Chương 45: Chapter 38 — Walking With Tears

Jenkins had found his second wind somewhere around the third mile.

"Now I had a fella once," said Jenkins, from the driver's seat, "transported him six times over two years, never once complained about the road — good fella, very reasonable about road conditions — but the one time, the one time, the east verge was out past Millford and he looked at me like I'd done it personally, and I said to him, I said, Gerald, I didn't build this road—" Fenwick was writing in his notes. Max was walking beside the wagon.

The road home ran along the same route they had come on, the same oaks, the same long straight stretches where the treeline opened. Max had been watching it carefully, looking for any signs of the dragonflies. He was methodical, patient, his eyes moving across the verge and back without stopping. Fenwick looked up from his notes.

"The jump," he said. Max looked at him.

"Lady Nutter," said Fenwick.

"You ran up the wagon. You killed the dragonfly, and then you caught her." Max was quiet for a moment. Keeping his eyes on the road ahead. Then with a quick glance at Fenwick.

"She fall," said Max.

"Max catch."

"Yes," said Fenwick.

"But you didn't have to. You could have — the sword was already—" He stopped. He was not sure what he was trying to say.

"Why did you catch her?" Max looked at him with more attention this time. His brow wrinkled as he found the question genuinely puzzling.

"She fall," he said again. More slowly. As if Fenwick might have missed this the first time.

"Yes," said Fenwick.

"Max catch." A pause.

"Is job." Fenwick looked at him for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

"It is." Fenwick sat with that for a moment. Two months ago, Max had been a zombie following a butterfly. He had not caught anything. He had not needed to. The concept of catching someone who was falling had not been part of what he was. It was part of what he was now. Fenwick wrote something in his notes. Then he crossed it out. Some things didn't reduce to shorthand. Jenkins began a story about a goat he had once transported that had opinions about bridges. Fenwick wrote three more lines in his notes and stopped.

He was getting a headache, and the chatty donkey was the center of it. The ring had been in Max's other pocket since Lady Nutter gave it to him. He had not looked at it again after putting it away. He was fidgeting with it now. This was new to his ghoul evolution; he had not fidgeted as a zombie. He was now turning it over in his fingers, plain band, no stone, an unremarkable object. But to a ghoul, it felt different, so he played with it. He put it on. The change was immediate. His hands were different.

The grey had gone. The skin was warm-toned, sun-browned, the color of something living in the ordinary way. The knuckles were the same shape. The scar on the back of the right hand from something he had no memory of was still there, in the same location, faded differently. He turned his hands over. He looked at them for a long moment. Jenkins stopped talking. Fenwick looked up from his notes. The man walking beside the wagon was not Max. He was Max's height. Max's build.

He had the sword on his back and Max's posture and Max's way of standing with the weight slightly forward, the combat readiness that had been there since day one. But the face was human. Gone was the grey, the dark eyes, the ghoul face Fenwick had been looking at for sixty-eight days. A human face, young, twenty-something, and worn into it. Dark hair, cut short. A jaw that suggested stubbornness or determination, or possibly both. The scar at the throat, still there, still closed.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. A face Fenwick had never seen before. A face he did not recognize. Jenkins opened his mouth. Fenwick held up a paw. Jenkins closed his mouth. Fenwick climbed into the back and dug around his pack for a few moments before producing a small hand mirror. The grooming mirror he carried for checking the backs of his ears. A grooming concern that had not gone away simply because he was adventuring. He held it out. Max looked at it.

Then at Fenwick's expression. He took the mirror. He looked. Max stared at the face in the mirror for a long time. He looked at his hands. Back at the mirror. The face looked back at him — present, focused, his own eyes now brown instead of dark, blinking when he blinked, turning when he turned. He did not recognize it. He lowered the mirror. He looked at Fenwick. Fenwick sat watching him. Neither of them said anything.

On the screen above Max's head, the screen only Max and Fenwick could see, the one that had been there since Day 1, Sindy was very still. She had recognized the face immediately. She had known she would. She had known this moment was coming since the first time she had considered the ring and what it could do. She had never gotten to meet this Max because she was late, and now the moment was here, and she was not as ready as she had thought she would be. She put a photograph on the screen.

Fenwick watched the photo appear from his seat on the cart. The screen was angled just enough. He looked at it without speaking. A photograph from a phone. A man standing outside somewhere green, squinting slightly into the sun, one arm around nothing because the photo had been cropped. Dark hair. The jaw. The same jacket, with fewer metal enhancements and newer. The same face that was currently standing in the road, holding a small mirror and looking at Fenwick.

Fenwick sat very still for a moment, the photograph on the screen, Max in the road in front of him.

"Who is that?" he said quietly, which means the photograph. Meaning the face. Meaning all of it. Sindy put a second photograph on the screen. The same man, sitting cross-legged on a floor somewhere. One arm stretched toward the camera. In his lap, a small black dog curled tight against his knee, ears up, tail a blur at the edge of the frame. The man was looking at the dog. He was smiling. Fenwick looked at the second photograph for a long time.

"Who is the dog?" he said. Oscar. I think that's Oscar. It fits the timetable. Fenwick said nothing. Max had been looking at the screen. He could see the photographs — they were on his screen, his interface, the thing that had been part of his existence since before he had words for it. He looked at the face in the photographs and felt nothing he could name. He looked at the dog. His eyes got damp. He did not know why.

He looked at the small black dog curled against the knee of a man he did not recognize, in a photograph taken somewhere green, and something in the rebuilt architecture found an edge it couldn't cross. His eyes got damp, and he stood in the road holding a mirror with a human face, not knowing why. Nobody said anything. The minutes ticked by, and Jenkins grew more confused. He squinted up at the empty air above Max's head.

"You two see something up there?" said Jenkins. Neither of them answered. Jenkins craned his neck. Nothing there. Back at them. Still fixed on the same invisible point.

"Right," said Jenkins, with the tone of someone adding this to a list he had been keeping for two days. He faced forward and let the iguanas walk. The road went on. Max lowered the mirror the rest of the way. He looked at it in his hand. He looked at his hands — still human, still warm-toned, still not his. He looked at Fenwick.

"Max?" he said. A question. The only question he had words for. Fenwick looked at him for a long moment.

"Yes," he said.

"That's you." Max looked at his hands one more time. He put the mirror in his pocket. He kept the ring on. They walked the rest of the way home without speaking. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 68] He put on the ring. I knew the face. I have always known the face. It has been on the phone since Day 1. I showed Fenwick the photographs. He asked about Oscar. Max looked at Oscar, and his eyes got damp. He doesn't know why. I know why. I am not going to say it yet.

There are things he needs to find in the right order, and this is not the order. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ I met him. ▌ I finally met him.