The Long Past & Other Stories

by Ginn Hale

  Lucky scrutinized Dalfon with skepticism. Three years gone didn’t strike him as being drawn back together by any inexorable pull. If it was fate, then it damn well took its time.

  “I know I sound ridiculous, but just hear me out and you’ll see.” Dalfon sat up. “When this business with Pa Spivey started, I was working in Nevada for the Borax Brothers—”

  “The owners of Three-horn Borax Company?” Lucky had a tin of the cleansing powder back at home. Pretty much everyone owned one of the big yellow cans with a snorting triceratops printed on the label. The Borax Brothers weren’t celebrities, Lucky knew that, but it was exciting to imagine himself having any kind of personal connection—even if it was just that he knew Dalfon.

  “The very ones,” Dalfon informed him with a wry smile. “Anyway, they hired me to look for a missing person back east, and that’s when I discovered that Jerry Buck and I were digging through the same records. It didn’t take us long to work out that we were searching for the same person but in the hire of different men. That seemed like a weird coincidence, so Buck rode down here to check the situation out.”

  “I never saw any Pinkerton,” Lucky felt obliged to say. “If I had, I’d have set him straight about Pa Spivey’s whole scheme.”

  “I’m sure you would have. But he’d planned on approaching Margot Swaim first. She’d hinted that she was willing to disclose important information in exchange for funds that could secure her a divorce from Bernard. I don’t imagine that plan worked out well for her or Buck.” Dalfon’s expression turned briefly sorrowful, but he shook his head. “When Buck didn’t report back, I rode down after him, and I admit I wanted to see you even if it did mean trouble, so I went to your house first. And just my luck Frank and Harry Swaim mistook me for you and jumped me at your place.”

  “That’s when Frank cast the curse on you?” Lucky asked.

  Dalfon nodded.

  The full implication of that closed in on Lucky. The Swaims had been waiting for him with that curse. If Dalfon had arrived after Lucky had gotten home, he probably would have opened the door to discover Lucky’s corpse sprawled on the dirt floor.

  “I laid Frank out and took off,” Dalfon went on. “About a minute later, I realized that I had to find you, because if two of the Swaims were waiting in ambush at your house that left one out in the marsh, hunting.”

  Lucky studied Dalfon. It had been such a near thing and at the same time no mere chance that Dalfon or the Swaims had been out at the edge of the marsh.

  “That has to be fate,” Dalfon said. “It can’t just be pure chance that led me back to you exactly when it did. There’s something uniting us—I don’t have a word for it except fate. It feels like we were always meant to be together. As if my life is somehow yours.” Dalfon’s expression turned a little self-conscious. “Or at least that’s how it feels for me.”

  Lucky wasn’t certain he believed in fate, but he understood what Dalfon meant. He felt more alive, happier, and simply more himself with Dalfon. And yet the idea of giving in to it, of basking in so much joy only to lose it again terrified him. But he had to take that chance. He’d already lost three years of happiness with Dalfon to his own bleak expectations. That hadn’t protected him from any pain only ensured it.

  He leaned into Dalfon and wrapped an arm around him. Dalfon kissed him gently. The glow of the embers made the silver in Dalfon’s hair appear golden. They were both still too spent to do more than kiss and caress one another, but even that felt lovely. They leaned into each other, at ease.

  A curiosity occurred to Lucky. “What about the Borax Brothers? Didn’t you start out looking for someone for them?”

  “Yep. The same person Buck was looking for.” Dalfon grinned at Lucky. “You. The Borax brothers are Juan Song-Garcia and Hector Song-Garcia. Hector hired me to find you, his lost son.”

  Lucky gaped at Dalfon. Excitement, disbelief and anxiety whirled through him like a cyclone. His father… As a child he’d dreamed and fantasized so much about his father finding him. But as the years passed, his hope had brought him only grinding disappointment. In the end he’d been almost relieved to abandon any thought of meeting his father ever again. Now Lucky grappled with the idea of reuniting with his father after twelve years. Would his father be delighted or disappointed in how he’d grown up? The fact he’d hired Pinkertons to find Lucky reassured him some. At least he knew his father had missed him.

