Answering him, gravely, I say, “I could kill you.”
River’s shoulders, his just wide-enough shoulders, roll carelessly. “And I’m not gonna die if I fall?”
It’s infuriating that he’s right. And infuriating that he’s in this position. All he was trying to do was protect me. He got to my place early—we were going to drive into the next town to hit the movies—when he saw someone waiting inside for me.
Raised on one too many of his mom’s Investigation Discovery documentaries, River started poking around downstairs. He’s the one who found the federal ID in the unfamiliar car parked in front of my place. He’s the one who said we had to run.
He didn’t even know why the guy was there! He just took it for granted that whatever the federal government wanted from me, it wasn’t good, and he planned our getaway.
When I rolled up, he practically dragged me into his truck and took off at top speed. I guess peeling tires got the aliencatcher’s attention, because after a few minutes, his black car appeared in the rearview mirror.
“We’re going to the caves,” River informed me as he dropped the gas pedal to the floor. Dust rose around us in volcanic plumes, escorting us on our mad race out of town. At some mark River alone recognized, he veered suddenly off the road and into the desert.
Bouncing like a dune buggy, the truck (affectionately known as Carnivale, because “it’s a party on wheels”) bounded through the sagebrush like a boss. The shocks rattled like cans full of coins. More than once, the exhaust met the geology at top speed, but River never slowed. Eventually, he just slammed on the brakes. Miraculously, we stayed on all four tires.
The next thing I knew, we were out of the truck and running as fast as our legs would take us. Grit stuck to our sweaty skins and the taste of earth coated our tongues. Heat licked at us, spilling down from the sun, reflected up from the desert floor.
River skidded down a cleft in the rocks, disappearing into an opening, and I followed.
We got away! I didn’t whoop, because we were still running. But I couldn’t hear anybody behind us. Or anywhere around us, for that matter. My lungs burned from exertion, but I felt like I could jump the Grand Canyon. Me and River, the two of us against the world. We ran from the law and the law—
Shot at us.
It was comical; when he fired at us, it wasn’t a boom. It sounded like the faint snap of smashing caps on rocks, or those snap’em pops that turn up around the Fourth of July. But the blaze of hot lead ricocheting around us—that was real damn real.
River and I cussed in two-part harmony, and slithered through cracks barely big enough to fit through. Reckless, we dropped through holes and scrambled as fast as our feet found purchase.
There was one part of the cavern where we had to get flat on our backs on the ground and slide through. River got through quick. He’s wiry strong, and fast as hell. I’m...not. My nose rasped against the stone. For a second, it looked like me and my big head were gonna get stuck.
Just then, River grabbed my ankles and pulled me through. A sear of pain lit up my face, because it got grated good and deep by the sharp rock. But it was fine—it was a relief to sit up on the other side of it.
In this little hollow, River stood, hunched over me, and searched my face. “Wade, what are you into?”
“Nothing,” I swore, pressing my shirt against my face to soak up the blood.
“Hey, look. We’re gonna fix it, but I have to know what we’re dealing with.”
For a second, I thought about playing it off again. Somebody’s stealing copper from the construction site, and probably they want to finger me for it. Or, they found out that sometimes, I like to go out into the desert by myself, and commune with some peyote and the universe.
Instead, for the first time in my whole life (what I remember of it,) I told the truth. That the 2005 meteor, that took out the water tower on the north side of town—that was me. Me, my ship and a crash landing.
It all spilled out. I told him that my first memory is a beautiful black woman with silver hair, and gems glimmering in a floating crown, kissing me goodbye and shutting the hatch above me. I think the word for her on my lips is mother, but it’s not in English. It’s in a language I don’t know, and I don’t speak, but sometimes, I dream about.
Then I tell him my second memory is a county sheriff, carrying me away from the crash and wrapping me in a blue blanket he kept in his trunk.
It was a little much, all at once.
At first, River said nothing. Then he kicked at the floor and clapped a hand against the stone wall. “You want me to believe—” He slapped the wall again, furious. “Damn it, I’m trying to help you!”
So instead of arguing with him, I demonstrated.
I raised my hands, mostly for effect (it feels good, but I don’t have to wave my hands around to move stuff with my mind,) and he slowly lifted off the floor. So did every bit of debris on the ground, stones and pebbles floating up silently, starting to orbit his feet. It took only a second for him to look down, to realize—
The blood drained from his face. And River? He’s smart. So smart that he could be a detective or a nuclear physicist or anything between. He did the math, alien plus floating, plus an impossible close call driving back from a game at Barstow... Through his graying lips, River pushed a whisper—one full of realization. “The bus. The bus crash. That was you.”
Slowly bringing him back to his feet, I nodded. “I’ve had a couple of other run-ins, but I mostly stayed off their radar until that. What was I gonna do? Let everybody die?”
The funny thing about the way River reacts is that it’s nothing like the ways I played it through my head over the years. He’s not afraid of me. Not fascinated, either. He doesn’t call bullshit, or ask for more proof, or anything like that. He gets mad.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!”
