by N. D. Wilson
“I don’t like this place.” He looked up at the priest’s back, and his burro’s swaying rump. A moment ago, he had been in a coffin with the Vulture laughing at him. Despite the sun, Sam’s skin felt cold. He crossed his stiff forearms and rubbed goose bumps against each other. “Why do I see things that aren’t in the book?”
“Because the book is only inspired by one version of your life—the version that Jude will eventually write after all of this is long over. The best version you have lived so far, though I pray a better one is still ahead of you. But you have memories of many attempts. And your mind can’t help but blend them in your dreams.”
“I die in the best version,” Sam said. “That’s encouraging.”
The priest looked back over his shoulder, and then across the canyon at the clouds. “The same is true for all of us, Sam. The best-lived lives still end.”
Sam looked up, squinting against the harsh sun. He wanted off the burro.
“So why can’t you just dissolve this place into sand and reappear us where we need to go?”
“Because I am not God,” the priest said quietly. Sam could barely hear him over the slow crunch of burro hooves. “I cannot make or unmake reality. Angels and men travel through physical space in the same way—they move. And they ride donkeys when they must.”
“So you can’t change space. But when it comes to time . . . ,” Glory prompted.
Father Tiempo laughed, and his voice rattled off the canyon walls. “I’m beginning to understand why the old man liked you. Time is beyond your comprehension. Time is a wind. Time is an animal. Time is choices. Time is light woven into song. Time is the Poet speaking the next word. We are small, and so we hear and live only one word at a time, living in the way you would read a book. Outside of the book, where only the Author exists, there is no time at all. It is not even a book. It is one endless, ever-growing but already-grown page. Most people live in the lines, but I march in the margins. I am sent to make the edits, the notes, the corrections. You and I and all creatures are ink on the page, but I can lead you through the white space between the words, where time is thin. I can lift you off the page until only your shadow is dragging behind.” The priest glanced back at Sam, smiling. “Does your head ache yet, Sam? Or are you daydreaming? You always used to ask these questions, but you hated these answers.”
“Not daydreaming,” Sam said. “I’m listening. But I don’t understand.”
“Are there actual paths?” Glory asked.
Father Tiempo pointed up at a floating falcon. “As many as that falcon has through the air. But down here, even that bird must walk across the ground like you.”
“So you can fly through time?” Sam asked.
“I can,” the priest said. “But it is easier to glide, to rise, to hang and let time pass beneath me before landing in a new moment. A true flight through time can require tremendous exertion and even pain, especially when pursued while carrying a boy-size burden or transporting a soul.”
The priest looked back at Sam, and while his mouth twitched slightly upward, his black eyes were hard and distant beneath the red rag on his brow, like they were sorting through whole libraries of nightmarish memory.
“What makes it hard?” Glory asked. “How far you’re going? Is there some shortcut formula? You know, minutes divided by leap years multiplied by hours or something?”
The priest twisted around to stare past Sam at Glory.
“There has to be crazy lots of math,” Glory added, eyebrows up.
“As much as the falcon is doing,” the priest said. “As for minutes, they exist only as ideas. A clock ticks only so men can map their moments. On our sphere, the beat of time is governed by the moon and her tides, by the sun who swings us, and by our own spinning through evening and morning.”
“Circles,” Glory said. “So stuff with pi, then?”
The priest laughed.
Sam was feeling dizzy and his throat was cracking. “Could we talk about something else? I would rather you just explain where you’re sending me this time and tell me how to stay alive. And tell me when we can get a drink.”
They had reached the top of the canyon wall, and the burros scrambled over a stone lip onto the edge of a flat and barren plateau. Sagebrush. Cacti. Stones rippling in the heat. And the dried and broken remains of a railroad line, stretching into the distance like a monstrous serpentine fossil. Beside them, the shattered timber bridge jutted out into the space over the canyon. In the distance, Sam could see the slumping forms of collapsing buildings huddled around the tracks. Father Tiempo scanned the plateau with squinting eyes, and then peered into the sky. Seriousness was heavy on him.
