The Forever Man

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘Those ain’t answers,’ protested Riley. ‘Those are riddles.’

  More of the theatre disappeared and Chevie began to shake. The stalls vanished one by one and were replaced by an ocean of grey fibres.

  ‘I could take your hand and see where the wormhole sets us down,’ said Chevie. ‘I would love to do that, but after a while it would eat away at me that I could have saved someone, and I didn’t.’

  Riley knew then that Chevie was talking about her own father. How could he argue with that?

  ‘The wormhole will try to take you, Riley, so be strong. Tell it where you want to go. I will shield you from the worst.’

  Riley was barely listening. ‘So the great Chevron–Savano romance is over? That’s it, then?’

  There were tears in Chevie’s eyes as she cupped Riley’s face.

  ‘Not quite it,’ she said, and kissed him for the second time.

  Malibu. California. 2008

  The old lady wore sunglasses.

  Never took them off in public. A bouncer teased her about it once in a Route 66 casino.

  Hey, grandma, what’s with the shades? You a vampire?

  The old lady did some kind of kung-jitsu hocus-pocus on the guy and his partner. Stretched both of them out on the craps table. And she didn’t have to take the shades off to do it either. Nobody asked her about the glasses to her face after that, but they talked plenty behind her back.

  I mean, the old gal’s gotta be eighty, right? She took out Gary and Ted like they were two sacks of trash. And did you see all that silver? Goddamn rings and bangles. The old dame jingles and jangles like a sack of spoons.

  That was how it had been for Chevie these past few decades, for the old woman was she. Six months in a place; a year, tops. Then she lost her temper, pushed someone’s face in and had to move on. She stayed in California near the coast, keeping an eye on herself, her younger self, trying to figure out how to stop her dad’s bike exploding without actually causing the explosion. Her first thought had been to stick a blade in the gas tank on the morning of the accident, but what if he didn’t notice the leak and got gasoline on the pipes? Then she considered busting her dad’s leg in a bar fight. A mercy break. But one of the problems with that was that she knew enough about the time stream to realize that it often shook out the kinks, and the Harley road crash would come back round in a couple of months. The other problem was that he was her dad. And breaking your dad’s leg was never going to be a walk in the park, especially not for the hobbled parent. Not to mention the fact that the wrong shard of bone could slice the wrong artery and she would have to watch her own father bleed out in front of her eyes.

  The idea to hang around just to change a life had come from Garrick. Albert Garrick. The magician who was death.

  He sure is dead now, Chevie often reassured herself.

  Garrick had stayed around for practically two hundred and fifty years just to kill his apprentice . Whereas Chevie’s plan had been to emerge at the beginning of the twenty-first century and save her dad, but she did not have Garrick’s core of hatred to sustain her in the inter-dimension and was forced to exit one century early. Then she had survived two prisons, three armies, a marriage and a hippy commune just to save her dad.

  Chevie never had any kids, though. Probably just as well. No fun having an immortal parent with cat’s eyes, right? Something else she hadn’t been able to fix.

  No. Immortal was the wrong word.

  She was growing older, but slowly. A gift from the wormhole. Chevie had ridden it out for as long as she could in there, but she was like a sugar cube in a vat of coffee and eventually she had to get out or stay forever. That had been over a hundred years ago.

  Now the day had come … maybe. Chevie couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure of the day, but she had it down to a month, and this was the month. And so every day of the month she had dragged her slowly ageing carcass up through the Malibu hills, along the road that snaked past the ten-million-dollar estates and further up past the old frontier houses and round the back of the Savano cottage, where she sat on a stump and wondered why she was so uncertain all of a sudden, when she had been dead set on her knife-in-the-gas-tank plan for the last couple of decades.

  She sat and drank from a flask of iced coffee and wondered what the hell she was going to do. Would she really leave it until the last minute to act, until her pop threw his leg over the motorcycle?

  Pop? I could pop him one, I suppose. Maybe my subconscious is giving me a solution.

