Crossroad

A tree stands alone at the end of a long and winding road. It marks the end of one journey and the beginning of others. Before its twisted, ancient trunk, the road splits in two, the only place since its beginning when it had done so. To one side or the other, all travellers must go.

Eventually.

-0-

Sean stopped before the gnarled tree and looked up into its leafless branches. It was not a kind he could remember ever having seen before, though the thought does not intrigue him as it might once have done. He stood beneath its spreading boughs, aching feet weary from the long, long walk to this place and turned to look behind him.

The road was long, though he could see most of it from where he now stood. Perfectly straight runs the last stretch, his own footprints still visible in the greyish dust. Something tugged at his memory, something important though he cannot quite nail it down. With a shrug, he marveled at how far down the road he has come. His knees and back ached, it must have been a very long walk.

Shading his eyes against the pale light from the overcast sky, he tried to see where he came from. Up to a point, the road was clear and he could even see a few tiny, almost familiar figures; people, each steadily walking towards the spot where he now stood. Beyond that the world was… not dark, though it could not be seen. Hazy might be a better descriptor. The limits of his vision, maybe.

With a shake of his head, he turned back to the tree and listened to the creaking of its branches in a wind so gentle he could barely feel it against his exposed skin. Reaching out to touch the bark, he marveled; the texture of it was familiar to him, as though he had run his fingers down this same spot countless times. Again a memory tugged at him, as gentle as a child’s hand on his sleeve, but evaded his remembering.

Music, soft and gentle, caught his attention. Turning around again, looking back toward where he had begun, two buildings swam into focus. They stood on opposite sides of the long and winding road, their walls flush on two sides with the main road and its branches. Over the door of each, in plain script under a mirrored image of a full pint over a stylized fork in the road, read the words “Inn At The Crossroads.”

Pushing through one of the doors without thought – the buildings were the same what did it matter which one he chose? – he threw a look over his shoulder and saw another figure pushing into the inn opposite. That brought him up short, and the other man too, also looking at him. Again there was the strangest sense of familiarity, but again the thoughts skated across his mind as though there were a skin of ice between them and him.

Clad all in grey, the other man look at him with bewilderment. Then blankness clouded his features, and Sean turned away, entering the building.

It was warm inside. He hadn’t noticed before that he had been cold. Sensation bled into his fingers as he stood just inside the slowly closing door, looking into the comforting gloom. The warm, steady air slowly leeched the biting cold from his bones, how had he not noticed it before? His ears burned and his aching joints cried out for rest, desperate to ease the burden after so long on the road.

Few people sat alone at scattered tables, heads bowed over drinks or bowls or small books. The inn was silent, a quiet made from absent things. An abandoned guitar sat on a stool next to a soundless fire, no low hum of chatter hung in the room. Behind the bar, a person stood, their eyes on Sean, carefully wiping a glass with a pure white cloth.

Trying to shrug off a tingle that was slowly crawling down his spine, Sean stepped towards the bar. With that first step the heat from the fire grew, his legs cried out for rest, and the murky faces of the diners gained a single degree of clarity.

A low blueish haze hung in the room as though the people around him all clutched smoldering pipes between their teeth. But as he looked around, none of the patrons had moved, no pipes or cigarettes glowed in their hands. Each of them kept their eyes down, focused on whatever was in front of them as though in a trance.

None looked up at his passing. His grey clothing did not rustle as he walked, each footfall against the polished wood floor was dead silent. Each step brought new sensations to his attention, the light, background scent of burning cedar logs and a subtle hint of spices on the air. The aroma of stew that rose from each table he passed was intoxicating, his eyes lingered longingly on each bowl, though he could see nothing in them.

Perhaps that was the cause of the haze which obscured the faces of the other patrons. The steam from their meals hanging in the warm, almost stuffy room could limit his vision but… but no. There were not enough people for that to make sense. Nor did smoke leak from the hearth that held the silent, blazing fire.

