by N. D. Wilson
“Sir,” Tiny said. “Mr. Buitre. We’ve checked every moment at that bridge that matched the exact position of the moon one hundred years in both directions. Rattles and a few others went forward while I went backward. We checked more than two thousand nights, sir. Then we moved further in increments of seven like the priest always favors. All the way up to seven hundred years each way, sir. And . . . well . . . I think he tricked us.”
Mr. William Sharon Vulture Buitre raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
Tiny straightened to his full height and blinked his one eye. “We assumed that the priest was fighting us off in order to ghost the boy away the way he always has. He lost much of his life doing it, so it mattered to him dearly.”
El Buitre waited.
“But he didn’t,” Tiny said. “Ghost him away through time, I mean. He didn’t take him anywhere. Once he scattered us all through the years we were just trying to find our way back to you. But the priest . . . did nothing. He tricked us. We assumed he would hide the boy the way he always has, and we went searching, but the boy never left that time. He was just lying there in the desert right where you shot him.”
The Vulture stiffened his long fingers and then curled them each slowly into fists, cracking one knuckle at a time.
“You’re sure of this?” he asked.
“We are.” Tiny nodded. He licked his lips, nervously. “When we realized what had happened, we returned to the moment right after we had first been scattered. We saw the boy’s body.”
“And?” El Buitre asked. “Was he still living?”
“He was. But the priest was with him. We killed him. And killed him. Even more than when you were there, and he flung us away through time. Younger and angrier versions of him fell in a ring all the way around the boy. And as the last priest died, he threw up an enormous sandstorm that spun like a tornado above all of his bodies. It swept us clean out of that time and wouldn’t let us back. Disappeared whole train cars. The next closest time we could reach was fourteen hours later. No one there but dozens of the dead priest. But there were wagon tracks in the sand. Someone took the boy.”
“Someone?” El Buitre asked. “But how does that help the boy? If he isn’t dead, his arms are at least destroyed. They must come off if he’s to survive. Even the priest isn’t fool enough to think he could face me with stumps on his shoulders.”
The arch-outlaw walked to his bent glass windows and looked out over the fog. His mind, trained to track time through seven layers at once, capable of fiery patience and an intense and bloodthirsty pursuit of perfection for every day that he lived, capable of beating even lesser demons and their fortune-tellers at the poker table, could not understand what Father Tiempo could possibly be planning.
“Ridiculous,” he said out loud. “If he wants to offer up a single prayer against me, he must move the boy back and try again to overcome my strike at the train. But then why die? Why give up so much of his own life when he could have vanished with the boy at the outset?”
“Maybe he died a little too much,” Tiny said behind him. “Maybe he had a plan, but we just beat him.”
El Buitre thought about this. Maybe. Maybe the priest was finally done. Maybe the boy was dead in the desert and his soul had departed from the earth, never to relocate again, never to come searching for the Vulture with the blessing of Providence upon him and a weapon in his hand.
Maybe El Buitre could finally live forward, braving the week he had long ago seen to be his last.
“I think he’s dead,” Tiny said. “I do. I think it’s over, Boss.”
El Buitre wanted to believe it. Badly. But believing was a fool’s game.
“When his heart is ash in my hand, I will believe. Get me the boy’s heart.” He pocketed his watches, picked up his gun belt, and turned around, strapping it on as he did. Then he looked up at Tiny with a grin, his fingers tickling the butts of the twin silver-and-pearl revolvers. “Try me, Tinman?”
The lanky man took a step back toward the stairs, shaking his head. “Not with all those timepieces on, Boss. I know how they favors you.”
Turning, he raced for the stairs, long legs tumbling like the legs of an awkward insect. When he had gone, El Buitre pulled both of his guns sloth-slowly, thumb-cocking them as he did.
“Boom, boom, little boy.” He smiled and holstered his guns.
