Edge Walkers

by Shannon Donnelly

  Putting down the bowl next to him, she hesitated. He patted the bedding and she sat close enough that her shoulder brushed his from under her robe, warm and solid, and nothing like a ghost’s.

  Staring into the flickering flames, she dug out the crystal shard, held it so firelight glinted through it and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He glanced at her. The fire played over her features, left them sharp and shadowed. “Tell you what exactly?”

  She winced as if he’d struck her, and he knew he might well as have. But she shrugged, lifted a hand. “Not a good time to play dumb. About that—that Walker you knew.”

  “Tell you when?” he asked.

  Next to him, she stiffened, the crystal stilled in her hand. She pocketed it again, shifted so she could face him. “You might have mentioned something before you took us with you to hunt the thing that was your wife.”

  She sounded angry, and she had a right to that. But he had no idea what to tell her—how did you ever talk about something like that?

  Lifting his foot, he started to unlace his boots. “It’s what we do when we’re out there. We hunt Walkers. There’s a dozen others out there now trying to clear this world. And we try not to die. I’m sorry if I’m used to thinking others know things because they’ve seen it in—”

  “Gideon,” she said and rested her hand on his arm. Her fingers tightened, dug into his robe. “This isn’t about blame, and I think we at least owe each other the truth. And I…I understand not wanting to talk about things you don’t even want to remember. But…okay, so I think it would be good for you to get it out. That’s not why I need to know. About her. About your crossing. It could be important to finding a way back—except, maybe you don’t want to go? Not with her...” she let the words fade, shook her head, but she didn’t look away.

  Reaching out, she touched one finger to the cross he wore. “Is that for her—so you won’t forget? So you won’t let her go?”

  He pulled off one boot, threw it across the room, got the other off and tossed with its mate. Hunching his shoulders, the tired washed over him in a long, smothering wave. “Ghosts have to be put back in graves. The dead shouldn’t keep walking. You don’t forget that kind of thing.”

  “Gideon?” Carrie put her hand on his arm again, kept her touch there. Gideon looked down at her fingers, now clean of blood. He shook his head. She started talking again, her voice soft but sliding rough as sandpaper over his skin. “This isn’t about trying to push into your personal life, although, okay, yes, I—well, we made a…we’re…and I thought…I think, well, maybe what we have, what we feel could be more than just…well, just. This isn’t about that. There’s more at stake here. We’ve—I’ve got a door that’s half open. What if the Walkers figure out how to use it before we do? What if their plan all along has been to get to where we live—get to Earth?”

  Turning, he looked at her, stared into her eyes. She kept her gaze steady and he saw the earnest intent sparking in the depths of the gray-blue. Duty. Conviction. She’d do this without him if she had to. And the thought of the Walkers taking her... No. He wasn’t allowing that.

  Reaching up, he brushed a lock of hair from her face. With a nod, he pushed up to his feet and held out his hand. “Come with me.”

  She glanced at his open palm, put her hand into his grip and he pulled her to her feet before he let go again. He stopped to pick up a stone lamp, held it under the flow of glowing mineral, gathered enough to light their path. Taking her hand again, he led her from the room.

  Barefoot, the crystal cool and smooth on his soles, he found the path at the back of the main cavern. He took her to the sloping ramp that led into the heart of the mountain. Carrie followed, quiet for once, either too tired to ask questions or perhaps she felt it too—the deep steadying serenity of an ancient place. He didn’t know how many thousands of feet had worn the floor smooth, worn a groove so the center dipped slightly. The narrow crystal walls reflected the lamplight with a soft glow.

  They left behind the filtering lights from other rooms—the sharp glints of color softened, dissipated, and darkness closed around them. The smells of cooking fires, of meat roasting, and bodies huddled together dimmed and drifted into cool musty air. The soft rustle of activity, of bedding rolling out, the light clatter of stone bowls, and the splash of water faded until he could hear only his steps and hers, steady padding beats and shallow breaths.

