The Talisman

anyplace else. The Territories could be good, and it seemed he felt the goodness around him now, as calmly, inarguably sweet as the smell of the haystack, as clear as the smell of the Territories air.
    Does a fly or a ladybug feel relief if an unexpected gust of wind comes along and tilts the pitcher plant just enough to allow the drowning insect to fly out? Jack didn’t know . . . but he knew that he was out of Oatley, away from Fair Weather Clubs and old men who wept over their stolen shopping carts, away from the smell of beer and the smell of puke . . . most important of all, he was away from Smokey Updike and the Oatley Tap.
    He thought he might travel in the Territories for a while, after all.
    And so thinking, fell asleep.
    2
    He had walked two, perhaps three miles along the Western Road the following morning, enjoying the sunshine and the good, earthy smell of fields almost ready for the harvests of summer’s end, when a cart pulled over and a whiskery farmer in what looked like a toga with rough breeches under it pulled up and shouted:
    ‘Are you for market-town, boy?’
    Jack gaped at him, half in a panic, realizing that the man was not speaking English – never mind ‘prithee’ or ‘Dost thou go cross-gartered, varlet,’ it wasn’t English at all .
    There was a woman in a voluminous dress sitting beside the whiskery farmer; she held a boy of perhaps three on her lap. She smiled pleasantly enough at Jack and rolled her eyes at her husband. ‘He’s a simpleton, Henry.’
    They’re not speaking English . . . but whatever it is they’re speaking, I understand it. I’m actually thinking in that language . . . and that’s not all – I’m seeing in it, or with it, or whatever it is I mean.
    Jack realized he had been doing it the last time he had been in the Territories, too – only then he had been too confused to realize it; things had moved too fast, and everything had seemed strange.
    The farmer leaned forward. He smiled, showing teeth which were absolutely horrid. ‘Are you a simpleton, laddie?’ he asked, not unkindly.
    ‘No,’ he said, smiling back as best he could, aware that he had not said no but some Territories word which meant no – when he had flipped, he had changed his speech and his way of thinking (his way of imaging , anyway – he did not have that word in his vocabulary, but understood what he meant just the same), just as he had changed his clothes. ‘I’m not simple. It’s just that my mother told me to be careful of people I might meet along the road.’
    Now the farmer’s wife smiled. ‘Your mother was right,’ she said. ‘Are you for the market?’
    ‘Yes,’ Jack said. ‘That is, I’m headed up the road – west.’
    ‘Climb up in the back, then,’ Henry the farmer said. ‘Daylight’s wasting. I want to sell what I have if I can and be home again before sunset. Corn’s poor but it’s the last of the season. Lucky to have corn in ninemonth at all. Someone may buy it.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Jack said, climbing into the back of the low wagon. Here, dozens of corn were bound with rough hanks of rope and stacked like cordwood. If the corn was poor, then Jack could not imagine what would constitute good corn over here – they were the biggest ears he had ever seen in his life. There were also small stacks of squashes and gourds and things that looked like pumpkins – but they were reddish instead of orange. Jack didn’t know what they were, but he suspected they would taste wonderful. His stomach rumbled busily. Since going on the road, he had discovered what hunger was – not as a passing acquaintance, something you felt dimly after school and which could be assuaged with a few cookies and a glass of milk souped up with Nestlé’s Quik, but as an intimate friend, one that sometimes moved away to a distance but who rarely left entirely.
    He was sitting with his back to the front of the wagon, his sandal-clad feet dangling down, almost touching the hard-packed dirt of the Western Road. There was a lot of traffic this morning, most of it bound for the market, Jack assumed. Every now and then Henry bawled a greeting to someone he knew.
    Jack was still wondering how those apple-colored pumpkins might taste – and just where his next meal was going to come from, anyway – when small hands twined in his hair and gave it a brisk tug – brisk enough to make his eyes water.
    He turned and saw the three-year-old standing there in his bare feet, a big grin on