by N. D. Wilson
“Real things?” Samra asked.
“Sometimes,” Jude said. “I think all of them might be real. Somewhere. In different times. Ghost memories from other lives.”
“All right,” Millie said. “Enough of that.” Sam could hear the tension in his sister’s voice, and the room grew quiet. She didn’t care for the dreams and whispers of her many other endings. And Sam didn’t blame her. She had never told him everything she remembered, but he’d seen the graveyard half filled with stones bearing her name. Millie was living the only version of her life that had ever worked out. Of course, so was he.
Millie pointed to the last pair of sharp-eyed, lean boys—Simon, with thick black hair, flattened on one side and fluffed in the back, a style only a mattress can achieve, and Tiago, with a tight, short Mohawk, an old gash on his nose, and two impressive black eyes.
“Simon Zeal and Tiago Lopez are our best hunters, but I won’t be happy until they bring me live pigs, not dead ones. And build me a pen.” Both boys wore shirts and pants, heavily pocketed. Neither smiled as Samra nodded at them. They were studying her like they might study a trap.
Tiago squinted his bruised eyes. “How many men in your gang?” he asked.
“More than are in yours,” Samra said. “You’re all boys.”
Simon snorted. “You think we can’t kill men?”
Tiago stepped forward, but Millie raised both of her hands and overwhelmed the potential conflict with dining instructions. Then, after offering up old-fashioned thanks for another evening meal, she released the pack. Potato soup was hanging in a pot over a fire in the courtyard. Fish was hot and ready on the fireplace grill. Butter and vinegar and sea-salt beans were in a strainer in the sink. And she had hidden away stewed cinnamon apples for dessert. The boys all whooped, collecting plates and bowls, but Sam hung back, waiting for Glory to show up. He wasn’t in a crowd mood, either.
Glory stepped out of the hallway. Her face was pale.
“You hungry?” Sam asked.
Glory shook her head. “Feeling sick. Thinking about Peter.”
“He knows where we are,” Sam said.
“Not if he’s dead,” Glory said.
“Not if who is dead?” Millie stepped in close to Sam, handing him a plate of beans. “Peter?” she whispered. “You said he was exploring on his own. Why would he be dead?”
“He wouldn’t be,” Sam said. “He isn’t.”
Glory shut her eyes and exhaled. “I’m going to bed.” Slowly, she turned around. “Dream tonight, Sam. Make it a good one. Find out something. Anything.”
Millie and Sam watched her make her way down the hall and climb the stairs.
“That’s not good,” Millie said.
“She’ll be fine as soon as Peter comes back,” Sam said. “She’s just hurt that he left her behind with the chumps.”
Sam felt Millie’s eyes on him, and he knew her judgment without her needing to say a word. And he was pretty sure she would know that he was lying about . . . no, downplaying . . . Glory’s version of what had happened. But what good would it do to tell everyone that Peter had been last seen floating helplessly in the air toward two shadow demons about twenty-one years ago?
“You know what I think?” Millie said. “I think my brother Sam is jealous of what Glory and Peter have. I think you’re the one who’s hurt when they leave you behind to test time.”
Sam finally met his sister’s look. She was smiling.
“They told you they do that?” Sam asked. “How often do they go?”
Millie backed away. “Eat,” she said, pointing to the plate she’d put in his hands.
Sam looked down and back up at his sister. “It’s just old green beans.”
“You’re welcome.” Millie laughed, turning away. “Get in line and get your own food.”
SAM’S BED WAS A WEB HAMMOCK STRUNG BETWEEN A DEEP shelf full of dusty, old vinyl records and a window in the corner of what had once been someone’s den. He had chosen it because of the western view over the water, and he was most relaxed rocking himself to sleep while watching the moon set. Glory had wanted Peter to make him Navajo charms to protect his dreams from the Vulture’s flying watchers. Peter had refused. But he had chosen a heavy rounded rock from the shore and had told Sam to hold it in his hands or let it rest on his belly while he slept. The spirit, he said, can be anchored and kept from wandering too far from the body, although not always.
Tonight, Sam’s anchor was on the bookshelf. His foot was on the wall beside the window, and his head was propped up on a pillow, facing the moon. Speck and his right hand wandered the hammock freely, but Cindy and his left hand were bungeed tight to his side.
