The next morning, I loaded up a backpack with three days worth of Cookie’s food. Most of it was actually good reasonable trail food. Gofer--that is, a different hob child, acting as Gofer at the moment--brought some other supplies. A knife, some tools. A canteen, a rope. After I slid the hatchet into the specially built loop on the side of the pack, I started to feel like I was gearing up for a three month hike, not a three day courier job.
At my request, Gofer-Two was able to run into town and fetch several energy bars and a glass bottle filled with cold brew from my favorite cafe near my normal job. I told him to keep the change to buy whatever else he wanted. When he returned, his pockets were stuffed with so much chocolate that I wasn’t sure he hadn’t just stolen it. Well, I could deal with that when I got back to realis, I guess.
Porter was late, which gave me time to meet Boddy-One. He was tall, for a hob. Easily over five feet, and he was built. Even his long pointy ears seemed muscular. In a contrast to the smart, well-kept, clean hats worn by the other hob staff, Boddy-One had opted for a thoroughly patched stocking cap.
“Uh…you must be Boddy? I’m Daniel. I uh…appreciate you coming along to guard the way.”
Boddy-One looked up at me and grinned. Hob teeth are thinner than human teeth, which means they have more of them for the same amount of mouth. They weren’t pointed or anything, but Boddy-One suddenly made that grin threatening nonetheless. “Duty for the House, Mister Corners. Not for your appreciation.”
“Well.” I paused for what felt like an entire minute, trying to come up with a response. Boddy-One kept one eye on me as he checked his own pack over. “Duty comes first,” I eventually managed, unconvincingly. “But all the same I’m glad it isn’t all on my shoulders.” I realized that even with his size Boddy-One still was several inches shorter than I was. “Metaphorically speaking.”
“Hah!” Boddy-One barked, a loud but seemingly honest laugh. “Humans. They always tell the best jokes.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That joke you just told. About metaphors.” Boddy-One answered, shaking his head. He raised one pinky to flick a tear from the corner of his eye. “Suggesting that metaphors speak. Human humor. I love it.”
“I didn’t realize it was a joke,” I replied, honestly. “It’s just an expression.”
“Oh?” Boddy-One said, leaning in, suddenly serious. His teeth were all on display again, but he was at least pointing them away from me. “Let me tell you an expression we’ve got here, then, Mister Corners. Metaphors are dangerous. If you let them speak, you’re already lost in them. Quash them, before they define you.”
“I hadn’t…how?”
“Master Carver explained the Lane to you?”
“Some. I gotta say, I didn’t understand a lot of it.”
“That bit about it being collective human thought?”
“I remember that bit.”
“Maybe you should ruminate on the implications of that with regards to metaphor, Mister Corners. ‘Cause I don’t much want to have to scrape your bits off the Lane because you dared to think about the burden of dishonesty and how it was crushing you under heel, or some other human nonsense.”
He continued to grumble under his breath, strapping his pack to his back. His front bore an arrangement of weaponry, including a revolver on his hip that would have fit right in on the set of an old John Wayne movie, a high caliber hunting rifle slung over one shoulder that had some sort of electronic sight I didn’t recognize, and an honest-to-truth sword cane. Like the type where it looked like an ordinary cane but a sword came out of it.
I was spared from Boddy-One’s wrath and the weaponry that he would have used to carry it out by the tardy arrival of Porter. I wasn’t entirely sure what his role in this delivery was. If I was to be the human dropping off the box and Boddy was there to guard me from murderous metaphor, why Porter? For that matter, who would mind the gate while he was away?
All Mister Carver had said on Porter’s inclusion was that ‘I’d know why he was there when he was needed’. He had ignored the question of who was minding the gate to Mister Carver’s House entirely.
Believe it or not, time passed normally on the Lane. Or…something that looked an awful lot like sunset, and nighttime, and sunrise, and the passage of time according to my phone (and the cheap digital watch that I wore for when my phone inevitably ran out of battery halfway through the trip). So it was about an hour after sunrise, or 8:34 by the watch, when the three of us set out across the yard. Porter opened a small side gate in the great stone wall to let us out. I noticed that this gate, unlike the others I had seen around the property, was made of wooden slats. I wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that it opened onto the Lane instead of realis.
Boddy-One set our pace, or as he described it, ‘took point’. I found it was a comfortable stride for me; one of the benefits of my traveling companions both being hobs, I assumed. Porter’s legs, being the shortest, were a flashing blur as he all but jogged to keep up. He didn’t seem to grow tired, though, and Boddy-One didn’t seem interested in calling for a halt.
As we walked, I did my best to memorize landmarks, in case I needed to find Mister Carver’s House again on my own. After a mile, I was starting to get a headache trying to remember what the most recent house had looked like. On the second mile, I realized that the current house, which was either the 20th or the 200th house that we had walked past, looked subtly different every time I looked away. But the time it was passing out of view behind me it had gone from some sort of elaborate one-story Spanish villa to a sterile-looking modern apartment tower. I tried to reconcile the two images in my mind, and my headache got worse.
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“Stop that,” Boddy-One said.
I looked around. I hadn’t been doing anything particularly odd. Porter was looking at me expectantly, both ear tips curled down towards his head. “Stop what?” I asked, confused.
