The Sixth Street Sandman, Chapter 9

Trent Gutshall wasn't the happiest man in the world on the afternoon of September 2. First of all, he didn't want to be in the gym that day; he had planned to take the day off for once in his life and spend it fishing up at the river. But Olin Pond had asked him a personal favor, something he almost literally never had done; in fact, his private room in the basement was pretty much the only personal favor he had ever asked for. Gutshall was minded to grant Pond's extremely few requests.

But this one annoyed him, he had to admit. It was costing him a good deal of money, for one thing; he had to have trainers around for the fighters, and in accordance with Ohio Boxing Commission rules he had to pay his ring doctor to be present. Of course, in a situation like this one that was just common sense; the doctor's services would probably be necessary by the time Pond was done with this guy.

Oh, like Allie, he knew Baker's history. He knew it in the first place because he was one of the 38 people in the United States who still payed attention to the Golden Gloves, and remembered him from some years back, and also because, while Pond hadn't supplied much information, he'd looked Baker's history up online and refreshed his memory, even watched a couple of his amateur fights on youtube. Baker had been very good, but hadn't fought competitively in years, and even if he had Gutshall sincerely doubted Pond wouldn't knock him into last year.

It wasn't really about the money so much, though. Pond let Gutshall keep very nearly all of the profit from his fights; he really owed Pond ten times what this afternoon was costing him, or more, when it came down to it. Gutshall just wasn't crazy about the whole thing. To him boxing was an exhibition of human skill and heart in its purest form, a spectacle to be beheld. In one sense boxing was still boxing whether fought before a crowd of ten million or no crowd at all, but to Gutshall it seemed all wrong to do it in an empty arena. Here he had... well, Gutshall privately believed he was sitting on a championship-caliber fighter in Olin Pond, but this wasn't about pitting Pond's fighting prowess against a worthy opponent's. This was about two guys that disliked each other engaging in an only thinly glorified street fight. Trent Gutshall was no fan of street fights. Jeff Baker wasn't even really a pro fighter, but he was here expressly to settle a personal grudge with his fists. Olin Pond was here for essentially the same reason he always showed up to fights: He just liked to inflict pain.

And that made Gutshall uncomfortable, because it made him think about things he preferred not to think about. Gutshall saw a perfect juxtaposition of beauty and brutality in his chosen sport; he loved boxing because of the distilled human character in it. His old friend Olin Pond, whose boxing career he continued to be instrumental in advancing, was... well, he was a walking contradiction. In the ring he was, Gutshall thought, a beautiful thing to behold, just magnificent. The kind of casual boxing fans that paid to watch Fight Nights saw an out-of-control, rabid beast, but if you looked closer, watched Pond with an eye that really appreciates the finer points of boxing, you saw a perfectly oiled demolition machine. It wasn't just his raw power; it was the unnatural speed for a man his size, his ability to slip punches, walk through jabs, counterattack with razor reflexes even by a fighter's very high standards.

And it was almost unfair, because Pond never in his life trained the way professional fighters train. He didn't run much. He didn't work on his footwork; he didn't do exercises tailored to work particular muscles. He locked himself in his basement room three or four times a week and whaled the hell out of everything in sight until he was too exhausted to continue. Gutshall understood perfectly well why Pond was what he now was, but it still struck him as a tragedy. Olin Pond was sheer brutality. He was no appreciator of the art of boxing; he was a one-man demolition squad, concerned only with destroying whoever stood in front of him.

Olin Pond had no appreciation for how good a boxer he was. He just didn't care about boxing itself. That stuck Gutshall as a very sad thing.

And he was at the Sixth Street Gym that day to destroy Jeff Baker. To both men this was far more than a grudge match over a dispute over who's manlier. That, Gutshall could easily have stomached. This was a war. Both men were here with, frankly, intent to kill. And Gutshall was hosting it in his gym, with no spectators, standing in the ring with them and trying to referee a street fight to the death. That, he didn't like at all. But still, Pond had asked it as a favor, and Gutshall was minded to grant Pond the favors he asked for. That didn't mean he had to like it. He had told Pond so; Pond just said thanks, nothing more. It was the closest that man would ever come to warmth.

Jeff Baker arrived at the Sixth Street Gym at 2:00 the appointed afternoon. Trent Gutshall had contacted him on Tuesday and told him where to go in the gym. Baker told Gutshall that he would provide his own equipment, and that he would provide his own corner man and had no need of a house trainer. So when he arrived at the gym with two other guys, Gutshall met them and showed them to their downstairs dressing room.

Baker put on his trunks and tossed on a sleeveless shirt, then went out and found a hanging punching bag. He worked it for a little while, getting loose, gradually building up to full speed, and only after about ten or fifteen minutes' exercise did he realize that he was being watched. He looked over and saw three guys watching him, all little guys; the smallest of them, a Mexican, looked to be no more than 125 pounds, and the largest of them, a white guy that looked to be around 30, couldn't have been over 160. The third guy was a black kid, looked like he couldn't have been old enough to drink.

“There something you guys want?” Baker said, dropping his hands and standing upright from his fighter's stance. The tone of his voice wasn't pleasant.

“We were just watching you,” said the young kid.

“We heard you were gonna fight the Sandman,” said the older guy. “That true?”

“The Sandman?” Baker repeated sneeringly. Yeah, he'd heard that menacing-sounding nickname the secretary liked to call himself. “I'm gonna beat up an old jackass that's been walking around like king of the world for too long.” He punched the bag a few times. “If he calls himself the Sandman, then yeah, I'm gonna knock a few of the Sandman's teeth loose.” He spat that last Sandman and furiously punched the bag.

“Nobody 'round here wants to fight the Sandman no more,” said the young guy. “Ain't nobody never gone but four rounds with him.”

“Nobody ever knocked him down,” said the little Mexican with a strong accent. “You are very brave to fight him.” His name was Julio Caronas, and he had a reputation as an extremely scrappy, tough fighter in the bantamweight division. He thought you'd have to be an idiot to get in the same room with a maniac like Pond, much less a ring. The Sixth Street Gym's stable of fighters walked in awe of the Sandman, but stayed as far away from him as possible. He was not keen on mentoring the younger fighters.

Baker smiled to himself, thinking about how satisfying it was going to be to pulverize this blowhard that had everyone afraid of him. Maybe he'd made the wrong career choice after all; he had to admit, this felt good. He punched the bag a few more times, offered nothing but a smirk to the awestruck little club fighters looking on, and returned to his dressing room.

Trent Gutshall, still in a sour mood, went out to the downstairs ring at 2:45. He'd checked in with the two fighters at 2:30, when Pond had first arrived, and instructed both to come to the ring at 2:55. Pond had stalked in at 2:32, to be exact; he never gave himself much time to prepare for a fight. He walked slowly through the top floor and downstairs toward his dressing room, with his head down and his thoughts on some other world. The fighters that saw him go by watched him go and gave him a wide berth, but didn't say anything. They had all learned to stay well clear of Olin Pond on a fight night.

Gutshall's mood soured even more when, as he walked through the mostly open space to the ring, he noticed ten or eleven young guys sitting in the bleachers a good thirty yards from the ring (the ringside chairs were set up only for Fight Nights) and talking and laughing loudly. Baker's entourage, he could only assume. Pond had told him no one would be present. Gutshall thought, for a second, about checking with Pond as to whether he should tell them to leave, but he knew better. Pond was always welcoming to giving his opponents whatever advantages they wanted, and anyway, it was a spectacularly bad idea to disturb him during the twenty minutes preceding a fight. Gutshall had done that once, a year before, and Pond had nearly broken his jaw. The two had known each other a long time, but they had an understanding when it came to fights. Pond had apologized the next day, and Gutshall had gained respect for that understanding. So he let the spectators stay. The businessman part of him wanted to go and collect ten dollars from each of them, but he let it go. In a strange way, it felt better having at least someone to watch, and heck, back in the beginning he'd staged fights in front of crowds of 40.

