Fortuna, Land of Hope and Glory by Sam Martone
AN ARRIVAL In this city of excess, you could get lost just by making a wrong turn in a back alley, you could walk out one end of the city and wind up right in front of it again, looking up at the billboards and blinking lights. It used to seem so easy. The world used to be so small, limited by mountain ranges, by coasts, by monsters too strong for your tiny hands. You followed your father wherever you went. Everything occurred in a sensible sequence. But he is gone, and now the story unfolds like a map. The world is much bigger than you ever could have imagined, and you have only just begun to dip your toes in. You and the former prince explore the city, unsure if there’s a certain order to this place, if there is a chain reaction of events that will set off a visible cause and effect, everything in sequence—or if you’re meant to embrace disorder, open-endedness, uncertainty. This city, it comes alive at night. If you arrive during the day, simply walk in circles just outside the entrance, just until the sky shifts in stuttering shades to dark. It will happen in minutes. This is one thing, in this new world, you can predict. A GAMBLE The casino is this city’s main attraction. There is always a casino, somewhere in the world. Sometimes two. During the day, there is a traveling theater troupe that performs one scene from a tragic love story, over and over, as though they’ve forgotten all their other lines. At night, the stage is adorned with dancers in red dresses, can-canning at the catcalling crowd. You and the prince play the slots, three bells in a row ringing. Place bets on beasts that barrel from the gates, destroy each other. Watch the races and remember the dreams you had of road trips in the rain, where you, safe and dry, traced drops of water on the backseat window, guessing which one would river down the glass first. You play a giant board game where you are the playing piece, and this game, it feels more like real life than real life does, or at least, more honest. Roll the die. Examine the ground beneath your feet. Find something, or fall through a trapdoor. Start back at start. You can feel something looking down at you from above, a tapping tangled in your hair. You don’t know why you’re here.
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