Charlinder's Walk

by Alyson Miers

  He walked through an expanse of city remains once called Bologna. This time, the pulsating in the ground didn’t feel like a heartbeat so much as like ripples in a pond, and they all led in the same direction. The sense of being asked to move along wasn’t really a feeling of something pushing him out so much as pushing him through. The message was to keep heading north until he was out of the city. That much was easily explained; everyone kept telling him to keep going north, as if his life wouldn’t be complete until he saw the Alps. What he didn’t expect was when he came near the city limits, and the message of "north" changed to "and when you get out of the city, stay on this side of the river."

  When he was far enough outside the city remains to lose the ripples in the ground, his sense of direction abandoned him. The idea that he should keep going north, but stay on this side of the river, made no more sense than that he should dig a hole and bury himself. All his nervous doubts of the past several days coalesced into ugly thoughts as persistent and plain as someone whispering in his ear. He'd just spent the last thirty-two months marching himself into a trap. He knew nothing about what he was trying to prove. All the scientists' work was demolished by now, as if any of it had ever contained the data that he needed. He could spend months wandering around northern Italy, and all it would ever get him would be trips through more cities fallen to mountains of rubble. He was more likely to get a sign from God out here than any answers from science. He may have just come this far to do the Faithful's work. The thought of it made him retch.

  He followed the river for the rest of the day because there was nothing better to do. He saw the white house in his dreams again but this time he had a voice. He kept asking the house, "What are you doing here? What'll I find in you?" A breeze sometimes ran through the branches of the orange-and-white trees, and the fluffy animals stood on their hind legs to face him, but he was the only one who had anything to say.

  When he woke up, his thoughts proceeded as though his mind had snapped in half. The part of him that reasoned, kept calm and explored options was out of commission. He packed up his bedding and continued marching north simply because he couldn't sit still. The white house in his dreams, he realized, was a sadistic game his subconscious had chosen to play on him as punishment for all the upheaval, uncertainty and discomfort he'd inflicted on himself with his half-baked scheme of a journey. He had left home without the slightest idea of what he would bring back or how he would know where to find it. He had spent the last two and a half years--no, more like three years--living in the comfortable but farcically naïve assumption that everything would become clear once he reached that mythical land of Northern Italy. It wasn't clear, and he had no right to be surprised.

  There was a village coming up. Good--he was hungry, but in no mood for that pathetic routine of making cute faces at the villagers to beg for their hospitality. He would simply go straight into the first house that smelled good and open up whatever pot was boiling on their hearth. If anyone tried to stop him, he was ready to fight. In fact he wasn't concerned about getting beaten up anymore. There was nothing to be found that would prove or even support his side of The Great Plague Debate. He couldn't enlist the Italians' help, as he couldn't explain his intentions to them. No one out here could speak English, now why hadn't he thought of that when he was twenty years old and addicted to Being Right?

  He was in the village now. He would have to do one of two things, now that he'd achieved this newfound clarity. He could stay, learn the Italian language, and see if he could find anything out, in which case even if he did find out what Eileen didn't know, he might never see his home again. His other option was to call the whole attempt a bust and go back to Paleola empty-handed.

  Children peered fearfully at him from behind their mothers' skirts; adults waited for him to state his name and business. How would he get back home, though? He doubted that any country had redeveloped the engineering and nautical skills needed to get a boat across the Atlantic. If he couldn't go by water, he would have to turn east and walk back through the continents he'd just traveled. He would have to go back, in other words, more or less the way he'd come.

  The thought of doing such a thing stopped him in his tracks. Go back the way he came? He might as well have found a cliff and jumped off. He looked toward the sky; the roofs, trees and clouds spun around his head.

  "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I'M DOING HERE!" he shouted at nothing.

  Looking back towards the ground, he started turning on the spot. "What in the Hell was I thinking?!" he demanded with his hands at his head. There was a small boy toddling unattended nearby. Charlinder ran towards him, asking, "Do you know what I'm doing here?" The boy whimpered and ran away. Charlinder turned towards another frightened child, demanding, "Why did I come out here?" The child also ran off, while Charlinder took no notice of the adult feet coming closer. There was a sharp pain at the back of his head, and all went blank.

  Part 4: Gentiola

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Impossible

  White.

  That was the first thing Charlinder sensed as he regained consciousness. There was something white, and his head hurt. He closed his eyes again because the whiteness was painful. He was upright and something pressed into his back. He opened his eyes again. The white color he saw was a halter of some densely woven material wrapped around his torso, which kept his arms immobilized at his sides. He was standing on a wooden platform, which, as his eyes gathered focus, turned out to be the floor of a horse-driven cart. He was tied to an upright at the side of the cart, which was otherwise empty except for his baggage. On the ground behind the cart, a couple of guys were arguing over him, and that phrase came up again: la mamma. If Charlinder had been more alert, he might have laughed. It was almost like another family had taken him into their home for the day, only this time he couldn’t just get up and leave. The guys eventually settled their argument and got up on the driver’s bench behind the single gray horse.