  She stumbled once when the path curved, twisted, and again when it dipped and narrowed. At last, dark walls fell back, widened—he could sense the space opening in front of him from the rush of air on his skin. Rock no longer seemed to press down and he knew they’d stepped into the deepest room. Feeling for its location, he set the lamp on the nearest pedestal. From the walls, minerals caught the pale light, reflected it, brightened and lifted in iridescence blue shimmers to reveal the cavern.

  The learning rings hung in front of them, dangling in long, braided cords hung from the ceiling, a peacock array of deep, flashing colors. More rings hung from the walls on crystalline hooks, pale and gleaming soft like the scales of some living beast. The rings moved, stirred by movement in the cavern, chiming with high, clear, faint tones, twisting to cast their rainbow brilliance onto the walls and floors.

  Carrie let out a breath. He took a moment, too, caught by the beauty of the room as always. A holy spot, sacred and secret. Hidden compensation for all else on the surface. Pulling Carrie close, he whispered to her, for this place deserved hushed respect, “The archives. It’s everything they’ve saved. Their knowledge, their hope. If they can get rid of the Walkers, this could give them back a future.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sometimes you just know things…sometimes memories and experience fit together to form knowledge. And sometimes you know things in your bones—your instincts should be screaming the truth at you right now. — Excerpt Interview Gideon Chant

  Letting go of Gideon, Carrie walked forward. She turned in a slow circle, lifted a hand to touch one of the rings that hung from the high ceiling. It hummed under her fingertips like a struck tuning fork and whispers stirred in her mind. She pulled away fast, tucked her hands behind her back, unsure now if she should touch anything. She glanced back at Gideon.

  He’d moved away, had stepped to the side and bent over a dark, hard-edged stacked pile of square objects near the door. She followed him into that dark corner, leaned over his shoulder and drew in a sharp breath.

  Half the equipment she could name, and the rest looked similar to Temple’s black pineapple—tech from this world. She didn’t know what to do with that, but with the rest…her heart skipped and skidded. Falling to her knees, she brushed a hand over a laptop’s dusty and dented cover.

  Above her, Gideon said, “It doesn’t work. Well, most of it doesn’t. Temple tossed this here along with everything they managed to salvage from the things that fell through with me, but at this stage it’s all junk.”

  Twisting to look at him, she cradled the computer and grinned. “Not when you have a misspent youth and an EE minor.”

  “A what?”

  “Electrical engineering. My older brother had a thing about building his own computers and he pulled me into it since he needed extra hands to hold the soldering iron when he was modifying circuit boards. If the microchips aren’t fried, I should be able to strip this down to basic functions. A charged battery is going to be the trick, but these minerals…light means energy emission, so there’s got to be a way to harness that. If nothing else, I might get an earth-battery going.”

  He stood still, blinking at her, and she shook her head, rose with the laptop still clutched tight. “Right. Forgot—not a science geek. You stick conductive metal plates in the ground.” She started to explain voltaic cells, saw the same blank expression she’d seen not that long ago on Jakes, and said, “Just a guess, but you don’t know about telluric currents, either?”

  “Latin…tellus? Earth currents?”

  She smiled
. “Close enough. Didn’t you ever try the old trick of using a potato to power a light bulb for a science project?”

  He shook his head and reached for her. “I’ve something much more impressive.”

  Tucking the laptop under her arm—no way was she letting this baby out of her reach—she took his hand. She turned, swayed, couldn’t stop the reaction. Fatigue had set in hours ago, but she pushed it back, pushed through it, licked dry, dry lips. She could manage a few hours more. This was important.

  Gideon took her back to the rings, led her through them in a wandering path.

  “These look organized?” she said, half asking and half guessing. They stepped through another row of rings that glowed soft orange and chimed delicate as glass.

  “Oldest ones are in back. They’re color coded, too.”

  Now that she looked, she saw it—pale to dark, a banded spectrum of shades and rainbow hues. How long would it take to learn what each meant?

  Gideon stopped in front of set of rings that stood out, rich as ripe plums. He touched one and it seemed to detach itself from the hooked and braided cord, came easily into his hand. Turning to face her, he held up the ring, thumb and forefinger spread wide. “You need to see this.”

  She looked into his face, into the strain etched there, the grief worn into his skin and made part of him. “Archive? Historical records? Recorded thoughts?” she said, certain she couldn’t be far wrong about her guesses, given what she knew of Temple and his people.