  “But what were the chances of him hiring you, of all people?” Lucky asked.

  “You see what I mean about fate. Everywhere I searched, everything I wanted, every question I asked—the answer was always you, Lucky. Always.”

  That did seem like being dealt four aces twice in a row.

  So much good fortune at once. Too much to believe it could be real. Lucky gazed at Dalfon and struggled with the impulse to crush the hopes that Dalfon’s words had revived within him.

  “So what do I do with this?” Lucky wondered.

  Dalfon’s smile faded a little and he cocked his head.

  “Well, what is it you want to do?” Dalfon asked. “You want to meet your father?”

  “I do but what if he—” Lucky didn’t want to admit his fears aloud. But Dalfon simply continued to watch him, waiting. “What if it’s all wrong somehow and he’s not mon père? Or if he hates me—”

  “I don’t think either of those things are likely to happen. But if they do, well then we’ll still be all right. If the man I met—who is the spitting image of you—turns out not to be your father, we’ll keep looking. And if he has the poor judgment not to take to you, well, that’s his loss, Lucky.”

  Lucky nodded. Hearing his fears voiced and answered so calmly didn’t just reassure him, it reminded Lucky that he’d come through far worse already.

  “Come back to Chicago with me and at least let the Moreau estate and Mr. Song-Garcia know that you’re alive and well,” Dalfon went on. “Beyond that, it’s up to you. You know where things stand with me.”

  Did he? Reflexively, Lucky wanted to distrust all the sweetness and promise that Dalfon seemed to offer, but he stopped himself. When the world bent over backward to give him the joy he so desired, it would be utter cowardice and idiocy to turn it away for fear of it failing.

  “Chicago it is, then,” Lucky said.

  Dalfon beamed at him and moved as if to kiss him again, but then a loud, low roar tore through night. Dalfon straightened and immediately drew his pistol from its holster. Lucky sat up and peered through the gloom.

  “That was One-Eyed Pete’s challenge roar,” Lucky said. “Someone is coming too close to him.”

  There wasn’t much that alarmed the giant saltwater crocodile, but sometimes sailboats set him off. Dalfon snatched up his discarded clothes and quickly pulled his moon goggles back over his eyes.

  “It’s a catboat,” Dalfon whispered, “with a longhorn bull painted on the sail.”

  “The Swaims.” Lucky had seen Frank take the small sailboat out a number of times in the past. He squinted into the dark and just made out the tall triangular sail. “How’d they find us here?”

  “I don’t—” Dalfon cut himself off and swore. “The curse. Bernard Swaim must have traced it.”

  “We need to get the thing away from us, then.” Lucky noticed the metallic gleam of the curse’s silvery spikes lying beyond the fire.

  Dalfon stepped past Lucky and picked the thing up. “Or we use it to draw them into the woods, then circle back to set their boat adrift. That should strand them here while we make a clean getaway on your raft.”

  “You think that could work?” Lucky knew the hills of the island pretty well, but it would be tricky to lure the Swaims far enough from their boat they wouldn’t notice it drifting. It would also mean outdistancing them to circle around without being seen on the way back.

  Lucky buckled up his pants and snatched up his rifle.


  “It’ll work if we split the trouble between us.” Dalfon shoved the curse into his coat pocket. “I’ll draw them after me. You drop back to the beach and set their boat on its way across the sea. Then I’ll loop back to you.”

  “I know the island better. I should be the one to lure them into the woods,” Lucky argued.

  “I’ve got moon lenses to show me were I’m stepping, and in the dark that could make all the difference—”

  “But you don’t know how to reach the beaches like I do.”

  “True, but I can carry this curse without awakening it,” Dalfon responded. “And since I’m not a water mage, I’d have a hell of a time wading among all those crocodiles, much less moving a sailboat just where I pleased. You’re the one who can do that, not me.”

  It took Lucky a moment to realize Dalfon was correct. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as powerful—certainly not compared to Dalfon. But he realized he would be the one who had to try to move the boat, especially with Dalfon being hurt.

