The Journey by John Marsden

Author:John Marsden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 1988-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Two days later Temora left the fair to begin her journey home. Though she did not mention it, Argus felt that Mayon’s muttered aside at the fire had helped her to make her decision.

Although she was travelling in the general direction of her home, she was leaving the fair when it was furthest away from Batlin, and the route she planned appeared to be a particularly arduous one. But she was adamant that it was time for her to move on, and she would not discuss the decision with Argus. Indeed, she seemed preoccupied, as though she had already closed Argus out of her life, and the boy’s depression as he moped around the campsite had so little apparent effect on her that Argus started to grow angry.

But when the time came for her to go she became once more, for a few minutes that Argus cherished long afterwards, her former self. She flung her arms around him, gave him a wicked kiss and laughed with a reckless pleasure. ‘Oh, I’m so glad I met you,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forget that day on the beach. And the times in the tent, and the caravan. If I ever have another boyfriend I’ll always be comparing him to you, and he’ll never know why I suddenly seem to be twenty years away.’

Argus laughed, despite himself. ‘I’ll miss you too,’ he said, and meant it, though after her familiar figure had finally vanished around a corner in the road he felt a strange sense of what seemed almost like relief. He quickly suppressed the feeling, not liking to admit that although he liked Temora he was glad to be free of such a long and intense relationship.

Her departure nudged Argus into the realisation that he must also be moving on. ‘The wanderer’s danger is to find comfort.’ He was, and must continue to be, a wanderer and, although the end of his quest was starting to take shape in the distance, he still had a way to go yet. He broached the subject with Mayon as they were setting up at their newest venue, the city of Palatine.

It was not easy for him to tell the storyteller his decision, for he had grown to look on the gentle Mayon as a second father, and he knew that Mayon cared for him as a son. Yet the storyteller only hesitated a moment before agreeing with the boy that there was nothing more the people of the fair could teach him. At first Argus promised to stay on until they left Palatine, but once he had made up his mind to go, he found himself becoming unbearably restless, and Mayon, sensing this, gave him permission to leave as soon as a replacement could be found. This did not take long in a city the size of Palatine, and so it came about that on a wet and grey-cold morning Argus slung his blanket-roll on his back and took to the roads once more.

His

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