The man’s feet shifted, and there was a gasp of breath. The next time the woman spoke, it was small talk about the weather and how dry the heat was. She took a few steps backward, and I held my breath in anticipation, looking for whatever might have aroused their suspicion.
The next thing I knew, the man had dropped to the floor, his eyes inches from mine, and his hand reaching toward me, clasping for my own. I scurried back out of reach. Once my back cleared the cart, I leaped to my feet, only to bump into the woman. Her wide brown eyes stared back at me in surprise.
“It’s just a child!” She exclaimed.
The man scowled as he returned to his feet. “Children should know better than to eavesdrop.”
I hadn’t been caught often, but I’d been caught enough to recite the perfect response off the tip of my tongue. “I was scared.”
The man stared back, unimpressed.
“Come on, Jacob.” The woman implored.
From the moment the Storyteller had mentioned the man and the woman, I’d expected this. Still, the name left me reeling, breathless. Jacob had drilled into me the devastation they’d wrought, but he’d spent little time detailing their adventures before they went wrong.
The Storyteller changed voices once again. “He’s lying,” Jacob said as he strode confidently around the shipping container. His full focus had landed on me once more, his charismatic face asking for the truth. “Why were you really there?”
“I wanted to hear your story.” I’d blurted, “Travellers like yourself have the best stories! But they won’t tell them to a kid like me, so I hide and listen for them.”
“What kind of story are you looking for?” The woman had asked, her face dark. Jacob shrugged back at her.
“Something new! All I seem to hear now are stories about someone's wife or girlfriend. I want a story full of new adventures.”
The children made simultaneous expressions of disgust.
“Well, I can certainly see how a child might find those stories boring.” Jacob had murmured. The woman elbowed him in the side, and his mouth snapped shut.
A few children giggled.
“I don’t know what story to tell you.” The woman told me, helpless.
Jacob placed a hand on her shoulder, relaxing her. “If you like stories so much, why don’t you try making your own?”
“Like what?”
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“Whatever you want.”
I thought about it for a few seconds. “That sounds like too much work.”
“And sneaking into the shipyard to get caught, isn’t?”
“It’s fun!”
The woman crouched down, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. Her brown eyes were warm, inviting. “Maybe once you try it, you’ll like telling stories?”
But I wasn’t interested in telling the stories I’d heard. I’d hunted them down, and they were for me alone. “What about your story?”
“Our story?” The two exchanged a look. Jacob crouched beside her, his eyes as calm and cold as ice.
The two spent hours in that shipyard, telling me stories of another fantastical world that hadn’t yet discovered space travel. Like any other culture, people could be cruel in their world, they explained. A sprawling civilization of great and powerful mages had once ruled their world. As time began to pass, their arrogance became their downfall. They hid themselves away from the rest of the world, leaving the weaker mages to fend for themselves against a people that resented being under their rule for so long. And so, those mages, too, hid their power as they walked amongst the remaining men.
Jacob and the woman, Ava, were two of those hidden mages and had steadily been growing closer.Ava went on to explain that one day, she had fallen asleep and woken up in another world, and they’d decided to explore the worlds together, writing their own story.
They ended the tale they told me there, adding, “And the rest is still being written.”
I protested, “That can’t be the ending! That’s not an ending at all!”
Ava smiled mischievously. “Exactly!”
I pestered them, begging them to tell me what was going to happen next. “What about your plans? What do you want to do?”
The starry sky that peeked in through the skylights reflected itself in their eyes, glimmering in the starlight. “I suppose we want to hear your story.”
I’d pouted. “But that sounds boring! I want to know more about your world!”
In the end, they convinced me to explain the rules of our world–the classes, the special suits that tell us of our health and our names, and everything else–with the promise that, one day, they’d return with additions to their story.
The Storyteller fell silent, indicating the story was over.
“That’s it?!” a child complained.
“That wasn’t even a real story!”
“Where’s the adventure?!”
Sinbad nodded along with the children’s complaints. I was about to myself, as he had made no mention of the ‘worldwalker’ title in his little tale. In fact, other than telling me that Ava and Jacob had come here once, long ago, he’d provided very little information in his dull and dry so-called ‘story.’
The Storyteller raised his hands in a placating gesture, silencing the children once more
“So you want adventure?” He asked them.
“Yeah!”
He held a hand up to his face, considering. “Adventure, hmmm?” Reluctantly, he continued, “Well, I suppose I might be able to….”
The kids cheered as I shifted my legs beneath me, preparing to stand and leave. Catching my movement, Sinbad did the same. The Storyteller’s head whipped around, focusing on us with such intensity I thought he must be glaring.
“That wasn’t the end of the tale. That, my dear listeners, was merely the beginning.”
I settled back down with a sigh and prepared for a long wait.