by N. D. Wilson
And in his window, there was a face. Rhonda. Her eyebrows still rising in slow motion surprise.
Leave this place. Fly in the darkness between times.
The whisper had Mrs. Dervish’s voice, but it came from inside Alex’s heart, and it brought overwhelming desire with it. More than anything, Alex wanted to leap up into the darkness and fly away. He wanted to see the unseen. He wanted to take. To conquer. Even to kill.
“Can she come?” Alex asked. “I want to show her.”
You are El Terremoto. Do not ask. Take.
Alex walked toward the window, floating watches and chains trailing behind and above him.
Rhonda wasn’t a peeping tom. Not normally. But it hadn’t been a normal night, not by a long shot. What had started out as a horrendous embarrassment—playing hostess to a nerdy boy in the grade below her—had become the night of her life. And the nerdy boy . . . well, he was something else entirely.
Bloody messages under his skin?
A dark doorway in the air?
Men with liquid eyes and owls and vultures battling above the street?
It wasn’t surreal. It was beyond real. So far beyond that she had actually wondered if her mother had accidentally fried up hallucinogenic octopi.
And that woman had stabbed Alex through the heart. She was sure of it. All the way through his back and out his chest.
But he had woken up and acted fine. No, not fine. But alive. And when Rhonda had finally finished cleaning up with her mother and had been sent to bed, she had stayed at her window, waiting for the flashing lights of an ambulance when Mr. and Mrs. Monroe discovered that their son was actually dead. Those lights had never come.
Sleep was impossible. And even though she had already agreed to sneak out and meet her drama friends for a midnight movie, she stayed glued to her window well after midnight. And then she decided that someone should check on Alex. He was probably dead, but his parents were just asleep and they wouldn’t know until morning.
Slipping on homemade mittens with matching scarf and hat—definitely not what she would have worn if she had been meeting her friends—she put on a puffy coat, locked her bedroom door, and climbed out her window, dropping easily onto the piled-up snow that had buried the horrible junipers that kept her from doing such things in the summertime.
And then, in the glowing pink winter light, she had tromped over to the window that mirrored hers on the other half of the duplex. She had ascended the snow and junipers beneath that frosty glass, rubbed herself a hole, and pressed her face against it.
If Alex was dead, he was dead in midair. His feet were on his bunk, his arms and head were dangling straight down, and some kind of chain web held him up beneath his chest.
And then, she blinked. And everything in front of her changed. Hundreds of loose pages flew across the bedroom. Alex became a fast-moving blur. The light turned on, and the new, blurry, swirling version of Alex was suddenly right in front of her. In a flash, he threw the window open between them, shattering the cheap glass.
She hadn’t even had time to scream.
Alex’s bright, flickering hand stretched out through the opening. His face pulsed and his eyes trailed smoke. He was angelic. Or demonic. And she didn’t much care which.
He was amazing.
She shook off both of her mittens and took his flashing hand in hers. And the instant her skin touched his, Alex suddenly became solid in front of her, and everything else in the world slowed down. But it wasn’t just the speed of reality that had changed. The sky had opened up just above them. The roof of the duplex had been swallowed by thick darkness, just like the doorway over the sidewalk earlier that evening. It was as if she and Alex were standing on either side of a roofless dollhouse wall, holding hands. Glowing golden watches formed wings above him with their chains. As the watches moved, the darkness above them turned.
“Get in here,” Alex said, and he pulled. Rhonda scrambled up and dove through the window into his arms. Alex stood her up and together they stared past his levitating light fixture into the black nothingness above.
“What’s happening?” Rhonda asked.
“I think we’re looking outside of time,” Alex said. “I have the Vulture’s watch-wings now. I think I can fly through it. Want to come?”
The watches brightened, straining upward, pulling on Alex, heart and soul. He didn’t wait for an answer.
“Hang on tight,” he said, and Rhonda threw her puffy coated sleeves around him.
Alex jumped. His chain-wings rattled and twisted above him, and he and Rhonda rose into darkness.
