by Inmon, Shawn
And then, they had escaped from slavery in Denta-ah together. They had been forced to throw their lots in together and rely on each other to survive. They had emerged from the experience as brothers. Alex knew that he would miss the quiet wisdom and support of Sekun-ak more than anything else.
Alex sat down opposite. Typical of their way together, they did not speak at all for a long moment.
Finally, Sekun-ak said, “It is time, then?”
“It is time.”
They stood and faced each other, one hand on the other’s shoulder.
Quietly, Alex said, “If you ever need me. Follow me through the door. I will be there, and you know I can help.”
“Gunta, brother,” Sekun-ak said, then sat down and stared toward the forest.
God, I hate goodbyes.
Alex climbed back down to where Reggie still sat. “Sanda-eh, do you have your toy?”
Sanda-eh reached in her pocket and pulled out the small blob of high-tech material that Emily had given her. “Time to go, then.”
“Can we play a little longer?” Sanda-eh pleaded. It was as though she was begging to swim another lap in a lake, instead of preparing for the biggest journey of her life.
“It’s time,” Alex said simply.
Sanda-eh waved to Tinka-eh and ran to Alex’s side. They walked to the waterfall. Alex had hoped to make a quiet escape, but when he turned for one last look at the landscape he knew so well, he saw that almost all of the tribe had gathered on the field. They didn’t speak, but simply held a hand up in goodbye.
Alex took a long piece of rope around his waist, then did the same with Sanda-eh and Monda-ak. He only had the experience of going through a door a single time and he had been alone. He wouldn’t risk losing either of them this trip through.
“Remember. Close your eyes, and just keep your feet moving. I’ll tell you when to open them.”
The three of them stood and faced the waterfall.
Alex led them through the door into time.
Chapter Forty-Three
Oregon
The feeling inside the door was instantly familiar to Alex, though he had only experienced it once before. The darkness was total and the silence nearly so.
Monda-ak had not closed his eyes as Alex had instructed. His keen eyes were able to see something even in the darkest of nights or caves, but not in this darkness. He let out one of his mightiest woofs in protest, but the sound barely reached Alex’s ears.
Alex gripped Sanda-eh’s hand tightly and forced himself to take a few steps forward. He stumbled, pulling Sanda-eh with him. He remembered collapsing face first on the beach and fought to maintain his balance.
Then there was light and more-breathable air. Alex blinked and looked around, trying to prepare himself for anything. Even so, he was not prepared for what he saw.
It was his basement, but not as he expected it. The wall had not been rebuilt as he feared. In fact, the bricks of the two walls were still stacked on the floor a few feet in front of him. The bricks that he had laid out like they were a puzzle were still in the same spot, the claw marks of the karak-ta still visible.
To Alex’s eye, it appeared that nothing had changed in the eleven years since he had stepped through the door.
That’s impossible.
That thought had no more flitted through Alex’s brain than the definition of impossible was ratcheted up several notches.
He still held Sanda-eh’s hand in his right, but the oddest thing of all was that his left hand brushed up against the frame of the wall. His left hand. A complete hand.
He held it up in front of his face and gawked.
“Dadda!” Sanda-eh said. “Your hand is back.”
ALEX REACHED OUT AND stroked her hair, trying to keep her calm. What he really needed was someone to stroke his hair and keep him calm.
Monda-ak moved quickly around the room, sniffing at everything, cataloguing an entire new spectrum of smells.
Alex turned his miraculous left hand this way and that, admiring it. His focus traveled up his left arm and he noticed that the long, slicing scar—the one from where Draka-ak had sliced him open—was gone. He lifted his kilt and saw that the dozens of wasta-ta and zisla-ta scars were gone as well.
He lifted his new left hand—or maybe his old left hand—to touch his forehead and noticed another thing. His hair was gone. At least, his long hair that extended down his back was gone. He touched the top of his head and found his old familiar buzz cut.
“What is going on?”
That is what he asked, but in his heart, he knew.
Bista, or perhaps whatever iteration of Janus II was currently functioning, had set the door to return him to approximately the time when he had first stepped through the door. He dashed to the basement window and peered outside.
Blue skies and sunshine. Just like it had been on the day he had left. He picked up his cell phone from the workbench. It felt like a foreign object in his hand. Clumsily, he swiped it to life. It said it was 2:47 P.M. on February 27, 2019.
Alex’s heart leapt. His first thought was Amy.
She’s still four years old. I didn’t even miss her party. She didn’t grow up, thinking I abandoned her.
Monda-ak saw the stairs and went up to explore.
Alex scooped up Sanda-eh and followed him, double-timing it up the stairs.
The giant plush teddy bear sat on the chair, waiting to be delivered.
The dishes from making breakfast still sat in the drying rack. Everything in the house was just as he had left it.
He sat down on his couch, put Sanda-eh on his lap and explained where they were.
“This is where we live.”
Sanda-eh looked around uncertainly at the living room furniture, the television. “I don’t like it. Where is our home?”
“This is our home now. It will take time, but we will get used to it. We have Monda-ak with us, right?”
Monda-ak woofed his agreement. He was indeed with them.
