by N. D. Wilson
He watched Tiny step forward and point his gun straight down at him. If his arms had been bendy, he would have been able to push Glory off him in time.
There was a stampede on the stairs. A Ping-Pong paddle spun through the air, crashing into Tiny’s cheek. Drew Dill dove out of the stairwell and put his wide shoulder into Tiny’s ribs.
Sam saw the flash from the barrel and felt something punch him clean through the gut. Boys erupted up the stairs. Two roaring redheads. A boy with a Mohawk and a knife. Tiny fought to keep his feet. But hissing sand swept across the room, swallowing them all, swallowing the world. And then there was nothing.
“IDIOT! WHAT DID THAT FOOL HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH? OH, I added inches more to that awkward frame. Tiny, indeed! Ha. And what did he gain? A chance to ruin some poor girl’s life? She had nothing to do with this. Nothing!”
Sam opened his eyes. His breath was still gone. He was still on the Spaldings’ living room carpet, still staring at the ceiling, but the lights were all off. Moonlight flowed down on him through the windows.
And he was in pain. More than usual. A lot more. He fought to breathe and barely managed a burble. A man in a black robe stepped into view and dropped into a crouch beside him. His jet hair was wild and uneven but contained by a rag strip tied tight across his forehead. His skin was dark and smooth except for two deep creases high on his cheeks. His teeth were wide and white in the moonlight, and his black eyes were overflowing with irritation. He was wearing the black shirt and white collar of a priest.
“How’s the pain?” he asked. “Manageable? I need time to think.”
Sam shook his head. Very much no. His lips sputtered.
“Where . . . Glo . . .”
“Right here,” the priest said. “Slightly better off than you are.” With a cool hand the priest turned Sam’s head. Glory was lying on her side next to him. Her cap had fallen off and her face was slick with sweat. Her eyes were wild, searching the room.
“Breathe,” the priest said. “Stay calm. Try not to wake the Spaldings. Things can always get worse. Always.”
“I don’t—” Sam began to cough.
“Understand?” the priest asked. “Right. Well, you never do and you don’t need to. Not yet, at any rate. We’ve only hopped into tomorrow night till I can settle on my next move. It isn’t speed chess but sometimes it feels like it.”
Sam shut his eyes. Now would be a lovely time for a daydream. But he was probably daydreaming already. This couldn’t be real. He opened his eyes again and they locked into Glory’s.
“Who . . . ,” she said. “Who . . .”
The priest was pacing. “If I reset you two in the moment before the shooting, there’s no surety that you’ll remember this, and Tiny might be expecting it and be waiting. And if Sam has proven anything, it’s that he’s incapable of following instruction. If I reset earlier, your memories will be even worse and the whole thing liable to repeat. You’ll be in as much pain . . .” He stopped. “Pain.” The priest dropped back into a crouch, squatting flat-footed between Glory and Sam. “Hang onto this pain. Promise me. Feel it. Remember the agony of this moment or you will be doomed to forget and repeat it. Can you do that? Both of you get to the Bunk House. The Bunk House. Lock the door and wait for me.”
Panting, Glory eyeballed the priest like he was a nightmare.
“Who . . . ,” she said again. “Who . . .”
“Father Atsa Tiempo,” the priest said. “We’ve never met, but you’ll have to trust me. I’ve known Sam for more than a century. He’d vouch for me if he could remember any of it.”
Father Tiempo crossed his arms, placing his right hand on Sam’s head and his left on Glory’s. Then the priest shut his eyes and began to whisper. His quiet voice was like an unbending wind from another world. Sam felt like he was flying apart. Racing sand peeled him away layer by layer.
The pain in his stomach vanished first. And then the rest of everything.
SAM HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG HE’D BEEN STANDING IN THE sun. Had he dozed off on his feet? It wouldn’t be the first time. His eyes were still shut. A moment ago he’d been in total darkness, but now sunlight was filtering bright and bloody red through his eyelids.
“Sam!”
