Two Miles

It was as much a matter of luck as having studied Moxi’s map that we came about the Venne Road at all. There had been one little route curving away from the southbound road by the Gale River that splintered into another road that curved off north before cutting back eastward in a turn that was almost hard to spot, appearing to be a dead end through the overlarge grass anywhere but right before it. Fen had squabbled with herself, pointing forward and declaring that there must have been a turn back east that we’d missed, for the road most certainly stopped here. There was a wall of weeds all the same, and Moxi only discovered that there was a little turn, barely wide enough for her to squeeze through, when she stomped up to the trail’s supposed end, swearing twice and thrice that she was right because most surely her map was. One blade of the grass stuck out over twice higher than Fen’s head, and there were grayish reeds between it all and green thornbushes. It helped as much that the sun was lowering in the sky, still bright as noon, but pointing down right through the reeds and onto the tops of our heads. Fortunately, it was an autumn evening, and summer had narrowly skipped us by a month and a half.

“What salivating monster makes their roads into labyrinths?” Whimpered Moxi, “There should be hedge mazes in the gardens of palaces, and places that any person would want to be. Here, it is but cruel!”

Fen twisted around the next bend. I stayed resting on her shoulder, turning back slightly to face Moxi, now struggling a little to keep up. She’d slipped by the side of the road and gashed her knee on one of the thornbushes earlier. I thought out loud, “We’re going east now, it can’t be more than another twenty minutes until we’re in Venne, based on the map. And, there was that wooden sign way back there that said Venne was two miles away.”

“Wooden sign?” Fen stopped sharply. “Why didn’t you point that out before?”

“I did!” I asserted. “Weren’t you listening?”

Moxi shook her head, “I did not hear this either. Two more miles after all this! Why did it have to be two and not one?”

“Well, it can’t be a whole two miles anymore,” I fluttered up over the tops of the reeds, trying to see if I could spot the lights from Venn, or maybe smoke from a fireplace. There was just a sea of more grass, and the town wasn’t anywhere in sight. I mumbled, “I thought I saw the sign an hour ago.” Now, the sun was starting to sneak downward in the west, and the eastern sky over where Venne must have been was twisting from cyan to navy and purple and black.

Fen sped up a little, only to stop every few seconds for Moxi to catch up. Each time she waited, Fen slowly scraped at the dirt road with her bottom claws, her tail flicking from one side to the other behind her, and her ears peeling back a little. I thought I heard her growl in one instance. Then, slipping through another tight turn, she froze. There was a tall wooden post with a triangular sign pointing east. Venne: 2 Miles. Fen glared at it, studying the sign, “You’re right… You did see a sign.”

“No, no…” I mumbled, “It was different. The one I saw had a different kind of post, and it was more hidden in the grass. That one had a much darker grain, and this one is some kind of light wood, or maybe it’s faded from the sun. I saw that one an hour ago must have been, and we can’t have gone much more than two miles in that time.”

“Then, we’ve gone in a circle!” Moxi stumbled up to it.

“What if we went past it and didn’t see it at all?” Fen shivered, “Or we made a wrong turn somewhere and doubled back? Or, we walked through it, and the town’s not there anymore?”

“Then, why is it still pointing east?” I pointed at the end of the triangle, “We’ve been going east the whole time except for little turns here and there. What if the other sign was wrong? It’s only two more miles, then! We’ll be there shortly!”

Now, we were all vigilant that we were indeed going east past every little turn, and that each twist evened out with another bend. Moxi was muttering to herself anytime we went right, and counting the steps until we turned back left, back east. Fen bent down anytime she saw footsteps ahead of us and compared her own claws to them just to make sure they weren’t our own. They were much too big for her or Moxi, maybe an adult human, and they were fresh enough for her still to see. Moxi predicted whoever had gone this way before us had been here no more than a few hours ago. If at all, we’d gone in a circle before, now we hadn’t in the slightest. I looked up again over the reeds, and this time I saw a little smoke against the late evening sky, but no lights below it. I couldn’t tell how far it was, and when I saw the sun behind me in the west, it was barely in the sky at all, the last pink of sunset turning to black. And now, there were waves of little stars rippling throughout the sky, each flickering on its own. There was a nearly full moon between it all, large in the sky and almost golden. The pattern of its black craters was the same as one of the constellations I could see near it. We continued another hour, and under the dim, peach moonlight, we came to another sign that gave pause to us all. This one was planted right in the ground, and it was almost hard to see, for how deeply it was in the underbrush. Made from some sort of pale wood, it read Venne: Two Miles.

“We could camp here!” Fen bobbled back and forth on her toes, “T-then we can backtrack and get back to the south road tomorrow! Venne can’t be much worth it, anyway. It’s getting late. Maybe we just get some sleep!”

“I’m not going to sleep in the middle of some dirt road!” Moxi’s stomach growled, “And, you said there’d be food in Venne. It can’t be any further, now! Just these two miles! That’s what the sign says. We’ll be there any minute!”

“I saw the smoke…” I muttered, “That must be Venne, it has to be. And, the signs, the other two must have been misplaced. Two miles, two miles… Maybe there was a shortcut we missed!”

“Then, where’s the shortcut now?” Fen darted around the edges of the trail, pulling the grass apart with her front claws, and peering into the darkness of the plains, “There’s only this road! It’s the only route we’ve seen, and sometimes it’s even hard to see! Face it, there’s nothing but fog around us without a drop of mist!” She paused, “Fog… The plains get foggy at night. We’ve got to stop!”

Moxi kept walking, “I don’t see any fog around here!” She stopped, “Move, or I’ll leave you behind.”

Fen and I pressed more after her, having to rush as she stormed past one bend and the next. One twist at a time, the trail became darker, and when I looked up at the stars, they seemed dimmer than before. The moonlight scattered lightly before it could reach the ground. And, past one bend, I couldn’t see Moxi in front of us at all. I blinked. “Fen, can you see anything?”

“Moxi!” She yelled ahead of her. “Moxi, where are you?” There wasn’t an immediate response, and Fen stopped cold in the middle of the thickening fog, “Oh, poor Moxi. She’s been grabbed and ripped asunder and eaten by wild boars or coyotes or snakes!”

Moxi stepped back to us through the fog, “Would you want that, Kitty?” She rolled her eyes.

“No! Not at all!” Fen rushed to Moxi’s side, almost rubbing against her, “I was just a bit worried with all the fog, and it’s very dark out now, and we should really make camp while we can! We’re lost, Moxi!”

“We’re not lost,” I said, “the signs are still pointing in the way we’re going. We know we’ve got to be close to Venne.”

Moxi stopped to rub her scraped knee with both of her hands, then slowly continued walking forward. Now, we couldn’t even see the giant grass at the opposite end of the trail, and when Moxi walked more than a few feet ahead of Fen and me, we lost track of her entirely.

“There!” Moxi yelped and suddenly ran ahead.

Fen sprinted after her, leaving me to hold tightly onto her shoulder as she ran so that I wouldn’t fall off. We emerged into a wide area where the grass had all been trimmed and cleared, and though Fen and I could still only see a gray-and-black blanket of fog all around us, there were little pinpoints of firelight in the distance on all sides. When we finally caught up to Moxi, she was standing in front of another sign. This one was larger than the others, with two large posts holding it up, and it read Welcome to Venne.