by N. D. Wilson
She rubbed her raw wrists and looked at the tall man in the elevator with her. He was in a much better mood than when she had last seen him. His thumbs were in his belt and he was smirking above his oil-dark pointed beard. At least his seven gold-and-pearl watch chains were tight to his vest instead of floating all around. The space was too small for that.
“I always wonder how much you remember,” the man said. “Do you even know who I am?”
Millie nodded. “You’re the Vulture.”
“Oh, please,” the man said. “We’re old friends now. You can call me . . .” He thought for a moment. “Fate. Destiny. Doom. Whatever feels right.” He shrugged and twitched a quick smile. “How does God sound?”
“You destroy things,” Millie said. “You don’t create. You and God have nothing in common.”
“Smart girl. Call me Mr. Sharon. Or William. That’s how this body was first christened, and it has been one of my favorites.” He nodded at the door. “Open the cage whenever you like.”
Millie assessed the brass accordion door. Gripping the handle, she slid it open, and then staggered back in surprising light. They were thousands of feet up, and outside the elevator, stars were whirling. The sun looked like a throbbing white-gold symbol, coiling around itself in a loosely braided sphere. Below her, mountains rippled like fields of grass crawling in the wind. Forests spilled across the land like dark liquid. But the ocean was as hard and motionless as a smooth sapphire.
Millie couldn’t pull her eyes away.
“I’m a bit of an ancient nomad,” Mr. Sharon said. “Not much younger than this world, actually. But I’m only just beginning to enjoy myself. When I’ve finally dealt with your brother in a permanent way, the fun will truly begin.”
“Sam will kill you,” Millie said. “That’s what everyone says. That’s why we ran and why the priest hid us.”
“Oh ho!” El Buitre sneered at her. “You think your memory is sharp? Let me show you something you won’t remember.”
The Vulture slammed the door shut, pulled out a watch, adjusted it, and then threw the door back open. Millie blinked again. She was looking out at a small walled garden—a graveyard—beneath the night sky. A yellow shard of moon hung low, between two hulking trees that loomed over the wall. The moonlight was just bright enough to throw shadows behind the headstones, and the grass was just long enough to bend smooth backs.
In the center of the graveyard, there was a stone bench with the seat worn smooth. A narrow dirt footpath led straight to it through the grass. Behind the bench, there was what looked like an old stone sundial. A gold clock floated above it, leashed down to the dial face with a heavy gold chain stretched taut.
“One of my thinking spots,” Mr. Sharon said. He stepped out of the elevator. “Where I contemplate time and mortality and your frustrating brother. Although it isn’t really his fault that he’s frustrating. It’s all that horrible priest.”
Millie moved out into the graveyard and the air was sharp in her lungs. Each breath had glass edges.
The priest. Millie had a picture in her mind. Black hair, dark skin, obsidian eyes. His name . . .
“Father Tiempo,” she said.
Mr. Sharon dragged his hands over headstones as he walked toward the bench. “Yes,” he said. “Father Time. Can you understand why he doesn’t like me?”
Millie didn’t move. Mr. Sharon turned and sat on the bench. He extended his legs, crossing his booted feet at his ankles. Moonlight crawled across his watch chains.
“Well,” Mr. Sharon said. “I don’t like him either. He’s a poor loser.” He spread his arms, rippling his long fingers as if he were testing the texture of the air. “Do you like this garden? I do hope so. If you don’t help me, you’re going to stay here forever. I will personally dig yet another hole in my Miracle garden, and you will go into it very much alive, screaming, until I’ve shoveled enough earth on your face to silence you.”
Millie took a quick step back, but there was nowhere to run. And the man wasn’t coming toward her. He was pointing at the headstones.
For the first time, Millie looked at the names. To her right every stone was the same. Dozens of them.
Millicent Miracle
She turned left, and her eyes bounced from stone to stone. They were all her brother’s.
Samuel Miracle
Millie’s heart went cold in her chest, cold and heavy. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was frozen. First the darkness and then this. She didn’t understand, but she’d seen too much to doubt the headstones. She was living in a nightmare. Her heart sank low, and she followed it down, landing on her knees in the cool grass.
