The Song of Glory and Ghost Read online

  “What?” Sam yelled back.

  “Nothing!” Glory shook her head. It hadn’t been a real question. She’d seen the girl move a few times, and not just her curls being all stupidly gorgeous and picturesque in the wind.

  “What?” Sam yelled again.

  “You’re an idiot!” Glory shouted, smiling.

  Sam smiled back. He hadn’t heard.

  Glory wished that she could sleep just as deeply on the bottom of the boat, but preferably without a goose egg on her skull. She wished for all sorts of things, but most especially that they could come unstuck from this ridiculously broken time and get a move on—or a move back—preferably to a time stream where El Buitre hadn’t managed to blow up the majority of the Pacific Northwest.

  Sam suddenly cut the engine. The wind died and the boat settled lower in the water, drifting.

  “What were you saying?” Sam asked.

  “Nothing,” Glory said. “Keep going.” She looked back toward the ruined city. More than a few pillars of steam rising up from the surface of the sound now veiled the view.

  “You looked mad,” Sam said. “You did the Glory-is-frustrated face.”

  Glory groaned and shut her eyes.

  “Like that,” Sam said. “Exactly.”

  “This day is the worst,” Glory said. “Seriously. We’d have to go all the way back to Arizona and put you back in that train wreck and let the Vulture shoot up your arms to find a worse one.” She opened her eyes and raised her eyebrows. “And at least then you were actually fighting him.” The boat was rocking gently beneath them. Glory exhaled and put her hands on her head. Her stomach was getting vicious. Too vic—

  Glory twisted and lunged for the boat rail. Her stomach emptied into the brackish water and then was suddenly calm. She rolled back around slowly.

  “Are you okay?” Sam asked. “Did you eat something?”

  “I’m fine,” Glory said, and she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her canvas jacket. She didn’t have any better options.

  “Glory?” Sam asked.

  “Seasick,” Glory said. “And it doesn’t matter. Do you know why? You shot people today. People shot at me. Why? Were we fighting El Buitre? Did we finally find him? Did he find us? Were we doing anything important at all?”

  Sam obviously knew better than to answer. Glory rose onto her knees and plunged her hand into a large green duffel bag inside the sidecar. She pulled out a flattened roll of toilet paper and held it up to Sam.

  “That’s why!” she said. “For this! One roll! The rest were taken. Peter is gone and we get one roll of toilet paper!”

  “I’m glad you got some,” Sam said. “Seriously.”

  Glory threw it at him and Speck snatched it out of the air, saving it from flying overboard while Glory plunged back into the bag and pulled out a yellow plastic package.

  “Do you know what these are?” she asked, shaking. “Fig stinking Newtons! The rest was stolen. People tried to kill me for it. Have you ever had one? They’re just dried-up fig jam inside Newtons! Why couldn’t I get Oreos?”

  “I don’t know what a Newton is,” Sam said quietly. His freckled face was blank—intentionally so, Glory knew. He was judging her but trying not to look like he was.

  “Nobody knows,” Glory said. “And who eats figs?” She tore the package open, plucked out a soft, cracking Newton, and threw it at Sam. Cindy caught it perfectly between Sam’s forefinger and thumb, which annoyed Glory even more. Sam popped the thing into his mouth and chewed slowly. Glory could see the pleasure in his eyes, and then the panic as he tried to hide it. No way he was going to admit to liking it, not while she was being like this.

  Like this? Like what? How was she being?

  Glory sat down on the planks and flopped backward, looking up through a blue sky crack in the fog.

  “I lost Peter in exchange for one roll of toilet paper and a package of grandma cookies while you went all caveman and knocked a girl on the head. You should have left her.”

  “I couldn’t,” Sam said. “If I’d left her there, those people chasing you would have killed her.”

  “Sure,” Glory said. “The right thing to do is drag her back to your cave.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Sam said.

  Glory closed her eyes again.

  “Why not?” she asked. “Everything else is.”

  “This is all about Peter,” Sam said.

  Glory laughed, but her tone was sharp. “Of course it is. We can’t do anything without him. We’re no better than driftwood.”

