The Song of Glory and Ghost

by N. D. Wilson

  The broken gold chain whispered as it slid out of the Vulture’s vest and pointed across the empty courtyard.

  The Vulture looked at it and stared at the emptiness where it was pointing. Mrs. Dervish did the same.

  “How?” the Vulture said. He jumped to his feet, snatching his guns off the stone table. “Can he really be here?”

  “No,” Mrs. Dervish said quietly. “But he is a dreamer. He may be watching us now.”

  The Vulture sat back down. “Put me to sleep,” he said. “Quickly! And summon your mothers!”

  “They have tasted the priest and now they are hunting his beginning,” Mrs. Dervish said. “You will not be able to trace the boy’s spirit back without them.”

  “Sleep!” the Vulture bellowed, slamming his guns back down. “Now! Before he wakes and is gone!”

  The Vulture felt the cold from Mrs. Dervish’s hands pour into his temples and he heard the first of her whispered words before his body slumped forward. But his mind didn’t so much as blink. While his body fell, his dream-self searched for the foolish invader of his garden.

  “Miracle,” he said aloud. “My young and ancient friend, are you so eager to finally die that you practice as a ghost?”

  6

  Ghost Sand

  ALL AT ONCE, SAM’S DARKNESS BECAME FIRELIGHT. TORCHES sprang to life all around the cobbled courtyard enclosed by small carved buildings set into cave walls. Torches surrounded the fountain in its center, lighting up a gold chain and clock floating above the splashing water. The Vulture had seen Sam first, and had spoken. Slowly, the tall outlaw—even taller in the dream—rose to his feet. He studied Sam, stroking his pointed black beard as he did, almost smiling.

  “Welcome to my dream,” he said. “Why have you come? To surrender? To seek peace?”

  “This is more than a dream,” Sam said. “I found you. And you will never destroy another city or take another life.”

  The Vulture’s eyes sparkled. “Your mind may have found me, but could your body ever follow? Did you come with enough strength to harm me? To even reach me?”

  “Face me now, I dare you,” Sam said. “I will tell you where I am, to the year, day, and minute. Are you afraid?”

  “Afraid?” The Vulture laughed. “You are helpless. Your priest will soon be ash. You will finally be imprisoned in one time without escape. Your heart will be ready for harvest and all those you love will die.” The Vulture stepped forward, ghosting through the arm of his chair.

  Sam’s shoulders began to rattle. Cindy had no weapon, but she hovered in the air, ready to strike.

  Kill. The word floated audibly through the air.

  The Vulture blinked in surprise. “The serpents speak?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Sam asked.

  “Can you always hear them?” the Vulture asked. “Or is this my dream?”

  “Always,” Sam said.

  Yee, Speck hissed.

  Naaldlooshii, Cindy answered.

  The Vulture froze. “Who told you this? The priest? His brother?”

  The torches in the courtyard dimmed and two shadowy shapes swept into the cave like a cloud.

  Sam jumped away, searching for an escape, but Speck and the watch pulled him back. The shadows began to condense into smaller, harder, sharper swirling forms. Sam forced his right hand open, and he threw down the golden watch and broken chain.

  THE VULTURE WOKE UP, SEATED, FACEDOWN ON THE STONE table. Slowly, he sat up. Mrs. Dervish stood beside him, soft hands intertwined with each other. She smiled nervously as she met El Buitre’s raging eyes.

  “Your mothers,” he said, his tone furious. “The Tzitzimime. They swore to me that it was impossible. A dreamer could never enter this place. They swore the yee naaldlooshii would be gathered in secret. And yet Miracle was here, and he spoke of the skin-walkers.”

  “William,” Mrs. Dervish said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. The boy can’t escape you now. He cannot hide. He cannot move through time. He will rot where he stands. My mothers traced the priest to his infancy, to the very day of his anointing as a time-walker.”

  The Vulture shut his eyes and inhaled through sharply flared nostrils. “And?” he asked.

  Mrs. Dervish laughed. “And they are the Aztec Tzitzimime. No Navajo charms and protections could ever stand against them. He’s as good as dead. They will halve his infant heart and wield his anointing as their own.”

  “SAM.” GLORY’S WHISPER IN HIS EAR JERKED HIM CONSCIOUS. “Wake up!”

