by N. D. Wilson
“I am El Terremoto,” Alex said.
“Spanish? We shall hang you for a spy!” A tall man built like a saber strode forward, pistol leveled at Alex’s head, sword clattering against his thigh. “Where does this doorway lead? How long have you been listening? How long have the Spanish been aiding the Kaiser?”
Kill, Mrs. Dervish purred inside him.
And Alex knew he would.
Maybe.
6
First Blood
THE GOLDEN WATCHES SPUN OUT OF ALEX’S SHIRT AS THE tall man fired his pistol. Time slowed to a trickle. Within it, Alex became faster than sound.
He watched the pistol’s hammer slowly fall. A ring of smoke wafted out of the barrel around a wobbling bullet, pushed by a slow groping flame like a snail stretching from a shell. It was the first smoke ring Alex had ever seen and it made him think of hobbits and pipes. Did it look the same puffed out of a hobbit’s mouth? He wanted to know.
The bullet rippled through the air toward his face and he reached for it with his thumb and forefinger. The lead should have been hot, but at the speeds Alex was moving, it felt cool against his skin. Plucking it out of the air, he turned it back toward the men at the table and lobbed it like a lazy dart.
The tall man was firing again. So were the others. Bouncing through the slow, liquid-thick air, Alex ran toward the table. When he reached it, he looked around at the men, some still in the middle of blinking while they fired guns at the door where he had just been. Laughter welled up inside him and shook its way out.
Kill! Mrs. Dervish commanded. Show me you can kill! All of them.
But Alex didn’t want to. Did he? It might be fun. But as slow as they were, they couldn’t really hurt him. He’d feel bad. And who was Mrs. Dervish to boss him around? He was the one with the watches, after all. What did she have?
“No,” Alex said. “I don’t have to.” He grabbed the map off the table in front of the tuxedoed commander, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor. The man looked so serious, with his gray beard and bald head and hard eyes. And those eyes were flitting toward Alex, trying to move faster than their own time.
“Can you see me?” Alex said. “You can, can’t you? Out of the corner of your eye?”
With the back of his hand, Alex flattened the man’s pointed beard.
Out of the corner of his own eye, only inches below his hand, he saw the first bullet he had pinched and lobbed this way. It was spinning end over end, descending. And then it hit the man in the chest, directly over his heart. Alex saw the silk embroidered threads of his coat fray and pop as the bullet spun inside him.
“No!” Alex yelled. “No, no, no.” He grabbed at the wound, but the bullet was already gone. He tore apart the man’s jacket and shirt and saw the skin pucker up like a kiss.
The man rocked backward out of his hands.
Alex grabbed his golden chains, yanked down his watches, and shook them.
“Go back!” He yelled. “Play it back!”
Time accelerated. He was once again moving at normal speeds.
Gunshots roared around him, and the man’s body suddenly accelerated backward, tumbling over his chair onto the floor. Alex dropped onto his knees and crawled toward the fallen man.
“Assassin! Prime Minister!”
Men with swords jumped after him as he put his fingers against the side of the French prime minister’s throat to check for a pulse. He felt nothing.
Looking up, he saw a blade flash toward his throat and he dove away, rolling across the carpet and jumping to his feet. The watches were dragging slack behind him.
Men with ribbons all over their chests and weapons in their hands were coming toward him, spitting curses in French. He backed toward the glassed-in courtyard. Rhonda jumped out of her crouch by the clock and sprinted toward him.
“I didn’t mean to,” Alex said. “I promise. I don’t even have a gun. You shouldn’t have tried to shoot me. It was like a ricochet.”
“Ricochet?” The nearest man, with hard-parted slick hair and a Zorro mustache, sneered the word. “You will hang, Terremoto. Your intestines will spill in the street for this Spanish treachery.”
Alex gathered up his watch chains with his right hand. Rhonda dodged through the men and grabbed on to his left.