“Do you remember your sister Amy I’ve told you all the stories about?”
“I remember her,” she answered.
“Today is her birthday, and we are going to go see her now.” Alex considered telling her about riding in his pickup truck, but decided it might be best to let her absorb things on her own. Alex’s eye fell on Monda-ak. “And what are we going to do with you? You will never fit in the cab of the truck.”
This was nothing but a jumble of foreign words to either Monda-ak or Sanda-eh, so they stared back at him blankly.
An hour later, Alex had convinced Monda-ak to climb into the back of his truck, but he stared petulantly into the front. Monda-ak was certain he would fit his petite self into the allowable space. Alex was more certain he would not. For once, Alex won the argument.
He had given Sanda-eh a bath and washed her hair. He took her Winten-ah clothes off, which would have made her look like she was attending a costume party and gave her some of Amy’s. Ironically, the two half-sisters were nearly the same age, but Amy’s clothes did not fit Sanda-eh properly.
Alex looked at her outfit with a critical eye and said what dads have been saying since time immemorial. “That will do for now.”
Alex’s stomach was full of butterflies as he kept to the back streets on his way to Mandy’s house. Every time he passed another vehicle, the person gawked or honked at Monda-ak. Alex felt fortunate that he hadn’t hopped out at a red light and taken off after another dog or cat.
When they stopped in front of Mandy’s house, Amy was sitting on the front porch waiting on him, even though he was five minutes early. She ran to the car, saw Monda-ak and froze.
“Whoa. What is that?”
“You said you always hoped we would get a puppy, didn’t you?” Alex asked, sweeping Amy up in his arms and squeezing her so tight he was afraid he might break her.
“That’s no puppy, dad. That is a very big dog!”
“He is very big,” Alex admitted. “His name is Monda
k.”
“That’s a funny name.”
Probably better than Monda-ak, though, right?
Amy saw Sanda-eh sitting in her car seat and said, “Who’s that?”
Man, this is a lot to spring on her. Kids are adaptable though, right?
“That is Sanda.”
“Sandy?”
“No, Sanda.”
“I don’t know that name.”
“And now you do.”
Alex dropped Amy onto the ground, unbuckled Sanda-eh, rechristened Sanda now, and reached behind the seat. He pulled the giant teddy bear out. If he had come with just that as originally planned, Amy might have squealed with delight at it. As it was, the teddy bear was the third-most interesting thing Alex had brought with him.
He reached in the cab, pulled Sanda out and turned toward the house, still holding Amy by the other hand. On the porch, Mandy was standing with her hands on her hips and that uniquely puzzled/angry expression she often had when Alex was around.
Alex took a deep breath and walked up the sidewalk to her.
IT WAS NOT ALWAYS A smooth transition back into twenty-first century life for Alex Hawk.
He had told Mandy that Sanda was the daughter of a friend from the service who had died suddenly and that he had promised to raise her if anything like that came to pass. It was at least a semi-plausible explanation.
There was the normal feeling-out period for Amy and Sanda, but Alex was relieved when they soon became fast friends. He knew that he couldn’t expect Sanda to keep her true origin a secret at her age, so he bit the bullet and told Amy the whole story.
She was skeptical, but before he rebuilt the wall, he showed her the door, and the primitive weapons he had brought back. Most convincing of all, of course, was Sanda and Mondak themselves. Their sudden presence in his life was irrefutable evidence that something unusual had occurred.
Alex found that he could not keep his job as a drywaller. He wasn’t ready to trust Sanda to anyone but himself yet, and he knew Mondak could not bear to be separated from him for ten hours a day. It would have killed him.
Alex lived off his savings for a month while everyone adjusted to their new circumstances.
One night, while watching television, he flipped across a show about tiny houses. Sanda became excited. She pointed to one of the houses and said, “Dadda! Like our home!”
At first, Alex was amused. The idea that his one-hundred-and-fifty square foot home, built with no power tools or even steel and nails, was now a hot and trending subject was amusing to him.
As he watched the craftsman build the house, he got to thinking.
I could do that. I could build those. But, would anyone buy them?
The answer was yes.
Alex had his first one sold before it was completed. All he had done was take pictures of it as he constructed it and shared them on the Facebook page of his local Buy-Sell-Trade group.
He built himself a website—Winten-ahConstruction.com—and things took off from there. Before he knew it, he had orders backed up. Those back-ordered clients begged him to hire people so he could produce more tiny houses faster, but Alex declined. He was looking for a way to make enough to support himself, Amy, Sanda, and Mondak, but he wasn’t ambitious enough to turn it into a large-scale business. He preferred to have more time to spend with his family.
When Alex had been back in Oregon a few weeks, he and Sanda visited the escrow company who had closed the sale of his house. He asked to be put in contact with Benjamin Hadaller, but the woman at the front desk demurred.
“We can’t give out our client’s personal information.”
Alex set Dan Hadaller’s diary on the desk and said, “This is his dead son’s diary. I think he’d want to see it.”
Soon, a blonde older woman approached him. “I’m Karen, the manager. This is quite an extraordinary request. I took it upon myself to call Mr. Hadaller. He says he doubts you have what you say you have, but he gave me permission to give you his address.”
