The Land of Broken Roads

Old weathered gray stonework lay silently in every direction. Seamless bricks of the same gray stone sat stacked in some places, often at corners of buildings, but most had collapsed. Empty door frames interrupted the square footings of vanished buildings and opened to dead streets. Lengths of cement or mortar, flat paving stones; tall, rounded pillars that held up nothing at all; featureless old statuary eroded down to lumps. Every sharp edge was worn round by eons of wind and rain, every surface bleached by the sun. No color but green and dirty white, and the rocky brownish hills surrounding the city.

Pillars lined the main thoroughfare, twice Socks’ height. Dirt suspected he would have been terribly impressed by them, if he’d seen them before the trees, or before seeing Mother. Instead, it left him feeling conflicted—in part, that he was so small, even in a human place, and in part, that humans couldn’t seem to build anything to rival the den. He’d been amazed by the temple in the forest, and still wanted to go back someday to see what was inside, but after spending several days inside the den, this whole city felt small.

The wolf pup jumped all the way up onto the nearest pillar and balanced atop it, all four paws bunched together and tail wagging furiously. Then he stepped forward to the next one, and the next, as gracefully as if that’s what the pillars were for in the first place.

“Are they sturdy? You won’t fall, will you?”

-No, they are sturdy. They don’t even wobble. I could knock one down, though. Want to see?-

“No, it’s been standing for so long it’d be a shame to knock it over now. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since humans lived here?”

-Mother never told me about this place. I’ll ask her later.-

“Are there any humans left? For real?” asked Dirt, trying to picture people walking these streets. Wearing clothing, men and women, boys and girls. All different sorts of people. He couldn’t picture it no matter how hard he tried. He could picture wooden dolls that looked like Home, though. Or himself. But it wasn’t right.

-Mother says there are. But not as many as there used to be, and they are far away from here.-

For the briefest instant, the dead roads filled with color and life. Bright, fluttering cloth hanging from buildings, every surface painted, the streets filled with feet and voices. But it was gone so quickly Dirt wasn’t even sure if it had been his own thought or something Socks had imagined, and it made the dead city feel even emptier.

“It feels like there aren’t any humans left. Just me,” said Dirt, growing melancholy.

He stepped off the road and into the doorway of a building whose white stone walls still reached taller than him in some places. They were even tall enough in the corners to reveal the sills of windows.

Dirt walked to the center of the sunny room with footsteps full of meaning, deliberate steps with head held high, as if he belonged there. He tried to recall the feeling of a building, of being in a place for humans, but the sunlight ruined it. No roof, not even much shade this time of day. On a whim, he pulled up a clump of grass and dug down the three or four inches to find the floor, smooth tiles of pale reds and greens and blues.

Dirt cleared some of the earth away with his hands to expose a little more, then a little more, and found intricate patterns of curved lines and shapes. The wolves might be huge and build huge things like the den, but they didn’t decorate, so that was something.

He walked from one end of the large room to the other, then through another doorway into a different room. What was it for, he wondered? What did people do in a place like this? Why would anyone need more than one room?

There was more to this building, but collapsed heaps of rubble kept him from seeing the rest of the floor plan. He dug down a few inches to the floor of this room as well and found more smooth tiles, but no pattern. These ones were all the same color. Disappointing.

He was being silly, he knew. He should be more excited by all this, but he felt how he felt.

Dirt stepped into the next building over, pacing through it without stopping, then to the next one. And the next. If he could see where the doorways were, he used them, and if not, he just stepped over the wall footings.

-What are you looking at over there?-

“I don’t know. Nothing, really. I’m just trying to figure out what these places were used for, or maybe think what it was like when people were still here. But it’s not doing any good.”

-This is a fun place.-

“Yeah,” replied Dirt. He wasn’t feeling it just now, but why shouldn’t he have a little fun, at least? Socks had the right idea.

Dirt hopped onto the wall footing and carefully walked along it. It was wide as his shoulders but the top was uneven, requiring him to pay attention. He ascended where the wall ramped up to a corner and got a better look around. Where was the most intact place nearby? He should go find that.

If he followed a road where it branched off the main one, only a short distance away the whole front half of the building was still standing, and to the side was an intact stairway.

He jumped down into the grass and ran over to get a better look. The whole front of the building was still there, even the decorative stonework in shapes worn to nubs by countless years of weathering. Dirt couldn’t even tell what they were supposed to be anymore.

