by Ginn Hale
“That was a hell of a shot.” Lawrence too knelt back down on their bedding. His shoulder brushed Grover’s, and Grover leaned into him just a little. Three of the gold orbs dimmed and went out, leaving only two still shining. “How did you see where to aim through the dark?” Lawrence asked.
“I don’t rightly know that I did, so much as I just snatched up the rifle and fired.” Grover considered for a moment, remembering fragments of his strange dream. “I just sort of knew it was creeping up on us from the left.”
Lawrence studied him a moment.
“The same way that you just knew that King Douglass didn’t mean us any harm that first day we set out?” Lawrence asked.
“That’s right.” Grover replied. “My ma used say that if folk just learned to listen, they could hear every living creature around them. My pa thought so too, that was how he taught me to hunt.”
Lawrence nodded, his expression thoughtful but not quite so strained as it had been earlier.
A thin seam of pale light was seeping along the jagged line of the eastern horizon. It would be dawn soon. There wouldn’t be any point in trying to go back to sleep, at the same time it was a little too dark to begin the day’s work.
“Do you think there are any more mountain lions out in the dark about to attack us?” Lawrence asked.
“Not just now, no.” Grover decided after a moment. “I think it’s mostly songbirds, little blue-footed dinosaurs that are waking up to begin their dawn choruses.” First thing, the birds and dinosaurs could make quite a racket, all of them calling and chirping to each other.
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in putting down your rifle? Perhaps we could bide out time until the sun’s up?” Lawrence leaned into Grover and almost shyly stroked Grover’s back with his left hand.
That struck Grove as about the best thing he could think of doing. Lawrence let the last of the gold lights go out, and the two of them lay back together.
By noon, they reached a narrow pass Grover called the Needle’s Eye. There they turned west, descending towards the brackish waters of the Rift River. The terrain grew wet and warm. Lush vines, dense stands of magnolia and giant ferns invaded groves of native aspen. Veils of mist filled the gullies and rain showers fell most evenings. The ground turned to mud and creeks that Grover easily jumped across in winter now spread into bogs. The signs of bigtooths grew more fresh and common.
That afternoon they came upon a gargantuan longneck carcass sprawled across several uprooted willows. The smell of it filled the air like a fog, and its prone body rose like a hill of bloody bone and overripe meat. Pterosaurs, vultures, eagles and vast flocks of crows blanketed the heights of the mountainous corpse, while coyotes, foxes and even a bear fed on the hunks of flesh and bone that the bigtooth had left after it fed.
“Wolves have already been here.” Grover noted the tracks in the soft mud. “And a momma cougar with two kittens it looks like.”
“You reckon the liè lóng—bigtooth—will come back for seconds anytime soon?” Lawrence inquired.
“This time of year there might be a whole brood of ’em.” Grover touched his rifle like a talisman but didn’t free it from his saddle. “But from the look of things they ain’t going hungry just now.”
“Still…” Lawrence said, as a second bear ambled out from between two magnolia trees.
Grover nodded. A carcass like this would pull every hungry predator for miles and miles away. He felt no inclination to repeat their earlier encounter with the mountain lion. Only a fool would make camp anywhere near here.
“We should keep a move on,” Grover finished for him.
They forwent their lunch, riding till twilight to get well clear of the rank, rotting scent of the remains.
That evening, Grover hiked a little distance to refill their canteens from a fresh water spring. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a form burst through the underbrush. Grover whipped up his rifle only to find Romeo gawking at him with disappointment. Clearly he’d picked up Betty’s scent off of Grover’s leathers and gotten his plumage all glossy and proud for their assignation.
“I’m already spoken for,” Grover muttered.
Romeo quickly scuttled away, and Grover won a good laugh out of Lawrence when he related the story over dinner that night.
