Ronin

by Tony Bertauski

  Ryder didn’t answer. Did she completely block out the part with Ronin? He felt woozy.

  “Sounds constructive.” Soup stripped his bed and began remaking it, carefully tucking the corners.

  “What’d you do to him?” Ryder muttered.

  “It’s his best self,” she said adoringly. “He understands now.”

  “That isn’t him.”

  “If you strip away your shortcomings, are you still you?” She nodded. “We don’t know who we are until we look inward. And once we honestly do that, we put down the things we don’t need. We’re attached to who we think we are.”

  Soup was whistling as he fluffed the pillows.

  “Campbell is his true self now,” Jane said.

  Ryder waited. Soup didn’t erupt. He was deep in a Christmas tune and tucking the bed corner. “Campbell?”

  “Yeah?” he said.

  Ryder stared. When he didn’t say anything, Soup waved him off like he was messing with him.

  “This isn’t right.”

  “That’s his name, Ryder. He reclaimed it. No more dark corners to hide from, no more suffering. He’s a good boy. He’s nice.”

  Ryder walked off. He couldn’t look anymore. Something about the scene was disturbing. The hall was swimming around him.

  “Don’t forget the meeting,” Jane called.

  Cherry caught up to him. They followed the drones out of the wing and walked in silence. The name, the way he was dressed, the goofy smile and whistling. It was like he woke in an alternate reality. He didn’t even call her sweet Jane. But that wasn’t the worst part.

  He’s not wearing the hearing aid.

  ***

  Ryder needed air. Frigid, bone-chilling air.

  The horses galloped along the fence, snow flipping off their hooves. His coat hung open, inviting winter inside. He welcomed the shivers.

  How far would we have to go to escape? The other side of the mountain?

  “It’s freezing.” Cherry huddled next to him, a scarf around her face. “You should stay in your nicy room tonight.”

  “No.”

  Even if there was a door labelled This way to the secret underground lab, he couldn’t stay there another minute. It was foul. It was wrong.

  “What would I tell Arf?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Just let him find out Soup was body-snatched by a nicy.”

  “Body-snatched?”

  “He wasn’t wearing his hearing aid! I know BG is a miracle worker and all, but he didn’t put a new ear in his head. You saw the way he was acting. That wasn’t Soup. That was Campbell.” He pointed at the nicy wing. “No one calls him Campbell, and you saw what happened—”

  “Ryder.”

  She put a hand on his arm. Bradley Cooper was grabbing all the footage and he didn’t care. Soup’s behavior could be explained, maybe. Not the hearing aid. BG couldn’t cure that, not in a day or two. Even if there was some medical breakthrough, it wouldn’t be seamless, not like that.

  “Let’s go inside,” she said.

  “They’ll come for you, too.”

  They had to escape before introspection. He couldn’t stand seeing her like that. Neither would she. He couldn’t say it out loud. They were all turning nice.

  “Why aren’t you on the list?” she said.

  You’ve always been nice. BG said it, but Ryder was nothing like them. He wasn’t a good boy who did what he was told, so it couldn’t be true. So why aren’t I on the list?

  Steel pails rattled in the breezeway. The horses waited at the fence. A large silhouette stepped out of one of the stalls. Ryder could barely feel his feet as he marched toward the barn. The old man ducked into the tack room. The door was still open when Ryder approached.

  “Where did he go?” he said.

  The room wasn’t big enough to hide him. Horses hung their long faces out of the stalls, mashing hay between rubbery lips.

  “Where are you?”

  Cherry grabbed him. “Don’t do this. We don’t need attention right now.”

  He was suddenly red hot. Emotions boiled up from a deep and angry place. All the secrets and the old man was always in the shadows. Why wasn’t he on the stream? What was he doing in the cabin?

  Ryder pounded on the barn doors, the ones that were locked, the room where Cherry had once visited, had seen cages big enough to house an elephant. His bones rattled. He kicked until his entire body hurt.

  “Listen.” He put his ear to the door. “Hear that?”

  Wump-wump-wump-wump-wump. Something mechanical was turning. He could feel it through the door. That sound wasn’t there before.

