The Long Past & Other Stories

by Ginn Hale

  The great flood that began back in ’58 could have destroyed everything. For six years saltwater inundated lands around the world—states and then entire countries disappeared like Atlantis. Monstrous beasts emerged from the rifts where the water poured out. Tyrannosaurus devoured people, mosasaurs capsized supply ships and gigantic pterosaurs ripped airships from the skies. It had probably seemed like the apocalypse to most the people living back then. But the floods had been stopped, thanks to the courage of a Black trapper and a one-armed mage. (Dalfon had been honored to meet the old-timers a year prior while recovering from a dustup with the Younger gang in that “Paris of the Rockies”, Fort Arvada). The dinosaurs remained, but folks now knew how to fight and domesticate them.

  People across the divided Americas, and most of the wider world, still commemorated the end of the flood. In San Francisco the day was always celebrated with parades, fireworks and street carnivals. Dalfon’s parents embraced the holiday with a rare, unrestrained revelry they didn’t even display during Purim—probably because they were old enough to know firsthand what the world had been like before the long inundation and just how near they’d all come to death.

  Dalfon felt a dull hunger gnaw at his empty stomach as he recollected the feasts he’d left behind when he’d abandoned his pious family—all those penny pies, corn cakes, fragrant, sweet oranges and cups of spiced cider. He’d taken all that abundance for granted, he supposed. But he’d also known, even at fifteen, that he wasn’t ever going to become a rabbi like his father or wed any of the pretty girls his mother always pointed out to him. When he’d met a rugged older ranger, he’d joined the man and his band to ride the wilds of the Rocky Mountains. He didn’t regret the decision, but he did sometimes miss the decency and comfort of the life he’d left behind.

  “You hunching there in the middle of the road for a reason, mister?” A man’s voice sounded from behind Dalfon, and at once he sprang up and spun to face the youth striding up behind him. The pterosaurs startled from their perches, but Dalfon’s mare continued grazing.

  “Some lookout you turn out to be,” Dalfon muttered to her. Then he turned his attention and most winning smile on the ragged young man before him.

  The fellow wasn’t unattractive—in fact there was something charming about his dark unkempt hair and amused expression—but being soaked to the bone and spattered with mud from his patched shirt all the way down to his bare feet wouldn’t have brought out the best in any man. His slim build and complexion made Dalfon think that at least one of his ancestors hailed from across the Sea of Sanji, but his dialect sounded a little French.

  As far as Dalfon could see, the young man wasn’t armed beyond the hunting knife that hung from his belt. But the fact that he carried a dead juvenile crocodile slung over his wiry shoulders certainly testified to a lethal capacity. The reptile’s pale tongue lolled from its grimacing mouth, and it seemed to pin Dalfon with one warning yellow eye.

  “Hail fellow and well met!” Dalfon tipped back his hat to the young man. “The name’s Dalfon Elias.”

  “Luc Spivey. But everybody calls me Lucky.”

  “Ah. Well, Lucky, you’ve caught me in the midst of pondering the bridge,” Dalfon informed him.

  “You mean that what ain’t there? Seems like either a whole lot to consider or nothing at all.” Lucky smiled as he teased Dalfon, and the expression seemed to light him up.

  “As the bard wrote ‘what need the bridge much broader than the flood? The fairest grant is necessity,’” Dalfon stated, but he could see that Lucky didn’t follow him. “Anything that would get me across the river would do, was what I was thinking.”

  “Oh. Heading into Edgewater?” Lucky’s expression turned slightly assessing, and Dalfon could almost feel him trying to work out what possible connection Dalfon could possess to the literal backwater of Edgewater.

  Dalfon considered spinning one of his yarns about a long-lost brother or newly discovered cousin, but today he didn’t feel like lying. And there was something canny in the way Lucky studied him that warned Dalfon the young man wasn’t a fool.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve taken in a Flood’s End celebration,” Dalfon admitted. “I’ve enjoyed plenty of bang-up parties—one that nearly burned an entire town down—but it’s been a long, long time since I last strolled across a green, sipping tea and sampling pie and just feeling…decent. I think it’d be nice to go.”

