by Sean Platt
Clint still protested, but eventually Edward squashed his enthusiasm by repeating that the trail was already cold and that if there had been another shift in the sands (which seemed a near certainty), they could no longer count on even the direction of Kold’s ride to carry them toward him. If there had been a shift, any direction could be the correct direction. Which to take would be as random as a drop of the numbercubes. So, with Kold out of sight, there was no reason not to wait and gather strength for the pursuit — wherever and whenever they might resume it.
Cari seemed amused by Clint’s curmudgeonry as he convalesced in the following weeks. His barbs and insults were constant, but Cari took each of them with an ever-widening smile. The gunslinger said that her hands were clumsy and she grinned. He told her that she was poisoning him and making him worse, and she laughed. He insulted her hovel, and she swore that she would one day live in a castle in NextWorld.
That, Clint didn’t mock. Though not a religious man himself (he believed in Providence, but cottoned to no church), the gunslinger knew something about belief — and knew that a man worth his salt should never soil another’s belief with his words.
And so, as the helioroot drained from his system and his strength slowly returned, as the sun crawled across the sky and turned the Edge dragonfire hot, Clint could only lay in bed while his hands slowed from lack of practice. The tedium of long, wasted days was torture, so to distract himself, Clint dragged conversation out of the family. He asked about their lives. He asked about where they came from. He asked them about their belief in NextWorld.
This last mostly happened because they kept asking him about The Realm.
“Our people believe the fracturing of the world and the detachment of The Realm have opened gates everywhere to NextWorld,” Cari’s grappy told him over a dinner of pumpkin mash and undersized turkey legs. He turned to Clint as the family always did when The Realm was mentioned and said, “What is it like beyond the wall, Clint? Do the people there wear shimmering robes and live in perpetual bliss?”
Grappy’s name was Makai — a name Clint couldn’t keep straight from grammy’s name, Malai. He was a thin, bony man who looked frail even though he was ox strong. He was an accomplished Sands shaman, and he could sift so much magic from the leaking sand that the family had enough left after meeting basic needs to power a large spark-fueled food cooker and other appliances.
“Nar,” said Clint, gnawing on turkey. “I don’t remember much about my time in The Realm, but I can tell you it’s only a city, same as your village above the aquifer, but larger. There are good people and bad people there, but there is also so much magic that they’ve grown spoilt. Few wear white robes since they spend their wealth on luxuries, including coats of many colors. Gems. Spangles. Glossy books and ample distractions. They play a lot of Risk and listen to a lot of Joelsongs. They’re soft. You all, here, are better than them. A Realm man wouldn’t survive a day out here.”
“You did,” said Makai.
“Yar,” said Clint. “But even when I was in The Realm, I was a Sands man, and Edward was a Sands unicorn. We were always strangers to The Realm, which probably explains our exile. A unicorn chooses his rider, and Edward found me on a long sojourn into the desert. This was back before the first fracture, when restless souls such as mine often left The Realm to wander. It was on one of those trips when Edward found me. It was his choice that made me a marshal and gave me my guns, not a decree of the Realm. The tin star they gave me made my already-confirmed appointment official — nar more than that.”
Clint realized he’d just told the family nearly everything he still knew about The Realm. There had to be a wealth of memories in his mind between his birth, meeting Edward, and his exile, but outside of a few oases in his mind, those old memories were shrouded. It was as if the great fracture had opened a matching fissure in his mind — and when that had happened, Clint’s memories of The Realm had fallen into the core, into deep magic that swallowed them whole.
Makai and Malai’s son was a strapping, weather-worn man named Gregori. Gregori was in charge of the family’s turkeys and pumpkins, and spent most of his days while Clint was around using Makai’s spark drill to tap into the aquifer below the hovel so he could give the pumpkins the water they needed. Gregori said it was a neverending battle, since the sand started spitting water a second after its sipping first started. The pumpkins took what they could, then the water sifted back down.
Gregori, like the others, seemed obsessed with asking Clint about The Realm and telling him his own theories.
“Our people believe there are wanderers who help the rest of us find our way to NextWorld,” he said one day during dinner. “Even before the fracture, we believe that NextWorld moved around, and it’s easy to get lost on the way to a place that moves. But a human’s purpose is to find his own way. We spend our lives looking, searching for signs and guideposts, and for those wanderers in life who can guide us. When we do finally discover the way, through whatever means we can, our souls wander forward.”
None of what Gregori said made a splinter of sense to Clint. He thought Gregori might be wondering if Clint was their family’s spirit guide, but Clint hadn’t a foggy as to how a soul could search for anything if its body was stuck in a Sprawl hovel. But, not being a religious man, he didn’t ask questions that might be seen as disrespectful. Instead, he listened and nodded politely.
Clint stayed with Cari, Makai, Malai, Gregori, and Gregori’s wife Persei for two weeks before he finally found the strength to start going on short walks. The sun was a fire in the sky, and by the end of his short walks, Clint found himself drenched in sweat. He’d been wandering the Sands under an unforgiving sun for two and a half years now — and, of course, for years beyond that prior to his time in Solace — without any trouble. But now, he could barely make it a quarter-mile.
