Path

The Path

Sauntering down the road I thought, ‘Ha, some road, more of a trail.” Oh how I wished to understand how just a few generations ago people could move down this path at 60, 70, or even 100 miles in one hour.

My had held tightly the large heart shaped gold locket more precious to me than life itself. Hanging around my neck, it held the code. No one is my village knew or understood it, or so I thought until, one night while a bit intoxicated, Meddy4 whispered in my ear.

“Sleep with me tonight and I will tell you what you need to know.” Meddy4 was training under the guidance of his father, Meddy 3, to become the next meddy.

Strange that they never had a real name. It had something to do with past dangers. They knew but would never tell us curious ones. As greedy as I was to know anything and everything I gave in to the bait he dangled in my ear.

“Tell me some now and some after but I have to know if you really know anything.”

“I know the code symbols to pass on info with saying a word. Remember when I was gone walking 3 years ago? Gone two months? Then gone six months? There is a place that teaches that. We keep our books hidden. No more printing presses allowed.”

After I had paid the extortion price, I demanded, “Now tell me all!”

In a sleepy spent way he mumbled the story. “We aren’t allowed a real name because long a go there had been a strange kind of war and they had use a medical excuse to give people shots, vaccinations, they were called. It kill a lot of people and some people went nuts and were killing the ones they had gotten the shots from. No names, no way to tract the right one who had done it.”

“They forced them to get this vac…vaccination?” I asked as I was dressing as fast as I could.

“No, just a strange war of the mind. Fear is the way they did it. I don’t know why. I wasn’t at the school long enough.”

“Why don’t we have a school?”

“Come back into my bed - you ask too many questions.”

“I have to know. Where is this school?”

“You can’t go. You don’t have a medic badge. They don’t let just anyone in, you know. They have guards. Also a printer….so fascinating. They don’t let ordinary people have those things anymore.”

“I will come back tomorrow, OK.”

“No, no I can’t tell you more. You might blab.”

“If you tell me the way, I will go and find out for myself.”

“Just go north on the highway until you see a old overhead sign that says Green Fields Next Exit. That right - you can’t read.” His laughter was so hard to bare I almost let the tears come.

“Make the marks for me once in the ground. You can wipe them out. No one will know.”

“OK, but only once. You had better remember.”

We walked outside. He drew the marks. I stared at them, burning them into my brain. I turned around and walked away as he wiped the ground smooth. I have been walking ever since. He hadn’t told me it was so far. It had been 10 days now and water was hard to find. The bread and cheese had been enough to sustain me. How I was going to get past the guards I didn’t know. Thoughts occupied more of my attention than my surroundings. Then I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was a hand rise above the pile of rubble to the left. I had to know, to see, even if it was bad. As I walked around the pile there lay an old man. Thin, just bones I would say. He moaned “Water, please, water”.

Giving him a small drink of warm, musty tasting water. He smiled, “So you are the one.”

“One what? I am looking for an overhead sign with code marks on it.” I hesitated a moment. This man was no threat so I opened the heart shaped locket. There I had scratched the marks I had seen in the dirt.

“Don’t go there. Those bastards nearly killed me for wanting everyone to have what we have there.” He hesitated and then continued.” But I had a dream that someone would come along to help .I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.”

“Teeth don’t have skin. Are you all right in the head old man?”

“Fine now that you are here.”

“But I have to know how to decipher the code. I have heard there are books that can tell you anything you want to know. I want to know a lot of things.”

“Do you have anything to eat?”

Reaching into my pack I pulled out the cheese and gave him a piece. With a big sigh he offered back to me hope. “If we go past Green Fields there is a town only 20 miles north on the other side of the highway. It is empty. All died because of the vaccine but there is a huge library there. I will teach you to read if you help me get there. There is a creek running through it for water and maybe some old stores of food. Don’t know about the stores but I have some seeds.”

My jaw dropped - no guards. Learn to read and all I have to do is keep this old man alive. That I did. Of course he died just two years later but not before I could read and also write the code. Now I am very gray but I have found others over the years, others as curious as I. We are only 27 here now and we are working on a plan to build a printing press. Many of the books are crumbling apart.

The greatest code word is “WHY” and the second “HOPE”. So thank you Meddy 4 for the info that put me on this path. But I also pity you for being stuck in the fears of the past.