Rocinante runs until he is exhausted, and then he trots, until he is exhausted again, even more so, and then he walks—and he walks, and he walks, and he walks. He is a bony old horse. He is made of sticks. He can walk forever; it is a thing he can do. He is searching for his missing Master; there is nowhere he will not walk to. Oh, he is so tired, but he walks and he walks; here is where he walks:

He walks over the hills.

He walks across the meadows.

He walks on the bridges, to cross the rivers. Or he wades through the mud.

He walks through the towns, or around the edges of them.

He walks down into the Inquisition dungeons when the guards aren’t looking, or he slips his bony old self between the bars across the gratings or windows, when there are gratings and windows. He checks to see if each prisoner might be Don Quixote, and then he asks them all if they’ve seen Don Quixote anywhere, by any chance—and all they can say back is that he’s certainly not in here, but they’ll keep their eyes open the next time they’re out and about.

He walks all the way up a tower he manages to find, even though he is tired, so tired, so tired, and at the top is nothing but a telescope. No wicked Enchanter. No Don Quixote.

He walks along the bottoms of the lakebeds.

He walks up the sides of the mountains. He peers his snout into the high caverns, but there is no sign of Don Quixote. Wherever the wicked Enchanter has stolen away Rocinante’s Master, it is nowhere in Spain, or at least not in any sort of expected place.

He walks up into the sky to check inside the clouds, a clever trick, to hide someone in one of those, but nothing.

He walks down to the bottoms of the lake-beds, beneath the murky water.

He walks through the narrow spaces between moments.

He walks from the beginnings to the ends of everyone’s sentences, and then back again.

He walks out of Spain and into Portugal, and then quickly back over into Spain, enough of that. He walks out of Spain and into France.

He walks out of France and into Italy.

He walks out of Italy and into Austria.

He walks out of Austria and into Germany.

He walks out of Germany and into Poland.

Everywhere he goes—nothing. Everything—misery. Nobody runs out of misery, There is plenty, plenty, in every town, in every country. There is poverty, there is illness, there is sorrow, there is
Rot.
Everyone is
Rotting
Until they are mush, and then
Rotting
Until they are paste, and then
Rotting
Until they go trickling along the little furrows and cracks of the ground, away from where they are and towards somewhere else. It is inevitable that Rocinante walks out of Poland and into Gaza; there is no other place that he could go. He trickles into Gaza. This is where everything goes, except food. This is where it all meets and pools.

The Veil is starting to thin, but it is still so much thicker than Rocinante is. It takes Rocinante years and years and years to find his way from La Mancha to Warsaw to Jabalia. He has to pass through all the space in-between, every inch of it, and he is so exhausted, he is so exhausted, and not just the space; he has to pass through all the time also in-between, every second between then and now.

And all the stories—there are so many stories between then and now, in so many places, about so many things, and Rocinante has to make his way through all of those before he finally gets to where he is going; there is nowhere else that he could go; there is nothing more than just muffled whispers and blurred images that slip across the Veil, overtaking him as he goes.

But finally, after as long as it takes, with his poor splitting hooves aching from all the journey, Rocinante steps out of a string-narrow gap in the rubble and there he is. His poor splitting hooves, oh his poor splitting hooves on the crumbled concrete and the jagged broken glass and the sun-cracked ground, there is nothing even close to soft. He is miserable, he is exhausted and in pain. He is overjoyed.

He is entirely certain that he has come to the right place, at last. Of all the places that the wicked Enchanter could be, who has stolen away Rocinante’s Master, surely it is here, the sinkhole and the wellspring alike of all agonies. Just look around: hunger and death and sorrow. It is the Enchanter who is the creator of all this, surely, surely, and it is the Enchanter who sips at it like honey. The bony old horse immediately redoubles his search, finally, finally, he must be close to finding Don Quixote!

First, he checks in the tunnels which run below. He finds soldiers, there, with their faces covered, they stare at him curiously as he approaches. They do not know that he is from Spain; they think he is from this place and of their land, and they let him pass them by without any trouble, though they ask him many questions. “Who are you, strange horse?” they ask him. “How have you found your way down here?”