As though by long habit, Sean reached for his temple, trying to grasp something that was not there. He knew that he needed to clean… clean what? Running his fingers down his jaw, feeling the rough stubble of a recently shaved beard, he tried to remember. The knowledge was there, just out of reach, staring at him like a reflection in a mirror; he knew something was off about it, something was missing, but the closer he looked, the more normal that reflection seemed.

He was himself. The only person he had ever been and nothing had changed. Yet, something was missing, he looked around the murky room again, touched his face again, pressing a finger between his eyes as if to push something up. Push something back into place. Except nothing was out of place. There was nothing there.

Shifting his weight, turning on the spot to look around, his back complained again, compelling his feet toward the bar. He could ask his questions after he sat down. He could, but there were no questions to be asked. Sighing, the only sound in the room, he seated himself on one of the red-topped stools.

If he had looked, he would have seen himself in the polished brass of the bar top. Would have seen his own face and failed to recognize it. The face in the bar top was a stranger to him, a face that he hadn’t seen before. Or so it seemed.

Without sound, without seeming to move, the bartender placed a steaming bowl and a tall, frosted glass before him. The smell was something out of a memory, one that gently placed its hand on his shoulder, trying to get his attention. But the prospect of food was too enticing and he shrugged it off, letting the memory fade back into the haze around him.

His first taste of the stew was empty, not bland or unpleasant, but empty. He was aware of enjoying it, but it was as though the food had forgotten to bring along its flavour. Sean looked down at the next spoonful, a chunk of meat surrounded by vibrant vegetables. He could not smell it, though he brought it to his nose before his lips. The scent of the stew was in the air, it surrounded him, though it was not from the bowl or the spoon.

A second taste, and a third. A small loaf of warm, steaming bread was beside the bowl. Had it always been there? Of course it had. He chided himself, one really must pay more careful attention to one’s surroundings. Mechanically, he tore a piece off the loaf and dipped it into the stew. Something nagged at him, pulling his attention away from his meal, begging him to look over his shoulder. What could it be?

Lifting his head from his bowl, Sean looked first over one shoulder, then the other. The exercise was pointless, no one stood behind him and, near as he could tell, there was no one trying to get his attention. Stupid really, to be looking around like that, he returned to his meal.

Snapping his head around again, he was convinced that someone stood just behind him, waiting for the right moment to speak. Again, there was nothing.

With infinite tiny legs, the sense of being watched crawled across the neck, bringing something close to memory with it. There had been other feelings like this once, he was certain of that. He shuddered, gripping the rough-spun fabric of his grey tunic with bloodless knuckles. There was something watching him.

The thing, whatever it was, did not feel dangerous. Instead, it loomed behind him, simply waiting, as though the time was not yet right to speak. It was not angry, that much was clear from the sense of its gaze on his back. It was not dangerous, no, danger was not the word. Standing behind him, looming over his shoulder so close he felt he could reach out and touch it, something just waited. Inevitable.

Flavour came on the next spoonful of stew. A soft, savoury flavour just at the edge of perception. Again, it tugged on his memory. Almost as though he had had its twin some time before. Though when was a mystery, he could remember nothing before standing at the crossroad, the limbs of the ancient tree creaking in a gentle wind he could barely feel.

Another spoonful, then his hand was grasping the sweating glass, bringing it to his lips. As with the stew, he could barely taste or smell the beer. A sensation was there, lingering at the edges of awareness like the fading memory of a dream upon waking. He sipped again, trying to understand it. He suddenly knew that there was some kind of beer he was allergic to, but alongside came the realization that this was not that kind. Just as soon as the knowledge had floated to the surface, it sank again. Lost in the swirling sea of unknowing.

Glancing up from a bowl that was nearly empty, the flavours of the stew lingering on his tongue only after he had swallowed as though only the memory had remembered to arrive on time instead of the flavour, he saw the bartender standing before him. That same glass as before was in their hands, the pure white cloth slowly wiping its way around and around, cleaning dust or dirt invisible to all but the person cleaning it.

