by Ginn Hale
A small herd of buffalo looked on from the far edge of the meadow. Grover wasn’t sure if they seemed more awed or horrified witnessing the awkward climax of these two giants.
“It’s like watching landslides copulate,” Lawrence commented. Then he added with a crooked smile, “And here I thought I’d seen it all.”
“It’s a world of wonders when you’re traveling with me, that’s for certain,” Grover replied.
While the two longnecks disengaged and returned to the more subdued activity of grazing, Lawrence and he rode along the edge of the meadow and crossed back under the cover of trees. They made the Rabbit Hills before sundown and ate a meal of clams that Grover gathered from one of the distributary streams that splintered off from the Rift River. Lawrence contributed some of the rice he’d brought along, and that combined with a few sprigs of wild sage made for quite a repast, in Grover’s opinion.
“Could do with a beer though.” Lawrence scratched at the thick stubble covering his jaw. Grover had forgotten how red Lawrence’s beard came in. The hairs looked like copper in the glow of the fire.
“I built a still at the cabin and hauled up my ma’s old oak barrels,” Grover informed him as he stretched out and warmed his damp feet by the fire.
“Don’t tell me you’re distilling your mama’s applejack?” Lawrence’s face lit up with delight. Grover might as well have told him he had hot taps, a flushing toilet and a solid gold bed; he still wouldn’t have impressed Lawrence more.
“Yep. I had to do something with my time at the height of winter. Only so many hours a man can hunt.” Grover indulged himself in a satisfied smile. “I’ve got two barrels aged five years now. I figure it couldn’t hurt to sample some. If you ain’t too busy with other things.”
“Now you’re just teasing me!” Lawrence laughed then he sighed. “The whole time I was traveling through India, I kept having this dream that you brought me a bottle of that sweet applejack…”
“Is that all I did?” Grover expected not, knowing the sorts of dreams he’d indulged in while missing Lawrence. Most involved fucking and laughing and the immense relief of knowing that Lawrence wasn’t lost to him.
Those dreams had been worse to rise from than nightmares because they left his waking days desolate.
“In the dreams you would always put your arms around me and let me rest my head on your chest. Then you told me that I had to keep going and make things right,” Lawrence said, and Grover didn’t like the sadness in his tone, but then Lawrence caught himself and pulled a smile. “Speaking of not shirking my duties. Wasn’t I supposed to show you a little mage training?”
“Well, the suggestion was made. But am I gonna have to put my boots back on?” Grover scowled at the slumped piles of marsh-soaked leather sitting next to Lawrence’s riding boots beside the fire. “My toes are just starting to warm up.”
“No. You don’t even have to stand up if you don’t want to.” Lawrence quickly closed the distance between them, sitting down beside Grover. He held out his left hand. “Just take my hand in yours.”
Grover took his warm hand. Lawrence interlaced their fingers and very lightly traced a circle over the back of Grover’s hand with the ivory fingers of his right hand. Grover felt the slightest tickle and only heard a murmur as Lawrence whispered foreign-sounding words.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Grover asked.
“Keep your feet warm,” Lawrence replied, and Grover wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. He almost asked but Lawrence gave him a serious look.
“Close your eyes and let yourself relax,” Lawrence instructed him. “Whatever might be bothering you, forget about it for the time being. Relax.”
Grover closed his eyes and took in a few deep breaths—breathing the way his ma had taught him to when he needed to cool his temper. Not that he felt angry now, just a mite too excited and nervous. Over and over he drew a slow breath in and blew it out, along with the tension in his muscles. Until he felt like he could almost drift off to sleep.
“Now listen to your surroundings,” Lawrence said quietly. “Not just the sounds but the silence. Feel the waves moving through the air and the deep stillness of the surrounding stones.”
How in the blazes he was supposed to accomplish that Grover had no idea, but he went ahead and tried, listening intently to the noises of the twilight night. Bats peeped and fluttered between distant stands of trees. Lawrence’s horse snored softly while Betty scratched grass and earth into a bed for herself. Way off he could just make out the rumble of the Rift River.
But as for waves moving through the air or the stillness of stones, no. Grover focused hard, attempting to pick out the faintest trace of either, but only his awareness of the warmth of Lawrence’s fingers seemed to grow. Where their skin pressed, Grover sensed a hum of excitement but also steady waves of heat, pulsing like a heartbeat. The steadfastness of that rhythm struck him as deeply comforting and drew him closer to Lawrence. As he focused he realized that Lawrence blazed like a brilliant fire pored into the shape of a man. Though his right arm flared with tiny blue sparks.
A strange sensation came over Grover, as if he were floating over his own relaxed body and curling around Lawrence in a plume of smoke. He caught the exhalation of Lawrence’s breath and rose with it into the cool evening air. All around him he felt tiny pulses flicker like starlight as moths winged past him and bats pursued them. As Grover took it in, he realized that each of them shone with a warm glow that lit their flesh like light streaming through stained glass.
