Author’s note: This story is set sometime in the past, in the days before smart phones.

Standing on a street corner, Honey peered down both directions of the narrow, dingy alleyway and shivered.

“When you said earlier that right was right, do you think maybe that left was actually right?” she asked her brother. “Because right now, I don’t know whether to turn left, or right, or turn right back around and try to retrace our steps.”

Jim let out a noisy sigh. “I’m sorry. I thought I knew where we were, but now it’s pretty obvious that I was wrong.”

The two of them, plus Trixie and Mart, had set out half an hour earlier for a walk while the rest of the Bob-Whites relaxed at their hotel in Palermo, Sicily. Somehow, the four of them had strayed into the oldest part of the city, where the cobbled streets were barely wide enough to take cars and the buildings loomed overhead, blotting out the warm Mediterranean sun.

“May I see the map?” Mart asked, and Jim handed it over. “Hmm. I think I see the problem. This is our hotel here, right?”

Trixie leaned closer, nodding. “Right. What about it?”

Mart traced a finger across the page. “We walked in this direction to begin with, passing this church here.”

Honey nodded. “I think I remember that one. Didn’t it have an arch with little zigzag carvings above the door… or am I thinking of another one, that we passed later?”

“It doesn’t matter which church was which,” Trixie replied. “What matters is that Mart gets to the point.”

“Which I will do, when given time to speak.” He cleared his throat. “You will notice that these streets are not straight, and we followed several of them in succession – perhaps these ones, or even this particularly curving one here – which means that when we thought we were turning towards our hotel, we were actually turning further away.”

“I thought I’d taken that into consideration, but obviously not,” Jim added.

“So, maybe left was right?” Honey wondered. “But does that mean that left is right now, or is right right? I’m so confused.”

Before any of them had time to answer, a local man strolled into view from their right. His steps faltered when he noticed them and his expression showed his surprise.

“You are lost, yes?” he asked, in English.

“Yes, we are,” Honey answered, at once. “Would you mind telling us, please, where we are?”

The man answered with the name of the street, which none of the four Americans could decipher. They shared a helpless look.

“Where is that on this map?” Honey asked.

“It is easier if I show you the way,” he replied. “I will return in a minute or two. You wait here and I’ll be right back.”

He smiled and passed them, in the direction from which they had just come.

“We should get out of here, before he comes back,” Trixie whispered, a moment later.

“What? Why?” Honey shook her head. “We don’t know where we are and he actually offered to help us, and it wouldn’t be right not to do what he said, when he’s probably going out of his way to help us.”

Trixie’s face settled into a scowl. “I don’t trust him. His eyebrows are too close together.”

“Trixie! He can’t help his eyebrows, and I don’t think that they were, anyway, because lots of men have eyebrows that actually meet in the middle, and his don’t.”

“And he seemed strangely familiar,” Trixie added, as if her friend hadn’t spoken. “Besides, how does he even know where we want to go?”

“He’ll probably ask us that when he gets here,” Jim answered.

Mart nodded. “Which will be imminently, because I perceive his approach.”

Trixie hastily shifted her expression to something approaching neutral.

“We’ll go this way,” the man told them, pointing to the left. “It’s easiest.”

They followed him along an even narrower street than the one they had just left, through an archway that appeared to go nowhere and into another hidden street beyond. It opened out into a tiny square outside another church – or perhaps one of the ones they had already passed; none of them were quite sure which – and then split into a Y-shape. The man led them down the left-hand branch and out onto a wider street.

“Show me your map,” he asked. After studying it for a moment, he pointed. “You are here, facing in this direction. Do you think you can find your way, now?”

“Yes, I think so,” Jim answered. “Thank you very much for your help.”

The other three echoed him, even Trixie, though a little reluctantly.

“It is no problem,” the man answered with a smile. “Enjoy your visit.”

He turned on his heels and disappeared back into the web of back-streets.

“What do we want to do now?” Jim asked the others. “Continue walking and risk getting lost again, or return to the hotel?”

“I think, maybe, that I’d rather go back,” Honey decided, after glancing at both Trixie and Mart. “Not that I’m not interested in seeing more, but more that I feel like I’ve spent enough time not knowing where I am for one day already.”

The other two nodded agreement, so Jim gestured to the left.

“It’s actually not that far from here,” he noted.

