The Wayward; The Way to Reward (Chapter II)

Chapter Two: The Road

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I.

The child stepped through the gate of air—and found himself on a road.

Not a road he had ever seen before. Not made of stone, not made of dirt, not made of anything solid. It was a road made of light—thin, yellow, the same light that had been calling him from the other side.

It didn’t burn. It didn’t blind. It simply held him, like a hand that had been waiting to catch him.

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II.

He looked back.

The gate was gone.

Not closed—gone, as if it had never been there. As if the only way forward was, in fact, forward.

He turned again, and saw them.

Figures. Walking.

Some were ahead of him, their shapes small in the distance. Some were behind him, still emerging from their own gates, their own collisions, their own unanswered questions.

None of them spoke. None of them looked at each other.

But they all walked in the same direction.

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III.

The child fell into step beside an old man—or what looked like an old man. His back was curved, his hands were empty, and he walked with the slow, careful pace of someone who had been walking for a very long time.

“Where are we going?” the child asked—not with his mouth, because he didn’t have one, but with the part of him that still remembered how to ask.

The old man didn’t look at him.

“We are going to see the Old Man,” he said.

“Who is the Old Man?”

The old man smiled—a small, crooked smile, like a crack in dry earth.

“He is the one who knows what it’s like to be stopped.”

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IV.

They walked in silence for a while.

The child noticed that the old man’s feet didn’t quite touch the road. They hovered, just above it, like he was walking on the memory of ground.

“Were you stopped too?” the child asked.

The old man nodded.

“I was stopped by a word,” he said. “A word I said that I couldn’t take back. A word that changed everything. I have been walking ever since.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

The old man laughed—a dry, quiet laugh.

“I stopped looking,” he said. “Now I just walk.”

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V.

Ahead of them, another figure—a woman, young, with something in her hands. The child couldn’t tell what it was. It looked like a bundle of cloth, or maybe a bundle of air.

“What is she carrying?” the child asked.

The old man squinted.

“She is carrying what she lost,” he said. “She doesn’t know how to put it down. So she carries it.”

“Is that what we all do?”

The old man looked at the child—really looked at him, for the first time.

“No,” he said. “Some of us learn to put it down. And when we do, it turns into the road.”

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VI.

The child looked down at his own hands.

They were empty.

But they didn’t feel empty. They felt like they were waiting—waiting for something to be placed in them, or waiting to be released from something they didn’t know they were holding.

“What am I carrying?” the child asked.

The old man didn’t answer.

He just pointed ahead.

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VII.

At the end of the road, the child could see a light.

Not the thin, yellow light that had guided him through the gate.

A different light.

Warmer. Older. Like a candle that had been burning since before the world began.

“That is where the Old Man sits,” said the old man.

“What does he do there?”

“He waits.”

“For what?”

The old man smiled again—that same small, crooked smile.

“For you.”

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VIII.

The child stopped walking.

For the first time since the collision—since the moment he had been stopped—he felt something other than the road under him.

He felt seen.

Not by the old man. Not by the figures ahead or behind. But by the light at the end of the road.

It knew his name—even though he didn’t have one anymore.

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IX.

He started walking again.

Not because he knew where he was going.

Not because he had found what he was looking for.

But because the light at the end of the road

was waiting for him.

And that was enough.

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End of Chapter Two.