  Were they taking him to their mother, perhaps? If so, what did they expect their mother to do with him? Would she beat him up for scaring the village children? That idea made as much sense as any other. Charlinder had caused offense, and it would take a mother's wrath to punish him for his transgression. Well, if that was the case, he surely hoped their mother would also feed him, as his guts were snarling. The horse was pulling the cart down a flat, dusty path through a forest. Then Charlinder remembered that he was once again tied up in a cart and getting taken who-knows-where by a couple of guys who were thoroughly annoyed at him. He didn't have a dairy animal this time that they could dry up. What would they do to punish him, then? He noted, on the positive side, that there were no mountains in sight, and it was August. That didn't rule out the possibility that la mamma was a very deep and fast-moving river. Though, for some reason, he didn't feel threatened. If they'd wanted to kill him, they'd have done so already.

  More light was coming through the trees ahead. They were approaching a clearing in the forest, and as the path straightened out, Charlinder gained an unobstructed view of the source of this penetrating light.

  Straight ahead was a piece of land, no more than a half acre, enclosed in a tall, black, wrought-iron fence. Most of the land visible from the road was planted in gardens that showed patches of dry, drab limpness among crisp colors. Behind the gardens were trees bearing orange fruit and white flowers. Chickens pecked at the soil between rows of herbs. A few melon-sized balls of fluff were just visible hopping around a large wire cage under a low wooden shelter. In the middle of the clearing was a stately, rectangular, snow white house.

  All other concerns momentarily abandoned, Charlinder was staring at the house so rapturously he didn't bother paying attention to what his captors were doing. He was jolted back to his body when they untied the ropes around his waist and pulled him out of the cart.

  Holding him by the elbows through the restraining material, the captors walked him up to the gate. There, they started shouting a
t the house. His first thought was that he was in perfect mental health compared to these guys if they expected the house to answer their demands, but then the front door opened and a woman stepped outside. His captors went quiet. Charlinder watched the woman rush up to the gate, which spontaneously clicked open before she reached it.

  The guys took Charlinder with them inside the gate. The woman stood there with her fists on her hips, awaiting an explanation.

  She was a small woman, though nicely curvy, about a foot shorter than Charlinder. Somewhere in her mid-thirties, she was tan, fine-boned and green-eyed, with thick brown hair flowing down her back in lush waves. She wore a loose, shapeless sort of gown made of tiers of gauzy off-white material hanging from her shoulders, and on her feet she wore a pair of sandals made of strips of fabric sewn to the edges of leather soles. She said something angry to Charlinder's captors. They responded defensively; they were trying to make her understand something, but she was not satisfied. The argument escalated, and since Charlinder had no idea what they were saying, he contented himself by watching the woman's eyes bore into his captors.

  She was overall a pretty woman, but her eyes were nothing short of mesmerizing. They didn't simply flash in annoyance, they outright glowed in the most intriguing shades of green, blue and gold. Her eyes had a presence and personality all their own, and Charlinder was increasingly excited to see her put his captors in their place. She eventually said something to them they couldn't answer, so instead they undid the restraints that held his arms immobile. One of them went back to the cart and tossed Charlinder's pack to the ground by his feet.

  When both of the young men were in the cart and driving away, the gate clicked itself shut again. The woman scowled after them until they were out of sight. Then she did something entirely bizarre.

  She grasped Charlinder's head in her hands by his jaw and crown, closed her eyes, and began muttering something in Latin. She rocked his head around, pushed his jaw from side to side, and did something with her fingers on his ears. Then she was finished, and for the first time, locked eyes with him. She looked at him in an expression of wondrous, almost disbelieving interest.

  "My name is Gentiola. What about you?"

  It was the first time since India that anyone had asked him a full question that he could understand. He was too stunned to do anything but answer. "Charlinder."

  "That's beautiful. Are you part-Indian?"

  "No, why?"

  "It sounds like an Indian name is all, but you don’t look Indian, not really. Those young men who brought you here could tell you’re from somewhere else, and it’s been such a long time since I met anyone from another country. Won’t you come inside? Are you hungry?"

  "I could eat a whole farm right now if it sat still long enough."

  As she led him to the front door, he asked, "Wait, can I ask you a question?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Where did you learn English?"

  "Oh, is that the language you were speaking in their village?"

  "Yes. You’re speaking it right now."

  "Oh, no, you see, I’m not speaking your language any more than you’re speaking mine. I just cast a spell between us so we can understand each other."

  She turned and continued inside, beckoning for him to follow. He went in after her, and not until he sat down behind the low wooden table she indicated did he connect her words together.

  The house was unlike anything he had ever seen, inside as well as out. He sat on a cushion made of dense, sturdily woven cotton sewn around stuffing of a soft yet resilient material. He faced the kitchen, populated with shining wooden cabinets and intimidating metal box-shaped contraptions of various sizes. Gentiola flitted cheerfully around between her otherworldly appliances, perfectly oblivious to the fact that she’d just told him something impossible.

