The Future Falls (44 page)

She Sang past the birth of three and four. Past the conception of five and six. Past the birth of five and six. To . . .

No snow this time. No rain, but then there wouldn't be. It didn't rain while the Gales were in ritual unless the Gales wanted it to rain. It felt like spring, all damp earth and new growth, but she had no idea how much time had passed. Although this ritual was all about Allie and Graham making one final baby,
the
final baby, Charlie could feel the rest of the family laying down a harmony track. The seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale would grow up surrounded by cousins his age.

And not only cousins. If the world still existed—
don't look, don't look, don't look
—he'd have plenty of friends and neighbors his age. For a broad definition of neighbor that lapped against the Rockies to the west, the border to the south, the tundra to the north, and slid over Saskatchewan with nothing to stop it until Manitoba.

As the power of his conception sizzled around her, the surrounding shrubs burst into full leaf and then into flower. It tugged her forward, pooled between her legs, and spread in burning lines of need throughout her body. A distant roar pushed through the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears, and it took a moment before she realized it had to be David, challenging from within his circle of aunties. She had to leave before David fried her where she stood.

But she couldn't disentangle herself from Allie's touch. Graham's touch. Roland. Katie. Rayne. Lucy. She took another step forward.

The attack, when it came, lifted her off her feet. Airborne, she clamped her hands over the strings, forced an A past a dry tongue, and rode it back to . . .

...slam into the trunk of an enormous oak. Charlie grunted at the impact, breath knocked out of her lungs, head ringing. Her guitar thrummed out a sympathetic B flat. Bark crumbling behind her as she slid to the ground, she fought for air, stumbled, and finally sagged back against the tree.

At first she thought the darkness was the fault of the rising bump on the back of her head. After a moment, she realized it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with where David had thrown her. As a rule, she stayed well away from the shadows under the old oaks. From a distance, they looked fake, like blackout curtains hung to simulate shadow. Up close and personal, the shadow became very real with next to no underbrush when she looked down and no glimpse of sky through the nearly solid canopy when she looked up. It smelled like the root cellar back at the old farmhouse, a damp repository of dying vegetables. Worst of all, she could hear running water.

“And that,” she grunted, straightening, “is mean. Why not offer me a pomegranate and nail the symbolism.” No one had ever told her to refuse food or drink the Wood might offer, but then no one had ever told her not to sing “Sk8ter Boi” in a honky-tonk; some things anyone with the slightest sense of self-preservation knew not to do.

The music was nearly all percussion in the shadows, the aunties at their most definitive, and her blood pounded out a demanding rhythm over the lingering throb of conception. Since she had to know where she was before she could Sing herself to where she hadn't been, she teased the faintest thread of Allie's song out from under the percussive posturing and followed it.

And followed it.

And followed it.

By the time she reached a clearing she recognized, surrounded by birch and alder, her feet ached, her right calf had started to cramp, and she'd been earwormed by Shari Lewis singing “This is the Song that Never Ends.” Her stomach growled. And she really wanted a lamb chop.

Step out. Eat. Sleep. Tempting, but she didn't have it in her to start over, so her only choice was to go on.

“Five more stops.” Sucking the inside of her cheeks provided a small mouthful of spit. “Don't quit now.”

If the conception of the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale had nearly dragged her into disaster, she only survived the birth because it had driven David beyond thought. Back in the Wood, she poked a finger through the tear in the sleeve of her jacket, and licked the smear of red off the tip. Bleeding in the Wood was a bad idea.

The burst of salt and iron on her tongue made her thirstier.

The memory of Doomsday Dan's bottle of yellow
whatever
had begun to look good.

“Four more. You can do this.”

Start with Allie. Sing the babies. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. BIRTH. Then the longest jump yet, as she Sang her way to the first ritual after Edward and Evan turned fifteen. She didn't need to fill in the details, she needed to hold the note.
Hold it. Hold it.
Her fingers rolled over the strings. It might have been a pattern from Mary Chapin Carpenter. It might have been Mississippi blues. Charlie had moved past being able to tell. All she could do was trust her fingers.

Hold it.

Hold it for years.

There was a future. Auntie Catherine had Seen it.

She'd Sung only what she knew—birth, conception, birth. Not what she wanted, what she knew; moving forward into the future that
was
.

Charlie held the note.

Then Edward and Evan entered ritual, pulling her out of the Wood and into the park.

Propped up against a rock, where she couldn't miss it, was a bottle of water and a power bar.

“Looks like the two brain cells I had remaining after this stunt have finally begun to work again.” Aware of how little time she had, she snatched them up, wondered if that meant the world was safe. Could plastic bottles and power bars survive with only the infrastructure the family could protect?

She needed to look.

She needed a lot of things.

Sucked to be her.

The sound of teenage girls and predatory giggling chased her back into the Wood.

A single bottle of water was as much a tease as a solution. The empty plastic crushed in her hands, Charlie had no memory of drinking and had a suspicion it had all been absorbed by her mouth and throat before it had a chance to reach her stomach.

A power bar was a bad compromise between candy and food. Charlie ate it anyway; it had been years since she'd eaten. Metaphorically. Metaphysically. Whatever that chewy purple thing was, it hadn't come within a hundred
kilometers of a blueberry and she had no trouble believing it could survive the end of the world.

Her mouth had gone dry again.

“Three more stops. You survived the Havelock Country Jamboree, you can survive this.”

Allie. The babies.
Sing it
exactly
the same.
This was not the time to explore jazz. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth.
Hold the note.
Edward and Evan.

More giggling as twins three and four joined the circle.

Another bottle of water waited, but she dropped it, flung back into the oaks by David's power.

“Asshole!” Breathing had started to hurt and her jeans were sliding off her hips, making the walk back to the familiar trees even more uncomfortable. “Two more.”

