Happy Ending

- Will you tell me a story?

- What kind of a story?

- One with a happy ending.

- Come here, then.

- Alright.

- There was a village on a far off world.

- Which world?

- It’s called Nyay, and it’s in our galaxy on the far side of the Oort Cloud.

- Wow. What’s it like on their planet?

- It’s a hot, dry planet. Only 29% of their world is covered with water.

- Oh.

- So there are not as many people as on our planet. Only five hundred million or so. Amongst them was a lovely family who lived in a simple home and had kind faces. They had a pet, a skinny brown animal called a nafneng.

- What was its name?

- Chimba.

- That’s a good name. Was it a boy or a girl?

- A girl. The father of the family was called Spoodama. The mother was called Gellim. The children were called Stovit, a girl, and Bijjish, a boy. They were a farming family. Every year, the crops grew all summer in the hot sun, and the harvest was not great but it was enough. The children went to school, and they were happy.

- Okay. And Chimba was happy too.

- Yes, she was a happy dog. She loved her family, and she was not too naughty.

- What kind of naughty things did she do?

- Sometimes if you had a piece of food in your hand and you let your hand down by your side -

- Oh, like Tilda!

- Yes, just like Tilda. If you got distracted, she would tease the food out of your hand and eat it, and when you brought your hand up -

- You’d find it empty, and go, ‘Oh, Til- Chimba!’

- That’s right.

- As the years went by and Stovit and Bijjish grew up and became interested in the world outside the village that their teacher had taught them about.

- Did they learn about us in the school?

- Us?

- Us, here on Earth.

- Yes, they learned about Earth. They learned that our planet is small, wet and cold, and that we have long winters, and they would pretend to shiver in their hot classrooms and laugh.

- Oh, Earth is so cold!

- Yes, like that! Now as time passed, the summers in the village grew longer and hotter. The sun would hang over Spoodama’s back as he worked the fields, and we would water the plants with his own sweat, but he never complained. He loved his family, and he knew that a good person would suffer for those he loved.

- Like you, Dad.

- Perhaps. In any case, as the summers grew longer and hotter, the crops became less bountiful, and the meals of the Nyayvian family grew smaller. Gellim and Spoodama worried but also knew that worrying would not change anything. After a while, Stovit got sick.

- Did she get a day off school?

- She did. In fact, she got several days off school. In total, with all the visits from the doctor, and all the journeys to the medical centre in the nearby village, she did not go to school for one hundred days.

- A hundred!

- And even when she did go back to school, she was still weak and could no longer take part in gymnastics lessons, which she had loved.

- Oh. Poor Stovit.

- Chimba also had less to eat, and so she became skinny and her ribs stuck out.

- Oh. Poor Chimba. What about Bijjish?

- Bijjish did okay to start with, but his stomach rumbled loudly when he was with his friends, and this embarrassed him.

- Burble blurble, oops!

- Exactly.

- Did the summers get any shorter? Did the rains come?

- Spoodama and Gellim hoped very much that they would. They dreamed of cooler days and water landing on their brow from the sky. They looked at each other and told each other that the rains would come. If not soon, eventually. The universe would be kind to them.

- And what happened?

- The cooler days and the rains did not come. The summers stretched on and on. The clouds would begin to gather and darken. Bijjish would go outside to watch them, making spit in his dry mouth. He saw his own spirit run forwards out of him, tearing off its shirt, whooping with delight and being soaked by phantom rains.

- And did it rain?

- It did not. The clouds that had gathered simply dissipated, and summer would go on for more days and more weeks.

- And what about the farm?

- The harvest from the farm was especially poor that year, and the family could only eat two meals per day. And then Gellim got pregnant. Spoodama talked about taking Chimba away to another place and coming back without her.

- Oh no!

- But Gellim forbade him, and he relented. They were all very skinny by now, and then Stovit got sick again, and she did not return to school.

- What, never?! When is it going to rain?

- Well, then it did rain, but it was not good.

- Oh?

- The fields had grown dry and dusty, and when the rains came they washed all of the top soil away and much of the crops floated away. Bijjish came running out of school to try to collect as many as he could with his father, but they were left with very little.

- Oh no. Couldn’t somebody help them?

- Normally, the people in the village helped each other when misfortune fell on this family or that. The elder of the village taught them to do so for the greater good. But now everyone was in the same situation, and there was nobody to help them.

- What did they do?

- News came of another place a long way to the south called Fatam where water ran in the rivers all year and the summers were not so severe. Other families began to pack up their things and set off to Fatam. Gellim and Spoodama argued about this. Gellim thought they should go, but Spoodama looked at her huge belly and at the weak, bedbound Stovit and shook his head.

