Read Online Forever the Road (A Rucksack Universe Fantasy Novel) by Anthony St. Clair - Free Book Online

what would make Jay forget himself and “follow what he would never follow” anyway?
    Jade shook her head. “You’ll figure it out in time,” she said to herself. “Do your duty, and duty will show you the way.”
    For a moment, the memory of Jay’s green-and-gold eyes left her mind, and she felt focused on her purpose, on her work, again. A moment’s heated rush. Some sense of attraction. Well, Jade reasoned, I’m still only human. More or less. No one ever said we couldn’t feel a bit of a flush toward someone. Just as long as it doesn’t get in the way of what I have to do.
    She started to let the directive fall from her hand, the way she had hundreds of times before. Once it left her person, the sheet of paper would always disappear. No flames or puffs of smoke; as the paper drifted to the floor, you would start to see the floor through the paper, until the sheet had faded away into nothing. Or not nothing. What happened after the paper disappeared, where it went, she did not know; Jade always figured The Management simply moved the sheets into some sort of filing system. Even when managing existence itself, every management had to have an office, and every office had to have its filing.
    But her heart beat faster again as she thought of his bright eyes, the long years and hard miles behind his gaze. Jade couldn’t let go of the sheet of paper. The directive was seared onto her brain, but the realness of the words on the page pulled at her. For the first time in her career as a Jade, she ignored policy, folded up the directive, put it back in its envelope, and tucked it into her back pocket.

    T H E TROUBLE with hostels is the stairs , Jay thought as his legs wobbled him back from Jigme’s place. And hostels always had stairs.
    Well, except that one place in Ireland, but that was an exception in so many ways.
    They could never be grand, sweeping staircases, either—no wide, perfectly spaced, ergonomically correct steps that fit your struggling stride. Hostel stairs were always barely as wide as your pack. With every step, the backpack fabric would rub on the walls, sometimes resulting in a new look for your pack, depending on the quality of the paint. Every time you moved, you barely moved. The friction of wall and pack conspired to hold you still, while you burned energy you didn’t have just to get to your bed and collapse.
    If the narrow stairways didn’t get you stuck, there was always a turn in the steps, some small landing that would make sardines claustrophobic. That always resulted in a few embarrassing moments of shifting back and forth, trying to turn a little to one side or the other, anything to get you free and trudging again.
    Due to some twisted law of the universe, Jay had concluded, getting stuck on hostel stairs also compelled someone from an upper floor and someone from a lower floor to need to use the stairs at the same time. Then came the tricky negotiation of who continued on their way first, while the other two hapless travelers tried to squeeze themselves into the wall so the other could pass.
    In these inevitable situations, the laden backpacker always lost.
    As the first traveler passed and then the second traveler passed, Jay breathed out hard and extricated himself from the wall. His legs shook. His feet throbbed.
    There was still one more flight of steps to go.
    “Leave the pack with Jade,” Rucksack had encouraged him as they went with Jigme. But Jay just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t letting the pack out of his sight until he fell asleep—and even then, he was seriously considering chaining his wrist to the pack, just to be on the safe side.
    Bollocks , he thought, in a part of his mind that seemed far away and somehow not fatigued. He tried to ignore that part of his mind, but it persisted. It has nothing to do with the pack, he thought. You just couldn’t deal with seeing her again.
    Jay started up the last landing. He was almost to the third floor.
    His memories of Jade