There are prisoners, down here. Rocinante asks if any of them have seen Don Quixote, and they haven’t. They just want to go home, like people are always wanting to go home. They are tired of this, like people are always becoming tired of things. They are not able to understand why any of this is still happening. They are not able to understand why everyone hasn’t just settled down and called an end to this, already.

After the tunnels, Rocinante searches the beaches—there are often fish in the sea near the beaches who know all sorts of things, but none of them have seen Don Quixote either. They are every bit as confused, too, about what is happening in the world. Nobody has come out fishing in such a long time—their numbers are swelling and swelling.

There are so many of them, all clamoring over each other in the water; even when the artillery-rounds from the cannons of the warship parked just off the coast come tearing through the school, it barely makes a dent in their new numbers. The sea churns with their blood and tissue-paper organs, and there are so many of them that Rocinante cannot make out a single voice from the mass. He gives up on the fish and instead he asks a man on the beach if he has seen the Great and Noble Woebegotten Knight, Don Quixote.

“I have never heard of such a person,” says the man, who is sitting in his house, he has built it here, on the beach, from used-up flour-sacks refilled with sand; he loves it here on the sand. He has no shoes, and the sand feels good on his bare feet, or better than the pavement. He imagines that it must feel good on Rocinante’s poor splitting hooves, also, or better than the pavement—so he asks the bony old horse to tell him more about the Knight he is searching for.

Perhaps the man has seen him after all, or perhaps he knows someone who has seen him, or perhaps he knows someone he might be able to ask to go looking for him, and perhaps the horse might stay standing here on this gentle sand for a while longer as they talk—he is trying to be kind. “What is the story of this Knight?” the man asks. “How can a person ever become a Knight in this day and age?”

He doesn’t understand that the sand is grinding into the cracks in Rocinante’s hooves. Like a bullet between the bones of the shoulder, tracing its fingernails down the nerves, but Rocinante stands there and he tells the man everything. He tells the man that

Once,
There was a man
A good bit older than himself
Who was very well-studied and very well-read
More than anything in all the world,
He loved books;
He was one of that sort of people.
He lived up on a hill
Overlooking the sleepy little town of El Toboso
In a mansion with a big round window,
Lovely blue shutters,
Which he would sit at in his chair
As he read his books
Of gardening
And mathematics
And history
And most of all,
Chivalry
Romances of chivalry
Adventures of Knights
And their horses
Against dragons and Enchanters,
Rescuing maidens,
Correcting injustices
And all of that.

Rocinante goes on and on to the man about his Master’s passion for books, how he had read every book in his vast library at the very least five times straight through, and then after that he had bought more, and more—and more—and more; he had started selling off livestock and holdings of his family’s land to buy more and more and more and more and more, on and on, all the books he could find about Knights rescuing maidens and correcting injustices, this had seemed to him, surely, like the heartbeat of the world. He would disappear into his library and not come out for hours, and then for days, at a time, and then for weeks.

Haven’t you heard this story? Don’t you know this story? This is the story of Don Quixote!

Finally, he comes out of his library after reading too many books about Knights rescuing maidens and correcting injustices, blinking in the afternoon sunlight, and his eyes have become clear, haven’t they? At long last, he can see the truth, can’t he? That’s how it goes! He looks around, and he sees a world which is filled with injustices in need of correction. He sees hunger and hatred, poverty and misery and cruelty and endless offences against God. He knows a beautiful woman down in the village who is in need of rescue—her whole people are in need of rescue—

Oh,
The things that are
Becoming of them!
Oh,
The miseries that are
Befalling them!
Oh,
The nightmare that is
Still approaching them!

All that is left to complete the picture is a Knight to save the world, and Don Quixote simply looks at himself and sees everything that he needs to see. He tosses himself up atop his bony old horse and rides off into adventure!

Here is what he looks like, Rocinante explains. Here is what he was wearing, probably, when he was taken away by the Enchanter, here is a description of his bedclothes, or perhaps of his armor as well, in case he was snatched while he was preparing himself.

The world has been waiting for him to carry on saving it, for a terribly long time, it has been waiting for him. His bony old horse has been searching for him for a terribly long time—can you even begin to imagine how long Rocinante has been searching for his Master? Can you see how badly the world needs saving? Look around you, surely you can see! But have you seen Don Quixote? Do you have any idea at all where he might have been taken?

