It was the morning of the fifteenth of July, 1901.

"He isn't dead," said Charles DeLange, bending over the boy. "Still breathing shallowly."

"My goodness, Charles. Do you think it was bears?" asked Maude DeLange, a hand extended over her mouth, which held agape with shock. "And his dress is so strange. He can't be from around here," she remarked. She watched as Charles stripped off his jacket and shirt, tossing the bundle to her. "What's this about?"

"Wouldn't want any stains," Charles said, reaching down for the boy. "Some kind of sled would be ideal, but we'll work with our options." He picked up the boy and slung him over his shoulder, noting immediately the slow trickle of blood that began to run down his bare chest. "We need to get him treatment immediately or he won't last long. I'm going to run back to the house. Can you run for the doctor, dear?"

Maude nodded.

"Tell him the boy's lost a lot of blood. I'll be praying for him… I advise you do the same."

As the two fled the blood-stained sapling in the summer woods, neither noticed the metal object that rested just beyond where the boy's outstretched arm had been… the thing's face was mottled with blood and mud, and already the morning breeze had sent a leaf or two atop it to partly cover its shiny surface. It would sit there, alone, as the sapling near it grew larger and sturdier, until eventually a root would pass over it and grip it in place to the floor. Wild animals would find it and sniff it, but never disturb it. Trees would sprout up and die around it, lives beginning and ending near it—and there it would sit for nearly a lifetime, until finally a wild animal of a different sort discovered it in the glow of a handheld light.

* * *

It was the nineteenth of August, 1901.

Infection had quickly set in, and hopes had fallen. Then came the fevers, and the outlook only worsened. Maude was often by Parker's bedside, changing the sheets and cleaning his wounds and patting his forehead with damp cloths. She brought out strange folk remedies from her native country of Germany, teas of peppermint and ginger. She spoke soft prayers in her mother tongue and English, sometimes seeming to switch between the two in the same breath. In this period of time, Parker swam in and out of awareness, almost feeling like a man drowning whose head continually bobbed up above the water before plunging back in below the churning surface. He watched as the strange folks in their old-fashioned dress spoke at him, but their words simply didn't register. Pain racked his body, and his limbs tingled maddeningly. He couldn't move very well, and each breath was a battle, as though his chest weighed a hundred pounds just to lift for a single struggling gasp. Gradually, though, this weight began to evaporate away, and the attention-stealing searing pains started to dwindle away to a background throbbing. Words began to come through. He learned the names of Charles and Maude. He learned the way their house creaked in the night. He occasionally saw children peeking in from the door, and soon learned their names were Ben and Muriel. They seemed to be about 11 or 12, dressed in dusty formalwear.

Day by day, more of Parker's strength and awareness returned. The doctors remarked that Parker's recovery was nothing short of miraculous. Whether that was meant as a medical miracle or religious miracle was unclear, but Charles and Maude certainly chose to interpret it as the latter. They thanked God profusely for delivering Parker from harm, and for setting them on the path to find him, and Maude's prayers only became more and more frequent with each passing day. Parker wanted to thank her, but his throat burned white-hot and his jaw refused to move. His cheeks felt as though they'd split each time he opened them, and when he tried, she'd rush in and place a hand on his forehead, saying "shhh, shhh. Don't speak, your cheeks and throat still need time to heal." And so, quiet he'd remained.

It was the first of November, 1901.

Parker sat upright in bed and sipped at his stew. He had managed to dress himself today, a first since his arrival to the home. Over the past few months, his mind had recovered fully, but his body lagged frustratingly behind. His legs refused to move, due to a spinal injury he'd suffered, and the doctor wasn't sure if he'd ever walk again. His left arm was partially paralyzed, but he found he could still move it through a very limited range of motion, though doing so brought out painful protest from his shoulder. His throat had largely recovered from its slash, but Parker's voice was permanently ruined… speaking was a rough and guttural thing, hardly distinguishable from a pained burp. He thus spoke as little as possible, and so the DeLanges had been kind enough to place a chalkboard next to his bedside in easy reach from his seated position.

