Olmo had once been a great city. It had towers, markets, and an old minaret. Esteban and Rico had to cross it to reach the Stone Bridge.
They arrived at sunset on the fourth day of their journey together. The city appeared in the distance like an enormous ghost leaning against the hills. Its high gray walls gleamed in the last light, and its pointed towers rose above the fog like fingers pointing at the sky. Not a single thread of smoke rose from inside.
"I don't like this place," Rico said.
"Neither do I."
"Then why are we going in?"
"Because the road to the bridge passes through it. Going around would cost us two days." Esteban hitched his bag higher on his good shoulder. "And this wound won't survive two more days."
"You say that like it's an excuse."
"It is an excuse."
"And the other excuses?"
"I don't have any others."
Rico laughed. "That's the most honest thing I've heard from you."
They entered through the western gate. It stood wide open, hanging from its post by a single rusty nail that creaked in the wind, making a broken sound like the sobbing of some old creature. The streets were wider than any Esteban had ever seen. They were paved with interlocking white stones and lined with two- and three-story houses. The windows were ornate, and the iron balconies still held pots of dried flowers.
There were no ruins. No fires. No marks of war. Everything stood in its place, in a strange kind of order. It was as if the whole city were waiting for its people to return from a long walk.
"This is strange," Rico said quietly. There was no humor in his voice.
"What is?"
"Nothing is broken." He turned slowly in a circle. "When people leave a city like this, thieves come. They smash doors, steal whatever shines, and burn whatever doesn't. I know, because I've done it a hundred times." He swallowed. "But here, no one has touched anything."
He was right.
The great square held a market that looked like it had never closed. Dozens of wooden stalls stood under faded, colorful canvas. Baskets of vegetables sat on the tables, turned to brown dust. Loaves of bread had petrified into something like pebbles. On one vendor's table lay a fish, of which only a clean white skeleton remained. In the middle of the square stood a cart. A mule's bones still sat between its shafts, like a creature that had decided not to wait.
"Where are the bodies?" Rico asked, then fell silent.
Esteban didn't answer. He knew the question. He had been asking it of himself for ten years.
They passed a small school in a side alley. Its door was open, so Esteban went in, though he couldn't have said why. Inside were rows of small wooden desks. On each one sat a clay tablet and a piece of chalk. On the large blackboard, in an elegant, slanting hand, was an unfinished sentence:
"On Monday the children went to..."
It had no ending and no period.
He stared at the chalk, caught between the last two letters, as if the teacher's hand had only just lifted from the board. In the front row, a desk held a small open satchel. Inside was an apple. It was whole. It had never rotted.
"Esteban." Rico stood in the doorway, pointing at the back wall. "Look."
A large clock hung there in a dark wooden frame. Its hands had stopped at seven minutes past twelve.
"Time died here," Rico said with a weak smile.
"I saw another clock at the gate."
"And I saw one in the market." The young man wiped his forehead. "They all stopped at the same minute. Did you notice?"
"Yes."
Neither of them said anything more. Neither of them understood. But something heavy hung in the air, as if the city were trying to speak a sentence it didn't know how to pronounce.
In the next alley, they passed a small barbershop with its glass door open. Inside stood a red leather chair with a white cloth wrapped around its shoulders. The cloth was puffed out, as if a body still filled it. Beside the chair sat a shelf with an open razor, a dry brush, and a bar of soap that had hardened and cracked. On the floor beneath the chair, gray tufts of hair still lay where they had fallen ten years ago.
Rico stepped in cautiously and touched the edge of the white cloth with one finger. Then he yanked his hand back as if it had burned him.
"It's like he was here a moment ago."
"Yes."
"Do you know what I hate about places like this?" he said as they came back out. "It's not the silence. It's not the dust. It's that they don't look dead. They look... waiting." Read the latest chapters at NovelPing.
Esteban didn't reply. He had been thinking the very same word for years.
Darkness fell. Rico said he was hungry and wanted a roof. They chose a house in a quiet alley, with a wooden door standing slightly ajar and an old brass lantern hanging above it. They went in carefully. Rico lit a candle he found on a hallway shelf and walked ahead like a man carrying a torch into a cave.
It was a modest house with one large room and a stone hearth. The table was set with two clay plates. One held the remains of dried bread. The other held a piece of cheese that had turned to stone. Two folded coats lay on the chairs, a man's and a woman's.
"A small family," Rico said.
"Yes."
They climbed to the upper floor. There was a large bedroom with a neatly made bed, and a smaller room beside it. Esteban opened its door slowly.
It was a child's room.
A small bed with a white blanket embroidered with yellow stars. A stuffed cloth doll resting on the pillow. An open toy chest. And on the floor, a little wooden cart with two wheels. Its front wheel turned slightly in the draft from the door.
Esteban stood at the threshold and didn't go in.
"Every time," he said, in a faint voice that didn't sound like his own, "every time I walk into a house like this, I'm looking for something."
"For what?" Rico asked beside him.
"I don't know. Something that tells me they died here. Blood. A trace. A body. Anything." He ran his hand along the doorframe. "Something I could cry over."
"And did you find it?"
"No."
"Never?"
"No."
