Z: A Fool's Journey

A Quick Pass Thru Avalon

The mountain town of Avalon was in full swing by the time I hopped the final boulder down the trail.

Avalon rested on a natural slope that reminded travelers there was no lodging and they needed to keep moving on. Guests, of course, could do whatever they pleased, but the small pitstop was a place for repairs, trades, and maybe a quick luxury to-go.

Luxuries like the aroma leading my nose to the first shop on my delivery route.

On a day like today, I always entered towns from the upslope to make sure I was going against the flow of the guests. It was always so tempting to stroll up with visitors and listen to their stories. But when I had a schedule to keep, it was better to pass people going the opposite way than be drawn into their tales of love triangles, social politics, and fears of not being enough.

They were endlessly baffling and I never tired of them, which was why I needed to travel opposite of temptation for the day.

In the storybooks, Avalon was a magical place with witches, knights, kings, and castles. Anyone expecting to find as much in this namesake mountain town was bound to be disappointed. It was basically two rows of shops framing a path up the mountain for about a quarter of a mile.

Guests either stopped or they didn't. Their choice. But nearly everyone passed through.

Everyone got an early start this high up in the mountain. Avalon bustled — all types of foods already cooking over open fires or baking in clay ovens as shop owners laid out their wares and got ready for the day. But nothing cooking over a fire completely overpowered the sublime aroma of bread baking at the first shop on my list.

"Z!" the baker's daughter called out to me when I was still a good distance away.

I waved back, double-timing my pace to reach her as she pulled a sticky bun off a cooling tray. By the time I got to her she was holding it out to me.

"Good morning, Emma," I said as I took the delicious pastry.

"Good morning," she replied with a bright smile. "Today is not your usual day."

"I know," I said, finding a stump to rest my bag on. "I couldn't sleep last night so I decided to come up the mountain."

She eyed my bag and gave a small impulsive bounce. "Have anything for us?"

Emma's father was a baker and her mother was a seamstress, so I often had items for at least one of them.

"Only small things this time," I said, taking a bite of the hot bun as my free hand undid my pack. I peeked in, knowing exactly the pouch I was looking for. "But I do have..."

I pulled out the pouch, letting Emma swipe it from me to peer into the bag as if it contained great treasure. Because it did.

"Buttons!" she squealed, looking through them as I made quick work of the sticky bun. "And they're all different. Where did you get these?"

The answer was always the same: Guests.

Items on the mountain were a rotating stock of what visitors left, lost, or traded during their time on the mountain. Which was pretty much everything. So when someone asked where something came from, they weren't asking about who brought it up the mountain, but the why and the how of it all.

"Well," I began, reshouldering my pack as I gave her the story behind the buttons. "Once upon this one time, a rich man lived in a high tower in the middle of a great city. This man had everything he had been told he could want, yet he felt empty. And, as the days passed, his emptiness grew and grew until, not knowing what else to do, he chartered a jet off to Timbuktu."