by Tanya Huff
Charlie snorted, snickered, and teetered on the edge of hysteria. The impact was all that mattered. Stop the impact, save Jack.
“And the world,” she reminded herself. Again. “All right.” Right hand. Left hand. She flexed her fingers then rested them back against the strings. Finger picks might’ve been a good idea, she hadn’t been taking the best care of her nails, but, as she’d already played for seven months, it was way, way too late to think of that. “Repeat the Song to the flare of power that marked the birth of three and four, then keep going to the conception of five and six. Doubt I’ll be able to miss that. Piece of Auntie Mary’s blueberry pie with ice cream.”
She had to force herself past the birth of the twins, force herself beyond the draw of an exit she’d already created, the emphasis of rituals flickering past as she headed for . . .
Power!
Charlie threw in a Hallelujah chorus and stepped out of the wood . . .
...into knee-deep snow.
Seriously? Considering how the family drew power, who the hell had thought settling in Canada was a good idea? Though the weather did make it obvious time had passed. Even in Calgary. Shivering, she noted the barrier still hummed at her heels, and bent carefully to scoop up a handful of snow, licking it off her fingers, melting it in the warmth of her mouth to ease the tightness beginning at the back of her throat. Here, in the park, it tasted clean. Cold. Purified by the family’s power. And maybe, it tasted a little like Allie. Charlie grinned. But then, why wouldn’t it?
Beyond the barrier, would it taste of ash? Twenty-one months less eight was thirteen. It was possible she’d emerged once again before the impact point. Possible that Allie had agreed to decrease the spacing between her pregnancies. Possible, but unlikely given Allie. If the universe insisted, she’d be more likely to dig her heels in than fling them into the air.
Still . . . Charlie bit another mouthful of snow off the clump on her palm. If she turned, what would she see? A thousand tales began or ended with doors opened that should have stayed closed and Charlie’d had her hand on the doorknob her whole life.
Except this time she couldn’t open the door. Ask the question. Turn around . . .
“I’d have been a pillar of salt before they reached the suburbs,” she told the silence.
The silence agreed.
The residue of power in the snowmelt helped relax her throat. Responding to the ritual power rising on the hill, growing damp and heated under her clothes, she reached for more. It was safe enough this time to take the time. David couldn’t leave ritual. The aunties wouldn’t allow him out of . . .
Slammed her to her knees, the bout of her guitar carved a crescent into the snow. She jerked it clear, found her voice, and rolled sideways into the Wood.
Metaphysical dirt still tasted like dirt. Who knew? Ass in the air, chin dimpling the ground, guitar clutched tight against her body, Charlie straightened and spat. “Fucking hell, David!” He hadn’t needed to leave the circle, not with the power he commanded once ritual began. Why hadn’t she warned him that she’d be in and out? Unless she had, because why the hell wouldn’t she, and it hadn’t mattered. Didn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter. David acted instinctively to protect the family against someone he knew wasn’t supposed to be in the park. Because they were already in the park. Or had stepped into the Wood one day twenty-one months before an asteroid impact and had never stepped out.
“Let’s go with already in the park.”
Which raised the odds that he’d be waiting at the stage door every single time.
And speaking of time.
Familiar Songs rose around her.
Right back where she’d started from. Again.
The urge to leave the Wood and grab a case of beer was intense. She rubbed the dirt off her lips with the back of her hand, skin still cold and damp from the snow, and stood. Took a step forward. Heard a warning in the breeze. The leaves rustled and informed her that if she left, she’d lose as much of the Song as she’d already sung and have to begin again from scratch.
“Or,” she muttered, checking her tuning, “since the foliage has never been all that chatty before, I’m afraid that’s what’ll happen and am refusing to take responsibility for my own decisions.” The aunties would vote en masse for option two. Here and now, the aunties could go fuck themselves. Because she wasn’t a total idiot, all evidence to the contrary, she didn’t think that last bit too loudly.
Time as such didn’t pass in the Wood. Charlie licked her lips, licked her teeth, breathed from the diaphragm, and sang her way past birth, conception, to birth again. Thirty-two weeks. Two years, give or take Allie’s willingness to fight the universe’s plan for her life. Forty-weeks.
She stepped out of the Wood to the baby duet of five and six and dove back in again, driven by David’s hoofbeats, before the urge to turn and check on the world even came up.
“If he ever learns to run silently, I’m in trouble.” Her throat felt rough and the Song had dried her mouth to the point where it took time to work up enough spit to swallow. “On the other hand, my willpower remaining untested can’t be a bad thing.”
She didn’t chew gum during a performance, not after the first time she’d caught hell for a wad stuck to a mic stand, but she checked her pockets anyway. One used tissue. The crushed foam cover off an earbud. The expected guitar pick. A linty humbug.
Charlie didn’t like humbugs and she had no idea of how the candy had ended up shoved down under the ridge of her jacket pocket’s lower seam.
Lie.
