The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (2 page)

“If you keep it up, Tom’s going to kick your ass.”  That was Harold.

“I don’t fight girls.”  That was Tom.

The fist came next. And then the pushing and the pulling and the yelling and the other fists. Some were Gabriel’s landing on Eddie’s face. Some were Eddie’s landing on his. The bus was over the Tillet River Bridge by then. Gabriel was busy trying to punch Eddie’s nose so he didn’t have time to notice if the bus driver, Mrs. Hopper, was distracted. He thought he heard her voice somewhere in the din of shouting that erupted with the fight, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t pay to listen to voices of authority when someone was punching you in the face.

So, maybe she was distracted. Maybe she turned the wheel when she was looking into the giant rearview mirror. Maybe she didn’t see a car stop in front of her. Gabriel never knew. All he knew was the sudden fishtailing motion of the bus and then the squeal of metal against metal as the bus scraped along the guardrail of the bridge. And the screams. After the screams, it was hard to hear anything else. His own scream was particularly hard to hear over.

And then the bus was tumbling. Over the guardrail. Spinning as it fell. He could see the other students falling and twisting through the air, bouncing against seats and windows and the ceiling and the floor. He saw Tom’s head hit a window. He saw Harold clutching at the leg of the seat. He saw Eddie, terror in his eyes and his mouth wide in mid-scream, slam his shoulder into the ceiling.

And he saw the water. The bus plunging toward it. Forty feet from bridge to river in long, panic-filled moments. Enough time to notice anything. A small eternity. And he had seen it all before.

The bus struck the water sideways and the motion within came to a jarring halt, bodies falling into the windows on the bottom. Some of the windows had been open. Others broke. The water began pouring in faster than Gabriel would have imagined possible. He was wedged under a body. Tom’s body. Not moving. The blow to Tom’s head must have knocked him unconscious. Gabriel could see Harold. Screaming. Everyone was still screaming.

“The door!” Gabriel screamed. He struggled up above the side of the seat and saw that the front door of the bus had been pushed open by the impact and water was rushing in. The entire bus would be flooded in seconds. He couldn’t see Mrs. Hopper. Straining to push Tom’s unconscious body off himself, he saw two kids struggling near the emergency door at the rear of the bus. It took a moment before he realized it was Emily Baskin and Eddie. Emily was struggling to get near the exit door and Eddie was trying to stop her.

“We have to get it open,” Emily screamed.

“The water will come in,” Eddie screamed back.

He probably can’t swim, Gabriel thought. Gabriel hadn’t been able to swim either until last Spring. He hadn’t wanted to learn, but his parents had insisted. It had been a mortifying experience. The only thirteen-year-old learning to swim with a class of seven and eight-year-olds. Apparently Gabriel had a higher tolerance level for mortification than most boys his age. He was glad he did. Otherwise, he might have been like poor Eddie; so afraid of drowning that he might try to stop the one person who could save him.

The water continued to flow into the interior of the bus from the windows and the front door. Emily continued to fight with Eddie near the emergency door at the rear. The water was up to their waists. People continued to scream. And Gabriel continued to struggle to get from underneath Tom.

He saw Eddie punch Emily in the face. Emily’s head snapped back, but her legs never moved. She may have been a slender, geeky girl, but she knew how to take a punch. And she knew how to deliver one. Emily had six older brothers. Eddie saw the left hook, but he never noticed the right-handed haymaker that clocked him in the temple. Eddie collapsed with a splash into the ever-deepening water. Gabriel had just enough time to think that if it was going to be the last thing he saw, seeing Eddie Sloat being knocked out by Emily Baskin wasn’t half bad.

Of course it didn’t matter, Gabriel thought in a wave of despair. The rear emergency door only opened out. It would never budge until the water had already filled the interior of the bus. However, Emily didn’t move to open the door. Instead, she reached down behind the rear seat and pulled free the large red fire extinguisher.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Gabriel wondered as he continued to struggle with Tom’s unconscious form.