In only a few minutes, they found it and went inside to find their friends. The hotel boasted a small courtyard, where Diana, Brian and Dan were sitting.

“Did you enjoy your walk?” Brian asked, when the other four arrived there.

“Mostly,” Honey answered, “apart from the part where we mixed up where we thought we were with where we actually were and turned right, which turned out to be wrong.”

“The oldest part of town is a bit tricky to navigate,” Jim explained. “And I’m not sure this map is entirely accurate.”

They spread it out on the small table and gathered around to look at it.

“I think this is where we were when we realised we were lost.” Jim pointed to a T-junction. “And this is the way we went to get back out again, but one of the streets we walked down isn’t marked. And I suspect that we walked down another unmarked street earlier, too. We were only a short distance away from where I thought we were the whole time.”

“How did you ever find your way back?” Di asked, wide-eyed.

Trixie frowned. “That’s the strange part. A man came up to us and just offered to show us the way.”

“He was just being friendly and helpful,” Honey argued. “It wasn’t strange at all.”

“Well, I think the strange part is the way that he chose to lead us,” Mart put in. “Just look at this. If we were where Jim just pointed out and we turned right instead of left, we would have come out onto a wider street in not much more than a stone’s throw, instead of winding here and there through all of those alleyways.”

Honey shook her head. “It would have taken us further away from here than the way we went.”

“My point, exactly.” Mart poked at the map. “The way he chose was the optimum one for us. But none of us told him where we wanted to go.”

“And you hadn’t seen this guy before?” Dan asked.

“I think we must have, somewhere, but I don’t know where,” Trixie replied, frowning in thought. “He said that way was easier, but it was really complicated.”

“Well, I think we have no right to feel ungrateful, when he helped us without our even asking, and here we are, right where we’re supposed to be.” Honey picked up the map and started trying to fold it, with limited success.

“Right,” Dan agreed. “But we should keep our wits about us. There’s probably plenty of people who’d take advantage of us, if we let them.”

Honey’s brow creased. “Yes, I suppose so, but I don’t think the man we met was one of them.”

“Maybe not,” Jim answered. “But Dan’s right and we should be careful.”

Some hours later, they strolled down to a restaurant they had found the night before, where the food was delicious and the man running it spoke excellent English.

“Back again,” he greeted them, showing them to a table.

Trixie stifled a groan, but Honey and Jim both heard it.

“What is it?” Honey whispered.

“This is where we’d seen him,” Trixie replied.

Honey’s eyes widened.

“You found your way easily enough?” the man continued, as he handed out menus.

“Yes, we did, thank you,” Honey replied. “It was very kind of you–”

“No, no.” He smiled at her. “I can’t let my customers be lost. It’s bad for business.”

At that, he started translating the menu for them and making suggestions. Once they had made their order and he left them, Dan turned to Trixie.

“Are you telling me that that’s the guy who showed you the way this morning?”

Trixie’s face heated. “He looks different in different clothes. And I told them that I thought he looked familiar.”

“We should have known who he was,” Jim added, rubbing a hand across his face to mask his embarrassment. “And we should have known better than to get lost in the first place.”

Mart shrugged. “I, for one, think that getting lost is something of a rite of passage in situations such as ours. We are no longer mere tourists, but bona fide travellers, intrepid explorers of foreign lands.”

“If it’s all right with you, Mart, I think I’ll stick with being a tourist,” Di told him. “I’d rather not get lost in a strange place.”

“Everything has turned out all right in the end,” Trixie argued. “And it was interesting, seeing the places where people live, and the streets and buildings that have been there for hundreds of years.”

“I’m sure it was, but I’d rather know where I am.” Di smiled. “But if you think you can find your way back there, I’d like to see the church that Honey told me about before we leave tomorrow.”

“I’m sure we can,” Honey answered. “As long as we remember that right was wrong and left was right, I’m sure we won’t get lost again.”

“Right.” Dan drew the word out to its full potential and they all laughed. “I’m glad we’ve got that straight, then.”

“How about if we return by the same way we go there and avoid all of those complications?” Brian suggested with a smile.

“That could work.” Mart thought about it for a moment. “But when do we ever do things the easy way? Especially when we can have an adventure instead. Am I right?”

“Right!” they chorused, laughing.

The End

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