Once he could write, the questions began. "Where are you from? What is your name? Where is your family?" For all of these, he gave the easiest answer that could be given: I don't know, he wrote, and with each successive question, he underlined those same three words yet again. He didn't actually have amnesia, but given his condition, it would be an easier pill for them to swallow than "I come from the future year 1981!"

Parker had had ample time to think on his situation, and how utterly trapped he was. He couldn't go forwards, and he didn't even have the watch anymore. It was somewhere out in the woods, and, truth be told, it was no longer any use to him at all. I guess this is what I get for playing with fire… Is it all that shocking that I got burned?

He'd also had time to think on the reason he now sat where he sat in his current condition… for the first weeks, he'd wanted to deny what he'd sworn he'd seen, what he'd sworn he'd felt. Could Logan have done this? Parker knew that he could never attack a friend—even a former friend—so savagely, but what about a person who could choose to feel or not feel at will? Such questions hurt worse than the wounds; in time, as the pain of injuries further faded, the agony of betrayal was what would keep Parker up through clammy nights.

Charles and Maude would ask every day if he remembered anything new… and he could tell that every "no" set their spirits lower and lower. They were singularly dedicated in Parker's recovery, but he needed to give them something to hold on to… and so, he chose a name: Jim Duncan. It was a choice that surprised even Parker when he said it aloud, as it was the first kernel of a plan that began to form deep in the now-crippled boy's mind.

It was the third of March, 1916.

Years passed, and Parker's 'memory' never recovered. The DeLange family, which had once been eager to find Parker's home and family, instead resolved themselves to simply adopt the boy and give him as good a life as the one he'd forgotten. They were generous folks, and Parker quickly grew to love and respect them for the selfless caretakers that they were. Charles could be quite strict, and Maude was hopelessly naive in many things—and both displayed an alarming amount of ignorance to the world, but Parker supposed that was typical of the times—and yet, they were willing to overlook Parker's inability to walk and speak. Parker supposed he could overlook their faults in turn.

Parker, under the name of Jim Duncan, worked the family's accounting books, spending many of his afternoons hunched over a desk scribbling at paper until his hands were stained a deep blue. His adopted brother Ben had grown from feisty child to cocksure young adult before his very eyes, and Parker supposed that even he must've changed, though it was always harder to see inconstancy in the self. Soon, a gorgeous red-haired woman from Virginia had entered the picture. Her name was Rita, and she gravitated towards the arrogant young huntsman in a way that stirred a certain jealousy in Parker. Nobody had ever looked at him with such desire, and Parker doubted anyone ever would.

Within the year, Ben married Rita and had a child on the way. On the day their son was born, Muriel—Parker's adopted sister—wheeled his creaking chair through the snow to the midwives and they placed the newborn baby in Parker's arms. Horace, they had named him. "Isn't he beautiful?" Rita asked. Jim Duncan, the cripple in the wheelchair, nodded his head, though it set searing pain rippling through the scars in his face and neck. In that moment, Parker realized he had spent nearly as long in the 'past' as he had in the 'present.' He would soon be more a resident of this time than the far-off memory that was the 1970s and 1980s.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He looked into the wide eyes of the baby, a true denizen of the times, and touched his face. If you can live through these decades, then maybe I can, too, Parker thought. He smiled his best, mangled smile, an expression he so rarely wore of late. The baby began to cry.

It was the twelfth of September, 1928.

It was a celebration of Maude DeLange's birthday, and relatives from all over the state traveled to celebrate. Family gatherings at the DeLange estate were always Parker's brightest days, as they were the only days he truly felt seen. Out in the city, people looked away from the scarred cripple in the wheelchair. With every parent covering their child's eyes or every person looking away from Parker's gaze as though terrified to make eye contact, Parker felt more and more like the monster they thought he was. Jim Duncan was the cripple, the wretch, and on Parker's lowest days he began to associate himself more with that newer name than the old. Who even was Parker Cambell in a year many decades before he was born?

