Title:

A Short Walk Through A Wide World

Author:

Douglas Westerbeke

Category:

Fantasy / Science Fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

February 17, 2025

ubry Tourvel is nine years old and living in Paris in 1885. She and her two older sisters discover a mysterious old well, decorated with carvings that make the well look like it has a face. Each sister decides to drop one item into the well and make a wish. But when it is Audry's turn, she balks at tossing in the puzzle ball that she disovered rolling on the ground. Audry soon comes down with a strange affliction - she begins to bleed from her eyes, nose, mouth unless she moves. It takes a little bit of experimentation, but it becomes apparent that Audry will bleed to death if she stays in any one place for more than three or four more days. Initially accompanied by her mother, Audry begins a life of being always on the move.

I liked this story of Audry roaming the Earth. We see her on some of her various adventures - riding the Trans-Siberian railway, sailing down a boat in Siam, blundering into British-held India, stumbling across the deserts of North Africa. By the time she is an adult, Audry is a seasoned traveler - savvy, tough, and adaptive. She knows a lot of languages, she has crafted a walking-stick/spear that she has become an expert at hurling, and she makes acquaintances (some of who become lovers) who accompany her for a while, but inevitably, they separate and Audry walks on alone.

In addition to Audry's travels, there is magic around her. Often, when trapped in terrible circumstance (such as a freezing winter in the Himalayas), Audry will find a magical door - entering these doors leads her to a vast, deserted library upon its shelves are piled endless books and scrolls. Food and drink magically appear, but there is never any sign of another person in the library. When Audry exits these libraries, she will be in an entirely different part of the globe.

Although Audry suffers from the bleeding curse if she stops her wanderings for too long, otherwise she seems to be magically immune to disease or injury. If the bleeding starts, once Audry gets moving again, she recovers remarkably fast. If uncertain which way to journey next, Audry pulls out her puzzle ball, and it will magically roll in a particular direction and that is the course she follows. (If the puzzle ball ever gets lost, she always finds it again the next day).

As I read A Short Walk Through A Wide World, I expected more of an explanation at the end of the novel of why Audry was cursed to move her entire life. Why did the magic libraries exist? Was the puzzle ball sentient? If so, what was the puzzle ball's goal? Did the mysteriously carved well give Audry the curse? If there were explanations in this book, I missed them. I did wonder if anyone else on the planet ever suffered the same move-or-die disease, the wells/libraries seem to be too ancient to exist just for Audry's benefit.

We read that Audry cannot stay in one place for more than a few days, and that she cannot visit the same place more than once - I couldn't help but wonder about the parameters of this curse. Suppose she entered a city with streets laid out in a grid, such as New York City. If Audry had marched up and down each street in the grid, she could have stayed in a city as large as New York for months. Would that count as always being on the move, and never staying in the same place twice? What counts as visiting a "place" more than once - is a place a country, a city, a road, a building? How far does Audry have to move to be considered in a different place? A kilometer? ten? It never seems to occur to Audry to determine what the constraints are for her affliction.

Given that the novel begins in 1885, long before there were global communications, let alone the internet, it seemed highly unlikely that so many people, in so many exotic places, had heard of Audry. Also, given level of the violence back then, I felt that a young, blonde woman wandering alone in strange locations would have been assaulted numerous times.

The premise of A Short Walk Through A Wide World was certainly interesting enough, but I wished Westerbeke had provided some reasons for the magical parts of the book.