It was the poison still in his system that caused his fatigue, said Cari, and that was a sure sign that he was not yet ready to travel.
A week after he first started walking, Clint’s constitution improved and he was able to double the length of his walks, but Clint, looking back on so much wasted time, bemoaned how much the illness was setting him back. Cari explained that his old self was still there, and that the helioroot had simply slapped a mask atop it. Once the helioroot had left his system, he’d be the same as if he’d simply sat around for the same number of days. It was meant to make Clint feel better, but he’d never sat for a month before. He feared the atrophy of his muscles, his grit, and most of all his hands and fingers.
So, to exercise his dexterity, the gunslinger started doing coin tricks and using his fingers to twirl long pencils. He found hard clumps of sand to crush between his fingers. He tossed pebbles high into the air, spinning himself in a circle before snatching them with his thumb and different fingers before they struck ground.
Eventually, to further his practice and still his boredom, Gregori gave him back his guns.
“Bullets,” said Clint to Gregori, inspecting the guns and finding the chambers empty.
“If I give you the bullets, you’ll leave,” Gregori replied. “And then, you’ll die.”
Clint swore sixteen curses, shaking his fist at Gregori and yelling that he was being held where he didn’t belong or wish to remain. When Cari saw this, she smiled and laughed in a way that suggested that Clint would be Clint.
Still, he was glad to have his irons back. He oiled and polished them, stripping them to clear the grit and grains from deep within their works. He used a small brush Cari leant him to clear and oil each of the fourteen chambers.
Once his guns were fully restored, the gunslinger practiced his draws, pulling the triggers while trying to imagine the thick billows of dull red smoke as he fired. Soon he felt as fast and as sure as ever, leaving his aim as the only mystery. But since a gunslinger knew his hands and his guns, verifying the precision of his aim was only a formality.
Clint was practicing his draws indoors when Persei walk
ed in, saw him, and screamed.
Clint, who saw no reason for Persei to scream, assumed a looming threat and spun toward the entrance with both guns drawn, forgetting in full that the chambers were empty. He found Persei staring, green eyes wide and aghast; mouth dragging on the dusty hot floor. She wasn’t looking at Clint or his empty weapons. She was staring past him as if at something so horrible that it haunted her eyes.
She ran at Clint and began pounding her fists on his chest.
“What? What, woman?” Clint said, slipping his irons back into their holsters while fending off her blows with open palms.
“You dare! After we’ve taken you in and fed you and brought you to health! After we’ve shared table, bed, and turkey pie!”
Makai, who’d heard the commotion, ran in and stepped between the gunslinger and his daughter-in-law, holding his hands up for peace.
“He was drawing on…” Her eyes darted behind Clint.
And then he knew.
At the back of the hovel was a small, ornate arch made of dried desertwood, painted in rainbows and covered in costume jewels. Below the arch was a small door made of stone. The door’s knob was cut glass, like a diamond. The entire structure stood around two feet tall, and after each meal, Makai took some small morsel of food from his plate and set it before the door, after which the others did the same.
When Edward first saw this display (he typically stuck his head through the curtain for meals, and Persei would lay a plate on the ground for him) he joked to Clint that the family must be leaving cookies for Santa, then brayed with insensitive laughter. Fortunately, only Clint was present. He shushed Edward, frantically waving and whispering that he must never make such a joke in the family’s presence. Clint hadn’t known much about Leisei religion when his nursing first started, but he’d quickly learned enough to know that every family had their own shrine, and that it wasn’t something a man — or a unicorn — had any business mocking.
“Why not?” Edward asked. “They’re putting food in front of a tiny door for no reason, and they’re doing it in a part of the world where food cannot always be counted on. Don’t tell me that’s not ridiculous, and a waste. Who is coming through that door to eat the food? A leprechaun?”
Clint couldn’t help himself. He smacked the unicorn across the nose. “Remember what you said about Cerberus defiling Mai? The profane thing he’s doing to her very soul?”
Edward’s eyes became serious. “Yar.”
“If you want to do the same to these people,” said Clint, “make that same joke in their presence.”
Edward never made any jokes about NextWorld or the shrine again, either to the family or to Clint.
On the night Persei attacked him, the gunslinger stared at the shrine (which the family sometimes called a “portal”) and then began to apologize to Persei. He’d been practicing drawing his guns in front of the family’s single reflecting glass — but to her, it must have looked like he was pretending to fire at the portal.
“You were going to shoot at it!” she screamed, half angry, half desperately afraid.
“I beg your every pardon,” said Clint. “I was practicing my draw in the glass. I meant no foul, or to draw on your portal.”
Persei was still sniffling. Makai, who saw the gunslinger’s mistake, was trying to comfort her while casting a crooked look at Clint.
Clint unbuckled his gun belt, fell to his knees, and placed the belt in Persei’s hands.
“The chambers are empty. I meant no offense. Here: take my weapons, pleasem and thankoo.”