Looking down between his feet, Alex watched his roofless house shrinking below him. His father and mother stood in bathrobes in the hall outside his room. Rhonda’s parents were in bed. And then there was the neighbor’s house with someone sleeping in front of the TV, and the next house where two dogs were silently barking up at him, somehow able to see where humans could not, and all of it was fading quickly as it shrank, swallowed by the darkness.
OUTSIDE OF THE MONROES’ DUPLEX, A WINGED SHADOW descended from an owl perched on a streetlight. Two dogs were barking frantically from inside a neighbor’s house as the shadow swept through Alex’s broken bedroom window and then flashed out again, climbing quickly to wake its owl. Moments later, five owls flashed down into the duplex window and Millie’s startled scream joined the muffled barking of the dogs.
Millie had her hands over her mouth, fighting a sob. Jude kicked at the pages scattered at his feet. The empty bed. The broken window.
Alex was gone. Taken, Jude was sure, by some monstrous powers allied with Dervish or her demons. Taken to be trained. He and Millie had done their best to hide him. But it had happened all the same. Faint dreamlike memories and fears rose up from the dusty corners of his mind. The manuscript that had been burned the night before. Pieces of it were lurching into focus like horrifying déjà vu. He had written this story in a dreamlike state. The story of Alex Miracle’s abduction. The watches, charms of the Tzitzimime, had been plunged into Alex’s heart in that story. The son of Sam Miracle had become the Vulture’s heir. He’d sent a warning to himself so that Alex might be hidden. And here he stood, in a tiny town in Idaho in 1982, where the boy had been hidden. But it hadn’t mattered. Alex was still gone.
Jude raised both fists to his head and groaned.
And then the five massive owls poured into the room and Millie hadn’t been able to stop her startled scream.
The biggest gray owl landed on the desk, flared wide wings dripping with startling red, and then hopped to the floor. By the time the bird landed, it was a towering man in high boots and brass-buttoned trousers. He wore a vivid red vest with no shirt beneath it despite the cold, and a red bandana beneath a towering top hat. This part of the story Jude did not remember, but it gave him hope. Especially because he knew this man. He had dreamed him often. He had described him often. The man who had rescued Sam Miracle, when he had lain shattered in the desert. The man who had grafted rattlesnakes into Sam Miracle’s arms, equipping his hands with the speed to face El Buitre. The last free chief of the Navajo people, and brother to Father Tiempo.
Gesturing back at the other birds, the tall man spoke in a strange language, and the four owls bobbed obediently in place.
The giant faced them.
“Manuelito,” Jude said. “I don’t think we’ve met. Not for real, but—”
“We have met,” Manuelito said. “In your seer dreams. I am sorry that we are meeting again now.” He nodded at Millie, raised his hat slightly, and then continued. “I did not comprehend Dervish’s plan in time. But she had been distracting us with strange moves in our own older time. I believed that she was grooming my old bane and enemy, Christopher Carson, called Kit, as her new Vulture, plucking him from his victory over my people. She gave him a jade time charm of his own, similar in power to the Vulture’s watches. But that was only a feint. She then leapt up the continent and through the centuries to this place. Hours ago, an
d by her hand, your boy’s heart was pierced with the devilish time chains of El Buitre. We were not able to stop it, and two of my family were struck down in the effort. I pray that they rise alive from their dream-walking in their own times and places, but they may not. The boy chose to be the Vulture’s heir of his own free will. And now, again of his own will, he has gone into the darkness beyond time. Even as owls in dream-flight, we cannot follow with any hope of finding him. The outer darkness yields nothing to our eyes.”
“No,” Millie said. “Someone took him. He didn’t go. The window, the pages . . .” She pointed around the room.
“The girl entered,” Manuelito said. “She travels with him.”
Millie looked at Jude, her eyes wide. “But he knew about the Vulture. He knew he was evil. He wouldn’t have done that. He can’t have.”
Manuelito nodded at a horned owl on the bookshelf. The bird leapt up, flapping bright-blue wings, and landed as a lean young man with hardened eyes.