  Sam blinked the moon into focus, and then squinted at Glory’s face. She had thrown his blanket off and was already trying to uncinch the bungee from Cindy and his left hand. Sam’s face was drenched with sweat, and Speck was coiled on his chest.

  Jude and Drew were both sitting up in their sleeping bags.

  “He yelled and threw the watch,” Drew said. “Some kind of nightmare.”

  “Glory?” Jude asked. “What is it?”

  Sam licked his salty lips and exhaled, trying to calm himself. His heart was racing and images from his dream were very much alive in his mind.

  “The things,” Sam said. “The flying shadows. They can find us.”

  “Tell me later.” Glory turned back to Jude and Drew. “We’re under attack. There are men on the island. They must have killed their boat motors and paddled in quietly. Rifles, pistols, the works. Go! Wake the others.”

  Jude and Drew frantically kicked out of their sleeping bags and jumped up, barefoot. Jude was wearing only a pair of old sweatpants and his pale torso was zebra-striped with scars, all shaded by the moonlight. Drew was in tight long johns from ankle to wrist, but he already had a long knife in his four-fingered hand.

  “How many?” Drew asked.

  “Three boats’ worth,” Glory said. “Maybe eighteen.”

  Drew and Jude shot from the room, and Sam listened to their bare feet race away on the marble floors as his left hand slid free. Sam dropped to the cold floor and pain shot up his numb feet. He was wearing a white tank top and he had slept in his jeans but they were unbuttoned. Buttoning quickly, he picked the watch up off the floor and hooked the bent paper clip on the end of the broken chain back onto his belt loop where it belonged. Then he grabbed his bow and quiver holster from beneath the hammock.

  “Is the Vulture here?” Sam asked. “Did he find us? I saw him. I told him to fight me.”

  “Not the Vulture.” Glory’s brow was damp; her eyes were wide with fear. “He doesn’t even matter right now, Sam. We have a bigger problem.”

  She tugged him toward the door, but Sam pulled back.

  “He doesn’t matter? Of course he matters!”

  Glory shook her head. She was exhaling through pursed lips, trying to stay calm.

  “Now, Sam!” she hissed. “Hurry!” And she slipped out into the long gray concrete-and-marble hallway.

  Sam didn’t walk. He ran. He knew Glory well enough to know that whatever frightened her would frighten him even more. He raced down the hall in his bare feet, ignoring the whispers and warnings from his waking brothers as he passed the doors to bedrooms and bathrooms and an office and a home theater. Grabbing the steel handrail on the stairs, he leapt up them two at a time behind Glory, his heart pounding.

  A gunshot echoed through the house and was immediately joined by shattering glass.

  Sam wanted to turn around. He wanted to defend his brothers and his sister and his house. But near the top of the stairs, he felt sand slide and grind beneath the balls of his feet. It grew thicker on the landing, and as he slipped through double white doors into the vast moon- and lantern-lit upper floor that was the master suite and gym, the sand grew thicker still.

  Glory Spalding shut and locked the doors and scrambled across the room, stopping in an inch of sand beside the wide white bed that she had chosen as her own. Sand was pouring off its sides in dozens of streaming falls.

  On the other side of the bed stood a boy Sam had never seen. A boy it was hard to see now, not because he s
eemed to be made of dying light, but because Sam’s eyes—or his mind—just wouldn’t process him. The boy was most visible when Sam was looking at Glory or the bed or the sand . . . or the shape that was lying on the bed. The shape . . .

  Gunshots and raging voices vibrated the floor beneath his feet, but Sam hurried forward.

  Peter Eagle—his best friend, the boy who had been most protective of Sam on the Arizona ranch, the boy who would grow into the time-walking priest who had died and died and died for Sam, the leader of the Ranch Brothers and the Lost Boys, Peter Atsa Eagle Tiempo— was stretched out on the bed in the center of a swirling pool of bloody sand. His face was gray. His skin dry.

  “Peter!” Sam brushed past Glory, scanning his friend’s body for wounds. “What happened? How did he get here?” He saw no injury, but the blood and sand were only increasing. “Where is he hurt?” Sam looked up at the boy on the other side of the bed, immediately unable to see him. Looking back down at Peter, he grabbed his friend’s firm shoulder, and coldness flowed up into his hands.