- Couldn’t they build a cart and carry them?

- They could, and Spoodama knew that, but it would be hard for him and Bijjish to carry them along with all their possessions. And so, with the food running out day by day, they stayed.

- Oh dear. They should have gone with their neighbours.

- They waited until Gellim gave birth to a baby boy, whom they adored from his first breath, and they called him Shask, which means ‘monsoon’.

- Then they did they go to Fatam.

- They did set off to Fatam. Stovit was tucked up in the cart with Shask, and bony Bijjish and Spoodama took one of the protruding wooden rods each and pulled.

- Did Chimba go with them?

- Chimba did go with them,. On the way they passed a small farm with noknoks, which are like our Earth chickens but much sillier. Chimba was so hungry she did something she had never done before. She ran into the farm and snapped at the neck of one of the noknoks and killed it.

- Oh no! Chimba! What’s going to happen?!

- The owner of the farm threw a heavy rock at Chimba which hit her hard on the head. Chimba yelped and ran away. Bijjish saw that she was bleeding. He tried to clean the wound, but it was difficult with the little water they had.

- Poor Chimba. They shouldn’t have thrown that rock.

- Sadly the owners of the farm were scared and hungry, so they resorted to violence to protect what little they had.

- Dad, are you sure this story is going to have a happy ending?

- Let’s see.

- Okay.

- They walked on, hour after hour and day after day past the scorched fields of their country. Bijjish noticed that Chimba was staggering a little and tried to swat away the swarm of vipids, which are like flies, that kept landing on her wound, but it didn’t do much good.

- What would Doctor Belkin say?

- Doctor Belkin would say that the wound should be thoroughly cleaned with alcohol and bandaged up, and that Chimba should be assessed for brain damage from the impact.

- But they couldn’t do that.

- No, they couldn’t do any of those things. In fact, there was only one thing they could do.

- Walk.

- And walk they did. They panted to the top of small hills in the dizzying heat with the small cart and rolled to the bottom on the other side. At night, Gellim, Stovit and Shask slept together in the cart, and Bijjish and Spoodama took turns to sleep under the cart while they other watched the road ahead and behind and the dark fields around them.

- What did they eat?

- They had taken all their food with them when they left the village but, as their neighbours were weeks ahead of them, they had no one to ask how long the journey would take. They decided only to eat one meal a day, except for Gellim, who had to feet Shask. Stovit ate as much as she could but for some reason she was never very hungry. Chimba was always sniffing around for something to eat, but she didn’t steal any more noknoks.

- I hope they get to Fatam soon.

- So did they. Unfortunately, the next night bandits crept up on them so steathily that they were almost upon the cart before Bijjish could raise the alarm. Spoodama awoke at once, and he and Bijjish began to fight them off, but the bandits were armed with knives, and all he and Bijjish had were their farmer’s hoe and fork.

- Did they get anything?

- A lot. They took the family’s blankets, which kept them warm at night, and a lot of their remaining food. And Spoodama was badly hurt.

- And Chimba?

- Chimba was very slow by now and a bit stupid. She ran away and barked at the bandits from a distance.

- At least she didn’t get hurt again.

- Thank goodness for small mercies. Spoodama cleaned up his wounds as best he could and applied a tourniquet. Then the family all tucked themselves in the cart to share body warmth for the rest of the night, but it was too cold for little Shask. In the morning, his little body was still.

- Ohhhh!

- Spoodama cut off a lock of hair from his head and gave it to Gellim, who sniffed it and sobbed, sucking in great mouthfuls of air as she did so, as Spoodama dug a tiny grave by the side of the road. They commended Shask’s spirit to the divine and went on their way, leaving the little pile of stones growing smaller behind them.

- Poor little Shask. No happy ending for him.

- I suppose not. In any case, they were all weaker and skinnier now than ever, and now the way became steeper and steeper, and they were forced to climb the largest hill that any of them had ever seen. It was incredibly difficult for them to push the cart up the hill, even with only Stovit and now Chimba inside and their other few possessions. Every time they thought they were approaching the top, they found it was still further away, and they continued to push and stumble up the hill.

- Oh, poor them.

- One small mercy was that the sun was on the other side of the hill, so it was not too hot, but still they pushed and climbed and pushed.

- Did they get to the top?

- They did. And when they got there, the land flowed all the way down through a valley full of marvellous little buildings and into a great blue expanse.

- The sea!

- They stood there looking down at the sea or a large lake anyway, knowing now that they would make it. But then Stovit said ‘Oh. Chimba.’

