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“All you do is leap. It’s a simple maneuver. Bend at your knees first,” said Tom.
“I’m just not convinced. It seems more complicated. Isn’t there danger?” asked Mr. Grey.
“It’s only a ditch.” Tom furrowed his brow in the direction of the shallow rut running beside the road, between himself and Mr. Grey.
Mr. Grey rubbed his knuckles, and glanced at the sun, and kicked up mushrooms of dust with his drumming foot, and hoisted his suitcase and violin coffin from the ground; all indicative of an anxiety to be underway. And yet, despite this anxiety, his feet stuck fast to the dirt road on his side of the ditch.
“Where’s your glory sense?” said Tom. He shook his head, decorated in its ubiquitous glaze of sweat. “Ruts and drains are common things, yet you’re shuddering.”
“It isn’t the ditch. I think it’s more the crossing. What about those birds?”
Mr. Grey gestured with his violin coffin at the one-legged birds squatting in the ditch. They were about the size of the pipkin stoat, but there were definitely more than one of them. Several dozen roosted in the nosebleed of wine running down the base of the ditch. They stared at Mr. Grey with beaks that were twisted, as though each had just sucked forcefully on a nugget of extremely sour candy.
Tom said, “You could throw me your fiddle, if that’s easier.”
“I just think it’s a wide ditch…”
Tom pulled his freshly-laundered, crisply-starched handkerchief from behind a zeppelin cloud of his folded robe. The fabric square looked tiny in Tom’s meaty hand. Metallic gilding on its frill glinted in the day’s shine as he wiped his brow. He said, “I’ve jumped ditches twice as wide, when I was a boy.”
“Is there a bridge we can cross?”
“Many days away.”
Mr. Grey swung the suitcase and violin coffin in an idle rhythm, like twin grandfather-ticker pendulums. He ground his heels, kicking up more dusty clouds, and looked to his left and right. The road hugged his side of the ditch in both directions. Both ditch and road eventually slithered over the rolling hills, out of sight.
Tom’s stomach grumbled.
Mr. Grey said, “Let’s find another crossing. A place that has closer banks.”
Tom seemed not to hear. “I slept in a ditch one time. But it was drier.”
“Tom, are there narrower spots?” Tom noticed Mr. Grey and followed the grey eyes up and down the rut. He shook his head. “Could we walk a bit? Let’s just stroll along the flanks. Let’s not jump with haste.”
Tom stretched and dabbed a particularly fat bead of sweat off his brow. He then carefully folded and stowed the handkerchief. “I’m too worn to waste walking.”
“Why don’t we follow the roads?”
Tom turned and pointed into the wilderness. “Our road goes that way.”
Mr. Grey saw The Wind That Smelled like Rain in the distance on Tom’s side. She played in the tall grass of the lumpy hills. She climbed the scattered poetrees and shook their needles. Her clouds were scant, and their shadows ran fast across the ground. She seemed to flee from the sunbeams gilding the grass. The sun’s light was a cold one though, and the grass and the poetrees waved like feral banners.
“There is a road then?” asked Mr. Grey. He relaxed, loosening his ground-in footing on the dirt.
“A figure of speech. There’s no road to the witch well. We’ll just cross the hills.”
“We won’t know where we’re going. We might become lost.”
“I know the right direction.”
Mr. Grey didn’t look reassured. He looked down at the rough dirt path on which he stood, and the dust he’d kicked up, gathering like mold over his shoes. He tried to picture the shoes without that road beneath them.
Mr. Grey eyed Tom suspiciously. He said, “It’s a far off place to dwell.”
“She must like her privacy.”
“And you’re a friend of this witch?”
“I do what I say. I said I’d introduce you.”
Mr. Grey still looked to his sides; to that dirt trail - no longer so rough or foreign looking - which cleft the wilderness in twain. Mr. Grey asked, “What if we… buy a compass? Back at a town shop?” Tom crossed his arms and stared hard across the gap. “We might still get lost. Even with a direction, there’s no guiding road.”
Tom uncrossed his arms and scratched at his bristly whiskers. “You’ll always be lost, the moment you part from home. Even on a road. The wilds are the same, with landmarks instead of signs; poorly traveled roads.”
Mr. Grey tapped his foot. He forced himself to stop - the dust cloud reached his hem now - and breathed deeply through his nose. He tried to look optimistically at the hills, and poetrees, and playing Wind, in the un-roaded land behind Tom. He took a second steadying breath; a second whiff of the comforting, caustic antiodor cologne.
With a last show of resistance, he said, “I’m not the best at leaping.”
Tom said, “Then I will catch you.”
Mr. Grey nodded, more to himself than to Tom. He stepped back a pace from the ditch’s edge. His arms swung the suitcase and coffin in their pendulum arcs, but wider. At the forward end of the swing, Mr. Grey followed them, letting the two articles add their momentum to his run. Just before the edge Mr. Grey bent his knees. He jumped from the road.
The twisted beaks and sharp eyes of the one-legged birds at the bottom of the ditch followed the grey cloud as it passed overhead.
Mr. Grey shoes touched the wavy grass at the perfect point to be just shy of sure footing. He landed on the exact right spot, where he could wobble at an uncertain angle for eternity. His body could wriggle infinitely for balance, and his laden arms would spin in endless wheels.
Tom saved Mr. Grey this indignity by grabbing his shoulder and pulling him onto flat ground.
Together, Mr. Grey and Tom left the road behind. Together, they set off into the pleasant, hilly yonder.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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