A Fateful Carriage Ride in the Unknown

Sepia-hued sunlight filtered through the stubborn chartreuse leaves still clinging to dry bark. Two brothers walked along a well-trod path, the younger crunching pinecones underfoot and the other trying to load up the hiking trail app on his phone. The younger brother tripped over a gnarled root that poked defiantly out of the ground.

“Jeez! Watch it, Will,” said the older brother as Will clung onto his sweatshirt for stability.

Sheepishly, Will replied, “Sorry, sorry… are we almost there yet?”

“What are you talking about, we just started!”

“Oh…” Will went silent for a few moments. A bird gave a shrill cry in the distance. Then he said, “Why are we out here, anyway?”

The older brother, James, rolled his eyes and looked down at Will, who was about a head shorter than him but retained the brown hair, the dark eyes, and the somewhat doleful face of his elder. The only difference in their faces was Will’s nose; unlike James’, it was not bent from a hockey injury.

“Don’t you remember? Mom wanted us out of the house for a bit.” The app wasn’t working. Frustrated, James put away his phone.

They continued along, finding red dots on the trees to help guide them along the right path. Every now and again, they’d hear another solitary bird calling out for a companion who had long since flown south for the winter. While Will had another occupation in place of pinecone-stomping–hitting tree trunks with a stick, James considered the forest itself.

It was a mix of thin, pale birch trees with peeling bark and a carpet of yellow leaves alongside giant, aged maples and oaks with meandering branches and deep brown colored bark. The edges of the forest were quite impenetrable; it seemed that the trees just went on ad infinitum, eventually giving way to a bleak nothingness. James scratched his head. Before embarking on this hike, he thought he had picked one that he’d done before with his friends. In the early stages, there had been some landmarks he’d been able to recognize to affirm this belief; a massive, moss-covered boulder which looked a little like a misshapen giant’s head among them.

Now, where were the landmarks? The red spots on the trees aside, why was this forest so heavy with birch trees? What were these ancient oaks and maples doing here, stalwart and menacing? The forest James remembered was filled with young growth and was marked with a forest floor filled with ferns and little scrubby bushes. Even the birds that screeched and cawed, were they not a little alien? Their calls bleating and eerie as they echoed amidst the dead silence that lay upon the wood?

James stopped in his tracks and Will ran into him. “Hey, what the hell, man?”

The elder brother felt his heartbeat quicken. His mouth was a little dry as he turned around and looked at the path from where they had come. Even that path looked odd. It was wide and well-worn, whereas the path that James remembered was treacherous and narrow, full of little drops and stones that were an ankle’s worst enemy. Where was the root upon which Will had just tripped? Looking back, all James could see was a flat beige dirt packed so tightly that some fallen leaves seemed pushed into it by force.

“You could drive a car through this thing,” muttered James, and while that at first gave him some relief–perhaps they’d accidentally stumbled onto a more commercial dirt road and could therefore be rescued by a car. However, he soon realized that there was not a single tire mark on the road, nor the unfailing signs of human presence on the roadside: litter.

Will was still demanding an apology or explanation for the collision, but James pulled his phone out and tried to load the trail app he’d used so often. He was greeted by a message telling him he had no reception, just an SOS line.

“Hey!” said Will, punching his brother in the arm. “What’s going on?”

James looked down and said, “W-I think we’re lost, Will.”

“Lost?” scoffed Will. “Lemme see.”

He pulled out his own phone and opened his Maps app to find the same, foreboding thing: no reception, their position marked by a blue and white pulsing dot upon a slate gray backdrop. Will shook his head, “My phone’s being dumb, but can’t we just go back the way we came from?”

James looked back and considered their options. The path in both directions looked like it stretched out into eternity. Looking up, James felt a stab of real panic when he saw the sun wasn’t anywhere to be seen; it was already behind the canopy in the west, its light turning a deeper shade of orange as it began the swift exhale of a late-autumn sunset. The phone, still good to tell time, said that it was nearly 5:00pm. In less than an hour, the sun would sink below the horizon and they’d be stuck in the dark.

They couldn’t have been walking for an hour already, could they? James licked his lips and came to the unfortunate conclusion: he couldn’t be sure. But he had to make a decision fast, so he said, “Sure… You’re right. Let’s go back.”

“Okay!” said Will happily, starting to bound off before James grabbed his hoodie and ripped him backwards. Will cried, “Hey! What’s your–”

“This isn’t a joke, okay?” James’ eyes were flashing with an urgency. “I don’t know where the hell we are! None of this looks familiar, and I can’t have you goofing off and getting us more lost. The sun’s going down and we need to get home, okay?”

