by David Arnold
Here. Take this . . . “Here,” he said, handing her the watch. “Take this.”
“Lennon.”
This is me, taking care of it . . . “This is me, taking care of it.”
Nico strapped on the watch, already feeling the years of missing him, of staring into the little skyline framed in the silver circle of the watch face and thinking of Lennon and Harry on the streets of Boston. She wished she could put herself in that picture.
Lennon opened his mouth, and she heard what was coming, and she wanted it, wanted so badly for him to come with her. And while there were a million reasons for him not to come—she didn’t know how it would work, where it would go, what would happen, and on and on—only one reason really mattered: “This is what he gave me,” she said. “Jean gave you . . . your own destiny. Which is a word I know that means fate but sounds more dramatic.”
They both smiled, a sweet memory soured by loss. And when they kissed, it was new and wondrous, a book by the fire, a cormorant in the sea, both understanding and feeling understood. Their kiss was a blinding purity of one empath colliding with another, until her thoughts were his, and his were hers, and this collision dovetailed into something even more beautiful than before. It would be over too soon no matter when it ended, but behind her, the water beckoned, its humming so intense she felt the sound in her bones, and so she willed herself to step away from Lennon, turn toward the Deliverer.
“Will you go back to the Farmhouse?” she asked. “I don’t want him dying alone.”
The Deliverer nodded once.
“Good,” said Nico. “I assume there’s . . . a place for me?”
The Deliverer pointed to Nico’s bag. “It’s all in the Red Books.”
A slight nod passed between them. Talk about a consolidated pulse.
And now she answered the water’s call. It would take a running jump to clear the hole in the floor. She secured her bag, wrapped herself in her coat, and took a few steps back. A last look at Lennon—“This has all happened before,” she said—and then she ran, eyes on the spinning circle, right for it, intensely aware of her own senses, as if her life to this point had been one long sleep, and now, finally, she was awake. In the light of the moon, under shadows of snow, she felt colder as the circle drew near. Harry barked, and she thought, How much I’ll miss that dog, and then she heard her father’s voice, the great eye in the sky, Some people are more ancient than others, Nic. All those growth rings inside, and she knew that he was the water and she was the sound: when one moved, the other felt it; when one changed, the other was affected. And now the shine of her mother was inside her too. My snowstorm girl, her mother said, and Nico understood that she was the product not of faith or science, but of both, that there was truth and hope to be found in even the most unlikely of fictions.
Inside the spinning circle, mist turned to snow, thick flakes on her face and chest, and all these words in her mind chatted like old friends, speaking of birth and death and birth again, of life after life—and Nico jumped, disappearing through the water-circle.
Chronologies
“We’re a little like trees, don’t you think?” her father had asked years ago.
They sat like that, perched on the attic deck, staring out over miles of treetops at night, the Great Green and Navy Unknown.
“How so?” asked Nico.
And he explained how trees have growth rings inside, smaller circles in the middle, larger as the tree expands, each ring representing the age of the tree. “Dendrochronology, it’s called. Someone specializing in dendrochronology could point to one of those rings and tell you how old the tree was at that point in time, or what the atmospheric conditions were at that point in time. Yes,” he said. “We used to be quite good at things.”
Nico looked out over the land and chewed on this. “How are people like trees, though?”
Somewhere an owl hooted; a wolf howled. It started raining, and it seemed the seasons were changing before their very eyes, the Great Unknown bursting oranges and yellows more than greens and navies.
“Some people are more ancient than others, Nic. All those growth rings inside.”
Soon they were both soaked to the bone, content to sit in the rain if it meant they could keep sitting together. Her father raised his face to the sky, opened his mouth, drank it in. “We may be like trees, but we’re made of water.”
Nico joined him, opened her mouth to the sky, and couldn’t help smiling.
“Pretty weird when you think about it,” said her dad. “But then, water is weird.”
Sometimes Nico thought life with her father was composed of nothing but a single question, over and over and over: “How so?” “Its relationship with sound, for one,” and he explained the intimate connection between water and sound, how when one moves, the other feels it; when one changes, the other is affected. “Certain frequencies can actually change the physical shape of water. Given the right circumstances, a note can travel through water like a fish.”
“Really?”
“Sure. How do you think Bellringer’s toll made its way to Manchester? Actually, sound travels through water much faster than it does through air.”
Nico suddenly saw herself as a cormorant gliding through the night sky, searching for the moon and stars, and, finding only darkness, plummeting into water. It was just a vision, but she suddenly felt delirious, looked down at her feet dangling over the edge of the attic deck, the ground far below, and she began to cry.
“It’s okay, Nic. Let it out.”
Their talks often went like this, starting in theoretical places, ending in inexplicably personal ones. Vivid images. Like she’d been in the places they’d only talked about. And while she’d never given this feeling a name, she thought maybe it could be called ancient, as if she’d lived not one, but a hundred lives.
