How the Stars did Fall Page 19

  Eventually only the injured men and a small number of others remained in the fort. The birds now became so numerous that there was no longer room for any more birds on the platform, nor on the roof of the colonel’s lodge, nor on any of the watchtowers, so the latecomers took to the ground, waddling about like penguins, sometimes fighting each other, sometimes pecking at the men lying in the cots.

  All of this Faraday watched in amazement, unsure of what to make of it. He was still shackled and so were Moon and Tenhorse. Unable to break free, he decided to use his power once more, to look for some solution to his quandary.

  He closed his eyes but only a face appeared to him. A furry face with massive fangs and green eyes like a bear mixed with a wolf. It spoke to Faraday.

  “I am close,” it said. Then everything became dark in that other world and Faraday felt compelled to open his eyes.

  And he beheld a stranger entering the fort, garbed in green with wiry hair like roots and little branches with leaves sticking out from his neck and arms as if he were part man and part tree. Next to this man, matching him stride for stride, a coyote bared his teeth whenever they passed by one of the soldiers who had stayed behind. Now, as this man approached the platform, the birds sang and flew to him and some hovered above him, and the man lifted his arm to the osprey, giving permission for it to perch. The man climbed onto the platform, the coyote still by his side, and faced Faraday.

  “Who are you?” Faraday said.

  “It is only important that I am an ally of your sister and she calls me Adler.”

  “You know where my sister is? Is she safe?”

  “For now. But she is being pursued by forces that are beyond even my power to oppose.”

  Just then the green man snapped his fingers and a tiny partridge that had been hiding beneath the platform flew up with a bronze key in its mouth and delivered it right to the man, and with it he unlocked Faraday’s shackles first and then Moon’s and Tenhorse’s.

  “You know where my sister is?” Faraday asked.

  “I do. I am here to take you to her. The course of this world is hidden in shadow and only a few may pierce the veil, not by any merit of their own but by the ordinance of one above.”

  Now the four of them descended the platform but Faraday stopped on the way out of the fort to try and gather some supplies. Food and water and guns and munitions. But Adler, noticing Faraday’s efforts, stopped him with one leafy arm.

  “Leave these behind. We will make our own way. Do you think I am unaware of what places you’ve been? And how you’ve gotten there? I know of your gazes, your meanderings in the world of shadow.”

  “You know of my gift?”

  “I do and I even know who gave it to you.”

  “Who?”

  “Look for yourself. He left his mark on your arm.”

  Faraday looked at his arm up and down but saw no mark.

  “Not with your eyes, with your mind,” Adler said.

  So Faraday closed his eyes and passing into the other plane he looked at himself and on his arm he saw burning like fire a ‘V’.

  “That is his seal. We shall speak of this more later. For now, we must leave this fort.”

  So they began to move again, leaving behind the fort and all those within it. But just as they had gained some distance they heard horses riding hard behind them and Faraday was sure it was some remnant of soldiers come to avenge the death of their colonel.

  They continued walking at a brisk pace, trying to avoid confrontation with the soldiers. But the soldiers had caught on to their trail and eventually the sound of their coming became too loud to ignore and they stopped. Then the horsemen appeared just over a hill.

  “Go on,” Adler said. “Continue south and I will meet up with you soon.”

  Faraday and Moon and Tenhorse did as they were told, turning and continuing on. But once they had climbed a hill, the three stopped, and when they looked back they saw Adler and the horsemen about to converge on the plain. The soldiers fired at Adler and a few of the bullets hit, but instead of collapsing, Adler remained standing, and wherever the bullets hit, an eruption occurred, visible from even that distance, of what looked like shards of bark and leaves. This caused the horsemen to halt suddenly to ponder the strangeness of the figure before them. And while they hesitated, Adler’s form shifted. It was as if a tremor had passed over him, the vibrations tiny yet so pervasive that he looked as though he were about to vanish. But Adler did not vanish. Instead, where once there had been leaves now there was fur and hard muscle, and Adler’s face changed too. A snout emerged, protruding, with long ivory fangs hanging beneath the folds of skin and gums. And Adler snarled and roared and charged at the horsemen, and the horses shrieked in horror and fled, throwing down their riders and galloping away as fast as they could. Of the survivors most fled after the horses, but a few tried once more to fire at Adler and these were mauled without mercy, and all of this Faraday saw.

  After Adler had fallen upon the horsemen, Faraday and Tenhorse and Moon together turned away as if they feared being caught watching that spectacle. As if the scene was not for their eyes and they expected Adler not to want them to see it. So they came down the hill and walked for a while until they found a few trees huddled together. There they allowed themselves to sit and wait.

  It did not take long before Adler came into view, sauntering down the same hill, once again in the form of a leafy man. And he brought with him a delicate foal, still living, walking side by side with him. But when he reached Faraday, Adler picked the foal up in his arms and, hugging it, whispered something in its ear, and then he dropped it onto the ground, the body now lifeless as if the spirit of the foal had left at the mere asking. Faraday saw the man doing this and thought of what he had done before and feared Adler was not a peaceful creature.

