Ring of Years

by Grant Oliphant

  “I asked you a question,” Sara screams as she trots behind Peter. “Didn’t you hear Tethys?”

  Peter reaches the van first. He sets Selena down in the cargo bed with the others and pulls up the open end of a handcuff. He is just about to manacle her into place when Sara, moving faster than Natalie, grabs him by the shoulder and whirls him around.

  “Didn’t you hear her?” she demands for a third time.

  “I heard her!” he responds, his jaw clenched.

  “Then you heard we need to leave the girl behind.”

  “I didn’t hear anything of the kind.”

  “Peter,” Selena says. “What’s going on? Why is everyone so angry?”

  “Nothing we can’t fix,” he tells her. “They just don’t understand.”

  “How could you not have heard that?” Sara asks.

  “Because she didn’t say lt.”

  “Then you weren’t listening. Don’t you get it? Selena was just to bring this woman here.” Her hand waves toward Natalie. “That’s all, nothing else. The only way she was ever going to come with us was if Natalie didn’t show. But she did show, so we don’t need the girl anymore.”

  Peter shakes his head. “But Tethys didn’t say that we have to leave her behind. She didn’t say we have to.”

  “Not on the tape, maybe. But I was there when she made the tape, remember? I was with her. And that’s what she told me, Peter. If the Last One showed up, we were supposed to let the little girl go. I told you not to get too attached to her, didn’t I? I was trying to warn you. You should have listened.”

  Natalie can see the rage building in Peter’s already blood-red face.

  “Bullshit!” he explodes. “You’re just jealous, that’s all. Tethys never told you any of that. If she really meant that, she would have said it on the tape, but it’s not on the tape. And if it’s not on the tape, I don’t have to believe you. And I don’t believe you, because you’re a liar, a jealous liar. You just don’t want me to have what I have with Selena. You don’t want me to have someone who trusts me like that, just me, no one else. Well, too fucking bad. She’s coming home with us, just like I promised her. Isn’t that right, Selena? I’m taking you home, just like I promised.”

  The image of Selena’s face in that moment rips at Natalie’s heart. It is an expression of such dawning horror that Natalie feels her whole body go limp just from seeing it. She knows that, if she dies right now, this is the image she will take to her grave—not the pleasant memory of holding Selena in her arms, but the agony of a little girl’s face as she realizes the depths of human deception.

  “No,” Selena wails, “No! You promised me you’d take me home, Peter, you promised!”

  “And that’s what I’m doing!” he says in that strained, gritted-teeth voice adults use with children who are embarrassing them in public. “I’m taking you home.”

  “To my mommy!”

  Peter’s eyes narrow into angry slits. “No, that’s not your home anymore. Your home is with me.”

  “She doesn’t want to go with us,” Sara tells him.

  “And you just said you wouldn’t make her do something she didn’t want to, “ Natalie adds.

  He turns on her furiously. “She doesn’t know what she wants, “ he shouts. “She’s just a little girl, and you’re all trying to confuse her and turn her against me. But I won’t let you. She loves me and I love her and I’m going to take care of her like I promised her I would. And I don’t care what you say or what lies you tell, I’m not going to abandon her here in this horrible place while we all go off to paradise. I’m not. I won’t do it.”

  He grabs at Selena’s wrist to handcuff it. She cries, slapping at his face and hands.

  “Leave her alone!” Natalie screams.

  “Mind your own business!” he yells back. “If it weren’t for you showing up, none of this would be an issue.”

  She lunges at him. She can’t let this happen, not again, not a second time. She can’t let another little girl die.

  Peter’s not a big or particularly powerful man, but her body is spent and his is rested and filled with the kind of zeal that makes men dangerous. Perversely, he has the strength right then of a mother bear protecting her cubs—and she figures that’s probably how he looks at it, that he’s protecting his cub, his offspring. Reason, stood on its head. He bats Natalie away with a quick swing of his free hand, sending her crashing backward into a wall lined with rakes and shovels and pitchforks that come tumbling down on the floor around her.