“So . . . ,” Sam said. “What do I do?”
Finally, Father Tiempo pointed toward the buildings.
“Over there, your soul will abandon this body and I will return it to an earlier time and an earlier you.”
Sam blinked. “What? Hold on. I’m leaving my body?”
“Yes. But only to reinhabit your flesh at an earlier moment in your story. You will board a train, and your one and only goal must be to reach the other side of this canyon alive. From the moment they discover our new attempt, El Buitre’s men will be on you. If they remove your beating heart, that will be the final end of our game. If you cross the canyon, you will have matched your last attempt. But once there, you will still not be safe. You must hide. Be still. Do you understand? Every time you’ve died, your soul has been torn from your flesh. And every time I’ve moved it back into earlier life, the bond between your soul and mind and body has grown weaker.” Father Tiempo leaned off his burro toward Sam until they were eye to eye. “If you die again, I cannot promise to save you. You may be nothing more than a dreaming vegetable, wandering confused memories. So, no fighting. No bravery. You find safety. If you survive, the fighting will come eventually. And this time, preserve your arms.”
“My arms will work?” Sam couldn’t hold back a smile even though his dry lips cracked wide. “Is that why I have to leave this body?”
“Yes. We need you undamaged.”
“Where will you be?” Sam asked. “Are you coming?”
Father Tiempo sighed. “A soul can only be woven into the heart and breath of one self in one time. There can never be two in the same moment. My oldest self is there already. I am fighting already. And I fear that the old man is now desperate enough to risk everything on a single gamble. In the past, a retreat has always been prepared. This time, I am holding nothing in reserve . . . including myself.” He paused, still eyeing Sam. “Do you understand the risk?”
“I’m nervous,” Sam said. “I’m scared. Shouldn’t I be?” He shrugged. “But if I die, at least it will be over.”
“Over? If we fail now, Sam Miracle, there will be no other attempt. A younger you with foggy memories and strange dreams will not show up somewhere new. You will finally cease, and I will have likely ceased beside you. Your story on this earth will have finally ended while El Buitre’s is still beginning. The Legend of Poncho will be just four short chapters with so many scribbles and scrawls and deaths that it was finally thrown away. But the goal is not simply to survive. The goal is to live for those who need you. Die, and you and your confusion will finally rest in peace, undisturbed. But those millions within El Buitre’s still-growing reach will not.”
“Excuse me,” Glory said. “I’m here, too. Where will I be?”
“You are difficult,” the priest said. “In some ways, you are the most desperate part of the old man’s plan. It is one thing to return a soul to its earlier body, and quite another to transport an entirely new body and soul back into a moment in time where it never was before. And in this case, it also happens to involve a speeding train.”
Father Tiempo turned his burro toward the tracks, rubbing his jaw as he spoke. “The complexities are infuriating. You must be thrown into the air above the tracks, exactly at the height of a train car. While you are still in the air, I must move you to exactly the
precise moment in time when that car passed through that space. If I miss, and you end up in front of the train or beneath the train or between cars, it will end terribly for you, and I apologize. Also, I must wait for the first death to occur on the train before I can even make the attempt. A death will create a brief vacancy in the narrative into which you can be inserted. But with Sam’s new actions on the train, along with any variation in behavior on the part of El Buitre’s men, I cannot be sure of exactly when that will occur.”
Sam shut his eyes and leaned forward in the saddle. “Can we just do this,” he said quietly. “I’m starting to feel sick.”
The priest didn’t notice. “I can only hope that the old man remembers to write it down. If he writes it, I’ll know.”
Sam’s ears were beginning to buzz, and someone was drumming inside his head. If they had to drum, he wished that they would have better rhythm. The beats were scattered and spastic. He wanted to hide his burning face in his hands. He wanted to cover his eyes or at least knuckle his temples. But his arms were still stiff as lumber. All he could do was shut his eyes and smash his face into his shoulder. His body rocked forward.
