It was a complete bolt from the blue, and I couldn’t muster a single word. Nito rushed behind me to hide. The man didn’t wait for a reply, just cheerfully yelled an “I’ll be right down” before vanishing from the window.
Is he shady? I thought, my mind racing. Uh, right, a weapon. I need a stick or something. Ah, I’ve got the gun. Maybe I should get that out.
Even as I had the thought, I didn’t move. Eventually, the door to the first floor opened and the man came out wearing a huge backpack. He came over, pausing by the auto-trike to set his bag down before walking the rest of the way to us. I could feel Nito pulling on the back of my shirt.
“You don’t need to be so nervous. I’m Jack, a traveler.”
“I’m Keisuke. A-A traveler,” I imitated in a tiny voice, unable to think of anything else to say.
I heard a slight sigh of wonder from behind me.
“I’m Nito. Also a traveler.”
“Well, aren’t you happy about that,” I chuckled.
She was looking smugly back at me, apparently pleased by the appellation. The man calling himself Jack bent at the waist and gave her a cheery greeting. He gave off the air of a cheerful older fellow, and he didn’t seem to be a bad person, at least at a glance.
“You’re in a tough spot though, huh?” he said. “You’re better off not driving in the town at night. You never know where you’re gonna fall.”
“Did you...see?” I asked hesitantly.
“Sure did. I was sleeping up there,” he told us, pointing up at the window from earlier. “It was a right racket, so I wondered what’d happened.”
It was embarrassing to think he’d seen our failure. I wanted the earth to just swallow me up. Well, come to think of it, there was a convenient hole that’d do well enough right in front of me...
“You could have said something,” I protested.
“You wouldn’t have wanted an old guy like me coming up to you at night, would you? Plus, there’s a kid with you. I didn’t want to deal with all that wariness.”
Nito seemed to realize that he meant her by “kid” and poked unhappily at my arm. That must have really irritated her.
“Why turn up now, then...?”
“I just got up and when I took a look I saw you were gonna try that unstable slope,” he said, dropping down into the hole and scrutinizing our work. “I don’t think it’ll take the weight.”
“Ugh.”
Considering I’d driven it into the hole in the first place, I didn’t have much confidence in my driving, frankly. Plus, I’d already thought that it looked like a good kick would take out the slope.
“So, about that trade.”
“What is it you want?” I asked cautiously, deciding to hear him out.
“It’s nothing massive,” he insisted, waving a hand. “I just want you to take me to the bridge.”
“To the bridge?”
“It’s a little past the town. It’s called the Soralt Bridge. I was going to walk to it, but a working car would be heaps better.”
Nito and I exchanged glances, holding a silent debate.
“You just want a ride?” I asked.
“Right. I don’t mind the back seat, or the roof even.”
After a brief moment of worry, I quickly came to a conclusion.
“Okay then, sure.”
I still wasn’t entirely convinced he was on the level, but that was inevitable with us not knowing each other. Taking him to the bridge was no big deal. The important thing now was to get the Kettle to safety, as unharmed as possible.
“Great, thanks!”
Jack looked up from inspecting the hole and held his hand out toward me. Cautiously, I gripped it and gave him a handshake. He was so relaxed I almost felt stupid for my reticence. It must have been the composure that comes with age.
Jack rolled his sleeves up and hoisted a fist-sized rock off the ground near his feet, then started digging at the exposed dirt.
“Um, what are you doing?”
“We’re on the clay stratum here,” he said as if it was obvious.
Sure, the clay stratum... So what?
Nito and I could only watch wordlessly as Jack gathered the reddish-brown earth together into a mound. Then he gathered up smallish rocks and fragments of flagstones and put them on top of it. When he didn’t have anything suitable, he broke apart the flagstones.
“This is water, right? I need some.”
He took one of the drums we’d removed from the Kettle and poured the water onto the pile of clay and stone fragments before mixing it all together by hand. Eventually, it started to harden until it looked like a massive, sopping-wet lump of bread dough. He picked up a handful of the mixture and slapped it onto the back of some larger flagstones, laying them along the top. There was no hesitation to his movements, and soon he had the drop buried in rubble and formed into a smooth slope. He then did the same on the other side before using the water drum to wash his hands. Then he rolled his sleeves back down.
“It’s pretty rough and ready, but it should stand up to a single climb.”
“Um...is this your job?” I asked.
He laughed shyly.
“Nah, I’m just copying.”
I didn’t think simple copying went that far. The ramps were still fairly damp, but they looked sturdy even at a glance. I wasn’t worried about driving up them.
“Whoops, hang on. They’re not dry yet, so you’ll need to give it four hours,” he warned.
That was going to be a fairly long wait. I folded my arms, wondering what to do with our sudden surfeit of free time. Nito, on the other hand, immediately went for her rucksack of painting materials. Jack looked at us both and laughed.
“Didn’t you come to see the witch?” he asked.