Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 14 of 44

Finn held both hands out. Two red mushrooms in one. Two green in the other. The swamp water lay flat behind him. Bailey looked at his sister. Cora clutched her cracked wand and said nothing. The choice was hers too, and Bailey would not make it for her. "Green means we grow old," Bailey said. "Red means we sleep and never wake." He had carried a hundred years already. He knew what forever felt like. He did not want more of it. Cora's hand went to her throat, but the black totem was gone. He had thrown it into the deep water. She looked lost without its weight. "I died four years after you," she whispered. "I came to the swamp to find you. I never got to grow up." Colt stepped down from the shore. His one clear eye fixed on Bailey. "You pulled me out of these reeds fifty-seven years ago," he said. "I got to live. Every year after was borrowed from you." He tapped the lens over his blind eye. "Take the green. Both of you. Go be children who get old." Bailey reached into his coat and found the old book, the one that had taught him the lost tongue. Its pages had shown him who he was. He did not need it anymore. He handed it to Colt. "Then you keep the words," Bailey said. "Somebody should still be able to read them." He turned back to Finn. He took one green mushroom. He did not eat it yet. He held it out to Cora instead. "You searched a hundred years too long," he said. "Grow up with me this time." Cora's face broke. She took the green mushroom from his palm. Her fingers shook, but she nodded. "Together," she said. They ate at the same moment. The green was bitter and cold. Bailey felt it move down his chest, into the place where the hundred years had lived. The old ache lifted. His feet, always cold in the mud, went warm. His hands, which had not grown in a century, felt heavier. Larger. Alive. Finn closed his other hand around the red mushrooms and the last green one. They crumbled to nothing. "It is done," the swamp said through him. "You will age now. You will die one day, far off. That is my gift." Then Finn's ghastly smile faded. He set his pole in the water and pushed off. His shape thinned into mist and joined the swamp he was. The dock sat empty behind him. Bailey looked at his own hand and saw it had changed. A knuckle he did not know. A life he had not lived stretched ahead. He turned to Cora, who was crying and laughing at once. But one question stayed with him, sharp under the joy. "Evan," he said. "I saved him. If I'm alive again, then somewhere, so is he. And he won't know my face." Colt heard the name loud and clear this time, “My grandfather?” Colt asked. Bailey confused as he started to see the similarities in the facial features of Colt and his old friend Evan. “My grandfather had just passed away last year at the age of 103.” Colt stated. “He used to tell me stories about you, Bailey.” Colt paused in thought then spoke what he wanted to say without regret, “Or should I call you Prince Colton?” Bailey confused once more. Cora’s faced smiled and her laughter let loose. Bailey suddenly remembered Cora’s laugh, it was only gone temporarily. He was only Bailey Baz as named by the swamp, not who he truly was. Colt smiled and said just before he walked away, “Where do you think my name came from?”