The Forever Man

by Eoin Colfer

  Riley caught the blade, and in one fluid movement turned and flung forward his hand, dropping to one knee as he had been taught. But there was no thunk of blade on bone nor squelch of knife through organ – and Garrick reckoned himself safe for the moment.

  ‘Too slow again,’ he gloated. ‘You’ve forgotten your lessons, son.’

  Not this one, Riley might have said, or: I remembered the knife palm you forced me to practise all those years.

  But there was no time for banter, as the flames were rising and Chevie’s face was a mask of terror. Riley could not stand to watch the fire burn her feet and calves, so he simply threw Isles’s knife, which he had not previously thrown but simply concealed in his palm. This time his target was not on the balls of his feet ready for the dodge but leaned to one side and woefully off balance.

  Blast, thought Garrick. I hate stabbings.

  He had been stabbed many times in his long life and it seemed as though each one hurt more keenly than the last. Although they had healed in mere seconds, Garrick swore he felt the diverse pains whenever the night was cold.

  Today, however, he had barely the time to grit his teeth before the blade buried itself deep in his shoulder. Garrick had to admit the boy’s aim was true – which was to his own credit, of course – before that particular sharp pain of a knife wound blasted like a white light through his brain and he could not hold in a yelp of pain, which he felt sure must have given Riley some satisfaction.

  But still Garrick would not yield. He plucked the knife from his own shoulder, refusing through sheer willpower to sink to the ground. The pain was debilitating, certainly, but it would be brief and this game could still be played.

  But the pain persisted and blood flowed from the wound. Garrick felt himself light-headed.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is this?’

  Riley moved left and right, searching for a way past. ‘Ain’t you figured it out, Garrick? Didn’t you feel that spirit inside you?’

  Garrick knew that it must be true, for the wound was not healing. That spirit had stripped the wormhole right out of him.

  ‘But …’ he said. ‘But I am the Forever Man.’

  ‘Forever is over,’ said Riley, and readied himself to commence his run.

  For he had formulated a desperate plan in those last few seconds: even if Garrick lay down like a lamb, there was still no earthly way to extinguish the fire and save Chevie in time. He could not snatch the book unless he could use Garrick’s old trick and magic the book away from where it was supposed to be.

  But Garrick was not about to lie down and die, for, in fact, he was not mortally wounded and what he lacked in energy he made up for in hate.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, brandishing the blade. ‘None shall tell me when my time is over. Perhaps I ain’t immortal no more, but I am still Witchfinder here and I will burn who I please and none will dispute my orders. I would build a bonfire for every man, woman and child in Mandrake and they would trot into the flames on my orders. I am the master here and no parliament, king or god shall say any different.’

  At those words, Riley despaired. Even now, with the blood pumping from his wound, Albert Garrick thwarted him.

  I was wrong. Garrick cannot be killed. He is the Forever Man.

  But then a small round hole appeared in Garrick’s forehead and it was followed by the report of a musket. In the middle of the thoroughfare stood Jeronimo Woulfe with his rifled musket. He lowered the smoking gun and spoke a single word: ‘Enough.’

  Albert Garrick was dead.

  Riley saw Garrick sink to his knees and he could not fathom what had happened or whether perhaps it was a ruse. At any rate he knew that it didn’t matter much, as he could feel the heat of the bonfire on his own face and could not even imagine the agony Chevie was feeling with the flames at her knees.

  I must go now and there are no two ways about it. Life for us both or death for the two.

  Of course he was afraid, as his plan was at best foolhardy and at worst a dolt’s errand, but Riley’s fear was that he would not be able to end Chevie’s suffering.

  Garrick was now on his knees, slumped with his life’s blood pouring out of him, useless to man or beast.

  Perhaps not quite useless, thought Riley, and he began to run directly towards the pyre.

  From behind he heard someone, probably Fairbrother Isles, shout, ‘No, kid. It’s too late. There’s nothing you can do.’

