Mireia spent half of Sunday shopping, dragging the others along on an intensified mission as she backtracked between Marion Square and the Market over two pairs of shoes, a blouse, a dress, a handbag, and a pair of sunglasses. Feeling just a little petty over the matter, Bernard made her and Jez wade back through the artisan stalls at the Square with him, after lunch. They had to wait for him, for once, until he came away with a new hand-carved wooden relief of a sailfish swimming freely beneath the waves. The emotionally-driven purchase had cost him a more significant portion of his savings than he was willing to admit, and the girls teased him over it all the way back to the Belmont.
Their families met them over dinner—and, to the trio’s collective uncertainty, Loren and Saara.
Contrary to the scene they had made last night, however, the pair was remarkably pleasant and formal all the way through the meal. Saara was even dressed more modestly, proving she could adjust her tastes when she needed to.
Over a remarkably modest meal of fried flounder and grilled vegetables, Loren introduced himself as the son of a private aviator whose parents had moved overseas to care for his sister, who suffered from a long-term illness. He’d been given charge of his father’s small estate outside rural, remote Round O, SC near the town of Cottageville, and not far from the city of Walterboro. He went on at length about his father’s pride and joy: a modified de Havilland DHC-6, a 19-passenger twin-piston amphibious plane. Currently, the craft was being loaned out to a trusted friend, leaving him with (only) a smaller amphibious Lake LA-4-180, a small AS350-B helicopter, and a slightly larger MD-600N he was borrowing in exchange for the de Havilland.
Eager to spend some time with the aircraft, he was willing to pay the teens each $500.00 per week to come out and help with maintenance of the estate, along with the horses his parents had left behind. The slight twitch on his face felt genuine, as did Saara’s soft smile.
Saara introduced herself as a visiting friend who was spending the summer State-side, and was looking forward to being flown around the country to do some sightseeing.
They invited everyone to come out and see the place the next day, to allow the parents a chance to see it before agreeing to let their children work for a total stranger in the middle of nowhere.
Their cover was brilliantly flawless, and their offer enticing. If Bernard hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought half his weekend was some sort of fever dream; that is, if Toby hadn’t told him that Sam’s husband was borrowing the de Havilland for an investigation in the Balearic Islands, or that the story about Loren’s family bore signatures of partial truth, as much as Saara’s summer-long visitation.
The whole ride home, Odessa talked about nothing but horses to the sound of her favorite tape—an offensively obnoxious boyband mix she had spent hours compiling. It was, Bernard thought, a clever ruse to add the horses. His mother would be more inclined to let him hang around the place if she was bringing his sister around to visit.
It also sounded like a problem, though Toby assured him it would be fine.
Later, as he was changing into his pajamas and brushing his teeth, he decided he should set a few ground rules with Toby: Don’t freeze his bedroom, because of his snake. His aquarium had a heater, but if anything happened to his snake, he’d be pissed. Don’t kill his mother’s garden, be nice to the cats, and don’t defrost the freezer or overheat the refrigerator. Stay out of the bathrooms and bedrooms, the latter especially any time people might be changing. Most importantly: don’t draw attention.
That was when Toby reminded him that this wasn’t the first time he’d been on Earth. Or the second.
On that note, Bernard was done: it had been a strange, fucked up weekend, and it was going to be a strange, fucked up week, and he was exhausted.
At long last, he was able to crawl into his bed, the mattress old and a little stiff, but comfortingly familiar. He fell asleep within minutes of closing his eyes.
* * Lincoln, NE – 1986 * *
He was sitting on a couch, watching television with his friend Silver, who was dressed in a sparkly white translucent shirt over a tie-dyed tank, with a rhinestone-bedazzled pair of jeans. A thin, dark-skinned Mongolian less than five feet tall, with spiky, extravagant, side-swept black hair framing his androgynous features, he appeared to be in his early thirties, although sometimes he seemed a great deal older. He could have passed for someone much younger at that moment, though, as he laughed along with the show they were watching.
Bernard had stopped paying attention, and was looking down at a handgun, running his fingers over its smooth, black barrel.
