The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  I secured my daggers at my hip, smiling at him, but honestly, I felt let down. Embarrassed. Maybe he wasn’t as skilled as me in this past life, but I wished he hadn’t disappeared like that. It only made him look suspicious to Micki, Levi, and Porter.

  But Blue didn’t know they were watching. He didn’t know he was being evaluated. And we won, didn’t we?

  You need to get to the western city gate, Micki said, interrupting my thoughts. The convoys leave from there. Have Tre lead you if you can’t remember the way.

  I touched Blue’s hand. “We need to get to the western gate.”

  He nodded, and we turned down a street on our right. “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing in China now, Sousa?”

  “We’re going on a road trip.”

  He smiled, and we ran faster. We weaved through a poorer side of town, overgrown with twisted trees and weeds. It felt like a jungle, it was so thick. The streets were dirt. There were women washing clothes in barrels of water, children with smudged faces chasing each other and laughing, and old men with even older-looking beards sitting on porch steps smoking long pipes. The air was filled with a combination of scents, some delicious like stews bubbling over fires, some sweet and fresh like the tunnel of honeysuckle vines we ducked under, and others sharp and pungent. They quite literally smelled like shit.

  Yep. That’s exactly what you smell, Micki said. No plumbing, you know. But they had fascinating uses for excrement back then. They used to cook it with human hair to use as fertilizer. Sometimes they’d distill it like wine and spray it on their crops. Brilliant, no?

  I scrunched my nose at the thought.

  Still enjoying time travel? she asked. When the time comes, you’ll have to find a comfy log in the woods to do your business.

  Focus, Micki. I tried to sound stern. She was distracting me.

  Yes, ma’am.

  We reached the gate drenched in sweat, the sun high in the sky. Just outside the city wall, there was a line of horse-drawn wagons waiting in a queue. Blue nodded at a fat man sitting behind a table under a tent, fanning himself as beads of sweat poured down his red, blotchy face. An old woman using a crooked cane handed him a fistful of bronze coins, and he waved her toward one of the wagons.

  Micki whispered the name of the healer, and I approached the man behind the table. “I’d like passage to see Shang Guan Jian.”

  The fat man thrust out his hand, never once looking at me, waiting for me to fill it with some sort of payment. He coughed and hacked into his other hand while I carefully unwound my pack. I presented him with the bowl. He took it, turned it over in his hands, coughing all over it, then nodded and waved Blue and me to the first wagon in line. I bowed my head in thanks.

  We were on our way.

  Lo Jie

  “I love this,” Blue said, sitting beside me. The wagon bounced and swayed, and we leaned against each other for support. “Being here with you, alone, not a care in the world.”

  I had cares, plenty of them, but I knew what he meant. I settled against him and watched the countryside move past at a snail’s pace.

  The first leg of our trip wound through a wide, rocky valley with tree-covered mountains reaching high above us on either side. We passed through little groves of spruce and pine and oak and maple, their leaves and branches rustling now and then in a barely-there breeze. Ferns and lily-of-the-valley dotted the path. Squirrels and chipmunks scurried among them, while woodpeckers and swallows swooped overhead. I had expected China to look exciting and new, quite a bit more tropical, but beneath these peaks I could almost believe I was back on the White Mountain Trail in New Hampshire, vacationing with the family when I was eleven.

  You’re thinking of Southern China, said Micki. Bamboo, pandas, rice paddies. The North is completely different. It’s a lot like where you come from.

  Even though it was similar, and somewhat familiar, it was still breathtaking. There were so many greens there couldn’t possibly be a name for each one. And even though the types of trees were the same as back home, they were older. They had a wild and ancient air about them, steeped in silence.

  Like they held centuries of secrets.

  I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my face. The wagon rocked. “I should do this every winter,” I said to Blue, not missing slush in my shoes or bitter wind or chapped lips. “Descend someplace warm to thaw my bones.”

  “You make it sound like vacation, but this isn’t a vacation for you, is it?”

  Watch what you say, Levi said before I could reply.