  "Wait, did you just say you cast a spell?"

  "Yes, and that's how you can talk to me."

  "Whoa, whoa," he exclaimed. "Cast a spell, as in, magic? Like, what, you're a witch or something?"

  "Most people around here think I'm either a goddess or a demon," she answered, looking intrigued at his question, "but, yes, I'm only a witch, and just as human as you." She placed a dish of salad in front of him as if they were discussing the weather.

  Too hungry not to take his chances with her cooking, he shoveled lettuce and goat cheese into his mouth. "So, what," he said around a full mouth, "you're telling me magic is real?"

  "You never met another witch before me?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  "And you only ever heard the myths and fairy tales about witchcraft and magic?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, then," she said with a gentle shrug. "I suppose I can't prove to you that you're not hallucinating now, but, I will point out that the reality isn't nearly as lush as the myths. There are no unicorns, no pixies, no dragons, no mer-folk and I don't even do much with a cauldron. There is energy in the Earth, which can be manipulated through properly trained thought, and I'm one of the small group of people who learned the skills to use it. That's what we call magic, and, in case you were wondering, that's also how my front gate opens and closes without me touching it."

  "Does this small group of people keep all this a secret?"

  "Not really, not anymore. Mainly we just don't tell anyone who doesn't ask. So it's hardly your fault if you thought it was all bedtime stories." She placed a glass tumbler on the table ahead of his plate and made a round, orange-colored fruit to hover under her palm. It sliced itself in half, the bottom hemisphere dropped to the table, and the top one squeezed its juice into the glass.

  "You just made that fruit slice itself," he observed between bites of salad.

  "Yes. It cuts down on the dishes I have to wash."

  "What else can you do?"

  That question took her by surprise; she let out a breath and her eyes widened. "That's a very big question. There are a lot of things I can do by harnessing the energy properly, and it would take some time to explain what's possible. I can remove the language barrier between us, but I don't know what you're thinking." She turned back to the kitchen and came back with a salad for herself in one hand and a pot of stew in the other. "Which is odd, because the guys who brought you here thought you were sick in the head, and that I could sort you out, and I don't know where they got that idea. If you were injured, I could heal your body--like I did with the goose egg on the back of your head--but I can't do anything about your mind. I didn't know you were coming," she pointed out, "and had I known I would have a guest today, I would have straightened this place up a bit!" She sat down opposite him and squeezed the other half of the fruit into her own glass. "Making an orange squeeze its own juice is trivial."

  "So that's an orange!" he interrupted. The look on Gentiola's face in response was infectious in its enjoyment. "Sorry, I saw those fruits earlier this year, and I read about oranges before I left home, but I never got to connect the name with the fruit," he explained. "We can't grow them where I come from; the climate is too cold. Sorry, go on. What else can you do?"

  "Well, I can alter weather patterns in the short term, which is valuable, but very risky and I'll thank you not to ask me to demonstrate for your entertainment. Most of what I do concerns information."

  "Okay, then maybe you can tell me if I've been imagining things," he began, and went on to tell her about his experiences in the city remains. He described the smell, the heartbeat in the ground, the sense of being asked to leave as soon as he came in.

  "Yes, that's an expression of magical energy you've just described," said Gentiola, apparently intrigued to hear a description of the phenomena from someone learning about it for the first time. "Basically, the land is reclaiming what was formerly taken away from it. What's left of the cities don't want you to stay, but they can't force you out. It's like a wild animal that's more afraid of you than vice versa."

  "That explains so much," said Charlinder, now much calmer than in the precedi
ng days of agitation, hunger and confusion. "And all this time, I thought it was just my stupid monkey brain playing tricks on me. I kept telling myself it was all in my head."

  "Oh, don't apologize," she assured him. "Our stupid monkey brains do play tricks on us, and if all you ever heard of magic was from fairy tales, then you were absolutely right not to trust your senses. You paid close enough attention to describe your experiences accurately, but you had every reason not to assume there was anything going on except the sort of tricks the mind plays on itself. The evidence you had on hand was nebulous, and if you'd thought it was due to anything except psychology, then you probably would have come to the wrong conclusion."

  "And yet, now you're telling me there really was magic involved."

  "Well, yes, but you believed the most sensible thing you could with what you knew at the time."

  "That's...certainly nice of you to say. This probably tops the list of the Weirdest Days of My Life, and I've had some crazy ones in the past few years."

  "I would have liked to start smaller," Gentiola began, "but with the language barrier in place, we couldn't communicate much at all."

  "Oh, I am definitely not complaining!" said Charlinder. "All this," he said, gesturing around at the room, hoping to convey the value of her company, the meal, the conversation, the shelter, "is kind of saving my life right now. If those guys thought I was crazy, they weren't far off. This trip was about to make me lose my mind."