  “Come on.” Cherry pulled with both hands.

  The drones captured every second. BG was going to see it. He’d throw him in the nicy wing and lock the door this time. The old man appeared in the breezeway like he’d been there the entire time, watching. Ready to draw guns from his long coat.

  “Is he in there?” Ryder said.

  The old man worked his tongue beneath his bottom lip, pushing a lump of tobacco to the side. Brown specks littered his bushy white beard. He smelled like leather and hard work. He pushed a pair of sunglasses up his nose with the hand with missing fingers.

  “Who are you?” Ryder said.

  His emotions were running the show now. Ryder planted both hands in the old man’s midsection. He leaned in but hardly moved him. A grin wrinkled the scruffy white beard. There were traces of red through it like veins of iron.

  The old man grabbed a halter off a hook and turned his back, limping stiffly away. He was almost around the corner when Ryder scooped a snowball off the breezeway and threw it.

  It grazed the cowboy hat.

  The old cowboy stopped. He spit in the snow. “You don’t understand. But you will.”

  His voice sounded like words spun through a meat grinder. Fear finally dissolved his anger. Ryder felt the full force of paralyzing reality. Cherry grabbed his coat and dragged him out of the breezeway.

  “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered in his ear.

  Numbly, he followed her across the horseshoe. His emotions had taken charge, but now he understood just how foolish that was. The old man didn’t threaten him, didn’t even take a swing. It was his voice that raised gooseflesh on Ryder’s neck. It was the way it sounded.

  Like it was inside him.

  “We got to leave,” he said. “Tonight.”

  18

  “Gallivanter!” the herders shout.

  The harness jingles. The reindeer at the front tosses his head. Cubes of special feed fall in the snow.

  “Here. Take him.”

  The herder shoves a feed bag at Gallivanter and slides away. Ronin holds his head up. His rack rises above the reindeer. Gallivanter sighs.

  “How many times have I told you? The others can feed you.”

  The last reindeer snorts. His breath hits Gallivanter like hot steam, blowing his beard braids over his shoulders. It’s followed by wet nostrils on his cheek. Gallivanter holds up a cube.

  “Eat.”

  The other reindeer gobble all the cubes they’re offered. They remember what happened last Christmas. Dasher, Dancer and Cupid were recovering from a slight illness and shouldn’t have made the journey. Halfway through the night, they gassed out. Christmas is always a demanding night, but that Christmas the sick reindeer were barely able to inflate.

  Ronin had shouldered the burden of hauling the sleigh through the last leg. Without him, they would’ve been stuck somewhere in the Netherlands.

  Gallivanter hugs his snout. “Time to go, my boy.”

  The reindeer eagerly dig at the snow. The bells jingle. They look back and wait. There are pronouncements. The elven step back. The call is given; Ronin throws his head back and roars.

  He leads the way.

  The reindeer gallop across the muted snow; the bells are loud and tinny. One by one, the hooves turn silent and the jingling settles. Nine reindeer soar toward the night sky.<
br />
  Gallivanter waits for the whine of the timesnapper to engulf them. The elven will remain on the ice. A minute or two will pass before they return, exhausted and satisfied, with an empty sack in the back of the sleigh.

  This Christmas will be different.

  There will be no accidents to report. No sightings to cover up. But a rule will be broken. A rule that applies to the elven colony, including the reindeer. A rule Gallivanter is very familiar with, one he has broken once before. This is the Christmas Ronin sees a truck on a very cold night.

  The Christmas he interferes.

  The room was silent.

  Ryder turned his head. The sheets on the other bunk were bunched up. Arf wasn’t snoring.

  He was gone.

  Ryder sat up. Bradley Cooper remained asleep. It was a few minutes past four o’clock. Winter gear was stacked on the floor. He hadn’t gone to the nicy meeting. That meant Jane and John must have brought the gear to his room.

  If you must sleep over there, Jane had said, we’ll take care of you.

  A scattershot of frozen snow blew across the window. It was dark and windy. The barn light was on. Drifts had formed. It had snowed quite a bit since he fell asleep. And there were footprints, too. Like another football game.