The man shakes his head, he really doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know anyone who might know. He is sorry, he really is sorry. Don Quixote sounds like a good and kind person. Don Quixote sounds like the sort of person the world might need right now. Rocinante is more than welcome to stand here, or sit, and rest as long as he likes before he carries on his search. The man does not have much to share, but a few crumbs of bread, at least, or a carrot? The bony old horse will need his strength.

But bony old Rocinante shakes his bony old head, and he tosses his thinning and graying old tail. Telling all about it just now has made him twice as certain; he needs to find Don Quixote as soon as possible. He cannot delay any longer than he already has. The world cannot wait any longer than it already has. He thanks the man with a nudge of his snout and carries on, away from the sea.

In three weeks, the man will leave this house to visit his cousin, and when he comes back it will have been crushed flat by a bulldozer and half-buried in the sand. But Carcayona will have ripped out the guts of the bulldozer and left it empty for him to live in instead, like a shell, and it’s not quite as roomy, but it will do well enough.

Rocinante wanders about for a little while longer after leaving the man, until he finds a mother and her four children—two sons, two daughters—all stood in line together for food. The children are all carrying bowls, as big as they can carry, as small as they are. The oldest son has a shiny aluminum mixing-bowl that could fit his head into it three times over if someone came along and
Blew
It
Off.

The youngest daughter has a bowl about half as large, even though she’s only about a quarter of the size of her brother. She could fit
All of her
Remains
Into it, if she was willing to squish them down, a little. The mother is carrying two large cooking pots instead of bowls, the largest vessels she has, one of them under each arm like an extra two children. Thick metal, much thicker than the bowls—they are sturdy pots, great for stews, and they weigh far more, each of them, than anything her children could carry, even working in pairs.

The mother is torn between holding them up and reaching out to grab her younger son or daughter and tug them back towards herself when they start to move to far away, or when it’s time for the line to shuffle forwards a few steps—she doesn’t want to lose her spot—she is so hungry—the sun is so hot—she does not want to lose even a minute waiting here more than she has to. When she first sees Rocinante approaching, the corner of her mouth twitches at his old bones—how could anything living be so thin? Will she be so thin? Will her children be so thin?

And she knows her daughters and her sons so well, if Rocinante comes walking past them now, they will cry out, all four,
“Oh,
Lovely horse!”

Even the eldest, and they will go running after him to touch his ears and feel his tail and try to convince him to let them up onto his bony old back, and she will be helpless to gather them again without completely losing her place in line, and she has been waiting for hours, behind hundreds of people, and there are hundreds of people waiting behind her, who will take her place the moment she gives it up, they are all hungry, they are all tired of waiting in this sun, with their heavy bowls and cooking-pots.

The mother starts looking around for someone who just might be kind enough to hold her place for her instead of taking it, what else can she do? But instead of walking past, Rocinante comes to a stop. He politely bows his head for the children, so that they can touch his ears right where they are standing. He turns and offers them his tail. He can see how tired and hungry they are and he swears that he would let them cook him and eat him right here and now if only he were anything more than just bones.

He asks if any of them have seen Don Quixote. He tells them who he means, and he tells them more, this time, then he had told to the man on the beach. He tells them things he had not thought to mention before. He tells them about Sancho Panza, for instance, the foolish peasant man who his Master had brought along on the journey as his squire, Sancho Panza, and his donkey, Dapple, riding along. All for the promise of a governorship, after Don Quixote had become famous and powerful enough to start properly moving the world. Hardly a noble motivation, and hardly a shrewd partner for the quest, but that was just how people are, Rocinante had supposed, stupid and selfish, that’s just how people are. And it was better to have someone than no one, Rocinante had supposed, and he is supposing it even more now, after all of his traveling by himself.

Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had fought against those terrible giants, and Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had gone galloping out into the middle of those two clashing armies, and Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had bravely defeated that rival Basque Knight, and Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had received their blessing from the Lord of the nearby castle, and Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had freed all those innocent prisoners, and Sancho had been there when Rocinante and Don Quixote had recovered the legendary Golden Helmet of Mambrino, quirked with charms of strength and luck. Sancho had been there for those, and a thousand other things; Sancho had been there for it all, and come to think of it, where is Sancho anyways?