Persei seemed somewhat appeased as she looked down at the weapons, but Clint was underwhelmed. He should have known better than to risk offense to the portal, but he could tell that she didn’t recognize the symbolism of what he’d just done. A gunslinger surrendering his guns was as meaningful to him as the portal was to them, and it tore something inside of him to do it.
Makai, old enough to know the ways of The Realm, seemed to see the meaning in Clint’s gesture. He took the gun belt from Persei, led her outside, then returned to Clint and handed him the belt.
“Put them back on, Marshal,” he said. “You see your mistake and atone.”
“I meant no offense.”
“Yar, but pleasem be careful,” said Makai. “I understand our beliefs aren’t for every child of Providence, but I also know that life near the Edge is hard, and that faith goes a long way toward keeping a person sane. It keeps us hitched to our spirits instead of crying at what we might see when we look true.”
Clint nodded, repeating his apology. He meant no offense, but he understood why Persei was bothered by the aim of his draw. The one thing you could do to a Leisei that was worse than killing was to destroy his portal. Without it, Leisei belief said that a soul was forever stuck in the sand and unable to move on to NextWorld. Such a pour soul would be stuck at the Edge forever, undead and wandering.
Persei was visibly shaken throughout the evening’s remainder and into the following day. Clint felt discomfort on his head, but at the same time he felt strength and speed return to his hands. The entire event began to feel like an omen, so at the next day’s dinner, Clint made an announcement.
“Thankoo and pleasem for your generosity of spirit,” he said, tipping his imaginary hat since Cari, Persei, and Malai all insisted he not wear one in the hovel. “My companion and I are much refreshed and improved in health. Our spirits are thicker than on our arrival, and we agree between us that we’ve imposed on your household enough.”
The women started to protest, but Makai was already nodding. He and Clint had shared many a palaver on the topic. It was true that Clint wasn’t quite finished with his healing, but it was better for a man to risk dying on his feet than to die slowly on his back. Clint had been convalescing for nearly a month, and although he had tried to keep his mind sharp and his muscles strong however he could, the truth was that the gunslinger couldn’t help but feel that he was growing softer and slower with each passing day. The longer Clint stayed in the hovel, the weller he’d be — but he’d pay for that wellness with a loss of his hardness. Skills were like butter. Once they’d softened, they never again resumed their same shape.
“Yar,” said Edward, his front half sticking through the curtain at the room’s far end. “We thank you. We know that more healing could be done, but we starve a little with each passing day that we stay. You are good people who live in peace. But what you must know is that a gunslinger and a unicorn need hardship like a sharp knife needs a whetting stone.”
There were a few more chirps of protest from everyone but Makai, but all were half-hearted. Everyone knew that the day of their guests’ departure was coming, and Clint suspected they saw a silver lining. Edward ate turkey pies as fast as Malai could bake them, and he was none too courteous about only taking a piece or three and leaving the rest of the pie for another. With their guests gone, the family would finally be able to chew their food and swallow their brew without looking behind them.
“Do you have a plan?” said Makai.
“Yar. Walk out into the sand and start looking.”
“The landmarks might have shifted. You understand how common that is out here? It’s not like it was near your town of Solace.”
Clint felt a strange desire to clarify that Solace was not his town so much as a place he once kicked off his boots, but he let it go. He nodded.
“Yar. We’ve seen it.”
“We’ve felt it,” said Edward. “I’ve had a fault line shift beneath my feet. And when it was over, when we were past, the place we’d been the day before was no longer behind us, nor in front. It could have been anywhere. We could have been anywhere.”
Quiet draped the table as everyone ate, after Edward’s strange words killed the conversation. Truth was, neither Edward nor Clint knew which direction to head. The unicorn gave them fifty-fifty odds that heading out the way they’d come — past the site of the dooner ambush — would end up setting them in the right direction. Kold
could have wandered across any number of fault lines in the past month, and any of those fault lines could have shifted in the meantime. It was as though they were heading into a giant combination lock with an infinite number of dials, hoping against hope that none of the dials had been touched.
“Get surrounded in a shifting zone, and you could end up wandering forever,” said Gregori. “You won’t know where you are.”
“Not knowing where you are matters little when you have nowhere to go,” Clint countered. All he cared about was finding Kold and Mai. Beyond that, every place was the same. His actual whereabouts didn’t matter worth a fart in the wind.
The next morning, Clint rose before the family awakened and sneaked outside the hovel to where Edward was waiting. They’d already packed the meager supplies they’d brought with them, tucking them in beside the generous store offered by the family to help them get through. They were carrying so much water and dried food that even Edward, who as a proud unicorn normally refused to carry supplies, agreed to wear a humiliating set of bursting saddlebags.
They had said their thankoos throughout the previous evening so that the morrow’s head-out wouldn’t be drawn out and tearful, but as Clint prepared to mount Edward’s back, he realized he’d forgotten something very important.
Gregori remembered too.
“I owe you something,” Gregori said, approaching from behind the turkey pen and extending a fist toward Clint. Clint put his palm out, and Gregori dropped fourteen bright silver bullets into his hand. They had an oily, multicolored sheen, but felt perfectly dry.