Will, who’d never seen his brother like this outside of a hockey game, brushed him off and said, “Yeah, sure. My bad.”

So the brothers began their walk. They started out in silence, but the soundlessness of the forest was too difficult to bear; it was like a balloon slowly building up pressure only to be punctured by some strange creature–they were not even sure it was a bird now, that gave its wicked call into the endless forest. So, James tried talking to Will, but that didn’t work for long. The two brothers, seventeen and fourteen, realized they had very little in common and aside from some banal questions about school, girls, and the pair’s respective sports, hockey and soccer, there was nothing to talk about. The awkwardness of the conversation began to startle them more than the occasional strange cry of an animal. The wind picked up every now and again, whistling ominously as it rustled through the fallen leaves.

“Sh-should we try an SOS call?” asked Will. It had been forty minutes, and there was no sign that the forest was changing back into the familiar.

Another rush of panic bit at James’ mind; they’d been turned around a few times when they were trying to figure out where they were. Could it be that they had gone further down the path rather than doubling back? James couldn’t bear that possibility. He nodded slowly. “I-I guess we should.”

He pulled out his phone and tried an emergency call. It rang once, twice… and then the line went dead. He said, “What? How’s that possible!”

Will’s breath was growing strained out of stress. In a thin voice, he said, “Oh-okay, let me see if it works on my phone.” But a few short moments later, the message left by the silence on the phone line was damning: They were alone.

A desolate dusk was falling around the forest. Mist began to snake its way among the trees, hovering ghostlike above the ground and moving only when provoked by a soft breeze that caressed the mist but stung the boys. They were still walking down the same path–there were no forks in the road, no more red dots, either. An inky sky was marbled by dense clouds above them, clouds that only barely captured the fading orange light of the sunset now. James’ fears of a cold night were actualized when the clouds began sending down thick, heavy flakes of snow.

Snow? thought James, in October?

It was not unheard of in New England, but it was rare. However, the presence of the snow did more than foretell a doom of hypothermia for the brothers; it gave James the strange premonition that they were simply not in New England anymore.

Onward they marched, their path barely lit. Their eyes were doing well to adjust to the darkness; silently, they had agreed to save their phone batteries for emergencies. James just happened to check his phone and see that it was now half-past eight when Will stopped abruptly and gripped James’ arm with a tight, shivering hand. James looked at his brother’s face, a pale outline amidst the dark. Will’s lips were tinged blue, his cheeks carrying a little bit of pink that contrasted sharply with his otherwise alabaster skin. His teeth chattered. “W-what is that?”

James looked to where his brother was pointing. Ahead, seeming to melt out of the shadows and obscurity itself, was what looked impossibly like a horse-drawn carriage. James blinked a few times to ensure he was seeing it properly. Surely, in the present year, the year in which cars were electric and phones had more power than computers, there weren’t horse-drawn carriages, were they? At least, outside of novelty holiday tours provided in European cities.

Yet no, as the brothers got a little closer, they saw it materialize fully before them. It was a horse-drawn carriage with rickety old wheels, a carriage that had a sagging but intact roof, and a thin, bedraggled horse that stood stoically in the snow, its breath coming out in long streams of mist through its nostrils. The man who drove the carriage… He was hunched over, wearing a black overcoat that covered his body totally, and upon his head there was a black tophat that gathered the snow that fell upon the whole apparatus. In fact, upon every surface there was about a half-inch of thick, wet snow. It seemed as though the carriage had not moved since the snow began–more troubling, perhaps: there was no indication of where the carriage had come from.

Despite the baleful impression of the carriage and the ribbons of velvety indigo shadows that seemed to ripple from it, disrupting the path of the white snow and pooling on the ground like the waist-height mist that surrounded everything else, the brothers found their gaze transfixed upon it. James’ mouth was hanging open slightly. He said, “H-Hello? Sir?”

There was no movement from the driver. Instead, a deep, resounding voice cracked through the air like a sharp whip. “What do you come here seeking, children?”

The echoes seemed endless against the dead wood. James swallowed but found his throat parched. He wheezed, “W-what do you mean?”

“Do you know how to get out of here?” asked Will, his voice a little stronger than his brother’s.

There came the notion of a smile from the still-unmoving driver; the brothers felt he was leering at them with a crooked grin. Why did he and the rest of his carriage look as though it was made out of the void of night itself?

“I know many ways, master William. Come hither and become learned.”

James pulled his brother back but couldn’t deny that there was an attraction in the driver’s words, some sort of pull that transcended his common sense. He said, “Look, if you know the way out of here, please tell us. We’re lost, we’re cold… I-I don’t think we can make it out of here.”

“Then I ask you again,” boomed the grating voice. “What do you come here seeking?”

James shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean?”

A low, grumbling laugh bounced around the forest. The boys felt it in their bones; it seemed to be coming from the earth itself. They also felt that there was no denying the following command: “Then enter my sleigh…”

Before the boys knew it, they were climbing up the snowy steps and were inside the carriage. The driver seemed to unfurl from his hunched state, some of the snow falling off of his overcoat. The horse whinnied somberly as it began to trot. The carriage pulled a sharp turn and then went on its way. Soon, John asked, “S-sir… you’re taking us out of the forest, right?”

“I’m taking you to the crossroads of fate,” said the driver.

James found he couldn’t picture the man’s face. All he knew was that it felt awfully nice in the carriage–he felt warm, comfortable… The only problem was that the whole thing seemed to pulse gently with the thready beat of his heart. He turned to see his brother stricken with fright. The driver said, “What brings you brothers on this path tonight?”

“W-we were just walking,” explained James, “and then we got lost–”

Another low chuckle that reverberated in their bones. “People do not get lost on this path.”

“I d-don’t know what you’re–”

“You are correct in one matter only… You are more lost than you know.”

James felt Will grip his hand tightly, and he was grateful for his brother’s clammy touch. James said, “What do you mean?”

“Why did you come on a walk today?”

“Our mom wan-wanted us out of the house…”

“And why did your life-giver want you out?”

James tried to search back in his memory, finding it bereft of any details leading up to the walk… In fact, it seemed the harder he thought about it, the less he remembered about his life at all. It was Will who said, “We were fighting a lot.”

James could only weakly manage, “Please sir, let us go… we can walk–”

“Oh no, boys,” there came the impression of a cruel smile. “I cannot let you go. Fate will determine your trajectory from here.”

“Why were we fighting?” asked James quietly.

Will said, “It was about your jersey, remember? I spilled tomato sauce on it–”

“Oh yeah,” said James.

“With such follies do the young damn themselves.”

The brothers considered each other once more. Where had the little boy gone who’d played with Will and his trucks until they fell asleep on the mat with the roads on it? Where had the boy gone who would go to every one of James’ hockey games and press his face against the glass to get a better look at his brother flying down the ice? Where had the brothers gone who knew they were united against the authority of their parents, who did anything to keep the other one out of trouble, even when one was angry with the other?

“Let me tell you a story,” said the driver. “I had a brother once. He was the image of beauty, a paragon of intellect. His words would wash over your ears like the timeless melody of the sea, and his eyes would pierce you like arrows tipped with blue fire. He and I fought endlessly along the riverfronts of eternity.

“Our father separated us at last when our conflict had seized nations and shaken even the souls of the damned; when the earth might have crumbled from the power of our strikes. And now… Now I am bidden to see him only at the crossroads. Only briefly do our eyes get the chance to meet from our vastly different planes of existence, he upon his heavenly perch, I… in my sepulchral, miserly carriage, and yet in our eyes is not captured pride or jealousy at witnessing the other’s position. Our eyes meet and speak only of tragedy, only of the poignancy of our everlasting division.

“Where we might have been united, now we are only powerless pawns in the kingdoms of greater beings, and though we walk upon the earth like gods, the spirit of our kinship would bring thrice the power we each can possess alone.”

The brothers listened to the story enraptured, tears falling down their faces. Tears frozen nearly instantly by a burst of cold air. They were coming to a light down the road, something so blinding that neither could bear to have their eyes open as they met it. The driver gave one last shuddering chuckle. “Welcome to the crossroads of fate, children.”

They were aware of a great many voices that whispered on the edges of their existence. They suddenly felt weightless, unable to open their eyes yet aware that beyond them was resplendent beauty. The whispers grew louder; they were floating, surely, the carriage had abandoned them. And then… then they felt the seats beneath them again, and the brilliance faded quickly into darkness. James opened his eyes. They were back in the carriage, but wait… there was no forest around them anymore! They were on a familiar street, there was a familiar house–

“That’s our house!” cried Will, pointing. They came to a smooth stop before it.

“You have been spared this time, gentlemen,” said the driver. “Forget not the power of your bond henceforth… Or you may find yourselves on a different path the next time we meet…”

They did not have a chance to reply; they found themselves spilled out onto the steps, soft snow cushioning their fall. James realized he was desperately weak. He croaked, “Help…”

The door opened, and warmth blasted the boys from within the house. Ashen parents looked down to the boys they had not seen in months, whose faces were plastered on the news as missing children. The story, they would learn later, would only vaguely be remembered by either boy, yet both together held the pieces to complete the puzzle of this strange journey, and never again did the brothers falter in their love and loyalty for each other.