7
Snakes
SAM MIRACLE HAD A DREAM. HE WAS SITTING ON A STOOL in a cave lined with mirrors. He was wearing a barber’s apron tight around his neck, and he was waiting for a haircut. The floor was crawling with fat-bellied snakes, so he kept his legs tucked up beneath him. A tall Indian wearing a top hat and no shirt was seated in a red-velvet easy chair, reading a newspaper. The snakes didn’t bother the Indian. He had his legs extended straight out onto the slithering rug, boots crossed at the ankle. Every time he turned a page, he winked at Sam.
Underneath the apron, Sam had no arms.
“Who are you?” Sam asked.
“My father named me Pistol Bullet,” the Indian said. His voice was distracted, his eyes roaming the newspaper. “Because he wanted me to be frightening to our enemies. A priest named me Emmanuel, because he wanted me to be a savior to my people. But men called me Manuelito, because I am large and ito means ‘little,’ and there is often joy in calling a thing what it is not.” He smiled at the pages in front of him. “But Manuelito fits me well, because my body may be large, but I was only a little savior.”
Manuelito looked up. “My brother wanders time on the path set before him by God’s angels. But I am at rest. Men think I am dead. But I am here when he needs me. He brings me broken things in need of healing.”
“And you fix them?” Sam asked.
Manuelito shook his head. “I heal them. Sometimes that means breaking them differently. If a boy’s arms are so damaged and mutilated that he cannot live, a healer may remove the arms to save the life. He makes things worse to make them better.”
Hot fear flooded through Sam. He wriggled his torso under the barber’s apron.
“You took my arms?” he asked. His eyes were burning. He blinked quickly. “They were bad before, but I liked having them.”
Manuelito set his newspaper down on his knee. He removed his top hat and set it on the newspaper. His dark eyes had grown quite serious.
“I did not take them. Not in the way you mean. My brother wanted me to heal them,” the Indian said. “But that I could not do. He wanted your arms strong and fast, so that your enemies would fear you, and so that you could be a savior to all who have come under the shadow of the Vulture who flies against time. And that I could do. Is this what you want, even if I must break them differently? Terribly. Fearfully. You could live more simply with them gone. I can still remove them.”
“Arms,” Sam said. He nodded and hot tears darted over his freckles and down his neck into the apron. “Yes, please help me. If you can.”
Manuelito set his hat back on his head and winked. “I can.” He picked up his newspaper and opened it. “I may. And, I already have. Your left arm is a matter of justice. Your right is a young and foolish volunteer. You are strong enough to wake now, but there’s no hurry if you’d rather not. I have also given your memory some calming. It has been through much.” He snapped the paper up in front of his face. “When you do wake . . . try not to be frightened.”
THE DREAM FADED. FOR HOURS. FIRST INTO DARKNESS, AND then into nothingness, and finally it faded into light as warm and golden as the dawn.
Sam opened his eyes. The ceiling above him was stone. The wall beside him was stone. He was lying on a low wooden cot and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Instead, his hands and arms were bundled in bandages from his knuckles to his shoulders. He sat up and tried to rub his eyes. Needle-sharp pricks danced along his arms as they moved. And they didn’t really move like arms at all. They were strong, but . . . floppy. His left hand missed his face completely and floated in the air behind his ear.
Sam swall
owed hard, suddenly nervous. And then two snakes began to rattle behind him.
After a week of sleep, Sam exploded off the cot and spun around. His feet were bare, and the stone floor was dotted with sand and loose rocks.
The snakes were still behind him.
Yelling, Sam jumped back up onto the cot and turned in a tight circle. The whole cave was echoing with the rattling, but Sam couldn’t see a single snake.
“Sam!” Glory was running toward him from somewhere. “It’s okay, it’s okay! Calm down!”
Sam stopped spinning and looked at her. His chest was heaving. Panic sweat was running down his face. First one rattle stopped, and then the other.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked. “I dreamed a big Indian. I think.”
A boy Sam’s size ran into the room behind Glory. His hair was thick, perfectly black, and cut in jagged clumps around his protruding ears and the worn-penny earrings that dangled from them. He wore a coarse wool poncho that hid his arms, a tangle of long braided-leather necklaces, and a red cloth strip tight around his head—just like Peter had done back at SADDYR. Sam’s mind was so sharp with memory, it surprised him. The recent past was crystal clear . . . all the way up to guns firing at the train wreck.