  “He’s left before,” Sam said. “Lots of times.” He tried to think of the words Peter Eagle had used to describe his occasional departures from the island. “He goes when he has to go to become what he has to become.”

  Glory sat up and shook her head. “No,” she said. “This was different, Sam. He didn’t leave. I told you that already. Peter was taken.”

  Sam stared at her. Glory sniffed and wrapped her arms around her knees. He looked back toward the black hills of Seattle.

  “By those people in the trucks? Then why are we out here?” Sam asked. “Why did we leave? We have to go back.”

  Glory didn’t respond.

  Sam stepped out from behind the wheel, fists clenched. “Who took him, Glory? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “He wasn’t taken here.” Glory looked away, avoiding Sam’s eyes. “We went back to the day the destruction all happened. While it was happening. We were on the hill again. These winged creatures came, and . . .” Glory shut her eyes, trying clear the images of sharp silvery faces on shadow bodies out of her mind. But they only grew brighter. “Peter was kidnapped. There was something else there, too. Something strong enough to just send me away.”

  “You were hunting the Vulture?” Sam asked. “Without me?”

  “We didn’t mean to be there,” Glory said. “We didn’t. Not right then.”

  “Glory, look at me!”

  Glory did. And what she saw was exactly what she had expected. Sam’s arms rippled into a pair of taut S’s, ready to strike. Veins bulged out of his human skin up to the cuffs of his sleeves. His jaw muscles pulsed. His eyes were hard and sharp. Soon, he would be rattling.

  “We talked about this. We said no splitting up. We said I would handle things.”

  “You talked about it,” Glory said. “We never agreed to anything. And we had our reasons, but they don’t matter right now. What matters is that Peter is gone and we’re here.”

  “Where did you go?” Sam asked.

  “Around,” Glory said. “Peter kept taking us to random years. We were trying to come back when we slipped in right after the eruptions.”

  “And?” Sam asked. “Was the Vulture there?”

  Glory shook her head. “The creatures. They’re women. Or strange copies of women. They floated Peter right out of the sidecar like a balloon. I thought we were going to die, Sam. And all of a sudden there was this thing—it was shaped like a boy, but more like a ghost of one. A fire ghost so bright I could see him through my eyelids. Next thing I know, I’m back here and getting chased. Without Peter.”

  She looked back into Sam’s eyes. “The ghost knew what time I’d come from, Sam. He sent me right back here. But he kept Peter. At least . . . I hope he did. Whoever and whatever he is.”

  Glory waited. Sam’s hair shifted with the breeze, but his face was stone.

  “I know how you feel,” he said. “You’re not upset that Peter’s gone. You’re upset that you were left behind.”

  “Sam.” Glory climbed to her feet. “That’s not fair. Do you really want to risk your memory for nothing? Do you want the daydreams to start up again? That’s how they found us in the first place, or can’t you even remember that? You can’t just move around through time like Peter can.”

  Sam nodded and returned to the wheel. “I’m sure Peter’s fine,” he said. “Peter always is.”

  “Are you sure that we’re fine without him?” Glory asked. “Because last I ch
ecked we don’t do much more than survive. We’re stuck in the apocalypse and Peter’s the only one who could ever have any chance of getting us back.”

  Samra groaned at Sam’s feet and slowly sat up. Once upright, she brushed her hair back, wincing as she did.

  “Samra,” Sam growled. “Meet Glory. Glory, Samra.”

  Glory offered the girl a tight smile. “So,” she said. “I hear you’re pretty awful. If I’d been there, we never would have brought you along.”

  Samra looked at the quiet water around the boat, and then back at the city.

  “You have to take me back.” Pale-blue anger sparkled in her eyes. Her cheeks flushed and her voice jumped. “Right now! Take me back!”

  “She’s a sweet one,” Glory said to Sam. Then she whistled at the redhead and pointed back toward Seattle. “You’re welcome to swim.”

