Free Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey Page B

you think I would take money from you?
    Joško watched his money burn, shook his head and opened his rucksack again. Inside he found the medal he’d been given in Šibenik. He
     took it out of its plastic case and squeezed it in his hand, tighter and tighter until he began to tremble. But of course he had no choice.
    - Will you accept this?
    The woman took it, looked at it carefully, and closed her eyes.
    - Of what possible good is this to me?
    - I don’t know. Perhaps you could sell it, or give it to your children. Children like bright things.
    She stared at him for a time, then handed the medal back.
    - I have no more children, the woman said. But you can have three rolls. That is all I can spare.
    - Do you have the kind with poppy seeds?
    - No. They are all plain, but very fresh.
    She picked three rolls out of a bin and placed them on the counter. He thanked her, put them in his rucksack, went to the door and turned back. The
     woman was still watching him.
    - After the war, he said, perhaps you will have other children.
    - I am too old to have any more children.
    - Yes, but I once heard about a woman who was ninety years old, and God came to her and gave her a child.
    - That is nothing but an old story.
    - It might still be true, though. Some stories are true, you know.
    He smiled, and the woman slipped away from him into the back of the store.
    * * *
    Joško followed the road through what remained of the town. A strip of shell-pocked pavement stretched down toward the river, and to one side he
     saw a thick white pillar. On the pillar was a plaque, and the symbols on the plaque were from an alphabet he had never seen.
    Beyond the pillar was a bridge, or what had once been a bridge. There was a platform of dusty white stone leading into the air, but there it stopped,
     reaching into emptiness like the stub of someone’s arm. Joško began to cry, quiet gasps at first, then sobs that wracked his body. The girl
     started singing, and this helped him to catch his breath, but her voice was again distant, and when the song ended he heard nothing more.
    Thirty meters upstream, the river cut hard to the east: he would have to find some way across. He stepped past the ruined bridge and edged down a path
     worn into the bank. A bright span glimmered before him, but as he raised his eyes, his foot caught on a rock. He slid several meters on his chest, and
     stopped short against some sort of cold metal mesh.
    It was the side of a footbridge. Joško got to his feet and climbed around to the entrance. The bridge rattled beneath him, its metal slats like
     ribs cleaned by ants. A sudden wind clawed at him, and he clutched at the mesh, held to it until the wind died.
    On the far bank he headed up a deserted road that slipped through a pass in the hills, and here everything was different. The air was still very hot
     but he managed to stay mostly in the shade of the oaks that grew on the hillsides. Hours of this, and the sun slid into the horizon, and the
     girl’s singing came back to him.
    He stopped walking to listen more carefully. Her voice began to rise, grew louder and louder, became pure scream. He covered his ears but it did no
     good—the scream was inside him now. He begged it to quiet, and the scream stretched up and out and back deeper into him. He dropped to his knees
     and the scream was cut short.
    Joško removed his hands from his ears. There was no sound but the thin buzz of wasps. He sat down in the dry grass. The sky faded toward darkness.

11.
    J oško woke wrapped in a horrible silence. The sun was already well into the sky, and sweat was beaded on his face. He sat up, held his breath and
     closed his eyes. Even the insects had fallen quiet. So that was that. He’d failed. The girl was dead or taken.
    He headed west, and the hills grew into mountains. He came to no villages and passed few roads. When his course led uphill his lungs tightened and
     strained, and when it led downhill his legs pulsed and flared,