  The scene in front of her is one she knows she will never forget: Peter struggling to hold Selena still long enough to clamp the handcuff over her tiny arm, the little girl’s terrified screaming, the scared but oddly impassive faces of the others inside the van, Sara backing slowly away, as if retreating, moths flapping violently against the dust-coated overhead bulb. Natalie looks around desperately. Amid the jumble of tools on the floor is an old pickaxe, rusty and worn, possibly something left behind by her father. Struggling to her feet she drags it behind her—it’s heavy, like pulling a bucketful of lead—until she’s right behind Peter, who is still wrestling with Selena.

  “Would you stop it!” He slaps the little girl’s face, and she freezes, stunned. In that instant the handcuff snaps home.

  The click of the tiny lock pierces Natalie like a knife, and the hatred that brims up inside of her brings with it a newfound strength. She lifts the pickaxe, balancing it with both hands, and prepares to swing. She alms for his head, for the very center, where the rusty point will drive through his skull deep into his brain. What she’s thinking about isn’t so much killing him, this one man, as about ripping apart this awful moment, tearing up the very fabric of it, shredding it and everything it contains into a confetti of unreality.

  But she never gets the chance.

  The impulse, the order to kill, is just forming in her brain when she hears another clicking noise behind her, different this time, louder and more distinctly metallic than the subtle snap of the handcuff. Something hard and round presses against the base of her skull. She knows without looking what it is.

  “Put that down,” Sara orders. “Now.”

  * * *

  “No.” Natalie thinks a bullet in the head would be merciful, quick. Not to mention poetically just. “I’m not letting him take her.”

  “You don’t think I’ll shoot?” Sara asks.

  “I’m the Last One, remember? Tethys’ star pupil. You’re not going to kill me.”

  “It would be a disappointment. But don’t be confused. My first responsibility is to get these others safely to Atlantis. No one gets to interfere with that, not even you. If I have to kill you, I will. Reluctantly, but I will. And then I’ll take the little girl instead, because those are my orders—if I can’t bring you, bring her.”

  Natalie wasn’t expecting that answer, but realizes she should have been. Sara’s obsessions are no less twisted than Peter’s, and no less dangerous. The only difference is that to her, Selena is just a pawn, and thus disposable.

  Natalie studies the point on Peter’s head where she imagined the pickaxe hitting home. He is kneeling before Selena, pleading with her to forgive him for what he’s just done—for what he’s still doing—and worse: imploring her for mercy, as if he’s the pathetic victim and she the delusional killer. “I’m sorry,” he keeps repeating. “You’ll understand soon, I promise. Please don’t hate me. Oh, please don’t hate me.”

  Selena, head down and sobbing, face hidden by her long hair, doesn’t answer, doesn’t look up, doesn’t move except for the trembling of her shoulders. If there is a chance to save her, any chance, Natalie knows she has to take it. She lowers the pickaxe until it lands on the floor with a solid clunk, then turns to face Sara. The pistol is pointed directly at her. She wonders if it’s the same sort of gun Father pointed at her thirteen years earlier because from this vantage point it looks identical. But then she supposes all guns look alike from the wrong end.


  “Good,” Sara tells her. “Now back up against the wall.”

  She does as she’s told, nearly tripping over one of the shovels she knocked down earlier. When her back is pressed all the way against the rough boards, Sara moves away and this time places the gun at the base of Peter’s skull.

  “Get up,” she orders.

  Startled by the unexpected touch, he shoots to his feet and spins around. Just as quickly Sara jumps back, keeping the gun trained on him. “Don’t move!” she warns.

  “What are you doing?” The shock in Peter’s voice matches the sheer surprise on his face. “Why are you pointing that at me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, just for kicks.”

  He takes a slight half-step forward. “Come on, Sara, don’t be that way. I —.”

