Charlinder's Walk

by Alyson Miers

  He decided not to use the herbs right away. Every time he approached a new village, he did the usual ritual of bringing out the map with a long trail of tiny markings leading to their location, and while he still got some odd looks for this, there was no denying that it was sufficient. There was always someone who provided him with an acceptable place to sleep and something to eat. He was also treated to a ride on donkey-back through the mountains at several points, which made his Alpine traveling far less nerve-wracking than it would otherwise have been. Some things never changed: Charlinder's lack of language skills continued to lead to many scenes of hilarity. Some of his hosts also tried to feed him meat and were baffled to see him refuse. Ever since he’d eaten Lacey, he couldn’t take anything that used to walk on hooves.

  While he appreciated Gentiola's efforts on his behalf, he was reluctant to make use of her magic except under desperate circumstances. The situation which she probably didn't understand, being so isolated, was that he knew what was going on and his hosts didn't. That asymmetry didn't sit right with Charlinder, and so he resolved not to connect any villagers with Gentiola except as a last resort. The idea of her receiving the aftershock of working spells to compensate for what he took also gave him pause. While she could surely look after herself and knew what his using the herbs would entail, he preferred to keep his burden on her to a minimum.

  Before he knew it, he was out of the Alps, and somewhere along the way he'd crossed into a different country. The land grew flatter and he heard yet another language from his hosts. He soon passed through a corridor of hills that led him past an ancient signpost for a city called Grenoble and later another one called Lyon while he continued north. After several weeks in France, he was passing through a forest one day when he heard a most peculiar noise; a familiar though incongruous sound that took him jarringly back to his months with Lacey.

  He followed the bellowing until he came upon a dairy goat tethered to a tree in the middle of a briar patch. There was no sign of another goat, nor of a corresponding human in the vicinity, besides which it was a very odd place for farm animals to graze. She was confused but not injured, and she looked well-nourished and unharmed, so there was no mystery about what was bothering her: the poor neglected caprine's udder was swollen to a stage that Charlinder would never dream of letting any animal reach under his care.

  He dropped to his knees in the grass and took off his pack. He got out his old sheep shears, cut away some briars, and removed the rope around her neck. She approached him willingly and continued to vocalize while he pulled out the clay pot he'd previously used to receive Lacey's milk. With trembling hands he set the pot under the goat's teats and began to milk her. The screaming soon calmed to a much gentler bleat as her udder slackened. Charlinder encouraged her to follow him once he'd filled the pot, which she happily did, though she may have been so amenable partly because he hadn't quite relieved her of all the milk she'd built up. He had to acknowledge that the timing of the discovery was helpful, as he'd been walking alone for several days. Although he didn't intend to take the whole batch of goat’s milk for himself, he indulged in a few mouthfuls as he led her in a direction that he hoped would lead to a settlement where someone would recognize the animal and maybe someone else would host him for a night. It was a welcome gustatory change after days of subsisting on increasingly stale oats and dried-out cheese.

  After an hour or so of continuing north, he reached the edge of the wood and found a settlement in front of him, which he entered with the goat at his side. Several people soon turned and stared, but he kept going and waited for someone to approach. A woman yelled at someone else across the path, gesturing towards Charlinder. No one addressed him, but the adolescent girl who'd received the woman's notice dropped her spinning immediately and ran off down the path. Other villagers soon began chattering to each other and glancing at him. While they were less open in their staring than many cultures he'd encountered farther east, there was no doubt that he was the topic of conversation. As he had already visited hundreds of settlements, he found their focus on him reassuring rather than ominous. He had also learned enough by that point to know better than to address himself without invitation to a person who didn't understand English. Before any of the people who watched him along the path demanded an explanation from him, the girl who'd left her spinning showed up with a slightly battered young man, who immediately addressed a question in French to him.

  "Sorry, I don't speak your language," he replied. "Look, I found this animal, and she really needed a milking." He proffered the pot full of milk and pointed at the goat.

  Whether the bruise-faced youth understood was uncertain, but between the goat and the milk, he was obviously pleased about something. He said something to the girl, who ran back in the direction from which she'd come. Then he commanded the goat to walk beside him, which she contentedly did with a satisfied little bleat. He turned and started further down the path, beckoning to Charlinder to follow.

  They soon came to an impressive if austere house, markedly larger and more important-looking than any of the other residences Charlinder had just passed. The young man indicated for him to wait at the gate, while he went inside and left the goat to munch on the weeds by the front door. Charlinder waited, and the messenger shortly reappeared behind an older, neater-dressed man who first exclaimed over the goat chewing on his front yard and next bore down joyously on Charlinder, delighted to see the pot of milk in his hands and pleased at the sight of his humbly bemused face on the property. Having shown himself to be a rescuer rather than a thief, he opened the top compartment of his pack and brought out the map.