Stood here in line with the children and their mother, this is the first that Rocinante is coming to think of it after these hundreds of years; where is Sancho? He tells the children and their mother everything he can think of about Sancho, what he looks like, the roundness of his shape, and what he acts like and talks like, the roundness of his mind, his easygoing manner, the way his eyes go nibble-nibble-nibbling after any trail of gold he happens to find. His fear of the Inquisition.

Has anyone seen Sancho? Surely, Sancho Panza has been off looking for Don Quixote as well—or else he has been taken as well by the wicked Enchanter—wherever he is, that will be a step towards finding Rocinante’s missing Master.

But the mother has not seen Sancho Panza any more than she has seen Don Quixote. She does not know if he is searching around Gaza, or if he has been taken away to a detention facility. Her husband was taken eight months ago, and he got out a month after that, and he hadn’t said anything about anybody like Sancho Panza or Don Quixote in prison with him.

“They took him again two months ago,” she says. “This is not why he is here with us. Perhaps he is with your friends, now, perhaps they have been taken more recently, or perhaps they have taken him to a different place than where they took him to before. I do not know where he is. I do not know.”

“I had thought that perhaps you had left your husband at home,” says a woman a few places ahead of this mother in the line. She glances back over her shoulder to speak, and no, she has not seen Don Quixote or Sancho Panza either. She has left her own husband at home. Most of the women here have left their husbands at home, and their sons as well if they have grown old enough or tall enough. “There is always an excuse to shoot the men or bomb the men or burn the men, or anyone standing next to the men,” says the woman.

“They will shoot a horse, too,” says another woman. “They are always shooting horses, or they are missing and shooting the people standing next to horses.”

“They are always bombing horses.”

“They are always burning horses.”

Rocinante doesn’t need to hear anymore. He waits for the mother in front of him to get her four children tightly held, and then he turns and walks away, and he does not look back or else the children will want even more to come running after and pet him.

In two months, the mother’s husband will be let out of prison again, and then a month after that, the soldiers will come looking for him a third time—and nevermind that the family’s home was destroyed more than a year ago, and nevermind that they aren’t even in the same tent that they were in four displacements ago, the soldiers will have no trouble finding the mother and her children; there are eyes everywhere here, glass and copper, and there are knives in all the eyes, cutting away anything even close to hiding.

But when the soldiers come storming into the camp, the mother’s husband is nowhere to be seen. He is not in any of the tents, and he is not buried anywhere nearby. He is not in what remains of any of the hospitals; have they lost track of him in an alleyway? Have they lost track of him in a crowd somewhere? They go from group to group, from person to person, pointing rifles, demanding answers, but nobody has seen him. Nobody has even heard of him. What are you even talking about? You must have the wrong camp. When the soldiers start shooting at people, Carcayona will emerge from just across the Veil, where she has hidden the husband, and she will carve the soldiers into bright red ribbons. She will tear out their guts and leave their skin empty on the dust, but nobody will want to live in it.

Rocinante walks far away from the wide-open space where all the people are standing in line for food, and soon he finds himself in a bit of alleyway. Both of the buildings on either side have been bombed to ruins, but these two walls are still standing, still making an alleyway, at least for a few feet.

There are children playing here—dozens of children, running all about. They have a ball, kicking and throwing between them, and they are playing a game that doesn’t quite have rules until it very suddenly does, and then doesn’t again afterwards. It is much a game of arguments as it is goals and points. Rocinante plays alongside the children for a little bit—he bends down to push the ball with his nose, or he nudges it around with his poor splitting hooves.

For a little bit, the children’s game becomes kicking the ball so that it will go rolling between his long spindly legs, like through a gate, and then for a little bit after that the game becomes picking up the ball and running between his legs—through one pair and out the other, before anyone else can stop you. After that, the game becomes picking up the ball and throwing it for Rocinante to try and catch and balance on the narrow bridge of his bony old snout. He asks the children if any of them have seen Don Quixote or Sancho Panza. He asks if any of them have seen Dulcinea,

The fair maiden,
The pure Princess,
The reason for all the world’s goodness
And the reason for his Master starting this whole grand adventure
In the first place
Has anyone seen her?