Emily slammed the base of the fire extinguisher into the window of the exit door with all her strength. The window cracked. That was all.
Too bad
, Gabriel thought. Emily struck the window again. Nothing. She shouted in frustration and raised the fire extinguisher to strike again when the window suddenly imploded, a wall of water throwing her back into the bus. Gabriel barely had time to suck in a lung full of air before the water was over his head and the bus filled to capacity, sinking even faster than before.

Gabriel floated up to the opposite side of windows near the surface of the river as the bus swiftly sank to the bottom some fifteen feet below. The engine of the bus sank first, the rear falling more slowly. The bus rotated as it hit bottom, the ceiling becoming the floor. It was all Gabriel could do to keep his head straight and know which way was which.
Where was the door?
 

He dragged Tom through the water, pulling him past the row of seats above their heads, struggling past kids panicking and drowning, past kids trying to swim for the exit door. Gabriel pushed people with one hand, pulling Tom with the other, using his feet to kick against anything he could use to reach the exit.

Someone before him had managed to open the door. Gabriel groped his way through the opening and looked around, seeing cloudy sky above the water fifteen feet over his head. He swam. He swam harder than he ever had before, the weight of Tom pulling him down, the small mouthful of air in his lungs burning to get out, stinging like acid in his chest. He could feel the weight of his clothes and shoes, his jacket making it harder to move his arms. He was getting closer. The water above his head was lighter. Brighter. Nearer.

He gasped for air, spitting water and wheezing
. I’m not going to drown today,
he thought as the rain beat down on his face. He grinned as he put his arm around Tom and began to swim for the shore. It wasn’t far. Only thirty feet or so. He looked around as he swam and saw that he was not the only one swimming for the riverbank. Twenty or so of his fellow classmates paddled to safety. He could see Harold flailing his arms, trying to remember the strokes he must have learned when he was six like everyone else.

“Help me!” Gabriel shouted as he came to the shallow edge of the river. Harold struggled to reach them. Gabriel didn’t even wait to get Tom all the way to the riverbank before turning him over, wrapping his arms around Tom’s middle, and pulling repeatedly to empty the water from his stomach and lungs. Swinging Tom onto his back, Gabriel continued to push on his stomach to clear the water from his airway. Tom spit in Gabriel’s face, his eyes fluttering open. Harold had reached them by then.

“Gabe,” Tom said.

“You’re okay now,” Gabriel said.

“You saved me,” Tom said with a weak laugh. “Just like Aquaman.”

“There are still kids down there,” Harold said, looking back at the river. The shimmering yellow form of the bus was easily visible beneath the gently flowing water.

“Stay here with Tom,” Gabriel said as he looked into Harold’s eyes. Harold could swim well enough to reach the shore once, but he would never make it twice.

“You can’t go back down there!” Harold said, fear making his voice jump an octave.

“I’ll be fine,” Gabriel said, shrugging out of his jacket and kicking off his shoes. “My parents paid a lot of money so I’d be able to do stupid things like swim back down to sunken buses.” He doubted that was what his mother had been thinking when she had insisted on the swimming classes.

He gave Tom a quick wave and then jumped back into the water, his legs kicking hard, his oddly long arms making for smooth, strong strokes that brought him to the middle of the river in hardly any time at all. His fellow students screamed, cried, shouted, and tried to swim for the shore. Gabriel looked down at the bus. He didn’t see any motion, but he could see what looked like shadowy shapes that might be people. He sucked air in fast, let it out, and sucked it in again, filling his lungs. Then he dived.

He fought his body’s natural inclination to float as he dove, his arms striking through the water in unison. It took a few seconds to reach the bottom of the river and the bus. A few seconds that allowed him to think.
What the hell am I doing?
He’d only learned to swim six months ago. Why was he the only one going back down?  He’d been on the shore. The dream hadn’t come true. Why tempt fate?  And then he reached the bus and saw the two faces floating near the rear windows. That was why. Because you couldn’t just let people die when you might be able to do something about it.

He edged around the emergency door and swam into the bus. There were more bodies than the two he had seen. They might be dead. Or maybe not. Five in all, he could see. He grabbed the one closest to the door. Emily. He thought she had gotten out. The fire extinguisher must have hit her when the window broke. Her open eyes stared right through him. He didn’t look back for long. He grabbed her arm and hauled her toward the door, pushing her through and giving her a shove toward the surface. She moved upward. Not as fast as he had wanted. He hoped it was fast enough. He hoped someone above would get to her in time.

