by N. D. Wilson
“You know,” Glory said, watching. “There’s a difference between real life and books. Don’t act like they’re the same.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Getting life right is a lot harder. If I was just a book, Father Tiempo could have given up a long time ago. Come on, I’m curious.”
“Most of the book is blank now,” Glory said. “Right before the train wreck the ending was still there but . . . different. Now it’s just gone.”
Sam wasn’t listening. He held up both of his hands, fingers splayed. The horned snake head on the back of his left hand—Cindy—tugged slightly at his skin, trying to arch herself free of Sam’s arm. But she had been grafted in too deep. She could only ripple her scales, tickling Sam’s skin along the seams.
Manuelito appeared in the mouth of the cave. He wasn’t wearing his top hat, but everything else about him echoed Sam’s dream—his size, his thick white hair, the high boots, the heavy bundle of necklaces on his bare chest. Baptisto stood in his father’s shadow.
“Samuel Miracle, it is a pleasure to meet your conscious self.” Manuelito held up a belt with two holstered revolvers. “If you’re feeling strong enough, training with your serpent-assisted arms should commence. There is not much time, and more cannot be bought.”
“Training?” Sam asked. “For what?”
“For survival,” Manuelito said. “For victory, if our prayers are heard. You must face the Vulture. And when you do, you will die for the last time. Or you will live.”
Sam received the heavy holsters with strangely swaying hands. The big man crossed thick arms across his bare chest.
“I hope that you are not repulsed by your situation,” Manuelito said.
“No,” Sam said, looking at his arms. “I mean . . . yeah. A little. I did throw up. It really doesn’t feel real.”
“You must become accustomed to your new limbs. If you are ready, Baptisto will assist you.”
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready,” Sam said. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
Manuelito smiled. “My young friend, if you are still living in a year, you may thank me then.”
Manuelito slapped his son on the shoulder and spoke a string of words that sounded like water slipping across stone. Tisto nodded, and his father left.
Glory looked at the young Navajo. “Can I stay?”
Tisto looked at Sam. His eyebrows were up, waiting for Sam to answer the question.
Anger flooded through Sam and he shut his eyes tight against it. “I don’t care,” he snarled. “Just . . . don’t ask me anything right now.” He swallowed hard, exhaled, and looked up at Glory. She was worried, chewing her lip, but obviously not leaving.
Tisto took the gun belt from Sam’s hands and set it on the cot. As he did, Cindy struck, jerking Sam’s left hand and fingers into Tisto’s side.
The boy spun around, snatching Sam’s wrist and squeezing hard.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “I wasn’t trying to—”
Tisto jerked Sam’s hand up to his own face. He bent Sam’s fingers down and leaned his nose forward to within an inch of Sam’s knuckles. He was staring directly into Cindy’s vicious, unblinking eyes.
Cindy’s head tugged against the skin on the back of Sam’s hand while her fat rattle buzzed on his shoulder. She knotted Sam’s arm up harder than a cramp, but Tisto pressed his face even closer.
“Shut your eyes,” the boy said. “And try to think of nothing.”
“Excuse me?” Sam asked.
Glory stepped closer to Sam, eyeing the Navajo boy. “What are you doing?”
“Hush,” Tisto said. “Shut your eyes, please, and clear your mind.”
Sam shut his eyes. He was used to letting his mind wander, rambling through layers of foggy memory, but he was not used to clearing it. He was picturing SADDYR, with Jude writing in the corner and the pinball machine going, and the music on, and . . .
“I can’t do it,” Sam said.
“Look at the night sky.” Baptisto’s voice was smooth. “There are no stars. The moon has gone. There is only nothing. Can you see it?”
Sam nodded. Darkness swallowed him.
And then something warm trickled up his left arm and into his shoulder beneath the buzzing rattle. The ghostly warmth oozed up inside his neck, left bitterness on the back of his tongue, and spread out like a word made of steam inside his skull.
Kill.