Sean waited, he did not know what to say, nor how to say it. There were questions, of course, but those questions needed words to be heard, and he had lost those. Idly he patted an empty pocket, hoping to find the sounds hidden there the way he had used to pat in search of… in search of what?

Again, he reached up to adjust something his body thought rested on his nose. Again he found nothing.

Minutes or hours passed before the bartender spoke, their voice slicing through the crushing silence. Breaking it the way water bursts the confines of a dam. Behind Sean, the sound of the fire suddenly filled the inn’s common room with a warm, merry crackling. Glancing back again, the bartenders words forgotten as soon as heard, he watched the dancing flames, aware of the sounds and the motions not quite matching. But as soon as the words stopped flowing, the sounds of the world around him vanished. He was plunged into the hollow, echoless silence again.

There was something funny in that. Something that he had the desire to bring up to… to whom? He had known someone once, a child who liked things where the words did not match the actors’ lips. But who was that person, and what was the thing they loved?

He was painfully aware of the memories skating on the other side of the clear ice that separated him from them. He knew himself, though he was a stranger to himself. Knew his name, but had forgotten that he belonged to it. Again the sense of something with its hand on his shoulder, patiently waiting, lingered on his mind, fighting for his attention.

Ignoring it, deliberately putting it out of his mind, he focused – or tried to focus – on the bartender, who was looking at him expectantly. They were not tall, nor were they short. He could not guess at age or sex or gender. They were at once fair and dark, with face mostly hidden behind a sweep of long hair though he sensed, more than saw, a vastness in their eyes. A void where expression or light should have been. Not in itself something frightening, but he shied away from the intensity of that eyeless stare.

“Sorry,” he said, surprised at himself for finding the words and the half-seen mouth of the bartender quirked in something like a smile. Something like one, almost like they had learned how to do it from a manual written by someone who had only ever heard of them in legend. “Would you mind repeating that?”

Still wiping the perfectly clean glass, the bartender repeated the question and Sean was certain he answered it. As had happened before, both the question and the answer vanished as soon as heard, swallowed by the incongruously silent hum of the room.

In one blink, the bartender was placing a tall, sweating glass before him. He blinked twice more in confusion, the stew bowl and previous glass had vanished. But… no. No the bartender must have removed them, put them down somewhere behind the bar and poured the second beer. It was the only reasonable sequence of events. Why could he not recall having seen it?

Hand caught in the process of reaching for the glass, he whipped around again. There had been a voice, a whisper, just there behind him. But the rest of the smoky room showed no evidence of anyone having ever been there.

Eying the other patrons where they sat, Sean reached up and touched the shoulder where he could swear the hand still rested and found only the rough fabric of his own knee-length tunic. Memories cried out for his attention and he pounded on the nearly transparent barrier between them and himself. If only he could reach them, if only his questions could be answered, if only-

Sean found himself outside the Inn again. He was out of breath, or at least he was gasping as though he should be. The crushing, desperate sensation to get air into his lungs was absent, however. His muscles acted on their own, sucking in air he did not need and could not feel as his chest ballooned out and crashed back to resting. Over and over again. Why?

Vaguely he recalled the Inn and looked back. It was still there, door standing open, inviting him back into its warm embrace. The taste of the stew lingered on his tongue, having finally found the way, trying to draw him back into the building, back to the bar, back to the… there was something about that bartender. Something they had said? Something they had done?

Sean wondered, suddenly aware of the cold, dusty road under his hands, what he was doing on the ground. There was the sensation of motion, of frantic movement that carried him away from the bar in a mad dash, out into the strange half-light of the overcast sky. Memory ended, petering out wearily like the last runner in a marathon just before the finish line.

He knew that there had been panic. Knew that he had run from something he did not want to face. But that was where memory stopped and sensation began. Rushing headlong away. Then the feeling of crashing, of pain, of gravity flipping its pull and dragging him to the ground. He had run headlong into something, or someone.

Across from where he lay, the mirror of the Inn at the Crossroads stood with door standing half-open. He knew, somehow he remembered, another person – someone else in grey robes had come sprinting out of the mirror inn. Sean knew he had collided with the other man and looked around to try and find where he had fallen. But there was no one else. He was as alone as he had ever been.

