Rogue Touch

by Woodward, Christine

  Fast as a wildebear, I turned around and ran the hell out of there.

  And Ran. And ran. Up until now I’d barely been able to use that wildebear’s speed. The farthest I’d run was the mile between Joe Wheeler’s house and the parked Chevy truck. Despite everything going on inside me, the thunderstorm of jealousy and sorrow and panic, it felt right good to run this way, even with the hot air against my face. My legs moved like strands of spaghetti, hurling through the air so fast I could barely feel them underneath me. It seemed I was covering miles and miles, without getting a bit tired, just running so fast I was very nearly flying.

  The thing is: it really doesn’t matter how fast you run, when the people you’re running from can transport themselves right to you with a little whoosh and a zip.

  I skidded to a halt, my heels kicking up dust. Standing on one side of me were two of those ponytailed henchmen from the Chevy lot, huge and fierce-looking. I whirled around, and there on the other side stood Alabaster, King, and Touch.

  “Rogue,” King said, taking a step forward. “You already know it’s no use running. Just come back with us now.”

  Probably I should’ve found a way to play it cool, close to the vest, keep my emotions hidden. Instead, I turned to Touch and yelled at the top of my lungs, for all these enemies and the whole wide future world to hear. “You were kissing her!”

  Finally Touch spoke. He said, “She’s my wife.”

  He said it so calm. So matter-of-fact. The way you’d say, I have blue eyes, or I’m from Mississippi. A statement of fact that can’t be got around and won’t be changed. Just like all Wendy Lee’s memories had tried to tell me.

  Those thunderclouds in my chest broke open, raging, lightning along with them. I felt like I’d bust open, raining down on all of them. I wanted to rain down on all of them. What did I have to lose at this point? I’d already left my whole damn world behind. Everyone I ever knew in my life had been dead ten thousand years. Except for Touch. My married boyfriend. There was no way in hell I’d go back to that room—their house. The only thing that had felt any good was running. Suddenly I remembered that I didn’t only have wildebear speed. I had wildebear strength.

  So I spun around and kicked one of them henchmen-type guards. I kicked him hard as I could, right in the stomach. And when he hit the ground like he’d been shot by a bazooka, I went ahead and kicked the other one, too.

  Then I ran.

  From behind me I could hear a great commotion of whistles and long, low notes. I thought I could tell that Alabaster was saying something like “Shoot her, shoot her,” and King was saying something like “No, we still need her.” But someone back there must have agreed with Alabaster, because I heard a kind of whooshing, crackling noise, coming up behind me faster than I could run, and when I turned around I saw a red-orange ball rushing toward me, the same kind that had blown up that ’65 Mustang back in Napoleon, Ohio.

  Time seemed to click into slow motion. I ducked down, and the ball whizzed over my head, missing me, but then another one came, aimed at my new level, and I had to jump out of the way. And then another. And then Touch appeared beside me, out of nowhere, not flanked by his wife and father, but all by his lonesome.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  And then he lifted both hands and kind of flicked his fingers out at me, like you would to splash water at someone if your hands were wet. But instead of water, rushing out from his fingertips came great, golden threads of light. Never mind what he’d just said. I thought to myself, Touch is going to kill me. Right here. Right now. The only person in the world that I love is going to kill me dead.

  Except that’s not what happened. Instead of striking me like a weapon, the threads took form all around me, crackling like electricity. And the next thing I knew everything—the night, the henchmen, King, Alabaster, and Touch—was gone.

  For a while the whole world went very quiet. There was no sensation of moving. No sound. I couldn’t even see or feel a floor beneath me. Everything was just white, like traveling in a cloud. Or really more like sitting in a cloud. A very thick, still cloud on a day with no wind at all.

  Trust me, he’d said. It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of choice. Trust him or not, here I was, just floating, maybe in the air, maybe not. I couldn’t even be sure of the time zone, or the planet. Had he blasted me back into the past? Or the future? Or had he sent me to another realm entirely, another world, another galaxy?

  Finally the feeling of stillness shifted a bit. There was a little sort of drop in the center of my stomach. Then a rush, like an elevator going down. The falling grew faster and faster until finally I felt myself plunge underwater. When I opened my eyes, the white had gone, and I could see bubbles from my own breath rising up in front of me, and a whole lot of blue-gray water. I looked up, holding my breath, and saw the surface not too far above, the bright, bright sun shining through it. There was nothing to do but swim, upward. To where I found a raft waiting for me, a good-sized wooden raft, flat enough that it didn’t take much to haul myself on top of it. For a while I just lay there, facedown, clinging to the boards in relief. When oxygen finally moved in and out of my body in a normal way, I sat up and took a look around me.

  Water. Nothing but water for miles and miles. No birds in the sky, no land in sight. Just softly rolling waves, blue sky, and that huge, burning sun. I hoped Touch had thought to make the jumpsuit material UV-resistant. As it was, I sure wished I was wearing a hat. And sunglasses. The sun beat down mercilessly, and I squinted into the light, raising my hand to shield my eyes. For some reason the light out here seemed less foggy. I felt I could see much more clearly. This, I thought, is the real Earth. A vast ocean, no sight of land, hot sun, and waves. We humans were land animals in a world made out of water, just biding our time till the planet’s real substance rose to cover us up for good.

