blind to the connection, Oriax,” Messenger said. “Hatred grows like a cancer, spreading ever outward from its source. It’s a poison in the human bloodstream that spreads far beyond its origin. ‘If you prick a finger with a poisoned thorn say not that you are innocent when the heart dies.’ Isthil teaches that no one who does evil can ever be blameless for the consequences.”
“Oh, well then,” Oriax said, dripping sarcasm, “if Isthil said it—”
And just like that, without a word from Messenger, without any sort of warning, we were back in that void between two realities.
On our left, still within Samira’s reality, an irritated Oriax realized we’d given her the slip. She seemed not quite able to find us, though we could still see her.
On the other side of the void, Trent was with Pete. The third boy was no longer with them and in fact I never saw him again. I hoped he’d seen the malice in his friends and chosen a better path for himself.
Trent and Pete were sitting on swings at a park playground. Trent glared and frightened off the younger children who approached.
“Have you heard from your dad?” Pete asked.
Trent shook his head angrily. “He’s gone. Up in North Dakota, looking for work.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Hey. Douche nozzle. You think I want to talk about my dad? He’s gone. Maybe he’ll come back, maybe not. Okay? We done?”
Pete swung a little, a short arc, with his feet dragging the ground. “Okay, man.”
“Probably just drinking,” Trent muttered. “Up there drinking and not giving a damn about anything.”
“He used to be kind of cool before he lost his job,” Pete observed.
“Yeah, well, he did lose it. So that’s that, right? They gave it to some Mexican.” At that point his talk turned scatological and racist and I won’t attempt to repeat it.
There was a depth of barely contained anger in Trent. His friend, Pete, seemed like a more balanced person, but one who was under the sway of his larger companion. “My dad’s okay,” Pete said. “He still—”
“Do I give a damn?” Trent asked with weary mockery.
Pete was taken aback but forced a sickly smile and said, “No, man, even I’m not really interested in my dad.”
“He’s got a job anyway.”
“Yeah, but he kind of hates it because—”
“But he’s got a job. Right? So he’s not off somewhere all messed up from being out of work. Right? So shut up.”
Pete shut up.
I’ve often wondered about people like Pete. I have never understood why angry thugs like Trent seem able to attract more normal followers.
But then I winced, remembering. I had been a bad person. I had done a terrible thing. And yes, I’d had friends and acolytes the whole time.
Self-righteousness rises in me sometimes, and then I remind myself that I do not have the right to look down my nose at others. I am the apprentice to the Messenger of Fear, and as such I deliver a measure of justice. But it had begun when I accepted the truth of my own weakness. My position as apprentice was not an entitlement, it was a punishment.
“Oriax can’t see us?” I asked, mostly just to distract myself from painful memories.
“Eventually, but not immediately. Her powers are different. Very great, but different. But she will find us in time.”
“Then let’s use the time to figure this out,” I said.
“The time?” He cocked his head, waiting.
It took me a few seconds to grasp the hint. “Yes, the time. But I don’t think I want to see more of Trent. I want to understand the connections. I want to see what led to the death of that poor boy with his face blown away.”
Just like that, one-half of this split-screen reality replaced Trent and Pete with the solemn scene of the far-distant funeral.
Messenger seemed accepting of my initiative, even approving. “Proceed.”
“What?”
“Don’t be timid, Mara,” he chided. “You’ve seen that we can travel through time. So do it.”
I glanced back along the void. Would going backward take us backward in time? This was not how we’d previously done it. Messenger had always just made it happen.
But of course this was the simple version. This was Time Travel 101, an introduction before greater secrets and techniques could be learned.
I turned and walked with far more confidence than I felt, back along the narrow black bridge between facing realities. And yes, to my satisfaction, time went into reverse.
On her side Samira spit her food into her bowl, placed the stew in the microwave, took it out and put it in the freezer, walked backward from the kitchen.
Far more disturbing, the shrouded body of Aimal once again leaped from its grave and landed on the stretcher, which was then borne away.
I walked faster, faster, and time reeled backward at a geometrically quicker rate. Now Samira was back at school being harassed, and Aimal’s body was being ritually washed by his male relatives, and Samira was in class, and Aimal was quite suddenly alive. I noticed that the time lines were not synchronized, not matched up. I sensed that Aimal’s was the more recent event.
Distracted by that realization, I saw that I had moved too quickly. I reversed my direction and slowed my pace.
Aimal now was in the dirt yard of a bare, one-room cinderblock schoolhouse. There was a single tree providing scant shade from a blistering sun. There were other kids, younger, older, many kicking a soccer ball. Others read. Others just sat in small groups, chatting.
If you ignored the opium poppy fields and the distant but intimidatingly sharp-edged mountains, and the poverty of the school, it could be any school.
A pickup truck came barreling down the semi-paved road, kicking up a plume of dust. There was one man in the cabin, two more in the back.
The kids in the yard didn’t notice. But Aimal did. He rose slowly to his feet, the biggest of the boys. He shaded his eyes and watched the truck and peered closely at something particular.
Without even realizing what I was doing I stepped into his frame and peered as though through his eyes. I saw the thing he focused on.
It was the upraised barrel of an assault rifle.
Aimal began yelling. It was not English, of course, but I understood it nevertheless.
“Hide! Hide!”