- Oh no! Oh, Chimba. Oh no!

- Little Chimba had curled up next to Stovit and grown ever so still and cold.

- But Dad you said it was going to be a happy ending! But Chimba and Shask are gone! How can it be happy?!

The father reached down, touched his son’s wet face and looked into his shining eyes, tears that were not for himself but for the troubles of a family far, far away on a planet called Nyay.

- Don’t you see? It was.

Opening the Box

Garkellia shut the door on another damn day. At last she could let her face fall into the expression she’d been feeling on the inside since that stupid, rotten meeting. Those horrible – no, Garkellia. Even verbalising what she thought of them in her mind might cause it to pop up on her face the next time she saw them. Better not to. Things could always get worse.

She realised she still had her hand firmly on the door handle as if the day might’ve tried to shove its way into her home. When it didn’t, she got a beer, which went crack-hiss as she opened it, slumped into a floral armchair, kicked her office shoes onto the rug and switched the telly on.

But she could not project herself onto the screen and lose herself in its images. She let the beer and dejection swill and foam in her blood, and she was surprised to find moisture come to her eyes, more surprised to find that it stung her, blinded her. She groped for a tissue from the box on the coffee table in front of her but retrieved only an empty box.

She jumped up in a tearful rage, rubbing and wiping at her eyes as the room was rinsed in a white light which just as quickly died away. Before her stood a middle-aged woman, even upper-middle-aged, but she stood bolt upright, and the blue of her eyes poured down on Garkellia. Compassion. Pity.

She wore a wide-brimmed hat, a checked shirt, a black vest, a pair of beige shorts, woolly socks and boots. Garkellia gazed at her wrinkled knees, the strange black box she carried, her freckled chest, the slack flesh of her neck and finally those bright blue eyes.

“Garkellia. This box is for you. You must look after it.”

“Thank you,” said Garkellia, taking the box as though it were a divine word in solid form.

“And one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget this. This moment. Remember me.”

Her voice was rough and deep but kind. There was so much to this woman. Garkellia felt her trust escape from her and attach itself to the woman.

“I will, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Just do it.”

“Alright.”

Light flashed again. Garkellia covered her eyes, and when she lowered her hand, it was just her in her living room with a strange black box.

She put the box on the coffee table and continued to watch TV, but all she could really think about was that woman; how she stood, how she spoke, how she looked. When it got dark, Garkellia put the black box in a drawer she wasn’t using.

For the remainder of her twenties, a thought that lingered low in Garkellia’s consciousness was how much she admired that woman, how much she wanted to be like her, but how impossible that was, how she’d never put so much purpose, so much meaning into one word, how she’d never stand like that, like a hurricane wouldn’t knock her down.

As she grew older, she thought about the woman less and less often but, when she did think about her, the thoughts were less painful, the attributes she had longed for in her twenties didn’t seem quite so inaccessible. She moved from place to place and relationships came and went, but she always took the box with her wherever she went.

Of course, she wondered what was in the box, but if she ever looked at it, found her eyes rolling off in the direction of anything less troubling: the red of a book, the grey-blue of the sky.

One day, she prepared to go on a long hike and dressed appropriately. She packed an old rucksack with the few necessities such a trip required: water, a change of clothing, a torch, a good knife, a little money, a favourite book. Just before she walked out the door, it occurred to her that now might be the time to do the thing she’d put off for so many years.

She put down the rucksack, went to the bedroom cupboard and gently teased the box down from the high shelf.

‘It is time,’ she thought.

As she thought those words, everything disappeared in a flash of light, and before her, in a living room she hadn’t seen for decades was a very familiar person, a bright, handsome and resourceful young woman who lacked only self-belief.

As the red-eyed young woman looked her up and down in wonderment, Garkellia spoke the words that she remembered.

“Garkellia. This box is for you. You must look after it.”

The Frontier and the Farmstead, Part Two

Read part one of The Frontier and the Farmstead.

I didn't look back as she advanced toward Hect, that dusty unforgiving town which I intended to see with waking eyes never again. I didn't need to. Her manner of proceeding from one roadstone to the next was perfectly visible to my inner sight. She moved cautiously, like a scout, walking a distance, then surveying the land newly discernable. Then she would withdraw that rolled up parchment, the one I'd only seen the tip of, jutting out from her shirt as she had sat and conversed with me in the smokey tavern. As she walked, she would mark it with minute symbols using a slender piece of charcoal, erasing errors or unnecessary marks with a small brush fashioned from a larger wood-staining variety before carefully rolling the parchment up with a piece of cloth and concealing it once again within her linen shirt.

