“But I knew when I saw him shooting at us as if we were nothing, just meat, that there was no explanation. No good one. I stepped toward him, tried to tell him to stop, but he looked at me as if he had never seen me before in his life. He would have shot me too, I knew it, if those men hadn’t jumped him and stopped him. That’s when I knew I never mattered to him.
“But . . .” He straightens his shoulders. “I am important. I am the one person who can undo all he has worked toward. So long as I was kept happy at the Academy, spray tanning by day and partying by night, I would let myself forget what I could do. What I must do now.”
He calms down and meets my eyes. Suddenly I understand what he’s thinking, and I shake my head.
“We can’t go back before we were kidnapped. The time machine doesn’t work that way.”
He nods. “Wouldn’t that have made things easy? No, I realize I can’t rewrite what I did. But there is more I can do.” He rubs his hands on his pants and takes a breath before going on. “What Gadian didn’t realize is that by myself, I’m likely to fail. Leo and I were never close. And after what I did . . . he will not be happy to see me.”
“He’s not happy with me either.”
“Maybe not, but he will give you a chance. I need your help, Joanna. Please. Help me get through to Leo. Help me undo all I did wrong to our people.”
Alessio, for all his usual bravado and grinning, now looks at me serious and sincere. Though I don’t feel in love with him again, I think I like him more than I ever have before. He’s right. We may not be able to make it so that the wound never happened, but perhaps we can help heal it.
“Okay.” I nod slowly. Then I actually feel a soft smile on my lips. “But I’ve already been shot today, so you get to do the talking.”
___
The bullets don’t sink past the machine’s skin, and dread fills my belly as the time machine begins to whirl loudly. “No!” I scream, rushing forward, but it just disappears from under my hands.
This time, no heroes are coming to save us. Wild Dove is dead—Joanna is taken. How can I fight on when the very breath in my lungs has been stolen from me? If she were here, but everything else around us was destroyed, life would go on. Yet without her, the world we fought for won’t be enough.
FORTY-TWO
Tuscan Italy, September 1470 A.D
The white whirring noise of the time machine slows to a stop, leaving the silence in the air empty.
“I could only figure out how to put in the year and the person we wished to meet. We will be arriving at any time within the year after we were taken, but Leo should be close by,” Alessio says, reaching for the door.
“Do you know what you’re going to say?” I ask, running my hands down my stomach, for the first time in my life nervous to see my old friend.
But Alessio shakes his head. “No.” He looks at the time machine and runs his hand through his thick brown hair. “The words I need haven’t been invented, it seems.”
I have nothing to say to that, nothing but a prayer that Alessio will figure it out awfully quick. He opens the door and lets me walk out first.
We have arrived in an orchard, one Leo and I pillaged as children but hadn’t gone to in years. We are surrounded by apple’s sweet, pungent fragrance and after months of having the earth be so stifled the scent makes my thoughts nearly drunk. In my peripheral, I sense distant movement, and looking down the rows, I see a man. He takes a step, and at once, I recognize him.
I want to cry out, but he is too far away. Lifting my skirt, I run to Leo as fast as I possibly can. Any urge to be afraid or nervous is gone. If he is angry with me, he has every right to be, but all I want right now is to close the distance between us.
His head turns my direction, and tears spring to my eyes as I see that he doesn’t hesitate.
“Jo!” he cries out, and then he is sprinting toward me as well. Finally he’s here, and we collapse into each other’s arms. He buries his face in my hair, and when I speak, I hope he can understand me through the sobs.
“I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.” How inadequate the words feel, how common and plain. “Sorry” is easy—every person I know is sorry. But the remorse I feel, with its full weight of sorrow, is nearly once-in-a-lifetime rare. As rare as an eternal friend.
“You have no idea,” Leo mutters, shaking his head. “These past months, I didn’t know what else to do—”
A rustle behind us reminds me that we aren’t alone. Leo looks up and immediately takes a step back, shocked to see Alessio intruding on our moment. Leo’s eyes narrow, his jaw goes stiff, and his hands clench at his sides. Before he can speak, Alessio bows his head and lowers his eyes.