  Not much of one. Sure, she had taken out those two meatheads in the casino but they were dough balls. Her dad was faster than a rattlesnake even with a few beers sloshing around in his stomach, which he would not have at this time of the morning.

  Sugar in the gas tank?

  No.

  Cut the brake lines?

  Hell, no.

  Chevie wished Riley were sitting on the stump beside her. The boy magician would have had a plan. She had gone to find Riley in London before the First World War and found him alive and well, living over the Orient Theatre with a wife and daughter (in matching yellow dresses on that particular day) and working as a stage magician. Riley had looked so happy pulling daisies from behind his little girl’s ears that Chevie could not make herself intrude.

  That should have been me in that yellow dress. That could have been us.

  But it wouldn’t be right to drag Riley into her world again.

  After all, she could feel the time tunnel calling her and she knew how volatile her connection to this world was. Only the silver that adorned her fingers and limbs kept her form stable, and even then she could feel herself fade if she happened to cross a ley line or if there was an electrical storm flashing on the horizon. More than once she had awoken to find orange sparks circling her like quantum vultures.

  No. The kid deserves a life. The best thing you can do for him is to steer clear.

  She still thought about Riley in the present tense. Maybe she would see him again. The classifications past and future were not as concrete to her now as they had been once.

  I have never loved anyone else, she realized, and then, with more than a dash of self-pity: I have never been loved by anyone else.

  She felt a sudden jealousy again towards that young woman in the yellow dress.

  ‘You dead, old lady?’ said a voice.

  Chevie bristled. She was an old lady, and older than she looked, but somehow she had managed to hold on to her rebellious teenage attitude.

  ‘Not yet, I ain’t,’ she said, turning on the tree stump to find a young girl studying her from behind a hacked fringe.

  Hacked, thought Chevie, because I cut my own hair.

  It took a second for her to realize what was going on.

  I am being glared at by myself. I am meeting a younger me. This is exactly what all those time-travel movies warned me never to do.

  She did not need to ask what Little Chevie was doing here. This had been her favourite spot to sit and watch her dad work on his motorcycle.

  ‘That’s my stump,’ said the girl, pointing at it with a hunting knife that seemed like a battle sword in her ten-year-old hand.

  ‘You’re not supposed to have that knife.’

  Little Chevie responded quick as a flash. ‘You’re not supposed to sit on my stump, grandma. My name’s on it. I carved it there with this knife I’m not supposed to have.’

  At that moment, for the first time in her long life, Chevie understood that maybe it was a little annoying to try to hold a conversation with a smart alec.

  ‘This stump is nature, kid. And you can’t own nature. That’s what we believe, right?’

  ‘We?’ said Little Chevie. ‘What do you mean we?’

  ‘Shawnee,’ said Chevie. ‘We. The tribe.’

  Little Chevie twirled the knife in a reckless fashion, which made Old Chevie wonder how she had made it to adulthood with all her fingers attached to her hands.

  ‘You’re tribe?’ Little Chevie sa
id doubtfully. ‘You don’t look tribe.’

  It was a fair comment. The silver had lightened Chevie’s skin a few shades. She was not exactly Garrick pale, but in a couple of decades she would be.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m tribe all right. Take my word for it.’

  Little Chevie raised the eyebrow of scorn and Old Chevie couldn’t blame her. Some old lady turns up on her stump trying to claim some kind of kinship. What kid wouldn’t be suspicious?

  She had to earn this young brave’s trust and, as Little Chevie folded her arms across her skinny chest, time-travelling Old Chevie thought she saw a way in.

  ‘I can prove it,’ she said. ‘That I am who I say I am.’

  Little Chevie’s other eyebrow shot up. ‘Yeah? Grown-ups prove stuff every day. Lies mostly.’

  Chevie remembered how anti-establishment she had been at ten years old, a common trait among Native Americans, and wondered how she had ever come to work for the federal government.

  Old Chevie pointed at the fake tattoo drawn in Sharpie on Little Chevie’s biceps.