  “Take another one and I’ll shoot.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot me,” he says.

  More smugly, Natalie thinks, than she was when she expressed the identical sentiment just moments ago. And she can tell from the hard set of Sara’s mouth that Peter is just as misinformed as she was: Sara will kill anyone who gets in the way. Him, her, anyone.

  “You care to try me?”

  It’s apparent he doesn’t. “Sara, listen –.”

  “Don’t!” she snaps. “From now on, you’re going to do what I say. No arguing, no whining, no questions. And you’re going to start by taking that girl out of the van.”

  He stares at her for several seconds and then begins to tremble. “I won’t” he says in a small voice.

  “Now!”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “I said do it!”

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  “Fine, shoot me for not having the key. Try explaining that one to Tethys.”

  Sara’s arm drops several inches, and Natalie’s stomach lurches when she realizes where the pistol is now pointing. “You want the girl to die?”

  Even Peter seems taken aback. “I told you, I don’t have the key!” he insists.

  “I’ll count to five. One . . . “

  “Seriously, Sara, I don’t have it. How am I supposed to let her out if I don’t have it?”

  “Two.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot her.”

  “Three.”

  Horrified, Natalie screams, “For God’s sake, you idiot, of course she would!” She hopes Peter’s bluffing, that he really does have the key. Either that or in two counts Selena will die.

  “Four.”

  He seems to hesitate for a second, then quickly reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a small glint of silver. “All right,” he says, his voice wracked with something like grief.” All right, here.”

  * * *

  Natalie inhales and realizes she stopped breathing. Too close, she thinks, way too close.

  The gun worries her. You never know how things are going to go when there’s a gun involved.

  Tearfully, his chest heaving, Peter unlocks Selena’s handcuff and lifts her gently out of the van. “Where should I put her?” he asks.

  Sara points at Natalie. “Where she is. Let her sit against the wall.”

  Natalie clears a space on the floor in among the fallen tools and Peter sets Selena down in it. He gently runs his hand through her hair and tells her he loves her, tells her how sorry he is. “Don’t ever feel like I abandoned you,” he says in half-swallowed sobs. “Because I didn’t. This isn’t my doing. This isn’t my choice. You’ll always be in my heart. I hope you’ll remember that. And I’ll always be in yours.”

  Selena, curled up in a ball, says nothing.

  “Now put her in the van,” Sara says, pointing at Natalie.

  Natalie doesn’t wait to be hustled ln. She wants this to be over with before something changes and this game of musical death chairs switches back from her to Selena. She kneels down, gives Selena a final kiss on the top of her head, inhales the scent of her hair one last time, and takes her place inside the van.

  “Promise me you won’t harm her,” she says to Sara. who still has her pistol trained on Peter.

  “We’ve made a fair trade,” Sara answers. “As long as she stays out of the way, she’s safe.”

  Natalie nods. She places her wrist inside the handcuff and presses the two cold metal ends together. As soon as they click home. a strange feeling comes over her, first of panic, then of freedom, like being trapped and liberated all at once.

  She is about to die; she is about to be freed. She is sad and happy, frightened and eager.

  She is, she realizes, content. Not with her fate, which would be absurd, but with her choice.

  The little girl rolled up in a ball on the floor will never be the same. But she will be alive. She will go back home to her mommy, and she will live. And that’s all Natalie could want, in all the world, that’s all she could want. She thinks back to her near suicide in that other barn, the shed they built in Normalville. It was good she didn’t kill herself then—it would have been a wasted act. This way, at least, her dying will mean something.

  “To affect the quality of the day is the highest of the arts.” She thinks that was Thoreau—she came across it in a book once. This is the first time in her life that she feels like maybe she’s done that, affected the quality of the day in a way that really matters. Whether it’s truly an art, she can’t say; but it is satisfying. It is that.

  The van frightens her. So cold and metallic. The air inside it reeks: someone has lost control of his bladder.

