The Song of Glory and Ghost

by N. D. Wilson

  “Higher,” Glory said.

  Sam stood all the way up. Samra hopped back, slipped on the glass as it sloped in beneath her, and sat down hard. She slid into Sam’s feet.

  Samra yelped. “Ow! I hate this. There’s a better way. There has to be.”

  Only a two-foot circle of dock remained, snowy and slick under Sam’s boots. The rest of the glass held back warm water and hot rippling air.

  Spitting snow and blinking away melting flakes, Sam lifted Glory up to his right shoulder. The dock under his feet was replaced with glass, and he crow-hopped dangerously as the sphere snapped shut beneath him.

  The leviathans were still angry. And the snow was still falling, but now it was accumulating in the bottom of the ball.

  “Set me in the boat,” Glory said from his shoulders. “Then dive in after.”

  Sam moved forward, boots squeaking on glass, and the ball bent in, folding over what had to be the side of the boat, at least two feet below the leviathan water.

  Glory’s weight shifted forward.

  “Glory, no!” Sam’s feet slipped and scrambled. He couldn’t stay up. Samra screamed, Sam threw Glory forward, and the glass ball buckled and cracked.

  Sam fell.

  Warm water washed around his legs.

  Glory was shouting.

  Sam felt two hands grab onto him and pull. His kicking feet collided with something as solid as a slithering log. He pushed off of it and wriggled up slick glass, before tumbling down into a pool of water and two pairs of feet. He was on his back with his boots in the air.

  “Sam!” Glory was yelling. “Sam!”

  He spat out a mouthful of salt water and looked up. A pair of hatchlings was writhing between his feet, fighting each other to get into what was left of the glass sphere.

  Speck had already drawn Sam’s crossbow. Cindy was already aiming. Two bolts punched into two heads, and the serpents flopped away in a shower of white sparks.

  Samra dragged Sam’s feet all the way inside as Glory desperately spun sand.

  “Don’t!” Sam said, and he scrambled to his feet. On one side of his body, the air was scorching, and on the other, snow was still pelting him. “We’re in the back of the boat, find the motorcycle first!”

  Knee deep in hot water, Sam forced his way toward the bow, pushing on Glory’s glass, bending it down and rolling it forward.

  Samra screamed and Speck shot something Sam couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it had been.

  “Bigger!” Sam yelled. “Glory, make it as big as you can!”

  The motorcycle was strapped on to a platform in the bow, so the water wouldn’t be as deep. Inches. Maybe a foot. The leviathans might not even be able to reach them.

  Sam kicked the glass hard, and more water flooded in around his boot. Reaching back, he dragged Glory forward, and they both took a big step up and banged into a motorcycle tire as glass re-formed around them.

  Speck fired Sam’s last arrow and white sparks shrieked past Sam’s head, dying in the water.

  Samra half crawled and half swam up onto Sam’s boots.

  The blizzard was back. They were standing in shin-high hot water on a plywood deck. Snowflakes were steaming into it. The motorcycle and sidecar were intact inside Glory’s dome, with water up to the exhaust pipe. The glass had cut the straps that tied it down.

  Gasping and drenched, Sam looked around. Samra had her eyes closed tight. A severed leviathan tail was floating against her back.

  “Are we alive?” Samra asked.

  “Yeah,” Glory said. “Barely. Sam tried to kill us all, but we beat him.”

  Sam spat into the water. “I’ll try, try again.” He looked at Glory. She was breathing hard and dripping sweat, her work nowhere near done. Her stripe of white hair had at least tripled its width.

  “You okay?” Sam asked.

  “I’d like to eat a bushel of pasta and sleep for a year,” Glory said. “But first I need a shower.”

  “A shower,” Sam said. “How about a towel?”

  “Do you have one?” Glory asked.

  Sam didn’t answer. The snow and the warm water were fogging up the inside of the glass. But at least they were more elevated now. Water lapped barely more than a foot up the glass. Fewer tails and tusks could reach them at one time, but the animals were still trying.

  Samra sat up in the water. “I lost the comic book. Oh no.” Splashing up onto her feet, she rubbed condensation off the glass and peered outside. “I was in it. I was in that book.”

