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Broken.
He was broken in a car accident and left with deep damage inside. That damage must have been worse than anyone thought. His last memory is a cloudy recollection of pulling up to the eastern gate of the Arápache Rez. He remembers hearing his own voice telling the guard something, but he can’t remember what it was. His fever was soaring by then. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was unconscious before he learned whether or not the guard would let them in.
But none of that matters now. Death has a way of making the concerns of the living feel insignificant. Like the ground below, if indeed there is ground.
He leaps again, his pace getting faster. There is a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat. The branches seem to appear right where he needs them to be.
Finally he reaches the very edge of the forest at the very edge of the world. Star-filled darkness above and below. He looks for the creature that was leading him, but it is nowhere to be seen. Then he realizes with a dark sort of wonder that there never was a creature. He is the creature, projecting his anima before him as he launches through the treetops.
Up above, the full moon is so clear, so large, that Lev feels he could reach out and grab it. Then he realizes that is exactly what he is meant to do. Bring down the moon.
It will be a devastating thing if he plucks the moon from the sky. Tides will change, and oceans will churn in consternation. Lands will flood, while bays will turn to deserts. Earthquakes will re-form the mountains, and people everywhere will have to adapt to a new reality. If he tears down the moon, everything will change.
With infinite joy and absolute abandon, Lev leaps to his purpose, soaring off the edge of the world and toward the moon with his arms open wide.
• • •
Lev opens his eyes. There is no moon. There are no stars. There is no forest canopy. Only the white walls and ceiling of a room he hasn’t seen for a long time. He feels weak and wet. His body hurts, but he can’t yet identify the location of the pain. It seems to come from everywhere. He’s not dead after all—and for a moment he finds himself disappointed. Because if death is a joyous jaunt through a forest canopy for all eternity, he can live with that. Or not live, as the case may be.
This room is where he hoped he’d find himself when he awoke. There’s a woman sitting at the desk across the room, making notes in a file. He knows her. Loves her, even. He can count on one hand all the people in his life whom he would be happy to see. This woman is one of them.
“Healer Elina,” he tries to say, but it comes out like the squeak of a mouse.
She turns to him, closing the file, and regards him with a pained smile. “Welcome back, my little Mahpee.”
He tries to smile, but it hurts his lips to do it. Mahpee. “Sky-faller.” He had forgotten they had called him that. So much has changed since he was last here. He’s not the boy he was when they first took him in as a foster-fugitive. That was the beginning of his dark days—between the time he left CyFi and the time he showed up at the airplane graveyard.
Elina comes over to him, and immediately he notices the gray infiltrating her braid. Was it there a year and a half ago and he hadn’t noticed, or is it new? She certainly has reason to have new gray hairs.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps out.
She seems genuinely surprised. “For what?”
“For being here.”
“You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn’t.”
He wonders how many of those people are right here on the reservation. “No . . . I mean I’m sorry I came back to the rez.”
She takes a moment to look at him. No longer smiling, just observing. “I’m glad you did.”
But Lev notices that she didn’t say “we.”
“I decided that once you were stable, you were better off here in my home than in the medical lodge.” She checks the IV leading into his right forearm. He hadn’t even noticed it was there before. “You’re looking a little puffy, but you’re probably just overhydrated. I’ll turn this off for a bit.” She shuts down the fluid infuser. “That’s probably why you sweat so much when your fever broke.” She looks at him for a moment, probably assessing what he needs to know, then says, “You have two broken ribs and suffered quite a lot of internal bleeding. We had to give you a partial thoracotomy to stop the bleeding—but it will heal, and I have herbs that will keep it from scarring.”
“How’s Chal?” Lev asks. “And Pivane?” Chal, Elina’s husband, is a big-shot Arápache lawyer. His brother Pivane isn’t one to leave the rez.
“Chal has a major case in Denver, but you’ll see Pivane soon enough.”
“Has he asked to see me?”
“You know Pivane—he’ll wait until he’s invited.”
“My friends?” Lev asks. “Are they here?”
“Yes,” Elina says. “It seems my household is overrun by mahpees this week.” Then she goes to an entertainment console, fiddles with it a bit, and music begins to play. Guitar music.
He recognizes the piece from his first time on the rez, and it pulls at his heartstrings. That first time, he had climbed over the southern wall to get in and was injured in the fall. He woke to find himself in this same room. An eighteen-year-old boy was playing guitar with such amazing skill, Lev had been mesmerized. But now all that remains of him is a recording.