  She tries not to think of the lake, of what it will be like to die in this machine sarcophagus; of what it will be like to die with these people, this group of lost souls all staring off into space or exchanging anxious glances, caught in their own personal webs of memories and dreams, hopes and dreads. She tries, instead, to think of Selena, and of going to see Stephanie.

  The van is just a way of getting there, she tells herself. And these people, well, it’s like riding a bus—you don’t get to choose who else rides, but so what? It won’t matter when you get to where you’re going.

  In a loud bark, Sara orders Peter to take his seat in the front of the van and then comes over to close the doors in back. Just as she is about to swing them shut a familiar voice fills the barn.

  “Guess what everybody?” it says with incongruous good humor. “I’m baaaackl”

  Natalie looks past Sara to see its source, although she doesn’t really need to. She recognizes the voice. And there, sure enough, standing unsteadily in the doorway, ringed in night, is Bret Hartlow.

  * * *

  For a moment everything seems to happen at once. Sara whirls around and trains her pistol on her startled former colleague. The van erupts in a cacophony of greeting. Cries of “Bret!” and “Hey, everyone, look who’s here!” reverberate inside the tin sheath. Bret seems to take a bow but then, realizing what Sara has in her hand, jumps back, his arms raised in a defensive gesture. Sara shouts, “Shut up!” over her shoulder, and the van falls instantly, eerily quiet.

  “Whoa!” Bret says. “Sara, what’s with the gun? It’s me, Bret. Don’t you remember me?”

  His words are slurred. Natalie guesses he’s drunk or high or both.

  “What are you doing here?” Sara asks suspiciously.

  “I came back.”

  “Obviously.”

  He offers her a silly grin. “Like that prodigal son guy.”

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “Just a little.”

  “Who brought you?”

  “No one.” He gestures proudly at Natalie in the van. “I followed her. It wasn’t hard. not for me. I figured she knew something about finding you. so I staked her out and followed her. Isn’t that great?”

  Natalie feels a brief pang of guilt. She should have anticipated he would try something like that. He suspected her of holding out on him, so he followed her—what could be more predictable than that? Now she can take credit for having blindly led another lemming home just
in time for the trek cliffward.

  Bret’s sister was right. She should never have let Natalie talk to him again.

  His grin strikes Natalie as pathetic—too hopeful, too expectant. The prodigal fool, waiting to be welcomed home.

  Sara isn’t having any part of it. “Why the hell are you here?” she demands.

  “What, are you kidding? I want to go with you. I realized I made a mistake leaving here. so I came back. I miss Alima, I miss all you guys.”

  Without even pausing to think it over, Sara shakes her head emphatically. “No. You can’t come with us.”

  It’s clearly not the answer Bret was expecting. “What!” he exclaims. “Why?”

  “Go sit over there.” She motions toward Selena. “With her.”

  “Come on, Sara, don’t kid around like that. You’re scaring me.”

  ‘‘I’m not kidding.”

  “Please! Please! Whatever it is, I’m sorry. Is it because I’ve been drinking?”

  “It’s because you left!” she says impatiently. “You left us, okay? That was your choice. And we didn’t plan on you coming back. so now we don’t have room for you. That’s just the way it is. Now go sit down.”

  But Bret, his face the soul of anguish, doesn’t move. “You have room for her,” he protests, gesturing toward Natalie again. “Why would you take her and not me?”

  “Because Tethys is expecting her.”

  “But she isn’t even one of us!”

  “Neither are you anymore! As far as I’m concerned, you died the day you left. You’re not one of us, you’re just a man we used to know. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Regardless of who you are, we don’t have room for you. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  She is too busy arguing to notice Peter reappear behind her. He’s carrying something in his hand, a section of gray pipe, and moving so fast Natalie barely has time to register his presence. One moment he’s coming around the side of the van, the next he’s standing directly behind Sara, raising his hand over his head.