  “You still are,” Sam said. “But for real.” Reloading his bow, he counted the bolts remaining in his left holster.

  “Sam,” Glory said. “Start the bike. Now.”

  The huge blind beast on the island was swaying above them—fanning her collar and pulsing her throat.

  “Right,” Sam said quietly. “You stay put, Mama. We’ll be gone soon.”

  “Not there,” Glory said. “Behind you.”

  Sam turned, looking out the mouth of the harbor. Through the steam, a massive rolling wave was approaching. He wiped the glass quickly. A scab-colored head the size of a bulldozer was plowing through the water, followed by a moving mountain range of body.

  “And that must be the Papa Smurf,” said Glory. The animal bellowed across the water, knocking the steam off the inside of the glass with the sound.

  All across the harbor, hundreds of spiny heads rose from the water, bellowing in reply.

  Angry and blind, Mama joined in directly above the glass dome. Samra tucked her chin and covered her ears.

  “Start the bike,” Glory said again. “I’m ready.”

  Sam hopped on, turned the key, and kicked the starter like Glory had taught him. The bike coughed. Again. The bike grumbled. Again. The bike woke briefly.

  “Kick it hard,” Glory ordered.

  Sam did, and the bike roared, spewing black exhaust above the water. Every spiny head in the harbor turned their way.

  Samra tried to climb on behind Sam, but Glory grabbed her with her left hand.

  “Sidecar,” Glory said. “Quick.”

  “But in the comic—”

  “Don’t care,” Glory said. She threw her leg up and over the back of the bike and hugged Sam’s ribs tight with her left arm. “Sidecar or stay behind and feed the beasties.”

  Sam’s eyes and lungs were already burning from the fumes when Mama Leviathan slammed headfirst into the harbor next to them, like a train diving into an Arizona canyon. His heart jumped and memories slammed into him even faster than the wave—hot fog clouding his mind.

  The motorcycle was rising. It was tipping. On the other side of the canyon there would be a train wreck and smoke and ruin and pain and a man with guns faster than impossible and seven watches floating around him like wings.

  No. He had six watches now. And Sam’s hands were faster.

  The motorcycle was in gear. And Speck had already opened up the throttle wide. Behind him, Glory was leaning away hard. The bike was turning across the wave. Water was rising in two glistening sheets around the front wheel.

  AT FIRST, GLORY THOUGHT THAT SHE HAD DIED. THE STILLNESS that surrounded her was cool and perfect. And then she opened her eyes.

  Immediately in front of her right eyeball, there was a snowflake, shining in the sun, hanging in the air as firmly as a star in the heavens. Like a star, it was beautiful, and like a star, she knew it was one of uncountable billions.

  Sam was still in front of her, and her arm remained around him. Inside his chest, beneath her palm, a song was playing in his heart, a song that told a story, that rose and soared, that battled and rejoiced and then sank into peace. Every beat was more intricate than any opera, as simple as something played perfectly by a galaxy of orchestras, and she knew that it was only one part of a single heartbeat. Even as still as the world had been made around her, it would take her countless lifetimes to learn the first movements of just one beat.

  Two sheets of water hung in the air, like
museums of light. Beside her, a red monster was fixed in both the sea and the air, surrounded by foothills and planets of water. Looking at that beast, she saw its glory like she had seen glory in the desert, in the great painted rocks heaped between the ground of Arizona and the blue-bellied sky of lesser Heaven. And lesser red serpents, intricate statues of anger and ignorance and fear and hunger, had been placed all around her, across the polished skin of the harbor.

  The beauty of it all ached inside her, although it throbbed like death and sorrow, but with it came a deeper joy than she had ever dreamed of. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks like laughter and new sun-filled rooms opened in her soul. Until this moment, she had never known how dead she had been. Now she was alive. She felt . . . real . . . new. Like a dragonfly feeling her wings unfold in the sun for the first and only time—wings that could never be forgotten and would forevermore be felt.

  She was a dead girl, rising from an unknown grave in a garden world.