He didn’t hear it. He felt it. And he could feel the warmth of Baptisto’s face an inch away from his hand. His knuckles couldn’t feel it. His skin couldn’t feel it. The sensation came from the tickling head of Cindy and flowed into the back of his hand.
“What can you feel?”
“Your face in front of my face,” Sam said. The warmth shifted side to side and then rose higher. “You’re moving.”
“Good. What else do you sense?” the boy asked.
“Hate,” said Sam. “Cindy wants to kill you.”
“Open.”
Sam opened his eyes as the boy dropped his hand and took a step back.
“Good,” Baptisto said. The pennies swung below his ears as he nodded.
Kill.
The rattling had slowed, but the level of furious rage pulsing through Sam’s hand had not.
“She still hates you,” Sam said. “She wants you dead.”
“Of course,” Tisto said. “But I am not offended. Cindy wants all things dead.”
“I’m confused.” Glory looked back and forth between the boys. “What just happened?”
Baptisto ignored her, focusing on Sam. “When you calm the noise inside, you will know how your vipers feel. Cindy is old and her hate great, so her voice will always be louder. But Speckle can be heard as well. Also, these two can see the heat of bodies in the darkness. When there is no light, trust your hands to guide you.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “How do you know this?”
“My father taught me when I was young,” Baptisto said. “But I do not need the animal grown into me. I need only a touch of the skin and the oldest words of my people to learn what a beast might teach me.”
“Wait,” Glory said. “You can understand animals? Could you show me?”
“Yes,” Baptisto said. “And no. There’s not time. Eyes shut again,” he said to Sam. “Now arms straight out from your sides if you can. You must practice sensing them, and you must teach them to sense you.”
Over and over again, the boy gave Sam simple commands, and over and over again, Sam failed to accomplish them. He couldn’t gently touch his own ear with his left hand. Cindy struck him in the face every time he tried. He couldn’t even clap his hands. Cindy would recoil and Speck would float up or down or out—anywhere but where Sam wanted his hand to be. It was easier with his eyes open, because he could see what the snake was doing and fight it. But that wasn’t good enough for Tisto. Sam had to control his arms by instinct, and without sight.
Frustrated, sweating, and a little bruised, Sam stretched, twisted his torso, and tried to relax. With his eyes closed, he imagined the night sky without stars and tried to feel the new sensations, impulses, and desires that flowed up his arms from the reptilian brains on the backs of his hands. But all he got was anger and warmth on the left and confusion on the right. He could begin a motion easily, but the snakes always decided how to finish . . . if they finished what he had started at all.
“What now?” Sam asked with eyes clenched tight. “Punch myself in the face? I can do that. Or maybe I should lose my right hand behind my back.”
“Do not think of failing,” Tisto said. “Think of knowing. Glory now moves silently around the room. Know what your hands know. Point to her.”
Sam breathed evenly, trying to lose his mind in darkness and feel any rumors of warmth the snakes might send him.
Kill.
“Oh, shut up,” Sam said aloud. He had no idea where Glory was, but his left hand was moving in front of him by itself.
“Good,” Tisto said.
“That isn’t
me,” said Sam. “It’s moving by itself.”
Tisto sighed. “The right hand then. What does Speck know?”
Sam focused on his floating right hand. Cindy was still tracking Glory, but Speck seemed to be tracking everything. Sam’s arm slid forward, twisted and slid backward, looped around and slid forward again. After a moment, he recognized the pattern. His right hand was tracing a slow figure eight over and over again. And at different points in the motion, different impressions ghosted into his brain. And they were the same every time.
Rat. Boy. Girl. Snakes. Snake. Fear. Rat. Boy. Girl. Snakes. Snake. Fear. Rat. Boy. Girl. Snakes. Snake. Fear.
Sam tried to focus on identifying one thing at a time, matching the impressions he received with Speck’s motion.
“There’s a rat somewhere behind me,” Sam said. “Tisto is on my right. Glory is in front to my right. Then he thinks there are a lot of snakes straight ahead. One snake on my left—Cindy, I guess—then he tugs away from my arm a little bit, gets scared, and starts over.”
