The Song of Glory and Ghost

by N. D. Wilson

  Two winged, shadowy shapes swept shrieking out of the darkness, down toward the baby. The old white-haired Glory threw herself forward, shielding the baby with her body. She raised her hands and sand swirled, but not before black blades flashed. She fell limp to the ground, and so did the rest.

  Enough, Ghost said. And the room and the house began to recede. The vision was shrinking, the sound of a mother’s screams fading in the expanding distance.

  The room was small and far away, but it was full of death. Two female forms dressed in shadow bent over the baby. Feathers rippled across their laughing faces as they reached into the barrel with bloody taloned hands.

  Ghost let go of Glory and the black fire leapt off her arm and vanished in the cold night air. She was exactly where she had been. Sam and Samra were still asleep in the grass beneath a silver moon. Glory doubled over, gasping, trying to forget what she had just seen. It was too much. All of it. Seeing herself die. Hearing a mother wail in agony as her sons were attacked. But worst of all, seeing those monsters over the baby, over Peter. Tears fell into the grass between her feet, and she could have dropped to the ground on top of them, paralyzed by sobs. But there was heat inside her, too. Anger.

  “Are those the same shadows who tore open the sky in Seattle?” Glory asked. “The ones who trapped us here?”

  “Yes,” Ghost said. “The Vulture’s darkest allies, or so he thinks. Tzitzimitl Razpocoatl and Tzitzimitl Magyamitl. Blood goddesses of the Aztec. Long ago cast out of the light. Now returning.”

  “How many are there?” Glory asked. She didn’t look up.

  “Only two that matter now,” Ghost said. “There were once many.”

  “And they work for the Vulture?”

  “He might think so. But his abilities are no match for theirs.”

  Glory exhaled, wiped her face on the back of her arm, and stood up slowly.

  “I died,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Ghost. “And your death is not what must be changed. If we are victorious, that will remain your end just as Peter’s end was beside a smoking train, defending Sam’s broken body.”

  “Then what?” Glory asked. “Stop them from killing Peter?”

  Ghost pulled off his hat and scratched his moonlit hair. He could have been just another boy. Just another boy with power over light and time, standing on an island in the wrong millennium, talking to just another girl.

  “Stop them. Destroy them. Banish them. Do anything that prevents them from taking Peter’s heart and the time-walking anointing you gave him.”

  “But how did I get it?” Glory asked. “I thought Peter would be the one to teach me.”

  “You gifted it to him,” Ghost said. “Always. He returned some of it in that glass you hold, and I filled it.”

  Glory inflated her cheeks and shook her head. Sam’s right hand was drifting in the air, with Speck’s eyes focused on her. But Cindy and his left hand were lightly striking Sam in the face. He sputtered and yawned and stretched. Samra remained motionless.

  “Tell me,” Glory said. “Who gave the spirit to me? Who teaches me?”

  “Your mother left it to you and to your brother,” Ghost said. “Laila Navarre, daughter of seers and conquistadors on her mother’s side. Daughter of the Nightway, descendant of Baptisto, son of Manuelito on her father’s. You have no teacher but me.”

  Glory’s mouth went dry. “My mother?” she asked. “And Alex? From Manuelito? But Alex left me. He promised we would always be together, and then he left me in a bus station.”

  Ghost’s head slumped. “Alex abandoned you because I told him who he was. I told him he had been chosen for this fight.” He looked back up. “Your mother had desirable blood and much loss. A Tzitzimitl found Laila’s dreams and drew her in, promising her strength enough to avenge her losses and remake her life. Foolishly, she abandoned the life that remained to her and fled into the ancient Night instead of the Light, and the darkness betrayed her. Laila was bound in shadow and enslaved.”

  “But Alex?” Glory asked. “Even if this is all true—no. Whatever.” Glory raised both hands. “I don’t believe you.”

  Ghost sighed and dropped cross-legged onto the grass. “He had abilities. He was needed. But he also had pride.”

  “Needed for what?” Glory asked.

