The Broken Lands (15 page)

“I don't pretend to know anything,” Ambrose replied. “I know the story, that's all. What you make of it is entirely up to you. But it's going to get stranger before it's over.”

“I'd like to hear the rest,” Jin said quietly. “If no one minds.”

Ambrose swirled his glass. “Well, the snows melted, and the time came when Jack should've moved on from that slapdash shack in the hills. But he didn't go. First he started walking the woods in search of any signs of the mysterious woman. There were none. Weeks passed. Months.

“Then, in June, a wild rose vine appeared along one corner of the house and burst into bloom. To Jack, these flowers seemed like a sign. Little by little, he began to hope that she might come back. The second that thought came into his mind, he was as good as lost. He was never moving on.”

He paused and looked at Sam. “Here's a thing you would never know, living in a city. Men are like trees.”

“Trees?”

Ambrose nodded. “In a city, in a forest of others like him, a man will grow straight—taking into account his type, his temperament, and the unique blights upon his personality. But alone on the plain, alone in the desert, alone in the wilderness where he is the only tall thing to mar the horizon, to bear the pressures of the wind . . .
alone,
Sam, with the raging storms, the starving rocks, the alkaline soil . . . alone, a man may yield and become deformed by his environment. And Jack was alone for a very, very long time.”

Jin and Tom were nodding, as if all of this made perfect sense. Sam tried to imagine ever being that kind of alone and found he couldn't fathom it. Anytime he had ever been by himself, there had been a wall somewhere close by with someone on the other side of it.

“In the wide world,” Ambrose continued, “it is natural to seek out the paths others have blazed, if one is lucky enough to find them. Well, in that manner, those strange roamers I mentioned before began to find their ways to Jack's cabin.”

“Mr. Ambrose, sir, excuse me,” Sam interrupted again. “I don't know what you mean when you say ‘strange roamers' . . .”

Ambrose opened his mouth, then closed it again and turned to Tom Guyot and Walter Mapp. “Would you like to field this one, gentlemen?”

Tom and Mapp exchanged a glance. “Sam,” Mapp said, pushing his old hat back on his head, “you and I've known each other a while. Tell me the truth, kid. You think I'm a little odd?”

Sam nodded. Then common sense and politeness kicked in. “I mean—”

“Sure, sure, everybody in Coney Island's an oddity.” Mapp waved his hand carelessly. “Hell with parlor manners. Point is, I'm one of those strange roamers—or at least I have been, in my life; though, like I said, it's been a long time. So's Tom, and trust me when I tell you, we're probably the most normal of 'em. Take the most bizarre freak in West Brighton, multiply him by whatever big number you want, and put what you get on the road. That's what we're talking about.”

Sam thought back to earlier that evening, right before the fireworks.
I suppose I'm part of the roaming world now,
Tom had said. So
this
was what he had meant.

“But what—what does that mean?” Sam frowned at Mapp. “You don't
roam
anywhere.”

“I did for a long time before I came here, and someday I'll leave for the road again.”

“So it just means being strange and being on the road? Like . . . like a tramp or something?” It was sort of an awkward question. People generally didn't like tramps. Another thing newspapers were fond of screaming about, along with the depression and strikes and riots and anarchists, was what they liked to call the tramp scare.

Mapp shook his head. “When you think of tramps, you're probably thinking about vagrants or folks walking from town to town looking for work. What we're talking about is something different.” He looked to Tom. “How do I explain this?”

“Far as I go,” Tom said thoughtfully, “it's sort of a matter of feeling more at home on the roads than the places they lead to. You get to be at the edge of things, walking the borders of the world. How it feels to me, anyhow.”

“Did you always feel that way?” Jin asked. For the second time, Sam had the feeling that she understood what was being discussed far better than he did.

Tom shook his head. “No, ma'am. There was . . .” His voice trailed off. “There were a couple of things happened to change the way I looked at the world. One of 'em was the war. The other . . .” He glanced at Mapp again. “Well, that's a story for another time.” Then he turned back to Jin. “But you know what I mean about the roads, don't you, darlin'?”

