The Nowhere Man's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The Nowhere Man had been walking the Norwegian Wood for eleven days, and he still could not say what he was looking for. He left his apartment because the walls had started to feel like a second skin, and he had grown tired of his own company inside them. Out here under the pines, he thought the answer would come fast. It had not. He drifted wherever the path bent. When other walkers passed and said the river was pretty, he agreed and went toward the river. When they said the river was cold, he agreed and turned back. He had no compass of his own, and without one he understood he could walk these woods forever and never stop. On the eleventh afternoon he came upon a wooden garden bed half-swallowed by the brush. Neon plants spilled over the sides in colors that did not belong to any season. He recognized the bed. He had built it himself, four days ago, in a burst of certainty that this clearing was the place. He had stayed one night. By morning the certainty was gone, and he had walked away without taking anything. Seeing the bed again told him he was moving in circles. He sat down on the dirt beside it and admitted he did not know what kind of place would ever feel right. He made himself a small test. He would name, out loud, what he actually wanted from a place. Not what the river-walkers wanted. Not what the people back in the city wanted. He spoke into the trees. He wanted a roof that did not feel like a cage. He wanted color, because the gray apartment had drained him. He wanted to be able to step outside without packing. He wanted somewhere a stranger could sit down and he would not mind. He stood up. For the first time in eleven days, he had a shape in his head to match against the world. He walked until dusk and found two things close together in a stand of thin pines. The first was an open gazebo painted in loud swirling colors, its roof curling up at the corners like a held breath. The second, twenty steps behind it, was a small cabin with the same wild patterns climbing its walls and a round window above the door. He stepped onto the gazebo floor and sat. A breeze moved through the open sides. He did not feel boxed in. He looked back at the cabin and saw a roof he could walk away from each morning and return to each night. He stayed where he was for a long time. Then he stood, crossed to the cabin door, and tried the handle. It turned.