“Stop trying to make the Houses fit into your little box of what they look like.” Boddy-One explained. After three more of his powerful steps, he added, “It’s rude.”
Porter was nodding. With a sudden snap, I stopped trying to remember what the house looked like. It felt like a guitar string when it decides to go, except it was all in my thoughts.
A twang echoed from the road. It seemed to come from all around, except Boddy-One and Porter were both looking directly at me.
Boddy-One growled. “That. You just used a metaphor, din’t ya. I warned you to be careful with those.”
Briefly, I flashed to a memory of 12 year old me in school, and flippantly I replied “Technically it was a simile.”
Porter guffawed as Boddy-One’s scowl deepened. “Listen to me, rookie. This place? This place is not your playground. The Lane doesn’t care whether it’s a simile or a metaphor. Don’t.” He pointed his finger at me. I carefully avoided comparing his demeanor to anything.
Later, when I wasn’t on the Lane, I would compare it to a bad caricature of a strict teacher or babysitter.
Imaginary Me started up a lecture about listening to experts in the part of my mind I had designated as “his space”. Well, jokes on him. He was right, so I put him to work. For the duration of the trip, Imaginary Me was in charge of policing all of my thoughts for metaphor, simile, symbolism, or any other thing that might cause the Lane to shift or anger Boddy-One.
Imaginary Me seemed smug about getting put on the job. In another part of my mind, I worriedly noted that I only had nine more days until I could get my brain looked at for signs of tumors. Imaginary Me was only a few weeks old. His independence was concerning. More concerning was the fact that I had apparently accepted it and was now making use of it.
Is it possible to be a third-person observer of your own mindscape? Until a month ago, I would have answered the question with a solid “Huh?”. Two weeks ago, having freshly read what little philosophy texts I could find that were written in language I could grasp, I would have answered “No, excepting that you choose to do so.” I would have felt pretty clever in that answer.
The answer is yes. And Imaginary Me was just the beginning.
“Wait up a sec,” came Boddy-One’s voice, cutting through---no. Not cutting. Merely interrupting my thought process. As one thought does to another.--my reverie. I looked at our surroundings and to my surprise, the Lane was at a dead end. Or…it looked like a dead end. With a certain amount of effort, I told Imaginary Me not to hold any images of the Lane at this point.
A signpost stood in the road. Unlike most of the Lane and all of the Houses on it, the signpost was constant, solid. Realis, I knew instinctively. Odd. What was it doing out here? Porter--Maps, now. For Maphandler, Illusory Me supplied. How did he know? Maps hadn’t said anything about his name changing. In any event, Maps had approached the post and was now observing it, touching each joint and hinge that held the various signs to the post. He removed one of his gloves as he went, taking great care about where his bare hand touched the post. None of the signs was marked. At least…not with anything that could be construed as words. I looked over at Boddy-One. He seemed unconcerned, so I decided to follow his example. After a few seconds more, Boddy-One, Maps, myself, and the signpost were the only constant things in the Lane. For a brief moment, we were the only things at all, and then the Lane was back, slowly solidifying until it was merely a flickering possibility rather than a useless blur. The cobbles here seemed to have had the shine rubbed off of them from traffic. Certainly they lacked the coppery texture I remembered from the cobbles near Carver’s House. Had they always been like that? Illusory Me didn’t answer. I wasn’t thinking at him, anyway.
“Right,” Maps said, knocking on a single post with his ungloved hand. There was a word there. It vanished before I could make it out. Illusory Me shrugged. “Let’s keep moving, then. Daniel? Mister Boddy? This way.”
The way he led us seemed to be the same direction we had always been going. In fact, for all that the Lane twisted visibly in front of us, I was absolutely certain we had never changed direction in all the time we were walking. It had been at least half a day by now and I couldn’t remember walking a single curve along the way.
Near sunset, we came to another signpost. Boddy-One called for a stop. The four of us (counting Illusory Me) had walked most of the way in relative silence. Illusory Me had been diligent and I had managed not to have any more metaphoric thoughts. When I congratulated him, he seemed pleased. It was still unsettling, on some level. Except it seemed to be unsettling from a distance. As if --No metaphors. Right. Sorry. Later on I would think that it was unsettling as if I were watching it happen in a movie, but right at that moment I did not.
“We’ll rest here, tonight. Signpost should be safest thing for a good long while.” Maps nodded, and added “Tomorrow’s portion of the journey is going to be the worst. There isn’t another signpost between here and our destination. We’re going to have to jog or run nearly the whole way there and back just to get back to this one by nightfall.”
“Why?” I asked. “What happens at nightfall?”
“What happens at every nightfall. Sometimes during the day, too, but reliably every nightfall,” Boddy-One answered, drawing his revolver, checking each chamber, and resting it on his lap as he leaned back against the signpost. “Humans start to dream.” He closed both eyes, then reopened his left one to fix it on my. “Try not to.”
“No problem,” I answered shakily. “Almost never do anyway.” And wouldn’t tonight be a terrible time to learn that almost-never and never weren’t technically the same.
Setting down one of my raincoats as a pillow, I too leaned against the signpost and propped up my feet. In mere minutes, sleep was clawing its way out of the ground.
Distantly, I felt my own voice trying to stop the metaphor.