And then Gutshall noticed that one person, precisely one, had come on Pond's behalf, and he didn't doubt she had come uninvited. He missed her the first time he looked over at the bleachers, preoccupied with thinking about the group of guys. Allie sat a full bleacher's length away from them, but naturally they couldn't take their eyes off her. Neither could Gutshall, for that matter; who could?

Jeff Baker came to the ring first, at 2:54. He had brought two of his college buddies to work his corner, neither of whom struck Gutshall, at a glance, as boxing experts. Not that Angelo Dundee himself could help Baker much, given the circumstances. Baker's cheering section hooped and hollered while he came down to the ring. Baker regarded Gutshall, standing in the center of the ring, for only a moment before turning his back on him to talk with his corner men. A dark storm was gathering on Baker's brow, Gutshall could see, and his face and body were all tense determination. He had waited a long time for this. Gutshall sighed.

Pond emerged from the dressing room that instant, following behind his usual corner man, Charlie Houser. (Gutshall would find out only later that Pond had personally paid Houser for his time, so Gutshall wouldn't have to.) He looked precisely the way he did on a typical Fight Night, coiled up like the industrial spring from hell. Baker's buddies booed loudly while Pond walked down; Pond didn't even tilt his head toward them, nor toward Allie, who he had to have noticed.

Allie sat silently and watched Pond with no expression on her face. At that moment she was actually thinking about how to make her escape once the fight was done with, which she figured would be only in a few minutes. The guys kept stealing glances at her, and were calling over to her with increasing frequency; she'd been in this kind of situation a time or two before, and knew she was in for trouble before the day was over.

Gutshall didn't bother himself with any frivolities here. He had no interest in winding up this small crowd any further, either. He gestured for the fighters to lay aside their robes and come to the center of the ring. Baker and Pond received their mouthpieces and went to face each other down.

Typically, as in the Yance fight, the fighters will get to within eight or twelve inches of each other for the traditional staredown while the referee recited the prefight instructions. Baker was having none of that. As Pond quietly seethed, Baker repeatedly bumped into him while Gutshall gave the rules.

“All right, gentlemen,” Gutshall began, “this fight's unofficial, but it's in my gym so you're going to fight by my rules. You've both agreed to this. Official pro rules. No...” Gutshall stopped and reached up with one arm to push Baker back a step. God, but this was going to get ugly; he hoped he could even get the fight going before he had to throw Baker out of the building. Or hoped he could prevent a fight from going on without his license. “Save it for the match, OK?” Gutshall commanded Baker, still pressing his hand to Baker's chest. Baker slapped the arm away and gave Gutshall a go to hell glare, but at least he did stop bumping Pond, even if he insisted in keeping his nose about a half inch away from Pond's.

Gutshall continued. “No head butts, no kidney punches, absolutely no low blows. One low blow gets a warning; two and you're disqualified, no questions asked. Got it?” The fighters nodded.

“Touch gloves and go to your corners. At my signal, come out boxing.”

Baker punched Pond's gloves, hard, with both fists. “I'm gonna beat you like a dog, pal.”

Pond received the blow and paused a moment before he spoke. “I get it. You must be ready to die.” Gutshall almost shivered. Pond clenched his jaw and pounded his gloves through Baker's. Then, as Baker spouted gibberish taunts, Pond stalked back to his corner.

One of the club fighters was a 22 year old kid out of the nowhere slums of Cleveland, who Gutshall allowed to train for free in exchange for doing odd jobs around the gym for him. Gutshall had given him an extra ten dollars to man the bell that day; Gutshall nodded to him now, the bell rang, and both fighters came quickly out of their corners. Gutshall watched Baker immediately flash his formidable mettle as a fighter, moving very well back and forth and beginning to pepper Pond with stiff jabs and two one-two combinations. Baker was a cruiserweight, weighing about 190 or 195, which was a good 30 pounds less than Pond; he'd have to rely on a speed advantage to wear down the biggest man. Good bloody luck, Gutshall thought as he watched Baker whirl around and jab, jab, jab. Pond showed surprising speed himself—and it wasn't his best speed, Gutshall knew—and continued to turn as Baker moved, always keeping his foe square in front of himself.

A full minute had passed before Pond threw a punch; finally he began snapping jabs in Baker's face. Baker was unprepared for the first one, which popped him directly in the nose with much more force than a jab is supposed to have. Blood trickled from his right nostril. Baker clenched his jaw and took it to the next level, increasing his speed, flashing lefts and rights, hitting Pond solidly with several of them. Pond slipped most of them, though, and kept moving, moving, always keeping Baker in front of him, and cracking jabs into Baker's face periodically. Gutshall watched on as Baker steadily increased his intensity and Pond responded not at all; the glazed fury remained chiseled into Pond's face while he waited, waited, slipped, slipped, snapped off a jab.

With thirty seconds left in the round Baker went into an all-out attack. Pond allowed himself to be backed into the corner and spent ten seconds evading Baker's increasingly ill-intentioned punches, and then quickly slithered out of the corner, turned on Baker and unloaded a right square in the side of Baker's face. Baker rocked into the turnbuckles; he rebounded and slid out of harm's way, but stumbled as he did. That one rang his bell, Gutshall thought. He thought Pond had put maybe 75, 80 percent of his full power into that punch. He was impressed Baker hadn't been knocked out cold.

The bell rang to end the first one, and Baker grunted in anger as he stomped back to his corner; Pond quietly returned to his. Charlie Houser didn't bother to put out a stool for him; Pond never sat down. He leaned back against the turnbuckle while Houser watered him.

“He's good, that guy,” Houser said.

“Yeah,” Pond responded, and said nothing more. For 30, 40 seconds of the one-minute break between rounds his glare never left Baker for an instant. Houser knew better than to try to give Pond any advice. Who tells a wrecking ball how to wreck?

With ten seconds to go the buzzer sounded warning that the next round was about to start, and at that instant Pond turned his head toward Allie, who smiled and clapped when she saw him looking her way. Pond violently spit a mouthful of water onto the floor below the ring and let Houser feed him his mouthpiece, and crazily pounded his gloves together as the bell rang.

For nearly another two minutes the two men continued their dance with mounting ferocity. Baker danced around and then came in, attacking harder and harder, and Pond continued firing jabs and just avoided or absorbing Baker's punches. By halfway through the second round Gutshall thought he'd counted Pond throwing three, maybe four rights altogether; it was just jabs for him.

Baker rushed in one more time, and this time nailed Pond with a hard overhand right, staggering him. Baker jumped on him and unleashed a hard flurry of punches; Pond gritted his teeth and screamed as he fired a blurry right hook that Baker just barely managed to avoid. Pond followed it a split-second later with his hardest left jab yet, and caught Baker with that.

“Now!” Charlie Houser screamed, and Trent Gutshall grimaced. “Full power now!”

Pond actually opened his mouth to scream as he came unhinged. A minute to go in the second round, and Pond suddenly turned into a crazed animal. And yet it was so... precise. Like watching an expert dismantle an engine on fast forward. It was all blurry, but with his expert's eyes Gutshall saw the artistry of it all.

Jab. Uppercut; Baker dodged. Jab; connected. Uppercut; Baker dodged. Baker threw a hard hook that looked like it connected, but Pond slipped it and shrugged it off. Left hook to the body that blasted all the air out of Baker's lungs. Baker plastered Pond in the face with a right cross so hard Allie, 30 yards away in the bleachers, instinctively gasped and covered her mouth.

