Jim Hines - Codex Born

I had soaked this latest batch of flowers in a glycerin solution, removing the moisture while preserving the shape and texture. Tiny lines of brown crisscrossed the petals. They weren’t as potent as newly-formed Moly, but they should work.

As Nidhi pressed the petals into the book, the fictional flames faded, until I saw only a grainy image of the clearing. I reached out with one hand, imagining the resistor dials and adjusting them one by one. The minutes flew backward in my mind. A crow swooped down and vanished again. The scene darkened as the sun dipped beneath the eastern horizon. That put us past the eight-hour window. Were we in the wrong place, or had I misjudged the time of death?

And then the wendigo appeared, surrounded by blood and gore. It was twilight from the evening before, putting the time closer to eighteen hours ago. I would need to recheck my figures. Two other people crowded over the wendigo and disappeared, moving far too quickly for me to make out any details. The wendigo vanished a second later.

I adjusted my mental controls again, allowing the scene to play out in normal time. There was no sound. The chronoscope should be capable of reproducing sound as well as light, but I was doing well just to get this aspect working. Lena had taken Nidhi’s camera, and was clicking away behind me. I wondered briefly whether a camera would be able to capture these images, but if they could see it, that meant I was manipulating visible light. As long as she didn’t use a flash, they should turn out.

The creature who staggered into the clearing looked nothing like the withered body Lena had retrieved. The blocky pattern of broken ice armoring its body reminded me a little of The Thing from the Fantastic Four. All told, it probably weighed half a ton. It was digging at a wound in its shoulder, black claws the size of my fingers gouging through ice and fur.

The wendigo jerked, then toppled onto its back. It continued to claw at itself for a time, before curling into a ball. Once it stopped moving, two other figures appeared at the edge of the clearing.

“They’re blurry,” said Lena. “Can you zoom in on their faces?”

“It’s not that simple.” One of the men moved forward, but his face remained stubbornly out of focus. Other details were horrifyingly clear, like the ice ax he used to hammer away at the wendigo’s frozen hide, and the skinning knife he pulled out next.

“Jumalauta,” whispered Helen. I heard the meaning in my head, both a curse and a prayer, somewhere between “God dammit” and “God help us.” Both were appropriate for what followed.

“Is he wearing metal?” asked Nidhi.

I had noticed the same thing. The gleam of sunlight on polished metal, pebbled like oversized scales. Armor, maybe? Though it looked nothing like any historical mail I had ever seen.

The man’s companion held back at the edge of the clearing. I studied him instead, trying to determine if he was in charge of this butchery, or merely the guard.

Darkness flowed over both men, as if someone had moved to block our view. I looked more closely, focusing not on the men, but whatever hid them from us. Static danced over the rest of the scene, but the shadow remained. “Am I crazy, or does that look like a woman?”

“I see it, too,” said Lena. “Isaac, look at the man in back. His left hand.”

The shadow moved to one side as if it had heard, but not before I spied the book the second man clutched in his hands. It was far larger than the paperback I had used.

“Is that another libriomancer?” Helen breathed.

The shadow continued to grow—no, it was moving toward us. “I think she’s reacting to my spell.”

“How?” asked Lena. “I thought we were looking at the past.”

No, we were looking at a magical recreation of the past. The spell itself existed in the present, which suggested that whoever or whatever this woman was, she was here with us now, working within the spell to block my efforts.

“You need to end this,” Nidhi said sharply.

I had come to the same conclusion. How long had I been standing here? Ten minutes? Fifteen? My arm was numb, and my eyes were so dry I could barely see anything beyond the chronoscope’s window.

A flicker of red light told me Smudge had reacted to the threat in his usual way. Lena had moved him onto the trunk of a tree, presumably to keep him away from the Moly’s effects. Hopefully he wouldn’t set anything on fire.

I tried to collapse the spell, but whoever or whatever this was, she was fighting me. The images stretched and distorted, and black fingers reached toward us.

“Move,” snapped Lena.

I ducked aside as Lena snatched The Best of Isaac Asimov from Nidhi and hurled it directly through the center of the chronoscope’s image. A pained scream stabbed my mind, and I stumbled backward. The spell collapsed to a single point of silver light, then disappeared.

Lena caught me by the arms. I forgot sometimes how strong she was. I started to pull away, but the world had gotten much more wobbly, and I thought better of it. “Give me five minutes to rest. I’ll be fine.” Then I could try to figure out what the hell we were up against, and exactly how much trouble we were in. “Nice throw.”

Lena grimaced. “Touching that stuff makes me want to vomit. But I figured whatever was trying to come through wouldn’t like it any more than I do.”

Nidhi peeled back one of my eyelids, then checked my pulse. She didn’t look happy. “I told you to be careful.”

“Yeah.” I sagged against Lena. “I really need to start listening to you.”

The oak is ever divided. Reaching deeper, to the cool waters of Earth’s lifeblood. Reaching skyward, to the warm breath of the sun.

Within this tree waits home.

Within this tree waits solitude.

She is my mother. My twin. My center, cleaved in two.

Yearning to be one. Yearning to be my own.

I was born into winter. Yearning to sleep through the cold. Yearning for one whose warmth would awaken me.

Within his need, I found myself.

Within his desire, I found joy.

His body takes root within mine.

I reach inward to safety. I reach outward to his need.

I bring my Creator to his knees and receive his prayers.

—In memory of Frank Dearing

I AWOKE ON A low cot, gasping for breath. My feet and legs were tangled in an old wool blanket. The pillow was damp from sweat, as was the side of my face. The lights were out, but the safety-glass window in the door provided a hint of fluorescent illumination from the office outside.

“You’re safe.” Nidhi had a hand on my shoulder, holding me down with more strength than I would have expected. “What do you remember?”

The flickering magic of the chronoscope. A wendigo twisted in agony. An armored man hidden by the shadow of a woman. I remembered resting while Jeff and Helen discussed what to do with the body. They had decided to bury it in an unmarked grave behind the church. I had stood up too quickly. “Did Lena…she carried me here, didn’t she.”

“That’s right. We were worried at first, but then you started snoring. Do you know where you are?”

“Tamarack. We’re inside the school, right?”

“What’s your name?” Nidhi asked in that calm, clinical tone I remembered from our sessions. She kept her hands folded over the black leather purse in her lap.