He opened his eyes, immediately throwing a stiff arm up in front of his face to shield a squint. A girl was standing beside the Spaldings’ house in a baggy old SADDYR T-shirt. She was poking and prodding herself like something was missing. She looked up.
“Sam!” Her eyes were wide. “This is insane. That was for real, right? Who was that guy? How did he do that?” She moved out into the sun, pointing at Sam’s stomach. “You’re fine. You should be a dead bloody mess, but you’re fine. Where is he?”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “You’re Gloria, right? I’ve seen your picture before.”
Glory froze. “Not funny.”
A fist pounded on glass and Sam looked up at the second-story windows of the pink house.
“I should go,” Sam said. “Your dad has someone waiting for me.”
“No!” Glory stepped directly in front of Sam. “Are you nuts?” She glanced up at the house and then grabbed Sam by the arms to pull him away.
Sam jerked his arms free and glared at the girl. “Don’t touch me again.”
Glory’s eyebrows jumped. “Really? You’re just gonna walk right up there and get shot all over again? We were just here, Sam. We talked, you went in, I went in, we both got shot. Shot! Wait . . . when we were here last time, you told me that you flushed the last pages of Poncho. Now how would I know that?” She leaned all the way into Sam’s face, searching his eyes with hers.
Sam licked his lips. Nothing made sense. He was lost. He was always lost. His head was spinning, his vision was blurring, and the girl he didn’t know was talking to him like he was doing something very wrong. And every part of him said she was right. Every part of him except his brain.
“I was shot?” he asked. “When?”
“In about two minutes,” Glory said. “The priest said he’d meet us in the Bunk House. Dad can handle that freak on his own. We have to go now!”
“The priest?” Sam shook his head. “No. No.” He shut his eyes and shook his head harder. “The priest isn’t real. I’m supposed to be doing something else right now. Life lessons. I’m going to get in trouble.”
Glory made a fist and punched Sam in the stomach as hard as she could.
Sam doubled over and fell onto the hot rough ground. Pain. Fighting for breath, he looked up at Glory standing over him.
“Does that hurt enough?” she asked. “Remember now? Think about the pain.”
Sam spat. Tiny had stood over him and pulled the trigger. He’d fired right through Glory’s back and into his stomach. It didn’t make sense, but it had happened. And the priest . . . the priest was real.
He looked into Glory’s eyes and he nodded. She grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet. A tall shape moved behind the glass in the upper window.
Somehow, Sam knew what was coming. He jerked Glory to the side and dragged her into a run.
Tiny had guessed right. Sam would have walked right back into the same trap. But not Glory.
A gun fired behind them as they ran. Shards of window spun down through sunlight.
3
The Legend of Poncho
SAM BANGED THROUGH THE BUNK HOUSE ENTRANCE AND staggered along between the two rows of metal bunks. Glory slammed the door shut and leaned her back against it. Both of them were breathing hard. An air conditioner was whispering through ducts in the stained ceiling. Every window had been curtained, but sunlight the color of custard still oozed through them.
“Why am I so stupid?” Sam jogged between the beds to another door at the far end of the Bunk House. When he had checked the lock he turned around. “I never understand anything. I think something is real and it isn’t. I think something is fake and it’s actually real.”
Sam thumped his head against the wall and then blinked hard like he
was trying to clear his vision. He looked back at Glory. “You might think I’m crazy, but this isn’t the first time stuff like this has happened. I’ve had the longest dreams you could imagine—like living a whole life—until I completely forget this place or that I was ever here, and then I wake up in the desert with a helicopter landing next to me and some fat man-nurse starts sticking needles in my arms and they bring me back here and your parents tell me that I was working on a fence and was only lost for one night.”
Glory slumped down until she was sitting on the floor. She buried her head in her hands.
“Something is seriously wrong with me,” Sam said. “I mean that for real. I feel totally crazy.” He pointed a stiff arm at Glory. “If I had to bet right now, I would say that you’re probably not even here, that the Spaldings don’t even have a daughter, and that I’m making all of this up. All of it. In a second, I’ll think I’m chasing a stagecoach or a train or a truck and then I’ll get shot or trampled by a horse or thrown off a cliff and I’ll wake up . . . somewhere. Could be the helicopter and the fat nurse all over again.”
