Magic Time: Ghostlands by Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree Page B
Authors: Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree
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headed off down the street to walk among the mists and shadows and echoes that were the same every day….
Every Möbius-strip day.
“This part always creeps me out,” Inigo said to Papa Sky.
New York was shutting down. Or at least this section of it, now that Christina was gone.
Growing dim, the people and buildings subsiding around them, losing detail, like clay sculptures submerged in water and drawn out again. Or Adam and Eve in reverse motion, God in an act of un Creation, returning them to the mud again.
The darkness encroached, not at all like a sunset with night coming on, but instead like the cessation of consciousness as death drew near.
The Place to Be turning into the Non-Place.
Inigo stowed the Gargoyle shades in his jacket pocket and threw back the hood, letting his blanched skin feel the caress of the thinning air.
“Quittin’ time…” Papa Sky crooned. To one who knew the blind man less well than the boy did, there might be the assumption that he was unruffled by the darkness because darkness was his constant state.
But Inigo knew this was not the case—Papa Sky was just cool, in the way that eight decades of hard road and iron discipline had lent him a calm and strength that were rarely shaken by anything.
The old man bent his long, lean frame to the open case that rested on the pavement, set the gleaming sax gently within it as though it were an infant, wadded with cotton to hold it safe.
He snapped the case shut and stood with it, felt blindly with his free hand for where his fiberglass cane lay against the edge of the nearby building. His fingers closed around it with deft assurance.
Time for them each to make his own way home. Or what they called home now. Sure as hell not here.
To go while they still could.
Inigo fished in his pocket. His fingers found the coin that was always there, always newly born.
He pulled out the buffalo nickel, not knowing the source of it, at least not precisely. Dr. Sanrio, he supposed. That would be his sick idea of a joke.
The buffalo had been the first to be affected, out beyond the mountains in the federal lands, and the Indian lands, too…and Inigo’s father had been the second.
They had left him here, his father and then his mother, and Agnes Wu, too, when the hard rain had come down.
Fortunately for Inigo, he had turned into something that could stand that hard rain, something that was pretty damn hard itself, little and wiry and tough. And although he had not been wanted by what remained to perceive him, It had not—fortunately, again—regarded him as sufficient of a threat to bother to dislodge him.
(And perhaps, too, some residual affection Agnes held for him—or whatever of Agnes was still left—had lent him some sort of asylum, reprieve.)
Which hadn’t made the loneliness any easier…
Until, that was, the new arrivals made it onto the scene, these two good souls, these friends…and the additional interloper who was anything but Inigo’s friend.
Inigo slid the coin into the breast pocket of Papa Sky’s suit, just behind the white handkerchief that was always immaculately folded. He said the words he always said at this point, the ritual. It was what his father had said whenever he’d given Inigo his allowance, before Dad headed out on his rounds at the facility, or set off into the Badlands.
“Something for the ferryman.”
Papa Sky nodded. “Always got to pay your own way…”
Inigo started off, but Papa Sky beckoned him back. He leaned down and whispered into the boy’s ear, the ear that was so delicately pointed, tufted with fine, white hair.
“I had a word with the Leather Man,” Papa Sky said. “He told me it’s time.”
Inigo drew in a tight breath of thin, chill air.
It wasn’t a surprise, not really. He knew this day would come. But still, he felt far from ready.
Not that any of that mattered, though.
Yoda could be a little green dude, or he could be an old blind black man, or something with scales
Every Möbius-strip day.
“This part always creeps me out,” Inigo said to Papa Sky.
New York was shutting down. Or at least this section of it, now that Christina was gone.
Growing dim, the people and buildings subsiding around them, losing detail, like clay sculptures submerged in water and drawn out again. Or Adam and Eve in reverse motion, God in an act of un Creation, returning them to the mud again.
The darkness encroached, not at all like a sunset with night coming on, but instead like the cessation of consciousness as death drew near.
The Place to Be turning into the Non-Place.
Inigo stowed the Gargoyle shades in his jacket pocket and threw back the hood, letting his blanched skin feel the caress of the thinning air.
“Quittin’ time…” Papa Sky crooned. To one who knew the blind man less well than the boy did, there might be the assumption that he was unruffled by the darkness because darkness was his constant state.
But Inigo knew this was not the case—Papa Sky was just cool, in the way that eight decades of hard road and iron discipline had lent him a calm and strength that were rarely shaken by anything.
The old man bent his long, lean frame to the open case that rested on the pavement, set the gleaming sax gently within it as though it were an infant, wadded with cotton to hold it safe.
He snapped the case shut and stood with it, felt blindly with his free hand for where his fiberglass cane lay against the edge of the nearby building. His fingers closed around it with deft assurance.
Time for them each to make his own way home. Or what they called home now. Sure as hell not here.
To go while they still could.
Inigo fished in his pocket. His fingers found the coin that was always there, always newly born.
He pulled out the buffalo nickel, not knowing the source of it, at least not precisely. Dr. Sanrio, he supposed. That would be his sick idea of a joke.
The buffalo had been the first to be affected, out beyond the mountains in the federal lands, and the Indian lands, too…and Inigo’s father had been the second.
They had left him here, his father and then his mother, and Agnes Wu, too, when the hard rain had come down.
Fortunately for Inigo, he had turned into something that could stand that hard rain, something that was pretty damn hard itself, little and wiry and tough. And although he had not been wanted by what remained to perceive him, It had not—fortunately, again—regarded him as sufficient of a threat to bother to dislodge him.
(And perhaps, too, some residual affection Agnes held for him—or whatever of Agnes was still left—had lent him some sort of asylum, reprieve.)
Which hadn’t made the loneliness any easier…
Until, that was, the new arrivals made it onto the scene, these two good souls, these friends…and the additional interloper who was anything but Inigo’s friend.
Inigo slid the coin into the breast pocket of Papa Sky’s suit, just behind the white handkerchief that was always immaculately folded. He said the words he always said at this point, the ritual. It was what his father had said whenever he’d given Inigo his allowance, before Dad headed out on his rounds at the facility, or set off into the Badlands.
“Something for the ferryman.”
Papa Sky nodded. “Always got to pay your own way…”
Inigo started off, but Papa Sky beckoned him back. He leaned down and whispered into the boy’s ear, the ear that was so delicately pointed, tufted with fine, white hair.
“I had a word with the Leather Man,” Papa Sky said. “He told me it’s time.”
Inigo drew in a tight breath of thin, chill air.
It wasn’t a surprise, not really. He knew this day would come. But still, he felt far from ready.
Not that any of that mattered, though.
Yoda could be a little green dude, or he could be an old blind black man, or something with scales
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