Auntie Jane always carried humbugs. It helped her maintain the illusion she’d been born before Mackenzie King entered politics. She also carried scotch mints. Charlie liked scotch mints. Interesting that a humbug had shown up.
Actually, less interesting and more typical.
Having something to suck on helped, as little as she liked the flavor. “Insert dirty joke here,” she muttered around the candy as she tightened her G.
She Sang past the birth of three and four. Past the conception of five and six. Past the birth of five and six. To . . .
No snow this time. No rain, but then there wouldn’t be. It didn’t rain while the Gales were in ritual unless the Gales wanted it to rain. It felt like spring, all damp earth and new growth, but she had no idea how much time had passed. Although this ritual was all about Allie and Graham making one final baby, the final baby, Charlie could feel the rest of the family laying down a harmony track. The seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale would grow up surrounded by cousins his age.
And not only cousins. If the world still existed—don’t look, don’t look, don’t look—he’d have plenty of friends and neighbors his age. For a broad definition of neighbor that lapped against the Rockies to the west, the border to the south, the tundra to the north, and slid over Saskatchewan with nothing to stop it until Manitoba.
As the power of his conception sizzled around her, the surrounding shrubs burst into full leaf and then into flower. It tugged her forward, pooled between her legs, and spread in burning lines of need throughout her body. A distant roar pushed through the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears, and it took a moment before she realized it had to be David, challenging from within his circle of aunties. She had to leave before David fried her where she stood.
But she couldn’t disentangle herself from Allie’s touch. Graham’s touch. Roland. Katie. Rayne. Lucy. She took another step forward.
The attack, when it came, lifted her off her feet. Airborne, she clamped her hands over the strings, forced an A past a dry tongue, and rode it back to . . .
...slam into the trunk of an enormous oak. Charlie grunted at the impact, breath knocked out of her lungs, head ringing. Her guitar thrummed out a sympathetic B flat. Bark crumbling behind her as she slid to the ground, she fought for air, stumbled, and finally sagged back against the tree.
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br /> At first she thought the darkness was the fault of the rising bump on the back of her head. After a moment, she realized it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with where David had thrown her. As a rule, she stayed well away from the shadows under the old oaks. From a distance, they looked fake, like blackout curtains hung to simulate shadow. Up close and personal, the shadow became very real with next to no underbrush when she looked down and no glimpse of sky through the nearly solid canopy when she looked up. It smelled like the root cellar back at the old farmhouse, a damp repository of dying vegetables. Worst of all, she could hear running water.
“And that,” she grunted, straightening, “is mean. Why not offer me a pomegranate and nail the symbolism.” No one had ever told her to refuse food or drink the Wood might offer, but then no one had ever told her not to sing “Sk8ter Boi” in a honky-tonk; some things anyone with the slightest sense of self-preservation knew not to do.
The music was nearly all percussion in the shadows, the aunties at their most definitive, and her blood pounded out a demanding rhythm over the lingering throb of conception. Since she had to know where she was before she could Sing herself to where she hadn’t been, she teased the faintest thread of Allie’s song out from under the percussive posturing and followed it.
And followed it.
And followed it.
By the time she reached a clearing she recognized, surrounded by birch and alder, her feet ached, her right calf had started to cramp, and she’d been earwormed by Shari Lewis singing “This is the Song that Never Ends.” Her stomach growled. And she really wanted a lamb chop.
Step out. Eat. Sleep. Tempting, but she didn’t have it in her to start over, so her only choice was to go on.
“Five more stops.” Sucking the inside of her cheeks provided a small mouthful of spit. “Don’t quit now.”
If the conception of the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale had nearly dragged her into disaster, she only survived the birth because it had driven David beyond thought. Back in the Wood, she poked a finger through the tear in the sleeve of her jacket, and licked the smear of red off the tip. Bleeding in the Wood was a bad idea.
The burst of salt and iron on her tongue made her thirstier.
The memory of Doomsday Dan’s bottle of yellow whatever had begun to look good.
“Four more. You can do this.”
Start with Allie. Sing the babies. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. BIRTH. Then the longest jump yet, as she Sang her way to the first ritual after Edward and Evan turned fifteen. She didn’t need to fill in the details, she needed to hold the note. Hold it. Hold it. Her fingers rolled over the strings. It might have been a pattern from Mary Chapin Carpenter. It might have been Mississippi blues. Charlie had moved past being able to tell. All she could do was trust her fingers.
Hold it.
Hold it for years.
There was a future. Auntie Catherine had Seen it.
She’d Sung only what she knew—birth, conception, birth. Not what she wanted, what she knew; moving forward into the future that was.
Charlie held the note.
Then Edward and Evan entered ritual, pulling her out of the Wood and into the park.
Propped up against a rock, where she couldn’t miss it, was a bottle of water and a power bar.
“Looks like the two brain cells I had remaining after this stunt have finally begun to work again.” Aware of how little time she had, she snatched them up, wondered if that meant the world was safe. Could plastic bottles and power bars survive with only the infrastructure the family could protect?
She needed to look.
She needed a lot of things.