  “For Sam Miracle. For Peter Eagle. For the Future and the Past. You and he would have eventually been at SADDYR together. Alex would have been Sam’s guide, standing shoulder to shoulder with Peter. But when he learned that your mother was enthralled in shadow, his focus changed.” Ghost tore up a handful of grass and threw it away. The sky behind him was beginning to glow red. Glory could see the black shadows of islands and mountains on the horizon against the first warmth of dawn.

  “He went to look for her,” Glory said quietly.

  For years, she had tried not to think of her brother. He had left her. Alone. She had left that pain as undisturbed as possible. She had let it settle in her soul and after the first year, she had not allowed herself a single tear—for her mother or her brother. They had not wanted her. They had thrown her away.

  But now, it was all threatening to explode out of her. To her young self, Alex had been huge and fearless. When they had run from their first foster home and had lived in the streets, she had never been afraid when he was in reach. How many times had she seen Alex frighten grown men? No one on the streets had ever tried to touch her without suffering. How many times had he broken the two of them out of homes and even police stations? How many miles through how many streets and along how many railroads had she ridden on his back?

  Alex would have fought for their mother.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Was he killed?”

  “Yes,” Ghost said. “And worse. Like your mother, the darkness made him promises that took root in his anger and turned him. He was taken. You still went to the Spaldings and the ranch in Arizona and Sam Miracle. Father Tiempo was surprised to meet a girl with such a mind for time. He never knew that you were descended from his brother.”

  “You’re awful,” she said. “You think you can just use people up like that? Try my brother until he breaks and then try me. Hey! Now let’s see what happens? Who’s next in line when I turn evil?”

  “No one,” Ghost said seriously. “You must not turn.”

  Glory closed her eyes. Her right hand began to tremble, and she realized that she was still holding her hourglass tight. The glass was twisting and shaking inside her grip. Someone was moving time nearby. . . .

  “Glory?” The voice was Sam’s. Two rattles began to buzz. “Glory!”

  Glory opened her eyes. The sun was not yet up, but the world was brighter and the moon above her had gone ghostly faint in the bluer sky.

  The air was getting hotter. Much hotter. And thickening quickly.

  “Is this our island?” Glory asked. “Where did you put us?”

  “Where you will live,” Ghost’s voice whispered. “Or where you will cease. Here you will glimpse Peter’s killers, searching for Sam. And for monsters. Move quickly.”

  He was gone. And the next time she looked in his eyes . . .

  SITTING UP, SAM SQUINTED AGAINST THE BRIGHTNESS. THE sun hadn’t even risen yet, and the day was already brighter than any he’d ever survived in the Arizona desert. The grass around him was strange, too—the blades were long and plump, but curled up into tight rolls like snail shells. As the temperature climbed and sunlight began to spill over the horizon, every blade began to unroll up into the air, stretching for the warmth.

  Glory was just standing there with her back to him and her face toward the sunrise, with a thousand grass snakes unrolling up around her legs.

  Sam’s arms whipped around him, charged with energy. Speck was excited, but Cindy was afraid. “Glory!” Sam yelled, trying to get her attention.

  “Is this our island?” Glory murmured. “Where did you put us?”

  Eyes watering, Sam rose to his feet and the grass he had been holdi
ng down jumped up past his knees. Samra was on her side a few feet away, and her skin was flushed from the swelling heat. Her comic book flopped open awkwardly, lifted up by the rising grass.

  “Glory?”

  Sam grabbed her shoulders. Both of his arms were writhing, his rattles shivering. The heat was too intense; even Speck was getting nervous. Sand dribbled out of Glory’s right hand.

  Sam had memories of stars and darkness and spinning glass, but that could have all been one of his dreams. Glory’s unblinking eyes were streaming tears. Her face was turning red. The white stripe in her hair was too bright to look at.

  “When did you take us?” Sam asked. “Glory! Wherever it is, we have to leave. Now!”

  Glory turned in a circle, raising her left arm to block the dawn. She seemed half-asleep. “Where’s Ghost? Did he leave? Did you see him?”

  “No idea,” Sam said. “But we’re going to crisp into jerky soon if we don’t get out of here.”

  Glory looked at the hourglass shaking in her hand, spilling sand.