  Still, he couldn’t see how Dalfon intended to circle back to the beach when he didn’t know the island trails. Able to see in the dark or not, a place this overgrown presented all sorts of falls and tangles. Not to mention miles of beach.

  Lucky considered for a moment. “Over the rise of this hill, there’s an abandoned chapel. If you cut back behind it, you’ll find a cobblestone path. It’s overgrown and uneven, but it curves below a rocky overhang and leads to an old crypt in the side of the hill. Then it runs down to the water. I’ll have the raft waiting on the beach where the path ends. You’ll know the spot because there are two of those giant white rocks washed up against each other. They form an arch.”

  “The alchemic stones, you mean?” Dalfon asked.

  “No. The white rocks, like the ones you were looking at when we first got here and you asked…” All at once Lucky realized why Dalfon had sounded so awed by the boulders. “Those are alchemic stone?”

  “Yep.” Dalfon nodded. “I’d wondered why the Swaims were willing to risk murdering a Pinkerton to get control of salt-flooded property. Then I saw this place and realized it has to be worth a fortune. You’re gonna be rich as Croesus, Lucky.”

  “I’d be over the moon just now if I wasn’t so worried that we aren’t going to live past this hour.”

  “You’re going to live, Lucky.” Dalfon pulled him close in a hard embrace. Then he lifted his head, and Lucky felt his entire body tense. He released Lucky and adjusted the lenses of his goggles. “They’re mooring, not too far from where you tied up your raft. Looks like it’s just the three brothers, but they’re all three lugging dinosaur guns. I’d better get going.”

  “Take care of yourself.” Lucky kissed him quickly. “I won’t forgive you if you don’t come back to me this time.”

  “I wouldn’t forgive myself,” Dalfon replied with a grin. Then he dashed up the rise towards the thickets and woods that hid the crumbling chapel. Lucky dropped back, distancing himself from the dull embers of their fire and hiding in the shadows of the gravestones.

  Only a few minutes later, he saw the Swaim brothers step into the light of the dying fire. All three men carried large-bore hunting rifles. Frank crouched down and warmed his hands while Harry swung his rifle up as a bat winged past him. The report of the rifle boomed like a cannon.

  “For the love of God, Harry,” Frank growled. “Stop shooting at every living thing. Save at least one round for the Pinkerton, will you?”

  “Go catch a fart,” Harry replied. “You’re only complaining because you don’t have the guts to do what needs doing.”

  Frank shot his brother a murderous look, and Lucky wondered if the brothers might simply kill each other, but then Bernard drew near.

  “Hush, both of you,” Bernard said, his words silencing his younger brothers. He stood at the edge of the fire with what looked like a compass in his hand. Something seemed off about the shape of his head. Lucky studied him, picking his form out from the surrounding shadows. Bernard turned towards his brothers and the firelight. Alarm shot through Lucky as he realized Bernard wore goggles with milky-white moon lenses. He’d be able to see Dalfon clear as day.

  “He’s headed up the hill,” Bernard announced, and he looked again at the small device in his right hand. “He appears to be making very good time for someone in the grip of a curse.”

  “He must be dead by now. Probably just his remains being dragged up a tree by a cougar,” Frank commented.

  “Yes,” Harry replied. “The catfish-catching cougar that rafted him across the strait. That seems likely.”

  “If it really was the Spivey kid’s raft we can assume he’s here too,” Bernard said.

  “Then we can take care of both our problems in one night,” Harry commented.

  Lucky didn’t remain there to hear them further malign him. He crept on his hands and knees between the gravestones until he reached the salt sedge growing at the edge of the beach. There, the tall grasses and bulrushes disguised his silhouette.

  Lucky raced along the beach. The surf lapped at his feet, coiling and pulling at him while One-Eyed Pete watched him pass in silence. He found the Swaims’ catboat easily; its triangular white sail stood out from the dark water like the steeple on a church. Not far from where it drifted, several logs from Lucky’s raft bobbed in a tangle of slashed reed ropes. The rest of his raft lay strewn on the beach destroyed beyond repair.

  Lucky resisted the urge to swear and instead considered his options. Really there was only one: the Swaims’ catboat. It sat, with its bow up on the sandbar while the stern bobbed in the surf. Bernard had moored it to a tree.