Her eyes settled on a pale marble slab beside Mr. Sharon’s bench.
Gloria Spalding
Mr. Sharon followed her look with his own.
“Stubborn girl,” he said. “Smart, but not as smart as she thought. Tiny—you remember Tiny?—shot dear Gloria with Sam in Arizona. Doesn’t matter. What matters is you.” William Sharon raised his nose to the air. “Would you like this to be your final resting place, or shall we leave all your old exoskeletons here and move on?”
Suddenly, he leaned forward, staring straight into her eyes. “Join me, and I can give you the world—every moment of it. Be more than bait on a hook, always devoured. Why should you have to die? Why should Sam? Help me take him alive. Without a fight. I have won by spilling blood often enough already. You’ll be saving him as well as yourself. And then I can show you anything, take you anywhere, grant any wish, help you live forever, choosing lives for yourself, choosing cities and nations and eons. I’ll have Mrs. Dervish make you a queen. Would you like a Chinese dynasty? I can give you one. Would you like to burn kings and make soap from the ash? Is there someone you hate? Anyone? I will teach you to peel their entire life apart, second by second. Maybe you’d like to see the great sea serpents of forgotten time or rewrite the golden age of Europe? The past is my back garden. I only need one thing in return.” He smiled. “Sam Miracle. How many times have you died for him? And all your dying has accomplished nothing. Nothing but these stones around you, and the lifeless bodies beneath them. This time, live.”
Millie swallowed. She licked her lips. Her last memory was of Sam being shot in the train wreck while she screamed into a gag. He hadn’t even seen her. Then she had been knocked out. She didn’t understand how he could have survived, but clearly he had. The Vulture had raged angrily over the chessboard and had stormed off to destroy him. And he had obviously failed again, or he wouldn’t be asking for her help now.
The villain had tried to terrify her, but she had been terrified already. He had tried to entice her, but he had used nothing but lies. But, almost accidentally, he had given her something she badly needed. Something beautiful. A spark that she could cling to.
He had given her hope. And hope could burn anything.
Millie filled her lungs and her voice thawed. She stared the Vulture right in the eyes.
“When Sam comes,” she said, “where will they bury you?”
THE PRIEST HAS PRACTICALLY FLOWN THROUGH THE DESERT on the motorcycle, bouncing against rocks harder than a jackhammer. Sam could still taste the blood in his mouth from biting his lip in the sidecar; Glory was massaging her nose after smacking it into the priest’s back.
Old Father Tiempo had jumped them into 1969. The extra effort seemed to have drained him a little, but Sam was grateful not to be immediately greeted with bodies from a fresh tragedy. Then the priest had said a quick good-bye and dissolved himself away. It was strange to think that the old man was traveling to the smoking train wreck to stand over Sam with his shattered arms, to lay down his life just to keep Sam breathing. Sam had been relieved to see the priest alive again, but he knew the relief was false. In the priest’s time line, he simply hadn’t died yet.
“Well,” Glory said. “You’re still alive, so he must have made it.”
Sam stretched in the moonlight and tried to stop thinking about it. But h
e couldn’t. He wondered if he would see the old priest again, maybe years from now, but still before he had died for Sam. Or maybe all of those moments had been used up already. Father Tiempo had said that he lived in a straight line, but that his straight line was different from their straight lines. Sam didn’t understand. But he didn’t need to. Something else the priest had said . . .
Glory was watching him. The motorcycle was lifeless on the rough desert horse-track the priest had chosen to get them back toward the canyon where the blown bridge and the train wreck had begun Sam’s journey toward new arms. Metal was still ticking in the motorcycle engine from the heat of its exertion. Sam’s arms kept sliding under his poncho and winding tight around his torso. Speck and Cindy didn’t care for the night air. They preferred body heat.
“I could have kissed you back there,” Glory said. “Even if we die, we need to try and save your sister. The story is so much better.”