At family gatherings, he wasn't beloved like most other members of the family—Parker was an outsider to the family in truth—but there, he was at least accepted. Cousins would chat idly with him, waiting patiently for Jim to write out his answers or shake his head. The children would walk up and ask questions, always variations on a theme:

"How big was the bear that got you?"

"Does it hurt even when you're sleeping?"

"Uncle Jim, my pa says it wasn't a bear that got you but was a mountain cat instead. Who's right?"

"How come you don't remember stuff, Uncle Jim?"

Only Horace, already mature for a twelve-year-old, seemed to resist the call to ask questions about his injuries. He'd instead ask about the accounting work, and about Charles and Maude, whom Parker still lived with. With Horace, Parker felt more and more like Parker. He took a liking to the boy relatively quickly.

Later in the evening, Parker watched from the porch as young Horace slung a rifle over his shoulder, accompanying Charles and other men of the household to hunt venison for tonight's big meal. He wished he could go out hunting with them, that he could stand over young Horace and tousle his hair and help him aim his rifle like Ben was doing right now. Horace was the right age for Parker's plans… would he unpack his burden onto this small and innocent child? Would he embroil the boy in a situation fraught with danger, saddling him with a dilemma that left him torn him between familial obligation and moral obligation?

I'm not even true family, Parker thought. He decided that he could wait to make that judgment call. If there was one thing Parker had in excess, it was time… more than fifty years of it, to be precise.

* * *

It was the sixteenth of September, 1948.

Horace, now 32, pushed the wheelchair along the leaf-strewn dirt trail, keeping to the parts that were the flattest and free of stubborn roots. The two were chatting about the end of the Second World War, an event whose ripples were still traveling circles around the world. "Don't you think it's only a matter of time before other countries use atomic bombs against us?"

Chatting with Jim while out and about was no easy feat, especially because nodding brought the man a great deal of pain, but the two had arranged a system. He watched as Jim extended his good arm to the right: no.

"But why not? It worked well enough for us, making that a pretty great example to follow."

Jim stuck out his arm to the left: yes. He then waved his hand around, as though writing. Horace stopped pushing the wheelchair and waited as Jim pulled the pen from his pocket and began to scribble on the notebook in his lap. Mutually-assured destruction, he wrote.

"What's that?"

The world saw how well the bombs worked… soon, everyone will have atomic weapons. Once the world has enough stockpiled to kill everyone, they'll be too afraid to push the button. Nobody would shoot in a room where everybody has a gun.

Horace nodded, stroking his chin. He wasn't sure how thoroughly he agreed, but Jim had proven himself the wiser of the two time and time again. Horace felt more certain every day that he was the only person in his whole family to truly know this man in the wheelchair… there was a depth here, and a wisdom latent that besoke an eerily clear image of the world and its workings. Jim had somehow known that the Japanese would attack the U.S. and pull it into war. He'd mentioned horrible atrocities in Europe before the press even ran the stories. On any topic Horace could think of, it seemed Jim already knew several years' worth of study beyond what Horace did. Perhaps the crippled man had ample time to read?

Their discussions of politics and philosophy became a favorite pastime for Horace, every day tackling some new and challenging topic. Jim was as progressive as progressive gets, arguing fiercely for ideas that seemed strange to Horace. He wondered if somewhere out there, a family was missing and mourning the loss of this genius man… the two could even pass Jim's family on the trail, and nobody would know. Jim, because of his amnesia, and them, because who could see a lost child in this scarred older man?

"I don't know if I tell you this enough," Horace said, "but I do truly enjoy our chats like these. You've got a wisdom to you that I wish the rest of the family could see."

He watched the old man frown and stick his arm out to the right: no. He waved his hand in a circle, the signal to continue wheeling forwards. And as they made their way back onto the bumpy forest trail, he watched as Jim tried—and failed—to subtly wipe a tear from the one eye that could still cry.