It was two stories, with a doorway and windows on the ground floor and more windows on the next one up. The roof had fallen and the triangle at the top of the wall had lost its corner, but some of the ceiling for both floors was still there.

Dirt walked inside, then turned around and placed himself where all he could see was the ceiling and walls and the street beyond the door. All human craft filling his perspective. He gazed out the window and said, “Hello, there. Welcome. What brings you here?”

No one answered. Instead, everything seemed even quieter in the silence of anticipation.

“It is good to see you. It’s been a long time,” he said to no one. “It’s been a long time since I saw you, my dear D—… d…”

A rush of nostalgia hit him. A second time, for the briefest instant the walls of pale gray stone became plastered and red, the ground tile clean and covered in something soft, a door of wood filling the frame, and outside the window, someone he recognized.

It vanished as quickly as it came and refused to come back, no matter how deeply he yearned for it. He knew, deep and true, that he had been here before, or a place just like it. The shape of the doorway and windows struck a resonance in him, but the truth of it, the real memory, was lost forever, just like the people and the place this once had been.

Ah, but he could almost picture it! It was so close, a person, a name! Something real from his past, something precious that he’d lost. D… d… d… It was no use. The name was as dead to him as the person it belonged to. He didn’t even know if it was a man or woman. It may have even been a random sound he picked from imagination, since his own name started with D.

The tears that came welled up slowly, ever so slowly. He tried to think about anything else and drive them away. He should be happy and having fun. This was a fun place, and humans had made it, and that was unique. There were many such places left, from what he’d seen. Here were things to climb, and warm, cheerful sunlight, and… none of it helped. By the time the tears came out and erupted into crying, he didn’t even know what they were about. They came from a place deeper than his thoughts.

He tilted his head back and sobbed, shoulders sagging like he was ready to collapse. Hot tears ran down his cheeks and onto his shoulders or got caught in his hair. Dirt stared through the tears at the ceiling, which still had bits of plaster in the corners. It all looked so dead.

Dirt cried and cried and cried, unable to stop. If he held his breath, his chest shook. If he distracted himself, the sobs came back with twice the force.

Socks came in from the ruined opposite end of the building where he could fit, since the doorway was too small. He said nothing, just licking Dirt’s tears away and trying to nuzzle him without knocking him over. Finally the pup braced him with one big paw and rubbed the side of his face across Dirt’s body, over and over, stopping only to lick him some more.

Dirt didn’t look at the pup’s thoughts at all; he didn’t have to. The pup was patient and gentle and tender and he’d be there as long as it took. Dirt knew perfectly well what his friend was telling him.

The crying was slow to leave, slow enough that the muscles in his chest and throat ached from being over-strained, but it finally did. When Dirt could breathe easy again, he hugged Socks around the muzzle and buried his face in the pup’s shorter facial fur.

“Thanks, Socks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

-You don’t have to worry about doing anything without me,- the pup replied, hugging Dirt with his bony paw.

Dirt grinned right into the soft fur. Socks had a way with words.

“I’m sorry I got carried away like that.”

-You were sad. You don’t have to apologize. You have great big emotions, even though you are small. But I found something you will like. Want to come see?-

“What is it?”

-It’s a something. Are you ready to come? Or do you want to rest a little more?-

“I think I’m fine now. I don’t even know what that was.”

-I do. It’s called grief.-

“Oh,” said Dirt. Socks was probably right. What else would it be, after looking at ruined places and thinking about everything that was lost?

“How do you know what grief is?”

-When Mother was trying to talk me out of keeping you, she said if you died I wouldn’t even see you in the dream, and that I would be very sad and grieve.-

“Oh.” Dirt wanted to ask why Socks didn’t grieve for all the other little pups, but he might get an answer Mother didn’t want him to have, so he didn’t.

From there they walked down the street together, and to Dirt’s eyes the city was just a ruined city now. Just stones, just cement and mortar, just grass and earth and rubble. Whatever he’d been hoping to connect with wasn’t here, but that was fine, because now he could look at it how it was. Appreciate how it was all laid out in such clean, straight lines. Marvel at how much work it must have taken all the little humans to cut all those stones into squares and stack them just right. What skill it must have taken to decorate everything with facades, or all that handsome patterned tile work they saw peeking through the ground every so often.

It was quite a walk, which was fine, because Dirt needed to air himself out after all that crying. And even if it was all ruined, there was plenty to see. Old statues in rough outlines of people or animals, near unrecognizable after centuries of weathering. Buildings large and small, pillars standing and fallen.

