We Go Forward

by Alison Evans

  "Did…" I blink. "Did you see that?"

  "See what?" As she turns around, her blonde hair fans out around her. The monk is long gone.

  "There was a guy dressed as a monk; he just walked behind you into that curtain."

  She raises her eyebrows and looks around again. "A monk?" She laughs. "How much've you had? I mean you told me you were a lightweight, but…"

  "Shut up." I whack her arm. "There was seriously a fuckin' monk."

  "If you say so." She laughs. "No, no, no, I do believe you. Unless he was a ghost, in which case, I don't believe you."

  "You don't believe in ghosts?"

  "You do?"

  I shrug. "No. Except for when I do. That monk was probably a ghost. We're going to be killed by an angry old monk ghost for trespassing in the alchemy bar, because we're tourists."

  Next drink, Christie sticks with bear milk, but I go for a warm, appley drink that makes me think of wandering through the woods hunting wolves that killed my grandmother.

  I spit out my drink and nearly crap myself. "Christie, look."

  Little Red Riding Hood has walked in, I swear to god. "How can I be so drunk? Are there drugs in these drinks? Am I hallucinating? I have died. I've died. I'm dead."

  Christie turns around, not subtle at all. "I definitely see her," Christie says. "Unless this is a joint hallucination, I think you're good." She pats my arm.

  A really huge guy dressed as a demon walks in. He's wearing a long fur coat and red-and-grey face paint. Little horns stick out through his hair. Well, he's probably dressed as a demon and is not one in real life. Right?

  Not long after him, a woman dressed like a ghost steps in.

  "Prague is probably not a real place," Christie says.

  "Definitely not a real place." I nod in solemn agreement.

  We lay the map from the hostel on the table and plot out the adventures for the next day, after several too many drinks. We eventually figure out that the people all dressed up are from a nearby show. That or we're actually in a bar that serves demons, which wouldn't surprise me at all. My cheeks are so warm and sitting is so comfortable that I don't mind that I'm going to hate myself in the morning.

  *~*~*

  I wake up and the devil has crawled into my mouth and taken up residence. My teeth are all fuzzy and my tongue is a huge slug in my mouth. I look over to make sure Christie's there and she's still sleeping. I grab a shower before everyone else wakes up. Twelve people to a bathroom is tricky when there are only two showers.

  @roslyn: who the fuck wakes up at 6 30 wiht a hangover fuck jsut leave me here to die

  As I stand under the boiling hot water, I close my eyes and sigh, feel my muscles relax around my bones, sighing as my spine clicks into place and I feel like a human again.

  When I check my phone after the shower, I see that Vee's favourited the tweet. Probably by accident, because I know she doesn't follow me anymore. She unfollowed me, so I don't need... I scrunch my eyes shut. This is a bad train of thought. I don't need to think about her anymore. It's been months since we last talked.

  I keep scrolling through various social media apps until Christie emerges from her shower. She catches my eye as she towel-dries her hair.

  "You all right?"

  "Just hungover." I shrug and lock my phone.

  She frowns because already she can tell that I'm lying. "All right." She's quick.

  It doesn't take long until we're both downstairs eating the hostel breakfast that costs seventy-nine crowns. Christie has the map the hostel gave us out, and it's got some basic Czech printed on it with a pronunciation guide. She's repeating the words to herself as she circles the places she wants to go on the map.

  I type the cost of breakfast into a conversion rate because I still have no idea how much a crown is worth. Breakfast turns out to be just over four Australian dollars.

  "So, if ten Australian is two-hundred crowns…" I blink in the morning light. "But that means those drinks were like…"

  "I know maths in the morning is hard." She pats my head. "They were very cheap, yes."

  "Fuck off," I say, trying not to grin. "Come on, let's go on a walking tour." I point to one advertised on the map. "Get us some learnin'."

  We meet the tour guide in the hostel lobby with about five other people. I recognise two of the girls from our dorm. They're both Australian, too; I know because I've heard them talking.