It had no effect.

Right hook, left uppercut, shuffle the feet so as to come at him southpaw, right jab, left body shot, right jab, left hook, shuffle the feet again, right cross, left uppercut. Baker was weaving about and throwing punches of his own, which in itself Gutshall found remarkable; Pond's opponents invariably ran for cover when Pond exploded, trying to stay defensive and snap off punches at Pond here and there. Baker stood his ground and fought toe to toe with him. Whether it was guts or just plain hate, Gutshall had to give Baker credit for that.

But it didn't last long. Ten seconds, maybe. The toe-to-toe ground-standing ended with a right cross that Baker was just too weary to avoid in time; Gutshall actually heard Baker's nose crack on impact. Baker, incredibly, didn't fall, but reeled back into the ropes. Pond rushed in on him just as Gutshall made up his mind to jump in and stop the fight. Baker was through.

It wasn't necessary, though. Pond hit him with another left hook that crumpled Baker back into the ropes, very nearly unconscious on his feet, unable to defend himself. Gutshall was one step away from breaking it up when Pond, with one more scream as an exclamation point, hit Baker under the chin with an uppercut so hard that Baker, already leaning hard against the ropes, tumbled backward, over the ropes and six feet down onto the wrestling mats padding the floor below. Baker flipped in the air and landed, basically, on his chest, and rolled slowly onto his back. His mouthpiece landed 10 feet away.

The Sixth Street Sandman, Chapter 8

Months went by, and Allie continued to enjoy similarly brief and unsuccessful conversations with Pond. Life returned to normal; Allie continued working like a horse and fending off the interest of every guy in the office, and Pond returned to minding his own business and encouraging everyone else to do the same. After he demolished Shane Yance, Gutshall could no longer find any club fighter in the entire northeast that wanted any part of Pond any longer, no matter how much money was in it. Yance spent two days in the hospital, under supervision for a concussion. It was a common fate among Pond's gym opponents.

Trent Gutshall began to spend more time talking to people on the phone about Olin Pond than he had ever anticipated he would. He made calls to every gym he knew of, looking for someone that would fight Pond. Pond wanted to fight, and asked Gutshall every time he saw him whether a fight had been lined up yet. It never was; Pond had become well known, and no trainer was interested in sending his best heavyweight to Broxton to get beat silly.

He also received a lot of phone calls in the weeks after the Yance fight, and that's what he finally brought up to Pond two months later. “Olin, I've been on the phone for two months trying to find you somebody to fight. There is nobody.”

“You can take in fifteen grand with no undercards,” Pond said. “Give it all to whoever will come.”

“No one will, Olin. No one.”

Pond sat and fumed, but didn't say anything.

“If you want to keep fighting,” Gutshall continued, “You're going to have to go pro. I've taken calls from a dozen promoters or more. They all want to sign you to a contract, of course, but I'm sure they could be paid enough to give you some opponents.” Pond still didn't move or say anything. “You're too good for the gym level. You have to move up.”

“They won't come here, though,” Pond said.

“No. You'll have to travel to fight from here on out.”

Pond sat still for a long time. Finally he quietly said, “Schedule a fight.” Then he got up and went downstairs to his training room.

Gutshall worked the phone for a few more unpleasant days before he scheduled a fight. Small-time promoters, the types that kept fighters under contract and put together tours staging fights between their own contract fighters, were constantly calling Gutshall and wanting to know how much it would take to get Olin Pond under contract. Gutshall's response was clear and repeated as often as necessary: Olin Pond would sign no long-term contract under any circumstances, for any amount of money. What Pond would do is fight any promoter's house guys at a very reasonable price. The promoters didn't like the idea; they prefer to have total control over their organization. But in the end, greed won out as it usually does. Don Suarez had been a successful boxing promoter for fifteen years, and now oversaw an operation that included several dozens of fighters, a few of them very good, and brought in a million dollars a year in revenue. Suarez was well-known in the eastern part of the country, a shrewd businessman and an asset to the sport in the eyes of many of his associates. He and his team of trainers rode his fighters, almost all of whom had jobs and boxed only as a side gig, but Suarez treated them faily. At his heart, though, Suarez was a businessman, out to maximize his profits, not to help anyone develop his boxing career. Suarez made a deal with Gutshall: Olin Pond would receive $1,500 plus travel expenses to go to Cleveland on July 30, in two months, and fight Trev Barrett. Gutshall never bothered to ask whether Trev Barrett was any good, and Suarez never told him. In point of fact, Trev Barrett was the best heavyweight in Suarez' stable and quite well known in boxing circles. Gutshall knew exactly who he was, not that he especially cared.

Suarez hemmed and hawed on the line with Gutshall over the price and the details, but it was all a show. Gutshall knew it was, but didn't care much. Suarez would now put together a major production with Barrett-Pond as the main event, and it would make him a killing; as many as five, six thousand might attend. Pond's 18-0, 18 knockouts record would precede him, and he was worth $5,000, and would fight for a fraction of that. Suarez was making out like a bandit, and Gutshall went right ahead and let him believe he had no idea he was being taken for a ride.

Pond's first professional fight outside of the Sixth Street Gym took place two months later as scheduled at a defunct basketball arena in Cleveland. Suarez promoted the card relentlessly, and Barrett-Pond was indeed the headline fight. 6,200 people paid $25 each to attend, an enormous turnout for a minor-league boxing event.

Trev Barrett was the real deal. He'd come up through the rough streets of Baltimore, which he left when he was 17, and somehow turned up in Shane Yance's native Buffalo at 19. He thought he was a basketball player, but he was too short and not quite nimble enough to have any chance of going anywhere in the sport. He took much more naturally to boxing, though, and credited the sport with saving him from being sucked into the vortex of drugs. Now 25 years old, Barrett had two kids that he supported by working with a construction crew in the Cleveland area, and he fought six to eight times a year to bring in extra cash. He was small for a power forward, but big even for a heavyweight, six-four and 225 pounds, and he was now in his third year with Don Suarez, and his record in 20 fights was 19-1 with 13 knockouts; the one loss came in the second fight of his career, a split decision over five rounds.

Barrett was on fire of late, winning five of his last six fights by knockouts, and was the best, or at least most marketable, heavyweight in Suarez' ranks in 2014. The sharks that worked for some of the real big names in boxing, the real pros, were starting to swim around, and Suarez knew Barrett would not be under his control much longer. That made Olin Pond an especially fortunate find for him. Even if he couldn't get Pond under contract, he had heard plenty about the man, and had seen the Yance fight for himself. Olin Pond had no idea how much he was worth, and apparently this two-bit small-town trainer of his didn't know any better, either. Suarez didn't mind going fight-to-fight with Pond at these prices. Olin Pond was the best fighter he'd come across in the club ranks, and he expected Pond to pulverize Trev Barrett. What would follow may be very profitable indeed.

Trev Barrett was a very good fighter who went on to a modestly successful pro career, but on July 30 he would have been better off ignoring the alarm clock and staying in bed. The 6,200 on hand watched Barrett dominate the first round while Pond did very little but move around and slip Barrett's punches, and then they watched exactly the same action for three more minutes in the second. Through two rounds, Barrett had thrown and landed four times more punches than Pond, who seemed disinterested in the fight. Pond gave the whole of his $1,500 share to Trent Gutshall in exchange for Gutshall's coming along with him as his trainer, and early in the third round Gutshall suddenly left off his stoicism and became very animated for a few seconds, shouting something at Pond, and Pond went off like a bomb. Barrett couldn't escape him; he landed a few solid punches, but he couldn't hurt him, couldn't hold him off. Pond pounded him again and again, knocking all the air out of Barrett's lungs and not laying off long enough to draw another breath. Barrett's night was ended thirty-five grueling seconds later by a right cross to the jaw that he never saw. Olin Pond drove back to Broxton and was back at his desk on Monday morning.

