Forty Leap (48 page)

“I am Saritala,” she said, extending a
hand.

“Mathew.”

She giggled. “A very old name. Very
English.”

I smiled back. “Do you work here?”

“No.”

“Can you help me ask the lady for a
book?”

“What kind of book?”

“I study Forty Leaping.”

Saritala shrugged her shoulders and moved off
toward the lady. I heard them whispering, clearly heard Saritala
say the phrase
Forty Leaping
, when the lady on the serving
platter moved off toward one of the shelves.

“There is one book,” Saritala said on her
return. “She will retrieve it.”

“Thank you.”

“You like stories?”

“Hmm?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Stories. Make believe. Like Forty Leap.”

I was brought up short for a minute, not sure
if I was interpreting her English correctly. I was about to
investigate further when the lady returned with a book entitled
The Forty Leaps
by Rupert Oderick. I was immediately taken
aback and opened the book to find that it had been translated into
the current language. Though there were English words scattered
throughout the text, it remained almost indecipherable.

“You can’t read this?” Saritala asked me. I
had forgotten she was there.

“No,” I said sadly.

“I can help you.”

I looked up at her.

“Had lunch?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “I don’t have any
money.”

“Okay,” she said. “My home has food.”

Saritala was fascinated with me, as I quickly
became fascinated with her. Throughout the afternoon and the
evening that fascination turned into an infatuation. I had not felt
anything like it since Jennie and I found my hand straying often to
the pills in my pocket. I thought to take one many times, but was
harried by this feeling of guilt. Would I do for a woman I had just
met what I would not do for Rupert?

She started translating the book for me that
afternoon and I recognized Rupert’s own story as he had told it to
me centuries before. But his story was not the only one there, and
it was certainly not the longest.
The Forty Leaps
contained
forty different stories of forty different leapers.

I spent several months with Saritala. She
taught me some of the local language, but never asked me who I was
or where I came from. It was a society of trust and moreso, a
culture of curiosity. Saritala explained to me that my use of
English, a dead language if there ever was one, had made her feel
as if she had made a great anthropological discovery. She was
studying me. But she was only interested in who I was at that
moment, not who I had been. She rarely asked me about my
history.

We discussed Forty Leaping in depth and I
expressed to her that I believed it was history rather than myth.
As a scholar, she argued against the possibility. After all, the
concept of moving through time was so ridiculous that she was
amazed a man of my obvious intelligence could find any truth in
such nonsense. Though I wanted to, I could never find the right way
to tell her that the last and longest of the forty stories in
The Forty Leaps
was text taken directly from my journal.

I looked often at my journal but had stopped
making entries. It seemed unimportant, my story seeming to have
ended. Again and again, I looked at the pills in my pocket, but
despite my surety that this was it, I could not bear to take them.
For a time, I was sure that I was in love with Saritala. She too
seemed to love me. We certainly acted like it. We lived together
and spent time romantically. She was still curious about me,
curious about the things I thought sentimental. I later found some
work and earned some money so that she would not have to support
me. I had no skills, but people of that era were very open and
willing to help others. In my time there, I was very encouraged by
the evolution of man. In the end, though, I knew that I was in fact
searching for something. And Saritala was not that something. So my
search was not yet over.

I decided that I had to go. I didn’t know
where my life would take me but I knew that it had to be somewhere
else. I opened my journal for the last time and completed one last
entry. This was for Saritala. I did love her. It was true and it
was real. But it was not enough to hold me. Maybe Rupert was right
all along. Maybe I couldn’t allow myself to be tied to one time
frame anymore. Maybe there was more Phinneas Scot in me than I
thought. Regardless, I found the words to tell Saritala just who
and what I was. I wanted her to understand that, in another time, I
would have done anything to stay with her, but that time was no
longer. I was a different man and I had to be on the move. Whether
or not she would believe me, I would never know. I finished the
entry, left the journal for her so that she would know, not only
that Forty Leaping is a piece of history rather than a piece of
myth, but that it is a piece of my history, and a piece of my
future.

She spent long minutes staring out at the
empty street with the tears dribbling down her cheeks. It had only
been a summer. Two stupid months and she knew beyond all certainty
that the one man she could truly love had just walked out of her
life forever. She hated him so much yet she would do anything to
see him walking back up the street. She hoped and prayed and
clenched her teeth until her skin turned a dark reddish brown from
the exertion. But he did not reappear. She wondered if he was
sobbing as well.

Finally closing the door, she stepped back
into the dark and empty house. It took a long time for her to get
her breathing under control and get her legs working again. What
should she do today, she wondered? It was a regular day, just like
every other day before he had come back. Except now there was an
emptiness. She moved into the dining room to clean up the plates
from their breakfast.

And there he was, sitting in his chair, just
staring at her.

She was not wont to dramatic reactions, but
she visibly started. She controlled herself well enough to avoid
saying anything stupid, but the look on her face was
unmistakable.

He looked a little different. Just a little.
He had aged. She wasn’t sure how long. A few years at most. There
was a bit of grey hair at his temples. But he was shaved and well
fed. In fact, he may have put on a few pounds. The worry lines in
his face were deeper. In their time apart, be it only a few
minutes, he had lived through things that were far worse than what
she had experienced in the ruins of New York. This was not that man
to whom she had just said goodbye. But it was.

She glanced back toward the door, fighting
back the urge to run and see if the car had returned. “He still has
a long search ahead of him,” said this stranger. “I’ve finished
searching. I’ve found that the distant future holds so many paths,
including a path to the distant past.”

He let it sink in to her for a few moments.
He watched her as she sorted it all out in her head. He had seen
her at the end of her life and he had eventually understood where
his journey would end. The pieces had always been there for him to
sort out. It just took some time. And time was something he had
eventually mastered.

“Oh, Mathew!” she cried, rushing forward and
grabbing him. Despite his complete confidence in the outcome, he
burst out into tears of joy and relief. To have her in his arms
again was the most intoxicating thing he had ever felt. His heart
began to beat so fast. He could feel the adrenaline as it pumped
vigorously into his bloodstream.

Let the adrenaline be damned.

Finally, they parted, and she looked up at
him quizzically. “But… is it over for you? Are you here to
stay?”

He nodded. “I can be. I
want
to be. If
you’ll have me.”

“If I’ll have you?” she blurted. “What are
you, an idiot? Of course I’ll
have
you.”

He smiled again. Tomorrow he would call his
brothers. He pulled a battered phial out of his pocket. Inside, six
small pills that had been carried through the centuries and yet
hadn’t even been invented yet rattled against each other. He dumped
one into his hand and said with a smile, “I’m going to need a glass
of water right away.”

****

Author’s Note

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading
Forty
Leap
. It seems as if it took me forever to write this when
really it all came together fairly quickly once I really gave it my
attention. The original draft was about a third of the size and was
missing most of the characters included in this complete
manuscript. I spent a good deal of time working on those characters
so that they should seem real to you, the reader. Each one of them
has his or her own story to tell, just as Mathew Cristian told
his.

If you have any comments or criticisms about
Forty Leap
, please email them to me at
[email protected]. Feel free to leave completely honest
reviews on the web. I am always especially interested in feedback
from the readers.

In addition to writing, I have a great
interest in tabletop gaming. I’ve written a fantasy miniatures
battle game called
Clash of Swords
. With the help of some
friends, I’ve been play testing for several months now and I think
we’ve just about got the kinks worked out of it. If you like
miniatures combat, take a peek at
Clash of Swords
by
visiting
www.face2facegames.net
.

Thank you.

****

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