Her many growth rings.
Openings
The forward motion of Nico’s jump had carried her a few steps, but now she stood in blinding snow, a cold so deep it burned. She looked back the way she’d come, half expecting to see Lennon and Harry and the Deliverer standing in suite 4040—but it was only more snow.
Looking around, it seemed she was in the middle of nothing, some frozen planet, a universe in a patchwork quilt of white snow, black sky, white snow . . .
There was sound, something new. Faint at first but growing louder. In the distance, small lights became larger, closer . . . Nico turned and ran. The ground changed. Not visually—everything was still white. But the feeling of it, a softness she recognized.
Behind her, those sounds exploded, but she did not look back, not yet. Through the heavy snow, she made out a line of trees ahead. The woods, and she felt enormous relief at the presence of the familiar. At the first tree, she ducked behind its trunk, turned, and looked back the way she’d come.
A vehicle was on its side, smoke billowing out of it, drifting up into the night sky. Two others behind it now, sliding on ice before stopping.
Cars.
Actual moving cars with engines and foggy windows. From behind the tree, Nico watched more cars approach, tires rolling slowly before stopping altogether. People came out of their cars, ran to the one that had tipped on its side, and more cars came to a standstill, lights everywhere, smoke and sound unending.
She turned back to face the woods, slid down to the base of the tree, blew into her hands.
Think, Nic.
From her bag, she pulled out the three red journals, slowly unwrapping the black cord that wound them together. As she did, a folded paper fell into her lap; she opened it and found the faded greens and grays of roads and towns, a map of mountainous terrain. In the bottom corner, someone had drawn a circle in red ink around the word billboard. In the same ink, a line ran between the billboard and the top corner of the map, where a phrase was written: This house will save your life.
Something gave Nico pause.
She put the map away, opened one of the journals. A chunk of pages had been torn from the beginning of the book, and the first few after that were crossed through. She kept flipping until finally landing on the first cleanly written page . . .
DATE: October 28, 2025
ACTION ITEMS:
—Billboard first.
—Then get to the house. (See: map.)
A sudden urge to vomit.
October 28, 2025. The day she was born.
Pulling herself from the journal, she was about to turn her attention back to the map when she saw the old photograph of her young parents, the one from the control room.
You got this, they seemed to say. Be the Listener.
She stuffed the books and the photo back into her bag, turned to look around the tree again. The footprints she’d made getting here had already filled with fresh snow. Up by the road, a small crowd was attempting to pull someone from the crashed vehicle. Behind them, the line of cars had grown. And there, maybe a hundred yards away, rising high into the snowy sky, was the back of a billboard.
Ten minutes later Nico stood on the ledge of that billboard, higher than the tallest tree. Using a can of spray paint taken from the underground shelter behind the Blessed Church of the Risen Savior, she added two words to a billboard advertising that very church. “Now,” she said, her breath like smoke as she sprayed the giant letters right where she knew they belonged. “Voyager.”
When she was done, she turned slowly, wind whipping her hair around in the freezing air. “I was born in a snowstorm,” she whispered, and this high up it felt trancelike, dizzy and out of body. Far below, the line of cars was endless, alive with exhaust and lights, and like a mental checklist, she ran through the details of the last real conversation she’d had with her dad. In the back seat of a car . . . There were so many cars, though. Stuck in traffic on the highway . . . It was dark, everything wet with snow, but she kept looking. “You saw me on a billboard ledge, and you couldn’t explain it . . .”
Looking, looking . . .
“But it gave you hope.”
There.
His eyes were brighter and younger. But it was him.
They stared at each other, and Nico smiled. “That we would see each other again.”
PART SEVEN
IN
THE
AFTER-LIFE
THE DELIVERER
I stand on the bridge and watch Lennon and Harry head south out of Manchester. Part of me wants to chase after them, tell him everything, go with them to Boston. Seeing Lennon like this— I can’t help but think back to a time when I imagined us together, all those images of love and life with him, knowing they were impossible, dreaming them anyway.
The sure sign of youth.
But I am no longer young. And so I offer a quiet goodbye, turn north—not because the Books say so, but because I say so—and take the first few steps of a walk I could do with my eyes closed.
NICO
She found the man hanging over the table, neck in a rope, his head large and on the gray side of purple.
It was the second shock in as many minutes, the first being far more pleasant: that when, out of shivering curiosity, she flipped a switch, a light came on. It felt like something that should be written in history books. There once was a house on top of a mountain, and this house had working electricity.
All through the house, Nico found herself losing track of time, staring at a thing and realizing she had no idea how long she’d been standing there: a faucet of running water; a cold refrigerator; everywhere, the small hum of electric things. Nothing is as strong as the absence of itself, Lennon had said. Nico felt the absence of her wits in abundance, and nowhere was this truer than the upstairs bedroom closet, in which she found a dark gray synthetic suit and helmet, or the basement, in which she found a warehouse full of canned goods, buckets of freeze-dried meals, medical supplies, tubs of cinnamon, seeds, rice. Taco seasoning.