  “He is dying,” the vanishing boy said. “Dead in an earlier time but not yet in this moment. His future and his future in the past are spilling out—your futures. You are looking at the top of the tree as it falls, but the ax was taken to the trunk. And when this tree has fallen, so falls the forest.”

  “What did you do to him?” Sam asked. He jumped around the bed, trying to force the boy into focus. As he grew closer, the boy vanished completely. “Who are you?”

  Glory was leaning over Peter, searching his body for wounds. The blurry figure appeared, standing beside her.

  Sam let Speck whip up his crossbow. Cindy grabbed the stock, controlling Sam’s aim, tracking the boy’s elusive shape.

  “Stand still,” Sam said. “And tell me what you did to Peter. You better be able to fix him.”

  “I am not one who fixes,” the boy said simply.

  “He hasn’t been shot,” Glory said. “At least not that I can see.”

  The boy beside Glory suddenly became solid—more solid than a statue of polished black stone. Glory and Peter and the room and the bow and Cindy and Sam’s hand and Sam’s whole self all seemed to be nothing more than smoke and cobwebs. Speck pulled the crossbow’s trigger again and again, trying to shoot at the weighty shape of the boy, but the bowstrings were vapor and the arrows weightless. If the boy had been made of ghostly light before, now he was made of all light, every ray and blast and beam, every spark and every flame, every drop of starlight and moonlight and sunlight that had ever striped dark water at night and burned desert sand in the morning. All of it was gathered into his small shape, and there it stayed. He was not living.

  He was life.

  Glory screamed, but her voice was no louder than drifting steam. The noise of the violence downstairs evaporated. Sam felt his legs beginning to disintegrate, and he sagged toward the floor, his body crumbling in the presence of the boy’s enormity. And then, as quickly as the world had gone mad, it was sane again. Sam’s weight returned, and he staggered sideways on solid legs like someone in an elevator that had stopped falling too fast.

  Peter was still on the bed, but the sand around him had slowed. Thin streams quietly hissed off the bed onto the floor. Glory had fallen onto her knees, but now she rose. She and Sam both focused on the boy.

  And that’s all he was. A boy. He had black hair, cropped almost to the scalp, and skin two shades darker than a sun-leathered road worker’s. He was wearing gray jeans that would have suited a grandfather pulling a trailer into an RV park, bright-yellow flip-flops, and a tan-and-white polo shirt, and he was holding a dirty pale-blue-and-white foam-and-mesh baseball hat in his hands that said “Spokane Yacht Club” on the front.

  “Who are you?” Glory asked. The boy moved smoothly to the foot of Peter’s bed. Glory and Sam glanced across Peter at each other.

  “Did you do this to Peter?” Sam asked.

  The boy smiled sadly. “In a way, yes. In a way, no. I did not cause his death. But I am the one who will carry his soul away.” He looked into Sam’s eyes, and Sam flinched. It was like meeting his own eyes in a mirror. The boy already knew everything about him, already knew him from the inside—and hadn’t found it particularly interesting.

  “Will he live?” Glory asked. “He has to live. If he doesn’t . . .”

  “Then many things will unspool. Many pages and many times will burn away. The two of you will be sand spilled on this floor, believed to be no more than characters imagined and created for storybooks. Worse,” the boy said, “the Vulture will not be stopped before the world’s end. Be grateful that Peter has lived so many moments, that he has so much future to lose. It takes much time for a Father Tiempo to truly die. His soul is and was and will be in many times, and it must leave his body in all of them.”

  “So it’s over?” Sam asked. “For sure? He’s hurt and he’s going to die and there’s nothing we can do?” He reached out and touched Peter’s hand, this time letting the cold crawl up his arm until Cindy was shivering and angry.

  “The wound is not in this body,” the boy said. “The heart and life and anointing spirit have been taken from the infant who became this boy. His thread is cut and now it is falling loose, as will all the other threads he has supported. Yes, he is dying. As are his centuries. Samuel Miracle. Glory Spalding.” Sam and Glory both looked up at the boy, but the boy’s gaze was focused down at Peter on the bed, and his eyes were wet. When he spoke again, his voice was hard and slow, but full of fury, every word a stone large enough to crush houses.

