Prologue

   They sat in Alsa’s hut and passed a bottle between them.

   Alena sipped, hissed through her teeth. Whatever that stuff was, it went down like fire and cracked glass.

   “You’re not staying?” Alsa asked, as if she already knew the answer.

   Alena found the bruja’s pale gaze strange and unsettling. She was certain those alabaster eyes saw a whole lot more than Alsa let on; for, if a witch like her could stare into the dreamtime, that place between worlds, then what was to stop her from reading Alena like a children’s primer? 

   Alena shook her head. I can’t stay, she thought. We both know it. 

   “Your people,” Alsa said, as if knew Alena’s thoughts. Odds were, she did. “You worry about them.”  

   Alena nodded as the bruja passed her the bottle, but she did not drink. Her head was already light and swimmy. The demon in that bottle wasted no time in getting to business. 

   “They’re dying,” Alena said. “And those who are not, if there be any, need help.” Her tribe were dying slow, inexorable deaths, while the power-hungry among them murdered each other over an empty seat. 

   “I understand,” Alsa said. “You aim to deliver them.”  

   “There is no-one else to do it.” Alena said. 

   Please aid me, Blessed Mother, she prayed... something she hadn’t done in a long time. This task is too large for me. I can’t go it alone.

   Her prayer got no response. Not that she’d expected any.

1.

   It wasn’t long before Alena and the bruja ceased their palaver. She left her camo-cloak behind. The bruja wanted it, Alena no longer needed it, and so it seemed fitting to surrender it, as a parting gift. 

   The last rays of dusk bled through the pines and painted the snow in livid red. As the sun sunk low on its arc to quit the day, so had it become Alena’s time to depart. 

   Nobody answered when she came knocking at the cabin the old man and Tommy shared. For being father and son, they were certainly an odd duo—never outright angry at each other, but not quite convivial, either. Dutch, the ‘old man,’ was likely still out on a hunt. It was the only thing he did since the big firefight. As to Tommy’s whereabouts... well, that was a tough answer to a tricky question, wasn't it? 

   Alena was perfectly happy to find both away, and happier to find the door unlocked. She went in, propping up the old bolt-action beside the hearth where it was sure to be noticed. She didn’t want to leave it, yet it wasn’t quite hers to take. On the other hand, the old man’s binocs stared at her from their lonely place on the mantel, and in their dusty lenses she fancied seeing a mute entreaty. They might’ve been saying, Take us with you. Or, perhaps: Hey, let’s go have us an adventure! Alena gave the binocs some serious thought. She would need them more than the old man did. Wouldn’t she? 

   Once back outside, she shouldered her pack and got going. Alena was tall, and a life of hard years in the wastes had scoured away anything not bone-hard and lean. Her skin was warm and dark, and folks often said her eyes were emerald-bright. Though an obvious poetic exaggeration, Alena found the description pleasing enough. Pretty, even. But she took such compliments with a guarded and measured silence, for she was cautious in all things.  

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

   Her silhouette was a lean slash in the deepening gloom. Above the reddening horizon hung a sky heavy with clouds dark as gunpowder. It was shaping up to be a dark and blizzardy night. Alena had to balance her usual prudence against the need to move with urgency. Through the village she went, not looking at anyone in particular. Few of the hill folk paid her any heed, choosing instead to bury their faces in fur collars against the wind that kicked up more and more flurries. Their avoiding her was not unusual, however; she was, after all, a stranger from Old Angeles. An outsider.

   Alena didn’t mind. The fewer goodbyes, the better. 

   She passed the village outskirts and entered the woods proper without seeing another soul. The road down, out of the hills, wasn’t too far off. 

   “You’re going away,” said the girl in the most matter-of-fact manner possible. 

   Alena jumped, barely biting down a yell. She looked about. “Where the f—uh, where did you come from, little one?”

   The girl had dark hair and large, oil-black eyes. She leaned against the nearest tree, her little fingertips tapping the bark as if she’d been waiting there for some time. Given the cold, she should’ve been wearing gloves. “It could be,” she said, “that I’ve been hiding behind this pine, just a-waiting for you to find your way here. Or, mayhap I—like you—can conceal myself, and travel in the liminal spaces... and I’ve been following you far longer’n you’d like to know.”

   Um. “What is your name, dear?”

   “I am Maria. And you are Alena, friend to He Who Rose.” The girl’s eyes never wavered. Alena knew that gaze. It was all steel, the conviction of the converted. 

   Naw, kid, you ain’t creepy. You ain’t creepy at all.

   “I fear you’ve confused me with the bruja, love,” Alena said. “I have no magic.” Well, not much, anyway, but she’d keep her own council on that. She chanced a peek over her shoulder. Her backward-marching footprints were fast disappearing in the gray-black swirls. She did her best to hide the chill that, just then, shivered up her back. 

   “You’re following the boy.” Again, the girl Maria was matter-of-fact.

   “No, no.” Alena shook her head. “Tommy is—” Dead, she didn’t say. Because that would have been a lie, wouldn’t it? That whole showdown in the snow had been nothing but an elaborate ruse—not only to beat that warlord Suun, but to make sure the world forgot about the boy with the mark. 

   The little girl blinked, waiting. She would only have been creepier if she were smiling.

   Alena said, “Let’s say he’s not... he’s not of this world anymore.” She was hedging, for sure... but there was truth in her statement, from a certain point of view. Come to think of it, it might be the most truthful thing she could have said.

   Maria shook her head. “He died, and we burned his body by sundown, as is most fitting... but, truly, he walks among us. I saw him again at the next day’s dawn. We all did. We saw him, Alena. We believe.”

   “I’m sure you do,” Alena said. This whole encounter was just... too... creepy. “Now, sweet one, I must beg your leave. It’s time I made it back to my home, my own people.” 

   Maria said nothing to that, just kept that iron gaze fixed on Alena. Even after she turned her back, Alena imagined she could feel those eyes, like little augers, boring little holes between her shoulder blades. 

   A boy died a martyr; the dawn after, he was seen, ‘risen’ again. And the first to behold him had been a girl named Maria. Of course. The details weren’t quite apples-to-apples, but what was there—sketched out in broad, mythic notes—was a similar enough refrain to anyone who’d ever read the Book. 

   People in her part of the world loved their dying-and-rising gods, with the most commonplace cults pinning their beliefs on a man-messiah named Iesu the Green. Only, Iesu hadn’t burned; rather, he’d been murdered and buried in a berm only to crawl out three days later... with a new body made of soil for flesh and stone for bone, with emerald eyes and hair made of green and growing things. He’d been ‘born again,’ as they say, in the flesh of the Mother whose belly was the very Earth. 

   No, Tommy’s apparent resurrection was not the same as the Green Man’s tale. But, when it came to giving an old religion a new coat of paint, it was damned close enough.

   We saw him, the girl had said. We believe.

   No. Alena walked a little bit faster downhill. Just—no.

   She double-timed it down to the road, eager to be gone.