  He nodded. Clutching the laptop, she thought about the implications behind how Gideon handled this ring—with respect and resentment. She was making vast leaps of logic…and yet she knew. This ring held part of his memories—his thoughts. A part of his past he didn’t want because it was one you could relive.

  “Your crossing,” she said, made the question into a statement. She wanted to reach out, take it from him, put it away where he wouldn’t be touched by it again. A ridiculous idea since it was no more than what he already held too close in memory. But she still wanted to shield him.

  She kept her stare on him, even as he kept his on that dark, dark ring. Mouth pressed tight, she knew she had to help him with this, had to make it possible for him to share this connection with a reciprocal offer. It would seem one-sided otherwise, and too great an exposed vulnerability. Better to know his memories wouldn’t be misunderstood…or undervalued.

  “My...” she swallowed, wet her lips, tried again. “My mother died when I was in my teens. I still…even talking about it…it’s been well over a decade and I still get this knot in my chest. I still want to hit something because why her? And...and I miss her. We all do…did. Her getting sick tore up the family. But my dad went through two wars without anything happening, and sometimes I wonder if it was the worry for him that ate at her. And some days I just want to pick up the phone and have her there so I can bitch about work or have her listen to me cry about my crappy love live, and…and just be there. And I...I saw Chand, too. He was someone I worked with, so no, I don’t know what this is like for you, but I kind of do.”

  Gideon looked at her at last, just a flicker of eye movement, the rest of him held still. She read his answer in his eyes, knew he didn’t have words to go with these memories. Leaning down, she put the laptop by her feet. She straightened and put out her hand and asked, “How does this work?”

  He watched her a moment longer, eyes shadowed. She knew he still wasn’t certain about this. But he’d set his jaw. He’d made up his mind.

  Voice rough and low, he said, “It won’t hurt, but you’ll feel things. What I felt. You’ll see what I saw. It’s an experiential record.”

  She nodded. She’d go through his crossing as if she was inside his skin. She shivered, remembered how her own had been like a lot like getting tossed into a tree shredder. A tingle numbed her fingers, spread to her hand. The memory of her hand caught in the Rift snagged in her chest, caught a heartbeat for that imprinted sear of pain. Pushing it away, she flashed a smile at Gideon—she wasn’t sure about any of this, but he didn’t have to know that.

  “Hell of a way to get to know someone,” she said.

  The joke fell flat. He didn’t smile but he put the ring onto her forefinger. It slipped over her knuckle, cool and smooth. He twisted it and the material warmed, closed around her skin. Not metal—a semi-solid liquid similar to glass? A flexible crystal?

  She stopped being able to think.

  The ring spread itself, thinned and wrapped around her finger like a living thing. She looked up—and stared at a desert sky and dirt road.

  She bounced along in an SUV, steering wheel hard under her fingers, a map spread out to her right, paper crackling, a woman—my wife, came the thought, echoing in her mind like Gideon’s voice—in the next seat, two undergrads in the back with Max who came on all of these research trips, and Joe, a local sheep farmer they’d hired last week to act as guide and help smooth access with the Navajo nation.

  They’d been to Hopewell back East, but there was so much development around the Chillicothe earthworks, too much interference to gather accurate data. So they were heading out to the Anasazi causeways—the details filled into her mind, and the images sharpened—in New Mexico where a longitudinal line linked the Aztec Ruins, Chaco Canyon and Casas Grandes. Magnetic ley lines—they were here to measure and study them.

  Next to her, the woman spoke and a name popped and other memories popped into her head—Jill, who’ll be twenty-eight in two months but she won’t live that long. Frustration and excitement mixed in her voice as she said, “There’s got to be a fourth site to balance the others.”

  “Four to match the four sacred mountains of the Diné, the four sacred directions?” The words echoed in her head, in Gideon’s voice, in his memoires. Her vocal chords vibrated with the sounds, her breath hissed on the sibilant s’s and her teeth rattled when they bounced through another ditch on a road that was more sheep track than highway. Headlights and moonlight flooded the arid land, left it stark. Coyote eyes flashed gold, two pairs, and disappeared into the night.