A split second later, the watches were in the air, and Rhonda and Alex were bouncing through the liquid air toward the courtyard with the sundial, like two runners trying to jog across the bottom of a pool. Rhonda had an angry red splotch across her cheek where Alex had hit her. It matched the anger in her eyes.
“I’m not Spanish,” Alex said. “He called me Spanish.”
“You said you were called El Terremoto,” Rhonda answered. “What were they supposed to think? And you just pretty much messed up the whole history of the modern world. We might not even exist when we get home. You just killed the French prime minister right at the beginning of World War I. The whole war started because of one assassination, and you just threw in a bigger one. And I’m pretty sure Spain was neutral. Bet you a million dollars they won’t be neutral now. If dollars even exist anymore.”
A sick weight settled in Alex’s stomach.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said.
“Right,” Rhonda said. “You just flashed over there like lightning and he died by coincidence.”
“It was the bullet they shot at me, I just tossed it away. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”
Rhonda hesitated. “Well, you still slapped me in the face like a complete jerk. Was that an accident, too?”
“I just swung,” Alex growled. “I wasn’t looking.”
“Are you sorry?”
“Do you want me to let go and leave you here?” Alex asked. Dragging Rhonda toward the paned-glass courtyard doors, he kicked them into slowly floating shards, and then pulled her straight across the courtyard to the central sundial with the floating chained clock.
“You’re being a total jackass,” Rhonda said. She tried to twist her hand away, but Alex gripped her tight.
“Let go and you’ll be back at their speed,” Alex said. “They’ll have you in seconds.”
He circled the granite pedestal. It was crowned with a golden sundial and compass, with a circular face less than two feet across. The points of the compass protruded out the sides while the vertical gnomon was shaped like a shark’s fin, pierced with the chain that leashed the floating clock.
When Alex got close enough to the pedestal, the watch he had chosen to follow in the darkness floated down toward the sundial and slid its belly perfectly into a divot in the northern arrow of the compass.
With a shivering rumble like a mountain grinding its teeth, the golden dial rose up slowly from the granite, supported by a thin shaft. It looked almost like a flat steering wheel.
Glass shattered beside the broken courtyard doors. Clouds of sparkling shards floated through the air behind freshly fired bullets.
“We should go,” Rhonda said. “Before you kill more people.”
Ignoring Rhonda and the bullets, Alex leaned toward the dial and gripped the shark-fin gnomon with his free hand, pushing the dial face counterclockwise. With an almost imperceptible ticking, it turned back mere fractions of an inch.
Time turned back with it.
Sunlight dimmed in the sky above the courtyard. Bullets receded back through the glass and the shards reassembled into panes. Even the doors Alex had kicked in were made whole.
“Whoa,” Alex said. And he laughed. Pulling Rhonda up next to him, he placed her hand on the dial between both of his. “Push hard,” he said. “Please.” Together, they did.
As the dial turned, their courtyard seemed to separate from the outside world. In the sky above them, days flickered faster than Alex could count before simply blending into a deep blue, striped and ringed with the paths of stars. Through the long rectangular room and out the other window, the Eiffel Tower disassembled and vanished.
Alex stopped pushing. Switching direction,
he began to pull, twisting the dial clockwise. Time outside the little courtyard moved forward.
“Where are we going?” Rhonda asked.
“We’ll find out,” Alex said.
The Eiffel Tower reassembled.
“Maybe you could go back to 1914,” Rhonda said. “You could save that man.”
“He’s not my problem,” Alex said. “Duck.”
The dial passed its starting point and Alex kept pulling, sensing the millions of rapid ticks in his fingers and his heart. The dial turned a full inch. And then two. Outside the glass garden walls, the world changed rapidly. But inside, despite the sensation in Alex’s chest, reality seemed steady. The time garden and the sundial were steady. Anchors, like Mrs. Dervish had said. Alex released the sundial’s fin and stepped back, still chained to the watch resting on the dial’s face.
Flickering daylight returned and as the dial’s rotating face slowed, vegetation exploded up the outside of the courtyard’s windows. Hot air swirled around Alex as vines tore at the walls and slithered through the breaking glass.