  I knew Blue’s question was a little prodding—he wanted to know why I’d brought him to China—but did Levi really think I would spill all my secrets? Tell Blue everything? Didn’t Levi trust me at all?

  After a few hours in the wagon, the road lazily rising up one of the mountainsides, our driver pulled his horses to a stop. The path ahead was steep. Those of us who could walk were instructed to follow behind the wagon to lessen the burden on the horses.

  Blue and I didn’t mind. It was a slow walk as we stepped our way through rocks and roots, up, up, into the treetops. We didn’t speak; we were content to walk side by side, listening to the birds in the trees and the thoughts in our heads.

  Micki could joke about the less appealing aspects of descending, but they didn’t bother me. I liked time travel. I liked taking a stroll through the past. The differences were what made it so appealing. It was quieter. Calmer. Things moved slower, with more purpose. There were fewer distractions. You could focus on one thing at a time. The breeze in your hair. The sun on the back of your neck. Your footfalls on soft earth. There were no strip malls. No endless concrete developments. No billboards, no advertising, no gridlock, no noise. Just quiet breathing, and the ever-present notion that you are a very small thing in a very big world.

  I didn’t want to give it up. Even if it was one step away from mass destruction, like Levi said. I wanted to keep descending like I wanted to keep kissing Blue. It wasn’t logical, it wasn’t sane, but it was fact.

  I hunched my pack and resituated the worn, threadbare strap across my chest, patting the vase to make sure it was in one piece. I fingered the hilts of my daggers, remembering what it felt like to use them.

  Would I bring kung fu back with me to Base Life?

  Each time I slipped into one of my past-life bodies I carried a little piece of them back with me to the present day, like souvenirs. Once I brought back better vision; once, courage in the face of danger, and maybe even a thirst for it. In one of my past lives I was considered the best female sharpshooter west of the Mississippi. Shooter Delaney wasn’t just any train robber, she was one of the best in a sea of men and knew how to hold her own. Her fearlessness walked with me now as I climbed through the forest. Old me, the old Alex, would’ve jumped at every snap of a twig, would’ve sprained her neck from looking over her shoulder in this unknown wilderness. But not in Lo Jie’s body.

  In her body, I was confident, headstrong. I need no one. That was the refrain that kept rolling inside my head. I couldn’t figure out if it was my own thought or if it was Lo Jie’s shining through like sun through paper screens. At times, I’ve felt the struggles of my host body, and I’ve had to overcome them. Sometimes those instincts and muscle memories were helpful, like on this mission when I had to speak Chinese, or if I needed directions to a place only my past self would know. If I let those instincts take over I could blend in and fool everyone into thinking I wasn’t an imposter. Descending only worked when no one was suspicious.

  At other times, my host body’s instincts were difficult to control. Like the one I felt now, an overwhelming sense of independence. It wasn’t my own emotion—I needed my family, I needed a warm, loving household to come home to. But Jie was strong and self-reliant. She knew how to navigate her world alone. She could tell the time of day by the way the sun felt on her shoulders. How intense it was, what direction it came from. Not an exact time, mind you, but exact times didn’t matter much back then.
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  I could feel the stillness of Jie’s mind. Not less intelligent—she was as sharp as the daggers at my hips, but she only had one focus at a time. One single goal, like keeping the stolen vase safe. There were no pressing engagements worrying her, no notifications on her phone pinging every two seconds. Her mind was clear of clutter, her thoughts arranged like perfect garden rows, everything in its place, ready to be plucked when needed.

  She had muscles I never knew existed. Her body was hard and firm and lean. Her hands were callused, her skin brown from the sun, her lips dry from thirst. Her brow was set with fierce determination.

  And I liked her.

  I liked who I’d been.

  I liked that I could climb a mountain without feeling winded. As the hours stretched on, thick heat clung to my back. Sweat rolled down my chest. I hummed “Wayfaring Stranger” to pass the time, a song Dad used to sing to us before bed.

  I am a poor wayfaring stranger

  Traveling through this world of woe.