“I’d really rather not die before the adventure even starts,” said Glory. Sam couldn’t see her, but her voice was stern. “Sam?” Now she sounded concerned. “You should have let me give him some water!”
“Don’t yell,” Sam mumbled. And he felt his body falling.
TWO HANDS PRESSED AGAINST SAM’S FACE. THE HANDS WERE cool, but that wasn’t possible. Was it? Not here. His eyelids fluttered. He wanted to learn how to have icy hands. And how to touch his face. Gentle thumbs helped his eyelids open.
Father Tiempo was bending over him. A rotten old building loomed over the priest’s head.
“Say good-bye to this body, Sam.” The priest smiled. “Stay alive. Cross the canyon. Hide. Do you understand me? No fighting. Protect your arms. It will be hard to remember in all the noise of your old memories, but you must.”
Sam nodded. The priest’s eyes were wet. Not just wet. Leaking onto the bridge of his nose.
Sam’s voice crawled out of him like a crow’s ghost.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because you have forgotten me so many times. Because you and I have wandered through more lifetimes together than any other pair of friends in history. Because now we near the end.” The priest’s voice lowered to a whisper. “And I fear it.” He placed one icy hand on Sam’s forehead. “If we should perish, let evil perish with us. If we should fall, let it be in body, but not in spirit. If we face demons, make us angels, but make us angels of death. Good-bye, Sam.”
The priest raised his arms, and the building behind him turned into sand. But it didn’t fall. It flew.
Sam shut his eyes.
MILLICENT MIRACLE STOOD ON A WOODEN TRAIN PLATFORM and shut her eyes. A gust of wind, hot and dry, swirled her skirt and tickled loose blond hairs across her forehead. But Millie suddenly had chills. The skin on her arms and neck tightened into tiny hills. She swallowed, forcing cold fear down out of her throat and into her stomach.
She had felt this moment before. She was sure of it. Just like she had felt the moment of her mother’s death before it had happened. And her father’s. Just like she had known the smell of the loose earth inside the graves before the shovels had even pierced the turf. Just like she had known that rain would spatter on her father’s coffin before there had been a cloud in the sky.
Millie shivered. The sensation of preemptive memory was unpleasant, but it wasn’t a surprise. For her, memories often arrived prior to actual experiences. New moments felt old to her all the time. But sometimes how she felt was wrong.
Sometimes, Millie had the absolute sensation that something had happened when it hadn’t. When it never would.
How many times had she felt the horrible loss of her brother, the sick certainty of his death, only to have him enter the room alive and laughing? How many mornings had she been sure that she was finally alone, sure that he had been shot or burned or stabbed, only to find him snoring safely under his blankets?
Millie felt his absence now. Her heart ached behind her ribs, swearing to her that her brother had been taken forever. That he was gone. Dead. Fed to vultures.
But her heart was a liar and she had learned not to trust it. At least when it came to her brother.
Millie opened her eyes and blinked against the harsh Arizona sunlight. She turned around, looking for Sam.
5
Train
SAM MIRACLE YAWNED LONG AND HARD, STRETCHING HIS arms above his head. His feet were hot in his boots, and his wool coat was planting itches on the back of his neck. He felt like he’d been sleeping for a very long time—and dreaming—but it all had slipped away from him quickly. He’d been riding a donkey with some girl and a priest. The girl had been funny and bossy. Like Millie. He’d liked her. Somehow, even though he was dreaming, he was still on his feet.
Why Sam was wearing a wool coat in this sun, he didn’t know. He looked around the little train station for some place to rub his neck. It wasn’t a big place. Too small to be a town, but close. Beyond the wooden platform where he and his sister were waiting, there was a little general store with a crooked sign. Beside it, a corral made of split rails was currently empty of cattle. There was a saloon, two houses built, and a third under way—all with wooden siding—and a squatting little adobe thing flaking off its skin. The front door and the one window were boarded up, but two tall sun-bleached signs still sat out front. On one:
St. Anthony
of the
Desert
Wishes You
Sweet Respite
On the other:
Bed
Bath
Shaves
Haircuts
Laundry
Fortune-Telling
Holy Amusements
Admonitions
Strange. Sam rolled his sweaty neck against his collar, but that made the itching worse. He sidled back toward his sister.