Five minutes later, Alex was in his truck, Mondak again in the bed and Sanda in the car seat beside him. He pulled into the driveway of a sedate, low-slung series of buildings, talked Mondak into staying put for a few minutes, and led Sanda inside.
The front desk person instructed him as to how to find Room 402.
Alex knocked on the door and pushed it open.
Seeing Benjamin Hadaller sitting in a recliner was a shock. He was older than the last time he had seen Dan Hadaller, but not by that much. He looked like they could have been brothers.
The old man looked crossly at Alex, opened his mouth to say something rude, then saw Sanda. Immediately his face softened. He reached into a drawer beside him and pulled out a jar of butterscotch candies. “Can she?” he asked Alex.
Alex nodded and said, “Go ahead,” to Sanda. She was a great icebreaker.
Alex sat in a straight-backed chair that he pulled out from behind a small dining table. Sanda climbed into his lap and popped the candy into her mouth, smiling sweetly at Benjamin. “Thank you,” she said.
Benjamin grinned semi-toothlessly at her, then his face clouded. “Now what in the hell do you want?”
“I knew your son.”
“Impossible. You’re what thirty maybe? Dan’s been dead forty years now. I’m old, but not stupid.”
Alex shook his head. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.” He leaned forward, conspiratorially. “I found your walls. I found the door.”
“Psh,” Benjamin said. “You’re a damn fool too, then.”
Alex shrugged. “You’re not the first to tell me that.” He smiled to himself, remembering a conversation exactly like this with Dan years before. “I went through the door. Dan was there. Alive.”
Benjamin leaned forward, managing to squint and glare at the same time. “Prove it.”
Sanda’s eyes were wide. She had never heard anyone speak with anything but respect to her father.
“Here’s proof. I’ve read it. He did a good job of telling what happened to him after he stepped through the door.”
Benjamin’s glare wavered, then crumbled at the sight of his son’s handwriting on the front of the crude diary.
With sorrowful hope, he looked at Alex. “Is he...” He couldn’t bring himself to finish that sentence.
“Alive? No, I’m sorry. He passed on a few years ago. He spent almost forty-five years in that strange land. He wanted to get back to you. He told me if I ever made it home, to tell you that he did his best to get back, but just couldn’t.”
The old man seemed to sink into himself. He nodded vacantly, pulled the book to him, then opened the cover.
“We’re going to leave you in peace now. I just wanted you to know that your son loved you very much and was thinking about you until the very end.”
Quietly, Alex put Sanda on the floor. He walked to the door and before he opened it, he glanced back at Benjamin Hadaller. He was bent over reading. Tears dripped off his face.
Alex quietly closed the door behind him.
Chapter Forty-Four
Seven Years Later
Amy and Sanda chattered noisily at the dining room table. Alex was in the kitchen, wearing an apron and making pancakes. Mondak laid at his feet, an ever-vigilant garbage disposal.
At the table, the two sisters, eleven years old now, pushed large drawing pads back and forth. They had been working on a secret project for weeks and it was nearing completion.
Alex brought a high stack of pancakes into the dining room. When the girls saw him coming, they swept the papers into a pile and hid them.
“Almost, Dad,” Amy said.
“Yeah, almost, Dad,” Sanda echoed.
She had stopped calling Alex Dadda when she heard Amy referring to him as dad or daddy. Alex kind of missed that. One more small part of his Winten-ah life gone.
“Perfection is the enemy of done, you know,” Alex said.
The two girls looked at each other as if they couldn’t believe ho
w odd their father could be sometimes.
They tore into the pancakes and bacon with gusto. When they had eaten as much as they could hold, Alex dumped all the leftovers into a massive bowl in the kitchen. Mondak consumed it in two bites, licked his chops, and was ready for more.
“Later, big fella,” Alex promised.
Mondak laid down with a huff.
Alex sat down and said, “Young girls need to clean the dishes if they don’t cook the meal.”
Silently, the two stacked the plates and moved to the next phase of cleaning up.
Sometimes, when they’re quiet, I’d almost swear they’re communicating with each other silently. Did Lanta-eh find a way to gift them with that?
Alex shook his head. Now I’m getting ridiculous.
Alex picked up a copy of The Sunday Oregonian and leafed through, not finding much of interest.
Life had been good for Alex since he returned, but not without its sadness.
He and Mandy had never reconciled, but over time, they left their differences behind and became friends. On weekends when Amy was at Mandy’s house, she often asked to have Sanda over as well. On those weekends, Alex found it hard to fill his hours.
Two years after he returned from Kragdon-ah, Mandy had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Eighteen months later, she had died.
From then on, Alex raised two daughters with two sets of instructions from two dead mothers. He did his best to honor their memory and wishes.
He had been happy in the years since he had returned. His tiny house business was as busy as he wanted it to be, and he had those who were most important close to him. He had nothing to complain about.
And yet.
Sometimes, he daydreamed about running free and easy across the plains of Winten-ah in pursuit of a massive deer. Or, just sitting around the smoky caves, telling stories around the fire. Life was simpler in Kragdon-ah. There were times he felt a strong pull to experience that simplicity again.