For years and years, Don Quixote had been riding all about the land, declaring the fairness and the pureness of Dulcinea and performing countless great deeds in her name—all of this, every battle, every act of courage, all in the name of Dulcinea! How could they have never heard of Dulcinea?

Perhaps it is just because they are so young. Rocinante starts to tell them everything about Dulcinea, where she is from, what she looks like, and then he realizes that actually, he’s not at all sure what she looks like. He tries to remember, but he can’t seem to remember ever actually seeing her. Perhaps it is just because he is so old.

Instead, he tells the children everything that his Master had ever said about the indescribable Dulcinea, and by the time he’s gotten through it all he’s sure he can see her in his head—her beauty, her grace, the everlasting light pouring out of her like a gentle sunrise, and above all of that her kindness—where in all the world could you ever find such a kind creature? And now, all the children are sure that they’ve seen her—they see her every day.

“That is my mother,” says a girl. “There is no one in all the world kinder than my mother.”

“It is my mother,” says a boy. “My mother shines like the sunrise.”

“No, it is my mother,” another boy explains. “My mother is the most beautiful creature in all of Creation.”

Two girls—sisters—begin to cry out together that no, it is their mother who is Dulcinea. An older boy says that he is absolutely certain that his mother was Dulcinea—she was the reason for all the world’s goodness—and he tells Rocinante that he is very sorry to have to be the one to give him such news, but Dulcinea is dead.

She was killed by a missile three weeks ago—exploded just two feet from her, sent her flying—already scorched black and in pieces—straight out a third-story window. “Bits of her are floating in our breath, now,” he says. “I can still smell her, sometimes,” he says. “She is still burning,” he says. “She is made of flame and air.”

Can’t Rocinante feel the difference? She was the reason for all the world’s goodness, and now she is gone—and now look at the world! She had been Dulcinea, there can be no doubt about it.

A very young girl asks Rocinante if Dulcinea might be any good at making shakshuka, because if Dulcinea is very good at making shakshuka than maybe her mother might be Dulcinea instead of the boy’s mother, and it’s at this point that one of the children throws the ball for Rocinante to catch on the bony old bridge of his nose, and he does manage to catch it, but instead of staying there on his nose, it goes bouncing away at a funny angle, and the horse and all the children go chasing after it, but when it bounces around a corner all the children immediately stop short—they all know better.

Rocinante doesn’t know better, and before any of them can cry out to warn him, he has already walked calmly out into full view of the next street over and just like that he is hit with an artillery shell and blown to pieces.

He is made of sticks—and in a simple shape; it is not so hard for the children to put him back together again after they have gathered all his bits with careful ropes and fishing lines. But once they have finished doing that, they all scatter away; the tank will be rolling closer, now, to investigate.

It is better for them not to be here anymore. They all go one way, and Rocinante, as he is trying to twist his on-backwards hooves around right again, goes the other, and once more he is alone.

One of the girls will be running from soldiers down an alleyway like this alleyway, and she will be looking back over her shoulder to see how close they have come to catching her—they are already shooting at her, but their aim is poor. She will run straight into Carcayona’s leg and fall to the ground. She will scream and bury her head in her hands, and she will not see what happens next; when she opens her eyes, she will be alone. There will be no bodies left behind around her.

One of the boys will be starving to death, like everyone is starving to death, when bread starts appearing in his tent, and oranges, and finely spiced Spanish rice.

One of the other boys will be waiting for water when the missile falls, and he is looking up right as it happens—just an accident of fate; he might have been looking any particular way, really. He sees the plane against the sun, just a dot, and he sees something coming towards him, faster than he can blink, and then

“Like the stroke
Of a pen,”
He will say later.
“It was simply
Crossed out
And gone.”

The oldest girl will be shot in the head, or on the head—the bullet stops right up against her skull, like just a crumpled bit of paper. She will blink, stunned, dazed, lost—has her brain been so badly scrambled that she hasn’t even noticed it happening? Isn’t this how people die, she will wonder—she has has always wondered—with time just stopping at the moment? But then she is shot again—in the chest, and it barely leaves a scratch on her.

It is a few more hours or so before Rocinante finally meets someone else. Another child; a small boy much smaller than any of the children he has already encountered. Barely two years old, or maybe three, but not more than three.