  ‘I like your mark,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t talk about my mark,’ snapped the kid. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘I know it’s a chevron and you are named for it,’ said Old Chevie. ‘I know your father bears the same mark and so have all the Savano men back to the Shawnee wars, where your ancestor William Savano fought the Long Knives with Tecumseh at Moraviantown. For every officer he killed in battle, William daubed a chevron on his arm in blood, as this was the sergeant’s symbol. He was a fearsome warrior. So, in memory of William, the Savanos have worn the symbol. And you intend to honour William, just as they did.’

  Little Chevie must have been amazed to hear her own patter recited verbatim back to her, but she didn’t show it. Instead her scowl softened ever so slightly.

  ‘How do you know this, grandma?’

  Chevie stretched the neck of her T-shirt, baring her shoulder to reveal the same mark ingrained in her skin.

  ‘That’s how I know.’

  Little Chevie was genuinely impressed now and prodded the mark with her forefinger. ‘Wow. It’s right in there. How did that happen? A burn or something?’

  Chevie covered her mark. ‘No. It’s a part of me, of who I am. I am the spirit warrior of the Savanos.’

  She almost winced, so outrageous was this line of bull, but Little Chevie was going for it.

  ‘I didn’t know we had a spirit warrior. What is a spirit warrior?’

  Chevie nearly felt bad about manipulating a child, but the stakes were high and the little version of her was tough and would get over it.

  ‘Well, a smart kid like you will have heard of spirit animals?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of those.’

  ‘And you’ve always felt close to cats, right?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Chevie realized that the truth about how she knew that was way weirder than the lie she was about to spin.

  I know that because I remember our little cat, Tinder, and how much we loved him, you and I.

  ‘I know that because the spirit warriors are part animal,’ said Old Chevie, and with that she pulled off her sunglasses to reveal the tawny cat’s eyes beneath.

  If she was expecting Little Chevie to be shocked or frightened, then she was disappointed.

  ‘Wow,’ the kid said again. ‘That is cool. Cat’s eyes. Can I touch them?’

  ‘No, you can’t touch them. What kind of question is that?’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe I can’t touch them because they’re really contact lenses.’

  Chevie sighed. This was exhausting. ‘ OK, kid. Come as close as you like, but zero touching, got it?’

  Little Chevie nodded, but dialled up her scowl again, to show how unsatisfied she was with this compromise.

  And so they drew close, the two Chevies, separated by mere inches and yet centuries, gazing deep into each other’s eyes. Old Chevie could have cried at the innocence and hope she saw in her younger self. So much pain had already been endured and there was so much more to go.

  But not if I can help it.

  ‘We need to talk, kid,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my God, those eyes are real,’ blurted Little Chevie. ‘You’ve come to recruit me, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m gonna be a spirit warrior. Cool.’

  Chevie held the child’s stare. ‘Not so fast, kid. You gotta prove yourself first.’

  ‘Yeah, and how do I prove myself to an old grandma like you? Climb a tree? Open a soda can?’

  Old Chevie was feeling less guilty by the second about the whole spirit-warrior thing.

  ‘You prove it by saving your father. He’s in deadly danger.’

  Chevie saw something glint in the corner of her cat’s eye and realized Little Chevie had raised her knife.

  ‘Danger from who? You, grandma?’

  ‘No, not me, kid. Haven’t you been paying attention? I bear the mark. I am tribe.’

  The knife was slowly lowered. ‘Yeah, OK. We’re on the same side, right?’

  Chevie blinked and moved a few inches back from the kid’s intense stare.

  ‘That’s right. I see what is to come with my cat’s eyes. And I see your father on his motorcycle this afternoon in a terrible accident.’

  ‘I hate that motorcycle!’ said Little Chevie vehemently.

  Old Chevie was surprised to remember that this was true. She had somehow made the motorcycle a symbol of her dad’s sense of freedom, but now she recalled that she had always feared the bike would take him away from her, leaving her alone entirely.

  ‘I am gonna stick this knife into his tank,’ vowed Little Chevie. And the older version did not doubt that this plucky kid would find the strength to do it.