“I’m glad you didn’t kiss me,” Sam said.
“I’m not even your sister,” said Glory, “and I wouldn’t want you to leave me to die just to save the world. Which is how I know I’m way too selfish.”
“Selfish?” Sam shook his head. “Don’t be stupid. You didn’t have to come. And you didn’t have to stay with me in the desert.” After a moment, he looked over at Glory. “What if I really do have to choose? What if I die saving Millie, and then the Vulture gets to do whatever he wants to millions of people? Is it wrong to want to save my sister more than all those people in Tombstone?”
Glory didn’t answer.
Sam sighed and continued, now talking up at the sky. “I don’t know. It all makes me feel sick. And I really don’t like this plan. I don’t want all those guys to die. And they will.”
Glory tucked her hair behind her ears. “So. What do you want to do?”
“I want to move faster. I don’t want to wait for any distractions. I want to hit first. I don’t want to have to choose between saving my sister and saving everything else.”
Something feline sent a yowl rolling over the rocks.
“Do you think he was lying?” Sam asked.
“About it being more than thirteen hours to San Francisco?” Glory shrugged. “I don’t know why he would lie about that.”
“About Millie. You think she doesn’t have much chance no matter what I do?”
“She has a brother with snake arms who is willing to do absolutely everything he can to save her or die trying.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “But even if we follow the map perfectly and find this graveyard, and we wait for the earthquake Father Tiempo said would happen, and the guys beat us there and have him distracted, we still have to get into the outer darkness—whatever that is—and then through it into the Vulture’s tower, just hoping that he hasn’t killed Millie yet.” He faced Glory. “Feels kinda like we’re about to die trying. And if I die and the Vulture lives, what was all this for? What then?”
Glory slapped the motorcycle. “We have exactly one way to find out.”
“Well, I know we can make better time to San Francisco than that bus,” Sam said. “At least if you can really run this thing.”
Glory threw her leg over the seat, turned the key, and kick-started the engine hard. Exhaust ghosted off into the night as she revved the engine.
“You don’t need a driver’s license to dirt-bike in the desert!” She smiled. “Saddle up, Poncho.”
12
The Vulture’s Wings
SAM GROANED. THE SUN WAS BRIGHT BUT LOW. AND HE could hear voices. His knees and arms were tucked up under his poncho, and his cheek ached where it was resting on the edge of the sidecar.
He had no idea how long he had been asleep.
Yawning, Sam sat up. The motorcycle was parked on top of a hill, in long grass beside a road. Below Sam, San Francisco was curled up on its own hills running down to the bay. The city looked like a colony of slow-rolling ant mounds, clothed with trees and then dotted with houses and finally crowned with towers, all of it leashed together with taut and slack and tangled roads. If Sam didn’t know that he’d been to San Francisco countless times, he would have said he’d never seen a city like it. In the morning light, whether he was in 1969 or in 2069, it looked to him like it belonged in another world.
About ten feet away, Glory was facedown in the grass.
Two shaggy men stood above her. One nudged her with his bare foot.
“Bro! Don’t wake her up,” the other man said. “She’ll just make a scene.”
“Scene either way, my brother. At least if we take the bike.”
“We’re taking the bike for sure. Nice bike and they’re just kids. You know they stole it. The universe wants us to have it.”
Sam whistled, and as both men spun around, Speck pulled his revolver and Sam’s right arm slithered out from under the poncho.
“I don’t care what the universe wants,” Sam said. “You’re not stealing anything.”
“Whoa!”
“Bro!”
Both men retreated back through the grass. And then one of them began to laugh.
“You know, little brother, for a second, I thought you had a snake pointing a gun at me.”
“I do.” Sam cocked the hammer and both men broke into a run, jumping through the long grass back toward a wall of trees.
Sam holstered his weapon and tried to stand up. His legs were heavier than concrete and he couldn’t feel his right foot at all. He slipped sideways, banged his shin on the lip of the sidecar, and fell out into the grass.
Glory rolled over and sat up. “What are you doing?”