  Lucky stood almost frozen with dread. No doubt Bernard Swaim had placed spells on the boat to keep it from being boarded by undesirables like himself. The only way he was going to get aboard it would be to reach into the drowning depths of the waters surrounding him. His throat tightened just at the memory of feeling salt water choking him. He’d endured it once already tonight. He didn’t know that he could do it again.

  But the thought of Dalfon waiting for him with the Swaims closing in behind spurred Lucky to act.

  He waded out and laid his hands on the side of the catboat. It heaved against him. The surface seemed to bristle at his touch, and shocks of red light flicked up like needles, pricking his fingers. Lucky clenched his teeth against a cry. His hands burned like he gripped fistfuls of angry jellyfish. The pain brought tears to Lucky’s eyes, but he didn’t draw his hands back.

  The surf crashed against his legs. He pushed against those agonizing red tongues with the cool and vast power of the sea. The water swelled into his senses and seemed to swallow him, blotting out the moon and stars overhead. Losing himself in the lightless depths and miles of rolling waves terrified him, but not so much as failing Dalfon did. His ears roared and his lungs burned for air. But Lucky held on and kept the ocean’s power flowing through him and flooding into Bernard Swaim’s poisonous curses. He drowned the spells and washed his will through the wood, steel, rope and canvas. At last he completely doused the fiery scarlet spells Bernard Swaim had carved all across the boat. Even the Swaim emblem washed from the sail.

  Then he broke from the ocean’s grip, gasping in lungfuls of warm, night air. He sagged against the boat, his whole frame shaking like he’d just emerged from an ice bath. He wanted to remain there, regaining his strength, but there was no time for him to rest. Dalfon needed him.

  Lucky took up the catboat’s mooring line, shoved the keel off the sand and clambered into the shallow boat. The tide gripped him immediately. He pulled himself onto the thwart and dangled one hand over the gunnel to touch the water.

  This time he took in only brief sips from the vast sea surrounding him, just enough to catch a current. Then the water sped him around the island to the bay where two huge alchemic stones formed a ragged arch.

  The stones g
leamed—almost glowed—in the moonlight, as did several of the cobbles of the path winding up the steep cliff face. Most of the path lay obscured beneath brambles. Dogwood clung to the sheer rock face, while ivy spilled down from the overhang. Though the stone outcropping where the entry to the crypt stood remained relatively clear. A single magnolia tree spread its petals in the gloom.

  As the catboat bobbed and rocked beneath him, Lucky searched for any sign of Dalfon. High on the cliff above, a flock of small pterosaurs startled from the foliage. Then the thunderous boom of rifle fire resounded over the water. Dalfon bolted across the open space near the crypt.

  A second rifle shot sounded, and a hunk of stone splintered and tumbled down the cliff to the beach. Dalfon disappeared into the cover of brush. Moments later Frank and Harry Swaim pelted after him. Bernard followed at a more leisurely rate. He paused on the outcropping and surveyed the beach below him. Then he knelt and lifted his long rifle.

  On the path, Harry whooped and hooted like a hound dog after a fox. Lucky couldn’t discern Frank’s commentary but felt certain it wasn’t complimentary. Taking the situation in, Lucky could see what the Swaims planned. Harry and Frank would drive Dalfon out onto the open beach, and Bernard would pick him off from his high vantage point.

  Lucky shouted but his warning didn’t carry over the breaking surf and Harry Swaim’s ecstatic howls. Then he caught sight of Dalfon edging down towards the archway of alchemic stone. Frank Swaim burst from the path behind Dalfon. He fired. Brilliant blue flames burst up from the archway where the spells in his ammunition struck the alchemic stone. Framed in eerie blue light, Dalfon fired his own pistol twice. Frank toppled to the ground, and Harry Swaim went silent. Dalfon peered up at the path behind him, then he turned, and Lucky knew from the way he straightened that he’d sighted the sail of the catboat.

  Dalfon charged from the cover of the archway. Lucky shouted for him to turn back but already Bernard angled his rifle down, taking his time to aim. The moon lenses he wore gleamed.