  Where’s Arf?

  He had been snoring when Ryder fell asleep and wasn’t scheduled for introspection for another day. His laptop was gone, too. Ryder checked the drawers. They were empty.

  The bedroom door across the hall was ajar. Ryder pushed it open, peeking inside. It was dark.

  And empty.

  The board had been erased. The introspection list gone. He ran to the end of the hall, his heart pounding. He pushed Cherry’s door open, hoping she would be sitting cross-legged on the floor, shadows flickering across the rug. But the cushion was empty. Candlewicks blackened.

  Where is she?

  Her bed was made, the pillow smooth and square. He pulled the sheets back and reached between the wall and bed, feeling for the slit she had cut in the mattress. With two fingers, he searched the hiding spot.

  There.

  He fished out the phone, careful not to drop it. Wherever she was, she hadn’t had time to take it with her. Or she’d left it behind for him to find. He touched the screen, hoping there would be a map, at least a clue as to where they took her. There was a message waiting for him. It wasn’t a map. It was one word.

  Hide!

  A surge of adrenaline kicked his pulse up another gear. The room was beginning to spin. Maybe they forgot about him or he was the last in line. He stared at the phone. That can’t be right.

  Two days had passed.

  That was why the snowdrifts were so deep, the tracks so prolific. He’d been asleep for two days.

  How?

  The phone flashed with urgency. He shoved it in his pocket and ran back to his room. Quickly, he put on the winter gear. It would be enough to survive, including food and a tent. He could make it in the mountains for days. Strapping on the backpack, he went to Cherry’s room and threw it out her window. The snowdrift was deep and soft and without tracks.

  She didn’t escape.

  He dug out of the snow and put the backpack on, snapping the buckles in place before starting out. He had to get away and clear his head, hide deep in the trees, far enough away that the drones wouldn’t find him. He could spy when he had a chance and come back.

  The wind nearly pushed him over as he trudged into the open. He leaned into it. His cheeks were scrubbed numb. He plodded through the snow, eyes watering, trees blurry. The horses were in the pasture, galloping away from the fence. The going would be easier once he was in the woods. The snow would diminish. He reached the tree line’s moonshadow and was almost out of sight.

  His legs gave out.

  Creeping death shivered through his body. He fell like a tree. Arms limp, the ground rushed toward him. Face-first, he was buried in the snow.

  It was dark. Cold.

  He couldn’t feel it. His body hummed with a fresh pulse of paralyzing anesthesia. Helpless, he panicked. Trapped in the confines of his own body, he struggled to breathe. Snow melted around his mouth. It packed into his ear, but he could hear the wind howling over him. Each breath was a struggle.

  A green light began to glow.

  A shadow cut through the bluster. An electromagnetic field vibrated in his teeth. A drone was hovering close to his head, the green eye near him.

  What’s happening?

  He heard footsteps breaking through crusted snow. A hand firmly rolled him over. Icy crystals melted on his eyelashes. The world was dark and blurry.

  “Why is he awake?” BG said. There was a pause like he was listening to someone on the phone. “Let’s put him in storage. We don’t need him.”

  Snowflakes landed delicately on Ryder’s nose. BG was standing in front of him, but he was looking at someone out of Ryder’s eyesight. Heavy footsteps were behind him.

  BG took a knee and leaned over him. The stink of nicy was on his breath. Ryder involuntarily gagged as BG shoved his hand in his pocket. He pulled out the phone.

  “Where’d he get this?”

  Whatever chance they’d had to escape was over now. It was all in the open. They would know about the early morning excursions, the trip to the cabin, the maps on the phone.

  It was all so over.

  BG looked up and nodded. “Okay, all right. I’ll send for one of the new boys. The big one. We’ll put him on a table for now and sleep him till we get back.”

  There was a long pause. BG was standing over Ryder alone now. A chunk of time was missing. Snow had dusted Ryder’s face. Someone new had joined them. A hulking figure threw Ryder over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. Ryder’s arms flopped around as the big boy trudged through the snow. Blood was pounding in his temples.