Allie continued to hang around Pond's desk whenever she had a spare few minutes and a semi-plausible reason to be there, which usually was a time or two per day. That, of course, was noticed and widely whispered about. Allie, when asked—and she was—never said anything to defend Pond. Someone told her Pond a year before had beaten up a child who had cracked one of his windows with a tennis ball. Allie said, pleasantly as ever, that she wouldn't doubt it, and continued the conversation. But she also didn't stop visiting by his desk, despite his continued standoffishness.

And speaking of people who wouldn't stay away from other people's desks, Jeff Baker was beginning by this point to become almost as much of a fixture at Allie's desk as Allie herself. Of course everyone in the office noticed, and of course Baker was all the happier about that. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted, especially with women, and why shouldn't he? He was 28, tall, muscular and handsome, and rocketing upward in his chosen career.

After about two unsuccessful weeks of trying to talk Allie into a date, Jeff upped the ante. He had a gigantic bouquet of roses—$69.99 rushed from FTD—sent to her desk. Allie was delighted. She set them on the corner of her desk right where everyone could see them, and told everyone that asked (which was pretty much everyone, with the expected but, to Allie, notable exception of Olin Pond) that Jeff Baker had been so sweet as to give them to her. She kept them there all week, until they finally wilted. And she kept saying no, thank you, I'm not interested.

It was almost a month after the Barrett fight, at 4:15 in the afternoon, and Baker was once again standing just inside the doorway to Allie's cubicle while she was sitting at her desk. She politely put aside the article she was working on, which took some effort since, incredibly, Baker was even more boring than it was, and was listening to him with her customary bright smile, not fake at all. Baker had been complaining that he had never seen a woman smile so much and continue to say no.

“Come on,” he was saying with his best disarming smile. That was the first thing Olin Pond heard as he approached the cubicle with a binder Pat Walden had asked him to give her. “Why won't you at least just let me take you out to dinner this weekend? Or even just go out for a few drinks?”

“I have other plans,” she said.

“What other plans? I'm flexible.”

“Well, Friday for instance,” Allie said, “I'm planning on making myself a big bowl of salad and sitting on the couch all evening, watching second-rate college basketball games.” There wasn't a trace of irony in her chiming voice. Pond, hearing the conversation, remained out of their sight, in front of the vacant cubicle next door, and waited for Baker to leave. Waiting for Jeff Baker to leave so as to get to Allie, Pond had been hearing, had become standard the past few weeks.

Baker laughed just a little too loudly, annoyed—growing a little angry, really, but he held it in; he wasn't going to give up in this lifetime—and keeping the charm dialed all the way up. “You're hilarious. I love that in a woman.”

“You know what I love in a man?” Allie said.

Inside, Baker sighed. He was no idiot. That was a loaded question. Still, he had to play along if he was ever going to achieve his present life's goal of getting her in bed. “What's that?” he said, and suppressed his urge to grimace.

“A man who's not thoroughly amazed by his own excellence.”

Baker was ready. “What about giving a guy a shot who just wants to go out for dinner?” He was gifted at thinking on his feet; always had been.

“Jeff, your attention's been flattering, but now it's getting tiresome,” Allie said, maintaining the smile but ever-so-subtly changing the tone of the voice, the way women are so gifted at doing. “There are a hundred women in this building who would love to go out to dinner with you, and more. I'm just not one of them.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not. I'm allowed to choose who I am and am not interested in.”

“Yeah? And who are you interested in?” Baker had heard that insane rumor, too, of course.

“I'm afraid that's really none of your business, Jeff.” Still smiling.

“Come on, Allie,” Baker almost pleaded. “I like you.” This had become more than an attempt at bedding an attractive woman, now; it had become a challenge of his integrity. Women didn't say no to Jeff Baker. Especially not the young ones just out of college.

“Jeff, you're a bright guy. I can tell, really, you are. So which part of 'I'm not interested' is confusing you?” The woman was relentless.

“The part where you won't even give me a shot. Just one date, just a few hours.”

“That's enough,” said Pond, striding into the cubicle to Baker's right. He had wasted three minutes of his life that he would never get back listening to Baker's flirtatious assault, and he was not about to waste another second on it. Allie could sit and listen to him until her hair fell out, for all he cared, but not on Olin Pond's time. He stepped past Baker, not even glancing at him, and made to set the binder on Allie's desk; Allie quickly moved to take it from his hand instead. With a smile. God, she was irritating.

But not as irritating as this schmuck. Pond turned and faced Baker. “You've been pestering this woman nonstop for weeks while you're both supposed to be working. Leave her alone.” It wasn't a suggestion. Olin Pond hardly ever spoke unprompted, and when he did, it was never to make suggestions.

Rage flashed in Baker's eyes. Allie already had him worked up inside, and he was not about to let this guy that thought he was king of the world walk all over him now. He took a step toward Pond; only a foot then separated the two. “Who are you to tell me what to do and not do?” He glared down at him; he had three inches on the average-height Pond.

“Call me a concerned citizen,” Pond deadpanned, staring back at Baker but not really glaring at him. Just looking at him.

“I call you a queer S.O.B. who only has a job because you have some kind of blackmail on Parrella and don't know how to mind your own business, and so does everyone else in this office,” Baker spat. Allie, happily forgotten for the moment, couldn't help but let a faint smile trace her lips as she quietly watched on.

“Well, congratulations,” Pond said. “Now you've sexually harassed two people in the space of two minutes, which I'm sure is plenty enough to remove your soft pampered butt from this building for good.” Truth was, Pond didn't mind people thinking he was gay. Hopefully Allie would start to believe it.

“You'd better get up out of my face, fruitcake,” said Baker, leaning in another couple inches, “or you're going to get a lot worse harassment than that.” Allie continued watching.

Pond just stared at Baker, not even any menace in his expression, for a good ten seconds, just looked at him. Baker finally hit the limit of his fury and shoved Pond hard, Pond lurched backward one step and caught his balance before hitting the wall, and stood back straight.

“Perk up, Jeff, and get the red out of your face,” Pond said. “The boss is coming this way.”

Baker almost went ahead and slugged Pond anyway; he was probably bluffing to avoid that very thing. But for some reason, he stood up tall and exhaled, which was good, because Pond wasn't bluffing.

Parrella, who had been wondering where his secretary was, approached from behind Baker. “Gentlemen, is there some kind of meeting going on that I wasn't made aware of?”

“None at all, sir,” said Pond. “I had just stopped by to deliver Miss Caldwell some information from her editor, and Mr. Baker here was consulting with us about this weekend's basketball games, I believe.”

“You're not a sports columnist, Allie,” said Parrella matter-of-factly, “and you're not a Life columnist, are you, Jeff?”

“No, sir,” said Baker, putting on his best front.

“Good. Let's get to work, then, shall we?” Parrella headed back toward his office. Pond gave Baker one more look and left. Baker was too upset for the moment to resume persuading Allie; he followed after Pond.

That's how the first unadvertised bout at the Sixth Street Gym came to be. Jeff Baker knew that Olin Pond fought at the gym, and won every fight. What Baker thought Pond didn't know (but Pond in fact did know) was that he himself had been a boxer of national recognition in college, only six years before. He'd decided to pursue a career in sports journalism rather than one in pro fighting, but he smiled every time he thought about having an opportunity to cave that jackass secretary's face in. Pond wasn't willing to just meet him outside after work some evening—coward—but anyway that might cost him his job. Didn't want to do that.