Awesome question. Because I figure there’s two ways to play this: the Tony Stark way, and the Peter Parker way. Stark says you own it and flaunt it and count on having so many eyes on you that nobody could get away with giving you hell... Or it’s Spidey all the way: secret identity. Hide. That’s how to protect yourself, and everybody you care about.
For me? “Everybody” was exactly one River Hart, end of list. Since I wasn’t rich enough to pull off a Stark, I’d stuck to the Parker.
Impatient, River says, “Well?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, flippantly. “I was afraid you’d lose your shit when you found out you’ve been sleeping with a space man.”
River pointed at me. “That’s one reason why you shoulda told me!”
But before we could get much deeper into our feelings, Agent Dickheel found the opening above us. The rasp of his chinos on exposed stone whispered like the slide of a snake. His hard-soled shoes crunched on rubbled stone when he landed. Walking. A flashlight flickering along the seam we slid through.
Grabbing River, I dragged him with me this time. I’d spilled my biggest secret, but we were still in danger.
Running again, we slid across rough floors and banged into stone alcoves. The bright stink of bats puffed up in our faces as we bolted. We followed the cavern until a streak of sunlight beckoned to an escape. We’d gotten turned around though, because instead of bursting onto the desert floor, well. River stepped into empty space. I ran right after him.
We got lucky. We got so damned lucky that some rock climber had left a line in place. Our end was one more step into nothing, and we both almost took it. Instead we jounced, bending the pike that held the rope on one end. We slid, burning our hands on the line. When we came toward the stop, we hung halfway to the other side, and a couple hundred feet in the air.
Captain Jackhole almost went over the side too. He exploded out of the cavern, but caught himself at the last minute. He wore his mortality on his face, his average, symmetrical face—ordinary to
blend in while he hunted aliens. While he tracked us down to torture us, or worse. In a flash, he raised his arm. Silver glinted in his hand.
Twisting on the rope, I did my best to block River’s body with mine.
In jolting response, the pike bent more and we plunged down. This time, River only stayed on the line because I grabbed him. It happened too fast to think, and River was quick to climb back up over my arm. It wasn’t until he was safe-enough again that I started to shake.
Damn. Damn! I just almost lost him. I nearly lost my twin heartbeat, and it would have all been my fault.
I guess because it looked like we were done for, or because he didn’t have the stomach to shoot us in the face instead of the back, the government plebe hesitated. Then he holstered his gun, and backed into the cavern. Shadows swallowed him, followed by silence.
Which is when River started in on knowing I’d been hiding something, and also Superman, etcetera, etcetera. That’s how we got here—at the mercy of gravity, by the grace of the wind. And neither one of those forces had a reputation for kindness.
“Wade,” River says, tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes. His voice is low, reassuring. His gaze falls on me, physical in its weight.
I’ve spent years pressed to his side, making a home in his company, falling in lust into his bed, and love in between all of that. Always, always his voice slips into me—it’s okay if I don’t know fractions; it’s all good with him that I’m not a guy or a girl, no matter what my body looks like. And hey, who cares if I live by myself in high school—do I know how many people wish they could?
River has always made everything okay. And now...he’s going to try to make this okay.
Reaching out, he catches my hand. And even though we should hold on with both, we hold on to each other instead. He finds a smile, a smile like sunrise, that wakes me up like nothing else. “Just pick us up. Like you picked me up in the cave. Step one. Pick us up.”
Even though I don’t need my hands to make this work, I usually have a frame of reference. I’m not waving force around in the air—I’m pushing against the ground, pulling toward the ceiling. But River thinks I can do this. He believes it. I see it in him—his face is certainty, not fear. Encouraging, not pleading.
Twang!
We drop again. This time, the rope doesn’t stabilize. It keeps slipping. The spike behind us grinds in the stone, rock disintegrating, steel ringing as it gives way. We’re falling in slow motion. I see everything, I hear everything, I feel everything. My only thought is, not River. Not him. If only one of us survives today, it has to be him.
Another jolt. Another drop. We’re gonna die.
River looks like those saints in churches, his face smooth and beautiful even though agony’s coming. Lifting my hand to his mouth, he kisses one knuckle and nods encouragingly. “Step one, baby. You can do it.”
There’s nothing physical inside me where the psychokinesis comes from. It’s just like knowing I have the strength to pick up a glass without testing it. I don’t have to tell my hand to do it; it just does. So I forget push and pull. I forget everything except River needs me, and I need him, and today’s not gonna be our last day. It’s not.
I was made for River Hart. Maybe we were even made out of the same star when the universe was born. I have his heartbeat inside my heart, and his heart knows I can do this. I can do this. I can—
I don’t push. I don’t pull.
I rise.
And River rises with me. I feel the rope drop from beneath us, and it just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a strip of ribbon, fluttering toward the canyon floor. Slipping the earth, we stretch out, we reach out—like treading through the sea of the sky to get to each other. With gentle caresses, the wind fingers through our hair and streaks cool fingers through our clothes.
I open my eyes to River’s, wide and full of wonder. We drift in a lazy spiral above the canyon, untroubled by gravity. We are, at once, weightless and impossibly tethered to each other. For the first time since we started running, I hear his breath again. I taste a distant storm in the air. I bathe in River’s warmth, and I close the space between us to claim his mouth.
