The Town Isn't Dead
John hadn't been to a lot of towns in his nine years, but he knew a town in trouble when he saw it. And this one was in trouble. As he walked through the gate he noticed that no one was watching the gate, even though there was a guardhouse there, with a huge axe leaning against it. The streets were dirty, wagons lay on their sides or upside-down, every door and window was shut and bolted. And it was quiet. Very quiet.
John continued what he thought was the main street. Every once in a while he thought he felt someone's eyes on him, but by the time he turned to look, they'd be gone. If they were ever there to begin with. This town is a mess, he thought. Broken glass was all over the place, dead flowers drooped from broken flower pots, and the street was filled with pieces of burned wood.
"Hello," John shouted, but his voice just echoed. A few crows on top of a building jumped up, flapped their wings a few times, and settled back down. "Hello," he said again, "I'm supposed to help somebody. A sign showed the way to get here...." John stopped, realizing how foolish he sounded. He was thirsty. And hungry.
And almost as if he'd asked for it there appeared, on a doorstep, a tray with a glass and some bread. He looked up to see if he could see who put it there, but there wasn't anybody, at least anybody he could see. He went over to the doorstep, sat down, and picked up the bread. It was fresh, sort of. He ate it, then lifted up the cup.
He thought it had water in it (Coke was too much to hope for), but it didn't. It had wine. He knew it was wine from the sips he'd taken from his parents' glasses, and it wasn't something he wanted to drink. So he ate the bread, which at least quieted the rumbling in his stomach.
He heard the sound before he realized he heard it, and when he heard it he thought it was his stomach again. But it wasn't. It was sound between a belch, a fart, a hyena's laugh, and a squeaky bat. Around the corner came a cart pulled by a horse that looked like it was ready to fall over at any moment. The cart made the strange sound, its wheels tilted at an angle, the canopy over the bed of the cart swaying back and forth like palm trees in a tropical breeze. The canopy itself was made up of dirty clothes stitched together with string. And under the canopy sat what looked like a bunch of old torn clothes. Except that they moved. Slowly.
"Whoa!! Stop!!" The horse kept on moving, ignoring the voice (the hyena's laugh part of the noise). A head popped up, looked at John but didn't say anything, then turned back to the horse and said, again, in a high-pitched voice, ""I said stop the cart!!" The horse finally slowed down and looked back at the head, and John could swear he heard the horse say (but he wouldn't bet his life on it) "Is this good enough, or do you want me to go another foot or so?" The horse didn't really look like it wanted to go anywhere at all.
The head shook the rags off itself and a dwarf emerged, about three feet high, with an incredibly long filthy beard. "Pardon my appearance, kind knight, but...." and here he made a gesture that seemed to John to look like a hiccup with a burp at the end. He didn't know what it meant, but he nodded anyway and waited.
"I suppose you've come to see the king?" John shrugged and said, "Have I?" "There's no other reason to come to this town, especially since..." But here the dwarf bit his lip and shut up, and the horse, looking back again, shook its head as if it hadn't one good thought about the dwarf the entire time he'd known him.
"Especially since what?" John asked, eating up the last crumb of bread.
"Nothing, nothing," the dwarf said. "It's nothing at all." He looked around himself as if it were the finest day he'd ever seen. "Well, would you like to see the king?"
"I suppose I should," John said, and started to walk off. The horse started, too, and the dwarf, taken by surprise, fell over. The horse, John thought (but he wouldn't bet his life on it), smiled.