Frogs sang Lawrence and Grover to sleep as they lay in each other’s arms. In the mornings the hum of mosquitoes woke them. It should have made for a miserable slog, but Lawrence maintained an amused attitude and at times seemed genuinely fascinated by the strange world that their once-familiar stomping grounds had become. When he pointed out a vibrant flower, Grover couldn’t fail to see the beauty in it. He didn’t gripe when Lawrence took a few moments to sketch, particularly not after Lawrence took to showing his drawings when they settled down for supper by their fire.
“Are those farts you’ve drawn puffing up from the back ends of them three-horns?” Grover asked.
Lawrence grinned at him. Wasn’t as if both of them hadn’t coughed and choked on the pungent fumes the herd had left behind. In spite of that Grover found the drawings fascinating. As much as the rift had destroyed the lands, it had also filled Grover’s life with wonder and created opportunities for folks like him to succeed. But when he told Lawrence as much, Lawrence just shook his head.
“That’s because you’re an exceptional man, Grove. But I don’t think one in a hundred people would thank me if they knew what I’d done to them.”
Grover frowned at the flurry of pen lines that so perfectly captured the motion and power of three-horns running and rutting. Of course the rifts had been terrible, but not everything that came of them was bad. Lawrence had to see that, otherwise how would he ever manage to live in this world?
“You know, sometimes the world needs to get shook up so the people on the bottom have a chance of going any place else. My cousin Frank only managed to free his daughter because of the floods. If they hadn’t come when they did, she would have been sold on to a bordello owner,” Grover said at last.
Lawrence considered that silently and offered Grover a faint smile. “I’m glad for that, then.”
Grover supposed it would be best to let it go for the night. There were other ways to show Lawrence that life right here and now still promised pleasure and joy enough.
Early on their ninth day riding, they reached the huge canyon that the Rift River had plowed through Grand Lake Valley. The track they followed narrowed and they rode single file along the cliff’s edge. Below them dead and decaying trees lined the riverbanks, while beds of sedges, salt rushes and agave grew up in their places. The waters roared past, far too wild and deep to ford. But fish leapt and splashed through the torrents, while an enormous crocodile basked beside the salt pools and ponds that edged the river. On the far side of the canyon, some fifty jade-green turtles the size of prize pigs slowly dragged themselves into the river, leaving behind sandy mounds and clutches of buried eggs.
As they rode lower Grover pointed out the white salt crystals that limned tree trunks and rocks like frost. Thick crusts edged pools nearer the river. Grover spotted a herd of bighorn sheep licking up the salt while nervously eyeing a lounging crocodile.
If he’d been on his own Grover might have worked his way down to harvest several pounds of salt himself. The stuff was as valuable as gold dust back in Fort Arvada. But he could sense Lawrence’s anxiousness to keep moving and reach the rift. By now the Tuckers were likely searching it out for themselves and—unless they were dolts—they’d start by attempting to follow the Rift River to its source. That meant they’d be closing in on him and Lawrence soon.
“On our way back after this is all done, you think you’ll have time to spend a few hours scraping salt?” Grover gestured to the white blooms encrusting a pool some thirty feet below them.
“I’m not—” Lawrence cut himself off short as Grover looked back
at him. Then he shrugged. “I can’t make any promises, not before I’ve closed the last rift.”
“Fair enough,” Grover replied, but Lawrence’s refusal made him uneasy. Not just because he wouldn’t commit to something so small as a couple hours, but because of the desolation in his expression when he spoke of the rift.
Though once they rounded the curve of the raging river and rode out of earshot of the torrents, Lawrence’s easygoing temperament seemed to return to him. He made light of the ticks and biting bugs that bedeviled him through the lush brush of ferns, oaks and cycads, referring to himself as a three-ring flea-circus. When their path opened up, Lawrence rode alongside Grover.
“Don’t suppose there’s something you can do about my little army of hangers-on?” Lawrence inquired.
“How do you mean?” Grover asked.
“Well, you don’t seem much bothered by the blood-suckers.” Lawrence scratched at his chest and then scowled as he flicked a fly away. “The entire time we’ve been riding through these swamps, you’ve hardly been bitten. Whereas I and my horse are being eaten alive.”