So Baker showed Pond his boxing license—which he had just obtained a few months before, with this very idea in mind—and told him to arrange a fight at the gym, no spectators, no advertisements, just man-to-man. Pond came back the next day and left a slip on Baker's desk that read simply:

Saturday, September 4. 3:00 PM. --OP

Nothing more was said on the matter until the following Thursday, September 2, when Baker finally returned to Allie's cubicle after an absence of a week. After a few minute of his usual pandering, Allie said, “Listen, Jeff, I'll go out with you under one condition.”

Baker perked up. “What's that?”

Allie paused. “If you'll call off the fight you're supposed to have with Olin on Saturday.”

“Call it off?” Baker exclaimed. “How do you even know about that?” That bastard Pond had told her about it, of course. Baker seethed. No one was supposed to know about this. If Allie knew, it wasn't hard to imagine Parrella finding out about it, which was precisely what Baker didn't want, for a multitude of reasons.

“I overheard some things,” Allie said, which was half the truth; she had overheard some of the low-voice conversation Baker and Pond had engaged in, after they'd left Allie's cubicle the previous week. The other half was that she'd gone into Baker's cubicle before he'd arrived and read the note she'd seen Pond leave there.

“Call it off?” Baker repeated. “I've been waiting two years for a crack at that egomaniac.” He'd been training like a madman, too, for two months. He wasn't about to let this chance pass him by.

Allie sighed and looked down at her desk.

“Oh, come on, Allie,” he said. “You don't want to see him get hurt, is that it?”

“No,” said Allie, looking back up at him. “Even though I wish you'd leave me alone, I don't want you to get hurt.”

Baker laughed aloud. “Me get hurt?” he said incredulously. “No, I don't think you understand. He doesn't know what he's getting into.”

“What do you mean?”

Baker hesitated. “No, I'm not saying anything,” he said. “You'll plead with him to back out, if you haven't already.”

Now Allie laughed. “I haven't spoken to him on the subject at all since last week,” she said, and she hadn't. “But even if I had, do you really think I'd convince him to change his mind? Why do you say he doesn't know what he's getting into?”

Baker still figured he shouldn't say anything, but his pride and desire to impress Allie got the best of him. “He doesn't know it, and no one here does but you, not even Vorstad, but in college I was a big time boxer. I went to the Golden Gloves national finals and might have won them, but I got a bull@#$* decision. I decided I'd rather be a writer than a fighter, but I could've been a good pro. Could still be,” he corrected himself. “Had agents lining up and everything. He has no idea what he's walking into.”

Allie sat quietly for a long moment, looking glum. “Jeff,” she said, “He'll kill you to death inside of three rounds.”

Baker sneered. The hell with this impossible woman. “Oh. Oh, I see. You've got a little thing for that guy, don't you?” He almost laughed at the thought, but he wasn't in the mood anymore.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Allie, who wasn't secretive about that if somebody asked. “But that's not why I'm warning you about him. Jeff, I'm serious. You're going to get hurt. Please.”

Baker just shook his head and stomped out of the cubicle. Allie watched him go with a sick feeling in her stomach. She really didn't like Jeff Baker, but she knew him, and that made him different from guys like Shane Yance and Trev Barrett; they were just unknown, impersonal, and anyway they were pro fighters, getting paid to fight. Even if Baker was telling the flat truth about how good he was, she wasn't swayed. She'd seen the cold murder in Olin Pond's eyes when he stood in a boxing ring. She couldn't stand the thought of watching Baker get beat into a pulp on Saturday.

But she would. She finally pulled herself back into her work, all the while convincing herself that if Baker couldn't come to his senses about the whole thing, he deserved what he got.

Legends: Chapter Three

At another time, in another place, Reuben Edmonds took his eyes off his computer screen for once in his life and rose from his chair. “If Randy gets back and goes wondering where I am, I went up to the old storage room to drop this box off,” he said to Bethany. “I should be back within five minutes, though.”

“That's a relief,” she teased. “I wouldn't know what to do if the U.N. called and I had to tell them to wait fifteen minutes.” Reuben worked summers as a secretary for a small company ten minutes from his home, and Bethany Morningstar, who was full of smiles and teasing, worked there as an inventory clerk. She was 21 years old and strikingly beautiful, and she and Reuben had been on a few dates in the past few weeks. Reuben, 22, enjoyed her a great deal—she was relentlessly nice—and was optimistic about where the relationship was headed. He would finish his degree in Business Administration the following spring and start his career somewhere; Bethany had taken a year off to gather money and was now in her second year studying English or Accounting; she hadn't yet really decided which. They'd known each other on vague terms since high school, being from the same town, and again at college, but hadn't really gotten to known each other until working in the same office every day this summer, and they had hit it off splendidly.

Reuben sneezed and his mind snapped out of its reverie. Sure is dusty up here, he thought to himself as he deliberately began to pick through piles of discarded, forgotten cardboard relics. I doubt anyone's touched any of these things for ten years or more. Presently he spied the door, which seemed much newer than everything surrounding it, no doubt recently replaced. The brazen knob still shone as it reflected the dim lights back toward him. This, he guessed, was the old, old office, which had once been the central office, twenty-five years long gone. Now it was where the box he was carrying was supposed to be stored, along with twenty years’ worth of invoices. It took him several tries to finally insert the key correctly, as if the key was of a different make or age from the lock, but finally he succeeded and opened the door.

The light switch was to his right. He threw it and looked around, not that there was much to see: Boxes piled everywhere and nothing else to behold besides a shelf here and some of the dirty hardwood floor. The door was new, but the room behind it certainly was not.

Just as Reuben set his box down atop a pile of similar boxes marked “BLA payments 1994” and such, he gave a slight start as the door slammed shut behind him. He realized the hinges must have been spring-loaded to keep the door shut. He took one more look around for remembrance’s sake and then reached out for the knob. He jingled it. It didn’t budge. He frowned and gave it a hard turn, then a hard pull and turn. Nothing. It was locked.

He frowned harder, looking down at the knob. The front was smooth, and there was no locking mechanism. His stomach sank as he realized his predicament: This door could be locked and unlocked only from the outside.

He stood upright in resignation. His mind started churning, mulling over the options available to him. He could bang hard on the door, shout, try to raise enough of a ruckus to be heard; but it was doubtful anyone below or outside could hear him. He could try his level best to break his way through the door, and perhaps he could succeed at it, but he would certainly have to answer to the boss for it – not something he wanted to do. His mind settled upon the least destructive option. He would simply stay where he was until someone came looking for him. It seemed a fair guess that once he’d been gone a half hour, someone would begin to question his whereabouts and come looking for him.

He sighed to himself as he turned away from the door. He would still be bawled out by his boss once he did get out, for being thoughtless and wasting company time and so on and so forth. He shook his head as that one-sided conversation played itself out in his mind. He looked around restlessly, eyeing the boxes and crates stacked all over the place around him. Since he was here and wouldn’t be leaving any time soon, curiosity was getting the best of him and he wanted to look around. No sense sitting around and dreading the boss.

His attention was drawn for whatever reason to a stack of large boxes in the corner to his right and away from him. There were seven boxes, three stacked rather carelessly on top of a neat foursquare, each box a two-and-a-half foot cube. As Reuben approached them, he could see a very thick layer of dust coating them; clearly they had sat here untouched for probably about as long as he'd been drawing breath. He lifted first one box, then two off the top and dropped them onto the floor behind himself. They were very heavy, probably full of very old papers. Now, in front of him, he leaned forward and hoisted up the box on the floor in front of him, placing it carefully down atop the box directly behind him. He stood and frowned at the floor. Here it was wooden like the rest of the floor, but the wood was old, faded, and discolored. Perhaps it was rotting. He stepped forward curiously and very tentatively put one foot down on this part of the floor. Nothing happened, so he put a little more weight on it. It seemed to give just a tad bit, but not too much, so, satisfied, he put his full weight on it, stepping toward the box further back. It was a mistake.