It was the fourth of May, 1973.

Horace pushed the wheelchair from the theater, mind racing. He and Jim had just watched the newest Eastwood release, High Plains Drifter, and what had been a relatively normal cowboy flick—albeit one with a strange coicidence of names at the beginning—had ended with an unexpected gut punch. With an umbrella for the rain, he helped the old and frail man into his car, a sporty thing he'd driven all the way down from New York for his visit to Jim and the rest of the younger DeLanges. Once Jim was settled in the passenger seat and Horace had climbed into the driver's, his hand hovered over the ignition. "We need to talk," Horace said. The old man remained silent and unreadable. He didn't shake his head, nor did he put up a hand towards no in protest… he just sat there, in the pattering of the rain overhead, waiting.

This particular movie had been Jim's choice, and the weight of what that might mean was beginning to settle on Horace. In the movie, a mysterious and unnamed cowboy played by Clint Eastwood enters town. He has dreams where a federal marshal—coincidentally named Jim Duncan—was whipped to death in the street. The audience soon discovers that the townsfolk were in on a conspiracy to kill the departed marshal. Eastwood's character plunges the town into chaos and rides out as the city burns. There, as he's leaving, a man tending a grave asks for his name. Eastwood responds that he already knows it: Jim Duncan, back from the grave like a revenant to get revenge on those who had wronged him.

There, in his car with the old cripple seated to his right, Horace began to feel dots connecting that struck an uneasy chord deep within. The name on its own was a wild coincidence, but that seemed only the tip of the iceberg. There was the real Jim Duncan's unexplained injuries, that sense of him clawing his way back from death's door like a revenant all his own. There was the man's uncanny certainty to the world's uncertainties, that sense that he somehow always knew what came next. At first, Horace had thought the man simply a genius who could read the world as plainly as Horace might read a handwritten note. In time, Horace began to realize that Jim was somehow—in a way that shook his own theology—more of a prophet, always right when he'd had no business knowing things with such certainty. Horace frowned, recalling back to how Jim had called every single presidential election before it settled and most nearly every major military campaign. Horace was relatively certain he'd used the phrase 'mutually-assured destruction' decades before the political scientists and journalists first uttered that dread phrase to describe the mounting Cold War, and hell, Jim had been right about the whole Cold War thing, too.

"You knew that Eastwood's character was named Jim Duncan before we saw this movie, didn't you?"

He sat in silence for a moment before extending his arm to the left. Yes.

"Had you seen this one already?" Horace asked.

He extended a hand to the right. No. And then, he extended a hand to the left. Yes. He held up one finger, as though to say wait, and then he opened the glove box. He removed the paper and pen within and started writing. In his old age, arthritis began to set in to the man's good wrist, and Horace could tell that the writing brought him great pain.

Saw movie years ago, he wrote.

"But it just released," Horace said. "Last month, I think."

Jim's lips formed into a wan smile.

Do you want to learn my past? Jim wrote, hand shaking from the pain and exertion—or was it anticipation? Nervousness?

"Before your accident?" Horace asked, searching through Jim's eyes for some sort of confirmation. "Everyone does."

With a trembling palm, he drew a line crossing through the word past and wrote 'future' just above, so that the question now read Do you want to learn my future?

Horace frowned, confused. He momentarily thought that the man was beginning to lose it in his old age, but he knew that whipcrack wit was still burning behind his searching eyes. Not crazy, merely cryptic… same as always, Horace thought.

"I don't understand," he said aloud, hoping for clarification. He watched as his adopted uncle's hand began to scratch its way across the page.

I'll tell you of something that happened 70 years ago, and something that happens 8 years from now. The hand then scratched a second line below. But if I tell you, I'll need a great favor of you. He thought for a moment, before adding a third line. A great and terrible favor.

Horace swallowed, reading the note. "What kind of favor?" he asked, his throat suddenly feeling all-too-dry and stiff.

A hunt, Jim wrote.

A hunt for the bear that got me.