  The devil there isn’t, thought Riley. The wormhole is not yet open.

  His expression grim, he used Garrick’s shoulder as a vaulting stool and launched himself through the flames directly towards Chevron Savano.

  Chevie was going through changes, of this much she was certain. Something momentous was happening to her, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  And now I will be burned alive before I will ever know.

  Her mind refused to settle on this notion and slid off it whenever possible, distracting her with the fantastic array of events that were unfolding all around her. With her feline vision she saw everything more clearly than a human ever could.

  She saw the great boar fall from the sky and the huge humanoid grapple with it, and she knew somehow that the giant man was not of this earth.

  She saw the cannon fire decimate the battling pair and she grieved for them both briefly, for they were but flies in the wormhole’s ointment, as she had been.

  Then came Isles with his magnetic box, prodded into the square by Riley, and she knew it was him even by his walk and could not believe Garrick did not.

  She saw Cryer, of course, as he had attempted to pour the molten metal down her throat, and she had seen him die, though she wished she had not.

  Then there was the final showdown between Riley and Garrick, which had been coming for hundreds of years, and which was finished by another man’s hand.

  And yet, although Garrick was surely dead now, the flames rose about her ankles, and she tried to no avail to activate the Timekey by pressing it against her bonds, and the pain was so great that it seemed to fill the entire world, and yet …

  And yet something had changed.

  And now Chevie knew what.

  She regained something of her senses just in time to see Riley fly towards her through the smoke and flames, his eyes fixed on hers, and she wanted to tell him:

  Oh, Riley. There isn’t any need.

  Riley crashed into Chevie, knocking the breath from both of them, and the stake swayed but did not break, as Riley had expected.

  They were face-to-face for one moment, eyes locked and feelings clear, and then Riley felt the seat of his pants go up in smoke and decided that he did not want to be broiled in Roundhead armour. So he kissed Chevie hard on the lips and with a press of his thumb activated the Timekey round her neck.

  The pair was instantly surrounded by a swarm of orange sparks. As the sparks swirled around them, Riley and Chevie shrank but kept their proportions, until they were small enough to fit into the heart of the Timekey, which duly sucked them in, then dematerialized itself in a fizzle of orange bubbles.

  When the fire burned itself out, there was nothing left but the charred stump of wood and some soot-coated chains. Of the so-called witch and her familiar there was no sign.

  Dog Dog

  As the sun rose over Mandrake the next day, the townsfolk drifted to the blackened pyre, skirting the massive crater where many had seen with their own eyes the titans do battle until Mandrake’s cannon crews had valiantly sent them back to wherever they had come from. People stood in small clusters, whispering their disbelief and confusion at the events of the previous evening. Eventually the reasoning spread that the Witchfinder had in some mysterious fashion succeeded in his efforts to banish his nemesis and her familiar but the struggle had driven him dangerously mad, and that Jeronimo Woulfe’s bullet had been a mercy for Albert Garrick and the entire town.

  That same Jeronimo Woulfe found Fairbrother Isles away from public view. In his old haunt, the
jail hut, he was seated on the floor with his broad back to the wall, holding his elbow tight to his side on account of the Primly boy’s gunshot. He had a large hunting hound lying docilely in his lap while he bandaged the animal’s head, and Woulfe, who had always been a dog man, as they say, was mightily impressed that a man would tend to his hound’s wounds before his own.

  ‘Good Master Isles,’ said Woulfe. ‘How fares the hound?’

  Isles looked up from his work and there were tears in his eyes. ‘He’s a dog. Just a dog dog. He said he was going but I didn’t get it till he woke up. Just a dog.’

  This was puzzling talk, but the man had been wounded, so perhaps he was a little dazed.

  ‘Yes. Just a dog. And are the injuries serious, do you think?’

  Isles secured the bandage with an unusual glue-backed paper. ‘No, a flesh wound is all. But the scalp is a bleeder, you know? And Pointer, he bleeds more than most anyway. He jabbed himself with a staple once. I swear it bled for three days.’

