India Rose & The Eternals - The Fountain Of Youth Chronicles Vol. 1

Chapter 1 - The Man In The Brown Hat

I am drinking the water from a deeper well.

Won't you drink with me, my friend?

                                                - Ancient Proverb

Segovia, Spain 1907, 8:55 P.M, 43rd Day Of Winter

The Man In The Brown Hat and black coat stood in front of the massive, double iron door of the train station and waited. He had tracked his prey over the years to this place and this night, and he was now savoring just one more minute before opening one of the station's doors and flushing out the one he had sought all this time.

He examined the intricate iron bars that formed a fanciful pattern across the doors, and laughed a small, cruel laugh, as he thought of his prey behind iron bars for all time. Yes, tonight would be the night that the chase ended.

The train station in Segovia, Spain is a beautiful building in its own right, with its high, vaulted ceilings and delicate overlay of tiles in the Medieval Spanish tradition. But it has the unfortunate predicament of being just down the street from a massive, five-story Roman water aqueduct that had, against all odds, survived the two centuries since its building. This awe-inspiring piece of ancient ingenuity attracted tourists from all over the continent of Europe, and the Segovia train station was simply seen as the means for British and Dutch tourists to get to where they wanted to go. Add to this the fairy tale castle overlooking the old, walled city (a castle that a certain Mr. Walt Disney would base his own fairy tale castle on in a certain other place), and the marvelous little train station was almost guaranteed to be overlooked in the guidebooks that were starting to be published in places like the United States and Canada.

But on this winter evening, there were few tourists to be found among the benches in the great, vaulted central room inside the station. There were one or two groups of folks, with their belongings and suitcases strewn on the seats beside them, mostly a few workers from the various factories in town, heading home for the evening or back to their home villages for a few days. A few of the younger men on one side of the room were laid out on their backs, their feet propped up on the sacks that held their belongings. Two of them had their caps over their eyes, and the sound of soft snoring could be heard echoing around the fantastic acoustics of the stone room.

On the other side of the door, The Man In The Brown Hat surveyed the scene through the paradigm of the iron bars that served as the windows into the great hall of the station and decided that it was the right moment to strike.

He breathed in deeply, opened a heavy door, and stepped into the station.

And though the potential travelers waiting for their trains (about ten or twelve of them all together) could not have told you this, or explained why it happened, all of them became instantly parched at the same time. It was a deep, soul-affecting dryness; the kind of thirst of mouth and body that one experiences only once or twice in a lifetime if you are particularly unlucky. It was as if everyone had been at sea, or in the desert for two days without a drop of clear, satisfying water to drink. Several commuters immediately reached for their water bottles and others clutched their throats as The Man In The Brown Hat walked briskly by, his shoes, with their hard souls, making a distinct "clap clap" sound as he strode across the marble floor towards the ticket counter.

Señor Esperanza was getting ready to close the station. he whistled softly to himself behind the counter as he gathered up the various papers that were scatted around the area in front of the ticket window and put them into neat piles, though in no way organized, looked more presentable than before.