* Author : Rachael K. Jones
* Narrator : Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
*
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First published in Strange Horizons.
Rated PG.
Traveling Mercies
by Rachael K Jones
In the old stories, strangers at the door could be disguised gods, so you had to invite them in. It was a sin to turn away a guest.
Atithi devo bhava. Sanskrit: the guest is God.
I am not God, though I am old.
As the road rolls by, I know sunrise is near by the darkness outside. A church approaches on the left. A spotlight beneath the steeple sends a long, black finger into the sky. Everything looms larger at night, bulked up by shadows like fluttering cloaks.
I pull over and rest my head against the wheel. Travel takes its toll, but you can’t stop until you’re home.
I’m far away from home.
And I’m almost out of time.
Just as the horizon turns gray, I reach a long gravel driveway that wraps around a green-shuttered house. They’ve left the porch light on. They’re expecting me. I knock anyway, and a woman answers the door, coffee cup in hand, wet gray hair drying limp on her shoulders like moss. Marcia, an old friend.
“You made it!” The force of her hug knocks me back a step. “Come on in, Alif. You must be exhausted.”
“I’m pretty tired,” I admit. “Construction on I-96. Not much traffic, but it was slow going.”
“I’ll take your bag.” Marcia grabs for it, and I let her. Sometimes you have to let people take care of you. That’s the contract, the covenant of friendship. There are rules to this sort of thing, like how they have to invite me in. “Want coffee? Sam brewed a pot before she left for work. Or do you want to sleep?”
I do need rest, but another, more desperate thirst drives me, so I take her up on the coffee. In the kitchen, we watch the sun wash the countertops rose-gold. Reflexively I flinch from the light’s touch, but the feeling passes. I’m safe here, for now.
Hospitality is sacred, and the guest divine. Let no harm befall him once you have welcomed him in.
Marcia and I haven’t crossed paths in years, not since we bonded over coffee and good music in Johannesburg. “Keep in touch,” she’d said, “and look me up if you find yourself in Michigan. Wish I could stay longer, but Sam is waiting.” She said Sam the way another woman might say home.
That’s how she came to join the address book that never leaves my pocket. My lifeblood. It took me eleven years to take her up on the offer—travel takes forever because I can only move at night—but I made it.
When I have slaked my thirst for conversation, I set down my cup. “I’d better get some sleep. Long drive ahead of me tonight.”
Marcia is crestfallen. “Can’t you stay a little longer? You just got here.”
I shake my head. “I’d better not. I need to get home.”
I’ve been saying that for two hundred years now. It’s another rule: company that lingers too long becomes part of the household, so I mustn’t overstay my welcome. Otherwise, I need to be invited in again. Easiest to just move on. Besides, I have many friends to see.
Marcia’s guest room is well-lit and comfortable. An old patchwork quilt drapes the wrought-iron bed. It’s heavier than it looks, like the weight of the years is trapped between the layers. Out the window, the sun rides over the treeline and does not destroy me. The invitation protects me.
I have slept in guest rooms grand and humble, sometimes no more than a blanket on the floor. There is a painter in India who puts me up on a cot beneath an easel spattered saffron and blue. In Curitiba, Brazil,