Farther out, the lush forest radiated luminous green while countless creatures—some huge others miniscule, some stalking others sleeping—gleamed like a million scattered candle flames. He felt almost as if he could reach out and catch even the largest ones—that sleeping bigtooth only a few miles west, or the two sated longnecks that lay curled around each other—with just a flick of his hand. The warmth of them pulled at him, though the longer he focused on any one of them, the more it seemed to stretch towards him. Briefly he wondered if he couldn’t draw a light all the way from the flesh it inhabited into the palm of his hand, but he resisted. That seemed, somehow, wrong to him.
Instead he turned his attention to the weird blue haze that bobbed far off on the horizon. A grating, mechanical beat reverberated from it, and Grover could see the golden lights of night birds, bats and insects whirling away from its slow path across the sky.
Could that be the Tuckers’ airship, he wondered?
Without thinking, he curled himself around the swift soft body of a bat and winged after the airship. It floated a great distance away, and when the little bat’s strength flagged, Grover pushed some of his own warmth and light into the bat’s weary body. A feeling of shared exhilaration flooded him. As one he and the bat snapped up several fat mosquitoes and tore through the night to swoop alongside the sleek airship’s long gondola.
Dozens of shining human forms crowded the deck as he passed. Though three of them struck him as very strange. Up at the bow on the bridge stood two forms, both faint compared to the others surrounding them. But stranger still was the fact that when one moved away from the other, a stream of light stretched out between them like an umbilical cord. As Grover watched he saw the light flare up in one of the figures—growing almost as bright as it blazed in the surrounding people—but then it seemed to drain into the second body.
Back near the quarterdeck, the third figure sat near five others. But unlike the others this body seemed swathed in an immense ribbon of sparkling blue letters, while a tiny, intense gold light shone between and beneath them. Grover suspected that he knew who these people were but he wished he could be certain. If only he could actually see them instead of sensing the brilliance their lives threw off.
If he could somehow use other eyes…then he cursed himself for choosing to ride along on a bat. The moment the thought occurred to him, he was surprised to fi
nd he really could see the figures of the uniformed men on the deck of the gondola.
On the quarterdeck, a group sat near and on artillery cases, placing bets as they studied their hands of cards. Recognizing Lawrence’s countenance in their midst gave him a little jolt. He’d suspected as much but hadn’t realized how perfect Lady Astor’s impersonation would appear. She grinned, Lawrence’s crooked grin, and laid out a royal flush. The guards and crewmen groaned and coins changed hands. One of the men complained that the naked women drawn on the cards had distracted him.
“At least you claimed a lovely view from a losing hand,” Honora replied. “My girl on the king of diamonds nearly made my eyes water.” That won her guffaws and a slap on the back.
Grover swept over them and circled one of the hanging lamps, snapping up a moth.
Suddenly one of the Tucker twins came pelting towards the gathered men. The second twin followed close behind—and now Grover suspected he knew why they stayed so very close to each other.
“There’s a spy on board!” the first Tucker shouted.
“There.” The second lifted a pistol towards Grover. Terror raced through the tiny body he inhabited.
Honora instantly stood, blocking the shot.
“Are you mad?” Honora’s words boomed out in Lawrence’s voice. Even the Tuckers froze in response to the authoritative tone. “We’re surrounded by cases of explosives, alchemic dust and black powder. And you’re aiming at a lamp!”
Grover took advantage of the Tuckers’ hesitation to flit back into the darkening sky.
“It set off an alarm,” one of the Tuckers snapped. “Likely another bird or bat possessed by another of those filthy redskins to spy, and you’ve let it escape.”
The rest of his words faded from Grover’s hearing as he raced from the airship and soared back towards the camp where his body lay slumped across Lawrence’s lap. The sight of that gave him another shock. What if he’d died somehow? Was he going to have to live out the rest of his life eating mosquitoes and hearing shapes all around him?
“Come on, Grove,” Lawrence said softly, and he traced the circle around the back of Grover’s hand again. “Come back to me, darling.”
Grover felt a slight tug and let himself be pulled free of the bat. At once he sank back to his own body, and then rushed in like a deep breath. He felt cold and oddly stiff. Lawrence’s hand seemed hot as an ember.
Grover opened his own eyes to gaze up into Lawrence’s strained face.
“Did you know that bats aren’t actually blind?” Grover asked.
“I didn’t.” Lawrence laughed, looking relieved. Then he stroked Grover’s cheek and leaned down and kissed him.
Chapter Seven
The next morning, after Grover took a few minutes to drive off the bugs that bedeviled Lawrence and his stallion, they shared a quick breakfast. Over pemmican and whiptail eggs, Grover described the airship’s distance and how he’d reached it. Lawrence gazed at him with an expression near reverence.
“You could see all that?” Lawrence asked. “And you took possession of a bat?”
“I guess you could call it that. Isn’t that what you meant for me to see and do?” Grover scraped up the last of his egg and downed it. Discovering the clutch of eggs had been a rare treat though the absence of a parent guarding the nest implied that a bigtooth hunted very near their current location. Still Betty hadn’t been half-overjoyed to indulge in her share.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her rolling one of the eggs into a bush, which barely disguised Romeo’s brilliant blue plumes. Grover returned his attention to Lawrence.
