The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands

by Sarah Brooks

“Thank you for your concern,” Marya says, careful to keep her expression blank. “I will be more aware from now on.” Though the old Marya has disappeared already, of course. A careful, deliberate vanishing. Perhaps this new Marya will find it too easy now to disappear, while she is still new, unfinished. While she is untethered from the present. “There is a trick,” the girl goes on, rather diffidently. “If you want to know it. It’s better than the things they tell you in the guidebooks.” “Yes, please,” replies Marya. “I would be most grateful.” “You should keep something bright with you,” says Weiwei. “Something bright and hard that catches the light, like a piece of glass.” If she notices Marya tense she makes no sign of it, but takes out a small marble from her pocket and holds it up to the window. The sun catches a swirl of blue glass caught inside it. “It’s the brightness that matters. People say that you should take something sharp and prick yourself with it, but I think what you really need is something that’s sharp on your eye.” She moves the marble and the light dances across and through it and Marya feels her chest clench. The aching familiarity of it. “It brings you back,” says the girl. “I don’t know why.” “Glass is alchemy made solid. It is sand and heat and patience,” her father would say, when he was feeling poetic. “Glass can trap light, use it, shatter it.” “But not everyone agrees with me. Lots of people don’t.” Weiwei purses her lips. “They say iron is bet...