That parchment began as a sparse sketch of the frontier and now, before her hand and eye, was unfolding into the geographic story of the badlands, its symbolism growing as the reality of that dry land became apparent to her. During her years of working the land, she'd learned how the sight of a rolling field corresponded to its dimensions, both the modest farmstead of Wildflower and the other larger plantations that neighboured hers. This allowed her to mark the parchment with the features she perceived with confidence, and she was proud of the way the plan presented a visual record of her journey and observations. Furthermore, it looked like a real place on the page: the boundaries of fields, the coding of terrain types, the wells, barns and farmhouses, all stretching out to fainter strings of caret marks where she guessed the distant mountains were located.

By the time she reached Hect, the edge of her map was full of detail, and she had drawn preliminary lines to show the lie of the land to the east of the Posst road. She entered a wide main street with buildings of timber on either side, and Hect welcomed her with the noise and smells of humans, wagons and animals. Grasses grew in clumps in the compacted red-brown soil, and a small sun, already on its descent towards the mountains, glinted in the windows on her right-hand side. Her eyes opened wide, and she let all these sights flow into her, telling herself that life was changed now, that here, however life may turn out, that it would never again crawl along to the dirge of the countryside. Her map remained well concealed. She would work on it in as soon as she earned herself satisfactory privacy.

She walked along the street, drawing curious and speculative glances from waistcoated men with mutton chops and small, round, black hats as they examined their carts, from women in ankle-length dresses and floury aprons conversing on balconies, and others. That was all well and good. She doubted that any look was accompanied by great altruism towards a stranger such as her, but a town that takes interest in its incomers is a town that's mindful of its opportunities. Each building bore a certain tension as though it had pushed itself forward into a space almost too small for it in order to witness the miracle of human commerce and was now squinting away from the glare of activity on the street, overwhelmed by the unanticipated bustle. They were clumsy things, ugly, like storage boxes or plain-looking men in cheap suits. Yet, the whole was an arcade, a multifarious offering of carefully made things and skillful deeds, all for her for the right price.

She entered a place designated by the word 'HOTEL' in wandering capitals and subtitled with the phrase 'Messrs Nolan and Nolan'. Why here? Why this pouting grotesque amongst all the hostelries? Well, simply because it was one of the friendlier presentations and somehow knowing that there were two men working there, presumably related, gave her an advantage that its occupants did not have over her. The inside was like a dream of opulence realised in card by an imaginative child. A few chairs that looked none too comfortable nevertheless bore curly arms and legs. The service desk was carved with cherub-headed sea serpents whose faces looked ready to burst and whose scales slowly evaporated as the eye traced towards its stumpy tail. Standing out from all was a grandfather clock which bore no such tragic flaw. Its heavy ticks gave the passing seconds a stern formality that made her stand straight, straighter than usual.

'Go away!' shouted a weak voice, 'The hotel is closed! Come back later.'

Just then, a head flew up to standing height from beneath the service desk. It belonged to a compact gentleman with a neatly trimmed moustache and beard and a forehead that provided plenty of scope for his large, wandering eyes.

'Good afternoon, madam. Sorry about that! How may our humble establishment serve your needs, this fine day?'

'Good afternoon, Mr Nolan?' she enquired, continuing only when the man nodded, 'A room overlooking the street would be a fine thing, providing it locks only on the inside.'

'Our ocean room would be most suitable. Would madam like to see it?'

*Ocean room*, she thought, but only said, 'Of course. How kind.'

The man looked at the floor within the office with concern and suppressed frustration.

'Just relax,' he said in a gentle, firm voice, 'No need to talk to anyone. Stay here.'

The clock seemed to turn and watch, sending its ticking after them as they ascended a boxy staircase with an unevenly carved handrail to the first floor, where Mr Nolan withdrew a key and unlocked the door. Should any guest have been charmed by the carvings of the lower floor and hoped to see more, they would not have been disappointed. Apart from an unmade single bed against the wall and an almost-level writing desk, the room was replete with carvings of withered dolphins, and there was a painting of an over-sized sneering trout on the bedside table. It was also, for the most part, daubed in blue.

However, it was light and airy, provided a view of the street that made her instantly want to hammer down the steps and immerse herself in its noisy chaos once again. Furthermore, it was sufficiently private and secure, and she found that she trusted Mr Nolan, who gazed at a point a few inches in front of her with bright but patient interest.

'Will madam be able to accept the room, or might I show madam the forest room on the other side or the mountain room at the back?'