Twins five and six followed their brothers into the circle.

The giggling had started to get to her. She'd never giggled. Allie'd never . . . actually, Allie had giggled. This time she hung onto the bottle. Would leaving out a fucking muffin have killed her?

Allie. The babies. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Conception. Birth. Hold the note. Edward and Evan. Three and Four. Five and six. A little further.

She pushed beyond the surge of power, stretching herself past the point of pain. The ritual ended. Time passed although she had no idea how much time, could have been days, could have been hours, and she fell out of the Wood onto her knees, gasping for breath.

“Hello, Charlie.” He had his father's dark hair and his mother's gray eyes. At fifteen, he was still all elbows and knees and nose, but his shoulders were broad under a T-shirt advertising a band she didn't recognize and his smile had layers she couldn't begin to parse. “We gotta boot. Mom suspects something's up.”

Charlie blinked. His voice held no layers at all. It just was. The way the wind was. Deeper than she'd expected and resonant. The hair lifted off the back of her neck.

Allie's youngest shifted his grip on two worn and ugly bears and stepped forward, holding out a hand.

He didn't lift her effortlessly to her feet, but it was close—although Charlie wasn't sure if that was her or him. She felt liked she'd been cored, like she'd given so much to the final song there was nothing left of her. Certain a strong breeze would blow her away, she clung to his hand a moment longer. His palm was warm and a little damp. His fingers had familiar calluses. “Guitar?” she rasped, spat out a mouthful of blood, and ticked
gargle glass
off her bucket list.

“Bouzouki.” When her brows went up, he grinned. “Who lies about a bouzouki?”

“People trying . . .” She sucked air in through her nose and expelled words with the breath. “. . . to get . . . on a plane.”

“Never been on one.”

Not,
never flown
, Charlie noted and closed her teeth on a question about Jack—which conveniently kept her from biting her tongue when her knees buckled.

“You don't look years younger than the you I know,” he pointed out as he caught her. “You look terrible.”

“Bite me.”

“See, that's why you're my favorite cousin. You're never all excited and in my face about that seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale thing. Well, not until this morning's little talk.”

“Little?”

“You need me to come back to the past with you—this you—to stop an asteroid from wiping out civilization.”

That
was
little, Charlie admitted. Short and sweet. And then she processed what he'd said.

“Charlie?” Shifting his grip to accommodate the guitar, he stopped her collapse although her weight dragged the two of them around in a half circle.

“It worked.”

“Duh.”

He'd got that from her. Or Jack. Probably Jack, she'd mostly stopped saying it.

“But you can't bring me home again. Here again.” He huffed out a laughed. “After you take me back there,” he said, and Charlie could hear the care he used to choose his words, “you can't bring me back here.”

“Say what?”

“You haven't tried it yet, so you wouldn't know, but my you has and she says it can't be done.”

“Got here . . . once . . .” But not singing one song to cover births and conceptions and rituals while playing another to keep him with her. She—his she, future her—had a point. “I could . . . drop you.”

“Yup. Anywhere.” He grinned.

“You'd . . .”

“Give up the weight of family expectation about what it means to be the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale for a chance to meet those expectations and actually get to live a life?” Rearranging her weight on his arm, he met her gaze. His eyes looked older, a lot older, than his fifteen years. “I'm all over that.”

Charlie knew something about the weight of family expectations. Somehow, she found the strength for a smile. Given the blood she could taste on her teeth, she doubted it was reassuring.

“And it's not like I'll even have to miss the family, right? I'm going back to them.”

“You grew up . . . with yourself?”

“That would be weird.” He thought about it for a moment. “I never got to go to Ontario. I bet I'm there. I don't think Mom knows what happened, but now I'm gone . . .” The glee in his voice was entirely fifteen. “. . . that me can come out and keep her from killing you.”

“Yay.” Feeling a little stronger, Charlie staggered back a step, standing on her own. “You've been . . .”

“Trained? For world saving? I'm all about world saving.” This grin reminded her of his grandmother Mary. “Just didn't know it came with time travel. That's sharp. I've been . . .” His eyes darkened and Charlie tried unsuccessfully to focus on the glimpse of horn here, there, and all over the shimmer of air above his head. “Mom just told Auntie Bea where I am and Auntie Bea's minutes from the park.”

“Eavesdropping?”

“You never complained before.” He frowned and she saw his father in the bend of his brows. “Or then. I guess. Anyway, we've got to be gone when Auntie Bea gets here.”

Charlie was all for that. “Taking the bears?”

“No, I only brought them because you said you were aiming for them.”

Not literally. Not that it mattered.

“Edward'll kill me if anything happens to them.” He dropped to one knee and set them on a flat rock. For moment, he went completely still and Charlie heard good-bye in his silence.

Of course, if
she
heard good-bye . . .

Hoofbeats.

“David!”

They said it together, then his hand was in hers. “Charlie . . .”

“Okay. Hang on.” One more song, that was all she needed. One more song to get them into the Wood where as long as she could maintain her grip, he'd snap back with her to where he was needed. One more . . .

Her background band, notably absent in her previous moments out of the Wood, struck up “Climb Every Mountain.” Because an elderly show tune was exactly what she needed. She'd barely finished the derisive snort when the von Trapps gave way to “Everybody Say Yeah” from
Kinky Boots
.

“Better.”

“Charlie?”

“Not talking . . . to you, kid.” She tugged his hand up onto her shoulder and released him. She didn't need to sing them home, home was easy, she just needed to get him into the Wood and hang on. She flexed stiff fingers, dug the pick from her pocket . . . “Move with me.” . . . and took them into the Wood on the opening chords of “Carry On My Wayward Son.”