleep again. He sat up and listened but the rain had stopped and the only sound to be heard was the drops of water that rolled and splashed through the trees. Leo moved to the door of the shelter and looked out. The cloud had disappeared. The sky glinted and glittered with a fresh intensity. Leo spent a little time sitting with his arms around his knees, gazing up at it.

After twenty minutes or so he was about to turn away when out of the corner of his eye he saw a light shooting quickly across the sky. He turned back and watched intently. The light moved among the stars at speed. It shone brightly as it traversed the heavens in an apparently fixed path. It took perhaps a minute to pass from Leo’ view; the boy was transfixed for every second of that time, wondering what the light was and what it could portend. Long after it had disappeared he sat gazing at the spangled sky, hoping to see the light reappear, but he was disappointed. There was nothing to be seen but the everyday miracle of the stars in the night sky. At last, as the whitened sky in the east drew a gradual film over the purply blackness, he crawled back into the rough shelter and settled into a fitful new bout of sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Following the road as it led up into the uncleared and unsettled areas, gaining height all the while, Leo saw ahead of him the figure of an old man on the road. The man was shabbily dressed but had a blanket-roll on his back much like Leo’. His head was bald on top but was ringed by long grey curls, which fell almost to his shoulders. Despite his venerable age he was walking quite rapidly, and Leo, who wanted to catch up with him, had to stride out vigorously to do so. When he reached him, he walked along with the man for quite a distance before either of them spoke. At last however the old man, without looking at Leo, said, ‘I have one very good friend’.

‘Oh yes?’ said Leo politely, wondering if the old man were perhaps mad.

‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘and here he is.’ With a flourish, still not looking at the boy, he drew a large orange from his pocket and held it aloft. Leo was now sure that the man was mad. ‘This is my very good friend,’ said the man firmly, then he began ripping the peel from the orange and stuffing its flesh into his mouth, gulping it down voraciously. Leo thought of a number of facetious remarks he could make but wisely decided to make none of them. The old man finished the orange and spoke again.

‘We’re on a road to nowhere,’ he said, ‘and the only way we can get there is by eating our friends.’ He danced a few steps, stirring up clouds of dust in the road. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked. ‘Any question you want to ask me. Go on, any question at all.’ Leo was taken aback and did not know what to say. But the man was flitting on to another topic. ‘There’s nothing to say and no time to say it in,’ he declared. ‘There was a rabbit and an eagle, and then there was an eagle. Everything becomes the eagle in the end. But then, there’s another way of looking at it. When there’s a lot of light, you don’t notice the dark. When there’s a lot of dark you always notice the light. Now that’s a strange thing. And so I dance and I sing.’ He proceeded to do bo

th, singing:

A moth that flew to the moon,

Discovered, and all too soon,

The moon that burned so bright,

Would never defeat the night.

‘That’s true,’ said Leo, clutching in relief at what meaning he could recognise among the meanderings. ‘Ah,’ said the man, ‘but is it as true as that rock? As true as this road? As true as the word “true” that comes out of your mouth? Now there’s true and there’s true and there’s true, and that makes three, and that’s three trues, all different and none of them lies. But that can’t be right, because if there’s a true there must be a lie. And each true must give way to the next true that comes along. And so,’ he said, peering into the distance, ‘I see our road coming to a junction, and you are going a different way from me, and we must part.’

‘But,’ said Leo, astonished, ‘How do you know that I am going a different way?’

‘Because whichever way you are going, I am going a different way,’ said the man. ‘Do you go the same way as a bird? As a kite? Do you know the way home? Is there air in your shoes and between your toes? I expect not. So fly in circles until you find the air.’

They had reached the crossroad and Leo stood, irresolute. The road they were on continued to the west, still a well-defined route. The road crossing it was a straggling track that hardly deserved to be called a road. The boy looked at the man. The man gazed away, deliberately not looking at the boy.

‘Which way do you suggest?’ Leo asked at last. The old man shrugged. ‘One to the topmost,’ he sang, ‘and one to the coast.

One that goes to earth,

And another to a birth.

The only one it cannot be

Is the one that comes from the sea.

His dry crackled voice gave little comfort to Leo, who decided however that the way ahead looked boring, and so took the track to the left, to the south. The old man promptly took the one to the north and strode off along it, singing and muttering to himself. Leo shrugged and set out along his own chosen way.

The morning still had the cool freshness that characterises the early part of the day, before the sun has set about drying and heating the air and the ground. Leo walked and whistled. This was no time to be sour. He realised, with pleasure, that he was again noticing little things: the way a single blade of grass trembled as though palsied, though all around it was still; the way a creeper took such a tortuous path to the sun; the way one bird hopped on two feet while another walked, one foot in front of the other.