  Our path lifted us up and out of the poplar and pine, opening into a wide farm field, with rows and rows of vegetables and fruits planted along the sloping terrain. It was just like the song said: I know my way is rough and steep, but golden fields lie out before me.

  My stomach growled, so Blue and I left our convoy behind for a while to wander through the rows. We split open snow peas and popped the sweet seeds in our mouths. We ate handfuls of goji berries straight from the bush. Horseflies buzzed, and we swatted them away with our caps. Dragonflies danced lazily above rows of string beans. As we filled our pockets with peas and beans and berries, not enough to be missed, it reminded me of picking vegetables on Gran and Pops’s old farm in Virginia. Audrey and I were the only ones who liked okra fresh from the stalk. We’d sit in the sunbaked dirt, our knees burned red, our feet black from wading in creek mud. We’d reach high, snapping off the little green pods, and snack on them until we were full. And the tomatoes. Oh, how I missed them. Gran and Pops grew cherry tomatoes so savory you could make a meal of them. They made you want to sink to your knees, thankful to the southern Virginia sun for giving them such flavor. Tomatoes didn’t taste the same in Maryland.

  I missed those days with Audrey, filled with sunshine and grass and dirt between our toes. I liked sharing it with Blue, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted my sister with me.

  As dusk fell, we reached the top of a ridge. There, situated at the very edge, like it might topple down into the ravine below at any minute, was an inn. The wagon came to a stop in front of it and we were instructed to secure ourselves a meal and a room for the night.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said to Blue, feeling a little panicked. “We’ll have to sleep outside.” I didn’t have a bedroll. I didn’t have any food except the few bits left in my pockets. I’d been in such a hurry to leave Beijing that I hadn’t thought about those kinds of things.

  Blue pulled a handful of coins from his pocket. “You don’t, but I do.”

  He flashed a smile and my panic dissolved, and I stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, quick and sweet.

  Don’t do that, Porter said. You’re supposed to be a boy, remember?

  I backed away from Blue so fast I almost tripped. Blue had to snag me by the elbow to steady me. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like anyone saw us.

  Not that we think there’s anything wrong with that, Micki added, but your fellow travelers might think otherwise. So, maybe nix the PDA?

  This was going exactly as I feared. It was like having my parents along on a date. Only I wasn’t on a date. I was on a mission. And I needed to start acting like it. I needed to get a grip.

  “You OK, Sousa?” Blue placed a hand on my arm, gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “Fine,” I lied, forcing a smile. “Can you handle the room situation? I need a minute.”

  While he went inside, my feet led me off the road to the edge of the ridge, in the shadow of the inn, looking out across the valley. The wind swept up and tangled loose strands of my black hair in my face. I hugged my arms to my chest. There were tree-draped mountains cutting across the earth as far as the eye could see. Green at first, lit by golden setting sun, then steadily fading into blue as they met the horizon. The Great Wall snaked across one of the ranges in the distance, looking like a strip of white lace trim on an emerald dress.

  Behind the inn, off to my right, was a rocky outcropping made of smooth boulders, weathered by decades of wind and storm. I set my mind to climb it and meditate at the top as the sun set. Not that I’d ever meditated before, but Lo Jie had, and she led me to the top, one soft footfall at a time. On the topmost stone, I lowered myself onto a wide, flat spot. I sat cross-legged, my hands resting in my lap, and closed my eyes. Breathed in the air.

  And let my mind go.

  Betrayal

  Much later, when I opened my eyes, night had fallen across the mountains. My meditation had been so deep I hadn’t noticed the air growing cooler or the night sounds awakening across the ridge. The flickering of cooking fires outside the inn painted the surrounding trees red and gold. Stars had spilled across the sky, a mess of scattered diamonds settling themselves into the black.

  So this was why Jie’s mind was so clear, so focused. She tended to it, cared for it, kept it healthy and strong. She didn’t string herself out on stress and caffeine. She paused, left the here and now, just like I did when I slipped away to Limbo. Only this was different. This wasn’t escaping life. This was another part of living. It was like breathing, like fueling one’s body with foods straight from the earth. It was maintenance. Respecting the body, respecting the mind.