It was true that Lawrence sported a number of bites and welts while Grover remained largely untouched. He’d never noticed the absence of the little torments when traveling on his own, but now it did strike him as odd.
“Maybe I taste bad,” Grover suggested.
“Now I know for a fact that that ain’t the case, Grove. You are sweet as honey and intoxicating as calvados.” Lawrence favored him with a sultry smile which made Grover’s cheeks flush with the hot memory of Lawrence’s lips on him.
“There is something that you do though, isn’t there?” Lawrence’s expression turned more serious. “When you get a bite. I bet you curse the little critters silently or some such, don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t hardly wish them a hearty meal and a happy stay with me.”
They reached a small waterfall of meltwater and Grover stopped to refresh their canteens. Lawrence rinsed his face and hands. Both Betty and Lawrence’s horse drank from the pools surrounding the fall. Larks and tiny, fuzzy pterosaurs flitted between the water and the flower-laden magnolias surrounding them. While their mounts drank, Lawrence drew in his sketchbook and in a matter of moments produced copies of several of the orchid blossoms that sprang up from the mossy stones as well as overhanging tree branches.
Then they both mounted once more, and Lawrence returned to their previous conversation.
“There was a girl I met in China who could drive off lice with a wave of her hands,” Lawrence said. “She also called wild horses to her and tamed them with a touch.”
“Oh?” That sounded like something from the stories his ma used to tell him. It put him a little in mind of Queen Adiaha Umo judging for the fly wronged by a cow. “Did she make good trade out of it?”
“She did well by me. But my point is that in my travels I’ve come to realize there are many more types of mages than just the elemental trinity that theurgists recognize. I think you might have something in common with Jingfei—the Chinese girl who sold us horses.”
“I don’t know about that.” Grover couldn’t imagine calling himself a mage, and he didn’t want to even think about the hell Reverend Dodd would give him if he had to register himself and take an oath, as Lawrence had back when he’d turned sixteen.
“I suspected that you wouldn’t take to the idea, but you have to admit there aren’t any fleas or flies on you and it isn’t just anyone who can understand a dinosaur at a glance, or feel a mountain lion through the dark—”
“But that’s nothing,” Grover protested. “None of that’s a sign of being a mage. Not like that one night when you pulled light right up out of the ground and lit up the Fire Springs all around us.”
“Well, how else was I going to witness the glory of you swimming in the buff under the stars?” Lawrence gave a soft laugh and Grover smiled at the memory of the evening. He’d been real shy at first, all lit up like that, but Lawrence had joined him in the warm spring water and made him feel handsome as anything.
“There’s so much that theurgists don’t know, and so much more that they just won’t acknowledge because it falls outside the Holy Book,” Lawrence went on. “But believe me, there’s more power in this world than just earth, water and wind. There’s the life itself coursing through all of us, from fleas and flowers up to presidents and popes.”
Grover nodded. He’d seen enough of the living and the dead to know that something subtle and yet integral separated one from the other, and it could be lost in a single breath. That still didn’t make him a mage.
“In China they called it qi. In India the Hindus whisper of it as prana despite a veritable army of English theurgists banning practices of controlling such power.” Lawrence’s tone alone conveyed his annoyance at that. “A Hebrew trader I met in Salonica described living energy as Ruah. Even one of the theurgist missionaries Honora introduced me to admitted that the ancient Hellenes knew the concept and that the people of Oceania believe in a vital force that flows through every living thing.”
“You’re just telling me this as an excuse to brag about all the places you’ve been, ain’t you?” Grover teased. Frankly, he hadn’t thought about how far and how long Lawrence must have been making his way secretly from China to England. Nearly six years he’d have been journeying alongside Gaston and Honora.
Grover wondered how early on Lawrence and Gaston had become lovers, then wished that he hadn’t because knowing either way, it wouldn’t do him any good.
“God’s own truth, I am not,” Lawrence replied. “I honestly believe that you’re a kind of mage, Grove. I’ve thought so for a long time, but it didn’t seem like my place to push it on you.”
