The Walker

Ten Years ago...

The girl stood on the steps, holding her mother’s hand. The shiny faced men who hid their real faces had come and ransacked the house, taking all the books, papers and notes her parents had managed to collect. Her father lay across the front porch, huddled and cowed, face held to stop the bleeding of his nose. His shotgun lay next to him, still smoking from the pot shots he had taken at the big metal cart. He wasn’t moving much and was lucky the men hadn’t just shot him back. She knew better than to move to help him.

The men who hid their faces had hit her brother too, because he was bigger than she was and had tried to help her father. The men had a boss, who only half hid his face. His eyes were hidden behind shiny, dark glass and his face was pointy, long beak like nose crowning a sad looking mouth. He was tall, taller than her father, but thinner. He was like a big bird, she thought, one of the ones who ate dead things. He had the same hunched shoulders, and a flapping cape like wings; she could almost see him spreading the heavy, tattered leather and flying off, her father in his clutches to feed his ugly bird-children.

As she watched the no-faced men ‘teaching’ her brother, she looked up at her mother. She looked sad, but the girl wasn’t sure what she was sad about. Was she sad for her father, coughing in the dirt? Or for the treasures the men were taking away from them?

Her mother and father had explained why it was important to hide the treasures from these men, said it was important to ‘preserve knowledge’, but the girl hadn’t known what they meant. She did know hiding the books was pointless though. Everyone got caught around here. Their neighbour, the nice old lady who had always smiled and waved in the mornings, had been taken away for a while by other no-face men. When they brought her back, she had stopped smiling. She stood watching through the cracked windows of her home over the road, expressionless and still. Everyone got caught. Everyone except the Walkers.

The bird man had stooped to say something to her father, still lying in the dust in front of their house. The girl had no idea what he could be saying, but she supposed it didn’t matter; more warnings about learning, more of the same that she had heard all of her life. The bird man straightened up and glanced at the two of them stood on the concrete steps leading to her house. He simply looked on, doing nothing.

She suddenly wished she could see his eyes, but they were still hidden behind the dark glass. He said something in a soft voice that didn’t quite carry over the winds that blew through their town, and the lesson was over. One of them lugged a sack full of the treasures her parents had safeguarded and they made their way to the metal cart still waiting.

As the vehicle roared into life, sputtering thick clouds of oily smoke, her mother let out a sob and ran to her father, clutching his head and mopping the blood from his nose and chin. The girl slowly walked to where her brother sat nursing his gut, where the shiny faced men had left him winded.

“I told you” she said quietly, holding her hand out to help him up. “I told you they’d come. It’s the rules. That’s what they say”.

Her brother spat and stood shakily, ignoring her outstretched hand. “I know what you told me” he gasped, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “But you know we gotta protect it. It’s important, like Mum and Dad said. How can you not care?”

He glared down at her, squinting through his tears. She sighed and wondered how her older brother couldn’t see it. She did care, she cared a lot. She cared for her father, strong and dependable, full of his morals and lessons. She cared for her mother, clever and quick, who knew lots about the world outside of the village. She cared for her brother, smiling and tall, like her father, but much sillier. She cared about her neighbour, who never smiled. And she cared for books, and for words. The man had known better ways of doing this, she was sure.

He had strolled into the town slowly, almost nonchalantly, smoking too many cigarettes and smiling, as if everything was funny. He wore a wide brimmed hat, like in old timey pictures. At his side was a large sack, tied off securely at the top, and he carried a large gun, holstered to his leg.

Guns meant trouble, and most of the town had stayed inside and watched from behind threadbare curtains as the stranger wandered through town. Only the girl had braved the winds outside and gone to speak to the stranger. She remembered his smell; unwashed body odour and cigarette smoke.

She remembered his voice, too, which was deep and almost painfully slow, as if he weighed each word up, valuing it, before using it. She couldn’t remember what they actually spoke about, but she had offered to take him around the town for ten pence. He had laughed at her cheek, but had agreed, flicking the coin into her open palms.

They chattered as they rambled around the concrete town, occasionally stopping at shops or taverns. At every business that was closed, she would ask what he was looking for, and every time he would ignore her. At every open shop or pub, he would go in and speak quietly, and she would be made to stay outside; every time he came out he would check the untidy bag hanging from his shoulder.

She remembered now how he had avoided the town’s militia, ducking aside or pulling his hat lower over his face.

After nearly a day of walking and touring all of the shops and bars she could think of, they had stopped.

The walker had patted her on the head, thanked her, and had started to walk out of the town, when the girl had called to him.

“Hey! Mister! You never told me what you were looking for! Did you find it? It was treasure, wasn’t it? You were looking for treasure.”

The man had chuckled, walked back to her and knelt down in the dust, his cloak flapping lightly in the wind. Their faces were level, but she could only see her own wide, slightly frightened eyes reflected in his half visor, which was silvery but still not see through.

“What treasure do you mean, girl?”

The girl swallowed, he was more imposing up close; he still smiled, but there was something else there... something hidden away. His stubble seemed rougher and darker, and his smell was so strong it seemed to push her backwards on her heels.

“Not shiny treasure, like in stories. Real treasure”

It had seemed that they were still then for an age, his eyeless visor shining in her face, her staring into her own reflection. Even the wind had seemed to die down, to listen to what the walker would say.

She had flinched when the man abruptly reached into the sack at his hip. He held something out to her. She looked slowly down at a book. It was old, cracked and peeling; words had once been delicately printed on its surface, but all that remained were the letters TRE; the rest of the cover was torn. She had stared, entranced.

She had nearly missed him speaking, “How old are you, girl?”

She hadn’t looked up when she replied, “I’m ten. Ten and a bit... Is this for me? I never had a book before. Are you a Walker? My dad told me some stuff about Walkers.”

In fact, she realised, looking over at her father in the dust, sitting up now and muttering at her mother to fetch some cider, that her father had told her a lot about these walker men, with their guns and books.

Felosophers, her Dad had called them. Felosophers were a kind of old soldier, he had said, that went around looking after books. He had spoken about something called the Order, and how Walkers and Felosophers were once the same, but she had gotten confused. Her mother had refused to explain until she was older. She thought it was too horrible.

She had never met a Walker before, until that one had arrived and given her a book of her own, a book still hidden behind one of the loose bricks in the old, orange building marked W/C on the edge of town: the book about adventures and exciting men, with wooden ‘ships’ that swam the ocean, searching for treasure in faraway lands. But the men in this book weren’t looking for real treasure, not like the Walker that had come through town.

As her brother stood watching the no-eyed men’s driving machine disappear over the horizon, and her father sat shaking with his mug of cider, she remembered what the Walker had said to her, after he had asked how old she was.

“Keep this safe, girl, and show it to me if we meet again. Remember; knowledge is better than strength. Learn how to read, but not just books, people too. Learn all you can, and about all you can, from who you can. Keeping books in one place doesn’t help. What I do, that’s all that works. These,” he indicated the book in her hand, “Are the key to everything. Knowledge is power, girl. Remember that.”

He had left her then, without another word, and walked out of the town, not looking back.