Immortal

parlance, a giant cat of some kind—a lion, or a cheetah. Only it’s not exactly, as this dream is taking place tens of thousands of years ago. It is perhaps an evolutionary offshoot of a lion or a cheetah. There were few of them then and none of them now.

We find it lying in the grasses, no longer able to run, its breathing halting and uneven. I summon the Kaa as this is his moment, the moment when he becomes a man.

With great pride he strides forward and raises his spear, meaning to strike the creature’s soft underbelly, which lies exposed. But I’ve made a mistake. The cat-thing isn’t quite ready to die yet, and just moments before the killing blow is struck it lashes out with its sharp claws and catches the Kaa in the stomach.

In shock and pain, the Kaa lurches backward and unfortunately drops his spear. Never drop your spear. The cat is upon him before the three of us can do much of anything about it.

I jump onto the animal’s back and wrap my arm around its neck, rolling him on top of me and then throwing him away from the Kaa. (The Kaa is mortally wounded already and will die without reaching his manhood. This I know without looking at him.) Then the three of us surround the cat as it decides which of us is the greatest threat. It settles on me. With a mighty lunge, it pounces.

The creature bites into my shoulder with its sharp, jagged teeth—not a mortal wound, but painful—but I get the better of him, sliding my sharpened stone spear between his ribs. We land on the ground together. I feel its jaw slacken and the teeth slide loose from my flesh as it dies.

Pushing the dead thing off me, I rise. I am bleeding from my own wounds and also covered in the creature’s viscera. And I am happy. I howl in triumph.

It’s at that moment she appears. She walks out from the tall grasses, a pale white woman with long red hair, devastating blue eyes, and a regal carriage that speaks to me of royalty not yet even imagined in this time and place.

Her clothing varies from dream to dream: a Victorian dress, a sari, simple peasant rags, or a smart business suit. And sometimes she’s wearing nothing at all. She looks down at the dead thing, and then at me. She speaks. Her voice is an ice-cold splash of water and seems impossibly loud.

“Urrr,” she says, tears streaming down her face, “how could you?”

And that’s when I wake up. 

Part One Echoes of a Bygone Time

Chapter 1

I have no idea how long I’ve been here.

    The problem is they took my watch before making me change out of my clothes. And one of the reasons I’d gotten that particular watch was because of the calendar feature on the bottom of the face. Most people can keep decent track of what day and month—and year—it is without checking, whereas I’ve been known to lose entire decades. Which, I guess, is normal for someone like me.

Can’t complain too much about the cell. Not that I am all that familiar with cells in general. Let’s say it looks better than the ones on television. It has a comfortable cot and a real pillow, a clean toilet, and a functional sink. No mirror. Probably figured I’d break it and use the pieces as a weapon. Or use the pieces to hurt myself. Which I wouldn’t do, but I can understand why they wouldn’t appreciate it, at least before they’re done with me.

Without the mirror I have no idea what I look like any more. My face, which I’d kept clean- shaven for the better part of the past century, is now sprouting the first stages of a beard, and the hair on my head is starting to grow back. I bet with a good enough look at my reflection I could use that to determine the length of my captivity.

How had I ended up in this state? There’s the real question. I’d have to go back to the day I woke up behind the futon.

*  *  *

My first thought, upon waking up, was that sometime the previous evening I’d become paralyzed in a tragic accident of some kind. I was almost entirely unable to move, largely because all four of my major limbs had fallen asleep and were not nearly as interested in awakening as the rest of me.

It took a little work and a lot of wriggling to ascertain that I wasn’t paralyzed. I was simply pinned behind a futon. The smell of stale beer, tipped ashtrays, and vomit triggered vague memories of a party of some kind, one that I may even have been invited to. There was also the outside chance that the futon belonged to someone I actually knew, but that was, statistically speaking, a long shot.

I’m actually something of an aficionado in the “waking up stuck in strange places” department. I’ve woken up in hay lofts, under a butter churn, on roofs, in a choir loft (twice), under tables, on tables, in trees, in ditches, and half-pinned under a sleeping ox. One time in Bombay, I woke up to find myself lashed to a yak. This was my fourth futon. So, you’d think I’d have been used to it by now.

I could hear an American-style football game playing on the television, meaning first, someone else was in the room watching the game, and second, I was still in the United States. If I was exceptionally lucky, I was still in Boston, the last place I could recall being in.

My guess was whoever was in the room was also sitting on the futon, because the futon was rather heavy, and past experience suggested most unoccupied futons are easy to dislodge with minimal effort.

“Hello?” I said.

There was a lengthy delay, long enough for me to think I hadn’t been heard. Then, “D’you hear that?” someone said. Man’s voice, unaccented English. Okay, still in the United States, possibly not in Massachusetts any more.

“Yeah,” his friend said. They were both on the futon.

One of them peeled back the top and looked at me through the back support. “Hey, dude,” he greeted.

College student. Had to be.

He and his buddy stood up and pulled the futon away from the wall, affording me the opportunity to crawl to the center of the room. They pushed the futon back, sat down again, and continued to take in the game while I lay there and waited for the tingling sensation in my arms and legs to subside. That accomplished, I made a half- hearted attempt to get to my feet, but discovered that was far too difficult, due to a screaming hangover, which almost never goes well with bipedal movement.

“How’s it goin’?” one of my new friends asked, without taking his eyes off the game. “You need any help?”

“I’m fine right here, thanks,” I said.

“’Kay.”

If you’re thinking they were acting terribly nonchalant about discovering a stranger behind the living room couch, you’ve never been to a collegiate keg party.

“Beer?” he offered. “We’re still draining the keg.”

*  *  *

After two cups of beer from my prone position on the floor I managed to gain my feet, struggle into the only other non-floor-position seating in the place, and watch a goodly portion of the football game.

I don’t understand American football. If you’re going to line a bunch of behemoths up in front of a bunch of