“I suspected that you were sensitive to qi, but I had no idea that you’d go so far the very first time.” Lawrence reached out and touched the back of Grover’s hand lightly. “Thank God the holdfast between us held.”
“Don’t look so serious, Lawry. Ain’t no way you could lose me so easy.” Grover grinned at him with a shade more bravado than he honestly felt. “I’d find my way back to you no matter what.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Lawrence replied.
Grover just nodded. After all he wasn’t the one who’d left. He wasn’t the one who couldn’t say if he’d stay.
For an earth mage Lawrence sure was prone to wandering.
But then, Grover reminded himself, Lawrence wasn’t the only mage who didn’t seem like what he was. There was Lady Astor all fitted out like a man and looking so at ease with a deck of dirty cards in her hand that Grover felt certain this wasn’t the first time she’d played that part. Hell, she could probably piss standing up.
And there were the Tuckers, too.
“You mentioned earlier that Nathaniel Tucker was a wind mage as well as a theurgist. But he isn’t a mage anymore, is he? He lost his power when David Tucker showed up, didn’t he?” Grover caught and held Lawrence’s suddenly fearful gaze. “They aren’t anything like twins.”
No surprise that Lawrence hesitated in responding. He’d made it plain days ago that he didn’t want Grover finding out anything about Nathaniel Tucker that could make him a threat. But that had been before Grover had seen into him.
“Yes, he lost much of his strength. And no he wasn’t born a twin,” Lawrence replied. “But you can’t ever let him even suspect you know as much.”
“Because the two of them are living proof that they—he—broke a Divine Law.” Grover felt certain of it now.
Lawrence nodded.
“Honora suspects that he somehow pulled himself in two when he first attempted to create alchemic stone. He did have a younger brother, David, who served with us in China, but he died of flux early in the summer.”
“The man certainly put that tragedy to good use.” Grover studied Lawrence and thought again of what he’d witnessed on the airship. Two men sharing one life. That odd flow of their living force, almost as if one of them constantly fed into the life of the other. For the first time he considered what it would mean for a man to break through time, not to an ancient age but to his own past…
“I think I know how Nathaniel created David,” Grover said at last.
“Oh?” Lawrence appeared only a little amused at the presumption of him making sweeping pronouncements after just one whirl out there with the lights and darkness of magic.
“If you were gonna violate a Divine Law and open a rift in time for the very first time you’d do it real careful,” Grover speculated. “Try to make it such a little difference that maybe no one would notice. You wouldn’t pick an age full of floods and dinosaurs. The first time, I’d bet my back teeth, you’d aim for a time when you knew exactly what to expect.”
“Sure,” Lawrence agreed.
“So what happens if you open a rift that reaches back, say, five minutes? And you do it hidden inside your own tent where you’ve been all alone scheming for the last couple hours?” Grover flashed a grin. “Who might just step through from the past?”
All at once realization lit Lawrence’s lean face.
“You think David isn’t half of Nathaniel but actually the exact same man brought forward in time just a few minutes?” Lawrence asked.
Grover nodded.
“We’ve both seen a body pulled in two—Nathaniel Tucker ain’t a heap of blood and meat. What he is, is the past and the present forced to share every moment. They have to split the life that was meant for just the one of them. Maybe if he hadn’t been a mage Nathaniel wouldn’t have survived at all.”
“That is such a strange idea.” For a moment Lawrence frowned intently at the ground like he was working out a tough riddle. Grover understood. He’d spent at least an hour lying awake in the predawn gloom contemplating the exact timing required for Tucker to have opened a rift and transported an earlier version of himself without changing history so that he hadn’t opened the rift in the first place. The earlier Tucker—David—must have cros
sed through after he’d opened his own rift back in time. Which meant that maybe another Tucker had crossed over into David’s place… And maybe that pattern repeated on and on.
It made his head hurt to think about it too much.
“Just strange,” Lawrence repeated.
“I know.” Grover nodded. “But it explains why the next time he designed the spell it created rifts so far back in the past. He didn’t want to risk giving his game away by doubling anyone else or himself again.”
“Thank god for that small mercy, I suppose.” Lawrence pulled one of his wry grins. “I’d likely throttle my younger self if I could get my hands on him.”
“I don’t know.” Grover laughed. “He was awful charming last night.”
But the thought lingered with Grover the rest of the day. If the past altered—a man killed his younger self or thousands of miles of seawater drained away—wouldn’t that alter the future? If it did, was the world around him and his very life actually the outcome of things that had happened so long ago, but been triggered by the Tuckers, only six years past?
At last he gave up thinking about it. A fellow could drive himself mad chasing those sorts of thoughts.
The next three days they covered more ground and much faster than Grover had expected. In large part because they didn’t have to fight deep drifts of winter snow when they crossed the high passes. But the awareness of the Tuckers close behind them added to their sense urgency. Despite the abundance of opportunities, they didn’t linger in any one place—except to sleep at night. Their afternoon meals were comprised of lumps of pemmican they wolfed down while riding. When their mounts flagged, they walked and allowed the animals to graze and feed while still gaining what ground they could.