  “It does look like it could be a good time.” Lucky’s dark gaze turned from Dalfon, and he stared down at the town as if studying the bright poster for a play he longed to see but couldn’t afford the ticket to attend. Considering the young man’s appearance, Dalfon supposed the good folks of Edgwater didn’t treat him with much respect.

  Civilized, genteel people—Dalfon’s parents included—would likely take a wide route to avoid acknowledging much less speaking to a man who looked like Lucky. But Dalfon had traveled far and encountered all kinds, from slick, handsome devils to dirty, old saints. He’d been himself accused of being diabolical more than once. And with twenty dead men to his name, he didn’t argue. But something about this young man struck him as more genuine than Dalfon had ever been. Simple, in the better meaning of the word.

  “They charge a nickel to get in if you don’t live in the city.” Lucky shifted the weight of the crocodile slung across his shoulders. “But it don’t cost anything to watch from up here when they’ll set off the fireworks tonight.”

  “A nickel?” That wasn’t cheap. A dime could buy a man a pound of sugar and a quarter would set him up with more dried beans than he’d want to eat.

  Lucky nodded like a world-weary old prospector. His eyes remained focused on the festivities taking place across the water. Dalfon would have had to be blind not to see the longing there. Again he recalled the pampered luxury of his own boyhood when he’d sampled sweets and jumped on carousel rides just as he pleased every Flood’s End. Since those days he’d figured out how easy his life had been and how much luxury he’d enjoyed, but until this moment it hadn’t occurred to him that it was one thing to feel grateful; that was a sort of childish state, being provided for and only having to say “thank you”. It was different to think of providing something to another soul—finding a way to pass on a little happiness, a little joy. Not that he had time for such things. There was Curtis to hunt down. But it might feel good, one day, to allow someone else to experience the pleasures he’d enjoyed.

  A band began playing on the green. Big brassy notes trumpeted through the air. Dalfon frowned at the river.

  “I don’t suppose you know where there’s another bridge?” Dalfon asked.

  “Four miles or so south, on Swaim property,” Lucky replied, but he shook his head. “If the Swaims see you, it could mean a whole mess of trouble. Or you might try the shallow spot about four miles east, but you’ll get plenty wet. You’d be best off rafting across.”

  “If I had a raft, you mean? Maybe hidden in my coat pocket or slipped down my boot?”

  “They do look like awful big boots.” Lucky smiled. “Maybe you could hire a fellow to take you across.”

  Dalfon laughed at the obvious lead-up. Lucky’s smile widened into a grin, assuring Dalfon that he did indeed possess a raft that could ferry Dalfon across the river. Depending on the route Curtis took, Dalfon might well arrive in Edgewater ahead of the killer.

  “All right, how much will it cost me to hire you to convey my-poor-self and my steed across?” Dalfon asked.

  “Poor-self! You ain’t all that poor. Not with a jacket that nice and those slick-looking boots.” Despite his words Lucky appeared suddenly uncertain. “I ain’t trying to take advantage, I mean if you’re bad off… Judge Swaim and his family are surely all over there at the Flood’s End celebrations, so it would most likely be fine to cross their bridge now. I can show you the way.”

  “What about this.” Dalfon found himself speakin
g before he considered the implications or possible complications that might arise. “I’ll pay you two dollars. But not only do you have to ferry me across the river, you’ll also show me around the town and give me a tour of the Flood’s End celebration.”

  For a moment Lucky just stared at him like he knew the proposition was too good to be true but couldn’t quite figure out the con.

  “I could use a little human conversation after only having my horse to chat with for a fortnight,” Dalfon added. “I’ll want a bath and a meal first, of course. Then we’ll see where the day takes us. Conversing with me wouldn’t be too much of a hardship, would it?”

  “No. I don’t reckon it’d be any trouble at all.” The mix of hope and shy admiration in Lucky’s expression sent a rush of warmth through Dalfon’s chest, filling him with the flattering sense of being mistaken for some sort of hero—someone better than a mere bounty hunter. That faint sense of dissatisfaction with his transient hell-raising life stirred again—just as it had been doing since he’d departed Fort Arvada. What was it that Voltaire had said? Everyone goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest?