Picking himself up, Sean idly dusted down the front of his grey robes and looked from one to the other of the Inns at the Crossroad. Each one had the same warmly inviting air about it, the same sense that he had come home. Each one also held the knowledge of an absence, a missing something that marked them out as foreign, unwelcoming. But he could not give that something a name.

Right at the back of his mind, memories clamoured to be heard. Memories that he could barely recall. He had been inside one of these inns, hadn’t he? Yes… there had been a stew of some kind and a cold beer. The stew had been good, but he could not recall why. Only that he had eaten it and been satisfied. Strange. He had the sense that he normally paid very close attention to food and drink, why would he struggle to remember something just eaten? Unless it wasn’t just eaten, glancing at the grey, overcast sky, he wondered how long he had been inside.

Time did not seem to exist. Between his entering and leaving the Inn at the Crossroads, the pale, wan light from the heavy sky had not changed. Had it? He was certain there had been something… there must be something. He had been in the common room of the Inn for long enough to be served, then eat a bowl of stew and – there had been bread, hadn’t there? There was always bread with stew, that was one of life’s constants.

But where had he eaten it? There had been an Inn, right? An Inn where he had sat at a bar and spoken with… who? Tearing his eyes away from a sky that was uniform, without a hint of where the sun might be hidden behind the clouds, he looked around him again.

Sean stood alone at the end of a long and winding road. Before him, it stretched out of sight, blurring and hazing into obscurity. Down the road, figures of people plodded slowly along. Familiar figures of people, they were far from him, though. Too far to recognize, even if he could remember who they were. To either side, fields of greenish grey grass covered the horizon. He could feel a gentle wind as it blew off that seemingly endless plain, was aware of it tugging at his clothes with soft, teasing fingers.

Behind him stood the dead tree. The tree that was at once barren, alien, and deeply familiar. He stepped up to the tree, gazed into its leafless branches, and listened to the muted creaking of its branches as the wind blew of the plains around him. Beyond the tree, the grass waved in glimmering ripples in concert with the wind.

Except the grass did not wave in time with the wind.

Undulating, it rebelled against the wind’s insistence on which way it would blow. It writhed in counterpoint, rippling against the wind, joining together and breaking apart, calling to him. Greenish grey, it blended into the low-hanging clouds at the bleeding edge of vision, and it was mesmerizing. Beautiful and terrible, he could not take his eyes off it.

It coiled, writhed, undulated, drawing him forward.

Carefully walking around the bowl of the tree, he watched with mouth open as the grass danced for him. Its pattern changed, rustling at his attention almost as though the grass were alive. Almost as though it knew he was there. And knew that he was watching.

Something tugged at the hem of his grey tunic, and the wind changed direction. It ruffled through his shoulder length white hair, the ends brushing against his neck as the thing that was not grass ignored the shifting currents of air. It danced before his eyes, a writhing mass of greenish grey tendrils twisting, heaving, beckoning.

He tried to step forward, but the wind resisted him. Blowing contrary to the flowing of the false grass, which seemed to be calling him to wander free among its waving tendrils, it pushed him back towards the tree, back towards the crossroads. “Stay on the path,” the message was clear. And yet, the dancing of the greenish-grey tendrils lured him, he felt something deep within himself struggling to get closer, to embrace the plains.

Again, Sean lifted his foot, pushing against the wind, trying to follow the beckoning of the waves. No thought crossed his mind, there was only the desire, the need to be among those undulating tendrils. Yet there was still the voice, the barely audible screaming whisper in the back of his head, warning him to advance no further. Still he tried, as the wind howled and the waving tendrils danced.

If only he could get there, out among the waving strands of greenish-grey, lost and wandering until the answers came. Deep within, he knew that every question he had would be answered, out there under the grey, sunless sky but those answers would never be his so long as he remained on the path.