'It's just fine, thank you. I'd like to stay for three nights initially.'

'We charge four shillings per night,' explained Mr Nolan as the sun finally fell below the horizon, and darkness began to obscure his pleasant features, 'Breakfast is served before 10 o'clock. Unfortunately, we cannot offer an evening meal, but I'm sure it would be to madam's advantage in any case to visit one of the excellent hostelries in the town.'

'Yes, you're right. I'll just get my purse.'

'No need to rush. You can pay any time until tomorrow morning.'

She nodded, and the man dismissed himself. She rested a moment in the darkening room before rising and making her way down to the street again, glancing curiously at the service desk as she passed, but seeing nothing of the presumed second occupant of the office. In the short time she'd been in Nolan's hotel, late afternoon had begun to transition into early evening, and the atmosphere was already calmer and the air cooler. She crossed the road and entered one of the eateries to which Mr Nolan had gestured. The restaurant was simple and austere, but she ate well while listening to a town resident describe how to get from Hect to Staiv to a visitor, gesturing to a map of the town as he explained. As she listened to the descriptions of the woods and streams of the as-yet-uncivilised region, its mining towns and rivers rich in gold, her mind rose out of her head and flitted out the window, across the roofs of Hect and out over dry valleys full of peril and opportunity.

After eating, she returned to her hotel room. Here, she sat at the writing desk and worked by lamplight on her map of the borderlands, carefully drawing in the town of Hect and the peaks visible from it. Finally when the quiet of the town was punctuated only by the barks of dogs and the occasionally grumble of voices, she went to bed and slept fitfully.

The following day after breakfast, she paid Mr Nolan twelve shillings, purchased a map from a market stall and took it back to her room, laying it and her own map out on the bed, the writing desk being too small. She looked at the cluster of dark boxes that represented the town of Hect, the valleys and mountains and the road to Posst. Her expression tensed on the verge of falling into dismay. She took her own map and compared it closely to the new map, rolling the parchment to compare item with item. Puzzlement wrinkled her forehead until her gaze drifted toward the window, and she saw the two men who had been talking the previous night. The resident was reiterating items of advice and wishing the man well.

She turned back to the wall, her gaze fixed on a vanishing point on an unseen horizon, her jaw set and her hands clasped in her lap. The moment extended untouched by the ticking of the clock below.

'Yes!' she cried, jumping to her feet, 'Yes, I am. Absolutely certain.'

She ran out of her room, not stopping to lock the door and flew out of the hotel.

'Excuse me, sir, excuse me!' she called, hurrying towards the men, who looked at her in surprise.

'You mustn't, you really mustn't follow the instructions this man gave you. I'm sorry. I sure you meant well, but look at this map! Look at it! It's impossible!'

The town resident's expression had turned to disgust, while the visitor, startled, glanced between the two.

'Look at the mountains,' she continued, 'If this were right, the sun would have set over... this forest here. It didn't. It set over the mountains, didn't it?'

'Why, you disgusting little besom. How dare you?! I've lived in this town for nearly two years and these maps are made by good friends of mine.'

'And I'm sure they meant well,' she repeated, 'But I think if your friend takes the directions you gave him... he'll never arrive.' 'Bu-but I've given directions to dozens of visitors to this town.'

'And that's kind of you, very kind, but -'

'Did any of them ever come back?' interrupted the visitor, looking directly at the townsman.

'Come back?'

'Yes.'

'Well, of course they did. I mean, I can't say for sure. You'd have to ask the head of the guards for records. I'm a busy man! I can't be watching everyone that comes through -'

'Mr Sant,' said the visitor in a firm, level voice, 'Did you personally lay eyes on any of the people that you gave directions to - ever again?'

The townsman's head wobbled as though he were still in full flow, but no words came out as he looked around for support and certainty.

'No,' he said at last, 'I never did.'

'Will you take me to Staiv? I'll pay you five shillings a day plus lodging when we can find it.'

'Just the two of us?'

'Yes, just us. Bring a weapon if you like. We leave tomorrow.'

'Okay, I'll do it.'

The townsman turned and spat.

'You ungrateful wretch!' he shouted at the visitor, and then at her, 'You miserable wench!'

Then, he turned and stomped away, bent-backed, shaking his head in a muttered tirade against the dishonesty of incomers.

'Thank you,' said the visitor, 'You probably just saved me - a gruelling journey.'

'Probably,' she replied, 'Any chance of an advance? I could hire a horse and ride out.'

'No need for an advance,' he said, 'I'll pay for that.'

And it occurred to the young woman that, within a day of arriving in Hect, she'd already found her first employment.