She nodded. “Sometimes, out in between cities with all those big stretches of the country and all that sky . . .” She smiled wistfully. “
For a while the dust weighs lightly on my coat. These times, the traveler's heart is a flag a hundred feet high in the wind.
That's the same poet I mentioned before, and it's as if he saw right into my heart when he wrote that.”

Tom smiled at her. “That's just exactly it. You have a roamer's soul.”

Across the table, Ambrose cleared his throat. Mapp gestured grandiosely at him. “As you were.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mapp. To continue. By the time the uncanny roamers began to arrive at Jack's door, he had already gone a little ways around the bend.

“The first one to knock arrived in the spring, in the midst of a thunderstorm. Jack answered, certain it was the woman with the violin. Instead, a small, raggedy man in a torn coat stood there, dripping on the doorstep. Jack was crushed, of course, but he let the stranger in. The little man was all gratitude, and Jack, though disappointed, was gracious. This changed, however, the moment the man had made himself comfortable by the fire and asked Jack if he could perhaps borrow one of his blankets. Jack refused.

“The blankets, you see, whether in reality or only in Jack's tortured mind, still retained the scent of the woman with the violin, and he could not bear the loss of that small comfort. He did not explain this, of course—how could he? So his guest assumed he was simply being mean-spirited, and the second Jack's eyes began to droop, the stranger snuck one of the blankets and wrapped it around himself.

“Jack woke with a start, and I'm sorry to tell you I can't repeat much of what he said to the stranger before he yanked away the blanket and tossed the fellow back out into the rain. Suffice it to say, the stranger thought Jack had quite seriously overreacted, and he was angry. He turned to the door Jack had slammed shut behind him and scratched a small sign into the frame, just beside the doorknob. It was a warning to others like him, and it was the beginning of Jack's reputation as a troublemaker.

“Meanwhile, Jack was about to make his second mistake, and this one had to do with those three wishes he hadn't yet used.”

“About those,” Jin interrupted. “Why didn't he just wish for the woman to come back? Or to know where she was, or something like that?”

“Ah. Well, that's a good question.” Ambrose tapped his chin and thought. “I was never given a specific reason, but I can make a pretty good guess, because if there's one thing men who have loved and been left are likely to be, it's
stubborn
. I suspect Jack knew that wishing for her to come back wouldn't be the same, or as good, as having her come back of her own will.”

“But maybe she didn't know whether he wanted her to come back at all,” Jin protested. “How could she possibly know that?”

“Oh, please,” Sam muttered. “Girls always know.”

“That is absolutely
not
true. Who on earth told you that?”

“The girl who lives downstairs from me,” Sam retorted. “And she's assured me several times that she knows everything.”

“In any case,” Ambrose said with a touch of a smile, “Jack had not used any of his wishes in the many months that had gone by since the woman's visit, but after he had thrown out the stranger, he made his first one. He wished that if anyone other than himself ever again touched those blankets, they would cling to that person's hands and burn like hot coal until Jack himself ordered the punishment to stop.”

“Over a
blanket?
” Jin asked. “You weren't fooling about him having gone around the bend.”

“Over how the blanket
smelled,
” Ambrose corrected her. “Being a female yourself, you cannot possibly have any concept of how obnoxiously potent a woman's scent is, particularly when the woman in question is not present. Don't give me that look, young lady. I'm twice as old as you are and married to a woman I'm often absent from. I know whereof I speak.”

“That's just plain crazy,” Jin muttered. “Am I wrong?”

“Sounds crazy to me,” Sam said quickly, which was a complete lie. Actually, after this evening he thought it made a perfect kind of sense.

Ambrose shook his head. “That's nothing. Another strange roamer appeared at the cabin, this time in the summer. This one was an old, stooped woman, and although she saw the mark on the doorframe, she was too tired to go any farther that day. She knocked on the door, and while she waited for someone to open it, she made her mistake. She picked a rose from the flowering vine.