What happened next flashed by so quickly that it seemed over in the snap of a camera's lens. With a loud, dull crack! the boards beneath him shattered, sending him tumbling downward. As he fell, he desperately reached out to get hold of something, but instead slammed his left side and chest against the jagged floorboards at a very awkward angle and heard a second crack!, which, he could instantly tell, was at least one of his ribs. Just as this was happening, a large piece of the shattered floorboard caught him across that same side, from the front of his shoulder down over his armpit, gashing him. In a disorienting cloud of dust, dirt, wood and blood, he fell straight down, angled so his feet and rear end would strike first, whatever he struck.

What he did strike was even more surprising and confusing than the fall itself: He struck water. Not just a little water, but what seemed like a lake; he fell into it with a formidable sploosh and sank ten, fifteen feet straight down. Instantly, instinctively even though he was barely conscious from the shock and the injury, he struggled to get his bearings and get to the surface before he drowned. His lungs – his left lung was badly injured – were struggling and couldn’t hold out for long at all. Opening his eyes and trying to focus, he saw light above him and pushed toward it with everything he had. Just as his mouth opened and he began to take in water, he burst through the surface. He gobbled oxygen for a split second before bobbing back underneath, taking in more water, then he got back up. Quickly losing consciousness, he fought for his life. He remembered precious little of what was happening in those moments, but what he did remember was infinitely curious: Above him was blue sky; around him was green grass and trees, barely discernable in the whirling, desperate blur into which his world had disintegrated. And when he finally, somehow, reached the shore – shore? – he briefly understood he was lying on a sandy, grassy ground. Off in the distance he thought he could hear someone shouting, but perhaps it was only himself; and then he passed out.

“My Lubyan friends!” the Drifter called down the ridge where he had spotted Wilson and Williams below. “At last we meet again!”

Wilson looked up and squinted, making out the Drifter's form against the afternoon sun behind him. A full day it had been since the catastrophe at the Pit of Shada, but at least the demon-beasts appeared to be gone, run off to wherever in Arcoa they were going. As the smoke worsened and the monstrous two-headed Hellhounds and plump little shrieking flying critters and dragon-like beasts rushed out of the Pit by the thousands, tens of thousands perhaps, the four men had scattered in every direction, each running for his life, and quickly become separated. Williams found Wilson a few hours after, but that had been a full day before, and still no trace of Hokela. Wilson was hardly worried about Hokela. If any man in all Arcoa could be trusted to take care of himself, it was the assassin. Hokela would spend a day scouting the area around the Pit for the others, and then would make a beeline for their designated meeting place, which they had long ago agreed upon, should they become separated. No man in Arcoa was more reliable. That was what made him so blasted terrifying.

“So you're still alive?” Wilson shouted up to the Drifter. He still could not decide what to make of the man. He spoke like a madman, even looked a little like a madman, but the way he knew things was just eerie. Truthfully there was little doubt that this really was the Drifter reincarnate, the Carrier of the Legends, nigh unto being the voice of the Creator, or so Williams believed, and Williams believed nothing he hadn't studied and pondered at painstaking length. As for Wilson, he had a harder time assigning the kind of aweful respect to this quirky, offbeat little man that the very thought of the Creator demanded, but then, he was skeptical of everything.

“Somehow, I am,” said the Drifter as he approached. “We've really done it now,” he said with geniune sourness. “That must be why I rarely know the consequences of some of the things I'm compelled to do. I'd never do them if I did.”

“You sound glum,” said the giant. The bastard talks like there's three or four different men living in his head, Wilson thought.

“I am glum. What, you thought I'd be happy about this turn of events? Do you know the things a Hellhound is capable of? Hundreds of them must have come out of the Pit.”

“Let us hope not to meet one for a long time to come,” said Williams. “In the meantime, what will you do next, Drifter?”

“I'll do what I do best,” he said, and laughed. “Drift.”

“Do you know Hokela's whereabouts?” Williams asked.

“No,” he said. “I'm sorry about that. I'm sure he'll meet you in Laverch, according to your contingency.”

“You know that much, but you don't know where he is now?” Wilson said.

The Drifter shrugged. “Bizarre, isn't it?”

“Yes. Bizarre is precisely the word I have in mind every time I look at you.”

The Drifter gave a what-can-you-do? shrug.

“Do you care to drift with us as far as Dilfer, at least?” Williams said.

“No.” The Drifter shook his head. “I'm going south. You'll go east to find your assassin friend. I just came by to say so long for now, and to tell you one important thing. If you seek Ruuben, you'll find him among bandits.”

“Bandits?” the Lubyans exclaimed together.

The Drifter turned and began to walk away, and turned his head back toward them. “That's what I said. That's where you'll want to look. Later days.” And he vanished into the trees.

“That is one weird little man,” Wilson observed.

Williams shrugged. “At least we will have no difficulty locating bandits.”

Reuben didn’t, or couldn’t, open his eyes at first. His first perception of consciousness was through sound: There was some kind of faint sound somewhere nearby, although at first he couldn’t have any idea where it was coming from, or what it was or how loud it was or where he was. At first it was just the sound. Very gradually his awareness of himself began to return. He realized he was lying flat on his back, his legs stretched out, his right arm at his side and his left lying folded across his chest. His head was resting on an abundant, soft pillow, tilted slightly forward. The sound, a small sound, continued; it was to his left and seemed close by. Still he moved no muscle and his eyes remained closed. He sensed, before he was able to open them, that there was another person there, and that was the source of the sound. The next thing he noticed was his own body: He was sore, very sore, and felt stiff. He began to try to move his left arm, to straighten it, but was surprised when, not only did it not move, but the effort reverberated pain through his shoulder, neck and side. Then, and only then, did he remember: The fall. The water. The struggle. Had it been a dream? It felt like it was a dream.

Now, with some effort, he began to open his eyes. He opened them halfway for just a brief moment and then immediately squeezed them shut, blinded and pained by the sunlight. Again, slowly, he began to open them (still not really seeing anything) and then he closed them again, unable to abide the light. On the third try he succeeded in holding his eyes open—slitted, but open—and began to focus them. The ceiling above him was of unpainted wood, and beams ran across it, flat, but like a barn’s ceiling, and not terribly high. The sun’s light flowed in through a large window to his right. He tried to turn his neck to see the window, but it was so stiff that he could but barely move.

“Oh…!” He was startled by the voice although he had already known there was another person in the room. The voice he heard was female, but he couldn’t place exactly whose voice it was. His mother’s, perhaps? No; a nurse’s? This didn’t look like a hospital, but, remembering his fall, he supposed that’s what it had to be, somehow.

The mystery person materialized now at his side, to his left. Her voice preceded her. “You’re finally awake!” He blinked a couple of times, his eyes still struggling to function properly, and gingerly turned his head so far as he could, which wasn't very far, to see who it was.

He had never, to his knowledge, seen this young woman before. She stood smiling a happy smile, looking carefully at him. She couldn’t have been twenty years old, he thought to himself, but she was beautiful, with long, flowing blonde hair and deep, intelligent brown eyes punctuating a perfectly symmetrical, smallish face. She was wearing some sort of white gown, loose and very modest, with long sleeves and covering her to her neck. He was sure he had no idea who she was.