“I am Baptisto,” he said. “There was deception. He did not understand his choice, but he made it nonetheless. The chains are linked to his heart and soul. If he does not fight them to his own death, he will soon belong to them utterly.”
Millie wiped both her eyes, shut them, and crossed her arms. She felt Jude beside her. His arm slid around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. You were right. If I’d told him the right stories . . . if he’d known everything . . . he wouldn’t have been so . . .”
“Alone,” Millie said quietly.
“What do we do?” Jude asked. “What can we do?”
“Pray he is killed,” Manuelito said. “Before he fulfills the name pronounced over him and the fifth era ends.”
“No,” Millie said. “I won’t.”
“What is the name?” Jude asked, but as he did, he already knew the answer, as more pieces of the third Miracle story sharpened in his memory, typed in a half trance like the first two, but taken and burned before he’d been able to read it through, before he could try and change it with his choices. Now he understood why it had been stolen and burned. By Dervish or her demons, no doubt.
“He was called El Terremoto,” Jude said. “The earthquake of earthquakes. The one who will cast countries into the sea.”
Manuelito nodded. “I am sorry,” he said. “And now we must wake. All men face desolation in their own times, and we must return to ours. My people are starving and hunted. They need us. The boy will reenter time from the darkness beyond, and we will search for him again. You must get word to the boy’s parents. Somehow. I will tell my brother if I can. Peter Eagle, the one you call Father Tiempo. He will work for the boy’s salvation.”
The three owls who had not transformed into people hopped across the room and leapt out the window. Baptisto dove behind them, feathers reappearing in midair as he flapped away.
Manuelito handed Millie and Jude each a feather. “If you need us, burn one of these. In any time and any place, we will find you.”
“Thank you. I didn’t know you were skin-walkers,” Jude said.
Manuelito snarled down at him. “We are not. They are death and darkness, empowered by kin-slaying, crafted by cruelty and evil. We are dream-walkers. And the dreaming soul can learn to take shape and fly where it likes, so long as it remembers the path home.”
A great gray owl suddenly flapped in the air in front of them, flashing red beneath its wings. And Manuelito was gone.
ALEX’S FOOT DRAGGED AGAINST SOMETHING IN THE TOTAL darkness. Was there a ground in this place? A floor? The glowing watches spread above him were all he could see, and the single broken chain above his head. Rhonda was clinging to him, groaning quietly.
“I feel sick,” she said.
“Well, don’t throw up on me,” Alex answered. “Point away.”
Six time gardens are now yours, Mrs. Dervish’s voice purred through his bones. Timeless anchors in different kingdoms. Choose a watch. They will lead you.
Alex looked at the floating watches. He grabbed the chain with the most pearls and reeled in its watch. The crystal was edged with gold braid. The hands each held a diamond shard, but the numbers on the face were liquid gold, and changing.
“This one,” he said, but nothing happened. Maybe he had to wind it. The second hand was bouncing in place. He twisted the knob on top, but nothing changed. He popped the knob out and twisted again. The hands spun on the face and the liquid numbers morphed. But that was it.
Rhonda whimpered against his ribs.
“I said point away,” Alex said. “Hey,” he announced. If the Dervish woman could talk inside him, maybe she could hear him, too. “It’s not working. Not leading me anywhere.”
Nothing.
All right, then. Looking up, he brushed away the broken chain above his head, and released the watch in its place. It shook and spun, whipping into a blur. The watch-wings at his sides did the same.
They were moving. Slowly at first, and then at a dizzying speed. The darkness blinked beneath him, revealing flickers of the world as he flew. Alex shut his eyes and his heart fluttered and raced, heated by the chains whirling in his chest.
Distance was impossible to measure. But when his feet and then his legs dragged to a stop against hard surface, Alex was exhausted. Letting Rhonda drop, he heard her thump heavily against something hollow, barely managing a yelp.
The vast darkness was no longer boundless. It now had a bottom, and Alex was on it.