  These statements were as perplexing as the first had been, and Woulfe suspected that perhaps Isles had taken a drop of strong spirits to calm his nerves.

  ‘He took that bullet for me,’ continued Isles. ‘Put himself in harm’s way, the stupid lug. Now he’s one hundred per cent dog and I gotta live with that. Talk about selfish.’ Then Isles hugged the animal close, and the dog nuzzled into him and licked his face, like a normal dog would. ‘Good boy, Pointer,’ said Isles. ‘Everything’s gonna be OK. We’re partners forever, right?’

  Woulfe was touched. ‘And you, Master Isles? Would you accompany me to my house? My wife is a most excellent nurse.’

  Isles remembered his own injury and winced. ‘You think she’d come down here, Jerry? I’m a little weak at the knees right now. And, anyways, I imagine I’m gonna be locked up for quite a while after this night’s work.’

  Woulfe smiled at Jerry, a diminutive of Jeronimo, which his wife had begun to use in the privacy of their home.

  ‘There will be no imprisonment for you, good Master Isles. Not if I have any say in the matter. We all saw what the supposed Witchfinder brought down upon our town. Every man heard his threats. If you are to be locked away, then so am I.’ Woulfe’s face was as stony as the gargoyles he laboured on. ‘And I am not about to be locked away, Master Isles.’

  Isles nodded. ‘Yeah, you got the stuff. I pity the constable who messes with you right now, Jerry.’

  A thought struck Jeronimo Woulfe. ‘As a matter of fact, Master Isles, Mandrake is in dire need of a constable at this time.’

  Isles almost laughed.

  Damn, he thought. They want me to be sheriff.

  And it actually did come to pass that Fairbrother Isles became constable of Mandrake’s Groan, mostly due to the fact that Jeronimo Woulfe insisted upon it, on the condition that Isles forsook alcohol from the day he was sworn in and that he train the militia in the weird methods of combat he’d used to render most of them useless. These matters were agreed upon and Fairbrother Isles duly became the first African law official in all England, a fact which met with some resistance from certain sections of the community. But these were the same people who passed their days feverishly questing for matters to object to and they were largely ignored or, as Isles himself put it in memory of the little-mourned constable: de-cried.

  In fact, Isles’s appointment proved most fortuitous for the town. He schooled the militia in the arts of close combat, the use of natural camouflage and siege warfare, thus creating a fighting unit the like of which had never been seen and would not be seen again for centuries to come. It was under Isles’s command that Mandrake survived the second civil war, in spite of raids from Parliamentarians, Royalists and organized brigands, all of which amounted to the same thing essentially.

  Almost always at Isles’s side was his faithful hound, Pointer. When not at his master’s flank, he was ranging ahead checking for hostiles, and people swore the hound had more intelligence about him than any other dog and perhaps some humans.

  Both dog and master lived long lives. In the hound’s case, far beyond the span of a normal dog, and when they died it was within a week of each other. When Pointer’s extraordinary longevity eventually came to an end, it was said that Constable Isles died of a broken heart.

  Fairbrother Isles’s final request was that he be buried beside his beloved pet, but not in the same coffin – as he put it in his strange manner of speaking: That would be plain weird, and also if Donnie gets the power of speech back in the afterlife then I’m gonna have to listen to his griping for all eternity.

  The request was honoured. And, in memory of the pair’s service to East Anglia, the militia’s name was changed to the Fair Brothers and a man who proved himself most worthy to lead was said to be on point.

  The town stocks continued to be called the Fairbrothers, though, for that was how the constable himself had referred to them all his life – as a reminder.

  Surfer Chicks Rolling in Cali

  Riley woke up in the wormhole, which was unusual. Maybe ‘unusual’ is the wrong word, because nothing is usual about the wormhole when you are not part of the wormhole. No two trips are the same. No destination is guaranteed; there will definitely be changes to the schedule; and things are apt to arrive in a different condition from how they left the station. Sometimes in a different state altogether. Solids become liquids, liquids become gases and monkeys become men. If Charles Darwin had travelled through the inter-dimension once or twice, his theory of evolution might have upset the Creationists a lot more than it already did.