  Hey, she thought. I like myself.

  ‘No!’ she said hurriedly. ‘Too obvious. You gotta be under the radar. Something stealthy.’

  ‘Why don’t you do it? Give Dad the whole weird-eyes thing?’

  This was a fair question.

  ‘This is a test, kid. I’m giving you a task, like Hercules or one of those guys. You do this and you’re in the spirit warriors.’

  Little Chevie tapped the blade’s tip with her index finger. ‘Stealthy, huh?’

  ‘Yeah. You think you can manage that?’

  Little Chevie thought some more. ‘I could tell Dad about this dream I’ve been having.’

  ‘Which dream is that?’

  The blade’s reflection twinkled in Chevie’s eyes, or maybe the twinkle was all her own. ‘The one where my mom who has passed to the spirit world comes to me and warns me about that motorcycle. Every night she comes and says if he doesn’t sell the bike then there will be a tragic accident.’

  ‘And he’ll be killed?’

  Little Chevie grinned a crafty grin. ‘No, he won’t be killed. I will.’

  The older version returned a similar grin. ‘You, my young friend, were born to be a spirit warrior.’

  ‘Really? You’re not just blowing smoke?’

  Chevie felt herself relax. This kid would manipulate her dad until he had no idea which way was up. Using a vision of his departed wife to save his daughter? That was some kind of demented genius.

  ‘No, kid. No smoke signals of any kind.’

  Little Chevie frowned. ‘Was that a Native American joke?’

  ‘No. I was trying to bond. Spirit-warrior stuff.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  ‘You better get inside. Dad … your dad … will be making his run soon and you can’t let that happen.’

  Little Chevie tutted, which was not a sound made very often in real life. And the delicate noise made Old Chevie feel a little sorry for her father.

  He has no idea.

  ‘That will not be happening,’ said Little Chevie. ‘Not today, or any other day for that matter. Take my word for it, grandma. That motorcycle is history.’

  Chevie believed it. She had been quite some piece of work in her day.

&nbs
p; I still am, she thought, remembering the two bouncers she had KO’d the week before.

  A voice floated through the trees. ‘Chevron? Hey, baby. I’m gonna take a run down for some groceries. Hold the fort, OK?’

  Old Chevie peered through the trees and saw her own dear daddy squinting into the forest. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt her eyes well up.

  ‘I better go,’ said Little Chevie, then made a sad face. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Haunted,’ said the older version. ‘Haunted and terrified.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said the kid, and then she was off and running, dodging round the oak trunks.

  Chevie watched the kid and saw she had worked herself into semi-hysteria by the time she reached the cottage, and she knew in her heart that her father was safe.

  What will the consequences of that be? If Dad lives, I never go to London, never meet Riley.

  But she didn’t know, and nobody did. Charles Smart had never managed to unravel the wormhole; if he couldn’t do it, then what hope was there for lesser brains?

  It’s all butterfly effects and paradoxes with these guys, she thought. All shooting in the dark.

  She had met Riley and nothing could change that. She had lived a long and most eventful life.

  And I have scars and aches to prove it.

  Chevie stayed where she was on the stump for another couple of hours, mostly to make sure her dad didn’t set so much as a finger on the motorcycle’s throttle, but also to give her aching muscles time to recover from the climb up here.

  I am tired, she realized. So tired of fighting the tunnel.

  It followed her everywhere, the magic, never more than a layer of quicksilver away, singing its siren song to her, and now as her father stayed inside the cottage she felt the lure of this timeline slip away from her.

  What would happen? she wondered. If I just let go. If I let the sparks take me.

  No sooner was the question in her mind than Chevron Savano began stripping off the eleven pounds of silver that adorned her person. Off came the Santa Monica hippy bracelets and the Arabic name chain she had bought in a Moroccan medina and the etched earrings from Kenya and the Scottish circlet and the Kundan toe rings and the five Claddagh rings. And even the silver filling that she had worked loose with her tongue over the years was dislodged with a toothpick and spat into the scrub.