  Arf!

  Ryder’s tongue was fat. Saliva drooled from his lips as he bounced. Confusion mingled with fear, the fumes of panic filling his chest. Helplessly, he watched the footsteps recede until they reached the building.

  Arf carried him to the elevator.

  Ryder’s ribs were hurting. His gut ached. He managed a groan. Arf wouldn’t hear it. I’ll send for one of the new boys.

  The elevator descended deep below Kringletown. When the doors opened, the room smelled like a nicy armpit—a cloying aroma that invaded his sinuses and slid down his throat. He gagged as he was flopped onto a table. Arf looked down on him, with snow melting on a neutral expression. The ceiling was a network of pipes.

  I’ve been here before.

  It wasn’t the smell that was familiar, it was the maze of conduit above him, the hard surface of the table. Maybe he dreamed it.

  BG stood on the other side of the table. It felt like an operation was about to take place. Somewhere a mechanical rhythm played. Wump-wump-wump-wump. Panic bloomed in his gut and coldly streamed through his arms and legs. BG closed Ryder’s eyes.

  He couldn’t open them.

  A deep humming rose from his bones and filled his head, the anesthesia digging in. Ryder disappeared in the all-consuming darkness.

  A black hole of unconsciousness.

  19

  Floating in darkness.

  No ears or eyes, no seeing or tasting or smelling. Ryder reached up to feel his face and had no arms to move, no face to touch. Panic flooded the blackness, cold and electric. As if the very space around him were alive.

  A formless void of awareness.

  Where am I?

  A sudden contraction. Sensation pressed against him. When he turned his attention toward it, colors swirled out of the dark. Where once there was nothing, now there were feet and legs.

  Ryder lifted his arm.

  The floor was as black as the space around him. There were no other objects, no walls or ceiling. He took a tentative step in one direction then another. No matter where he went, the floor continued. There was no edge to fall from, no wall to stop him.

  Just endless nothing.
<
br />   “Ryder.”

  He spun at the sound of his name. A form had taken shape. It stood just beyond the edge of darkness. He couldn’t make out the details, only the outline of a very short, very round person.

  With extremely large feet.

  “I apologize. It’s confusing for one to experience pure awareness, perhaps frightening. You have no body here, but the illusion of one. It feels strange, though.”

  Ryder looked at his hands then back to the person. The voice was familiar. He’d heard it before, like he’d heard it all of his life.

  “Gallivanter,” Ryder whispered.

  Laughter trickled out, the kind that bubbled.

  “Your dreams,” Gallivanter said, “are our story.”

  Space rippled like heat waves rolling off summer asphalt. He wanted to see him, but every step he took brought him no closer to Gallivanter. He remained in the dark without moving.

  “Story?” Ryder said.

  “Dreams are stories, and stories have no end. Does the dream?” Gallivanter paused then beckoned. “Remember.”

  Ryder thought about the last dream, when Ronin led the reindeer on Christmas Eve. They were tethered to a red sleigh, launching into a night sky. Laughter from a very fat man trailed to the ice, where Gallivanter watched the last reindeer lead the others.

  He interfered.

  “The truth is waiting.”

  Gallivanter’s voice was out there. Ryder imagined his steel-gray eyes from the dream. They were full of joy, pride and wisdom. A reflection of the reindeer against the sky moved across his pupils. And then something different happened.

  This isn’t part of the dream.

  The eyes dried up and the joy faded. The blue moonlight turned harsh and bright. The silhouette of reindeer transformed. Instead, a reflection was looking back at him. Someone was leaning toward Gallivanter, a grin creeping in a tightly trimmed beard of red whiskers.

  “Where’s my pot of gold?”

  Ryder didn’t recognize the man at first. He was younger, the beard shorter, his complexion fair and smooth. It wasn’t weathered, but the voice was unmistakable. Billy.

  Figgy, curled up at his feet, looked up with tired eyes. Her muzzle was peppered gray. She groaned. It couldn’t be Figgy. She was too old, getting up with a stiff hip to pad her bed before curling up again.