“No one here has a place to be sorrier than I do.” His voice trembles as he stares at the ground. “I would do anything—give anything—to make up what I did to you. I was cruel—there’s no excusing it. The greatest mistake of my life was that day I let my jealousy control me.”
Pain pulses in the air between us, each of us feeling the others’ as well as our own, sharing in it, as Alessio waits for Leo’s response. With his shoulders stooped, I see how vulnerable Alessio is, all the fight gone out of him. Leo could ridicule or revenge him, and Alessio would do nothing to stop it. For the apology is no longer his—it was his offering, his gift, there for Leo to take or to leave.
At last, he answers.
“I’m going to need some time.” His voice is shaky. “I . . .” He pauses and looks at the trees. “I know I will forgive you. But it just might take a little while.” He exhales, nods, and meets Alessio’s eyes.
“Thank you.” Alessio holds his gaze, and then tentatively steps forward. “I want to find some way to make it up to you.”
“Me too,” I answer. Yes, these words aren’t enough—we must show him.
Leo raises an eyebrow and glances at me before back to Alessio. “And how would you do that?”
I find myself smiling. Reaching forward, I place an eager hand on each of them.
“I have an idea.”
___
Suddenly there is a heaviness in the air, a punctuation. Closing my eyes, I know this is what an end feels like. The path we have been on stops here.
FORTY-THREE
Tuscan Italy, October 1470 A.D
Before the day has started for the rest of the city, I am already fully dressed, walking barefoot the familiar cobblestone streets wet with the night’s rain. The dark sky has softened to blue, tucking away the stars for their daily rest. I don’t miss out on any of it. Everywhere I go now, I go barefoot, aware of each pebble under my feet, my eyes taking in every flower petal that droops with the weight of dew. I wonder if what we’ve done these past weeks could even begin to give back for the divine gifts we’ve been given. Our magical abilities, yes, but also all that the earth has to offer.
For these days that Alessio and I have spent beside Leo—our hands working the wood and silk, our fingers sketching out our plans on sheet after sheet of paper—I have realized how wrong I was. Magic was never meant to be against reason. Both science and magic have the same source.
To study science is to study something eternal. Be it soil or animal or ourselves, when we study these things, we study the works of the earth. Every truth uncovered through research was always there, the earth’s gift to those willing to appreciate it.
Turning from the city, I see the barn in the distance and make out Leo and Alessio waiting there. Excitement churns in my stomach as I begin to race across the field in front of me, the sun casting golden rays in front of me, leading me to the barn.
“Have you been waiting long?” I ask, panting but grinning as I arrive.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I got here about an hour ago.” Leo smiles broadly.
“And I couldn’t leave her, so I slept in the loft.” Alessio laughs at himself as I notice hay stuck on his wrinkled shirt. I grin, certain this was a first for him. That straw on his clothing is more than evidence of a rough night spent, b
ut of a change in him that runs deeper. A humbling.
“Well . . .” Alessio reaches for the handle of the large wooden doors. “No need to keep her waiting.”
Grinning, I take the other door, and we open it at the same time for Leo.
There she is, all thirty-three feet of silk wingspan spread throughout the large, otherwise empty barn. Next to me, Leo inhales quickly, then stepping forward, runs his hand across her light but sturdy pine frame designed after bats’ wings. His “ornithopter,” he calls her.
It looks almost exactly like it did in the memory Ramose showed me but this time there are some essential differences.
From handholds run two sets of rope which are attached to a harness sitting next to Leo’s flying invention. At the bottom are two small wheels, and at the back, a lightweight wooden rod runs just inches away from where Leo’s feet will go.
“Well, she can’t very well fly inside a barn!” I rub my hands together and reach for one of her delicate limbs. The men haul with me and soon she rests on the grass, her wings catching the full morning light until she glows a pure and brilliant white before us.