Sam shared the room with Jude and Drew Dill, and as he rocked slowly, he listened to Jude writing in his journal and Drew dream-breathing like he was in a fight.
Sam twisted in his hammock until he could see Jude, writing by low lantern light.
“Read it to me,” Sam said.
Jude looked up. After a moment, he shook his head.
“Please,” Sam said. “Why not?”
Jude looked at the journal on his lap, and then back at Sam. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want you to get upset. The truth can be hard.”
“I’m used to hard,” Sam said. “Or don’t you know that?”
Jude didn’t answer. Instead, he flipped back a page in his journal, sniffed, cleared his throat, and began to read, quietly and quickly.
“‘Jude’s journal number thirty-seven—fifth entry of November After Destruction 2034 (approx). Still in Neverland. Peter is missing. Sam and Glory returned from a scavenging run without him, but they brought back a girl from one of the scavenger gangs. I don’t know why. The boys are all nervous, but pretending like Peter will be fine. Sam and Glory aren’t sharing what happened. The girl has read Sam Miracle comic books that I may have written, or that I may one day write . . . in one stream of history or another. She says they are old. I’d like to see them, but I don’t think I should. If I am going to draw comics someday, based on what Sam and Glory have yet to do, they should be based on reality, not an echo of some other version that may or may not be real in another time. Millie is trying hard to replace the sun with her mood in this cold weather. But her heart is always heavy and always will be. Millions of people have suffered and died in millions of moments. And all because Sam chose to save her. And for all the times Sam has resolved to do everything he can to set things right, he can’t stop a villain he can’t find. He had his chance in San Francisco. There are no guarantees that he will ever have another one. Right now, the Vulture is the only one who could choose when to face Sam. All he needs to do is show himself and Sam will come running with his two guns and his last ten bullets and a handcrafted crossbow. Then this could all be over, one way or another, and if Sam fails and another million people die, at least Sam will be dead for good, too, and he probably won’t feel nearly as sick about it all as he does now. Of course, I think the Vulture will never live openly again, unsure of when Sam might attack. Maybe he is waiting for Sam to die. Maybe he is trying to trap Sam in a dead time. Maybe he is simply waiting for Sam to stop hiding and show himself.’”
“But I have shown myself,” Sam muttered. “I’ve been all over this place. I haven’t been hiding.” He stopped rocking his hammock. The Vulture and his floating watches loomed in his mind.
Kill. Cindy tingled the thought up his left arm like an itch. Her rattle twitched and Sam’s fingers splayed.
Yes. Speck’s agreement was less itchy in Sam’s right arm, but just as firm.
“That’s all I’ve written so far today,” Jude said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Sam said. “I will kill the Vulture. I will. You know that.”
Jude cleared his throat. “I don’t know anything, Sam. Not anymore.”
“But you think I could draw him out?” Sam asked.
“Maybe,” said Jude. “And maybe he’s just waiting for the moment he wants. But tryin
g to draw him out could be dangerous. Are you ready to lose people this time? We could all die. We know that. Millie could die. She knows that. Do you?”
Sam didn’t answer. Twisting away from Jude in his hammock, he looked out the window and yawned. Tugging Speck out from beneath his pillow, he plunged his right hand into his pocket, clenching the cold gold watch he’d taken from the Vulture.
Sleeping Drew gasped and then exhaled slowly. Jude’s pencil once again began to scratch on paper.
Sam shut his eyes and felt the watch. He focused on picturing the Vulture’s face, on his pointed beard and hooded eyes and floating gold chains. He heard train wheels scream and felt the heat of the Arizona desert on his skin.
“Come on,” Sam whispered. “I know I can find you.”
Sam’s soul slipped far from the island. His mind shifted.
Sam dreamed, but at first his dreams consisted of nothing more than Glory showing him all the bodies of Father Tiempo turning to ash by the train wreck in Arizona and telling him that every single Peter was dead and that she was going to go explore death with him now and that Sam wasn’t allowed to come because he would only slow them down and death would mess with his memories and make him dumber than he already was. Sam argued and argued, but words poured silently from his mouth. Glory and Peter were leaving him. They were gone, nothing more than clouds of ash rolling away in front of the wind. He was alone, in the desert, with Cindy and Speck twisting angrily in his arms. He had no weapons, but Speck was holding something smooth and cold and alive, something strong, pulling him like the needle in a compass pulls north.