  When we step outside, it's as cold as it gets. Definitely grateful that Mum bought me a pair of thermals before I left. The tour guide has an orange umbrella that they hold up in the air, so we won't lose them.

  There are so many people, too many people to be able to stick with the tour guide. They look supremely bored and I can't pay attention. I mean, I would get bored taking tour groups through the most crowded parts of the city every day, so I can't really blame them.

  "We should get outta here," I say to Christie. There's enough buzz of conversation and movement that I don't really need to keep my voice down from the tour guide for politeness's sake.

  "Hey, you're from Australia, right?" the girl with dark hair says. "Us, too."

  So, we end up ditching the group with the girls, whose names are Sam and Julie. We walk past the tour group and go into the castle gardens. From up here, we can look out over the whole city. There's so much of it, but no skyscrapers. The buildings are low, except for the church spires sticking out everywhere. The orange-roofed buildings are sprawled as far as I can see, the roads wending through the labyrinth as the river cuts through it all.

  "You been to the Charles Bridge yet?" Sam asks me. "It's rad."

  I tell her we only got here yesterday, so she starts recommending places to go. She hasn't heard of the alchemy bar and we make plans to go there.

  @roslyn: prague castle s so pretty is should be ILLEGAL i want to scream

  Julie tells me that the anger at the beauty won't go away, not for a long time. As we wander, Christie tries every door handle, and they're all locked or lead to cleaning supplies cupboards.

  "We should definitely go through that door." Christie points to a door that a security guard just came out of.

  "You've tried literally every door," I say. "Literally. This is the only door you haven't tried."

  "Eventually one will be open," Sam says.

  "And it'll be the one that'll get us into the most trouble." I pause to take a photo of the arrow slits in the wall beside us, just like in the movies.

  "I like to think I have exceptional door-selecting skills. I'm gonna find one that's open eventually, trust me. We're going through that one."

  We follow Christie to the door. She places her hand on the doorknob that's shaped like a serpent.

  "The moment of truth," she says, then presses down. The handle doesn't stop like the other doors do; this one goes all the way down, and then she pushes it open. Inside is dark and empty. Her eyes light up and I'm happy too, for a second, before I realise she's going to go in there.

  "Oh, my gosh," she whispers. "Fuckin' yes."

  Once she opens the door wider, the light from outside shows another door in the tiny room. Christie ushers us all into the door and she shuts us in. She turns on her phone's torch and we can see the dust motes swirling in the air around us. I sneeze.

  "I swear, if you've locked us in here and we starve to death, I will murder you," I say.

  "I dunno," Sam says. "Castle's a pretty cool place to die. We'd be real good at haunting."

  "That's into the churchy bit," says Julie, gesturing to the next door. "You're gonna get us killed in a church and I sure as fuck don't wanna be a church ghost. Imagine all the fuckin' priests and shit in there that'll be haunting with us. I can't deal with that."

  "Look what you've cursed us to," I tell Christie.

  "It'll be fine, come on." She opens the next door slowly. As it opens, we can see there's a huge room beyond. Christie pokes her head out.

  "Oh, my god." She giggles. "Come on." Then she disappears through
the door.

  Sam and Julie shake their heads at me, but I follow her. My heart's beating too fast. Beyond, the room smells like incense, the most incense-incense smell I've ever smelt. The incense combined with the dustiness makes me sneeze again. We're in a huge church that looks bigger on the inside that it did when we were looking at it outside. It smells like mornings at church that my grandmother would make me go to.

  Christie's preoccupied with the throne-looking stuff to the left of us, but I notice that we're standing behind a wall of glass. The throne stuff is a display and we're standing in it; there's a dozen people staring at us and pointing.

  "Christie," I hiss. "We gotta go."

  "It's fine," she says, waving a hand at me as she continues to stare at anything but the wall.

  "It's really not." I grab her by the shoulders and point. There's a security guard yelling at us, presumably in Czech, but I can't hear him.

  "Oh. Yeah, no, you're right." She coughs. "Let's go."