  The image faded, blurred, sped and slowed, reformed with the truck stopped, equipment in place—lanterns, solar lights glowing soft, laptops on folding camp tables, a tent nearby, canvas flapping in a cool wind that smelled damp with coming rain. EM meters clicked in the background and a generator hummed loud in the night, tucked back a quarter mile at base camp. Lightning flashed, a distant glare on the horizon. Gideon’s remembered excitement thrummed in her veins, dulled by her own dread for what was to come.

  “This is the spot,” Max said. Good ol’ Max, Gideon thought, and Carrie’s throat tightened because Max would be dead in ten minutes. Shock skidded down her back in a cold ripple. Gideon had to have recorded this after it had happened. After he’d crossed. His grief welled, pushed stinging wetness to her eyes. But she stared at the scene, caught by it.

  “Okay, this is...readings just went off the scale,” Max said, and he bent over a meter on the ground.

  Power spike, the words echo to her from her lab, from her own memories. Heart hammering, she drew in a breath, wanted to yell, Go, get away, run! She wanted to run herself. Instead, she turned and watched the generator burst out sparks. She saw with Gideon’s eyes as the Rift opened overhead.

  It split the sky, obliterated stars—more stars seemed to fall out of that endless blackness. Balls of light. The stink of ozone lifted and Carrie’s heart knocked into her chest. Gideon’s confusion settled over her, a buffering layer of stunned shock for what he hadn’t known, what he knew now. What she knew.

  Max died first.

  The light fell on him. She saw it shimmer on his skin. The light sparked, slid, cut a gash into his chest as he batted at it, screaming. It slipped inside, crawled through the jagged, bleeding tear. His body jerked, fell to the desert sand, twitched and held still. He rose again with jerky movements, eyes glowing brighter than moonlight.

  Equipment—lights and laptops—sparked as well, shorted and
burnt with a flash.

  Turning, Carrie saw through Gideon’s eyes, through his panic, saw one of the grad students stagger towards Jill, the kid’s skin sparking. Gideon acted on instinct, grabbed the hunting knife strapped to his hip—his dad’s, and he wore it from habit on these trips. He threw underhanded and the blade struck in the back of the thing headed for Jill. The body arched, clawed at the blade as something twisted and dark spilled loose. The grad student’s body exploded with a metallic scream and a sharp pop. Around it, equipment burst into flame. Jill yelled, cried out for help.

  Gideon staggered to her side, reached for her. But light fell from the Rift, showered over her and into her in a white, blinding rain. He tried to throw himself between Jill and the edges falling, but already something was tugging at him, pulling, dragging him from her like a riptide’s undertow.

  Jill stopped screaming, looked at him, the humanity in her dark eyes fading. He yelled at her, called her name, clawed an inch closer, caught her bloody hand. She slumped to the ground, her breath released in a long gush, brushing his face with its fading warmth. His breath fled, too, punched from him. “No…god, no!” he yelled, willing the world to be otherwise. Her eyes slid closed.

  Gideon’s sorrow welled, dark and yearning and vibrant against blank denial. For an instant, he thought prayers could be answered—Jill’s eyes opened again. But they snapped wide, sparked bright yellow-gold. She reached for him.

  Strong, lean fingers caught his arm, clawed into his skin. His body arched, contracted, spasmed under that sparking touch. Pain shot up his arm, through him, a jagged bolt of it, searing, mind-stealing, heart-stopping. With a gasp, he tried to yank free, fell backwards, dragged what had been Jill with him—into the widening Rift.

  Blackness swept into her, through her. Carrie staggered, gasped, and she didn’t know if that was Gideon’s agonized cry coming out of her or her own. But something caught her, stopped her from falling, lowered her slow and easy to the floor. She lay shivering, shaking, breath ragged, heart thudding into her ribs, wanting only to curl into a ball and keep her eyes shut—but that didn’t shut out the visions in her head. She gulped down another breath. Fingers tugged at hers and cool air slipped around the sweated skin where the ring had been. Tension bled out of her, fled with the ring’s removal. She opened her eyes and stared up at Gideon.