He was six years old.
Silver reached over and rested his thin, fragile-looking fingers on the weapon, gaining Bernard’s attention.
“I’m sitting right here,” he promised, “Nothing’s going to happen without me being the first to know about it, right?”
“I know,” Bernard said, “I’m just looking at it.”
“Remember what we talked about?” Silver answered gently, “Only take it out when you have to. Enjoy the show. Relax for a while.”
His fingers closed around the barrel. Bernard trusted him not to take it away, and made himself let it go. Silver set it on the couch between them.
Bernard took a breath, then released it slowly, the way he’d been taught.
“I’m doing my best.”
Silver grimaced. “I know it’s hard. Have you been sleeping any better?”
Bernard shook his head. “Uh, uh. I can’t stop thinking about Them. Mommy bought a nightlight, but I can’t stop watching the shadows, and if I take it out, I feel like they’re standing over my shoulder,” he rubbed his arm, remembering that shadowy, terrible flesh, “The Dragon hasn’t been around much, but sometimes The Dark One comes around. I see it in the windows sometimes, and two nights ago, I heard it under the bed.”
Silver muted the television, suddenly very serious. “What happened?”
“I keep my gun under my pillow, even though Mom told me not to, ‘cause she’s afraid something bad might happen on accident. I keep it holstered, though, and the safety’s on, so I think it’s okay. When I heard something move under the bed, I reached under my pillow really carefully and drew it, and I waited for it. I didn’t hear anything for a while, but then I saw a shadow in the moonlight on my wall, and I sorta heard my window shut real soft. You could barely hear it, but I know I did. My windows are locked, so I don’t know how it got in. Maybe the heating system?”
“Through the furnace, you mean?” Silver asked, his eyes wide and nervous, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and then he smiled, trying to hide the fear, and ruffled Bernard’s hair, “Well, they’re not here, now. When Sam gets home, I’ll talk to her about it, okay? We’ll look around under the house with your mom, and see if we can find their points of entry so we can catch or kill them when they come back.”
“I wish you could use your magic,” Bernard muttered.
“So do I,” Silver agreed.
* * Columbia, SC – 1988 * *
The air was cool on Bernard’s face.
Under his hands, he could feel the familiar leather jacket as he clung to it, the rumble of a motorcycle vibrating against the modified cargo rack beneath him.
He had just turned eight.
Everything was a pale blur. It was an improvement from two weeks of total darkness. His mother would never have allowed him near a bike in the first place, much less blind, but the driver wasn’t human. She trusted him, and there were far more terrifying things that could happen than a short trip down the road with a non-human driver—one with unusual abilities, even if they were limited.
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The bike slowed, turned, and puttered along at a parking lot speed. Then it stopped. The driver started to get off.
Bernard tugged on the jacket, pulling his friend closer.
“Are you okay?” Silver’s voice asked.
“Can I ask you something?”
Silence greeted Bernard for the space of a heartbeat, and Silver answered, “Sure. What is it?”
Bernard pulled his helmet off, then put his arms back around his friend’s waist. The weathered “Indian” lettering across the back of the jacket rested against his cheek.
“Do you . . . like being one of us?”
Silence again, as Silver drew a breath. His arms pulled away as he removed his own helmet. Then they lowered again, and he said, “I don’t mind it.”
“But do you like it? Which would you prefer?”
“To be myself, of course,” Silver said, “My real self, but the way I see it, as long as my inner being is somewhat at peace, I’m okay with whichever body I have.”
They were definitely in a parking lot, probably at the record store. A few cars rolled by, and Bernard understood the need for them to be vague. It wouldn’t do to go talking about alien dinosaurs outside the security of their homes unless someone like Silver said it was okay.
“But you’re not at peace,” Bernard said, as a statement of fact.
“You’re right,” Silver said softly, “I’m old, Bernard. Old enough to bear a lot of memories that no one should have to; in my case, memories of things my body has done against my will, and those are things my people cannot forgive me for.”