Bracing his hands beneath him, he found a wooden plank floor, and lowered himself down to it while the watches clattered around him. The surface smelled like dust and lemon. As he breathed hard, dim light crept into his consciousness, rising up from a stairwell recessed in the floor just ahead of him. Nothing else was visible anywhere.
Dizzy, he climbed up to his knees, and then his feet. Reeling in the watches, he shoved them back up his shirt. As they touched his skin, each one clung to him, twisting in place until the chains were coiled tight. As soon as Alex was sure that he wouldn’t fall, he moved toward the stairs. Rhonda sat up slowly, rustling in her puffy coat.
“Are you coming?” Alex asked.
“Yes!” Rhonda crawled forward. “You’re not leaving me out here.”
When she reached her feet, the two of them stood side by side at the top of the dim stairs.
“Do you have any idea where this is?” she asked.
“None,” Alex said. “We’re joyriding. I don’t even know when this is. C’mon.” He took her hand, and they began to descend.
The recessed stairs were iron, twisted around a central wrought-iron pole. Two times around. Three. And the light, though still faint, grew brighter as Alex and Rhonda descended.
At the bottom, they stood on an iron platform facing a peaked door. White light outlined it. On the other side, Alex heard voices. Speaking French.
Rhonda began to grope the door for a knob.
“There’s people here,” Alex said. “And they’re not speaking English. I’m not sure we should do this.”
“Of course we should,” Rhonda said. “Let’s find out where your watch dragged us.”
Something heavy clanked. Hinges groaned, and the thick door swung open.
Grabbing Alex’s hand, Rhonda pulled him through into the biggest, most opulent room he had ever seen. It was a long rectangle, and the sides were lined with ornately carved two-story bookshelves. The floors were covered with exotic furs and vivid oriental rugs. The roof was all glass and vaulted wrought iron, and one end wall showed a sprawling view of Paris and the full height of the Eiffel Tower. The other end opened on a lush garden courtyard, and in its center, there was a large sundial. Chained to the sundial and floating in the air, Alex saw a golden clock, and he felt it see him. A watch chain tugged on his heart, pulling him toward it. At the same time, the floating clock in the courtyard garden bent in his direction, pointing directly at him.
In the middle of the room, the floor was recessed down to a
massive table, covered in maps and surrounded by men with pointed beards, wearing swords and dressed in military uniforms decorated with stripes and ribbons that made them look like birds of paradise. Only one man was seated. He wore a tuxedo covered with silver embroidery that matched his gray beard, and he was pounding his fist on the table and shouting. The other men were clearly waiting to shout back.
“Alex,” Rhonda whispered as she jerked a thumb at the door behind them. Only it wasn’t a door. It was an enormous wooden clock that had been built into a bookshelf. They had come through a hidden entrance. “I don’t think we should say hi.”
The shouting escalated and the man in the chair leapt to his feet, slapped the map in front of him, and then pointed up at the clock. But the clock was still open. The man’s eyes settled on Alex.
Every head turned. Eyes widened.
Alex cleared his throat. “What year is it?” Alex asked. “Is this the real Paris? We came through the darkness between times. There were stairs.”
“Spy!” The man shouted.
Every sword was drawn. Three men drew pistols.
“Okay,” Rhonda said, and she tried to pull Alex back.
But his heart was jumping, pumping a thrilling heat through every corner of his body, and his mind crackled with rage. He stepped further into the room.
“Tell me,” Alex said. “What year is it?”
“1914. Name yourself,” the tuxedoed man demanded. His accent was thick. “English? American? Why have you come?”
“World War I,” Rhonda said behind Alex. “We should go. Not a good time to do Europe.” She grabbed his sweater and tried to pull him back. His arm jumped quicker than thought, and he slapped her away with the back of his hand. Letting go, Rhonda staggered back into the doorway and began to cry.
“Alex, please!”
Deep inside him, a bubble of guilt tried to rise, but anger swallowed it quickly.
It’s easiest to arrive in time around death, Dervish whispered in Alex’s head. Deaths leave a hole. These killers of millions are squatting outside your garden.