The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

Outside, beneath a pale-blue sky, the grasslands are unfurling into a shimmering, uncertain horizon. They look innocent, empty of everything, even shadows. Be careful, Rostov warns the cautious traveller; no landscape is innocent. If your mind begins to wander, turn away from the window. But his own mind had wandered in the end, hadn’t it? He had become an embarrassment, a man living in twilight. His family had tried to take the book out of circulation, but of course this had only cemented its popularity. Poor Valentin Pavlovich, where did you end up? Drowned in the Neva, some of the stories say, or in a poor house, or drunk in the gutter, still travelling the Wastelands in his mind. “Madam, excuse me…” Someone is touching her shoulder. She starts, looks up, confused. A young Chinese man is standing beside her, his hair a little long, poking out messily from beneath his cap. “I knocked,” he says in Russian, “but no one answered, and then I saw you were disappearing.” No, not a man, a young woman, a girl. She stands back and rubs her nose, and Marya wonders if she has fallen asleep and into one of those dreams where meanings slip away. “Disappearing?” “It’s what we say when someone … when they look like their mind is wandering. We have to bring them back.” The young woman’s tone is abrupt, though it might be down to her Russian, which is rough-edged and unplaceable and much older than she is, and as Marya starts to gather together her thoughts she realizes who this must be—...