“The big Indian is real,” Glory said. “This is his cave.” She looked back at the boy behind her. “And this is his son, Baptisto. He doesn’t speak much English, but he’s smart.”
The boy stepped forward and stuck his hand out from beneath his poncho, ready to shake.
“I am Tisto,” he said and nodded.
“Sam,” Sam said, but his right hand didn’t go anywhere near Tisto’s. Instead, it slid slowly up his chest and then hooked itself around the back of his neck. Sam blinked and jerked it back down by his side.
“Did you hear the rattlesnakes?” Sam asked. Cold dizziness washed across the backs of his eyes. His voice didn’t feel like his own. “Am I crazy?”
“I heard them,” Glory said, nodding. He could tell she was working hard to hold his eyes, to reassure him. “And you are crazy. And Father Tiempo is crazy and his brother is crazy and the whole world is crazy. Now how about you sit down?”
“I don’t want to sit down!” The cold in Sam’s skull exploded into heat, and his voice was rising. “Why would I sit?”
“Because your arms are the craziest of all and I don’t want you freaking out again.” Glory’s words were slow and smooth. She touched his chest, gently pushing him backward.
Sam sat down on the cot and stared at his bandaged arms, breathing heavily. When he relaxed, he could feel them trying to bend and twist. So he didn’t relax. At all.
“Okay,” Glory said. “For the record, I need you to know that I didn’t want him to do this. I didn’t want him to amputate your arms either. I wanted him to make them perfectly normal, like they had never been shot. But apparently that wasn’t an option. He said he could fuse them up solid and put them in painful braces forever, cut them totally off, or . . . this.”
Sam wasn’t looking at her. He was gripping his knees and staring at the backs of his bandaged hands. The skin was tickling. Wriggling a little. Like his veins were moving by themselves.
Glory leaned forward and took Sam’s left hand, untucking the end of the white bandage as she did. Tisto stepped back and crossed his arms. He didn’t seem interested in what was beneath the bandages. His eyes were locked on Sam’s face, and they weren’t impressed.
“Are you ready?” Glory asked.
Finally, Sam looked up at her. His heart was rabbit-kicking against his ribs. “Does it matter?”
“Not really,” Glory said, and she began to unwind the bandage. “Don’t look yet.” She paused. Sam was staring straight down at his hand.
“I’m serious,” said Glory. “Let me unwrap it first.”
Sam knocked Glory’s hand away and tore at the bandages. He stood up, shaking white cloth coils down to the floor of the cave. As he did, the rattles started up behind him. But Sam didn’t spin around. He was looking at golden scales patterned with black and white. They covered a mounded muscle that ran down the center of his wrist onto his arm. The scaled muscle flexed, and Sam felt it tense inside his arm just like it was his.
He clawed the bandage loose up to his elbow and then shook it off.
The rattling grew louder, and his forearm bent into a tight quivering U. Two vicious golden eyes with hard slanted pupils stared at him from the back of his hand. A sharp scale horn rose up above each eye, but there was no mouth. The skull of the rattlesnake, minus its lower jaw, had been grown onto the back of his hand. His own skin stretched up like the edges of a tent, and then merged with the scales.
“This one is Cindy,” Glory said. “Manuelito just calls her Cin. She’s a big old Mojave Sidewinder.”
“She hates people,” Tisto added. “All people.”
Sam was having trouble processing. There was a snake in his arm, steering his arm, bending his arm into curves that didn’t belong on anything human. There were eyes and horns on the back of his hand. And they looked angry.
“Cindy,” Sam said, and his voice was flat—stunned. “It’s stuck to me.”
“She,” Glory said. “Not it. The rattles are on your shoulder blades. If you get nervous or mad, you rattle.”
Sam relaxed, just to see what Cindy would do with his arm without him.