  “Well done,” Ghost said. “You can now be still and see with a sight that cannot be taught. And seeing, you can now move with a movement that is given only to a very few. Like a bird in flight, like a fish in the sea, like the winds in the sky, so Glory Hallelujah can now soar and swim and storm the limitless roads of time. Do you feel alive in this world? Are you a life in this world?”

  Glory was scared to look for his face, because she had been warned about seeing him again. But when she turned, she saw only black fire, dancing across the water near the mouth of the harbor.

  “I think so,” Glory said. “Where are you?”

  “I am burned into your bones and into your blood. And you do not ‘think so.’ This is knowing. This is being known. That is what this is. Knowledge of the words written inside the words and the Word outside all words, the notes inside the notes and the song outside all songs. This knowledge is given and in turn, it opens. Taste and See. Hear. Touch. Move in this song. Make your own songs inside of it.”

  The black fire moved between the heads of young leviathans before stopping a dozen feet away.

  “Glory Hallelujah,” Ghost said. “Dance with darkness, because you are the dawn. May every tongue of your fire burn white-hot against the chains imprisoning others. When your time is done and your life is spent, this will be the song Ghost sings of Glory when he gathers you in.”

  “Amen,” Glory said. The word rose out of her, and it felt right.

  “This is the purpose for which you were made,” Ghost said. “You will soar in this song of ours where only a few can hear, but those few are everything, and when you soar, you will make the rest more beautiful. To many, you will be a wind unseen. You will be the aroma of hope. To others, you must be fierce protection. And you cannot be that without also being destruction and fearless fire. Like Peter after you, you will learn your gifts and your own ways, but his strength will only be a portion of yours, so carve a mighty way. There will be much pain. And in that pain, you will find your deepest joys, like the grapes find their wine. Open your right hand.”

  Glory looked down at her locked fist, and her fingers finally obeyed her, spreading wide and flattening her palm. The hourglass was gone, but its shape remained, burned into her, still burning, with flames of black fire. Her flames poured out and leapt across the water to join the others. Heat and sorrow and laughter surged through her when fires met.

  “Your war awaits you,” Ghost said. “But do not forget your joy. Make the song more glorious with your every touch, and the name of Glory Hallelujah will always be the truth.”

  Ghost’s fire dwindled, gathering in on itself.

  “Wait,” Glory said. “When does it all go back to normal?”

  “This is normal,” Ghost said. “But not everyone sees.”

  “I mean the speed.” Glory looked around behind her. Samra was head down in the sidecar with her feet in the air. “How do I make it faster again? I’m pretty frozen.”

  Ghost’s fire began to spin into a whirlwind. “You may slow as you like and speed as you like. Exist in any moment for as long as you need to. Neither you nor I nor any but the Three above us can adjust the true tempo of this song. It is only our tempo that changes inside it. Act with the agility of light as you do now. Or fall behind the slow percussion of the planets, as you already have. Now go, be as you were meant to be.”

  With that, Ghost’s flames shot into the sky. And the harbor exploded with movement.

  The snowflake hit Glory’s eyeball. The leviathan thundered into the water like a collapsing volcano. And the wave flung the motorcycle, trying to catch it in its foaming mouth.

  But Glory moved faster.

  14

  Song

  GLORY’S GLASS DOME WAS FLYING APART IN SHARDS, LEAVING them in the hot ancient time, but she no longer needed the protective shell. Leaning off the motorcycle, she plunged her hand into the hot water, slowing its time.

  The water firmed, spitting the wheels up to the surface as the engine roared. Fishtailing and sliding and flinging a massive, chewy fountain from the rear wheel, the bike rocketed forward on a darting path of sandy glass that dissolved to foam behind it.

  Sam swerved around the first snapping spiny head and accelerated toward the harbor mouth, racing the monster approaching on the outside.

  Samra was trying to right herself in the sidecar.

  “What’s going on?” Samra yelled. “Where are we?”

  “Can you get us out of here?” Sam yelled over his shoulder.

  Glory didn’t answer. She wasn’t exactly sure how to do it, but she was sure that she could do it. And Ghost had said that she could take as much time as she needed inside a single moment.

