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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 12: Brown 368
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 160
Leaving Chicago and Lake Michigan behind, Derek and Vashti began to travel toward their stuff. Hopefully no one would take it before they got there. This trip would take some time, as they were on foot. They traveled along the paved highway for several miles, but Derek saw no good campsites, so he spotted a side road and headed down it. Within half a mile it split, and Derek was tempted to stop here, but there were still no good campsite.
Walking back and forth, relaxing to feel the scriff inhered in their items nearly a thousand miles away, the two looked around the unkempt grass fields with the occasional upthrusts of oak and hickory trees. A barbed wire fence, sagging, was the only sign other than the road of humanity. Lake Michigan lay along one road.
“It's more direct for this other road, but it's smaller, and it leaves the lake behind.” Derek said.
“Lake means ready water for bathing and drinking.” Vashti added. Both of their faces were screwed up as they tried to make a decision.
Knowing his mental map of the United States might not be accurate as there might be a giant lake in the middle of the nation that was not there in his home world, or something else, but at the same time knowing it was the best information he had, Derek tried to remember the geography of the, ah, ah, yes, the Midwest. Lake Michigan was on the right side of the mitten shaped Michigan. Wait, no, it wasn’t.
He needed a map.
“We can probably find water in a brook,” he said, pointing toward the smaller road that went more directly south and to the west, instead of south and to the east. Vashti nodded, accepting his decision, but suggested they get some water and a bath first. Twenty minutes later, refreshed, they set out south and west along the one lane dirt road.
Another three miles, and they had passed a dozen white clapboard farmhouses, but after the first had a mean dog, and the second had a one-eyed bewhiskered old man with a double-barrel shotgun and a railroad lantern, they had decided to sleep off the now two lines of ruts of the track in a grove of mature trees. Lying down with his head on a tree root, and Vashti’s head on his chest, he drifted off--only to wake in the light of dawn with something wet in his face. Squinting an eye open, he saw a straw-hatted boy of perhaps ten with clear blue eyes, a jean jumper and a flannel shirt, and a fishing rod on his right shoulder. A hound dog stepped back up, and slurrupped his face again.
“Gah,” he said, and the boy’s laughter was like light, tinkling chimes. Vashti stirred.
“Trouble?” she murmured, and he felt her tensing. In her position, she was turned away and could not see what was going on.
“Barnaby likes you. I’m Abner. What’s your name, mister?”
“Derek.” And he nudged Vashti so that she rose. “This is my wife, Vashti.”
“Wow, she sure is pretty.”
“Thank you, Abner, I--” Barnaby stepped over Derek and kissed Vashti on the face which had her laughing and batting him away. Derek grinned.
“Where are you from, missus?” Abner asked, and Vashti looked at Derek who nodded back, still moving slowly. Barnaby was friendly, but he was also three feet high at the shoulder, and his teeth were impressive. Derek felt sure that if they scared his master, Barnaby would be more than ready to make them regret such a mistake.
“Persia.”
“Persia,” the kid said thoughtfully. “Oh, Xerxes. And Cyrus. He uh, saved the Temple in Jerusalem or something. And Sindbad the Sailor. I liked those stories. Getting carried by a giant rock bird, and stealing diamonds from the bird’s nest.”
Derek felt surprised. He sat up, and leaned against the tree trunk at his back. Maybe this young, oddly well educated boy could help them.
“We’re trying to head south and west.”
“Oh, well then you’re on the wrong road, mister.” Seeing their confused looks, he looked about for a stick, and finding one began to scratch in the dirt.
“See this is Welkins Road. You’re right here at the X near the swimming pool where sometimes the girls…uh, anyways. Named for the Welkins who was the first family in the county way back when it was just Injuns. In four more miles it just runs into a river, and on the other side is woods with nothing but animal paths. Mother doesn’t let me cross the river even if my cousins can. Now you want to go back, and go along the Lakeshore Drive for a bit, and then you’ll find Welkins Drive. It will lead you south and west to Welford. Which is pretty big. It's got like ten thousand people.”
“Thank you, Abner.” They both said, and Derek was amused to see that the boy took Vashti’s thanks much more seriously. “We’ll head out.”
Abner looked sad for a moment, and then spoke up.
“If you need food, I can catch some fish. It’s not far,” he said almost pleadingly, and Vashti looked at Derek with a small smile, clearly aware that she had a young admirer. He nodded. Fish, if the young scamp could catch them, would be a good breakfast. Accordingly Derek followed the two with the boy chattering, and Vashti replying in her slower, more melodious tones.
A quarter of a mile later, they came to a pleasant spot under a ten foot tall waterfall. It was a wide spot in a river, a pool about ninety feet across, and Abner boasted that he had once gone down far enough to touch the bottom in the center ‘e’en tho’ my ears hurt fierce.’
On a small strip of beach the boy set up his fishing pole, baited with a worm he had trapped in a leaf box in his pocket. His feet were bare, and he offered a seat next to him to Vashti. Barnaby took a spot behind the two as the back of a bench, and the boy began to ask her for stories.
Feeling like a third wheel, he heard Vashti begin to speak, first of tales from her home, and then of their adventures together, although she disguised the names. Things like an atomic bomb in London became a giant bomb in London, but otherwise the tales were as they happened. Within an hour, they had five fish, each a handspan across, and the boy showed them his hidden bow he had cached, and his fire starter board. Soon the campfire was going, and they were eating fish.
Derek and Vashti got two each, which made Barnaby the giant hound give them pitiful looks. Derek just laughed at the dog, and pointed to the squirrel it had caught in the woods and was gnawing on, but Vashti gave the dog a little to lick off her fingers. The light of adoration in the dog’s eyes was almost too much for Derek.
Filled, they parted, and Vashti gave the hound and the boy a kiss on the cheek, and patted them both on the head. As they walked off, Derek grumbled. Vashti took his arm with hers as they walked back out of the clear wood.
“Jealous of my new boyfriend?”
He snorted. “Which one?” he teased.
After a bit, just before they reached their former camp, he spoke.
“He does remind me how fortunate I am to have my gift of the King.”
“Ohh, now you’re going to make me cry, Derek Brown. I love you.”
“And I you.”
They went back on the road, and walked back the path they had come, returning to the point where they had gone wrong. A mile further on, and there was a gravel road to their right, leading southwest. This they took, and five miles later, after passing a number of houses and walking under a railroad track bridge, they came to the outskirts of the small town.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