A new sensation flooded into the room. Speck relaxed instantly. Cindy tensed and slid in tight against Sam’s hip. Her rattle twitched just enough to tickle Sam’s skin.
Sam opened his eyes and looked around. Tisto had his arms crossed over his poncho. The boy nodded slightly.
“The rat is in a box. Snakes are in a den behind the wall in front of you. You listened.”
Glory was staring at Sam, chewing a nail, looking even more nervous about the new situation than Sam felt.
Manuelito had reentered the room, and both snakes had responded. The big man looked from Sam to Tisto and asked his son a question in their mysterious liquid language.
Tisto shrugged at Sam. Not disappointed. Not impressed.
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “I can get better.”
Glory forced an encouraging smile at him. “Practice makes perfect.”
“Cindy is too strong,” Tisto said in English. “But the other may function in time.”
“Too strong may not be strong enough.” Manuelito grimaced and scratched his broad chest beneath his necklaces. Then he stepped forward and picked up the gun belt off the cot. “The time to learn is now. Come.”
While Baptisto and Glory trailed behind, Sam followed the big man out of the room and down stairs cut into the stone. The ceiling rose higher and higher, arching into a red-and-yellow dome, bright with sunlight. Where the cave was larger, square buildings of mud and stone were clustered in rows. Manuelito led Sam through the narrow streets and walkways of the tiny ghost city until they finally stood in the vast gaping mouth of the cave, overlooking the rolling red rock and green sage hills of nowhere.
“There,” Manuelito said. He pointed at a long gravel shelf below the cave mouth. Sagebrush dotted it. A huge saguaro cactus huddled at one end, bent by the weight of at least a dozen ancient arms.
A few rusty cans were scattered on the gravel shelf. Manuelito handed Sam the gun belt and watched the tense curves of Sam’s scaled arms as he buckled it on.
“Walk on down,” Manuelito said.
Glory moved forward with Sam, but the big man dropped a hand onto her shoulder.
“He will struggle to control his arms. We will remain here, well out of view.”
Glory scrunched her face in disappointment, but she forced a quick smile at Sam. He inflated his cheeks in response. He was still more confused than nervous.
“Good luck,” she said. “You’ll be fine.”
Sam tried walking down the steep slope, but the loose gravel on the smooth rock made walking impossible. He arrived at the gravel shelf in a small avalanche. Dust climbed slowly up into the sky around him. A few small stones skittered all the way across the shelf and dropped off the other side.
But the world was silent.
Sam stood and looked back up at the cave. No one was watching. His legs were coated with dust and his arms swayed heavily, like socks full of sand, as he slapped it off. His hands mostly went where he wanted them, but his arms bent wherever they felt like bending to get there.
Cindy didn’t like it at all. Her rattle buzzed on Sam’s left shoulder and she fought his motion, stiffening his arm up into an S.
The desire to kill him washed up his arm.
“Oh, stop,” Sam said. “This is already weird, don’t make it harder.”
He forced his left hand up until he was looking into the snake’s horned yellow eyes between his knuckles. The rattle quickened and Sam tensed every muscle in his arm that his brain could reach. She was trying to strike him again, trying to smash his hand into his face.
And then Sam’s other arm jerked him suddenly backward and down. He spun, staggering sideways, barely keeping his feet. Cindy swam Sam’s left arm through the air toward his other fist.
Cactus spines dotted the knuckles on Sam’s right hand. His fingers were closed tight around a squirming lizard. On the back of his hand, the muscles in Speck’s rosy-scaled cheeks had mounded them up into a strange little smile.
“Oh, come on!” Sam said. “Really?” He forced his fingers open and the lizard dropped onto his foot before darting under the nearest stone. Speck’s smile vanished. The snake’s stony blue eyes stared into Sam’s.
Sam felt the ticklish urge to swallow something whole.
“No! You can’t eat it through my palm,” said Sam. “And I’m not eating it for you.”
Manuelito’s voice rolled down from the cave above.
“If it was unclear, I intended for you to attempt to shoot those cans!”