Bernard was well aware of the price Silver had paid for his dalliances with “sorcery”. The friends he had lost—even killed—in the process, and the subsequent loss of access to his abilities. He could see and feel the world he once knew, but his ability to touch it amounted to occasionally useful parlor tricks, and he was constantly being monitored by higher beings.
“Well,” Bernard said cautiously, “I guess what I wanted to know is . . . since you’re here, and not there, is it better?”
“At the risk of sounding too melodramatic: it’s living. But it’s a little bit better, not to be reminded of the past all the time. Not to have to see those people every day, always apologizing for things I can’t properly remember, and having to deal with it over and over again.”
“I guess that’s what this feels like,” Bernard said, “Being here with you. I wouldn’t call these the best years of my life, but as long as I’m here, I don’t have to listen to anyone worrying about me like I’m fragile or something. It’s a relief, not to be reminded of it all the time.”
More silence. Silver’s fingers clasped his, and after a moment he said, “I see what you’re getting at. That’s why I do this, you know. And it helps me, too, hanging out with you.”
Bernard squeezed him. “I’m glad. I love it.”
“We can’t control what’s going on because we don’t know what it is. I’m trying to regain some of my more useful abilities, but that takes a lot of work, when you’ve done the things I have. We can only do our best, and for what it’s worth, your sight’s coming back, and a certain someone is still missing an eye.”
Bernard had shot Nightmare in the face, in a stunning but minor victory. In return, Dark had showed up in the middle of the night and stabbed him with a needle. For three of the most terrifying weeks of his life, he’d been alone in a world of darkness every time someone walked away from him.
“What about you?” Silver asked him, “Have you ever wished you were more like us?”
That made Bernard laugh, though he sounded bitter, surprising himself. “I don’t even know what I am now. At least when I’m with you, I feel like I belong somewhere, but mostly I just wanna be like other kids. I wish things didn't have to be this way. I missed so much school, and now everyone thinks I'm a weirdo. Looking different already sucked, plus I stand out with the scars and stuff. I’m not even sure I’d be normal without all this stuff going on, but at least I’d have a chance.”
Another car pulled through the lot behind them, and after a moment Silver said softly, “People like us . . . we never really seem to fit into other people’s categories. We’re always somewhere in the middle. Ambiguous. Male, but also female. Sorcerer, but without power. Saurian, but . . . also something else.”
“Asian, but white,” Bernard said, catching on, “A kid, but not like other kids. I mean, still human, but . . . as you said: never really able to fit in. Especially now. Is there a word for people like us?”
“A few, yes, but labels can be tricky things. They can have different meanings to different people, and they can change over time. They can become boxes, and sometimes they can be used to hurt people. Truth be told, Bern, I’d settle for being called a person. I've chosen how I want to express myself, and I'm lucky enough to have fathered a child with the finest female I could ever hope for. My failure as a father notwithstanding, nothing else really matters, does it? Certainly not some silly label designed to separate me from ‘normal’ people.”
Bernard smiled. “But you're not really a person.”
Silver turned toward him. “Of course I am. Humans like to use that word to set themselves apart from every other living thing in the universe, but a person can be any entity, regardless of the form it takes. A tree is an individual living entity, technically deserving of personhood.”
“A tree!” Bernard laughed.
“By human definition it is born from an embryonic state, and goes through stages of infancy, youth, adulthood, and elder age. It has cellular and vascular systems only slightly different from your own. It breathes, drinks, consumes nutrients, and responds to environmental stimuli. It even has a reproductive cycle, occasionally requiring parts from other trees to reproduce, and it eventually dies. The Earth, too, as a complex organism composed of life-sustaining biological and geological systems, could be considered a living entity. My people know this because they’ve made some of the same mistake humans have, and we have paid respectable tolls for our disrespect of other, far more violent, worlds. ‘People’ is a population, Bernard, not a species. Human is what you call your species, as well as your genus—Homo sapiens.”
“Oh,” Bernard said softly, subdued, “I see. Sorry—“
“There's no need to apologize,” Silver interrupted him quickly, “I just want to be sure you understand.”
Bernard nodded. “I get it, now!”