He is waddling along, by himself. His clothes are torn and his face is torn, and he is covered with ash and soot. He has just finished being blown up, the same as Rocinante, though not quite as badly—not quite badly enough to need to be put back together. It is only his family who are in pieces—his father and sister all over the house, and his mother a few blocks away from here, still together enough to pull him out of the rubble and go walking with him for a little bit before finally collapsing.

Any other child in the world would have stayed there beside his mother, howling and sobbing, but not this child. This child has carried on walking because of the key on a string around his neck. He shows it to Rocinante—he holds it up like an insect he has caught, or a particularly nice pebble or shell. He has no idea what it is the key to.

He has no idea what a key is, really, or what it does—but he knows that this was important enough for his mother to stop and slip it off from around her neck before dying instead of taking just one more step, and he knows that this was important enough for his mother to reach out and push him gently away with the last of the strength in the one arm she still had, just a little bit further down the road, instead of pulling him close one final time.

Rocinante looks at the key and he is forced to admit that yes, Dulcinea really has died.

But surely, he thinks, Don Quixote still lives. The world really doesn’t make very much sense, otherwise, does it? The man is just missing—that is what he is. Rocinante tells the little boy all about Don Quixote—everything—all of it.

Every last detail. Every step and sparkling facet of his beautiful dream. Every setback and disappointment. Rocinante decides that the whole world is going to learn about his Master, starting with this boy. He goes on and on and on until he is finished, and then he keeps going on for a little while after that, just to make sure.

Every line of poetry, recited under the shade of the trees, or beneath the stars. Every meal—every missed meal. Every adventure and misadventure. Everything that Rocinante has missed.

Rocinante misses being somebody. Or no, he was never somebody. Nobody knows who he is, really, except for all the animals, or some of the animals. The animals here don’t know him. He misses being something, is what he misses—he misses being something to somebody. For all of his years pulling carts, he had never been anything to anybody.

He had never been anything to the owner of the crumbling old mansion up on the hill; it would have taken a very sawdusted sort of brain to think that they had ever grown up together in any tender sort of way; they hadn’t. The horse had never even had a name, and then! And then! Rocinante tells the boy all about it, all about it! He had never mattered so much to anybody as he had when he was the horse of a great Knight! He had never been so loved by anybody, except for by his mother!

And what has he mattered, since then? What has he mattered, across all of these miles and centuries?

Without another thought he lowers himself all the way down to the ground—nevermind the aching of his bony old knees—low enough for the little boy to crawl up atop his bony old back, as though the tiny arms and legs are trying to get over a fallen tree-trunk in the woods—and then he turns, and off he goes with his new companion. It is better to have someone than no one—better for both of them.

And more than that, it is destiny—it is the plan. Rocinante is not so foolish a horse as to believe in coincidences, and he is not nearly so foolish a horse as to not believe in God; he has never so much as read even a single word of scripture, but he knows God, he can hear God’s whispers, he can feel God’s nudges on the shape of his journey; horses are very sensitive creatures, after all. Keys unlock things, after all—that’s what they do.

Keys unlock things like locked towers or dungeons. Keys unlock things like prison-cells, the sorts of prison-cells where captured Heroes might be kept, and possibly their rotund companions as well. The whole picture is coming together perfectly in the bony old horse’s bony old head. Dulcinea’s final act, sending her son on a mission to save her Knight. He turns his snout towards the high wall in the distance. Even with his cloudy old eyes as old and as cloudy as they are, he can see all the buildings looming past that wall.

The towers, metal and glass, wicked claws scratching the clouds. Any one of them could be the one where the Woebegotten Knight sits waiting for rescue. And all the rest of them? As soon as he is free, no doubt, Don Quixote will tear down every last monument to evil. As soon as soon as soon.

Rocinante begins to walk towards the wall, with the little boy up on his back—he is so close, now—finally, finally, he is so close!—he walks, and then he trots. He is so tired, still—he is exhausted, that hasn’t changed. He is as tired as a coin. But he is trotting instead of walking. He is not quite running. But he is trotting. He is trotting, trotting, trotting towards the wall.

Something incredible is going to happen. Something wonderful is going to happen.