Gently, so gently that he might not have noticed it if the hand did not steady him against the wind, someone took his shoulder. Sean froze, wondering at the contact. The hand was cold, he could feel that coldness leaching into him, sucking in the warmth of his body like a child might on a milkshake. A strange thought, that. He’d never been one for milkshakes, though he wasn’t certain how he knew the fact.

The cold of that touch jolted through him. He had been cold before, so very cold. But what had driven it out of him? There had been warmth, a sense of safety and contentment, right? Where had that come from? He had been so very cold, the kind of cold that now leeched into his bones again from that hand on his shoulder.

Sean turned, looking into the face of the bartender. Beyond where they stood, he could see two mirrored buildings on either side of the long and winding road, their walls flush with the paths that branched off before the ancient tree. Little by little, the wind died as he looked at the bartender, past them at the buildings, and past them as well down the road into what he imagined eternity might look like.

He took a step, then another, responding to some unremembered request, and followed the bartender back towards the buildings. He turned when they did, and in the direction that they did, pausing before he entered the inn. Acting without understanding, he looked back over his shoulder and saw a man in the door across the street. He seemed vaguely familiar, and regarded Sean with blank, confused eyes before turning away. Behind him stood the familiar but nondescript form of the bartender.

Taking a seat at the bar, uncertain of who that other man had been, or what the bartender had said to him, he wrapped his fingers around a sweating glass of light-coloured beer. “I can’t pay for this,” he started to say, but the bartender waved their hand, it was thin, bloodless. The wind must have been colder than Sean had thought, but he accepted his drink and thought no more about it.

“What was all of that?” Sean didn’t know where the question had come from but was mostly certain he knew what it meant. The things outside, the waving, undulating tendrils of something that was not grass. But the bartender only shook their head; nothing could have been more clear, despite the lack of words. Stay away from that, it’s not for you.

“Can you tell me where I am?”

They pursed their lips, looking thoughtful behind their half-obscuring hair. Finally, seconds or hours later, they spoke. Sean nodded along, mouth falling open at the explanation forgotten as soon as heard, then stared in naked confusion at the person as soon as their words stopped flowing. The voice had no accent – not that it was a mirror of his own, therefore invisible to his ears, but rather that it was neutral, impassive. Completely devoid of character.

“I know you,” the bartender tilted their head at the words, a small smile playing at the corner of their lips. Yes, Sean found that he knew them, had been intimately aware of them for most of his life. But had never genuinely expected to speak to them.

“I never thought it would be like this.” Again, there was just the smile. Evidently, no one thought that this was how they would meet the bartender. “I’m right about you, aren’t I?” A nod, and a quiet word that, try as he might, he could not recall even as he heard it. “And that,” he waved towards the greenish-grey fields outside the warmth of the bar, “that is... one of the options?”

The bartender shook their head, saying something that refused to fix itself in Sean’s mind. But he responded to it, “The roads aren’t meant for everyone, but you think they’re for me.” The bartender nodded solemnly, looking out a previously unnoticed window at the expansive fields with an air of distinctive sadness. They had known each person, known everyone who had ever walked away into those fields and never returned. And they mourned their endless wandering. “Why can’t I remember who I was?”

Most people think they’d rage against going into infinity, think that they will at least try and defy the reaper when their turn comes. Sean got the sense he had always held such an expectation for himself, but then, he had never actually met the bartender before. A few close scrapes, that had grown further and further apart from one another as he aged, but never actually stood nose to nose and tried to resist.

Again, like the feel of a child on his arm, memory tugged at him. Looking down, he saw a child there, looking up at him with complete trust shining in his eyes. The boy was clearly frightened, lower lip trembling, and Sean lifted him into his lap where the boy sat quite comfortably and smiled at the bartender. Before the child was a small bowl of salted nuts, and Sean showed the boy that they were safe to eat by taking one himself.

Throughout the whole, he never stopped talking. Never stopped asking for and receiving answers he could not repeat. Slowly, the child grew warm in his lap, happily eating from the bowl. Until Sean finally asked the important question.

