The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [132]
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Red Shoes howled as his body stretched, as the sky receded and the Earth below tugged savagely at him. He exerted every ounce of his will and instinct to pull himself back together.
To no avail. Like a rotten cord, he snapped, and everything that was in him spurted out into the strange new air. He had wanted to end time, but time had ended him. He screamed his anger to the dispassionate stars as the serpent transfigured. He fell into wet, muddy darkness.
He lay there for a long time, twitching like a frog without its skin, gathering what was left of himself.
He was not alone. All around him shapes shifted restlessly, squirmed and squished against him in the mud. For ages, that was all that happened, until high above a light appeared. It hurt his eyes, burned his flesh.
But all around him, creatures made of mud began to struggle toward the light, like moths. Slowly, with aching pain and grief, they began to climb.
He commanded his spent body into motion.
How long the climb took he did not know, and it did not matter. But when they emerged it was into a world of light, to a hot sun beating down, and, like his brothers, he lay in the heat of Hashtali's eye, and slept. In his sleep, his skin dried, thickened, hardened as clay does in the fire. And when he awoke, it was to struggle again, to break the clay that entombed him, and to crawl, with blinking eyes, and finally stand, a man.
Thus we were born. Thus I am reborn, he thought.
He looked once more at the hole from which he had come and then, on legs as fresh and clean as the limbs of a new-molted cicada, still damp with the waters of the underworld, he walked away.
And his brothers, similarly new, went, too, each in a different direction.
Philippe raised his glass of cognac. “To King Charles XII of Sweden and Tsar Peter of Russia,” he said solemnly. “Though none of us reached our goal, they came closest in spirit.”
Ben clinked his own glass against James Oglethorpe's, then Nairne's, then Robert's, then Unoka's. He drank the amber fluid and found it both too strong and too sweet for his taste.
A faint breeze stirred the dust, and a black fog rose about their feet. Nothing remained of the ships, of the forest, the Taensa village, or the men and horses who had died here. Only dust, and the Earth itself.
But above was a blue sky, and in the distance, trees and birdsong.
A black film settled on the surface of the brandy, but Ben raised his glass again. “To those gone and those who survive,” he said. “For their sakes, may we treat this new world more wisely than the old.”
“Hear, hear,” Philippe approved, and they drank again.
When the round was done, they contemplated one another for a moment.
“What now, Mr. Franklin? Tell us about this New World. Are we dead? Has the reign of Christ begun?”
Ben hesitated, toying with the empty glass. “I don't understand much of it myself,” he admitted. “It is as strange a thing to me as to anyone—with the possible exception of Mademoiselle de Montchevreuil, to whom we should also drink a health. Where is she, by the way?”
“She was invited,” the king replied, “but begged to be excused. She seems much weakened by her ordeal. The same of our friend Red Shoes. But here. Mr. Franklin—we will accept your best explanation of our deliverance, and you may amend it later as you learn more.”
With that proviso, Ben nodded. “The world has been changed. It is not the change foretold in Revelations, I think we can all agree. It is something much more subtle than that. Of certain facts we are already aware—the laws of science are not exactly as we knew them. Kraftpistoles no longer work, nor do lanthorns, nor aetherschreibers, nor most alchemical devices. In terms of invention, we are set back to the year 1681, when Newton discovered the philosopher's mercury. Matter and aether are no longer pliant to our will.”
“We might consider that a blessing,” Oglethorpe remarked.
“We must consider it so, for it is