“I’m falling,” Sam said. “Is this San Francisco? You drove the whole way?”
“I did. And you slept the whole way. Which is ridiculous. Even when I stopped for gas. You’re like a dog, the way you sleep. Just flop you anywhere and you’re out.”
“I had to sleep just so I wouldn’t notice how uncomfortable I was,” Sam said. “How much farther?”
“If your Mohawk brother’s map is right, it’s just at the bottom of this hill. But it was creepy down there in the dark, and I didn’t feel like hunting around with you still snoring.”
Sam stood up and winced at the tingling in his foot as blood returned.
“Want me to drive?” he asked. “I can. If you teach me.”
“Ha,” Glory said. “Funny, funny, Miracle boy. Let’s walk.”
Sam didn’t move. He stood, feeling the sun. Smelling the wind. Watching the grass bend in the breeze toward the swaying trees and the distant white lines marking foam on the bay.
Glory stood beside him.
“Any reason to wait?” she asked.
Sam shook his head. “No. Not really. It’s just . . .” He took in a long slow breath, and told himself that the knot in his stomach was hunger.
“While I’m still right here,” he finally said. “This still might go well.”
“I get it,” Glory said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Sam and Glory walked down the hill. They hopped a fence and moved through a goat pasture. They rounded a small slumping house and then a collapsing barn. Finally, they entered a grove of ancient trees.
The trees were cedar, with massive sinewy trunks rising up in dozens of different positions, each one a tree unto itself. The earth beneath them was soft and bare, but ferns grew in thick flocks wherever enough light reached the ground.
At the center of the grove, Sam and Glory stepped into a wide clearing. In the center of the clearing, high stone walls were wedged inside two of the largest trees yet, enclosing what had to be one of the seven hidden gardens. A little stone building the size of a backyard veranda guarded the far side with a tarnished copper weather vane perched on its peak. Beyond the building, a narrow road wound away into the trees.
“See what I mean?” Glory said. “No way I was sleeping down here.”
As Sam and Glory walked around the walls, Sam’s eyes traced the muscled branches of the trees. They hugged the stone, b
ending around the corners, interlacing with one another, forming a wooden web of protection. Or maybe it was a posture of attack. He couldn’t tell, but if trees that strong wanted to attack, he was pretty sure the walls of the garden would have been long gone.
Cindy was on edge the entire time, thrust out from Sam’s body and as rigid as one of the tree branches. Speck, however, badly wanted Sam to let him down in the grass, and he wouldn’t stop tugging his right arm straight down.
On the road side of the garden, Sam and Glory stopped in front of the building. There was no door. Sam walked all the way around the walls and back again.
Nothing.
“So, if you’ve decided to stick to Father Tiempo’s plan, we wait all day until the earthquake shakes things up and knocks walls over,” Glory said. “Although I think the priest might have had some bad info. I can’t see these trees letting the walls fall down for us even if the earth does start shaking.”
“You know we’re not waiting,” Sam said. “I’m not letting ten guys get themselves killed as a distraction. I’m the first one in, and if I survive, I’ll be the last one out.” He gave Glory a tight smile. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been amazing. Really.”
“Oh, heck no,” Glory said. “I’m not sitting out here by myself. Do we climb? Shouldn’t be hard with these trees.”
Sam looked at the heavy wooden arms, coiled and tensed around the stone. They seemed oddly intentional, like set traps, ready to crush a skull or shatter bones. He didn’t feel like climbing them. But he would. They weren’t any creepier than his own arms.
Glory walked to the wall, hopped up, and grabbed the lowest branch. Scrambling against the stone wall, she grabbed the next branch.
Sam heard the stone groan. The ground shivered under his feet.
“Glory?”
But Glory ignored him. She climbed higher. Above her, the upper branches of the tree gently swayed. Sam held his breath. What else could he do? He could feel his snakes tightening, his rattles beginning to whisper. But he couldn’t shoot a tree.
Glory jumped and managed to grab the very top of the wall. Shoes scraping on stone, she hoisted herself up, and then froze.