  And then, there on the edge of the horizon, I saw a boat. A beautiful white sailboat, headed straight toward me. A little flicker of fear rose up, along with a glimmer of hope.

  I thought of everything Touch had done for me, like turning back time to come and get me out of Jackson. Even as a prisoner he had found a way to forge a suit for himself so he could travel back across the years to find me. Would a man who did all that for a woman leave her to go back to his wife?

  You bet he would, said Wendy Lee’s voice inside my head. I pushed that voice aside.

  Trust me, I heard instead.

  Sure enough, that boat came clearer and clearer into view. Only one person on board, steering straight in my direction. Wearing gloves, not on account of the cold but so, when he came up beside me, he could reach out to take my hand and help me on board.

  I climbed aboard that boat and stood on the deck with Touch. Then I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face in his chest, reveling in the feel of his breathing, the scent of him, and most especially his arms, hugging me back just as hard. Maybe even a little harder. It felt so damn good I forgot to worry or even think about anything else, until I remembered I couldn’t kiss him, which was just about all in the world I wanted to do.

  Instead we just held each other, pressing as tight as we could, till it was a wonder our bones didn’t crack beneath the grip of it.

  Touch steered the boat, and I stood behind him, my Arms around his waist, my cheek resting on the spot just below the nape of his neck, safely covered by his shirt. Obviously I had a lot of questions, but what I wanted to know first didn’t have anything to do with the politics in this new world.

  “Hey, Earthling,” I said. It felt so good just being with him again, all quiet and together, that I almost hated to start talking.

  “Yes, Earthling?” he said. His hair kind of tickled against my face.

  “How long has it been, since they took you out of Arizona?”

  “Much longer for me than it has been for you,” he said.

  Of course he must have known I’d figured that much out. “Like how long?” I said.

  “A year?
” he said. “Maybe a little more.”

  A whole year. That’s how long it must have taken King to find me without Touch’s help, sifting through time and space. Meanwhile, for me, three days without him had been like an eternity.

  “That’s a long time,” I said.

  “It is,” he agreed.

  “Did you think about me?”

  “Every day,” he said. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel a smile, radiating from his skin through his shirt to my face. I smiled, too.

  “Were you happy to see me when they brought me in to you?”

  “Well,” he said, “the truth is I’d been working hard for quite some time, to keep exactly that from happening. But the heart doesn’t always know logic, does it? I couldn’t help but be happy to see your face. Because I love you.”

  “Still?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Still.”

  “How come you didn’t just come with me?” I said. “How come you sent me out here alone? That scared me to death.”

  “I had something to do,” he said. “Before I came for you.”

  “Cotton?”

  “Cotton.”

  He turned then and put his arm around me. At the same time he adjusted me a little bit so that we stood shoulder to shoulder. I leaned against him and put my other hand on the steering wheel. Without asking, I assumed we were heading toward land, so I let my gaze search the horizon. At the same time I didn’t care if I ever saw land again. It was perfectly fine with me to stay out here, on the water, the sky melting around us and Touch’s arm around me, holding me close.

  Just the other day and also ten thousand years ago: King found Touch in Arizona and whisked him on back home.

  But before that, when Touch first came to my world, he hadn’t been working for Arcadia at all. He’d been working against it, just like King said.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

  “What would you have thought? How would you ever have trusted me?”

  “So is it true what else he said?” I asked very carefully. “That the whole reason you came was to bring me back and use me like a weapon?”

  “Yes,” Touch said. And I guess that should have terrified me. But I knew that we wouldn’t be here, and that he wouldn’t have answered that way, if it were still the truth.

  “Listen,” he went on. “I was raised on certain ideas. Of everything that had been taken from me, from us. Our families. My father has been planning this takeover his whole life. He’s been grooming me my whole life. But when I got to your world…”

  “You saw what it was like,” I said, real quick. “You landed in Smith Park, and you saw what happens in a world where the wealth belongs to just one small group.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And then I met you.”

  “And you fell in love.”

  “Yes,” he said again.

  “Alabaster said that you summoned her. And told her to bring the wildebears.”

  “I wanted to make you stronger. I wanted her to think I was still trying to bring you back, so they wouldn’t come after me as much.”

  “And in the caves?”

  “I couldn’t think of any other way. To get us out of there.” My silence at that must have worried him, because after a minute he added, “I love you.”

  Call me a simple girl. But for right at that moment, those three words were all I needed to hear. Above our heads, a little pink had started to paint itself across the sky, and the bright, bright sun seemed to move lower. Same old Earth. I could even tell which direction we were headed, watching the sun go down directly behind us. I wondered which part of the country lay underneath us, beneath all this water.

  And at the same time, I didn’t really care. I had everything I needed in the world, right on this old boat.