“Scratch my neck?” he asked.
His sister was two inches taller than he was, and wearing a buttoned-up and faded blue-checkered dress. Her blond hair was pulled back behind her ears where it fell straight down to her waist. Her eyes were blue, but uneven—like undermixed paint—with rays of dark and light stark in the bright sun. She had the same rough spray of freckles across her cheeks that Sam had on his. A large trunk was at her feet, and a ragged paper tag was pinned to her collar, with her name and destination scrawled in blotchy ink.
Millicent Miracle
San Francisco, California
She ignored Sam. He turned around, hunching his back toward her.
“Millie, please! It’s killing me.”
“So scratch it,” she said. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself already.”
“I can’t. My arms. And this coat!” Snarling frustration, Sam began to bounce and writhe where he stood.
“Samuel!” Millie leaned toward him. “What is going on? Was it one of your spells?”
He froze. “One of my what?”
“Look at me.” Millie’s voice was firm, and Sam immediately stared into his sister’s blue eyes. “Do you know who I am?”
Sam nodded. Farther down the platform, three nuns were looking at him. Two long cowboys who had been sleeping on a bench both tipped back their hats.
“Do you know where you are?”
Sam looked around the station. “Arizona,” he said. “But my head feels like a cotton ball.”
“It’s been that way all year,” Millie said. She straightened back up. “You’re fine. Your arms are fine. Just take off the coat. But don’t lose the tag.”
For a moment, Sam forgot his itch. He looked down at his arms. Veins were standing out on the backs of his hot hands. Slowly, cautiously, he bent his elbows. Both hands moved. Two inches. Three. Four. Five, and still no pain.
“Ha!” Samuel tore off his jacket and dropped it on the ground. He swung hi
s arms and slapped his chest and clawed his neck and touched his face and messed up his own hair. His own fingers on his face felt so strange, like he hadn’t touched his own cheeks and jaw and forehead in years.
How was it possible? He remembered the pain. The pain had been very real. And with the pain he remembered the hot grounds of SADDYR. He could almost envision his Ranch Brothers—blurry shapes and sizes, faces without features. He turned to his sister, and her eyes were far from irritated. They were concerned.
“Samuel, we need to get you into the shade.”
Sam shook his head. “I’m fine! And my arms are fine. It’s just that . . . I don’t even know.” He felt each elbow carefully and then looked back up at his sister. “Millie, I had the strangest dream.” But it couldn’t have been a dream. The happiness in him was too strong. It was quivering behind his ribs. It was shaking his voice. Tears were even leaking onto his cheeks.
And he could wipe them.
Laughing, Sam slapped at his cheeks and then leapt at his sister. He threw his arms around her, hugging her tight. Then he grabbed her waist and picked her up, ignoring her pounding fists and spinning in two quick circles. When he dropped her, she was fighting her own smile.
“My arms can bend!” Sam said, and he flexed them.
Millie laughed and shook her head. “Try to be sane, Samuel. I need you sane.”
Sam hopped up onto the trunk, clicked his heels together, and saluted.
In the distance, he saw steam. A moment later, the sharp blasts of the engine whistle reached the platform.
“Get down,” Millie said. “And pick up your coat. If Father were here, he’d smack you.”
Sam hopped down. “Well, good thing he’s not, then.”
The last traces of Millie’s smile vanished. She stepped toward her brother with blue eyes flaring, and her hand planted a slap across his face before he even saw it coming.
“Samuel Miracle, I don’t care if the sun’s boiled your brain, don’t you ever joke about that. Ever. Now pick up your coat.”
Sam had no words. As the train chuffed and squealed to a long and steaming stop, he stood on the platform with his coat at his feet. Motionless. Strange images swirled through his mind, jarred loose by the stinging on his cheek.