by Vance, Ramy
I didn’t know if he planned to hit her or just wave his balled-up hand in her face. Either way, I wasn’t standing for it and before he could get any closer to her, I stepped forward and kicked him in the back of the knee.
He dropped down to one knee like he was proposing to her and before he could stand up, I put a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezed as if I was digging for his collarbone. If you squeeze just right that spot hurts the most, and when he gave me a satisfying yelp, I knew I was pinching the right nerves.
“Apologize to her,” I growled. “Now.”
He twisted his head to get a look at who was talking and when he saw a five-foot-nothing girl with impossibly beautiful auburn hair (hey, I’m pretty and I know it), I’m sure he thought this was some kind of joke. He started to stand and I pushed down with my hand, kicking him in the back of his knee once more. That forced him down again.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “ ‘Here’s some dainty girl who got in a lucky shot.’ That you outweigh me by fifty pounds and you’re a good foot and a half taller. You think you can take me. Let me assure you, this is a miscalculation on your part. So do the smart thing and apologize to her. Right now.”
I don’t know if it was the venom in my words or fire in my eyes that scorched his will to resist, but he turned to the rebellious noro priestess and said, “I’m sorry.”
“In Japanese,” I said, squeezing his collarbone.
“Ahh, I don’t speak Japanese.”
“Then repeat after me. Gomen nasai.” I said each syllable slowly, deliberately, just to make sure an idiot like this guy got it.
“Go men nasai,” he said, mimicking my cadence.
“Good,” I said, nodding to the woman and letting him go.
↔
Keiko stepped forward, grabbing her noro sister by the hand and reassuring her that this wasn’t the end of their home. That she would do everything in her power to reverse what was happening this day.
And as she spoke, several soldiers stepped forward, looking to back up their chum in a throwdown with moi. “Good,” I said to the advancing squad. “Five against one. I could use the exercise.”
Keiko, leaving the young noro, took a step forward. “Oops, looks like your guys are going to—”
“Enough,” Jean groaned, as if bored. Making sure that his sleeve stripes were in full view, he said, “Step down, soldiers—they’re with me.” Then he looked at me. “Hulk much?”
“You should thank them,” I said as they walked away. “I redirected a good portion of my rage at you toward them.”
“Ahh, I see. In that case: thank you, boys,” he said with a patronizing wave.
With the soldiers gone, Keiko surveyed her home that was emptying of life. A single tear flowed down her cheek as she said, “Katto-san, I have something to show you.”
She gestured me out of the courtyard into another part of the village.
“I’ll just hang out here,” Jean said, “keep the boys in line.”
I followed Keiko through the courtyard and toward a cluster of homes in the more residential area of the village. She brought us to the doorstep of one of those homes, sliding the door open. “This one has already been vacated.”
We took our shoes off as we stepped into the traditional Japanese home. Keiko led me through the hall, lit only by the afternoon sun, to a bedroom with a series of tatami mats spread across it.
“This is where the priestesses-in-training sleep,” Keiko said as we stepped into the room. She waved her arm around the space. “This is where my grandmother grew up.”
I stepped through the doorway, my gaze sliding across the tatami mats as though they were occupied. As though the young priestesses slept on them even now.
I turned to Keiko. “She was safe here.”
Keiko nodded. “Yes, Katto-san. As safe as a girl could be.”
I had suspected as much, but hearing Keiko confirm it—and standing in this room where Blue had grown up—filled me with relief.
And even though she wasn’t here, and hadn’t been here for decades, something about knowing that Blue had spent years and years of her life here reminded me of my own humanness.
It reminded me that everyone who lived here right now was at risk of losing their homes, their history, their lives.
And I might be able to stop that from happening.
I turned to Keiko, bowed deeply. “Thank you.”
She returned the bow. “After all this, I will take you to see her, if you like.”
I smiled faintly. “Yes,” I said. I wanted to carry the promise of seeing her again, even if I wasn’t likely to leave this island alive. “I would like that.”
↔
When we came back into the courtyard, Keiko left my side to talk to another noro priestess.
Ahead, Jean stood with his back to me, his arms folded as he watched the soldiers evacuating the village. I stepped up beside him, my gaze following his. “No more shoving the locals?” I asked.
“Not after your display,” Jean said, chuckling. “I think they’re more afraid of you than they are of me.”
Good; I didn’t want to have to send any more soldiers to their knees today.
Keiko approached us. “My sister has informed me that the soldiers are moving the Others last and that Father Time is still in his hut. This way,” she said, and she led us up a path away from the village and into the mountainside.
Kat, Meet Father Time for the First Time
Father Time, Meet Kat … Again
We trekked up the path where stone slabs had been built into the hillside as stairs, and from the overgrowth, I could tell that few people walked up here. Or down. Fresh prints from the soldiers’ boots muddied the moss-covered stairs, and from the way the tracks appeared, three sets of boots had gone up slowly and then hurried down at breakneck speed.
Father Time is scary, I mused to myself.