  At the same time, virtue being its own reward didn’t leave a man with much spending money. Certainly not enough to treat another fellow to a meal as well. So today wouldn’t be the day for changing his ways.

  “What do you say?” Dalfon asked.

  “You got yourself a deal, Dalfon.” Lucky thrust out his right hand and they shook. Lucky continued to hold Dalfon’s hand for just a little too long. His fingers felt tough but also warm. That couldn’t be gratitude alone that he recognized in Lucky’s gaze.

  They descended together towards the river where Lucky had hidden his raft away in the underbrush. Dalfon found himself telling Lucky absurd stories of his various adventures in the Rocky Mountains and delighting when he won a laugh from him.

  The young man did have a certain charm, Dalfon thought. And just now the way the morning light fell on him, it lit his dark eyes like amber and exposed a brief, almost flirtatious curve to the set of his lips. Cleaned up and fed a decent meal, Lucky might prove to be quite fine. Maybe even a little distracting.

  Dalfon knew it was neither wise nor practical to waste his afternoon—perhaps his evening too, if things went well —with this young man. But if there was any day to indulge himself, any day on which to relish all the joy and abundance that made a man glad to be alive, and to share that bounty with another soul, it was today.

  Music rose from a far shore, and the scent of mulled cider drifted on the air. Dalfon stepped out onto the raft and led his mare after him. Overhead, a flock of pterosaurs chuckled at him and dived after fish hidden beneath the rolling waters.

  My Lucky day, Dalfon thought to himself.

  Well, perhaps it was.

  Riverain County, Illinois 1899

  Lucky studied the triceratops from the shadows of a black-gum tree. He’d come down here to fish, but folks up in Chicago would pay top price for triceratops horns and hide. And he’d smoke the meat and offer it to his sister Molly since he hadn’t gifted her with anything for her dowry. Not that her husband’s family expected a penny from him after he’d inherited all of Pa Spivey’s debts. But he felt it might do his pride good to be able to provide a real fine spread for her baby’s christening celebration next month.

  His pride had been at a low ebb of late.

  He slowly lifted his rifle.

  The dinosaur bent its huge head to root up reeds and glasswort with the shortest of its three horns.

  Lucky took careful aim on the triceratops’s orange eye. His hand-me-down Sharps rifle only offered one shot. But with an animal as tough-skinned and heavy-boned as a triceratops, there was really only one shot to take. The trick was not to miss.

  Lucky waited, allowing the triceratops to close the distance between them. The first night winds blew through ferns and cycads. A smell rolled off the triceratops, like old straw and goose shit; it hit Lucky in warm waves.

  Standing a good ten feet tall, stretching back thirty feet and sporting horns as long as Lucky’s arms, the dinosaur could probably have uprooted the trees Lucky sheltered beneath. But the triceratops moved through the reeds with surprising care, and a moment later Lucky realized why. A dappled hatchling—hardly bigger than a piglet—trotted alongside her, snapping up the roots and tender new growth of reeds that its mother exposed.

  The hatchling produced a string of little noises that sounded for all the world like the chirps of an eagle. Briefly, a turtle caught the hatchling’s attention but a low note from its mother called it back. The hatchling trotted through the mud to butt its blunt little head against its mother’s leg and snort as if it had won some great battle. Then it returned to feeding.

  Lucky lowered his rifle.

  It wasn’t in him to orphan any creature, no matter how valuable of a haul he stood to gain. His trouble wasn’t with killing an animal. He would have starved years ago if he hadn’t been able to do that. But he couldn’t bear to deprive a child of its mother. He knew that pain too well and couldn’t stand to hear the inevitable plaintive cries that would fill the air. The sound resonated through him and left him feeling heartbroken for hours. It embarrassed him to be so tender, even after so many years. Probably no other man in Edgewater would have hesitated even an instant.

  Then he remembered that quote Dalfon had told him once, “Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.”