  “You saw what I did?” Adler asked, as if he could tell what Faraday had been thinking. He asked this while he worked with his arms, still slick with the water he had used to wash himself of blood.

  “We did,” Faraday answered even though he knew it was not really a question, for he had begun to understand that Adler could see farther and in different ways than he or other men could.

  Adler took the foal’s carcass and skewered it with sticks and set it atop a fire to cook. Then he sat next to Moon and Tenhorse, his leaves seeming greener than before, his skin browner and rougher as if he were in the process of turning into a living tree, and all along the course of his arms flowers bloomed continuously, unbidden, in pink and blue and yellow.

  “Your people are known to me,” he said to Moon. “Though I have not visited them in a long time.”

  They ate of the foal and slept under the trees and the next morning they set out on foot. The journey was long and tedious, but Adler never allowed them to feel hunger or thirst and whenever they became fatigued he would tell them to stop and rest and he would speak to them of the wilds of that country. Of the prowling coyote and hibernating bear and the rejuvenation of the soil. Not just for trees or other plants but for all living things. And to demonstrate he lay down on the soil, letting the blithe air circulate above him, and the strands hanging from his skin seemed attracted to the soil as if magnetized, and like thin antennae they penetrated the soil and Adler let out a deep sigh as if something taut had been relaxed, and just by observing this exchange Faraday felt the weight of so much walking leave his legs as if by magic.

  This ritual Adler repeated every day in the late afternoon and he even told Faraday and Moon and Tenhorse to try it themselves, but even as they lay on the ground they felt nothing different.

  “Think of nothing at all,” Adler told them. Still they were unable to replicate the ecstasy Adler had described to them.

  “Perhaps these things are reserved for your kind, Adler? After all, we do not possess those appendages that you possess,” Moon said.

  “But you do. If only you could see them. Great tentacles of light emerging from the center of your body, stretching in ev
ery direction, squirming, feeling.”

  They walked for nearly a week until Adler stopped one morning and announced they would reach the carnival by nightfall. But instead of making haste to get there as early as possible, Adler told Moon and Tenhorse to remain where they had slept for a while longer, for he and Faraday had an errand to accomplish before they could go on.

  What this errand entailed Adler declined to share with Faraday. Instead, he merely told Faraday to follow him and Faraday did, walking side by side in silence for some thirty minutes until they came upon a rocky embankment overhanging the side of a grassy hill. From there the terrain fell off sharply, giving Faraday and Adler a clear view into the valley below.

  “Have you brought me here to show me those streams down there? If there are secrets in the soil there must be some in the water as well.”

  “There are, but none for you or me. No, I brought you here because it is remote and no one will bother us. Now, sit and close your eyes and we will go into the shadow.”

  Faraday knew at once what Adler meant and just as soon as he found a solid spot to sit and his eyes were closed he traversed the familiar path in his mind to that other plane where he could see far. But this time Faraday was not alone. Somehow, Adler appeared in front of Faraday.

  “There is much you do not understand about your power,” Adler said.

  “Then teach me.”

  “We do not have the time. But I do aim to teach you something else. Something you could not discover on your own. Hold out your hand. Good. Now, do not think about any place or person but instead imagine some when in the past. A date. Consider this date. What significance does it possess? What question does it answer? Search for the meaning and if the date you see now does not hold any, find one that does. Find some event in your past you have forgotten but wish to remember. Some itch you need to scratch. Good. Have you found it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then hold my hand.”

  As soon as Faraday felt Adler’s cold, bark-like hand, all the world around them began to shake violently as if seized upon by some crazed toddler, and the shaking would not cease but only grow and a wild wind began to blow about them until the winds threatened to coalesce and form some monstrous tornado. And it did, its mushroom body appearing suddenly ahead of Faraday like an ill omen. A portent of things to come.

  “Easy,” Adler yelled above the sound of the wind. “Focus. All of this is your doing. Your desire is too abrupt. Too uncontrolled. Think of the date not as something you require but as a curiosity that does not matter much at all. A mere trifling.”

  While following these directions as best he could, Faraday kept an eye on the tornado, watching it as it moved side to side like some vertical snake of dust and debris. And as his desire to know about this particular event subsided, so did the storm, until he felt divested of nearly any interest in the outcome, telling himself over and over that knowing it would change nothing. Then there was only silence.

  Finally Adler let go of Faraday’s hand and all around them the landscape changed, shifting in place, to another moment in time and space. The familiar place he ended up in was just as Faraday remembered. His father’s farm. And there was the old man working the field, only a speck in the distance. Faraday wanted to walk out to his father to have a closer look but before he could he noticed his mother just outside the house with a washing basin in front of her and clothes piled up all around as she worked to clean them with a bar of soap and the sheer strength of her arms. If she could see him as he approached, she gave no sign, and when Faraday called out to her and she did not answer he came even closer, waving his hand in front of her eyes and even touching her on the shoulder, but his touch seemed to not reach her, nor his voice, nor any sign of him whatsoever. She continued working, oblivious. Adler was there, too, and Faraday looked to him for guidance.

  “Is this some phantom? A conjured-up vision with no bearing on what actually happened?”