  As the security guard on the other side of the glass takes out his walkie-talkie, he shakes his head at us. I grab her hand and drag her to the door, Sam and Julie ask us what's happening, but I shake my head and say we have to run.

  "Ghosts!" Sam says. "Is it ghosts?"

  We bust out into the sunlight and the crowds of people stare at us. I can run a little faster than Christie and she starts to fall behind. A man's voice calls out to us, but I giggle and tell the others to hurry up.

  We keep weaving through the crowd and duck around corners, trying not to laugh, but failing. Christie's laughing like I haven't heard her before, desperate and deep and so loud. We're gonna get caught, we're gonna get caught so bad. My bright purple hair is sure to give them something easy to pick out in a crowd.

  I tell Christie this and she takes one look at me before changing direction. "We should leave," she says over her shoulder as the church bells go off. They're so loud; I cover my ears.

  The guards turn to look at us as we run past them and down the hill. We duck down an alleyway and get our breath back, the bells still ringing out. No one comes after us and really, maybe no one was even chasing us.

  "Please never do that again," I manage to get out, even though I can barely breathe from running.

  Christie grins. "I make no such promises."

  Chapter Six

  Christie

  The Charles Bridge is on literally every postcard, so eventually, we decide we should go see the thing in person. We put it off for a couple of days because it's filled with tourists—I have to keep reminding myself that I am still a tourist—so we made plans to go early in the morning. This seemed like a good idea last night, but now as I'm lying here, blinded by the light streaming through the curtains, I hate myself. Being awake this early in the morning should most definitely be illegal. But we manage to jump in the showers and make it down to breakfast.

  I clutch the black coffee close and chew slowly through the stale bread, sliced meats, and cheese that now make up literally every breakfast. The man who's running the breakfast area keeps looking at me like I've taken too much, but really, Roslyn's taken more than me. It's because I'm fat, I know, so I smile at him and shove some ham into my mouth.

  "I keep saying 'literally' and it's your fault," I tell Roslyn, who hasn't noticed anything.

  Roslyn is not a morning person when we wake up. She looks at me with puffy eyes over her cereal and stares at me, an eyebrow slightly raised. I go back to my map and try and remember how to speak the words I learnt yesterday.

  Dobrý den means 'hello', prosím is 'please'. Karlův most is how to say 'Charles Bridge' in Czech. I learn numbers and the words for train, tram, and so on. I know I'm going to forget them as soon as I leave the Czech Republic—already I can feel the German I know slipping—but learning the words makes it feel more like adventure's going to happen. New things, fresh mornings. This is why I love travelling.

  Next, Roslyn moves onto an apple and I can hear that it's not crunchy at all. I can also tell by the way she keeps muttering things like stupid shitty apple can't even crunch right what the fuck. She's got her phone out and she's most definitely tweeting about it. I've never really got the hang of social media, but it helps her keep in touch with her sibling, and I'm a little jealous.

  It's foggy when we make it outside, and there are a few people wandering about in the mist. There's a thin layer of snow on the ground, melted away in most places, but still white and fresh in the gaps between the cobblestones. It's very quiet.

  The bakery that always smells so good when we walk past is open, and so we take a pit stop on our way to the bridge. They sell hot wine and something called trdelník, which looks to be twisted bread tubes. They're cooked wrapped around a rod of metal and are rotated over a fire, then they sprinkle them with cinnamon. They smell delicious.

  "Dobrý den," I say to the man serving. I hold up two fingers and point to the trdelník because I know my pronunciation will be awful. "Dvě, prosím."

  The bread is thin, warm, and fluffy on the inside. With the hot wine, the morning isn't as cold and yawning. I'm content in my cocoon of sleep deprivation, but Roslyn is waking up faster than I am.

  "Fog is definitely my favourite kind of morning weather," she says. "Fog with trdelník and hot wine, definitely makes for a good morning. In Prague, with a fuckin' castle right over there."

  "Still not awake," I say. I don't know how she does it, because she's worse than I am when she wakes up, but somehow manages to be awake quicker.