  Touch and I slept belowdecks, in a cozy cabin. He told me some more of the story. How it was kind of true that Arcadia had fallen—King and his followers had reclaimed the castles and gotten all their people off the fishing boats. But Arcadia wouldn’t go down without a fight; people were even now gathering on the sea and land to take back their world.

  “It’s something we haven’t seen in hundreds of years,” Touch said. “A war. It will go on for a long time, and it will be ugly. Dangerous. My father’s people are outnumbered, but they have powerful weapons. In the end, I do believe Arcadia will win.”

  I asked Touch if he could escape, why he hadn’t gone to help Arcadia in the first place.

  “Because I knew they were still looking for you,” he said. “I couldn’t risk them finding you without my knowing.”

  “But Touch,” I said, “what was with that kiss?”

  He smiled, looking a little chagrined. “I needed you to run,” he said. “It was the only way I could send you to safety. It wouldn’t have worked inside that cell.”

  “And now that you’re free?”

  “I go to war,” he said.

  “So Arcadia will have you,” I said. “You can build weapons for them.”

  Touch nodded, real solemn, and I thought on who those weapons would be used against, his very own family. I guess I should’ve been scared, or at least freaked out. But truthfully what I felt was overjoyed. I didn’t even want to fall asleep. After Touch drifted off, I lay awake, my head on his chest, my arms wrapped around him. I felt so glad to be in this time, with him. I felt so sorry for the girl I used to be, the one who’d run away, out of Jackson, without him. One thing I felt sure of: I didn’t ever want to be without him again.

  Finally sleep took hold of me, even through my happiness. I expect I slept the whole night with a giant smile plastered on my face. When I woke up, Touch was lying beside me, raised up on one elbow, watching me sleep.

  “Hey there, Earthling,” he said.

  “Hey, Earthling.” I reached out to touch his hair, and he lifted up the edges and tickled the edge of my nose with it, which made me smile.

  We went up on deck and ate a little meal he’d prepared. Fish again, this time some kind of shellfish with a brown sauce, even more delicious than the meal King had brought me. But I couldn’t concentrate much on the food.

  “So, is Cotton with the Arcadia people now?” I asked.

  Touch got a very sad look on his face. “It’s a tough call,” he said. “The truth is, for all Alabaster’s flaws, she loves her son. But if I leave him with her, he’ll grow up like I did, poisoned by all the wrong beliefs. And if I bring him over to Arcadia…”

  “Either way,” I said, “he grows up in the middle of a war.”

  “And he’ll never be safe with either side. Even with Arcadia, his family’s history will dog him.”

  “You have the same history.”

  “Did I say I’d be safe? I’ll never be safe, Rogue, not in this world. Not until it’s all over. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to—don’t have to—stay and fight.”

  “You’ve got to do what’s right,” I said, feeling proud of him.

  Touch nodded. He looked real sad. “It’s been a lot of hard decisions,” he said. “Like the fact that the thing that’s best for the two people I love most is to be far away from here. From me.”

  I nodded like I agreed with him. Then I said, “Wait a minute. What?”

  “Rogue. You must know I have to get you out of here.”

  I told myself to calm down. I had to trust him. So I waited to hear the rest, figuring he was taking me to some rebel spot. Like, maybe an outpost in the middle of the ocean, or a piece of land on another continent.

  “So where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’re going back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Back to your own time,” he said.

  It wasn’t on account of Touch’s specially constructed suit that my whole body went cold. “No,” I said. “No way. Not gonna do it.”

  “Rogue…”

  “No!” I didn’t care how delicious the food was. I picked up my plate and sailed it overboard like a Frisbee. The shrimp or wha
tever flew up into the air and then rained down into the water. It goes to show how far out to sea we were; there were no birds to swoop down and get it.

  He stood up and took a few steps toward me. I didn’t yell, but my voice came out so strong and fierce it might as well have been a yell. “I’m here,” I said. “With you. Where I belong. Where I’ve always wanted to be.”

  A funny kind of expression crossed over his face. Smart man, Touch, and I knew he was reacting to the world “always.” After all, how long had I known Touch? Nowhere close to ten thousand years. Nowhere close even to one year. A matter of weeks, really. Still what I said was exactly true. Being with him was what I had always wanted, going way back to before I ever knew he existed. I’d wanted to be with him all those lonely years, living with Aunt Carrie. Even when I’d leaned in to kiss poor Cody, what I was really doing was yearning toward him—Touch—I just hadn’t known it yet. Across all these millennia, again and again, we were meant to be together. Somewhere. Sometime. Together.

  “I love you,” I said, like it was an incantation. Like it would bring him to his senses and make him realize that I couldn’t go anywhere, not ever, except for where he was.

  “And I love you,” he said. “But Rogue. Don’t you want to know what happened to Gordium?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Because it’s not going to happen to me.”

  “He died,” Touch said. “By his own hands. Because he could no longer bear all the memories of the people they made him…”

  “Stop!”

  “Don’t you see how valuable you are?” Touch said. “Not only can you incapacitate people with a touch, you can absorb all their knowledge. No interrogation needed. Just one touch from you, and whole worlds of information can fall into the wrong hands.”