THE TRAVELLER
Fairies wear boots. So does the Traveller.
♪ Listen
Martti noticed it first.
There was a path between two trees that I didn’t remember seeing before. I knew the forest well, so I stood there looking at it for a while. In the meantime, Martti sniffed a mushroom, peed on a rock, and headed down the path.
I called him. He turned, saw me, and kept going. I followed.
My name is Maya. Back then, nobody called me the Traveller. I had gone out to walk my dog, dressed as usual — black T-shirt, camouflage trousers, and boots. I had a backpack with me. There was a notebook in it, as there usually is, and my earbuds were in my pocket.
I’ve been a metalhead for a long time. I’ve been going to concerts, headbanging and getting into mosh pits for years. Black T-shirts, boots and heavy music were already part of my life long before elves and roads between worlds showed up. Later, I never saw any reason to change any of it. People there got used to me as I was.
Martti was walking ahead, and I had no idea where we were going.
The path continued through the forest until the trees began to thin out. Ahead of us was a valley with houses and fields. Smoke rose from the chimneys. The roofs looked strange, there were plants growing by the road that I didn’t recognise, and farther away stood a tall building unlike anything I had ever seen before.
I stood there looking for a while.
Martti headed down towards the nearest houses. I followed him, because at least there were people there.
By evening I was sitting in one of their kitchens. They gave me a bowl of hot food, and somehow we managed to understand each other. I asked what was in it and how it was made. The woman by the stove explained, and I took out my notebook and wrote it down.
I had already been writing down all sorts of things that day. The recipe simply ended up on the same pages.
Then we found our way back.
Some time passed before I came across another passage. It was somewhere else and led somewhere else.
More followed. Some looked like paths, others like doors or bridges.
There was one between two rocks that I thought I had lost for a long time.
I went back to check it several times. One day it was raining, the rocks were wet, and there was no passage.
Martti was soaked and made his opinion of my decision to drag him all the way out there very clear.
When the weather turned properly cold, I went back. The passage had appeared.
I’ve looked for it around that time ever since.
With the others, I manage as best I can. A door may disappear for months and then turn up again.
There are others whose timing I still haven’t figured out. If I’ve been through a passage before, at least I usually know where I’m going to end up.
On the first visits, everything was new. After a while I knew who baked the good bread.
I knew which houses could always find room for one more person at the table. I also learned whose neighbouring village was best left out of the conversation at dinner.
Food gradually began taking up more and more pages in my notebooks. I asked about the things I saw in kitchens, and the conversation often wandered somewhere else entirely.
A recipe could lead to a discussion about winter. Another dish might lead to stories about their journeys. Sometimes someone would explain why their family made something a particular way and then add that the neighbours were doing it all wrong.
There were recipes the locals didn’t find interesting at all. One woman stared at me in genuine confusion for quite a while because I wanted to write down something that, according to her, “everyone knows how to make.” Eventually she showed me.
On later visits, I started joining in with the cooking. Sometimes they let me help; other times I watched from the side and took notes. Some people measured ingredients. Others kept adding things until it looked like enough, which made my notes fairly useless afterwards.
I had to ask again.
Cooking also taught me plenty about what went on in those houses outside the kitchen. Someone would mention an old family recipe; someone else would explain why a particular dish was made only once a year. And some evenings, something quick would appear on the table simply because everyone was tired and nobody wanted to spend long at the stove.
Martti had a simpler way of getting acquainted. He went to the person with the food.
One notebook became several. Then came maps, drawings, loose pages, dried plants, and various gifts
. I still remember who gave me some of them. For others, I have to dig through my old notes.
Eventually I needed a permanent place for all of it.
That is how I ended up with Polaris Quill.
This is where I come back between journeys, and where the notebooks, recipes, and things I’ve brought home with me are kept. The kitchen is used constantly because many of the recipes need to be tried again.
Over time, the place became an inn as well. People come in, stay for something to eat, ask about a dish, and sometimes want to hear where it came from.
Some stories I’ve already written down properly. For others, I only have notes. And there are recipes I need to go back and ask about because I apparently wrote something like “add a little of the green stuff” and was completely convinced that years later I would know what that meant.
When one of the passages opens, I pack my backpack and we set off. Afterwards we come back to Polaris Quill, and I sit down to sort out my notes while I can still remember what I meant.