She wandered out back into an unkempt garden, found an enormous tank, and a steel-reinforced coop, in which chicken bones were scattered suspiciously among a few well-fed chickens. She walked to the edge of the cliff and was met with a view rivaled by nothing: not the woods from the attic deck, or the sweeping Manchester landscape from a crumbling bridge. And when she looked down, she had the answer to the question that had been running through her mind since she’d first arrived in this place. How is this possible?
She had never seen so many solar panels in one place.
Back inside, three packs of Metallyte chili mac later, Nico sat on the couch by the glass wall, and pulled the red journals from her bag.
THE DELIVERER
My House by the Solar Cliffs may have had hot showers and Miles Davis, but the Farmhouse has my childhood.
I walk up the porch and, for the first time in eighteen years, open the front door. Inside I take off my helmet, set it at the foot of the stairs, and listen. Flames crackle in the library fireplace.
The door was unlocked.
He’s expecting me.
Such a thing, the smell of a house: here is old wood, a good book, rabbit furs, beard balm. (As a kid, I always thought it was just the way Dad smelled. Only later, taking inventory in the basement stores, did I put two and two together.) The dining room and kitchen, the woodstove, the mudroom—these memories bleed too, but not like transport imprints. These aren’t memories from other timelines. These are my own memories.
Harriet—and then Harry—begging for scraps.
Mom quoting Scripture.
Dad telling stories.
The first floor is vacant, as I knew it would be.
Take the steps two at a time, now upstairs, across the cluttered attic, I open the door to the deck—and there he is. In the corner, sitting on the ledge, sipping tea from a mug like I’d never left. “You should taste the sludge I’ve been brewing this week.” He turns, looks up at me, and smiles. “Barely drinkable.”
NICO
Considering the relatively compact size and weight of the journals, Nico was astounded at their capacity to pack a punch.
For starters: she’d been a mother.
“Hufflefuck?”
Or—not really a mother? But sort of.
She flipped to the beginning of the first journal, determined to understand.
The opening pages were missing, and the next twenty were full of scribbling and cross-throughs, a madness transcribed. What little she could make out looked like dates and underlined warnings, fragments outlining strange methods of survival followed by joy at finding this house. The first clean entry was the one she’d read two days ago, which brought her here, and it felt like a storm inside the book had cleared, clouds rolled away, pages of blue skies.
All told, the journals covered eighteen years, beginning October 28, 2025—the day Nico was born—and ending November 5, 2043, the day she’d jumped through the water-circle. But if she was reading this right, this wasn’t her first time through that particular cycle. The journals referred to these cycles as “Lives,” each Life beginning with her painting the highway billboard, and ending when, at thirty-six years of age, she would hand the journals to the next Nico, who would jump through the water-circle and . . .
Reboot. Rainbow. Start over.
“Lennon would flip his shit.”
She willed away the lump in her throat and went on.
Most of this week’s entries read like an intro to the house, detailing the best way to cut down the man who’d hanged himself, where to bury him; explaining the importance of maintaining the ten-thousand-gallon rainwater-harvesting tank; how to clean the closet filter and take care of the chickens so they didn’t wind up eating more of each other. It outlined a schedule for Deliveries. And it explained the significance of the biosuit, its protective devices, how to trigger the metal hooks on th
e boots so they anchored the wearer to the ground.
She wasn’t sure how many cycles she’d been through (Lives she’d lived?), but if the notes under the entries were any indication, it was into the hundreds.
The notes under the entries. This was where things got really interesting.
Today’s entry, specifically. October 30. The action item was nothing surprising (cut down and bury the dead man). But underneath, her 7th Life—the “founder of the house”—had written a note of warning. A quick perusal of the pages offered two insights on this note: it was by far the longest, and it was the only one with a signature at the end.
Nico had skimmed it the first time, but now, having gotten the lay of the journal-land, was ready to reread this note exactly as her 7th Life requested: carefully, with an open mind and open eyes. After reading it three times, she looked up, stared through the glass wall across miles of untamed woods, her kingdom forever. Literally.
“Hufflefuck.”
THE DELIVERER
We spend most of our time in his room, and life proves again to be nothing if not circular: I pull a few favorites from the library, and then sit in a chair by his bed and read excerpts aloud.
From East of Eden, “A child may ask, ‘What is the world’s story about?’ And a grown man or woman may wonder, ‘What way will the world go? How does it end . . . ?’”
We taste Morrison’s Song of Solomon . . . “She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude . . .”
We climb Mount Doom, travel with Billy Pilgrim, and when we follow Dumbledore into a cave full of Inferi, and the aging headmaster says, “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you,” my father raises his hand a few inches, says, “I know how he feels.”