Sucked to be her.
The sound of teenage girls and predatory giggling chased her back into the Wood.
A single bottle of water was as much a tease as a solution. The empty plastic crushed in her hands, Charlie had no memory of drinking and had a suspicion it had all been absorbed by her mouth and throat before it had a chance to reach her stomach.
A power bar was a bad compromise between candy and food. Charlie ate it anyway; it had been years since she’d eaten. Metaphorically. Metaphysically. Whatever that chewy purple thing was, it hadn’t come within a hundred kilometers of a blueberry and she had no trouble believing it could survive the end of the world.
Her mouth had gone dry again.
“Three more stops. You survived the Havelock Country Jamboree, you can survive this.”
Allie. The babies. Sing it exactly the same. This was not the time to explore jazz. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Hold the note. Edward and Evan.
More giggling as twins three and four joined the circle.
Another bottle of water waited, but she dropped it, flung back into the oaks by David’s power.
“Asshole!” Breathing had started to hurt and her jeans were sliding off her hips, making the walk back to the familiar trees even more uncomfortable. “Two more.”
Twins five and six followed their brothers into the circle.
The giggling had started to get to her. She’d never giggled. Allie’d never . . . actually, Allie had giggled. This time she hung onto the bottle. Would leaving out a fucking muffin have killed her?
Allie. The babies. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Hold the note. Edward and Evan. Three and Four. Five and six. A little further.
She pushed beyond the surge of power, stretching herself past the point of pain. The ritual ended. Time passed although she had no idea how much time, could have been days, could have been hours, and she fell out of the Wood onto her knees, gasping for breath.
“Hello, Charlie.” He had his father’s dark hair and his mother’s gray eyes. At fifteen, he was still all elbows and knees and nose, but his shoulders were broad under a T-shirt advertising a band she didn’t recognize and his smile had layers she couldn’t begin to parse. “We gotta boot. Mom suspects something’s up.”
Charlie blinked. His voice held no layers at all. It just was. The way the wind was. Deeper than she’d expected and resonant. The hair lifted off the back of her neck.
Allie’s youngest shifted his grip on two worn and ugly bears and stepped forward, holding out a hand.
He didn’t lift her effortlessly to her feet, but it was close—although Charlie wasn’t sure if that was her or him. She felt liked she’d been cored, like she’d given so much to the final song there was nothing left of her. Certain a strong breeze would blow her away, she clung to his hand a moment longer. His palm was warm and a little damp. His fingers had familiar calluses. “Guitar?” she rasped, spat out a mouthful of blood, and ticked gargle glass off her bucket list.
“Bouzouki.” When her brows went up, he grinned. “Who lies about a bouzouki?”
“People trying . . .” She sucked air in through her nose and expelled words with the breath. “. . . to get . . . on a plane.”
“Never been on one.”
Not, never flown, Charlie noted and closed her teeth on a question about Jack—which conveniently kept her from biting her tongue when her knees buckled.
“You don’t look years younger than the you I know,” he pointed out as he caught her. “You look terrible.”
“Bite me.”
“See, that’s why you’re my favorite cousin. You’re never all excited and in my face about that seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale thing. Well, not until this morning’s little talk.”
“Little?”
“You need me to come back to the past with you—this you—to stop an asteroid from wiping out civilization.”
That was little, Charlie admitted. Short and sweet. And then she processed what he’d said.
“Charlie?” Shifting his grip to accommodate the guitar, he stopped her collapse although her weight dragged
the two of them around in a half circle.
“It worked.”
“Duh.”
He’d got that from her. Or Jack. Probably Jack, she’d mostly stopped saying it.
“But you can’t bring me home again. Here again.” He huffed out a laughed. “After you take me back there,” he said, and Charlie could hear the care he used to choose his words, “you can’t bring me back here.”
“Say what?”
“You haven’t tried it yet, so you wouldn’t know, but my you has and she says it can’t be done.”
“Got here . . . once . . .” But not singing one song to cover births and conceptions and rituals while playing another to keep him with her. She—his she, future her—had a point. “I could . . . drop you.”
“Yup. Anywhere.” He grinned.
“You’d . . .”
“Give up the weight of family expectation about what it means to be the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale for a chance to meet those expectations and actually get to live a life?” Rearranging her weight on his arm, he met her gaze. His eyes looked older, a lot older, than his fifteen years. “I’m all over that.”
Charlie knew something about the weight of family expectations. Somehow, she found the strength for a smile. Given the blood she could taste on her teeth, she doubted it was reassuring.
“And it’s not like I’ll even have to miss the family, right? I’m going back to them.”
“You grew up . . . with yourself?”
“That would be weird.” He thought about it for a moment. “I never got to go to Ontario. I bet I’m there. I don’t think Mom knows what happened, but now I’m gone . . .” The glee in his voice was entirely fifteen. “. . . that me can come out and keep her from killing you.”
“Yay.” Feeling a little stronger, Charlie staggered back a step, standing on her own. “You’ve been . . .”