“Father Time is not scary—just eccentric. The soldiers would not have run away from him,” Keiko said, evidently listening in on my thoughts (the only explanation, because I’m pretty sure I’d nipped my “talk out loud” habit in the bud). We walked the last of the steps as she spoke, the stairs leveling out onto a plateau where two huts sat. Keiko pointed to the left hut. “Father Time lives there. It is the one who lives in the adjacent hut that they ran from. Come.”
She gestured for us to walk to the left hut, standing in such a way that she blocked the path to the other home. Both Jean and I looked into the other hut’s window as we walked, trying to get a sense of who lived there. We saw nothing, but that didn’t stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing at full, terrified attention. I’d been alive long enough—well, vampire-alive, which counts!—to know what I sensed.
A hunter.
And from the way every one of my senses screamed for me to run, that was one hell of a hunter.
“Who … who lives there?”
Keiko shook her head. “That is not part of my compromise. I will not expose another to your musings.”
Jean audibly gulped. Evidently he felt the same thing. “So we won’t be speaking to the he, she or it who lives in there?”
Keiko nodded.
“Good,” he said. “That’s really good.”
↔
Keiko lifted a hand to knock on the hut’s entrance and as she made to rap on the wooden door, it swung open and her fist flew through empty air.
An old man with a long beard that wrapped around his ankles stood at the threshold. At least, that’s what it looked like at first, but as he took a step into the light, I saw that the beard didn’t just go straight down to his feet, but rather large tufts of it ran over his arms, stomach and around his back. He was literally clothed in his own white beard that covered him in a furry exterior that made him look like a white-furred yeti.
Harry would love this guy, I thought.
Father Time made a come along gesture as he stepped away from the threshold. “You two may enter.
The noro may not. She has broken her oath to me and therefore she is one I can no longer speak to.”
Keiko grimaced in visible pain at the words, but there was no surprise there. Others take oaths very seriously and when an oath is broken, their response tends to be harsh, final and often fatal. It was a small miracle that this guy didn’t do more than simply shun her. In the grand scheme of Other logic, he was well within his rights to demand reparations that come in all sorts of nasty ways.
“Hurry along,” he said. “I don’t have all the time in the world to wait for you. Look at me … Father Time is running out of time.” He giggled at his joke. Then his voice took an unnatural turn from jovial to deadly serious. “Hurry along. I don’t have all day to reject you.”
“Cheery,” I muttered as I followed him inside.
↔
The inside of the hut was sparse, with one simple, single bed, one pillow and no sheets. Although it was small, the sparse furnishing made it roomy enough that the three of us could stand far enough apart to swing our arms without touching each other.
A single chair and table sat at the far end of the wall. Father Time gestured for me to sit on the chair. I was about to decline, but he said, “Yeah, yeah … you won’t sit because you think I’m old and therefore my age and fragility trump your femininity when determining who is worthy of the chair.”
Looking at Jean, he added, “And your youth and maleness preclude you from being offered the chair. Or at least, that is my understanding of human culture. Chairs are offered in the following order: pregnant, old woman, old man, child, young woman. Then there are the injured and handicapped to consider. If they are sufficiently hindered, then they go above all, even a pregnant woman near bursting. There are no offerings to a young man, unless said man is exhausted. Did I get that right?”
He waved a hand before either of us could answer. “Being mortal is so confusing. I guess that is what death gives us: a simplification of everything. Personally, I can’t wait to be free of human protocol.” He lifted his head up as if speaking to the wind. “Death, wherever you are, come and get me. I’m waiting.”
Then he stopped speaking and looked at me expectantly. When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Well, on with it.”
“Ahh, OK,” I said. “We have a … situation. Seems that three dead gods are seeking resurrection and the—”
“Yes, yes, yes. War, enslavement. Bombs, armies advancing. I’ve heard it all before,” Father Time growled. “You know, we have met before.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, searching my memories of the man. I had none. I mean, how could you forget a character like this guy? Even with clothes on, I would have remembered meeting him. “I think I’d remember meeting you.”
Father Time looked at me with genuine confusion before shaking his head. “Ahh yes, you are right. I have met you before, but you have never met me.”
“OK,” I said, but before I could think of anything to say, Father Time started to laugh.
Then he abruptly stopped as if he was waiting for me to do or say something. Confused, I didn’t move. “Go ahead,” he said impatiently.
“Go ahead, what?” I said, turning to Jean for support. The soldier lifted his hands in surrender as he shook his head.
“Go ahead and make your joke.”
“What joke?”
“The joke you’re going to say. You know, I said, ‘I have met you before. You have never met me, though.’ To which you respond, ‘That makes sense, and by makes sense, what I really mean is that doesn’t make any sense at all.’ Then I laugh.” Father Time crossed his arms expectantly.
“OK,” I said, unsure. “That makes sense, and by makes sense, what I really mean is that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Father Time didn’t laugh, but instead said, “I already chuckled at that one. Now impress me. Say something insightful.”