Sam turned in place, following the pull, desert rocks dreamily soft beneath his boots. A sky full of darkness was swallowing the horizon, rolling toward Sam like a breaker toward a grain of sand. The watch pulled him toward it. Sam locked his knees and leaned back, but his dream boots wouldn’t grip the earth. Saguaro cacti swayed around him in a sucking wind. Dust rolled toward the darkness around his legs.
Speck was taut, extending Sam’s right arm like timber. The broken watch chain hummed in the air, pointing out between Sam’s knuckles at the heart of the storm. Cindy folded his left arm high and tight up against Sam’s shoulder, afraid, ready to strike, shivering her rattle on his shoulder.
“Is he in there?” Sam asked his hands. He looked down the watch chain like a pointing gun. “Will this take me to him?”
Yee naaldlooshii, Cindy hissed. And in his dream, Sam heard the words aloud. He looked at the horned snake with the yellow eyes on the back of his hand.
“I don’t know what that means,” Sam said.
Yee, Cindy hissed, tightening her coil, naaldlooshii.
A wolf loped past Sam, barely touching the ground, vanishing quickly into the storm. It was followed by the twisted and rotten form of a deer with one antler. Then a mountain cat with no lower jaw. Looking up, Sam saw bald-bodied owls and massive ravens and disheveled eagles all gliding into rolling darkness.
A white long-limbed coyote limped to a stop in front of Sam, but only its back had fur. Eyes rolling, it rose to its hind legs, revealing its other half, a girl wrapped in rags—her face peering out of the coyote’s jaw and throat, her scabbed shins bare below the knee, but furry and coyote-lean on the calf. The girl looked at Sam’s arms and then turned her sour green eyes toward his. When she spoke, her words were nothing but nonsense to Sam’s ears.
“English,” Sam said.
“Skin-walkers are called,” she said, and her words were rough and curdled. “All who would escape the kingdom of dreams and death. Tzitzimime call the yee naaldlooshii to live again.”
“Am I dead?” Sam asked. “Are you?”
“We are. But we will not be. The darkness will open and the living will flee.”
The girl dropped back onto all fours. The animal’s eyes focused on the snakes and ignored Sam. Its tongue lolled out the side of its jaw and down bald skin that Sam now knew to be a girl’s cheek. Turning away, the coyote limped into a fast-moving, almost floating pack.
Sam stepped forward, but Cindy jerked him back. Speck wavered.
No! Cindy twisted his arm up, meeting Sam’s eyes with her sharp yellow gaze.
Speck rose beside her, his eyes granite gray. His voice was quiet, barely hanging in the air. Killers. Shifters.
Sam hesitated, looking at both snakes above his knuckles.
“I know I can only hear you because this is a dream,” he said.
Cruelest, Cindy hissed. Kin killers. Curse drinkers.
“Coming from you, that’s saying something. But we’re going,” Sam said. “I’m sure they’re awful, but we have to find the Vulture.”
Speck submitted, twisting forward.
Dragging Cindy, Sam began to jog. One step. Two. Three and the ground dissolved. He was no longer in the desert. The air was cold and the ground was liquid. The storm sucked him forward deeper and deeper into the darkness, between a hollow bison and a snorting faceless elk. Then all sight vanished, and even Cindy’s rattle went silent.
Sam stood in completely lightless cold air, with cobblestones beneath his feet. He could see nothing, but he could hear steadily splashing water—a fountain, maybe—along with the slow clinking of a heavy chain. He’d heard that sound before, in San Francisco. In the center of a garden, a golden chain attached to a golden clock had been floating above a sundial.
He had found it. Sam was in a time garden, even if only in a dream. And the watch was still tugging in his right hand.
“What do you see?” Sam asked. “Show me.”
Two shapes swam into Sam’s mind. One large and bent like it was seated, one smaller and standing. Sam recognized them both.