Faster than fingers snapping, his hand slammed into his face. He tumbled backward and onto the cot. Forcing his hand away, he made his fingers hook onto the edge of the bed. Cindy tried to jerk the hand loose again, but Sam clenched tight. Blood was trickling out of his nose and his lips felt instantly swollen against his throbbing teeth. His eyes were watering. In his entire life, Sam had never been punched as hard as he had just punched himself.
Tisto shook his head and pointed at Sam’s offending hand. His tongue buzzed quickly like a rattle and then he spat out a sharp hiss. Cindy stopped fighting Sam immediately, but she remained tense.
“She just needs to get used to you,” Glory said. “You’ll have to practice controlling her. But the other one isn’t so bad. Just a little goofy. And a boy.”
Sam sniffed and wiped his nose against his shoulder. The rattling hadn’t stopped and he was panting hard. All he wanted to do was shut his eyes and not think about anything that had just happened.
Which wasn’t easy when he could feel his arms flexing without him, when he could feel them trying to twist and slide free of his shoulders.
It was a nightmare. He would wake up in bed sweating with a fever, and his SADDYR brothers would jump out of their bunks and make sure he was all right. His arms would be stiff again. Stiff and safe and useless.
But he wasn’t waking up. And his mind was clean and uncluttered, unlike any dream he’d had in years. The wriggling in his arms was real, as real as anything he had ever felt in all of his confused living.
Rolling over quickly, Sam threw up on the floor. There was nothing strange at all about the mess. It was exactly the same kind of mess that he’d made hundreds of times eating at SADDYR. Which was strangely reassuring. And vomiting had somehow stopped his nosebleed. For a moment, he ignored the tickling slither of his arms.
When he finally looked back up at Glory, she had her arms crossed, and her cheeks shone with quickly smudged tears. Her lip was shaking. Baptisto was watching her, curious. The pennies below his ears bounced when he looked back at Sam.
“She cries often,” Baptisto said. “While you sleep. While my father cuts you. While you heal.”
“I did not!” Glory said. “And why shouldn’t I? It’s been awful!”
“Please don’t cry,” Sam said. “Please.”
“I’m not.” She quickly slapped a tear off her cheek, sniffed, and then recrossed her arms. Her jaw was jutted out angrily.
“You already did,” Sam said. “Just don’t cry anymore. Not for me.” He sat up slowly, keeping his arms tense. Then he began unwinding the bandages on his right arm. “The way El Buitre shot me, I
shouldn’t have arms at all right now.”
“Why didn’t you hide?” Glory asked. “Father Tiempo told you to stay hidden. He told you to save your arms. Did you forget?”
Sam shook his head. “No. For once, I remembered. I still remember. Father Tiempo was wrong. You hated Poncho because he left his sister. So did I.” Sam stopped and stared at the heart-shaped rosy-peach head on the back of his right hand. No horns. Smoother color. Blue granite eyes—rounder, but still hooded and vicious. Sam’s hand looked around and then arched its back and rubbed its scales on the side of his knee. Baptisto nodded, pleased by the rosy snake’s behavior.
“It will be better with this one. I will tell my father.” Then, tucking his arms back underneath his poncho, the boy left the room.
“Speck,” Glory said. “Short for Speckle.”
“I couldn’t hide,” Sam said. “I couldn’t leave my sister. I had to try, even if I got my arms shot off.” Sam looked up into Glory’s eyes. “I’d rather have snakes in my arms.” He forced a smile. “At least these arms bend. And they must be pretty quick.”
“I think that was the point,” Glory said. “And your bloody nose already found out how quick they are.”
Sam was unwinding the rest of his bandages, all the way up to his bare shoulders, tracing the scale-wrapped strip of muscled snake to where the rattles stuck out from the backs of his shoulders, just below his neck. Cindy’s rattle was huge, and she buzzed it quickly as Sam traced her long flexing back with the fingers on his other hand. Speck’s rattle was almost as thick, but shorter by a few segments, and much calmer.
“Will this be in the book now?” He looked up. “Do you think the ending will change?” The shock of what he was seeing and feeling was growing into amazement. “They could help, right?”