“Stop talking.” Glory’s voice was muffled by her hands.
“I’m useless,” Sam said. “The crazy kid with brain problems. Talking to some imaginary girl.”
“Stop it!” Glory looked up. Her eyes were wet and her skin had gone gray. “You might not know if I’m real, but I do. I know I’m real, so shut up about it already. I just got shot, and then a priest moved me through time!” She held up her hands. Her fingers were trembling. “That was real, Sam! Real! I’m freaking out right now. I think . . . I’m going . . .” She leaned over sideways, fighting a gag.
“Oh, don’t puke,” Sam said. “If you do, I will, too. Even if this is a dream.”
Bedsprings squealed beside Sam and he jumped away, startled. Father Tiempo yawned and sat up on a top bunk, stretching. Sand streamed down off his lap. He’d changed. His hair was pure white and deep hard canyons lined his dark face. His eyebrows had thickened, and his hands were gnarled and scarred.
“Hello, Samuel.” The priest yawned. And then smiled. “So glad you made it. Glad I made it. There were a few decades there that were too close to call. And I will be dying soon. You are ready for the journey? Come. Time may be endless, but this moment is not.”
The priest hopped lightly off the bed, his movements younger than his looks.
Glory scrambled to her feet, tossing back her hair and eyeing the priest. She held up a finger. “Hold on! We’re not going anywhere until you explain what just happened. We just saw you five minutes ago, and you were a lot younger.”
Father Tiempo smiled. “I was younger and you were older, though only by one twist of the earth. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Spalding, but you aren’t going anywhere at all. From this moment, you will continue to live your life at the normal rate and in the normal way, passing into the future at approximately one second per second. And please accept my apologies for the disruption. Your involvement was the result of villainy now corrected, and is no longer required. Tiny has retreated to another time, where you will never see him again. But Sam is coming with me, back to where the pain and failure in his story began.”
“Gloria,” Sam said. “Gloria . . . is this him?”
“Don’t call me that,” Glory said.
“Sorry,” said Sam. “I thought you were Gloria.”
“You call me Glory.” She slid closer to Sam, gripping his forearm protectively. “I don’t think you should take him anywhere. It messes his memories up and he hates it.”
Sam looked at Glory and then at the priest. He didn’t want to go anywhere, especially if it meant more confusion. He had plenty of that already.
Father Tiempo scratched his thick eyebrows. His old eyes were completely focused on Glory.
“It’s regrettable, yes, but Sam’s memory troubles are to be expected, and he recovers. Somewhat. You are more unexpected. What do you remember from when you were shot tomorrow night? How much from our first meeting?”
“Everything,” Glory said. “You talk a lot even when you think people aren’t listening. You were deciding where to move us so the killer wouldn’t be waiting. You said it was like speed chess. You said you added inches to Tiny’s frame, which made me wonder how. You can stretch people? You said you had known Sam for a century and you told us to focus on the pain and meet you in the Bunk House. You crossed your arms to touch our heads and then everything was all wind and sand. Oh, and you said your name was Atsa Tiempo. I was thinking about that after everything went dark but before we were back in the courtyard. I knew a boy named Atsa, and it’s Navajo for ‘eagle,’ but tiempo is Spanish. Are you one or the other or both or neither?”
Father Tiempo’s old lips tightened. “You were thinking in the darkness between times?”
Glory shrugged. “If that’s what it was, yeah. My brain doesn’t really turn off. I can even study for tests while I’m asleep. If I am sleeping. Either way, it gets tiring.”
Sam shuffled his feet and slipped his stiff arm out of Glory’s grip. He didn’t like feeling inadequate. And he didn’t need a girl—especially a girl he barely knew—protecting him from an old man.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll go anywhere. Let’s go.”
The priest didn’t even look at him. His eyes were alive with light and searching Glory’s.