  His new host was, if Charlinder's interpretations were accurate, the leader of the village. The young man who'd brought him to the house was the shepherd employed to care for the family's dairy animals, and he, along with his employers' two young adult daughters, became Charlinder's new friend. If he understood the French-narrated pantomime correctly, some thugs from another community had ambushed the shepherd recently while he was out grazing the sheep and goats. That explained the bruises around his eyes. While he was unconscious, then, the thugs had made off with the goat, but apparently weren't intelligent enough to know where to keep her, so they'd tied her up and forgotten about her. The village leader, meanwhile, had been thoroughly infuriated at the theft of his animal and not entirely convinced of the shepherd's version of events, but Charlinder's arrival with their missing caprine had restored the peace.

  Perhaps because of Gentiola's remarkable generosity to him, the subsequent village visits had never failed to impress upon him that his hosts extended a special effort. There was something especially pleasing about this particular home. The grateful patriarch summoned Charlinder late that afternoon out to the garden behind the house, overlooking the lushly sloping fields they owned, and bade him sit down with his host on the wooden bench amidst the herb patches. One of the daughters set a small wooden table in front of them; her mother then came out and set a tray laden with new cheese and three glasses of wine on the table before sitting down on her husband's other side. The shepherd and two dogs herded a generous flock of sheep and several goats over the field. About a dozen yards to Charlinder's right stood a clutch of wire cages holding the same type of rabbits as Gentiola kept. The wife took a small knitting project out of her apron pocket and stitched away between sips of wine. Her husband put his arm around her, caressing her hip with one hand and holding his wine glass in the other. Charlinder munched on the cheese and sipped the wine, savoring the scene in front of him. The sky was growing dark, and he shivered slightly in the breeze, but the chill felt refreshing rather than forbidding. His host went on to elaborate on something to Charlinder of which he had no idea, but he was obviously feeling cheerful so it was an agreeable one-sided conversation. Charlinder reached over with his non-cheese hand and picked up the ball of yarn from the wife's lap. It was a lovely, magnificently soft piece of work that on examination proved to be a blend of sheep's wool
and the rabbits' miraculous fluffy hair. It displayed a fascinating play of colors that he noticed was naturally occurring on only one of their rabbits. He found the wife looking over at him curiously, and happily, pleased that he not only admired but understood her handiwork. She was working on a mitten, and the wisdom in her choice of fibers was not lost on him. The animals called to each other in their mindless ovine way, the wife leaned into her husband's side, and the sun set.

  Charlinder explained to the daughters the next morning that it was time for him to move on. He did feel more sorry to depart their home than most, but he couldn't stay for much longer. One of the girls directed him to wait in the main room while she took his luggage toward their kitchen. The other went off to find her parents. He waited a while, and the second daughter came back and beckoned Charlinder outside. In the back garden where he had enjoyed the previous evening with the parents, her sister was waiting with his pack and the parents stood by the rabbit cages. Their mother was holding the multi-colored rabbit in her arms. She said something pleasant and handed the little furry animal to Charlinder.

  Momentarily stunned, he held the rabbit out to his hosts and shook his head. "I can't accept this," he said.

  The mother argued back and pressed the animal to Charlinder's sweater. Her husband explained while pointing at his grazing animals in the field, and the message was clear: he returned their goat after someone else stole her, so he got a rabbit as thanks. Charlinder's experience with hosts was that once they decided to be generous, there was no refusing their gifts, so he didn't try to hand it back to them again.

  "This is really too much," he thought out loud. "Thank you."

  He named his new companion Smoky and soon established a care ritual with the animal that kept him occupied. The host family had included in the gift a pouch containing supplies for the rabbit; a tiny wooden comb, a leather halter and lead that fit around the bunny's chest and shoulders, and enough greens to keep him fed for the first couple of days. Charlinder combed out Smoky's wool every evening to make sure it didn't mat under the halter. He stuffed the harvested fiber into a corner of his pack for the night, then spun it on his drop-spindle the next day while he walked. Smoky stayed on the lead for most of the day, hopping beside Charlinder and nibbling on wild greens, though he periodically took the bunny off the ground and carried him in his sweater, leaving only his head and front paws poking out. Summer was gone and the weather was only getting colder. It occurred to Charlinder that this was probably the first time in all his trip that he was heading north as winter approached, so he was glad he still had Lacey's skin with him, though he would have been happier never to have parted with the living sheep. Smoky slept every night curled up next to Charlinder's middle between his sweater and jacket, and he gave him a few spoonfuls from each meal he made for himself. He was covered in fantastically warm wool, but also very small and descended from a species accustomed to living underground.

  He reached the northern coast in November. He followed the shoreline in a northerly direction until he reached a settlement. It was something between the Hyatts' town in western Canada and the Albanian community from which he'd sailed across the Adriatic Sea.

