Paul waits for Blake Biegler in the dusty field behind the school. Biegler is ten minutes late. He pokes his fingers through the chainlink, staring beyond the suicide barriers toward Golden Lakes. The ... [+]
Olivier Brossard had been hanging men for the best part of a decade, and he'd never seen the rope break. It wasn't uncommon for folk to try, usually magicians spitting fire and brimstone as they fought to conjure up a final means of escape. Still, there were protective enchantments braided into the noose, strong enough to keep it from fraying.
This time, the condemned was a flashy outlaw sort, with a fast smile and faster hands. Magic, too—just enough to make Olivier's fingers itch. He climbed the steps of the gallows, blinked at Olivier, and said, "We ain't been formally introduced, and I'm thinkin' we should be, since you're hangin' me an' all. I'm Jaks."
Olivier had seen the wanted posters. "Olivier."
"Now that's too much of a mouthful for a dyin' man," Jaks said, still grinning. "How 'bout I call you Vie?"
"Sure." Olivier settled the noose around his neck. "See you 'round, Jaks."
Jaks kept grinning, wide and unconcerned, and not like any doomed man Olivier had ever seen. He pulled the lever, and as the trapdoor fell away, Jaks fell with it. Olivier felt static tingle in his fingers, and the taught rope ruptured, unspooling into frayed edges. There hadn't been a gunshot, or the dizzying pull of someone casting a spell, just severing fibres.
Below the gallows, Jaks landed heavily on his knees, coughing and laughing.
"Divine intervention," the sheriff said, staring at the rope. "Can't hang him now . . . can we?"
Olivier looked down at Jaks, kneeling in the dirt, and flexed the static feeling from his hands. "No, don't suppose we can."
**
Later, when Olivier was drinking away the day in the saloon, Jaks sat down beside him. Guns on his hips and neck free of the noose, he leaned an elbow on the bar and said, "I'll buy you a drink."
Olivier sighed. "Sure, if you tell me how you did it."
"Did what?"
"The rope," he said. "Magic shouldn't touch it, and yet . . . you did something."
Jaks stared at him, then huffed. "You can sense magic."
"Sometimes."
"Not many folk can," Jaks said. "It's rare, you know. Why're you a hangman?"
Olivier shrugged. "Why're you a no-good outlaw?"
Laughing, Jaks said, "Drink with me, and maybe you'll find out."
**
Olivier had a room in town, but Jaks lived like a feral cat. He vanished into the desert for days at a time, re-emerging covered in dust and blood, sliding into a seat at the saloon and paying for Olivier's drinks. Sometimes, when he thought Olivier wasn't looking, he coughed bloody phlegm into a handkerchief, and when drunken saloon conversation turned into giggling and groping against the outhouse wall, the cool evening air made his breathing shallow and raspy.
"Is it catching?" Olivier asked when they made it to his room, half undressed and flushed in the lamplight. "'Cause if it is—"
Jaks shook his head, reeling Olivier in by his beltloops. "Nah, Vie, nothin' like that."
"Magic?"
Jaks huffed. "Yeah."
"Fine," Olivier said, mouth close to Jaks' ear. "Just don't spell me."
"I know some good ones," Jaks murmured, fingers mapping Olivier's ribs. "Trust me, you'll like 'em."
Olivier laughed, pulling them towards the bed. "Alright, magician, show me."
After, tangled together in the ruined bedsheets, Jaks rested his chin on Olivier's sternum and asked, "Good?"
"Yeah," Olivier said, carding a hand through Jaks' hair. "Real good."
"Awful pretty like this," Jaks said softly, thumb stroking along Olivier's stomach.
Olivier rolled his eyes. "You breathe better when you're warm, did you know?"
"Yeah." He leaned off the side of the bed, fumbling for his trousers. "Here."
Olivier sat up, and Jaks handed him something from his trouser pocket. It was a comb, the sort grooms used on horse's manes, with thick metal teeth. There was magic in it, warm and syrupy.
Olivier turned it over, studying the edges. "What's it do?"
Jaks folded his hand over Olivier's, squeezing gently before pulsing magic between their entwined fingers. The comb hummed, staticky and alive, making Olivier's hands shake.
"Focus," Jaks said softly. "Feel where the magic catches against the teeth."
He moved their hands through the air, brushing at invisible tendrils. There was a solid thread running through the centre of the teeth, tangible and real, with branching fragments on either side.
"Present," Jaks said, angling the comb towards the middle thread. "Then past, and future. Time is like a tangled mane . . . or a braided rope. I placed the spellwork myself."
"You designed it? Why?"
Jaks sighed. "My lungs. Magic ain't doing shit for it. Thought maybe I'd find myself far enough in the future there'd be a solution. Never quite got it workin' right. Can only stay within my own timeline. Got me off the gallows, though."
Olivier ran his fingers along the metal teeth. "You can relive moments?"
"Sometimes," Jaks said. "Or be somewhere else entirely. But it . . . it hurts, y'know, doing it? Burns the lungs, makes it worse."
"Then why—"
"Ah, darlin'," Jaks said, grinning, one hand running up Olivier's side. "Some moments are worth the cost to keep relivin'."
**
Winter came, and Olivier stayed up at night listening to Jaks breathe like he was drowning, wet and harsh and painful. Whenever Jaks left, Olivier began to wonder if he'd return.
"Where do you go?" he asked eventually.
Jaks shrugged. "Warm memories. You. When it hurt less to breathe. Wish I could see you get older, reckon you'd be real pretty with grey hair."
"Stick around and find out," Olivier said.
"I would, darlin', you know I would," he said.
The next morning he was gone again, and Olivier tried to imagine him somewhere in the past, curled up beside another Olivier, in a body that wasn't breaking.
It didn't make him feel any better.
**
Somewhere, on the steps of the gallows, Jaks looked up at Olivier Brossard, who had never seen the rope break, and said, "Darlin', we ain't been formerly introduced."
**