Socks stopped in a circular area with a square platform in the center, a foot taller than Dirt was. To the side, half buried in the dirt, was a statue as long as Socks from nose to tail. The exposed part was weather-worn like everything else, but it had a human’s form, seen from the back.

-Watch this. You will like this. It was buried so it’s still preserved. And I’m going to try something. Mother can lift things with her thoughts, and I think I can now, too. None of the siblings in the den can do this, not even the ones a year older.-

“When did you learn that?”

-When I heard you start crying, it made me wish I had hands so I could pick you up without using my teeth, and I just sort of realized.-

“Have you already tried it once?”

-No, I came to get you instead, and I didn’t want to try it on you first. Guess why.-

Dirt grinned. He smashed his hands together and made a squishing sound with his mouth.

Socks replied with a mental puff of amusement, his eyes sparkling.

“Can I help?”

-No. Watch.-

With that, Socks’ body went taut as he focused on the task. Dirt took a couple steps back to get a better angle to watch. He closed off his thoughts to keep from distracting the pup and waited.

The huge statue lifted more quietly than Dirt expected. He expected cracking and tearing, but there was none of that. Just a dull crumbling-dirt sound, and the statue rose from the earth and hovered in midair.

Dirt suppressed his desire to shout, in case Socks was startled and dropped it. With how perfectly he was focusing, that was a real possibility.

The statue turned to stand upright in the air, then floated over to the plinth, still mostly coated in a couple inches of earth. Socks was just about to set it down when Dirt noticed one foot was broken off, so he gently patted the pup’s leg and stepped forward to point.

Socks set the statue down in front of the plinth instead, slightly askew and leaning backward to stay upright. As soon as the thing was steady, he collapsed to his belly with a heavy whump.

Dirt patted the pup’s nose and asked, “Are you okay?”

-Yes, I am just tired. It was heavy. Are you happy?-

“I am! You rest and I’ll try and get the dirt off so we can see who it is.”

Dirt felt warm inside, a worthy balm to the sadness he’d felt shortly before. It was good to be cared about. But the statue was still exciting, and he hopped over and began cleaning it off.

The soil came away in big clumps that bore the shape of the carved stone until they hit the ground and broke apart. He got it cleared off high enough to expose a pair of bare, muscular legs halfway up the thigh, and from there he had to get up on the plinth to reach farther. Even standing on his tippy toes, he only got it cleaned off to the belly button, enough to discover that it was a man. He didn’t dare climb up it, because that might tip it over again.

He slid down from the plinth and sat down next to Socks, resting his arm on the pups’ muzzle.

-I will try and get the rest,- said Socks. He turned his eyes up to the statue, but otherwise stayed where he was, seeming too tired to move. A moment later, a big chunk of dirt fell away and crashed to the ground at the statue’s feet. Then another, and several more fell all by themselves after their support was gone. A few smaller clumps flew away from its head as if tossed, and that was it.

The statue was a man with thick muscles and a stern, bearded face. His arms hadn’t survived him toppling over. They were probably buried somewhere nearby, and it seemed a miracle the rest of him had stayed intact. If Dirt ever learned how to heal stone, he might have to come back and find them.

-That’s a grown human?-

“I think so. I like it. He looks strong and noble, even without arms. It makes me feel… bold.” Dirt knew he was stretching by trying to find more to say so Socks would know how much he appreciated it, but that mighty stone man was human, like him. It was the first human he’d ever seen, and he felt drawn to it, like it belonged to him, or he belonged to it.

-Will you get that tall when you are grown up?-

“I honestly have no idea. Well, actually, I don’t think so, because then I wouldn’t fit in any of the doors in these buildings. And my body is already eight years old, so it would have been doing a lot of growing already. I don’t know how much taller adults are but probably not that much. A lot thicker, though. Look at his muscle!”

The comparison to Dirt was laughable, almost. Dirt flexed his chest and nothing happened, not anything like the statue had.

-Do you hear that?- asked Socks, suddenly sounding a bit apprehensive.

Dirt paused and listened carefully. “No, nothing.”

Socks opened his mind and began melding their hearing, and Dirt completed it and listened again with the pup’s ears.

Scratching. Down beneath them, somewhere under the plaza or maybe right under the statue, was a cavity, and something inside was scratching, slowly, over and over. Exactly the same scratch, perfectly timed.

“What is that?” asked Dirt.

-To me, it sounds like a bone.-

The two of them rose to their feet, looked at each other, then downward into the ground toward the source of the noise. There was something buried there, moving.