  "It takes you at least three hours to wake while I'm good at one," she says, bread spraying out as she speaks.

  "You're so gross," I tell her. My eyes are falling out of my head. "God." Sometimes I think I'd like to be a morning person, until I remember that that's gross.

  She breathes in deep, lets her breath come out in fog. "I know, it's disgusting." She holds the map out in front of her and we take a look.

  "Karlův most, that's Charles Bridge." I point at the map. "We just turn right at the bottom of the hill and we're good."

  After we finish eating, we continue down the hill and only pass five people. Getting up early, as disgusting as it may be, was a pretty good idea. We've never been outside when it's been this quiet in daylight. Roslyn knows when to be quiet, too. We don't need to fill every silence. If this keeps up, we'll keep travelling together. I want to. I think she wants to.

  The bridge is covered in a thin layer of snow, more than was on our hill. There are some footprints, but mostly, the surface is soft and unbroken.

  We walk across the bridge and the statues on either side stare down at us, probably judging us for our sins and whatnot. I laugh and point out to Roslyn that one of the bishops looks like Batman from the side because of the hat.

  "Batman's gonna send you to hell," Roslyn says in a husky voice.

  We giggle, the loudest sounds around us. Roslyn stops walking to look out at the river, the city. I did look up what the river is called, but it's lost somewhere in my mind.

  There are a billion white swans in the water. When I first came to Europe, I realised that I had only ever seen black swans before. I'd never seen a white one in real life, only on TV or in picture books.

  "All right, important question time." I clear my throat. "Would you rather eat a toenail or go for a swim in the river?"

  "This river?" She points at the one below.

  "No, the other one that we can see right now."

  "Well, whose toenail?" she says, prodding my shoulder. "Specifics, come on."

  "All right. There was this guy who I shared a hostel room with for a week in Budapest and he never showered the whole time—his socks were a health hazard. His toenail, or this river right here. The Vltava." The name comes back to me, and I'm definitely not saying it correctly. I'll never get Czech pronunciation right, I swear.

  She screws up her face and debates silently for a few moments. "How would the toenail be prepared?"

  "Just straight up toenail."

&n
bsp; "Toenail clippings or the whole thing, somehow removed from his foot? I mean like, does it have any flesh attached?"

  My stomach turns. "This is proving more disgusting than previously intended."

  "I don't do things by halves, my friend."

  When she uses the word friend, I can't help but smile.

  "So I'm guessing by your response that it's just toenail, straight up." Roslyn laughs as she eats more trdelník. "I'd take the river."

  "Even right now when it's negative two degrees?"

  "Even right now," she says. "No way I'm eating some rando's crusty toenail. After the river, I'm going back to the hostel and using up all the hot water and scrubbing my skin raw, though."

  "Who knows how many diseases there are in there. I think I'd rather casual cannibalism."

  Roslyn frowns. "Is it cannibalism if there's no meat?"

  I shrug. "Doesn't it just have to be body parts?"

  "What if I cut off a chunk of your hair and ate it?"

  A pair of people walk past us, alarmed looks on their faces. I realise now that we're no longer alone: there are stallholders setting up, the nearest ones to us are selling pictures of the bridge.

  "Please don't cut off my hair and eat it," I tell her. "That would be gross. And possibly cannibalism."

  She shrugs. "Suit yourself." She links her arm in mine and we continue walking. "My feet are freezing, swear to god. Gotta keep moving. Now. Would you rather..." She purses her lips and looks out across the bridge.

  Snow has started falling again and we can see the first tourist group of the day: they're following someone holding up what looks like a fishing rod with a fly on the end of it. She's reading out from a piece of paper and looks supremely bored.

  "Would you rather... eat ten tubs of butter or drink ten jars' worth of pickle juice?"

  "Pickle juice is actually delicious," I say. "So I'd drink twenty, even."

  "That's actually disgusting." She holds up her phone and turns around so the bridge, the castle and the river are in view. "Selfie time."