“Who was that going into the other building?”

The bartender’s face fell, not as though they had not wanted the question asked, but almost like it had been something they were avoiding. They spoke at length, words fading into feeling, leached of meaning as they coiled around his brain and left information in their wake. He knew what the other building was now, knew what it meant that he was both in his seat, and across the way. Knew, for the first time in his life, what it meant to be truly afraid.

“I thought maybe you used scales,” he said, trying to force a laugh so that the child in his lap wouldn’t know how frightened he was. There was no need to scare the boy, no need for him to know what kind of place he was in. The question of how this boy could interact with, could touch him, never crossed his mind. There was only the knowledge that he needed someone to look after him, and Sean seemed to be the one chosen for the post. “I want to try again, if that’s possible. Can’t imagine how you’d judge us like this.”

Shaking their head, the bartender said something else. Sean frowned, leaning forward. Had he understood that right?

“So it isn’t you?”

Again, Death shook their head.

“Then how-”

From his lap, the child caught his attention. Turning down to look, he instinctively brushed the hair out of the boy’s eyes. They were so familiar, the eyes that he had seen looking up at him for years. Even after they had grown old enough to be in the world on their own, they had still looked at him so trustingly.

More memories skated across the ice under which he waited. Memories he desperately wanted, yet could not grasp. But, with the boy in his arms, he knew what those memories were. He did not feel them, did not fully comprehend that they were his, but he knew them. Knew what the sound of cracking ice was like; knew the sudden, heart stopping terror that could lance through one’s chest at a desperate child’s scream; knew how it felt to have the ice give out underneath him; intimately knew the shock of cold as winter water closed over his head; knew how hard it had been to throw the frozen, small, shallowly breathing body out over his head to freedom; knew what it felt like to fail.

Sean looked at the boy again, tears for actions he knew were his own but could not remember doing streamed down his cheeks. Two choices were left for him to make. One it seemed was the sensible option, he had failed, whatever lay down those two other roads was too good for him. And yet… and yet there was the boy in his lap, looking up at him. Love and trust shone in the boy’s eyes, mingling with fear and the uncertainty demanded by the Inn at the Crossroad.

What he did not see was blame. Nor reproach. Nothing save acceptance. How could the boy forgive him for what he had done? Or rather, what he had failed to do? But clearly, there was nothing to forgive. Nothing left but for Sean to choose one road, or the other.

“How long do I have?”

The child placed his small hand on Sean’s cheek. “You have all the time you need, grandpa,” he said.

-0-

Sean sits at a table in the tap room of an inn that stood on either side of a long and winding road. It is the road that everyone must go down, and the inn stands at the end. Beyond its walls, fields of greenish grey roll far beyond the limits of vision. It is not grass, those tendrils that dance and warp counter to a cold wind one who stands before their tree can barely feel.

He sits, isolated but not alone, and stares into a beer that was always cold but from which he never drinks. Were he to leave the comfortable warmth of that place, he would find himself emerging from the building’s twin across the road. Come face to face with his memories, with the man he had been before failing to save his grandson from that hole in the ice. And when that happened he would have to make a choice.

The option to go back, be born again and try a second time to live a life worth living would be open to him. Or he could move on, down the other road. Walk and walk and walk until he was outside the knowledge of death themself. His grandson’s hand would be in his whatever he chose, the boy who never thought to forgive him, as there was nothing to forgive.

Past the Inns at the Crossroads, a gnarled tree stands alone. The only thing one can see apart from the road, the sky, and the undulating fields stretching to infinity on every side. Once it had been born, then it had been young, then it had been old, now it is dead. Withered with the passing of the long years. It is not a tree that Sean had ever seen, nor one whose name he knows, but it has grown with him all his life.

Before the tree, right at its petrified feet, the road splits. And to one side or the other, all travellers must go. The choice must be made, to turn right or left. Both are unknown, but one must choose between them, there at the end of the road.

Eventually.

-0-

Fin.

-0-

I've been writing this one for like 16 months! I do so hope you liked it.