  Thinking of his lost lover’s acuity didn’t help Lucky feel less melancholy but it did harden his resolve. There wasn’t no use in moaning to himself over a thing he wasn’t gonna do. He knew he wouldn’t shoot the mother triceratops, so he’d better finish up his fishing and skedaddle before the beast noticed him and took offense.

  He crouched down beside the dark water. His faint reflection peered back at him through a fringe of shaggy black hair, searching his tan face and the subtle curve of his eyes. Noting the details that set him so far apart from every other soul in Riverain County. At twenty he still looked slight as a seventeen-year-old, and he didn’t hold out much hope of ever sporting the sort of thick beard that his adoptive father, Pa Spivey, had taken such pride in.

  “You may be dark as a Mexican and stringy as a Chinaman, but with those big, flat feet of yours, I’d swear your pappy was a goddamn frog!” Pa Spivey had always cracked himself up with that joke, poking fun at the French accent Lucky had long since lost as well as Lucky’s childhood claims that his wealthy tante would someday come and rescue him.

  Lucky dipped his fingers into the sluggish current, breaking the reflection apart. He closed his eyes and his mind filled with the steady flow of water—here in the shallows he sensed it like a dull red pulse, as if all the rivers and sea were his own blood.

  Lucky concentrated, drawing up strength from the water itself. A kind of electricity kindled in his chest—the hot, tickling sensation quickly grew disconcertingly strong. His nerves felt like violin strings being sawed at by a wild fiddler. After only a moment it seemed too much to endure. Lucky released the blazing current, and it rippled down into the body of a fat catfish below. The fish jerked once and rose to Lucky’s hand, dead. Lucky took a moment to regain his composure, mopping the sweat from his brow and waiting for his pounding pulse to slow. Then he added the fish to the five others in his reed basket.

  The triceratops neared the long stand of black-gum trees and snapped up a mouthful of the leaves from the sprawling branches. The smell of her caught in Lucky’s throat.

  Time to move on.

  He swung his rifle across his back and hefted his fishing basket over his shoulder. He worked his way over the knotted roots of the black-gum trees, away from the triceratops and her hatchling. Best to take the long way around, he figured, even if it did mean trespassing onto Swaim land. It wasn’t as if Judge Bernard Swaim ever ventured out to the marshes that edged his sprawling pro
perty, and neither of his two younger brothers hunted after dark. That would be too much time taken away from card tables and whiskey bottles.

  Still, Lucky felt uneasy leaving behind the soft, damp footing of the marsh to slink up the dry hillocks where red maple and hickory grew. The soil turned brittle and unwelcoming against his bare feet. The faintest trace of burnt black powder drifted on the air. Since his wife Margot’s death, Judge Swaim had turned particularly vicious towards trespassers. Gossip among the sharecroppers was that he and his brothers had shot a Pinkerton detective a month back and thrown his body to the crocodiles.

  Lucky walked carefully, distinguishing the trunks of trees from rocky slopes more by memory than sight. If he’d been born one of those wind mages or an earth mage, he supposed he’d have been able to feel the world around him on the breezes or could have known the lay of the land at a touch. As it was, the distant, murky waters of the marshes bordering the Inland Sea did him little good at all. The sheer immensity and power of all that water became overwhelming far too quickly for Lucky to attempt much more than catching fish.

  On the bright side, though, water mages like himself were so uncommon that the US Office of Theurgy and Magicum rarely dispatched theurgists to search for them. That had kept Lucky free from wearing a collar or being shipped off to some institute back east.

  What they did to mages in those institutes, Lucky didn’t know, but Ma Spivey had described no end of horrors after Lucky and his two sisters had tried to run off. (They’d all three been adopted by the Spiveys to work the marshy farm.) Pa Spivey had belted them black and blue, while Ma Spivey had threatened to turn Lucky over to theurgists if any one of them disappeared again.

  “They’ll wire your brother up to the spell engine of a fancy airship and burn him like a fly in kerosene,” she’d said. Both Molly and Effie had wept and clung to Lucky, and that had put an end to any of them attempting to escape the Spivey house.