Galaxies separate the places where our bodies were made, but we harden the same way. We’re daredevil geminis, drunk on adrenaline and rushing with the kind of thrill that comes with fast cars, sure hands and cheating death. Our tongues tangle, and I shiver at the cut of his teeth against my flesh. My thoughts streak ahead to what if what if what if, what if I peeled away his clothes right here and—
A bullet whizzes past our heads. Two more follow it quick. On the cliff below us, the agent runs for higher ground to take aim again.
Damn it, River just taught me to fly. I hope to hell he can figure out how to turn on my laser vision or something, because this chase? It’s far from over.
But at least I know that when River runs with me, I’m never far from home.
* * *
THE CORONATION
by
Meredith Russo
What happened was this: the lights went out. The generators stopped. The radios fell silent. The wheels of the world ceased to turn in the span of a single night. There were seven nights of darkness, of cold and confusion and terror, of prayers and desperate begging and combinations of the two.
Then, as suddenly as the electric lights had gone out, a new yet ancient kind of light flickered into existence. The gods awakened, making themselves known once more in the hearts and dreams of especially sensitive individuals.
The gods followed where their flocks had gone since they last went to sleep, and if the Orisha, the Aesir, the Tuatha De, and the rest were surprised to hear voices calling out thousands of miles from where they expected, they showed no sign.
Legendary creatures crawled out of the shadows and made themselves known—horned serpents, thunderbirds, the Fair Folk, Yoˉkai and creatures for whom no name yet existed. Civilization contracted.
People lamented the sudden chaos, but, as people have always done, they eventually came to terms with the new shape of things. They returned to the land. Three generations passed under the decaying shadows of once magnificent cities, until only the exceptionally old could even remember the time of engines and lights.
Sixty years after the lights went out, on Samhain night, a red-robed druid with gray-streaked hair led a pious crowd into the ruins of what had once been a garden district overlooking a river, the rusted statuary looking more like spirits frozen in revelry than anything man-made.
Their village was cursed, but they knew that a tribulation is often an opportunity to demonstrate devotion, and so they lifted their voices in song. A wicker man loomed above the scene, its featureless face pointed back toward the faint lights of their village nestled in the city’s skeleton.
Beyond the hill and the swift, cold river, crouching low and dark like a hunting cat, the cursed forest waited, and no matter how badly the two young people at the rear of the procession wanted not to, they could not help stealing glances at their fate.
Tall, gangly McKenna pulled her hood back and shook her unbraided black curls loose. Her hands shook despite her high chin and square shoulders. She looked where she imagined the moon rose behind the low clouds and whispered soft, urgent prayers to Cerridwen and Mawu—her village formally paid homage to the Tuatha De, but McKenna kept private shrines to the Orisha to hedge her bets and honor her grandmother. As always during her waking hours, the goddess and the Orisha remained silent, but the habit of prayer still brought comfort.
Diminutive, wild-haired Tiwa hunched his shoulders and glowered at McKenna, his betrothed in the play-act of this ritual, at the sacred spear Summer clutched in the boy’s shivering hands. It served only to make him seem that much scrawnier. Tiwa thought of the damage he could do with such a weapon—his knuckles were rough and scarred from countless fights, and despite his size he knew that, wit
h the element of surprise, he could unleash bloodshed glorious enough to earn the spear a better name than a stupid season.
“Give it to me,” he hissed. His gaze darted to the adults marching before them, but they were too absorbed in the ritual to hear.
McKenna blanched and held Summer closer. She was so like a woman in every way Tiwa hated, and besides piety, cowardice was what he hated most in women. As McKenna’s face twisted in indignation the knot of disgust grew in Tiwa’s stomach. How could fate have wasted manhood on this coward?
“No,” McKenna said. “It’s my responsibility.”
“You don’t know how to use it.” Tiwa sidled close and grasped McKenna’s elbow with startlingly strong fingers. “I do. None of the adults are armed and Brandan’s guards must be further ahead. We can escape.”
“We could...” Uncertainty flickered on McKenna’s slender face, but then she scowled and tried to yank her arm away. It was a show of respect that they weren’t being led in chains—respect for McKenna’s sense of duty, at least, and so long as she had the spear Tiwa couldn’t do much harm or run too far. She knew Tiwa too well—everyone knew everyone in a village this size, and McKenna knew Tiwa was a vicious little monster, nothing like the other girls. Why the gods would waste a woman’s body on Tiwa was a mystery McKenna supposed she would only understand once her spirit floated across the western sea.
“No. Where would we even go? Druids spread news faster than we could run.”
“Stupid!” Tiwa hissed. “There are places druids don’t go. I heard in Atlanta they worship the Orisha first, and out west they haven’t heard of the Tuatha De or the Orisha, but something called an ‘Odin’ and the Wakan Tanka.”
“That far?” McKenna balked. “Do you know how to cross the Great River? Can you traverse the Smoking Mountains? I suppose you’ve got a boat and climbing gear and food hidden in your robes?”
“We can figure it out as we go,” Tiwa said. He grabbed Summer and tugged, but McKenna found her strength and snatched it back so hard she nearly fell over.
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