Alex tugged at his hidden watch, reeled it in, gathered the others, and shoved them all up his shirt against his skin.
The sky above the courtyard was dusty pink. The long rectangular room next to the garden was dim and hidden in shadow, but the Eiffel Tower was still visible through the window on the far side of the room. Most of it. Minus the peak.
Rhonda moved toward the gaping unhinged glass doors, stepping over the invading vines.
“So . . .” She looked around, unzipping her puffy coat. “This place is wrecked. And hot.”
Hopping through the vines, Alex followed her into the dim room. Where there had once been bookshelves, now there were concrete walls, puckered with bullet holes and stained with French graffiti. The floor was charred in places, mined with holes in places, and heaped up with pigeon poo, trash, and . . . bones. A few twisted and broken iron frames were all that remained of the wall of windows at the end of the room, and a warm sticky breeze stirred the dust and trash on the floor.
Only the large clock was recognizable, shattered, torched, and hinged against the concrete wall with iron straps. And ajar. Mrs. Dervish was standing in the opening, still wearing her floor-length black dress.
“Hello, children,” she said, looking around the defiled space.
Rhonda yelped and almost jumped into a hole lined with jagged rebar.
Alex faced her. “When is this?”
“Well,” the woman said, and she entered the room, primly raising her skirt just above her thick ankles. “You changed so much it would be difficult to say, if your watches hadn’t already told me exactly where and when you’ve gone.”
“So,” Alex said. “You can track me?”
“Anywhere,” Mrs. Dervish said. “And anywhen. You will never truly be without me, and unless those golden chains are torn out of your heart and you die, I will never lose you. In this case, I have followed you to Paris, late 1967. Well done. Your destruction was thorough.”
Alex looked out the open windows. The city wasn’t just a ruin, it was virtually empty. He saw smoke rising from a few distant points, but he saw no traffic, and he heard nothing.
“I didn’t do this,” he said.
“Oh, Alex.” Mrs. Dervish laughed, picking her way toward him by the window. “Do not ever underestimate the impact one courageous god can have when he tips the scales with blood at exactly the right time. What did you do in this very room half a century ago?”
“Those men,” Rhonda said. “At the beginning of World War I.”
“Wait,” Alex said, staring out over the city of rubble. “That bullet I tossed was an accident. I didn’t know it would hurt anybody. I didn’t mean to do anything but survive.”
“And yet,” Mrs. Dervish said, “this is all due to you, Terremoto. Half a century ago, you killed the French prime minister at the beginning of the greatest war the world had ever seen. The French blamed the Spanish, and Spain—neutral in previous history—was dragged into the war. The German kaisers were able to erase governmental France and subdue multiple rebellions. Although never quite conquered, Russia has been falling for decades. America never entered the war, and what you were taught in school to call the Second World War was completely averted because the fighting in the first one never really stopped. There was nothing second about it. This city saw combat in her streets for fifty years, and she may never rise again. But think of all the American lives you saved! You created an entirely different nation, and while Spain and England were occupied with this slaughter, your America annexed both Canada and Mexico as her own.” Sighing, she patted Alex on the shoulder. He flinched away. “Remarkable,” she said. “You erased modern Spain completely! And it’s only your first day! Good riddance, by the way. Spain and I have never gotten along.”
“How do you know all this?” Alex asked. “It feels like a trick.”
“It is,” Mrs. Dervish said. “A trick on the world. The Vulture planned this himself. We even tested variations. This time the garden was carefully prepared in this location and the timing, you’ll recall, was ready upon your entry. If it hadn’t been for that terribly tall Navajo who healed your impossible father, William Sharon would have built the entire western hemisphere up into his own united and invincible empire. He was gifted in his manipulations. But his defeat was your opportunity.”
“No World War II,” Rhonda said. “Really?”
“Really,” said Mrs. Dervish. “But Alex could arrange one if he likes.”
