02, p.22
02, page 22
“It seems so final, like a death, even though we’ll still be alive,” added Will—even as the light washed over his face, set his hair aglow. “We won’t even remember meeting each other; or what we did, who we became. Because none of it will have ever even happened.”
But Ank just looked at him—even as the world lost its edges, its veneer, its corporality.
And then they were gone, just gone, as were all the people on the water tower and Pang In-Su and Sarpedon. As was Time itself.
So many questions, so many decisions ...
And Nick was in the vision again, moving through the garden maze—which wasn’t burning—navigating its feints and dead ends.
Should I have killed the left hand, should I have spared the right ...
Moving through it while drawing closer, closer to whatever remained at its center—if anything—even as the breeze picked up slightly and the leaves rustled and the sun slowly sunk, painting everything gold. As Will and Tran performed the split-bullet trick in Fresno, California—and police lights flashed behind Coup and Tess—and Hooper and Maldano saw the earth emerging from behind the Moon—and Roger Aldiss stared at his hand: opening and closing it while rain drizzled down the 4x4’s window; making a fist.
But what you realize in the end is that every move you’ve made, every step forward, every step back, every fork in the road, has led precisely to where you need to be; and to where you belong ...
As Sammy—having had an epiphany—pulled the Harley over to the side of the road and told Annie to get the hell off; and Miles Facetimed his mother and father from Granger just to tell them he loved them; and Steve/Satanta—sporting short hair and business attire—paused to look at a statue of an Indian brave and decided then and there to resign his job and follow his bliss; to seek out—and live up to—his full potential.
For we are light itself, the only thing that brightens the dark, finding our way, walking the garden paths, looking for the center of the labyrinth. Feeling our way through the mists and smoke; and navigating—as best we possibly can—this savage and beautiful night.
As the racehorses at Checkered Flags thundered through the rain like graceful ghosts, their hooves splashing, their leg muscles shifting, and, finally, as he rounded a bend of the maze and found, not yellow bricks, but a lithe woman in a white dress standing on the Seattle waterfront (the place they’d been when the Flashback hit); a woman he recognized as his own difficult and beloved wife, Lisa. A woman who just looked at him, knowingly, he thought, rememberingly—as the setting sun backlit her hair—and smiled.
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Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar—Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.
Wayne Kyle Spitzer, 02