Grover watched a dragonfly dart past him and felt its papery wings hum across his skin.
“But now it is?” Grover asked.
“Now…things are different. Knowing what abilities you have to call upon could make all the difference if matters turn bad.”
“You think I ain’t seen my share of hard times already?” Grover raised his brows but then he laughed and shook his head, because he didn’t really want to argue with Lawrence. “Even if I am some half-assed mage, I don’t reckon it would change much. Except I suppose I’ll give it a go running any biting bugs off you and your horse tonight. Or was that all you were after?”
“Well, I wouldn’t object by any means, but no that wasn’t my purpose in initiating the conversation.”
“So?” Grover prompted.
“So, I think that if you are a qi mage, it couldn’t hurt you to actively practice your talent.” Lawrence paused, and he bowed low to his stallion’s neck, ducking below an overhanging willow branch. “What you’ve managed, just on intuition, is astounding. Think what you might be able to do if you honed your skill.”
“Send an army of fleas and bedbugs to harass Sheriff Lee?” Grover suggested.
“Or dissuade a bigtooth from hunting you.” Lawrence raised his brows. “That might come in handy, don’t you think?”
That would indeed, Grover thought.
“Am I even going to have to worry about that once you’ve closed the rift?” Grover asked.
“What’s on this side of the rift will be trapped here and vice versa.” Lawrence glanced down the cliff’s edge to the river now far below them. “The floodwater may dry up over time. Dinosaurs could adapt and keep breeding.”
Grover wasn’t certain if he ought to feel happy or disappointed about that. On one hand it would slow communications as well as farming and ranching. On the other hand all those plantations would remain under saltwater and worthless to the bastards who’d profited from making slaves of their fellow human beings.
Also, Grover wouldn’t lose Betty and King Douglass. Admitting how close he felt to the two critters, he supposed there might be something to Lawrence’s speculation…maybe.
“I don’t rightly know how I’d practice,” Grover admitted at last.
“If you’d like I can show you a couple exercises I learned in the corps.”
Grover didn’t know why, but the suggestion delighted him far more than it ought to have. Then he realized Lawrence wasn’t only promising to improve his chances against a bigtooth, this was the first time Lawrence had so much as hinted at the two of them being together beyond the present moment. Through all the days and nights they’d spent together so far, he hadn’t once mentioned a future beyond the closing of the rift.
Grover didn’t want to push Lawrence, but he hated how the uncertainty gnawed at him. Every day he rediscovered more of what he’d adored and cherished in Lawrence’s company. At the same time, he fought his own happiness back down, because he didn’t think he could stand to care so damn much for the man and lose him all over again.
“I’d like that.” Grover didn’t dare say more.
And fortunately he didn’t have to since all at once the ground began to shudder beneath them. Flocks of birds in the trees ahead of them took to the skies in streaming clouds.
Grover and Lawrence both stilled their mounts, and Grover thought he noticed Romeo stop off to his left near a thicket of hackberries.
“Was that—” Lawrence began, but Grover silenced him with a finger to his own lips.
The earth shook again—leaves and blossoms tumbled down from trees—as a deep, lowing moan rolled through the air like thunder. Another call followed it.
“Longnecks,” Grover told Lawrence.
“Not a bigtooth?”
Grover shook his head. Heavy as they looked, bigtooths moved as stealthily as cougars. In fact, it had been the sudden terrified silence of every bird and little chattering beast that had alerted Grover to the presence of a hunting bigtooth on several occasions.
They rode on, and about an hour later when they reached high ground, they found themselves treated to the sight of two gigantic golden longnecks humping and lumbering across a flowery meadow. Their massive tails swept across yards of ground, sending leaves, blossoms and several shrubs sailing through the air. The gleaming behemoths united, both of them bellowing and snorting like two steam engines suddenly endowed with the anatomy and desire for amorous congress. Tremors rocked through the soil, and a family of voles dashed from their nest and raced past Grover.