  And I could get used to it.

  “May I join you?” Behind me, Blue climbed the rocks as quiet as breath.

  “Of course.”

  He sat beside me and wrapped his arms around his knees.

  “Do you think the stars stare back at us?” I asked, wanting to use more of the Chinese language. I loved the way it felt to form the words and cup the vowels and consonants on my tongue, holding them to the roof of my mouth rather than against the back of my teeth like in English. The rise and fall of inflections, the intricacy of the tones. It felt like picking up an instrument and knowing how to play every note in perfect tune without a day of practice.

  “Oh, I think they watch us with rapt attention,” Blue said. “Especially during the day, when we ignore them, when our eyes can’t see past the blue. It’s quite the partnership, you know. We put on a show for each other. We’re both spectacles.”

  As he spoke, I stretched out on my back, hands clasped behind my head, admiring his profile. The slope of his nose. The curve of his lips. The set of his jaw. Then I turned my gaze to the endless stars above us, and the constellations I knew by name. They were all there, shining the same as they do over two hundred years in the future. They traveled with me, my companions on this journey. Orion was driving, Cassiopeia was riding shotgun, and I was in the backseat singing “Stardust” and “Orion is Arising” and “Catch a Falling Star”.

  “You know how some people think they’re worthless?” I said to Blue, feeling thoughtful and philosophical for the first time in a long while. “Not interesting enough, not beautiful enough, not smart enough? I think the stars must feel the same way. They go about their lives never knowing how breathtaking they are, how we rely on them to guide the way, or how many songs and sonnets have been written about them.”

  Blue continued to smile, a small, contented thing, as he listened. His hand found my knee, rested there. “Thank you for pulling me out of the dark, Sousa.”

  I sat up and kissed his cheek. Nestled my nose behind his earlobe, rested my chin on his shoulder. He smelled like dust and sweat and woodsmoke and earth. Distant firelight flickered against his warm skin. My fingers traced his forearm, the perfect muscles there. Slowly, almost as slow and lazy as a dream, our hands began to search each other, and we grew warmer still, kissing slowly, with purpose, savoring every moment.

  I’d fo
rgotten how wonderful it was to kiss him. How wonderful he tasted. How wonderful his skin felt beneath my fingertips, his body pressed and contoured against mine, my back cradled firmly in his arms. And I couldn’t help it, I wanted all of him, as much as I could get this far outside reality, this far outside ourselves.

  What are you doing? Porter said, his voice elbowing between Blue and me.

  I swatted his words away. I couldn’t let my team spoil this moment, so I closed the door on them, blocking them from my mind, pushing them out like I did to Porter back in 1927. They didn’t even put up a fight. Maybe because I caught them off guard, they weren’t expecting my sudden betrayal.

  I hadn’t expected it either.

  I had expected to be focused on my mission. To be levelheaded. But that was before I was faced with an entire evening, stretching on and on, alone with Blue. There wasn’t a thing I could do about finding the cure until morning light, and I couldn’t think of a better way to make use of my extra time. It was selfish, like most decisions I make concerning Blue.

  Selfish, selfish.

  And yet…

  “Let’s go to your room,” I whispered, breathless, as his lips found my neck.

  Chapter 19

  Good is Relative

  Alone in Blue’s room, alone in my head, we could do whatever we wanted, be whoever we wanted.

  We crashed onto his bed, kissing, his hands on my hips. I tossed my cap across the room and tugged my braid loose, letting my long hair fall around us. We untied our jackets and dropped them to the floor. My daggers followed. His hand slid up my back, to the nape of my neck, and he clutched my hair in his fingers. I gripped his undershirt in my fists. And it should’ve been perfect, but it wasn’t.

  Even though I shut everyone out, we weren’t completely alone. My selfishness followed us into the room. It stood in the corner, morphing into the shape of shame and guilt. It begged for my attention, for me to stop and consider the damage I might do by blocking out my team. They were my lifeline, weren’t they? My backup so I didn’t fail?