The Vulture and his servant keeper, Mrs. Dervish.
THE VULTURE WAS PERCHED BEHIND A STONE TABLE WITH his long black coat over the back of his chair. Both of his guns were drawn and on the table and he had a comic book in his long-fingered hands. Mrs. Dervish, wearing a billowy white blouse tucked in tight to a long black skirt, stood at his side, studying the pages as the Vulture turned them.
“Who is responsible for these?” he asked.
“Clearly someone who would like the boy to be known only as a hero,” Mrs. Dervish answered.
“How he is known does not matter to me,” the Vulture said. “So long as he is dead, and that death is a more permanent state than it has been in the past.” The Vulture stopped over a large full-page illustration of himself in a massive city square surrounded by terraced stone buildings and towers that, upon closer inspection, appeared to be the intricately carved walls and levels of a vast cavern. The square was crowded with men and women with ghoulish animal traits, and the comic book Vulture was retreating through the crowd, firing his guns over his shoulder and barely missing a tumbling Sam Miracle, who was returning fire.
El Buitre did not turn the page. He had no desire to look at any portrayal of his death, even a cartoony and fictitious one. Especially a fictitious one that seemed to be much too familiar with reality.
“Dervish,” the Vulture snarled. “I was told no living soul had seen this underworld and escaped.” He flattened his broad palm over the page. His lip curled with cold fury. “No one should know of the skin-walkers. Always I am betrayed. Always!” He snapped his fingers shut like a talon, crumpling the comic in his fist and then hurling it away.
“Perhaps there is no betrayal,” Mrs. Dervish said. “It may have been written in the future, after this city has been made known and the skin-walkers have reentered the worlds. Father Tiempo could have transported it back simply to make you doubt and fear. And if this presents an opportunity to rethink your strategy, it may be for the best. A monstrous army cannot be controlled once released. If you were willing to once again pursue the approach of patience that we used in San Francisco . . .”
The Vulture lowered his head, breathing hard. Mrs. Dervish continued quickly.
“. . . shifting and modifying everything to your design until a rich and powerful future was ripe and
awaiting your entrance . . .”
“Dervish,” the Vulture said quietly.
“. . . there would be no need for such destruction or such a vile army. You are gathering the cursed and damned, William. Werebeasts and shifters and healers who seized their dark powers by murdering those who shared their own blood. They are incapable of loyalty to anything but their own appetites.”
The Vulture raised his head. “Have you quite finished?”
Mrs. Dervish sniffed and crossed her arms. “Have I been heard?”
“Heard?” The Vulture laughed. “Woman, how long did I follow your course? I am finished with guile and subtle maneuvering and patience. I will no longer attempt careful surgery on the future with a scalpel. I am an eruption! I am destruction! You may help me with your patience when the time has come to repair the shattered world beneath my feet. But not before! Your patience failed me, Dervish. Do not forget it.”
Mrs. Dervish cleared her throat. Her foot began to tap. “Do not act rashly while Father Tiempo lives. Even the boy priest escaped your hammer-fisted assault—”
“Tiempo!” The Vulture spat the name. “Always the priest. Your sky-demon mothers have now promised me his heart before Miracle’s. Rest easy. I will not move until the priest is dead and Miracle is trapped in time and cannot escape again. I am done chasing him through centuries. If your mothers cannot do this, then we will find others more powerful who can.”
Mrs. Dervish uncrossed her arms, clasping her hands in front of her skirt. “Power is irrelevant. My mothers have no deftness. I was the one who bound time into your heart. I charmed those watches and their chains with artistry. The strength of the Tzitzimime is the strength of a poisonous belch. Your frustration has made you a fool, William.”
The Vulture turned, looking into the hard eyes of the only human he allowed to disrespect him, and then, rarely.
“The little lady is jealous,” he said, smiling. “You resent my new allies?”
“I think when they have given you the world to rule, it may be no more than a smoking heap of bones. It is their way.”
The Vulture sighed. “A globe of graveyards would suit my taste. I told you that I am no longer a surgeon. I am a storm. And when I have taken one time for myself, the Tzitzimime can open me a door to another. When the priest and the boy have both been killed, there will remain cities undestroyed for me to rule.”