Beau Landry's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The fence could wait one more day. Beau needed wood, and the ridge above the pod held a stand of dead trees. He kissed his wife, checked his rounds, and climbed. He told himself he would be back before dark. He walked the high ground, ax on his shoulder, watching the water for wakes. Halfway up the slope, the air changed. It pulled at his skin like a draft from an open door. Beau stopped. Ahead stood a tall crack in the world. Its edges were broken stone, carved with worn marks he did not know. Between the two halves hung pure black, and small chips of rock floated inside it, drifting up instead of down. A green glow lined every jagged seam. Beau had never seen anything like it. He did not trust it. He circled it once, keeping his distance. Nothing came out. Nothing moved but the floating stones. He should have turned back. But the marks on the stone looked man-made, and he wanted to know who had cut them. He reached out one hand and touched the cold edge. The ground dropped away. Light tore past him. His stomach lurched like a fall down a well. Then his boots hit dirt, and he was standing somewhere else entirely. The ridge was gone. So was the water, the pod, his family. Beau turned in a slow circle. The land ran flat and dry to every horizon, one endless plain with no coast at all. Strange plants grew in rows too straight to be wild. A sun sat wrong in the sky, larger and paler than the one he knew. Then he saw them. Figures crossed the plain toward him. They walked upright like men, but taller, with long limbs and pale gray skin. Their eyes were wide and black. They wore no clothes he recognized, only smooth suits that clung like a second skin. One raised a hand and made sounds that were not words. Beau's chest went tight. These were people, or what people had become. The stone gate had not moved him across the land. It had thrown him forward through time, past everything he knew. The rows of plants, the joined land, the changed sun. Ages had passed in a single step. His family sat alone on that dangerous shore, waiting for his voice at the hatch. And they were not just far away now. They were long dead, buried under a million years of dirt. The thought hit him harder than any beast on the bank. Beau did not raise his ax. He did not run. He looked back the way he had come and saw the broken gate standing behind him, still glowing green. It had brought him here. It could take him back. He turned from the tall gray figures and walked straight for the crack in the world. His family was waiting. He would not leave them buried in the past.