“Insightful, eh?” I looked at a being that was literally responsible for the birth of time and tried to unpack what was going on in his impossibly old mind. He clearly wanted me to say something. No, that wasn’t right—he wanted me to understand something. “Say something insightful,” he’d said, but just like he had laughed at a joke I hadn’t said yet, he was waiting for me to say something that had already impressed him.
I thought about my eidetic memory. Most people who don’t have it don’t understand how such a memory works. They think we recall things, but we don’t—not exactly. We recreate memories, remembering what happened by replaying the scene in our heads. And sometimes those memories can be so vivid it’s as if we’re reliving the moment again.
“You remember me,” I said as my mind struggled to formulate the thought into something coherent, “because you can remember the future. You can remember things that have yet to happen, can’t you?”
He snapped his fingers twice. “Precisely. You know, even though I remembered what you were going to say, I forgot how impressed I was going to be when you actually said it.” He shook his head. “I guess my memory isn’t what it once was. Comes from aging.” Then he shot Jean a look and started to laugh.
Jean, taking the cue, said, “Ironic that Father Time is ravaged by time.”
“Indeed!” he said. “You too are impressive, Mr. Jean-Luke Matthias, only missing the Mark.”
Jean rolled his eyes. “I haven’t heard that one before.”
“I know, I know. And you will hear it many more times before you eventually find your Mark. But he’s coming, that I promise you.”
Jean lifted an eyebrow in curiosity. “What do you mean, ‘find your Mark?’ I—”
“Not now, Jean! We don’t have time for this. Bombs are falling, gods are rising. We have work to do.”
“So you’re going to help us?”
Father Time shook his head. “No, I will not. I vowed when I became mortal that I would never lift a finger to guide the course of mortal affairs. And yes, I know that I am mortal. So no need to remind me,” he said, looking at me. “And as for you, Jean, can we skip the part about how you don’t really care, but you do love your wife Bella and you would do anything for her and how much she truly cares? And because you care for her, you in turn care for them—us.” He added the last word as if it were an afterthought.
The old man stood up and pointed down the hill toward the village. “And I know you both will try to guilt me into helping by evoking memories of the priestesses’ kindness and how this place creates a connection with the past and deserves a chance to remain. I will refuse you on all these counts and the dozen more arguments you will attempt to win me over with. So let’s skip all that.”
“Skip it?” I said. “Skip it! You can’t be friggin’ serious. You just had an entire conversation with us that we’ve never had … from memory. Your memory. A memory, might I add, that by your own admission isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps there’s a part of the conversation you’ve forgotten?”
“That may be,” he said, “but even if you were to persuade me, I cannot help. I have sworn an oath to the departed gods never to intervene in the humans’ course of time. That is why time travel is impossible. Time cannot be slowed, sped up or altered. And despite the prattling of numerous books and movies conjured by the human imagination, one cannot go forward or backward in time.”
“Tell that to Marty and Doc,” Jean muttered.
Father Time shot Jean a look and growled, “Time cannot be altered because of an oath I made before the gods brewed the primordial soup from which your ancestors emerged. I have not interfered with the mortal course of time since time began and I will not interfere now, even if it means that time may end.”
“But the gods are gone—” I started.
“And I am not,” he shot back. “I am here and intact. Ergo, my oaths are intact as well.”
I was absolutely flabbergasted. To be rejected before we’d even gotten a chance to speak was devastating. If Jean was bothered by the whole thing, he didn’t show it, simply shrugging. “OK, that’s i
t. We’ll be on our way then.”
Father Time didn’t say anything, but he did look at us expectantly, as if waiting for us to say something else. Something he remembered us saying. But it was more than his expectations that grabbed me. I also sensed a hint of fear in him.
Fear is a powerful motivator. It changes perspective, alters goals and ambitions, forces people to do things they’d never dream of. Things like breaking oaths.
He wants to help us, I thought as I considered Other logic. He just needs us to force him into it. But how do you force someone as ancient and powerful as the embodiment of time?
Not by threats or pleas, but with loopholes. Loopholes in the laws of the divine. And I had just the one.
“But here’s the thing,” I said, choosing my words with care. “How can you remember a conversation that is yet to happen? Also, riddle me this, Father Time: what will happen to you if we don’t have the conversation? I mean, you just remembered something that hasn’t happened yet. Surely not having the conversation will cripple you, won’t it?”
Father Time considered this. Then his eyes widened. “I completely forgot this part. And yes, you’re right—to not have this conversation would be akin to having a memory ripped from my mind. Very bad for the mortal condition. Not sure what would happen, but I hypothesize that to lose a memory in such a manner would bring on early-onset insanity.” He shook his head as his lips trembled with fear. “I’m too young to go insane.”
“And what would happen if you went insane? Certainly Father Time losing his mind would be detrimental to the very fabric of reality.”
The old man considered this. “Perhaps I would do something horrible,” he mused, “like alter the flow of time.”
“Go back to before the gods left, for example?”
“Perhaps. Yes. Possibly. Probably.” His eyes widened again. “Definitely.”
