Chapter 5 of Photograph, Part II

            Feeling returns in waves. First in the chest, then up to the head and down to the hips. Eventually the legs and feet return, as do the arms. The hands remain missing. I am warm, but it isn’t the fluid, cacophonous warmth of frozen death. The air too is warm, and humid, and I can breathe easily. With these observations I come to realize that my shirt, pants, and socks are missing, and in their places are soft towels wrapped comfortably around me. Somewhere close ahead, two voices converse with one another.

            “Does he talk?” One asks, and I recognize him as the boy.

            “Not out loud,” replies the other voice, which I do not recognize. “He can speak to your mind, if you know how to listen.”

            I decide to open my eyes. The boy is sitting across from me, wrapped in towels just as I am. Between us is a simple wooden table, atop which sits a cast iron pot, filled with water. Someone has seated me such that my arms are outstretched, hands dangling with fingers dipping into the water, my wrists cushioned by a small cloth between them and the rim. We are in what appears to be a wooden cabin. Dispersed around the room are various pieces of equipment, ranging from thick coats, boots, skis, and the like, to metal detectors, a radiator, a generator, and a few things I can’t identify. To my left sits an unfamiliar man, who I assume to be the owner of the other voice. I note his appearance: a white shirt with some black logo on the right breast, dark brown trousers, tanned skin, narrow eyes that hold an otherworldly wisdom, and angular, pointed ears. He catches sight of me, seeing that I am awake, and gives me a smile.

            “How are you feeling?” He asks.

            “Warm,” I tell him. He chuckles.

            “That’s good,” he says. “You’ll be glad to know that you can keep your fingers.” He looks at my hands dangling over the pot. Its contents must have been brought to a boil before the pot was set down on the table for us.

            “Your fingers were blue,” the boy says with awe. “Maxwell said that you got a frost bite.”

            The man—Maxwell, as it would seem—nods.

            “You’re lucky that Arthur found you when he did,” he says, nodding towards something behind me. I twist around, looking for this Arthur who is to thank for our rescue. What I find is a small kitchen area, with another pot sitting on a live stove. Attending the cooking is a massive, imposing creature, which I first identify as a gorilla, but realize my mistake when I notice the thick antlers on its head. Its whole body is coated in short, black fur that seems almost alive in its color; on the extremities—its arms and legs—the fur appears to glow, as if giving off a light of its own, whereas on its chest, neck, and head, the color of its body becomes stagnant and withdrawn, sucking in light until its finer features are indecipherable. Upon hearing its name, the creature turns its head toward us, revealing a face that is completely featureless, save for two perfectly round, glowing white circles. Its eyes aren’t just a bright, solid white—it is as if their very composition consists of pure light.

            The creature backs away from the stove. I watch, struck with wonder, as it gently collects a small white bowl between two enormous fingers and holds it before the pot. Something emerges from the pot, like a snake poking its head from a burrow, and it jumps into the bowl, creating a trail in the air that continues to feed the new reservoir until it cuts off, presumably having filled the bowl. It places the bowl on the counter and picks up another to repeat the task.

            “Maxwell said that Arthur is an angel,” the boy says, bringing my attention back to him. “I asked why he doesn’t have wings, and he said that they’re hidden until he needs to fly. They fly like bats, he said.”

            Maxwell nods. “He pays attention,” he says, looking at me. I frown.

            “Rarely,” I say. He sports a questioning look but does not issue any further remarks, and the both of us remain silent as the boy continues.

            “I asked Maxwell about his pointy ears, and he said that he’s an elf, so I asked him if he knows Santa Clause, but he said he doesn’t.” The boy’s glimmering eyes suddenly dim as his gaze falls to some other point in space. “But Santa’s not real anyway. I remember.”

            I stare at him, dumbfounded. He couldn’t know this, not so early. I’m sure of it.

            “Did you tell him that?” I say to Maxwell, who looks completely taken by surprise as he shakes his head.

            “No, I did not. He knew that when he came in, it would seem. Mentioned it during our conversation.”

            “He can’t know that yet, he’s too young. I don’t understand…”

            “You claim to know this boy’s future?”

            “I—” but I halt myself, suddenly realizing a truth that should have been obvious much earlier. This might be the boy from the photograph, but in this realm, he has lived on for who-knows-how long, experiencing a different life than mine. Our origins may be the same, but this child is no longer the same individual as me.

            “He must have been told by someone,” I say. “I don’t know who or when.”

            The elf raises an eyebrow, clasping his hands together as he leans forward in his chair.

            “Are you responsible for this boy?” He asks in his warm, kindly voice, even through the hard, stony look he gives me.

            “Yes. Yes I am.”

            “How did he come to be in your care?”

            I cannot tell him the truth, in part because it may be too dangerous, in part because it may not be the same truth in this world, and in part because I may not even know the full truth myself. The more I look at the boy in front of me, the more there is that defies every assumption I have held about him thus far seems to become apparent. In light of this, I decide that the answer to this question must be a different truth, one that means an answer in more than one world.

            “I owe him care that I did not provide, for a long time,” I offer.

            Maxwell takes a moment to consider this, putting a knuckle to his chin and studying the table with those wise eyes.