  Samra managed to climb all the way to her feet, blinking in pain and cautiously feeling her head. She stood directly in front of Sam, staring straight into his eyes. He looked away. Quickly. At his feet. When he finally glanced back she was still staring.

  “I know who you are,” Samra said. “But I didn’t think the story was real. I hoped you would help us.”

  “Let me guess,” Sam said. “You read a big old novel about the old west where I almost kill a villain in San Francisco, but he gets away? I’ve read it. Once, I even liked it. But not anymore.”

  Glory laughed. Sam ignored her. Samra dropped her eyes to Sam’s hands. Cindy twitched, and Sam shrugged his poncho down over her. As for Speck, he was twisting Sam’s hand behind him, to get a better look at a seagull.

  “I didn’t know there was a novel,” Samra said. “But I don’t read those, anyway. My brother had all the comic books. And we watched the movie. Bull and Dog found it. My father has movie nights when the generator works.”

  “A movie?” Glory asked. “And who are Bull and Dog?”

  “Comics,” Sam said. “Like comics. About me?”

  “The boy looked a little like you, even though he wore tights. He was better looking. Blonder. And he didn’t have freckles. But the snakes in his arms”—she leaned around Sam to look at Speck “—the pink one and the horned one—they were exactly the same as yours, and just as deadly.”

  Sam looked at Glory. Her face had gone completely serious.

  “Comics,” Sam said. “Crazy. But I guess it makes sense. Jude’s novel hasn’t changed since we left San Francisco. I think that story is done.”

  “You think Jude wrote comics about us?” Glory sniffed at the cold. “Future Jude wrote the novel and Father Tiempo took it back in time to help your memory. How do you explain random comics about us showing up in destroyed Seattle?”

  “I’m not trying to explain anything,” Sam said. “But Jude has been working on comics. And now comics show up. I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

  “Who’s Jude?” Samra asked. She inched closer to Sam. “Is he really old? The comic books are pretty ancient. I think I have one dated 1991. And the movie is on a tape from 1986. Is Jude that old?”

  “Movie,” Glory replied with a flat monotone. “Right. No wonder she tried to abduct you. You’re her superhero crush. We’ll have to get you some tights.”

  “Whatever,” Sam said. “We need to see these comics. They could help.”

  Glory raised her eyebrows. “Help? Did the book ever help? It changed all the time and got tons of stuff wrong.”

  “No, we got tons of stuff wrong,” Sam said. “How we lived changed what Future Jude eventually wrote. It helped us. It just didn’t give instructions.”

  “I thought you could help us,” Samra said. “I thought maybe the real you wasn’t so . . . bad.”

  Sam flinched. “Bad?”

  “Excuse me,” Glory said. “What do you mean by that?”

  Samra looked at Glory and then back to Sam.

  “In the movie, he was an outlaw in the old west. He took whatever he wanted. He stole things. He murdered people. He destroyed whole cities working for a supervillain called the Vulture, enforcing his will, and when he finally tried to rebel against him, he was killed. It’s a pretty sad movie.”

  “Let me guess,” Glory said. “He rebelled to try to save his sister?”

  “You’ve seen it?” Samra asked. “Or was that real?”

  “Close enough,” Glory said. “About the sister, at least. She’s still saved.”

  “Close enough? I’m not dead. How is that close enough?” Sam said. “And I never worked for the Vulture. Never. Not in any life.”

  “You don’t know that,” Glory said quietly. “We don’t know how far back this time stream goes. Two hundred and fifty years back from right here, Sam Miracle could have easily made a bunch of terrible life choices and gone to work for the Vulture.”

  Sam shot her a look straight from Cindy’s mood. “No. Don’t talk like that.”

  “So the Vulture is real, too?” Samra asked.

  Glory nodded. “El Buitre. Yeah, he’s real. Real enough to burn and flatten your version of Seattle.”

  “What do you mean?” Samra asked. “My version?”

  “What I mean,” Glory said, “is that there is at least one other version of Seattle that has not been blown up and flattened. We were there. This version swallowed us up right when everything was going boom.”