  “That not even I can answer. Whether real or imagined, these are the perceptions given to us and you must decide for yourself what to do with them.”

  Inside the house Faraday took the stairs up to the rooms. Inspecting each in turn, he found the room that would one day be Olivia’s filled with crates and sacks of grain and shelves lined with containers of salt and spice and unopened bottles of whiskey. His parents’ room was all neatly arranged, the bedding white and immaculate. Then he came to his own room. His and Daniel’s, for at that time they shared it, their beds sitting side by side. And as he looked inside, the scene began as he recalled. Both he and Daniel sat on the floor in between the beds. In front of them, Daniel had set down one of their father’s bottles of whiskey. Now Daniel opened the bottle and smelled it, offering it first to the young Faraday, telling him to take a sip. And Faraday, still only a boy, held the bottle in his hands, the dull amber of it reminding him of a pot of honey. But Faraday hesitated, not knowing what would happen or how he would feel when he drank from it. So Daniel took the bottle from him and drank from it himself, the sting of the liquor causing him to grimace.

  All of this Faraday remembered, but standing over himself in the past and seeing the whole scene play out was bizarre and surreal and it gave him goose bumps. Now he knew his father would return from the fields earlier than usual and find them upstairs and chastise them. It was the details of the chastisement that he could no longer remember, harboring instead of any specific memory only a dreadful feeling in the pit of his stomach of death and dying. So he watched on, enthralled by the actors and their lines, such that he did not even notice that Adler was no longer with him. There came the father, up the stairs. Then the yelling and all that came after was new to Faraday and yet not so, as if seeing the unfolding of his punishment was enough to call up the full memory, and as soon as he knew what came next any desire he had to see the thing play out disappeared and he began to call to Adler. To yell out that he wanted to go back. And he could have walked away or willed himself to some other place but he did not.

  The father had the bottle in his hands now and he took the young Faraday by the arm and dragged him downstairs to the back of the house, where a bunch of logs had been piled up. Faraday followed behind and once they were outside the father let go of the young Faraday and turned, and suddenly the older Faraday came face to face with his own father and before he could step aside to let him pass the father passed straight through him. There was an axe planted in one of the logs and Faraday remembered that he had considered for a moment retrieving it and using it against his father. Only for a moment, for before he could think things through completely the father returned, holding in his hand not only the bottle but a switch.

  “Now you’re gonna have your fill,” the father said, giving the young Faraday the bottle. “Drink up or you’ll get the whip. Up to you.”

  The liquid had burned going down, Faraday remembered, and watched as his younger self had a coughing fit after only a sip.

  “How’d you like it? Get more in you. You’re gonna drink that until you retch.”

  The boy drank some more, only a swig. “I can’t, Pa,” he said.

  The father stepped forward without even saying anything and brought the whip down on the boy’s arm. The bottle fell onto the grass, whiskey leaking into the soil.

  “Pick it up and drink or I swear to God I’ll whip you half to death. Don’t look at me. The wrath of God falls on those who disobey, I’ve told you that a thousand times.”

  Now the boy turned the bottle upside down in his mouth and took as much of the liquid as he could, and when he brought it down he stumbled forward, already half-intoxicated, his body’s defenses overrun, having never before encountered such an adversary. The boy looked to his father and the father only urged him on with a nod of the head.

  Another deep drink of the stuff and the older Faraday could feel the retch coming up in his own throat just off of the memory and then his younger self did vomit a little. He took another drink. This time the vomit came
strong and thick, the bile erupting from his mouth a sickly green. Taking that as his cue, the father lifted his son up, set the bottle aside and spoke.

  “You’ll thank me for this one day. This is love, is what it is. Do you believe it?”

  The boy did not answer. Instead, he glanced back to the axe, the head halfway dug into a log. The father read that glance and pretended he hadn’t understood and they went inside together, but Faraday did not follow. Then another upheaval occurred, the whole landscape around Faraday changing at incredible speed, a rotation across time, and when it stopped he was back standing with Adler in the dark forest.

  “Were you satisfied?”

  “I was, though once I was there I found I remembered it after all.”

  “Sometimes that happens. Once you open the ways all movement becomes easier, whether backward or forward.”

  “Is that what I do? Open the ways?”

  “Yes. And the same gift you gave yourself, you can give to others: memory of the past, insight into the future and knowledge of the present.”

  “How?”

  “By touching them. And willing it to be so.”

  They found Moon and Tenhorse still sitting in front of the fire they had made in the morning, and gathering what few things they carried, the company set out for the last leg of their journey to the carnival. They reached it by nightfall and when they got there they found the grouping of tents all alight with torches hanging from wooden posts and a horde of people lining up for one attraction or another. Before they entered the territory of the carnival, Adler shifted his shape. No longer were any branches or leaves visible. He looked like a regular man and moved into the crowds and before Faraday could ask him what he was doing he had disappeared. And so they entered and Faraday felt as though he was in a little bubble of life, for the dark of night surrounded them like an awning, and for all he could see beyond the lights they might as well be floating in empty space, a solitary island upon a wine-dark sea.