“Breathtaking” doesn’t begin to cover it. Looking at Alessio and Leo, I see I’m not the only one to feel as if my spark of wonder has had alcohol splashed upon it. We smile at each other, for that is all we can do to try to show on the outside what is in our hearts.
“She’s the most beautiful thing on earth,” Leo whispers, just as in the other memory. Except this time, he isn’t standing alone.
The moment I had seen never happened, not to Leo. Alessio and I had arrived just as Leo had begun sketches for his ornithopter, so the future was rewritten. Rather than his spending months in isolation working on this project, we completed it together in just weeks, our laughter filling the air as we worked. Laughter and sweat—that’s what our healing was made of.
Now standing next to him, I reach out and place a hand on Leo’s arm. “Thank you for sharing this with us.”
He grins back at me, a glint in his eye. “You know, Jo, this could be an incredibly reckless, foolish idea.” The thought doesn’t seem to bother him much.
I laugh, “Well, let’s give it a test and see what happens!”
With that, we each take our positions. Closing my eyes, I discard my human form and feel strength surge through every sinew. With the earth around me, so unrestrained, the bull form sweeps over me in mere seconds. As I open my eyes, Alessio steps forward with the harness.
“My mother always taught me that a gentleman doesn’t treat a lady like an animal, but I suppose I’ll have to make an exception,” he jokes, placing the harness inside my mouth. For a moment, his hand lingers on my face, and I know what he is feeling. I’ve seen it in his eyes often as we’ve worked together this past month—desire and regret in those pretty eyes. At times I’ve wanted to feel something back—everything would be simple then. Alessio and I could live out our days here, Mama and Leo forever within arm’s reach. I want to love him, I do. But I see now that I could no sooner talk myself back in love with him than I could command the dead back to life. For my feelings for him—the passion, at least—have gone the way of lullabies and hide-and-go-seek. My love for Alessio belonged to my pre-Academy life, and though my body may time travel, my soul cannot.
I understand now what I could not then. He is a good man, a better man than he was when I first loved him. Yet perhaps we were never meant for each other, never truly compatible.
No, he was never my perfect match. Simply a perfect stepping stone.
What I wouldn’t give to complete that step across these waters, through the years and centuries to where the one I could spend my life with waits. My Ramose. For even being home, being with all those I had so long yearned to return to, it isn’t home anymore. I realized it that first evening home with Mama. Seeing her again was everything I had hoped. When she held me once more, I could smell the familiar scent of home in her hair and on her clothes, like lemon and love. Inside everything looked just as it had when I left, except the bowls of spring strawberries and artichokes were exchanged for autumn’s pears and Brussel sprouts. Beside those, each candle and hand-painted ceramic held their usual vigilance, the chair by the fire not an inch out of place. It was in that moment that I realized only I had changed. As much as I would always adore my childhood home, I was no longer a child. I loved, and strongly love, one man as only a woman can.
But the cost of returning to him is the one thing I could not give. Even with the best of intentions, I cannot see time travel as anything other than despicable. To abuse the earth like that—I might as well murder my own mother in the name of love. Some things simply cannot be justified.
Shaking my head, I bring my thoughts back to the moment. Turning my great bull body, I see Leo standing over his flying machine, his hands slightly trembling as he slowly exhales. With a glance at each of us, he then bites his cheek and stoops down, climbing onto the board in the center of the invention. The bat-inspired wings fold out from above his back, and watching him, I feel my happiness swell inside me to see Leo have wings of his own.
He breathes slowly, deliberately, concentrating on each breath. Behind him, Alessio walks to the back of the ornithopter and bends over, his hands firmly gripping the rod we designed there.
“Ready when you are, DaVinci,” Alessio calls out, using Leo’s surname that the rest of Italy knows him by. When Alessio says it, I hear no jealousy in his voice, only celebration. He smiles and gives Leo a nod of encouragement.
Nodding in response, Leo exhales once, twice before his feet begin to pedal.