“It's okay to be honest if you don't. This is heavy stuff for a kid your age. Kind of unconventional, really . . . maybe don’t tell your mom I told you all that.”
“No, no, it’s fine! I get it!” Bernard insisted.
There was a pause, but this time it was a silence Bernard knew all too well.
“It's got nothing to do with Those Two,” he said, “Danny's already asking too many weird questions.”
There were so many questions. Like: how did you feel when you were thinking about that? Any fever? Unsteadiness? Headaches before, during, or after? Other aches? Vision’s okay? Hearing? Did you come up with that just now? If not, when did it start? And then Danny would record the time, the air temperature, Bernard’s temperature, his heart rate, how long he’d slept the night before, on and on and on.
“He's your caseworker,” Silver reminded him gently, “He needs to know if anything changes.”
“I know that!” Bernard cried, tugging on the jacket. “But I'm really tired of it! Please don't tell him, Silver. I just want to feel normal for a while, okay?”
There was a sigh. Silver dismounted the bike.
“Please?”
Silver’s thin fingers rested on his left arm. “You don’t need to worry so much about being ‘normal,’ Bernard. Different kids learn stuff at different rates, and you’re on track for a perfectly ordinary eight-year-old. We’re not looking at what you’re learning, we’re studying sudden changes in your rate of progression—that’s what the math and reading assessments are for. It’s not something you need to think about, okay? All I meant was that if he asks you anything, you shouldn’t fight him. I know it’s exhausting—we’ve all told him he’s tiresome—but he’s trying to help.”
Bernard fell silent, pouting.
A couple of people walked behind them. After they’d moved on, Silver laughed, but there was no warmth in the sound. “Be glad you don’t have my hearing—and I hope you never do.”
“Why, what happened?”
Silver tried to shrug it off. “Nothing to worry about—”
Bernard knew him better than that. “They were rude, weren’t they?”
“Only because they didn’t think anyone could hear them. It's best to leave such things alone if possible, and not draw attention. Some of these people get really uncomfortable when they see something they're not used to. They take it as a personal attack.”
“Why?”
“Fear,” his friend answered, “They're afraid of any changes to their normal routine, as well as anything unfamiliar to them, and the only way they know to respond is fight or flight. So they avoid us, for now, until they feel their world is being threatened.”
“That's crazy. We see new stuff all the time.”
“And we're used to it. It’s normal to us.”
Bernard knitted his brows, trying to understand such people, and trying to think of how the situation could be improved. “Can't we make them used to it?”
“You can't make people do anything,” Silver told him, “That's just not how things work. They have to choose it for themselves. Even if I could use magic, it would be immoral to rob someone else of their personal freedom—even if their free way involves being a jerk. You should always approach fearful people with caution. If you want to be persuasive, it’s best to meet them where they are. Let them see that you’re not so different as they think. The best thing I can tell for now is keep to yourself. Let them come around in their own way, if they choose to, and be ready to accept that some individuals never will.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if we all just got along?”
“That would make things easier for you and me,” Silver agreed, “but nothing in the Universe is ever so perfect. If anything, I’d call the Universe perfectly imperfect.”
Silver dismounted his bike and turned to help Bernard down, saying cheerfully, “Y’know, this stuff can really drag you down if you think about it too much, Bern. I seem to remember coming all this way to buy some music. Let’s go see if this store has the new Loverboy album in stock.” He took his hand. “Shall we?”
“You’ll stay with me, right?”
“Of course. I’ll be right next to you.”
Even though he couldn’t see the record store, Bernard had a good memory for where things were, and he simply followed along, running his fingers along the spines and covers, mentally counting the dividers between sections, his other hand clinging to Silver’s leather sleeve. It wasn’t perfect, but he lost himself nonetheless in the sounds of rock music and adult chatter, and enjoyed himself.
Everything else in his life was insane, with no end in sight, so it was moments like this that he wanted to remember. The smell and feel of cardboard slipcovers and pine display racks, and Silver’s melodic voice quietly considering the new releases; these were among the things he treasured most in life.