  Mother Leviathan erupted from the water on her right, white fire blasting, jagged yellow tusks bared. Father Leviathan dolphined out of the water in front of them, spitting a cloud of sparks the size of turkeys across the surface toward them. Sam hit the harbor mouth and banked left, sending a sheet of water up into the air like a shield. The sparks ripped right through it.

  “Glory!” Sam yelled. “Hurry!”

  Glory knew what time she wanted. She knew its feel and its taste. Raising her right hand from the surface of the water, she swept fiery black sand in a wide arch above the motorcycle.

  A door opened between times.

  The motorcycle shot through it and dropped six feet, landing hard and splashing harder. Glory smacked her face against Sam’s spine and Samra almost flew out of the sidecar, but landed upright. Around them, day became night, cold knifed their skin, and snow pelted their faces.

  “Ha!” Sam laughed. “Glory, you’re amazing.”

  She smiled, licking blood from her lip.

  Immediately, Sam veered the bike back around in a big loop, sliding and bouncing across the water toward the island. Even through the blizzard, the glass house was visible on the top of the island, a few of its windows gently glowing.

  “We’re back!” Sam yelled. “Back!”

  Glory looked at the storm all around them. Really looked. Every flake was coming from the wrong time, blowing through a massive tear in the sky. And the water was wrong, too.

  “You left it open!” Samra yelled. She was pointing back at the wide arch Glory had made for them. Sunlight was pouring through it.

  And so were the leviathan.

  But Glory didn’t care right now. She was focused on the two birdlike shadows flying along above the motorcycle almost faster than sight. Glory slowed her moment, and she saw everything.

  With the shadow wings spread wide, the skeletal bodies were laid bare in the center. The creatures had arms for legs and arms for arms, with taloned hands on all four. Each rib was feathered and the rib cages were stuffed full of gory trophies—the young feet and faces of those who had been killed in sacrifice. Their heavy heart necklaces flapped against those rib prisons as the two ghouls dove and crisscrossed in front of the bike, tearing open the air in an X just barely above the water.

  The mothers were too fast for Sam’s eyes,
but Samra pointed and shouted a warning.

  “Glory!”

  The bike was going to careen right into the freshly gaping darkness.

  Glory swept her hand forward, and the motorcycle and its passengers dropped into the sea.

  It wasn’t wet. And it wasn’t thick. All around them, the water wafted and curled away like transparent vapor. Behind them, the leviathans’ huge bodies twisted slowly above them like monstrous sculptures. Young curling leviathans floated in the vapor like balloons.

  Sam yelled in surprise, and the sound of his voice was as gargly as any underwater shout.

  Glory focused. Flinging glass balls was clumsy. She needed precision. She was already touching the bike with her legs, and Sam with her knees, and her free arm and the water with almost all of her. Clamping her knees tighter, she let go of Sam and reached into the sidecar to grab Samra. They had passed well under the Tzitzi trap, but they were dropping fast.

  The bike and its passengers were enveloped in a sleeve of rapidly accelerating time. The water around them thickened, and the bike chewed its way forward and up.

  One moment, Glory was watching a pair of massive monsters behind them, the next moment, the bike erupted from the sea like a leaping shark, slamming back down onto the surface and wobbling, sliding, and then rocketing away.

  The air was cold and sharp, but breathing was easier. Snowflakes dangled in the air, barely moving, like ten billion hung ornaments waiting for the celebration.

  Glory let go of Samra and hooked her arm back around Sam’s rib cage.

  Sam laughed. Snowflakes and droplets trailed his hair, and Glory’s ponytail snapped like a damp flag.

  “Where to?” Sam yelled.

  “To Peter in the past!” Glory yelled. “In Arizona. And then back to the island to pick up our crew!”

  Samra slumped as deep into the sidecar as she could, head down, arms around her legs.

  Sam bent the bike south and accelerated across the water. Glory accelerated more.

  THE LOST BOYS AND LEVI AND HIS MEN HAD GATHERED AT the dock, studying the pieces of sea monster that were somehow floating in strangely steaming water inside the hull of the metal boat. When they heard the motorcycle, every one of them had run through the falling snow, up from the harbor onto the arm of the island, and every one of them had seen the same thing.