“I do remember stuff,” Sam said. “I’m not always an idiot. I remember all sorts of things.” He stepped further back and leaned against a bed. “It’s just that some of the things I remember aren’t real.” Glory and the priest weren’t listening. He could walk back to the Commons and start playing Ping-Pong and they wouldn’t even notice. They were focused on each other. Sam began grinding an itch on his back against the bed. “See? I remembered the Ping-Pong! I even know which comic books I was reading, and I can tell you anything you want to know about The Legend of Poncho.”
Father Tiempo finally looked at him. “Good,” he said. “Very good.” He stood up tall and raised both hands toward the ceiling.
“Gloria Spalding, I, Father Atsa Tiempo, am going to tell you a story. And when I have, you will choose which wing of Time’s library will include the story of your life.”
Tiempo’s hands fell, and the walls of the Bunk House collapsed into sand. The sun and its heat vanished, the buildings of SADDYR vanished, and a moon rose over cacti and rugged stone.
The air was cool. Distant coyotes were calling to one another. The embers of a small campfire were spitting themselves to sleep. A kettle and pot hung on hooks above it.
Father Tiempo sighed happily. “Thoughtful of me to have remembered. I am quite hungry.” He picked up a tin cup and poured himself coffee from the kettle before plucking a fat sausage from the pot with his fingers. He looked up at Sam and Glory. “Encouraging, too. Apparently I live long enough to have remembered to provide myself refreshment.” He lowered himself onto a boulder and nodded at the pot.
“Eat if you’re hungry. Then sit. Listen. And remember what I say always.” He focused on Glory. “Even in the darkness between times.”
Glory turned in a slow circle, taking in as much of the moonlit desert as she could. Sam crouched over the campfire pot and sniffed at the sausages.
“They’re excellent,” the priest said, chewing. “Try one.”
Sam pinched a sausage between his thumb and forefinger, and his stomach rumbled. It smelled amazing, but he knew he shouldn’t. Canned and blended foods only for Sam Miracle. There wasn’t a bathroom anywhere near, and he didn’t want to throw up in the rocks. Of course, with his rigid arms he didn’t have any way to get the food to his face, either—his special silverware was back wherever they used to be—and he wasn’t hungry enough to drop a sausage on a rock and chase it around with his mouth like a dog. Not yet, at least.
Father Tiempo pointed at him. “Don’t worry about your stomach, it won’t upset you here. You’re incredibly distant from what was disturbing it.”
“Wh
at was disturbing my stomach?” Sam asked.
“The primitive technologies of the post-nuclear era,” the priest said. “But none of that matters at the moment. Eat.”
“Where are we?” Glory asked.
“Just where we were,” Father Tiempo said. “Why would we be anywhere else?”
Sam poked the sausage again.
“Oh, right!” Father Tiempo jumped to his feet and looked around. “Surely . . . yes!” He picked up a long metal prong with a wooden handle, stabbed a sausage out of the pot, and then pressed the handle into Sam’s hand before sitting back down.
The process was hardly new for Sam, but the prong was much heavier than he had grown used to at SADDYR. He could hear the priest talking and Glory spitting out questions, but he concentrated on holding the prong with both hands below his waist and using his fingers to rock and sway the meat toward his face.
Catching the sausage in his mouth, he nibbled off a crusty end. The taste was . . . emotional. Like a solid memory long lost but found again. He took a much bigger bite and let the grease burn his tongue. As he chewed, he looked into Glory’s eyes. She was staring at him. Her arms were crossed like she was bothered, but her face was soft. Sad, even.
“That looks . . . hard. But you should try to pay attention.”
Sam blinked. He didn’t know what she meant.
“I’m just eating.”
“I know. But you said you don’t like being confused, and the whole ranch just disappeared, and he’s actually answering questions. Maybe the hot dog could wait?”
Sam tore the rest of the meat off the prong, quickly cheeking as much as he could. “Sausage,” he mumbled. “Not a hot dog.” He dropped the prong and pointed at the priest. “He said to eat. So I’m eating.”