  The people looked like a solid bunch: weather-worn, wind-blown, ruggedly dressed, well-nourished and with all their bones set in the right places. The most significant part of this settlement, however, was the marina of boats docked along the shore. There were a handful of simple flat rafts like the Albanians used, and there were rowboats and small sail-powered craft. Charlinder paused a moment to stare at these vessels and contemplate how they were used, what kinds of missions they were set, and so forth, and momentarily forgot that he was a complete stranger, looking rather alien with his ragged baggage on his back and furry long-eared companion peering over his shoulder, standing around and staring at the transportation. During that brief loss of self-awareness, he attracted attention. A gruffly questioning male voice snapped him out of his gawk session.

  "Sorry, I don't speak French," said Charlinder, also observing that the questioner looked like a viable host. He reached over his shoulder for the map, but then the fellow surprised him again.

  "But you speak English," he said, through a heavy accent but very comprehensible.

  Charlinder nearly lost his footing on the perfectly solid ground. Memories from a certain day in India came rushing back to him.

  "Yes," he responded, cautiously. "Do you?"

  "Of course. I go to England often and trade with them. But your speech is different. Where are you from?"

  "I'm from America," he said, still dumbfounded.

  Now it was the older Frenchman's turn to be shocked. "You joke with me. How did you get here?"

  "I walked," he answered. "Mostly."

  Now his questioner laughed. "Now, really. I do not ask for jokes. You do not sound like the English, so where are you from? Ireland, perhaps?"

  Now Charlinder recovered himself. "No, I'm really American. I started walking west almost three years ago. I took boats over the Bering Straight, around Greece, and across the Adriatic Sea, but everything else has been on land."

  "My God. What are you doing here?"

  "It's a long story. Here, look at this," he said, holding out the map.

  The gentleman's name was Bernard, and he soon let Charlinder roll out his bedding in the corner of his kitchen. Bernard's wife and four children didn't speak English, but he explained the situation to them well enough that they were happy to have him stay. Bernard's brother, however, was another bilingual marine tradesman, who gathered up a crowd of other traders, and Charlinder was caught off-guard that evening to find he had an audience. For the first time since leaving home, he ended up seated at the front of a room, surrounded by people who wanted to know what he was up to, some of whom even spoke his language.

  "Actually, I'm on my way to Great Britain," he answered one person's query.

  "What are you looking for in Great Britain?" asked someone else.

  "Um...from Scotland, I'd then go to Iceland and Greenland," he explained. "I mean, I'm sure Britain's wonderful, and I've really enjoyed it here, too, but I'm looking to go farther than that."

  "What on Earth do you want in Greenland?" asked another man; this one with a very different spoken accent and more confident verbal flow.

  "I want to get back to North America from the western side, is what I want," Charlinder replied.

  This brought a murmur of understanding from the crowd. "Well, that makes sense," said another fellow in a similar speech pattern to the last, "but do you know this is a very bad time of year to go that far north? I doubt you'll find anyone who'll chance it before the spring."

  "I know that, so I'm planning to make myself useful somewhere in Britain and wait out the winter."

  There was a moment of eerie quiet in the room, while everyone merely stared at Charlinder aside from an interpreter translating his words to the monolingual part of the crowd.

  Finally, the latest questioner piped up again. "Well, Bob's your uncle and Fanny's your friggin' aunt, this lad's got a plan!"

  The room erupted into jubilant laughter. Charlinder joined in, though he wasn't entirely sure he knew what was so funny.

  "Here, Charlie, we're going back to England tomorrow, come along with us!" said a man nearby. "I think he'll fit in our boat, right, men?" he said to his fellows.

  "I'd really appreciate that! Did you just call me Charlie?"

  "You did not tell us why you are here?" Bernard requested later that night. "Why did you leave America?"

  "I needed to find something," Charlinder began, cautiously, "that wasn't there."

  "Did you find this something?"

  "Yeah, I found it, so that's why I'm on my way home now."

  "But how did you know where to look?"

  This, he acknowledged, was a valid question. "We got the story passed down from the original survivors--of the Plague of 2010, I mean--that the thing we needed was in Italy, and we figured they knew what
they were talking about."

  "Yes, that does make sense, but still, how did you know it was still there?"

  "That's the crazy thing about this whole adventure. I know now that I didn't really know then that it would still be around, or how I was supposed to find it, or what it was like to travel in other countries, but...we needed the information so much that I had to try. It's because of a lot of good fortune that I'm still alive, truth to tell."

  "It was information, then?" said Bernard. Charlinder had just said too much. "Was it about the Plague? I cannot think of anything else you would need so much that you would walk for three years."

  You caught me. "Yes, it was about the Plague, and I was lucky to find it."

  "We French call that event the--how do you say it?--The Great Turn-Back, is how it goes. We do not worry about how it happened, only that we must be more careful in the future. But you have found your answer, so congratulations to you. If you can go this far, then surely you will go home."