A Short Walk Through a Wide World

The two children, Sophie and Somerset Holcombe, and their parents are visiting from New Zealand. The father, Vaughan, orders the children away, afraid that Aubry has malaria. Aubry assures him that her illness is not contagious. The mother, Emily, recognizes Aubry from the newspapers as “the French lady” who has traveled the world since she was a young child (13). Sophie and Somerset ask her to tell them a story about her travels. Aubry says that she left her home in Paris when she was nine years old and that her illness came from a well.

Many years earlier, nine-year-old Aubry stands at a well in Paris with her sisters, Pauline and Sylvie. The well is made of smooth, gray stones and has a face carved into it. The face has a beard, and its mouth opens in a silent scream. The sisters have agreed to sacrifice their most prized possession for a wish to help another. Pauline wishes for the socialists to stop bombing buildings. Sylvie wishes for a cure for syphilis. The girls turn to Aubry, who holds a wooden puzzle ball. She found it a week ago. She left it in a park, but it appeared in her front yard the next morning, as if it had followed her home. She left it again, and it appeared in her room. She decides that it is meant for her and cannot part with it. She refuses to throw it into the well, though she had planned to wish for a neighbor’s baby not to die. Her sisters protest, but she runs away.

Sophie asks if the baby died, and Aubry says yes. Her sickness began that night.

At dinner, Aubry feels ill and does not want to eat. Her mother and father believe that she is being obstinate and spoiled as usual. Her father is about to punish her when she collapses with pain. Her father sends Pauline to get the doctor, and Aubry starts to convulse and falls unconscious.

Aubry wakes in the carriage as her parents take her to the doctor. The farther they get from home, the better Aubry feels. At the doctor’s office, she feels fine and exhibits no symptoms. The doctor says that he cannot diagnose her and sends them home. As they approach their house, Aubry feels worse and instinctively knows that she cannot go inside. Her mother tries to drag her in, and blood pours from her nose and mouth. Screaming, the entire family rides back to the doctor.

The doctor and Aubry’s father struggle to hold her down as her body convulses violently. As she spasms, Aubry looks out a window to see the sun rising over the city. With a sudden burst of desperation, she breaks from her father’s hold and runs for the door. Her parents try to stop her, but Sylvie yells for her to run.

Aubry runs down the road and toward a park that she has never been to before. The farther she retreats, the better she feels. Finally, she stops. Her mother follows, and Aubry says that she cannot go back because it will kill her. She cannot explain how she knows, but she feels that it is true. Then, Aubry’s father and sisters arrive as well. She tries to explain that she cannot go home. Her father does not understand, but Sylvie agrees. Aubry calmly asks her sisters to pack her some clothes and find her puzzle ball. To her surprise, the puzzle ball is already in her pocket. The family finds a hotel near the park to stay in for the night.

On the riverboat, the adult Aubry pauses to tell Vaughan that he was right to be cautious about her. She has been ill for so long that she sometimes forgets how horrifying it must seem to others, and he was right to worry about his children. Emily asks if Aubry and her family stayed at the hotel. Aubry says that they stayed for two days.

On the third day, nine-year-old Aubry becomes ill again, and they leave, walking through the city to the next hotel. Three days later, they move to the next hotel. They can never stay for longer than two or three days, four if they are lucky, before Aubry becomes ill again. At each stop, they meet with doctors who prod her with needles, feed her pills and powders, treat her with medicinal maggots, and even subject her to an electrical prod. One doctor wants to drill a hole through Aubry’s head. By this time, she is already famous in the newspapers, and every doctor wants to be the one who cures her. However, their treatments are torture, and Aubry decides to stop.

After a year, they spread to the outskirts of the city and the rural areas beyond. During this time, her father and sisters stay with her for a while, but eventually, her father must return to work and her sisters must go to school. Eventually, Aubry’s mother decides that a new climate might help, and they leave for southern France, then Italy, and finally Croatia, where their money runs out.

Sophie asks if Aubry and her mother go farther than that. Aubry says yes, and then even farther.

By the time Aubry is 12 years old, she and her mother have reached a nameless town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their family sends money when they can, but they are poor and exhausted. Aubry’s mother laments that she does not want to keep traveling. Filled with guilt, Aubry runs away, leaving behind a note. She could not stay and watch her mother suffer anymore. Aubry decides not to tell the Holcombes about the horrible early days, when she lived on the streets and stole food from stray cats, slept in the woods, and walked until her mind went blank.

Aubry tells the Holcombes about the kindness she found in her travels. She describes the charity she receives and the way the poorest people are the most generous. Then, she describes learning to hunt.

One day, Aubry begs for scraps from a fisherman, who asks what she can give him in return. She realizes that she has nothing to trade. That night, she steals a knife and carves a wooden spear. Over time, she perfects her hunting skills. She writes to her family for the first time since she left her mother two years before, telling them that she has learned to hunt. After watching fishermen with iron-pointed harpoons, she decides to get an iron point as well. She hunts a wild boar and sells the meat, earning enough money to buy one from a blacksmith.

Sophie and Somerset look at the walking stick that Aubry carries with her. She twists a wooden tip off the end and reveals the iron spear point hidden inside.

Aubry says that she could now use her hunting skills to trade for the things she needed. At age 16, she ends up in the Greek isles, where she earns passage on a fishing boat heading into the Mediterranean. At first, the men jeer at her, but her skills eventually earn their respect. During this time, she imagines that her sickness rides her like a vessel, just like she rides on the fishing boat, using her so that it can see the world.

Finally, the fishing boat arrives in Alexandria, where she disembarks. Aubry wanders the city and sees a strange building in the distance made of domes and arches that lead into darkness. She approaches the building. Her puzzle ball falls from her pack and rolls through one dark arch before stopping, as if waiting for her to follow. She steps through the arch and into the dark.

Aubry pauses, unsure of how much to share and what to keep to herself. She wonders if she should tell the Holcombes about the strange library she found and fears that they will think she is being absurd. She also realizes that if she continues, she will soon reach the part about Uzair Ibn-Kadder, “the man with all the cures” (67), which will scandalize the Holcombe family. Instead, she says that she is tired and must stop.

The ferry reaches the port, and the passengers disembark. The Holcombes invite Aubry to stay with them in Bangkok, but she says that she has been there already and cannot return. The family bids her farewell, and Aubry wanders the town. Her puzzle balls shakes in her pack. Following the ball’s motions, she finds a path hidden by vines. She follows the path “through a cathedral of roots and boughs that ends at a door—an inexplicable door with no business standing in a tangle of trees” (71), and she steps through it.