At once the powerful wings begin to lift away from the ground, as though the breath of life has been blown into them. That’s my cue.
Facing forward, I charge through the field in the direct line we had cleared of all haystacks. I feel the load catch my reins, and I plow ahead with even more vigor. With the power and speed of my bull body, I haul the load that would be too immensely heavy for any man. I run faster, as fast as my strong legs can carry me, my enormous heart racing, each breath heavy and loud.
Then suddenly, the weight is gone. I slow, my reins dangling freely on either side of me, catching in the short straw. Looking up, the beauty of what I see breaks my concentration, and I melt back into my human skin.
There among the dawn’s canopy of gold, bright amid the clear blue, Leo’s silken wings beat. At the back Alessio soars, pushing the flying machine ever closer to the sun. As I watch, Alessio opens his fingers, and just like that, the miraculous invention ascends on its own.
Corkscrewing under the machine, Alessio comes to fly an arm’s reach away from Leo, and I know this is a moment I must be a part of.
Taking three steps at a run, I jump as my swan transformation begins. Beating my wings, I feel the wind embrace me, saturate me to my core, touching every feather. They are a ways ahead, and for a moment I wonder how I’ll catch up, but I shouldn’t have worried. Leo, in a wide circle, loops back toward me.
Rising into the open sky, I come upon them, and Leo grins at me. “You didn’t think we’d forget you now, did you?” he yells over the rush of wind.
I can only tilt my head in response and he laughs, head thrown back, at the familiar gesture.
Over the hills we soar, patches of fading green and brilliant gold unfurling like a quilt beneath us. Above the city, red rooftops radiate in the morning sun, our great combined shadow causing heads of early risers to crane back in surprise. We hear exclamations that we can’t quite make out, then looking back I see children, ladies with clutched skirts, and merchants abandoning their stalls, each chasing us in amazement.
“Watch out!” Alessio yells. My head jerking forward, I see Leo quickly maneuver the ornithopter to go straight up just in time to miss the dome on top of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.
“You know how to fly that thing, right?” Alessio laughs, shouting.
“I could lie and say ‘yes,’” Leo shouts back, his hands shaking, b
ut the grin never dulled from his face. “But from what just happened, I think you know the answer!” He laughs and spins the craft as though to head out of the city.
Before us, the wide River Arno etches a path through the streets and buildings, each crest of water transformed as if by alchemy. Leo swoops low, his wings gliding just feet above the water. Coming up on each side, Alessio and I soar with him, the beat of my wings in sync with Leo’s. Swallows dart around us, welcoming us as friends to their open air. Birdsong spills beauty into the day, filling my heart to overflowing. Looking to Leo and Alessio, I see that the ecstacy of the experience has washed over all us, leaving in its wake a slow joy spreading across our faces.
He did it. He did it.
We did it.
I have never been able to soar like this before. Unbridled, unconstrained. How long had we spent, each of us, trying to soar on our own, each of us grounded by different things? My fear and isolation were one broken wing, as was Alessio’s envy. Watching those two beautiful wings of Leo’s rising and falling over me, they seem to be perfection. Balance. How did we not understand that it takes two remarkable wings to fly? We were never created to soar alone.
Ripples of light reflect off the water onto our arms and wings, as though tiny golden threads binding us together. Ahead, the Ponte Vecchio bridge arches over the patient river. We could separate to go under different tiers, but to do so would break the spell of unity we are under, would dissolve the truth we’ve struck upon and leave us once again with the illusion that we are unconnected.
A glance and nod is all it takes to communicate with each other. Smiling softly, we rise as one above the Ponte Vecchio and take to the heavens.
___
I wake from the dream, the silk white curtains around my bed billowing in the hot morning breeze. Placing my feet on the floor, I run my hand over my face, stubble scratching my palms. How can you miss someone you have never met? Walking to the ledge of my room, I look out at the kingdom and rest against the firm pillar, wishing I was still asleep. Still in her arms.
They Called Us Shaman Page 27