“So no nuclear bombs. No Holocaust,” Rhonda said. “That’s better, at least. Even if this is awful.”
Mrs. Dervish smiled. “I’m afraid that some things are inescapable. We expected dozens of nuclear bombs to be used in Russia and Europe. Dear William would have delivered bomb designs himself if needed. And as of this moment in time, ethnic cleansings and clinical genocides have been under way on an industrial level only possible in a place like America. All the pieces were in place.”
The world began to swirl around Alex. Acid climbed up his throat and into his mouth.
“Millions of people!” Rhonda yelled. “Millions! For no reason!”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. Dervish said. “Billions! But there will be new ones. There always are.”
“You’re sick!” Rhonda lunged toward Mrs. Dervish, but the woman whipped a long thin blade out of her skirt. Rhonda froze and backed away.
“Tell me, Alex,” Mrs. Dervish said. “Would all these people have died anyway? Were they not mortal? Have we increased human mortality by even the slightest margin? Of course not. We have simply imposed our own purpose on already universal death.”
Alex bent over, closed his eyes, and placed his hands on his knees. Dizziness shook through him, churning his stomach, heating his eyes. His arms were weak and wobbling. Part of him was worried that he might topple out the empty window. Part of him didn’t care if he did.
“I didn’t do this,” he groaned. “It isn’t real.”
“You did,” Mrs. Dervish said. “And it is.”
“Then I’ll put it back. I’ll wind that thing backward and tell myself not to come. I’m not Sauron,” Alex said. “I don’t want to be Sauron.”
“I don’t know who that is,” Mrs. Dervish answered. “But if you meet yourself, you’ll die. Your one soul cannot exist in two bodies in one moment. Whichever body is stronger in that moment will absorb the soul from the other. As for restoring things back to the previous global chaos, I find that letting a cat out of a bag is so much easier than putting one back in.”
Alex gagged and threw up out the window.
“You had no right to do this to him,” Rhonda said behind him. “To do this to anybody.”
“Right? Does the wind have any right to fell a tree? A river to swallow a bank? A star to engulf a planet or a volcano a city? Foolish girl. What does right have to do with anything?”
Alex spat bile, wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, and turned aro
und. Rage and shame were ringing in his ears. The heat of the anger pouring into him was overwhelming, blurring his vision, pounding beneath his fingernails like hammer blows.
He looked at the plump woman with the long skirt and the vulture brooch at her soft throat, and he knew only one desire. He had not meant to kill the old man with the pointed beard. But this woman . . . this woman he would destroy.
Mrs. Dervish’s eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. And she giggled. “There he is. There’s a boy fit to ravish the world.”
The watches poured out of Alex’s sweater, and rose around him, lifting the lower hem. Alex tore his sweater off, and his Star Wars shirt beneath it. “You’re a witch,” he snarled, “and you’re going to die.” The chains were rooted in an open but bloodless star-shaped wound in his chest. Gripping them with his right fist, he tugged at the bundle.
“If I rip them out?” he asked.
“You won’t,” Dervish said. “You’re not ready to die. When you’ve quite finished fuming, we’ll visit the next time garden.”
Alex leapt at the woman. Watch-wings spread above him, slowing time as his hands groped for her throat. Rhonda and the room became still, but Mrs. Dervish only accelerated. With her left hand on her vulture brooch, she whipped the flat of her long blade across Alex’s arms. She whipped him across the ribs, the shoulders, the throat, the head. She whipped until the watches fell and Alex was curled up on the floor, unconscious and covered in welted stripes. Then she released her brooch and stepped back into normal speed, breathing hard.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Someday soon I’ll fear you. When I’ve grown you a bit. But not yet.”
Rhonda sobbed and Dervish pointed the blade straight at her. “If you misbehave, you’ll get the point, not the flat.”
The two men with the liquid eyes entered the room from behind the clock. One broad and bald, one tall and young, but with a slab of white hair.
“Pick him up and carry him,” she said. “His horrible parents will be looking for him soon, and he is far from ready for that encounter.”