They were driving for miles now across tracts of untenanted land. The road seemed to stretch endlessly before them. Ageless and strangely comforting, the trees on either side of the road appeared to reach out and enfold their car.
�Don�t say anything, Laura.� Stan�s irritation at his wife�s constant plea to retrace their way began to show.
�Just turn around, honey. Please.� Laura tried to speak in a low voice, knowing that angering her husband would further rob the last shreds of reason in his stubborn mind. �There�s room enough up ahead for you to reverse the car.�
Stan continued to drive the car forward, deeper and deeper into the tree-lined road. Laura was growing furious every minute and was about to start shouting at her husband when the tangle of trees by the side of the road opened up and revealed crop fields.
The sight was majestic; it blew their breaths away. On both sides of the road were endless swathes of farmlands growing all sorts of plants neatly arrayed on strips of land. The golden brown wheat shuddered with the wind. The corn stalks, tall and yellowing, had healthy ripe ears of corn ready for harvesting. Rice paddies and land zones containing ripening grains were visible beyond the cornfields. On the left side of the road, trellises bore all sorts of vines: green beans, peas, and numerous other legumes none of them could put a name to. There were tomatoes laden with plump red and orange fruits, onions, carrots, potatoes, and assorted salad greens growing beautifully on tilled plots of earth. The air smelled fresh and clean; its earthy scent was primal and untainted. The farmland looked like something out of a painting with its healthy crops ripening under the sun.
�My god,� Laura muttered in awe, rolling down the windows on her side to get a better view.
Stan was dumbfounded, too. He narrowed his eyes to make out where the wonderful farmlands ended, but he only saw that the fields seemed to stretch to the horizon. Multicolored swatches of vegetation glistened at every corner of his vision.
It reminded him of what a snapshot of a fairy tale farm should look like. The place had an unnatural quality of perfection in it that reminded him of a curious detail he came across while he was studying the Sumerian civilization at Cambridge University. It nagged at him that no written records of the Sumerians were ever found. Their relics abound, but it was strange that the same people who invented the number system could not leave a scrap of document retelling their histories to their next generation.
Stan remembered the story of the mythical Sumerian creatures that were doomed to till the earth and make it fertile for all eternity. The name of the beings came easily to him. Shatikharis.
Harvesters.
�What do you think is this place?� Laura asked. She looked both elated and hysterical for everything was impossibly beautiful and it hurt her eyes to take up so much of it. The farmlands looked too beautiful to be real.
�I have no idea,� Stan whispered. His eyes were glazed and unbelieving, trying to focus on something large and amorphous on the rice paddies. The form moved and disappeared again, hidden by the towering corn stalks and sloping land. �Christ, it looked like every single goddamn crop on earth grew here.� He felt his pulse quicken.
�Look at that, honey!� Laura pointed out to a row of cauliflowers, assorted beets, pumpkins, and unknown tropical greens. The plants� natural colors blended incredibly, like a colorful mirage when seen from a distance.
�Give me the map, Laura.� Stan said. There was urgency in his eyes now. Fear.
Laura fished the map from the glove compartment and handed it to him. She was pale and nervous. She felt it, too. The inexplicable premonition that something was wrong about these farmlands was broiling inside her mind. She looked at her husband and saw him scared for the first time, saw him regressed from a strong-willed man who made all the decisions for both of them ever since they got married to a fumbling forty-two year old who gripped the edges of the map so tightly his knuckles were already turning white.
�There is supposed to be a river here. Bardenstan River.�
�Are you sure?� she asked, unable to take her eyes off the rustling wheat from afar. They were marvelous and hypnotic.
�We took the junction here, right?� Stan pointed to a fork leading off to another main road. �We only need to cover fifteen more miles or so before we reach the lodge. That�s why I took this turnpike. It would save us time.�
Laura took the map from him and studied it carefully. There was the junction Stan mentioned. She remembered it because they both agreed to take it. Everything was fine. Just a little pothole here and there. Nothing serious. Along the way, they encountered a few large trucks and a beat-up pickup and passed by an old diner beside a gasoline station. Five miles after that, there were the large trees on both sides of the road. Then they ended here where out-of-season crops grew perfectly out of freshly turned soil when there was supposed to be a bridge and a river.
�I think we should turn back,� Laura said.
Without saying a word, Stan turned the car around in a perfect U. The tires crunched on the radishes growing beside the road. The car, completing its arc and backing out, suddenly smashed against an enormous snarling thing that loomed in front of the car.
The thing would have resembled a human if not for its scales and its insect-like face. It held a large sickle-like tool in its left hand. The blade glinted when its surface caught the sunlight. Another one like it skittered around the car and smashed the back window.
In the end, Laura screamed enough for both of them.