            “A big thing to admit,” he finally says. “I suppose he’s your child, then?”

            “That is… one way of putting it, I guess.”

            “Well, he certainly looks a lot like you, no doubt about it. Now, I do have to ask about the state we found you in,” he continues, glancing up across from him. I follow his eyes to a clothesline stretching across a segment of the room. Now that I actually inspect it, I see that the clothes strung up are ours, still wet from the snow. My blood feels cold again upon seeing the state of my outfit, displayed clearly for all present to see: everything aside from the underwear I had is stained in blood. My eyes stop at the shirt and jacket, the most incriminating of the assortment, both nearly torn to shreds and covered in dried blood—my blood, in more ways than one. When I look back to Maxwell, his focus is locked back on me, and I barely stop myself from flinching, realizing just how much I may have given away in my face alone.

            “Now,” he starts. “My first thought when Arthur dragged you in was that you were attacked by someone out there. Then I saw how many holes your jacket had, and I thought, ‘there is no damn way he could have survived this.’ So, I thought that maybe we were looking at the reverse, that you had taken this outfit from some poor sap who’d been shredded with enough lead to cause an epidemic. I took off the shirt, and saw that you were covered in blood, but it was all dried up, so I thought I was right, since you weren’t hurt. Then I was checking your heart.” He reaches forward and points at my chest. I look down at the front of my torso that is visible through the open towel around my shoulders. Several large marks are scattered across my flesh, all in places where I was shot.

            Maxwell continues. “After finding those, I looked at your shirt, and back at you, and back and forth and so on, until ultimately I looked at the jacket and found the holes in the sleeve,” and he taps my right wrist. “When I saw that scar, that’s when I knew that you were the one who’d been shot up. So, if you can help me understand…” he leans forward again. His calmness is immeasurable, yet he has managed to stack up all the information available in such a way that it towers over me, and he is standing on top of it, looking down at me below. “How the hell did you survive that?”

            I have limited options, and most of them are very poor. The only way through this is to tell at least some significant portion of the truth.

            “We ended up in the middle of nowhere after we tried to travel through a mirror,” I say. Maxwell stares.

            “Yes, we went into the mirror and it was like a tunnel,” the boy chimes in. “And when we came out, we were in the snow. It was like the North Pole, but there were trees.”

            “Portal travel. Okay then,” says Maxwell. “That explains how you got as far as you did out there without proper protection. How about all those bullet holes?”

            “I was shot… I don’t know how many times. But I just sat down and waited, and I healed.” I doubt this is a sufficient explanation, but it’s what I say anyway.

            “Where in the world did this happen?”

            “Not in the world. Another space of its own, where things could change on a whim. It started collapsing, so we went through the portal to get out.”

            “Alright, portals are one thing. Now you’re talking demiplanes, and that is most certainly not my area of expertise.” He leans back in his chair. “But I think I’ve heard enough.”

            Whether it is enough to conclude that I am trying to look out for the boy, or to conclude that I am a danger to him, apparently is to remain a matter to worry about later. Right now, the boy waves in the direction of Arthur, prompting me to turn and see what he is doing. The hulking angel is walking towards us, in the same manner as a gorilla would walk, supporting its weight by moving on all fours with its knuckles pressing against the floor. Despite its conceived massiveness, it doesn’t lumber awkwardly in the small space of the cabin, instead moving deftly about as if it has lived here for its whole life, and on top of that the noise produced by his movement is so undetectable that I would not have been alerted to his approach had the boy not given him away. The two bowls he had filled with (what must be) soup hover in the air in front of him, traveling at his speed. My eyes are drawn to the antlers: unlike any I’ve ever seen in a normal animal, these branch together to form a wide ring above Arthur’s head, and the edges of the antlers glow with a white light much like that of the beast’s eyes. When he reaches us, the bowls descend carefully onto the table, and the light around his halo dims. Arthur sits down at the unoccupied side of the table.

            “You two must be hungry,” Maxwell says. “Eat up, get your strength back.”

            Lifting my hands from the edge of the pot, I spend a minute flexing and bending my fingers, enjoying the relief of being able to move my hands again. The bowl’s surface is hot, but not so hot as to keep me from holding it long enough to extract a spoonful of boiled potatoes, carrots, and beef from it. The stew tastes of home, wherever that is, and I find myself eating faster than ‘proper’ manners would allow. There’s a sweetness in it too, which I can only describe as caramelized honey—only a strange example which doesn’t exist can describe a strange sensation I haven’t experienced before. I finish my bowl just after my companion finishes his, and I thank Arthur for the food. His eyes seem to flicker, as if he’s blinking, and somehow, I find something in that which means ‘you’re welcome’ to me.

            “Seriously, this is amazing,” I say. “Already feeling better.” This is no exaggeration. Strength seems to have returned rapidly after the meal.

            “Extract, from the tree sap,” Maxwell explains. “The trees here have an ancient magic in them. Their sap can bring all but the dead back on their feet. Arthur and I keep a small supply for emergencies.”

            “It tasted like honey and ice cream,” the boy exclaims, smiling.

            “Goes great in tea, too,” Maxwell says.