The WayA Story by SomeoneSomewhere A short story about the inner flame that makes all believers children at heart, and how easily this flame can be extinguished There’s a thin layer of dust stuck to the
top of the surface of the map. Thin, as in, ‘Oh, I’ve been here for the past
three weeks’ type of thin, but stuck, as in, ‘You can try but I’m not going to
rub off easily either’. Back in the days when I was barely taller than the
mini-fridge we used to store our sugar-free coke bottles with the red caps and
glass bodies, my Nana used to lift me up on her knee and point to the map, and
say in that raspy voice of hers ‘That’s where we’ve just been, girl, and
there’s where we’re going to go next.’ I used to think it was some sort of
game, and I would take a grubby chocolate-stained finger and draw a line from
one dot on the paper with the odd names and random lines forming misshapen boxes,
and I would drag it over some other random lines into a different misshapen box
to rest on the dot with the odd name that she was pointing to. Then, somehow,
we would miraculously arrive there, carried hundreds or thousands of miles over
unnamed strips of tar in a fantastic moving box. We might’ve been for
travelling a day, or maybe two, or heck, even ten, but in the end it wouldn’t
matter, for we got there all the same, and I would hop out of the car and
greedily fill my lungs with clean air and all of a sudden the past few days
spent in my travelling house would be blotted out like the words of the
second-hand books my Nana would buy. Books. They were the very things that had
defined my childhood just as they defined their capricious characters on their
yellowed pages. They were marvellous, those books were, what with the whimsical
lands and the eccentric people, and often I would fancy myself in the role of
those titular players, travelling from city to city in my fantastic moving
house. “How’d you do, Mr. Rabbit?” And the store clerk would just sit there
staring at me, for no grown girl of my exalted age of nine had any
justification for calling him a rabbit, no matter how much said girl wished she
were in fact in Wonderland instead of a grungy Seven-Eleven. But he would sell
her the milk all the same, and off she would go, hopping and skipping, and he,
under his breath, would probably remark something along the lines of ‘Why, very
well, Alice. In fact, I was just on my way to a tea party. Care to join me?” But
of the course the girl could never know this for sure, for by the time he
opened his mouth she was already out the door and in another world, perhaps one
filled with mermaids and flounders and forbidden love. It was not until later that I learned that
mermaids and talking rabbits were the sort of mythical things that were the
basis of fairy tales, of children’s stories. Such lessons are not to be taught
lightly, for they do not bear the innocent brand of not dog-earing the pages of
my book or setting it down in such a way that it would crease the spine. No;
memories from that particular day are forever embedded in my brain; a short,
cruel film on undying replay. Even now, when the pitching of the car instills
an unbeatable sense of drowsiness upon me, and I stare out the grimy window to
an unfamiliar, impersonal landscape, I am drawn back into the past; a mere fly
trapped in the mocking web of an all-too-well-known spider. “Daddy,” I
asked my father one day, for I was just starting to grow up and into longer
novels, and having just finished a tattered, dog-eared copy of the Magician’s
Nephew I was mightily exhausted. The small trailer rocked up and down, up and
down, and I myself was rocked half to sleep. Out of the corner of my eye I saw
a sandy canvas painted with rolling brown strokes and speckled with angry
flecks of green, but this time I was not entranced by it; I was not drawn into
another universe populated with blasé cowboys and robust belles with their
austere braids capped under a floppy hat. There were no grotesque scorpions
with their vituperative stingers or cunning snakes curled around emerald
cactuses with beads of venom leaking from their expectant mouths. I would not
excitedly yelp for my father to bring the vehicle to a halt at the nearest
town, and then beg for him to check us in to the nearest motel where I could
feast my fervent eyes on the words of a wild-west novel. No; spontaneity was
for children, and I was no longer a child. I was well on my path to adulthood,
and being an adult meant planning ahead; looking to the future, not living in
the present. Or so I thought. And what better way to plan ahead than to do what
I watched my nana do day in and day out? “Daddy, here,
have a look at this map.” “Not now,
sweetie, I’m driving.” “No, it’ll
only take a second.” Silence. “I promise.” A heavy sigh,
and then the whining complaint of the brakes as they allowed the hefty vehicle
a short sojourn on the side of the road. “What is it?” Excitedly, I
grabbed the map and carefully rubbed off a thin layer of dust before thrusting
it in his face, so close he had to narrow his eyes and strain his head back an
inch to read it. “I don’t see
anything.” I sighed.