  “Someone’s up to something,” she said simply.

  “Glory!” Sam stepped back, and then spun, looking for shelter, for shade. Anything to protect them from the sweltering sun.

  The island was almost identical to theirs—a crescent moon around an inner harbor—but the land was much lower. Or the water was much higher. They were standing on the western crescent tip with the dawn coming at them from across the little harbor. There were no trees, just the armies of snail grass, and a massive tubular lava formation the color of scabbed blood sprawling across the top of the island where the house would eventually be, but taller, and much longer.

  “There!” Glory pointed with her hourglass. Sam turned, looking out across miles of water to the west.

  “What?” he asked. “Is it a boat? What am I looking at?”

  Glory didn’t answer. But whatever it was seemed to be waking her up. She cocked her head, finally blinking her glistening eyes.

  Sam saw a black shape that could have easily been a ship, if ships could grow longer on one side while the other side remained exactly where it was. The dark shape was expanding unevenly but quickly across and above the surface of the water—rising and falling and bending in a great curve that stretched for miles. It was moving quickly.

  “It’s a doorway,” Glory said. “Between times.” And then, from one end to the other, the black hole opened like a zipper, lowering its jaw below the surface of the sound. Water crashed together in a chain of angry geysers, all of it beginning to slowly swirl into a great whirlpool.

  “That can’t be good,” Sam said.

  Behind Sam and Glory, the sun rose, and the force of the heat almost knocked Sam to his knees. Needles of light pressed into his bare arms and the back of his neck. Cindy and Speck both tucked in tight to his belly, trying to stay in the shade.

  All around, the plump vertical grass began to hiss and steam, and the smell it gave off was like rot dragged up from the bottom of a pond. Glory gasped and doubled over.

  Stretched across the highest point of the island, the massive, tubular, scab-colored lava rock shifted and stretched.

  It wasn’t a rock.

  The island shook as an enormous spiny tail rose up and up and up out of the water, flinging a small lake of spray over the dark red blotchy body that was draped all the way up and over the top of the island and down the other side.

  The head was out of sight.

  The tail slammed back down into the water.

  Sam stood in the animal’s rain and forgot his blistering skin and his hiding arms. He was watching the serpentine tail longer than three semitrucks—finned between brutal spikes along the top and bottom—sweep up another load of the salty water and launch it in a sprinkler explosion over the basking monster. Much of the water began to evaporate immediately in a fog, but the rest came down in fat drops of hot rain.

  Sam bent over beside Glory. He was dripping sweat, but she was dry, and her skin was rough with salt.

  “Take us somewhere!” he hissed. “Before we boil or this thing sees us!” Forcing Speck and Cindy to obey him, he lifted Glory’s right arm with both of his.

  “This is our island,” he said. “Just move us forward! Forward, Glory! A long way forward!”

  She looked at him, blankly, like she was frozen with fear. Sam swung her hand around for her. Sand seeped out of the hourglass, but nothing else happened. He swung her hand harder.

  Finally Glory jerked her hand free from Sam’s grasp, slipping and dropping to one knee as she did. As she snapped her wrist like she was cracking a whip, a veil of sand spun and melted into a small glassy dome in front of her, but they were stuck on the outside of it.

  Within the dome, there was no snail grass. There was normal grass. And ferns. And one orange, very surprised chicken, cocking her head and looking out. Sam knew the chicken. Millie had named her Carrot because of her color, and then Carrot Cake because of how fat she had gotten.

  “Sam, it’s the right time,” Glory said, and she laughed. “I thought about when I wanted and it worked! That’s Carrot Cake! I did it!”

  “Great,” Sam whispered. “But we’re still out here with a monster bigger than this island! We need to be in there with that chicken!”

  Another shower of hot drops rained down from the beast, but this time, the tail didn’t slam back into the water. It remained in the air, like a scaled train standing on its head, twisting slowly, taller than a water tower.

  The bloody red body bent in the middle, and the other end of the creature rose into view from the other side of the island.

  The head.

  The Head.

  Was Smoking.