“Right!” Sam shouted back. His rattling had stopped, but both of his hands were floating by his sides, scanning the ground and trying to tug him down to get closer.
He grabbed the butt of the revolver on his right hip and looked for the nearest tin can. Speck didn’t fight him, so he drew the heavy weapon, cocked the hammer with his thumb, and aimed. Speck tensed, sending a rigid prickling shiver up Sam’s arm. The snake was staring sideways down the barrel.
Even with his old fused arms, he never could have held such a heavy gun at arm’s length without a wobble. But with the snake’s strength there wasn’t even a quiver in Sam’s arm, and no hint of muscle burn. Nothing more than a quiet throb in his old bones.
Sam pulled the trigger and the old can leapt into the air. The whining ricochet echoed across the desert.
Cindy snapped around, nosing Sam’s left hand through the air to get a closer look at the power in Speck’s grip. Sam shoved Cindy straight down at his side while he aimed at the can again.
He missed, but Cindy still snapped his hand up to see. This time, he forced her down and grabbed his belt with his left hand, holding on tight while he took aim with his right.
Speck forced his right hand slightly up. Sam pushed it back down to where he wanted it. Speck rippled ticklishly from his wrist to his shoulder, forcing the barrel back up again.
“Fine,” Sam said, and he pulled the trigger. The can skipped and tumbled through the sagebrush. Cindy jerked, but Sam held on to his belt just tight enough to keep her down.
“Three in a row now,” Sam whispered. “Got that?”
He cocked the revolver, pointed at a more distant can, and fired. While it hopped into the air, he cocked the gun again and let Speck drive his arm. The can split in half while it was still in the air. Sam cocked the revolver again and shoved the barrel toward one of the halves. Speck took over, tracking it down. Another bullet hit it just before it bounced.
Sam holstered his gun and stood still, breathing hard. The gunshots rolled back to him from across the hills.
“Wow.” He looked at the pink snake in his hand. “Speck . . . I like you.” The snake was happy, too. An electric thrill shivered up Sam’s arm.
Letting go of his belt, he used his Cindy hand to rub Speck’s head, and then ran his thumb down the length of the snake’s rippling body.
Lowering Speck, he lifted his left hand and looked Cindy in the eyes.
“You have horns, and you alread
y smacked me in the face, but I can like you too, if you behave.” The gnarly old snake gave him no reaction at all. So Sam focused on a can and reached for his other gun.
As soon as his fingers closed around the butt of the revolver, Sam’s left arm cracked like a whip. The barrel pointed almost straight up, and Sam’s thumb jerked back the hammer. With that first shot, a crow dropped, trailing feathers, and the gun barrel was already swinging down. A beetle exploded in the dirt fifteen feet away. A lizard vanished off a rock. A spider splattered into a cactus.
“Stop it!” Sam yelled, ducking away from his swinging arm. “Stop it, stop it!”
The revolver fired twice more, and two more small creatures perished. Sam dropped into a crouch, with his right arm sheltering his face.
Kill.
Click. Click. Click.
Cindy was still trying to fire. Sam lowered his right arm and looked up and straight into his own smoking gun barrel, and into the two golden horn-hooded eyes beside it.
His own thumb cocked the hammer. His own finger pulled the trigger.
Click.
Sam jumped to his feet, throwing the revolver into the sage. Anger surged through him, pounding through his ringing ears, roaring in his lungs.
“You’re insane!” He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, squeezing harder than he thought possible, squeezing until his fingers twitched and the pain was screaming louder than both of the buzzing rattles on his shoulders. There was a sharp stone between Sam’s feet. He wanted to crush the snake with it. Or gouge it out of his skin.
“Samuel!” Manuelito shouted down from the cave mouth. He was visible now. “Come. Eat. And I will help with the anger.”
Sam threw his left hand away. It swung down and hit his thigh and then crept up behind his back.
“No!” Sam forced his hand back around and grabbed his belt. “You stay where I can see you . . . you . . . sick little snake.”
He picked up his thrown revolver with his right hand and muttered insults at Cindy as he scrambled back up the slope to the cave.