The first thing he said was exactly that which he had just been thinking he shouldn’t say, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Where am I?” The word “Where” came out almost inaudibly, and his voice still cracked on “am”, but “I” came out clearly. That was progress.

“This is fifteen mamoyres north of the village of Aster, in the kingdom of Gerson,” the girl replied. Ma-what? Aster? Kingdom? He blinked again.

“The kingdom of Gerson…” he repeated slowly. “Forgive my asking, but… what country is this?”

“Country?” she said. “Gerson is the name of our country. Are you a traveler from afar? Whence do you come?”

That last question, the way she phrased it, sounded so odd to Reuben that he almost chuckled. “I’m from Elsrum, Virginia. Do you know where that is?”

“Elsrum, Virginia” she said, although in her mind it was more like “Elsrumvirginia”. “That’s a long name. I’m afraid I’ve not heard of this place. And you’ve not heard of this place. You must have traveled a very long way to come here.”

Reuben had become so confused that he decided to just let the issue of where exactly he was drop for now. “How did I get here?” he asked.

“My father and brother found you on the shores of the little pond in the southerly wood,” the girl replied. “They said you were nigh to death, but they brought you back here. That was four days ago.”

“Four days?” Reuben started. He had no idea it had been that long. He struggled to move his neck enough to look down at himself. Ah – that’s why his left arm wouldn’t move. It was heavily bandaged and held by a sling to his bare chest. The bandages ran from the wrist all the way up past his shoulder, and they were also tightly wound around his chest and upper abdomen, with some kind of packing on the left side, where, he remembered, he’d been injured in his fall. His injuries must have been worse than he thought.

And now, he realized, he still felt very weak. He let his head fall back on his pillow. Most troubling was the thought of where am I?

The girl leaned forward, letting her very pretty face come into his line of sight again. “May I ask your name?”

He had closed his eyes, but now he opened them again. “Reuben,” he said. “My name’s Reuben.”

“Reuben,” she repeated the name. “I’ve not heard that name before. It is a noble name. I am Lari.” She smiled a tender smile again, saying nothing more.

“Lari,” Reuben now repeated. “Have you… you’ve put these bandages on me? You’ve been tending to my wounds?”

“Yes,” she said with one quick accompanying nod. “My father has been out hunting. He left you in my care when he brought you back here, for he needed to return to the wood.”

“You and your father have saved my life,” Reuben said. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” she said with a wider smile. The idea had suddenly hit Reuben during this conversation, looking at this very beautiful girl dressed all in white – perhaps he was in fact dead and had found himself in heaven, or paradise, or some such holding place of the dead. But he needed no more than to try to move his savaged body to know this wasn’t the case. No, he was alive; the pain reminded him of that.

“I wonder,” said Lari presently, “Do you happen to be a refugee of Lubyland?”

“Lubyland?” Reuben frowned. “I’m sorry, but I have never heard of Lubyland.”

Lari was unable to stifle a giggle. “You’ve never heard of Lubyland? From what strange country do you come?”

“The United States,” Reuben said, assuming this to be a rather tongue-in-cheek comment.

“The United… States?” Lari said. “Where is that?”

“Earth,” he replied, again presuming this was a somewhat good-naturedly sarcastic stating of the obvious. But now, to his surprise, there came a very long silence, perhaps two minutes or perhaps twenty; Reuben could not truthfully tell, but it was for a long time. He looked up; Lari was now looking at him with the oddest curiosity he’d ever beheld. She was gently biting her lower lip, looking at him the way one might look at a strange carving recovered from an Egyptian tomb, and then stopped that and straightened her face. Her eyes widened a bit.

“Are you telling the truth?” she said in something of a quieter tone. “You are really a man of Earth?”

“Yeah,” Reuben said, himself now perplexed, his mind struggling greatly to accept what was now becoming plain – that he wasn’t anywhere he’d ever been before, that something bizarre and otherworldly had happened when he fell. His mind rejected this ridiculous folly and instead he became completely aware that this was all a dream. Still, though, as you so often do in a dream even when you know it’s a dream, he continued to play along as if reading from some script. “If…. This isn’t Earth? If it’s not, what is it?”

“Our world is called Arcoa,” said Lari with a softer smile. “We have always heard many tales and rumors of a realm called Earth, but I have never heard of any proof that it exists. But now I know.”

Reuben lay in silence, trying to absorb what she was saying, and what he was realizing.

Lari straightened and smiled again. “You are so tired,” she said. “Soon I will change these bandages. For now, you need to rest.” Reuben closed his eyes, indeed simply wanting to rest for now. Lari then did a very curious thing. She leaned close to him and kissed him on the lips – not just a small peck, but she let her lips linger there a moment or two before gently peeling them away. Reuben was startled by this but, being already convinced he was dreaming, held his eyes closed and almost instantly fell asleep.

It was nearly three full weeks before Reuben was finally capable of moving his body in something approaching a normal fashion, and even then he still was terribly sore and, doubtless, would remain so for some time. But at least he could move with no hindrance of motion. Through the entire duration Lari had faithfully and tirelessly tended to his wounds, brought him food and drink, and provided company, and her father and younger brother also spent no small length of time in his company, especially after that first week when he was able to make it downstairs to join the family for supper.

The family's name was Molivny, and Lari's father's name was Alam, and his son Alavom. Alam Molivny was a man Reuben would describe as jolly, with a ready smile and uproarious laugh that Reuben incurred seemingly every time he opened his mouth, to display his ignorance or to speak of some thing of earth that struck Molivny as so absurd as to be hilarious. Alavom likewise enjoyed a good joke or needle, but at the same time he was much more serious and responsible about his day's work than any boy his age (fifteen, perhaps, Reuben thought) that Reuben knew.

“I was sure you weren't going to make it, young man,” Alam Molivny had boomed by way of introducing himself the second evening after he had awakened. “Your days haven't all been counted yet, it seems.” He approached and held up his right palm toward Reuben. “Peace to you, sir. Lari tells me your name's Reuben. My name's Molivny. I'm happy you're recovering.” He stroked his full beard, dark blond with streaks of white. They talked on for a few minutes, mostly Reuben trying to explain where he was from and Molivny trying to explain where they now were, neither with any success. After that they hit on something to talk about.

“How many winters have you seen, Reuben?” Molivny asked him. By this time all the Molivnys were gathered in the room.

“Twenty-two,” Reuben responded, struck by the oddity of Molivny's phrasing.

Molivny, much to Reuben's shock, threw back his head and laughed loudly enough to be heard half a mile away, Reuben thought, and he continued to laugh for five seconds. Young Alavom was laughing, too, or chuckling, and Lari was giggling.

“Twenty-two winters!” Molivny roared. “By the Stars, what do they feed boys where you're from? I think you'd be nearly a match for me in a test of strength once you heal up, and that's no light thing!”

Reuben couldn't hide his consternation. “What about that strikes you as so funny?”

“Reuben,” Lari said, “why, Alavom's seen thirty-one winters.”

“And you say you've seen only twenty-two?” Molivny laughed again. “You've seen at least forty, or I'm a pig to be spitted.”

“I've seen thirty-five,” Lari said.

“I... beg your pardon, folks. Mister Molivny,” Reuben said, “may I ask how old you are?” That drew confused looks. “How many winters you've seen, sir?”

“My name is Molivny, and let's leave it at that,” he said. “And this past winter was my ninety-eighth.”

98... Reuben blinked, processing the information. Judging from his appearance and that of his children, Molivny had to be in his late forties, by Reuben's understanding.

“I don't understand how exactly it works,” Reuben finally said, slowly, “but it appears that my notion of a person's age works differently from yours. The number you go by, I think, is about twice the number I do. So I think I would be about forty-four or forty-five by your reckoning.”