  The monster yawned, flapping a spiked membrane mane like a deadly collar just behind a horsey head. Scab red outside, the inside of the creature’s gaping mouth was black. The upper and lower jaws were lined with jagged, broken, yellowing tusks, and translucent skin-flap cheeks were as taut as drums on both sides. The throat was scaled and baggy, lined with dozens of vertical black vents. The nostrils were wide uneven triangles, both flaring. The beast’s eyes were pupilless and knobby, the size of large pumpkins, but jaundice yellow. And they were both leaking steam from the inside corners.

  Sam tried to focus on those eyes, but he could barely stand the stifling heat, writhing and twisting his back almost as much as the snakes were twisting in his arms.

  Glory was still staring at the chicken inside her little glass dome.

  “Do it again!” Sam whispered. “But around us this time!”

  Glory raised her hourglass and swung a slow loop of hissing sand around her head.

  Samra began to whimper, stirring in the scorching snail grass.

  The beast shut its mouth and flared up its spiny collar. Its baggy throat inflated, widening dozens of vertical black vents like pleats in a skirt.

  “We’re burning!” Samra’s eyes were still closed, but she sobbed, thrashing in the steaming snail grass. And then she began to yell. “Put it out! Put it out! Put the fire out!”

  And at the sound of her yelling, the jaundiced eyes rolled open. What Sam had thought was eyeball was actually lid. The lids opened sideways, from the inside out, and sharp yellow eyes focused vertical pupils on Sam and Glory and the kicking Samra.

  GLORY LOOKED DOWN AT SAMRA, THEN UP AT THE MONSTROUS animal, and then straight into Sam’s eyes. Her face was the color of Valentine’s Day and he knew that his must be, too. But he could see her mind clearing in her eyes, the fear and realization and memory all crystalizing at once. And he knew exactly how that felt.

  “I know,” Sam said quietly, and he pulled his crossbow off his hip. “Do your best as fast as you can. I’ll hold it off as long as I can. But if that’s not long enough, jump in the harbor. Get back to the others. I’ll stay with Samra.” Hooking his foot in the nose of the crossbow, he made sure all four strings were drawn and had arrows in place.

  Samra sat up in the grass, wiping at her tears. “It�
�s so hot. Hot.”

  The beast leaned its towering head and ballooning throat forward, eyes narrowing beneath their own steam. Its throat pulsed with a sound deeper than any drum.

  Samra screamed and Glory swung her hourglass, cracking a long whip of sand around herself. The creature lunged forward, firing two spinning clouds of white sparks out of its nostrils with a blast that would have broken windows. The sparks sizzled and hissed over Sam’s head into the snail grass, turning it into ashen char. The beast roared and leaned closer.

  Sam raised his bow, letting Cindy aim. The first bolt disappeared into the corner of the animal’s left eye. The monster bellowed surprise as white-hot sparks erupted in a whistling stream from the wound. The second bolt vanished into the right eye, but black blood boiled from the wound instead of fire.

  “Get over here!” Glory yelled. The sand was melting into a web around her as she worked. Samra, comic book in hand, was crawling toward Glory’s feet.

  Sam darted toward Glory, letting Speck take aim and firing two more arrows. After they launched, he pushed through the stinging sand and hot glass, into the center of Glory’s little dome.

  “Look!” Glory pointed down at her feet. The snail grass was gone. They were standing on thick, cool, Puget Sound grass. There was even a fern. Samra was kneeling on it, her face as red as her hair.

  “You look.” Sam pointed up. Mostly blind, the huge animal was keeping its head down, but its spiny tail was climbing high. “Can we thicken the glass? Or move away?”

  Glory backed up, holding her hourglass tight with both hands.

  The dome half grew and half dragged with her, leaving a stripe of beautiful grass behind them to shrivel up yellow in the heat.

  Carrot Cake watched them leave, in her own little dome of glassy time.

  The monster’s tail came down like a hammer as thick as a building.

  The ground shook. Sam and Glory bounced. Samra yelped and hid her face with her hands.

  Fluttering orange feathers appeared in the air inside Glory’s dome, along with the smell of chicken.