27 June, 1:10 PM, Czernograd, Krakovska Avenue
“The ashes...”
He looked up from his plate. He has again chosen a safe option: spicy chicken breast sandwich with chips and salad.
“What exactly are you to with them?” Marina asked. She was having some sushi, another nod to the tourism-oriented cuisine.
Jake swallowed a bite and wiped a smudge of sauce off the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
“Well, I have to take them to some place called… Stare Duszki, is that how I pronounce it?” She nodded, close enough. “…which I understand from my extensive research on the internet and the ‘Lonely Planet Guide to Ruthenia and Galicia’ is a small village in the mountains, some forty kilometres south of here. Then I have to scatter them on the south side of the lake there, where a little stream called Tisza flows into the lake.”
“Why there?” she asked.
“I have no idea. Grandfather just left the instructions in the will; he did not give any reasons.”
“The place must have had some significance for him,” she pondered, absent-mindedly playing with the last remaining sushi roll on her plate. “Maybe he was born somewhere around there?”
“Who knows. Maybe.”
“Aren’t you curious to find out?”
He shrugged. “I’ve got nothing to go on. Even if I were curious. Which I’m not. Because I wouldn’t be in this position if grandfather even once took a moment to sit me on his knee and tell me about himself. His own childhood. Stuff you tell your grandchildren.”
She pondered on it for a moment, brow furrowed and lips pursed.
“I think we should go there tomorrow,” she suddenly looked up. Thinking done, her eyes, two pieces of dark amber, sparkled with excitement.
“What?” The fork froze mid-way between the plate and his mouth with a speared due of chips. “Where?”
“To Stare Duszki.”
“Why? I don’t have the ashes...”
She waved him away. “Call it a trial run. So you know what to do when you get them back. Besides, you don’t have any plans for tomorrow, do you?”
“No, but-“ he started to answer.
“Good,” she winked. “That’s settled. It’s less than an hour’s drive. And the road is good. Pretty new, thanks to the European Union money. It will be a nice trip.”
And so, he would be getting out into the countryside earlier than he expected. Maybe there would be a werewolf or a talking tree or a real witch to see along the way, just to complete that magic RiG experience he has read so much about the last few days. And whoever was developing penchant for going through his few possessions in his absence would get the third chance to make themselves comfortable around his hotel room.
He didn’t share that piece of mind with Marina either, because he knew how she would react, and because he knew – or at least was starting to think – that there might be something to her initial paranoia. And now that she has shifted from the concerned saviour into a fun tour guide mode, Jake did not want to lose the opportunity to spend time together when he wouldn’t constantly have to think about what might be really happening around him.
There was an omission and then there was a commission. He had lied to Marina too. He was beginning to be curious about his grandfather. Not because he started caring for the dead man or because he has developed a sudden interest in family history, but because – baring a case of mistaken identity – someone else out there seemed to be very interested in his grandfather. And, more to the point, the grandfather’s grandson.
Photo by Ariel_ Agüerophoto on Unsplash
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