“Jack opened the door just in time to see her do it, and he flew into an even greater fury than he had about the borrowed blanket. He ordered the woman off his land and stood there to make sure she really left. At the edge of the woods, however, she paused to carve her own warning mark on a tree beside the path that led to Jack's house.

“Meanwhile, Jack was busy using his second wish. The land he had cleared, the place where the cabin sat, was ugly, forbidding. All except that rosebush, the only beautiful thing that remained in Jack's world while he waited in vain for the woman to return. You can perhaps imagine why he was protective of it.

“‘If anyone touches this rose vine,' he said angrily, ‘may it wind that person up in thorny branches and scratch and squeeze them until I call a stop to the pain.' And that was summer.

“Over the next few months, many roamers saw the marks on the tree and the door, and one by one they passed Jack's house, muttering about the strange hermit in his lonely cabin. It wasn't until the autumn that any of them was desperate enough to knock again. This time it was a small boy with golden eyes, and he was being pursued.

“The thing that chased him was huge, fast, and deadly. The boy couldn't see it, couldn't smell it, couldn't hear it. But they were the only living things in the woods now; every bird, every beast, everything else had fled, so the boy knew his pursuer was close. He also knew that if he didn't find sanctuary, he would be dead in a matter of minutes.

“He saw the old woman's warning as he raced up the path. He saw the small man's warning as he came to a panting, trembling halt at the door. He knocked, and Jack opened the door just a sliver, but it was enough.

The boy slipped through. He hauled on the door, slamming it shut before Jack could react. A moment later there was a thump on the other side, the impact of something heavy that made the entire cabin shudder. Then, stillness. And Jack turned from the door to stare at the boy with the wild golden eyes.

“‘Please,' the boy said. ‘It's waiting for me. Please don't send me away.'

“Jack had changed, certainly. But while he was no longer the hospitable woodsman pioneer of his youth, he had felt the cabin lurch, and he was no monster. ‘Don't touch the blankets,' he warned, ‘and when we are able to venture outside again, do not touch the rose vine. Sit by the fire. I'll make us coffee while we wait for whatever is out there to leave.'

“They waited, and the boy sat silently until the coffee was done. ‘What is it?' Jack asked at last.

“‘I don't know,' the boy said. ‘No one has ever seen one. Only what they leave behind when they are finished with their prey.'

“‘And how did it come to be after you?'

“The boy shrugged. ‘I must've done something. A creature like that doesn't come after you for no reason.' He looked with imploring eyes at Jack. ‘That's true, isn't it? I must've done
something
.'”

Ambrose paused to pour himself another glass of beer. “I'm not sure I could have answered that question. Jack nodded, but only because that seemed to be the answer the boy hoped to hear.”

“Wait,” Sam interrupted. “Why?” Like most boys he knew, he'd spent his entire life trying to avoid doing anything—or at least, getting caught at anything—that might get him in trouble. Why would anyone want to be told that they deserved to be chased by some invisible, murderous being?

It was Jin who answered. “I think it's much worse to think awful things just happen without any good reason,” she said quietly, worrying the single green bangle around her wrist. “If you . . . if you can believe you deserve to be hurt, then there's always the possibility that you can figure out what you did to deserve it, and you can stop doing that, and then . . .” She swallowed. “And then you can imagine that things might get better.”

Tom Guyot patted Jin's hand, rigid and motionless as stone on her knee.

“You know that isn't the world we live in, darlin',” he said softly. “Would make life all sorts of easier, but things aren't that way.”

Jin nodded without looking at him. “Yes, I know.”

Abruptly Sam was ashamed that he hadn't done something, spoken comforting words or patted her shoulder or the like. But the moment had passed.

Ambrose drummed his fingers on the table. “Shall I carry on?”

“Yes, please,” Jin said gratefully.

“Jack and the boy sat in the cabin, trying to wait out the invisible thing. When Jack went to sleep, the boy obediently leaned against the wall without a blanket, shivering from cold and fear. He couldn't sleep a wink, and sometime during the night, he noticed the rosin pendant that still hung from the nail beside the hearth.”