  Samra’s eyebrows lowered and her head tipped, dubious. “But all the eruptions were twenty-one years ago. I wasn’t even born yet.”

  “We hopped forward. If we hadn’t, we’d be ash.” Glory laughed at Samra’s suspicion. “If you’ve read stories of us in the old west, you should already know we get around.”

  “The comic books aren’t set in the west,” Samra said. “They’re from the time of tall shining cities, when my dad was young. Before the floods and the shaking and the volcanoes.”

  “We’re taking her back,” Sam said. He turned the old rusty key in the ignition and the engine gargled.

  “We can’t go back,” Glory said. “It’s already late.”

  Samra looked concerned. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go back. Not right now. I want you to show me the other times. Take me with you. But not into the future. Show me the past.”

  “No,” Sam said. “Even if we could, we wouldn’t. And we can’t. Tomorrow we’re taking you back. And you’re showing me those comics.”

  “But I thought you just said . . .” Samra looked from Sam to Glory. “And in the comics . . . So why can’t you move through time?”

  “Why can’t you?” Sam asked.

  The engine roared. Glory smiled, shrugged at Samra, and dropped back down onto the planks.

  “Wait!” Samra yelled. “If you’re here, is the Vulture here, too?”

  “If he is,” Sam yelled back, “I’m going to end him. Now hold on!”

  As the boat surged forward, Samra grabbed onto the side, but her eyes stayed locked on Sam from inside her whirling cloud of red hair. Samra focused less on the snake heads protruding from the backs of Sam’s hands and more on the boy who controlled them. In her life, the most amazing things she had ever seen were all leftovers from another time—magical black panels that quietly made electricity from the sun; an escalator in a collapsing building that had suddenly jerked to life and moved ten feet when her father had fired up an old backup generator; movies and pictures that showed her the time before, when all of those things and hundreds more had been as normal to kids as a campfire and scavenging was to her. She had spent her entire life believing in things that she would never see, dreaming of them, yearning to see them. But despite the fact that she believed in things as crazy as elevators and smartphones and credit cards and schools, she had never once believed in Sam Miracle.

  Yes, she had imagined her arms with scales and extra joints. She had wondered what it would be like to have a different mind in each hand. At night, she shut her eyes and held out her arms, wandering her father’s camp by memory but pretending that her hands could see in the dark and were gui
ding her. She had read more Sam Miracle comics than the stories of any other hero, and she had decided that she had no desire to be Sam or even someone like him.

  No, she would rather be the girl, Glory—guiding the hero, motivating the hero, saving the hero. She was always with him, always at the heart of the adventure, the only one who seemed to understand the complexity of the Vulture’s plans and the depravity of his evil agents and henchmen. Glory got to do all that and walk through time wielding a sandy crystal blade sharp enough to sever reality itself.

  But if this girl was the real Glory, she didn’t seem to appreciate the incredibleness of her situation. The dark-haired girl was just trying to sleep in the boat. Could she really be that bored with who she was? With who Sam was? How could she sleep after a chase like she’d had? After Sam had saved her like that? If Samra had been in the story instead of Glory, she would have been alert, commanding, standing near Sam with a weapon in her hand so that the artist could fit her in the same picture with him.

  She would have kissed him. Maybe. Or at least held his hand. Well . . . maybe not. The real snakes were a bit more unnerving than the drawings. Her gaze bounced down to the yellow eyes above the knuckles on Sam’s left hand and below the two snaky horns.

  Cindy. In the comics, the snake’s thoughts would float out in space by Sam’s head, written in italics.

  Kill.

  Samra wondered if that’s what the snake was telling him to do right now. Was Sam thinking about killing her? Were his hands asking permission like she had seen them ask when facing goons on cartoony rooftops and bridges, when facing down monsters in cellars and dungeons and alleys?

  For the first time, Samra looked away. Sam’s hands might not like her yet, but that didn’t matter. She would find a way to keep them. On what should have been a long wearisome day of scavenging, she had met an impossible boy. A miracle. And no matter what, he was not going to slip away. Glory was another story . . . unless she became more interesting. And soon.