  So while nothing could be fairly called unusual when everything was unusual, what Riley found noteworthy was that he seemed to be sitting on the stage of the Orient Theatre with Chevie perched beside him. He was clad in full show get-up, complete with top hat and cloak, while Chevie was wearing her FBI jumpsuit – and neither of them seemed to be on fire, which was a huge relief.

  Riley knew he was in the wormhole and not, in fact, in nineteenth-century London because Chevie had made a few mistakes in her vision of it. Still, it wasn’t bad for someone who’d only been in the Orient a couple of times.

  Chevie spotted him glancing around. ‘ OK, smart guy, where did I go wrong?’

  Riley pointed at the balcony. ‘There are only four rows up top, and we ain’t got no golden cherubs as far as I remember it.’

  Chevie sighed. ‘There’s no pleasing some people.’

  ‘Not too shabby, though, Miss Chevron. Not too shabby.’

  ‘Oh, it’s Miss Chevron now, is it? Very formal all of a sudden.’

  Riley blushed. ‘I’m guessing you know why. Being as we’re communicating through our minds and whatnot.’

  Chevie blushed herself, which was a first. ‘I do know, Riley, but there’s no need to go all Your Majesty this and Your Highness that. Just plain Chevie will do. That’s how surfer chicks roll in Cali.’

  Surfer chicks rolling in Cali?

  Probably FBI code, Riley reckoned.

  ‘Fair enough. Chevie it is. How about Miss Chevie? A compromise?’

  ‘So long as I don’t have to call you Master Riley.’

  ‘No. I ain’t no Master nothing.’

  ‘This is true. What you are is the Great Savano.’

  Riley scratched his head. ‘I dunno about that. I got a few tricks up my sleeve, I suppose.’

  Chevie swung one knee on to the stage so she could face him. ‘You came through fire for me, Riley. We kissed in the flames. A girl doesn’t forget something like that.’

  ‘We save each other, Chevie. And I’m still behind in those ledgers,’ said Riley. ‘It’s four–two by my count.’

  ‘Five–two,’ said Chevie. ‘Not that anyone’s keeping score.’

  Riley took a deep breath. ‘I saw us, Miss Chevie. The last time we came through. I saw us together. I felt we could be happy. I don’t care about your cat’s eyes, if that’s what you’re worried about. And, after all we’ve been through, the two years between us
don’t seem so much.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Chevie. ‘What’s two years to a couple of time travellers? A drop in the ocean.’

  ‘So we can be together, you think? A courting couple, as they say?’

  Chevie frowned. A bead of sweat ran down her cheek and the Orient’s balcony shimmered and disappeared.

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘What could be simpler?’ protested Riley. ‘It’s the simplest question of all. And the oldest.’

  ‘Things are different now. I’m different. Look at me, creating bubbles in the wormhole just so we can talk. This isn’t easy, you know, and I don’t know how long I can hold it.’

  ‘You’ve got what Garrick had,’ Riley realized.

  ‘Yeah, except more so. I was a blank slate the last time I went in, so the wormhole filled me with quantum foam. I understand the beast.’

  ‘It is a great pity you didn’t happen upon this knowledge earlier in proceedings,’ said Riley. ‘You could have saved us both some bother.’

  ‘Yeah, tell me about it, but between nearly dying and getting eye injections, and, oh, being burned alive, I didn’t have too much time for navel-gazing.’

  ‘Navel-gazing being introspection, I am guessing.’

  Chevie nodded. ‘Riley, I’m different now. There are things I can do.’

  ‘What things?’ demanded Riley. ‘I should be told.’

  ‘Important things,’ said Chevie. ‘I can send you to where you need to be. Where you’ve always wanted to be. And I can fix what I never could.’