Adults never did. They always had to
wait for us insightful not-quite-yet-adults to see it for them. “That’s
because it’s not on the map. I need your help to find something.” Short,
concise sentences. I had long learned to make myself clear quickly and
succinctly when talking to adults. I often saw what I said go into one ear and
out the other, never fully processing in that alien brain of theirs. At least
this was how I found myself speaking to my father and the store clerk I’d
called a rabbit and the vegetable vender who I’d asked for the magic beans. But
not my Nana. No, no, no; my Nana was special. If not for her sinewy,
pulled-back hair the colour of moonlight and her leathery vein-marbled hands
and her heavy skin that made her face sag and pulled down the corners of her
eyes, I would have thought her a child. Though shrouded in old material, I knew
her to be young at heart. And that, I’d decided, would allow her to live longer
than any of the new material adults with the fake tongues and dying hearts.
Now, that I look back, I wonder why I even wanted to be an adult in the first
place. Perhaps I was confident I would become like Nana; eternal in spirit.
Such fallacies, such delusions crowded my mind at the tender age of thirteen. “Will it take
a long time?” I sighed,
another long, heavy, exasperated sigh, and tried to quiet the sound of my eyes
rolling in their sockets. “Does it
matter?” “Well, yes it
does. I was driving.” Driving where? I asked
silently, but instead bit my lip and said: “No, I don’t
believe it will. I was just wondering whether you’ve heard of Narnia.” He laughed
then, a sonorous, hollow laugh that rang in my ears that night and in the
thousands of other sleepless nights that followed. I frowned for a second,
confused, the creases crinkling my unmarked forehead. The confusion soon gave
way to anger, but he only kept on laughing, and so I stamped my foot in
frustration, demanding an answer. “Why, what a
silly question.” “Why is it
silly?” The blood was truly boiling in my veins now and heat was rushing up to
meet my face. But instead, he just ignored me. “I suppose
it’s the fault of all those stupid books Nana gives you. My, it’s about time I
have a word with my senseless mother.” His dull eyes focused on mine, and in
that instant I poured all of my bitter resentment and rage into one hot melting
gaze, hoping against hope that I could see the blazing fury igniting my eyes
reflected in his, and then he would understand and lower his gaze and apologize
profoundly for calling books ‘stupid’ and Nana ‘senseless’. But instead he just
trudged on, an oblivious bull slogging into a china shop. “Did you by any chance just recently finish
the chronicles of Narnia?” You
think?! I wanted to roar out loud, condemning his
thick-headedness and lack of awareness and that of every other adult in the
whole wide world. But I did not, for despite my hysterical vehemence I was
still afraid, afraid that I would say something wrong and then he would cease
to be my father anymore and become just some regular adult in a world full of
regular adults. He mistook my silence for acknowledgement
and continued on, but this time in a more gentle tone of voice, almost
soothing. “Sweetie, there’s no such thing as Narnia.
It’s just a story. A myth.” It took some sitting down and some
explaining and then some calming down before I finally understood, before he
finally uttered the words ‘it’s not real’ and my entire world crashed down on
top of my raw head. I suppose for other children it’s easier, what with going
from believing in Santa Claus, to having the older kids whisper ‘You don’t
really believe in that stuff, now do you?’, to finally growing up and
whispering to the younger kids: ‘You don’t really believe in that stuff, now do
you?’ The other children; the normal children who went to school and lived in
solid homes and didn’t have everything they’d ever believed in torn away from
their grubby chocolate-stained fingers. But all it took was a single moment of
realization for me to accept it all: adults did not chase after stupid fairy
tales and that was that, and that was probably also why adults had no plan in
mind; instead they just drove about aimlessly with no real destination. I could
never be like Nana; for Nana had completely skipped over the stage of not
believing and went straight to opening her heart and spreading her wings wide
and flying. I had no wings, at least not anymore, not after my father had told
me that angels weren’t real. Angels: what a disjointed fantasy, one that could
only have been conjured by the mind of a naïve child. I both long and hate that
child, for she is no longer a part of me, and never will be again. Because that
day, in a rolling caravan travelling to God-knows-where, I ceased to be a
child. That tiny spark; the flaming part of me that made me so child-like was extinguished. It died,
along with every other story and myth and creature that I had long thought
true. And if you don’t believe me, all you have
to do is take a look at the dust-coated surface of my map. © 2012 SomeoneSomewhereAuthor's Note
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Added on November 4, 2012Last Updated on November 7, 2012 Tags: short story, the way, mobile home, alice in wonderland, narnia, the little mermaid, believe Author
SomeoneSomewhereAboutOne day, I'm gonna think of something witty to write here. You just wait more..Writing
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