Maxwell had been walking for a very long time. Maybe that was a bad idea. He remembered that the key to survival when lost was to stay in one place and wait to be found, but surely that only worked if you knew where you were and could count on the right people to find you, and not some twelve-foot monster with multiple rows of rotating teeth. All things considered, moving seemed safer.
As he trudged along the Backend’s oldest path beneath the neon-dotted black of the early morning, he thought of his old classmate, Tara Hynes. He thought about the house party she had invited him to in tenth grade. Maxwell had been infatuated with Tara since he had first seen her at the beginning of high school. He had thought of countless funny and daring ways to strike up a conversation but had never found the courage to put any of them into practice. His strategy of watching her from the back of the class and making clumsy jokes during group assignments seemed much safer.
Then, against all odds, at the end of their second year, a friend had told a friend who had told him that the crush was mutual. She was having a party and wanted him to come. He didn’t know what to say. It was exactly the kind of scenario he had dreamed of, but the reality of it was terrifying. He mumbled something non-committal and ran home in a panic. For the rest of the week, he had avoided her in the hall. He was not sure what drove this instinct, but it seemed safer than a confrontation. If he saw her coming, he ducked into the washroom or struck up a conversation with someone passing by.
When the night of the party arrived, he did not know if he would go or not. On the one hand, he wanted to go more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. On the other, having to speak to Tara, having to acknowledge how he felt, and the uncertainty of what came next, was mortifying.
In the end, he put on his best graphic t-shirt and headed for her house, but when he finally made it up to her front gate, he froze. His legs simply would not propel him through the gate and up the porch stairs to the house. He stayed there, staring up at the outlines of kids from school in the window. He kept waiting for one of them to see him standing outside and wave him in. Perhaps if one of them did, he would have gone, but standing there was enough to tell him he would never have it in him to head inside on his own.
At school the next day, the friend of a friend had told him that Tara had spent the night crying in her room. She never talked to him again, and he never found the courage to apologize. After that, he kept his head down whenever he passed Tara in the halls, even once she had a boyfriend and had long ceased to care about him.
He never understood what drove him away from the party at that last moment, but in the years that followed, he had convinced himself that was the moment his life had derailed. It was the first moment of cowardice that had served as the foundation for all the minor self-defeats that came afterward. Many nights, he would lie in bed and trace the connections of his bad choices until he fell asleep, wishing he would wake up back in tenth grade.
Ten years later, he could still feel the same instinct that had driven him past Tara’s house at work. He had hoped it was gone, but the familiar urge still danced in him. As he moved forward toward the Core, he felt resistance urging him to turn back, to find Mihai, to lie in place and wait for someone to come find him, to do anything other than keep moving.
His feet felt like concrete, and he would occasionally get shivers across the back of his neck and down his spine. He had read about the mechanics of anxiety and understood how some of them might have helped human beings run to safety or evade predators, but others were a mystery. His labored breathing, for example, seemed antithetical to his ability to survive. How was it of any benefit to struggle for each breath while a sharp-toothed predator bore down on you? Maybe it was just supposed to help you pass out and die quicker. He kept waiting for it to get less difficult, but whenever he thought the fear was behind him and he felt relatively fine, a fresh surge would flood back into him. It was all he could do to resist the undertow.
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The road frequently branched off into the distance, sometimes to small villages, sometimes to dark forest enclaves full of glowing eyes. There were scattered huts here, too. They were located a small way off the road, hidden in the vast expanse of trees that bled off on either side of the path. In a few, the lights were on, and Maxwell wondered what kind of creature lived there and what their lives were like. In one, he saw a shadowy grey figure staring out at him with silver eyes. It watched him with a look of intense curiosity. Maxwell looked back at it as he passed. He was not sure what he saw in those eyes, but there was something quiet and inviting there.
Perhaps he could make a home in these strange dark woods. Perhaps he could live out his days here, and Marigold and Walter and all the strange beings that wanted to eat him or process him would just forget about the human they had once seen. He knew this was not a realistic scenario, but it was an inviting one, given the present circumstances.
He continued to walk.
He was getting hungry now and cursed himself for not bringing food from Mihai’s wagon. Nothing along the road looked edible either, and even if they had, he was not willing to take the chance of ending up frothing and convulsing on the side of the road.
The trees were closing in on him. They were thick and squat, with white vines that hung down in twisting curls from the branches. Each limb ended in a bulbous cluster of fibers that resembled blue dandelions. Below them, blankets of orange flowers and bright red fungus grew in patches below the greying dawn sky. There was no sign he was on a flat platform suspended in space. He felt like he was walking through a great forest and wondered how far he would have to walk it before he arrived at its edge.
After a couple of hours of silence, he heard footsteps along the path behind him. It was the first traveler he had encountered that was not in a vehicle. He paused and looked behind him to see who the footsteps belonged to.
It was a crane, a large human-sized bird, or something that looked near enough. It was wearing a black and red gown and clapping its hands as it walked. And then there wasn’t just one crane, there were several, twenty or more. Each one was wearing the same gown, and each one was clapping and shuffling up the road toward Maxwell.
The one in front lowered its head in welcome as it approached Maxwell, but it said nothing. It bowed slightly and continued to walk. When it was a few feet in front of him, it let out a deep, piercing cry, like the sound of a bell. The entire group of cranes took this as a cue to sing. It was a strange song, low and high at once. It sounded bird-like but also contained distinct words in a language Maxwell had never heard before.
One of the passing birds smiled at Maxwell and nodded up the road in a gesture of invitation. Maxwell walked with them. He wondered if they wanted him to sing, too. He hoped not. Maxwell was terrible at singing.
Though he could not understand the words his new walking companions were singing, he felt as if he could understand their meaning. They had lost something, a home perhaps. They were exiles with nowhere to go, but the high arcing melody of the birds in the back suggested a new home, a new destination, and as the birds in the front joined in on this note of longing, a deep shimmering hope fell over the group. Maxwell could feel it, too. No matter what was lost, there were always horizons to move toward. In that sublime moment of hope, it seemed as if anything was possible. The song crested and then descended again, finishing on a mournful note once more, but one that did not negate the hopefulness that had come before.
Or perhaps Maxwell was wrong. Perhaps that was just what he wanted to hear in their song. It didn’t matter.
As the song finished, the bird in front reached into its robes and produced a roll of bread. The other birds did the same, but while they all ate, the one at Maxwell’s side smiled over at him, tore the bread, and handed half to Maxwell. He was too hungry to refuse. He shoved it unbroken under his face covering. There was nothing special about the bread, but it was one of the most delicious things he had ever consumed. He did not think that he would ever forget the taste.
Once the birds had finished eating, a new song began. This one was more delicate and playful. The bird in front hopped a few times on one leg and then unfolded its wings and went soaring up into the sky. One by one, the other birds joined it. Maxwell’s new friend looped back and nodded at him, still singing as it arced around in a dramatic curve and flew out of sight.
The walk did not become easy after that. Maxwell still had to fight himself to continue along the path, but something in the birds’ grace drove him forward. He no longer felt as if he was only a scared and lost traveler in a strange world. He was still scared and lost and undoubtedly in a very strange world, but the more Maxwell traveled, and the further he moved toward his destination, the lighter his steps became.
He continued to walk.