At last, Esteban stepped inside. He moved so slowly it was like a man walking on thin ice. He bent over the little bed and reached out a trembling hand to straighten the corner of the white blanket with its stars. He used to do that for Lucía every evening. Then he picked up the wooden cart from the floor, set it beside the chest, and adjusted the doll on the pillow.
He said nothing. He didn't need to. His hands knew what they were doing. Rico stood at the door, watching in silence. He didn't dare step in.
Rico sat down on the threshold, set the candle on the floor beside him, and stared at its yellow flame. A long silence followed. The only sounds were the wind at the window and the rustle of old fabric.
"I lost my mother and my sister on the same day."
He said it without any introduction.
Esteban turned.
Rico was still watching the candle. His voice had changed. It wasn't the mocking tone he used with everyone. It was lighter, closer to the voice of a child.
"I was eight years old. My mother sold her sewing at the market. My sister Nina was five. She didn't like sewing. She liked sitting under the table and pulling at the threads." He gave a small smile. "I was on the other side of the market, selling what I'd stolen. I told my mother I was collecting bottles to sell."
"And what happened?"
"Nothing happened." He shook his head. "That's the strange part. I didn't hear a scream. I didn't see a cloud. I was haggling with a man over a rusty knife when I noticed the sound had stopped. The sound of the whole market. It was as if someone had shut a door on the world."
"And then?"
"Then I turned around, and there was no one there." His smile faded. "The man I'd been haggling with had vanished, and the knife was on the ground. The merchants were gone, but their goods were still on the tables. I ran to my mother's stall. Her needle was still hanging in the air on its thread, not moving. And under the table..."
He stopped.
"There was the little scrap of cloth Nina used to play with. And beside it, a rag doll."
"Rico..."
"I went home, and the soup was on the fire. Do you know that? The soup was still on the fire." He let out a dry laugh. "I still dream about it, every night. The smell of onions and carrots. Then I wake up."
Esteban knew that smell. He had known it for ten years.
"And then what did you do?"
"I waited. Ten days. Then twenty. Then I started eating the soup, because nobody else was going to." He wiped his face quickly with his sleeve, a gesture that didn't belong to someone who claimed to fear nothing. "After a month, I went out. I had to live."
"And the thieves? The ones who smash..."
"I'm not like them." He lifted his head sharply. "I don't smash anything. I only take what everyone left behind. I've only stolen from open houses, and I've never taken anything but food and clothes." He paused. "And I never go into children's rooms."
Esteban said nothing. He looked at the young man sitting on the threshold, with his freckled face and wide eyes. He saw that Rico was not a thief pretending to be cheerful. He was an eight-year-old boy who was still standing in that market, haggling over a rusty knife, waiting for the sound to come back. Get faster updates on NovelPing.
"We'll find them."
Esteban said it without thinking.
Rico raised his head and looked at him for a long moment.
"What did you say?"
"We'll find them. Your mother and your sister. My wife and my daughter. All of them."
"Don't promise me something you don't have."
"I'm not promising." His voice was calm, but something in it trembled. "I just want to say it."
"You say it with a lot of confidence."
"I don't trust anything." He took out the small piece of wood Matteo had carved, the house with the triangular roof, and turned it between his fingers. "I don't know where they are. I don't know who took them, or whether they're alive. But I've learned these past months that some sentences are said not because they're true, but because saying them makes you move."
"That's nonsense."
"Yes."
"But it's beautiful."
"Yes."
Rico smiled at last. It was a real smile this time, a little damp.
"Fine." He wiped his eye roughly. "I'll follow you. To the bridge, to the Seventh Star, to the end of the world. Not because I believe you. Because I've got nothing else to do."
"That's enough."
"Do you know you remind me of my father?" Rico said suddenly. "I don't remember him well. But he used to say strange things like that, and then look at me as if he were ashamed of what he'd said."
Esteban didn't know how to answer. He simply stood and rested his hand on the young man's shoulder for a moment. Then he took it away.
They ate a piece of cheese and the rest of the roasted rabbit. They spread their blankets in the large bedroom, where the candle still burned and scattered dancing shadows across the walls. The night outside was so quiet it was almost unbearable.
Esteban lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. His shoulder wound throbbed slowly. Under his shirt, the blue stone pulsed quietly, as if it were asleep.
He thought of the stopped clocks. He thought of the chalk caught between two letters, and of the soup that had stayed on Rico's fire for ten years.
There was something here he didn't understand. It was like a sentence he should have understood long ago, passing before his eyes like the shadow of a fish in water.
"Esteban?" Rico whispered from the dark.
"Yes?"
"Do you think they can see what we're doing?"
"Who?"
"The ones who vanished." His voice was half asleep. "Sometimes I feel like someone is watching me. From somewhere."
Esteban didn't answer.
He wanted to say it was nonsense, that the dead don't watch and the absent don't see. But he had learned long ago to say only what he believed. Now he wasn't sure of anything.
Then a sound cut through the silence.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the rustle of cloth.
It was a distant sound in the street, drawing closer, slow and heavy. Hooves on the white stones.
It wasn't one horse. It was seven or eight, striking the stones in an even rhythm that neither hurried nor hesitated. It was as if their riders knew no one in this city would dare to object.
In the dark, with every breath held, Esteban wished they were only horses without riders.
Rico opened his eyes in the darkness. Slowly, Esteban sat up, his hand reaching for the hilt of his sword.