“Well, how long's a year in your Earth world?” asked Molivny.

“Three hundred sixty-five days.”

“That long?” he exclaimed. “So your seasons are... you do have seasons, right?”

“Yes.” Reuben nodded, relieved that these two places had something in common. “Spring, summer, autumn, winter?”

“Yes.” Molivny laughed, obviously equally relieved. “Well, here those are forty-five days each, regular as clockwork, which makes 180 days a year.”

“That all makes sense, then,” Reuben said. “Your year is almost exactly half as long as mine.”

And so it went from there, day after day, in long conversations with the Molivnys. A year in this place called Arcoa was 180 days, and they had no concept of months, but rather four seasons of 45 days each. He also figured out that 'mamoyres' were their unit of distance, and eventually worked out that a moyre was about two feet and a mamoyre a thousand moyres, or a little more than one-third of a mile. At least the sun in Arcoa behaved the same way as Earth's; a day was comprised of 24 hours in one place just as the other.

Nine days after his arrival Reuben was able to go outside and behold the night sky, where he saw the Stars: Six of them, arranged more or less in a very wide circle in the sky, each shining very brightly in its own color: Starting from the top of the circle and moving clockwise, they were yellow, blue, green, red, gray and white. Most of the stars were white, of course, but the white Star—the Molivnys always pronounced Star, when referring to these six, as though it were capitalized—was easily discernible from the thousands of mundane stars. These, Molivny told him, were the pins that held Arcoa together, the source of all life and power, or so he believed, and they told him of prochons, people who possessed special power derived from the Stars themselves. Molivny knew no specifics about that, but reverence was clear in the voice of all the Molivnys as they spoke of the Stars.

For two weeks more, as Reuben healed from his injuries, he stayed with the Molivnys and became increasingly active, even going so far as to join Alam and Alavom in some of their work during that last week, which they didn't try to stop him from doing. The speed with which he recovered was incredible. He was still sore, true, but he was pretty sure a person wasn't supposed to recover from broken bones and a collapsed lung this quickly. Every night when he went to sleep, he expected that he would awaken in the morning in his own bed in his own apartment in Elsrum, Virginia; he expected the dream to end. But it never did, and after three weeks' time Reuben's assumption that he was dreaming had been pushed back into a corner of his mind. What seemed so impossible – still seemed to his mind utterly impossible – seemed to be true: Reuben was no longer on Earth. He had somehow found himself in an entirely different world.

Technology was different. There was only crude running water, and no electricity. When he walked around outside, the surroundings resembled a very peaceful northern wilderness – no cars, no cities, no people, nothing but forest and all its natural sights, sounds and smells. Wherever he was, the ambient technology was medieval at best. Molivny had two horses that he used to pull carts laden with the goods he grew or captured hunting, when he traveled to Aster to buy and sell. Reuben tried to explain the concept of cars to them, and they thought it a wonderfully funny story.

It was mid-Summer when Reuben had crashed into the Molivny's pond, and had faded to early Autumn more than three weeks later, when he decided it was time to try to get back home. Late one evening, after Molivny had returned home from his work harvesting his corn fields, Reuben had Molivny lead him to the pond into which he had fallen at the first. Surely, he thought, I can get back the same way I came. Reuben dove into the pond, which was about a hundred feet in circumference, circular, and the water a good twenty feet deep. He spent ten minutes scouring every square foot of the pond's bottom, coming up time and again for air and then plunging back down. He found nothing he wouldn't expect to find in a pond.

Sitting on the bank with the Molivnys watching on, perplexed, Reuben looked up. Up! I didn't just appear in the pond; I dropped into it from above. I remember that I did. He spied a thick branch reaching out thirty feet above the pond, or close enough to the pond for his liking, and he climbed the tree. In the back of his mind it struck him how bizarre that was, for even as a child he was never much for climbing trees. He was sore, but he shocked himself with the dexterity with which he pulled himself up the thirty feet. He could hear the Molivnys below loudly wondering what he was doing, but no matter; this had to work. Had to.

It didn't. He leaped from the farthest point out he could get on the branch—he heard Lari scream—and splashed down into the pond, and bobbed back to the surface. Nothing was different. He was still where he was.

“I can't stay here forever,” Reuben said the next evening, at supper. It was already dark, nearing midnight, for the men had been out all day long working in the fields, Reuben too. “I don't know how to return to Earth, but I know I don't belong here. I must find a way. If I can't get back the way I came, I'll wander this world until I find something or die trying.”

“I see the young men of Earth are no different from young men here in our good Arcoa,” said Molivny between slurps of the thick vegetable soup Lari had prepared. “Foolhardy and adventurous. Always want to go find something as they don't even know what.” He laughed, as he so often did. “I'm not insulting you, I'm not insulting you. I remember when I was young myself; why, it wasn't so long ago. A man has to do what he can do, fulfill his heart's desires while he's young; yes, I believe it's so.”

“Where will you go, Reuben?” Alavom asked.

“I haven't any idea, of course. If I go north, what will I find?”

“Forest and lots of it,” said Molivny. “There are villages here and there. Long as you have the good sense of direction to keep going north, I'll say you're in no fear of starving in the woods. Go far enough and you'll cross into Tuaisosopo. Just don't drift west, whatever you do. Evil, evil lands to the west.”

“Omegas,” said Alavom, sitting up straighter the way a boy will when excited.

“You've not even seen an Omega in your life, lad,” said Molivny, “and the Stars grant that you never do in this peaceful place. Bloodthirsty creatures they are, and they'll kill on sight. When you arrive at a village, Reuben, make sure to find out where you are. Make certain you don't move west, toward the Plains of Elzareth.”

“Are you certain you won't stay longer, Reuben?” Lari asked in her quiet way. He couldn't deny even to himself that she had taken a liking to him, but was that any surprise, isolated as she appeared to be? He forced himself to think nothing of it. Soon, he told himself, he would see Bethany again. Hopefully before she wrote him off for dead and moved on to new faces.

“I'm certain I don't belong here, and as your father has seen time and again, I'm no farmer.”

Molivny laughed loudly. “It is true, it is true. You're a hard worker, Reuben my friend, but I'm still at a loss for how you eat.”

“It's been an honor to stay with your family,” Reuben said. “And I owe you my life. I would be dead were it not for your kindness.” And he afforded Lari a smile. “Especially yours.” That got a blush from her.

The family saw Reuben off at first light the very next morning. Molivny had prepared Reuben well for a long journey. Reuben was dressed in Molivny's clothes; old and oversized as they were, the shirt Reuben had been wearing on the day he fell had been torn to tatters and he had nothing else. Molivny's generosity was remarkable; he gave Reuben also a pair of hiking boots, a large backpack and four canteens of water, plus a kind of ground up, dried cornmeal that Lari had prepared to feed him. The family had little on hand, yet Molivny gave him some gold pieces, enough, said Molivny, to pay for food and lodging for a little while to come.

Most generous of all, Molivny warned Reuben that “the world's been changing of late. There are bandits going about, and I hear tales of animals attacking people. If you're going to travel, you must travel armed.” And Molivny gave Reuben his own sword, which, Molivny told Reuben, outside the earshot of his children, he himself had used in battle decades before, in what Molivny called the Invasion from the Sea. It was a good sword, and Reuben couldn't refuse it. Still, he felt incredibly awkward strapping it to his back—“now, carry it where they can see it, don't let anybody think you're unarmed,” Molivny had said—and a little silly, like he was dressing up for a Renaissance Faire. But then, this whole world appeared to be one giant Renaissance Faire. The goodbyes were said, and Reuben headed north on foot, hoping fervently he would never have to remove that sword from its sheath.