by Tim Westover
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When he regained consciousness, the first thing the boy saw was himself.
Nathaniel (Me? Is that . . . me?) was standing before a dusty mirror, wearing his own familiar grin on his own familiar face. He saw himself bend at the knee and jump toward the ceiling; he saw himself touch a support beam, laying the flat of his palm there.
“Outstanding!” He saw himself shout. “Such energy! Oh, this will do just fine, boy!”
Nathaniel looked down. Through blurred vision, he saw that the hands now attached to his wrists were gnarled claws covered in spotted paper-thin skin. His knuckles were knotty arthritic bulbs. He touched his new fingers to his sunken cheeks.
His heart fluttered in his chest. Who was he?
“I worried,” Aldous McGrane said to him. While the words carried forth from his own mouth, it was clear that they belonged to McGrane. He suddenly knew, with perfect, awful clarity, what had happened. “I worried that you wouldn’t break bread with me, boy. See that?”
He pointed to the clock. It showed nine minutes before midnight. How long had he been unconscious? “That’s all the time you have left. And I mean all of it! You know what? I was resigned to everything that had happened. I was sure that he’d warned you off. But I should have known better! That’s not Caleb. My brother—your father—is a selfish man. He took the only woman I ever loved, and he stole the greatest gift she’d ever given me.”
McGrane continued, “And now I’m going to take what’s mine. I’m going down the mountain, and I’ll have my ring. Old Caleb—I can’t wait to see the look on his face when his dear son returns home from the top o’ the hill!”
“He doesn’t have it,” the boy wheezed. Shooting pains tore through his chest. Breathing was a chore. “My father—he doesn’t have the ring.”
“What do you mean?” McGrane snarled. The boy was frightened—frightened by himself, by the hateful faces he could make. In his own visage, he saw a mask of anger and frustration. “Where is it?”
“Trade me back.”
McGrane laughed. It turned to howling as he was so entertained by the proposition. “Trade you back? Six minutes, Nathaniel. Six . . . fleeting . . . minutes. Fathers and sons. Brothers and nephews. How do you think it is that we’ve managed to be up here in the hills so long?”
“But a lifetime without your ring is the alternative. My father gave it to me. He told me to give it to you, and if you really want it back, then you need to choose, old man,” the boy said. He felt his left arm going numb. A searing heat blossomed in his chest.
McGrane was uncertain. He paced the room for a long minute. “Caleb doesn’t know where it is?”
Nate nodded.
“And you do?”
“Yes. If I . . . if I go, you’ll never find it. Never.”
An expression of grief and sorrow washed over McGrane’s face, and he sprinted across the room—stricken. “Do you promise, boy? Do you promise you’ll give it to me?”
The boy nodded, and the man scooped the food into his mouth with his fingers; the boy followed suit.
“Do it now,” Nate hissed, “or you’ll never see the ring again.”
With three minutes on the clock, McGrane muttered the words.
There was a momentary blackout—a sense of pervasive nausea and deep despair—and then he was whole again, complete in his own skin. He touched his cheeks, pinched his forearm.
“Hurry!” the old man gasped. He lay prone on the table, hand outstretched. The boy raced to the knothole, retrieved the ring, and placed it in his hand.
“Oh,” McGrane said. A reverent quality came into his tone. “Oh my. It’s still so beautiful. She was so beautiful.”
He turned the ring over in his palm as the seconds marched off the clock. At a minute before midnight, the boy asked his question.
“Whose was it?”
“She was my wife,” McGrane said. “Many, many years ago, before there was a wall in the forest, she gave me this ring. Then my brother . . .” He shook his head sadly. “You know, I see Caleb in your face, Nathaniel. Be wary of him. He’s as old as I am, and he was willing to trade you away tonight—to keep his place here on the mountain. We’ve both made our sacrifices—him and me. And even though he gave you the ring, he was willing to risk losing you. Family can be the ultimate betrayal, boy. Don’t you ever forget it.”
A shudder raced through the old man. His eyes grew cloudy. “I think it’s time that I finally met up with her again. You tell Caleb that his brother is gone. You tell him . . . tell him he’s the old man of the mountain now.”
And with the strike of midnight, a final breath slipped between Aldous McGrane’s ancient lips. He slumped forward, the ring clutched in his right hand.
The boy stood. He surveyed the old man’s cabin for a long moment. He considered returning the ring to his father but then thought better of it.
It wasn’t his father’s ring anyway. All along, it had belonged to someone else.
He retraced his steps back to the edge of the clearing where his own home stood. From beneath a fan of bright stars, he watched his father’s pipe throw orange signal flares into the shadows of the front porch.
He loved his father, and he understood that love deep inside his heart, but now he was frightened of the man. The reality of what his father was—of the sacrifices he’d been willing to make to maintain the balance of his existence on the mountain—suddenly grew clear to him, and he felt sick to his stomach.
How long had they been trading—these two ancient spirits? How long had they been . . . had they been taking?
In the dark of the woods, a dove cried out. An instant later, the call was answered in kind. Nathaniel watched his father smoking for another minute then turned and began the long walk into Dalton and the life that awaited him on the far side of the mountain.