  “Peter Atsa Eagle must not die.” He looked at Sam. He looked at Glory. “Not now. Not here. Not until the chosen place and in the chosen moment—there I have already gathered the soul of an old man full of years who laid himself down to save you, Sam, where he died younger and younger in a ring around your fallen body. Now you have been chosen to protect the day of that death. If you fail, Father Tiempo dies unripe. You die unripe. And all the earth will be good for little more than fire.”

  “But how do we stop this?” Glory asked. “What can we do?”

  “And who chose us?” Sam asked. “Peter?”

  The boy lifted his foam-front hat and put it on, pulling the faded pale-blue bill down just slightly off center.

  “You have been chosen by the one who chose Peter Eagle to become Father Tiempo. The one who chose Sam Miracle to be the boy who would kill El Buitre on a street in Old San Francisco. The one who chose Gloria Spalding as the girl who would be at St. Anthony of the Desert Destitute Youth Ranch to guide his memory through time when all other attempts had failed. The one who sends Brother Segador, Angel de la Muerte, to gather all of your souls in the end.”

  Sam blinked, his throat tight and suddenly dry. “Who is Brother Segador?”

  “I am,” the boy said, smiling. “But you can call me Ghost.”

  “Ghost,” Sam said, and his tongue felt numb. Angel de la Muerte, the Angel of Death? Just moments ago, the boy had practically unhinged reality, and Sam hadn’t felt as frightened then as he felt right now.

  “So, you’re a reaper . . . in charge of killing everyone?” he asked, but he knew he was wrong the instant he asked it.

  “Not everyone. I have been given certain peoples and lands and times to tend. And I do not kill unless I am directly commanded. I collect. I reap. And I am not in charge.” Ghost laughed. “We all answer to somebody,” he said. “Some of us answer to fewer somebodies than others.”

  “How many do you answer to?” Sam asked. “And how many people have you collected?”

  “I answer to three,” Ghost said. “And when I have collected one hundred and forty-four thousand souls, seventy times, my labor will be complete and I will return home from my master’s field. You are one of mine. And Glory. And Peter. And the one who was called William Sharon, but who is now El Buitre, the Vulture. The one who has long used vile powers to elude the death you were meant to bring him. And because he eluded you, Sam, he has too long elu
ded me. It disgusts me to gather all the untimely dead, cut down by that man who should have been damned to dust and fire an age ago. Still he sends me others in his place, whole cities, and now Peter, and all who will die with no Tiempo.”

  “So then don’t gather them,” Glory said. “When the Vulture tries to kill people, just leave them.”

  “I cannot,” the boy said. “I am not the Resurrection Man. Such people would soon rot on their feet. I would be adding a curse to a crime.”

  The boy gathered a handful of air above his head, and then squeezed it tight in his fist before opening his hand, splaying his fingers wide.

  Darkness leapt from his palm, swallowing the bed and Peter and Sam and Glory in a heavy dome. The light inside the dome was just as it had been, but the small space was now truly alone, connected to heavy nothingness in every direction. Sand hissed in trickles onto the floor. Sam’s heartbeat was even louder, drumming in his ears.

  “Samuel,” Ghost said. “Gloria. Listen to me now. Peter is already with me. But I will not yet carry him from the world. I can delay one day’s breaths to focus on a debt, long overdue. The Vulture’s debt. Your task is simple, and yet may be impossible. Find Peter in his infancy. Stop the desert demons of the sky, turn back the Tzitzimime before they can take his heart and life and anointed gift. Glory, I will give you the blade you need to find and face such foes. When this is done, you must also find and kill the Vulture. If done quickly, before every Peter has gone to ash, I will see his soul returned, and Tiempo will live to die again. Now step forward.”

  Glory and Sam inched toward the boy together.

  “Glory, you are a time-walker. You must take the lead and move quickly. Sam, you cannot save Peter. But Glory can. And you can save Glory. Without you, she will die on the dark roads between times as surely as you so often died in that Arizona desert without her. Give her your life, lay it down for her, and you may receive it back in the end . . . if Peter rises from this bed. Do you understand?”