Looking back, he knew he couldn’t save them all. Not all four that remained. He just couldn’t hold his breath long enough. It wasn’t possible. He could come back down. They might make it if he could come back down fast enough. He swam back into the bus and grabbed the arm of the next person he came to.
Perfect,
he thought. Just who he’d always imagined saving. Gabriel grimaced and pulled Eddie to the emergency door, pushing him through and giving him a shove toward the surface as he had with Emily.

Just enough, he thought. Just enough air.
One more and I’ll go back up
.
Just one more
, he thought as he twisted around and swam back into the capsized bus once more. The next unconscious person he came to was Larry, the sickly boy who was always sneezing.

Larry’s arm was wedged between the seat and the wall of the bus. Gabriel pulled on Larry’s arm, but it was no good. Gabriel tried to pull at the seat. To bend it back just a little. Nothing. He pulled the seat with one hand and Larry’s arm with the other. Harder. Harder. His lungs stung again. His vision was getting blurry. But he kept pulling. Then Larry’s arm slipped free. Gabriel tugged at Larry and pulled him toward the emergency door. Then the world shifted.

The weight of the bus settling on the soft river bottom sent it tumbling again, lurching sideways once more. Gabriel spun with the bus as Larry’s unconscious body fell on him, a shoulder pushing down into his stomach, forcing the air from his lungs in a burst.

Gabriel pushed and pulled at Larry’s unconscious form, but it was no good. Larry was slight, hardly weighing a thing, but the angle of the seats kept him wedged against Gabriel.

He fought. He fought to move Larry’s body. He fought to slide out from under him. He fought to hold what little air was left in his lungs. He fought to keep his vision straight. He fought the temptation to open his mouth. He fought as hard as he had ever fought for anything, but he couldn’t stop himself. His body betrayed his will. His mouth slipped open and the bubbles of air flooded out. He tried to stop it. But it didn’t last long. He pushed against Larry’s body again. He knew it was a body now. Larry was dead. There was no saving him. No saving the others in the bus. No saving himself.

He held it as long as he could. Held the moment between breaths as long as he could. He knew how it would end. Just as it had ended in the dream. Maybe that was why he had come back down. Not to try to be a hero. Not because his conscience told him he should, but because of the dream. Because he knew the dream would be fulfilled no matter what he did.

He held on, hoping that someone would come down after him. One of the other students. Maybe a driver of a passing car. Someone. He held that un-breath and held it and held it and then before he knew it his mouth was open and he was sucking water into his lungs against his will. He willed his mouth to close, his lungs to expel the water, the spasms of his body to stop. He willed his eyes to stay open, his mind to stay clear, his vision to remain. He willed the blackness to stop. He willed his heart to start beating again. He willed his mind to remain conscious. He willed himself to remember his mother’s face and the kiss she had given him. He willed himself to remember his father’s hug and his smile. He willed himself to remember who he was. He willed himself to remember his name. He willed himself to live.

And then Gabriel Salvador died.

Chapter 2: Rebirth

Light.

Sounds.

Voices.

Was this death?  Could you see lights and hear voices when you were dead? Was this the light at the end of a tunnel?  No. The light seemed to come from everywhere. Could he see light without eyes?  Did he still have eyes?  Were his eyes open? Could he blink? The light winked out and back. He could blink. Could you blink when you were dead? 

“He’s coming around.” A female voice. Soft and melodious.

“I hate this part.” A male voice. Deep and resonant.

“Where?” That voice he recognized. That was Gabriel Salvador’s voice. His voice. Could he have a voice if he were dead?

“You’re safe,” the female voice said. The room slowly came into focus and the lights did not seem as bright anymore. He lifted his head to the light and saw a large window. In front of the window stood a man and a woman. The man stood well over six feet tall, with a muscular build, deep black skin and a wide, but angular face with a hint of grey in his close-cut hair. He wore a necklace of shells around his neck. The woman was much smaller and much thinner, with olive-brown skin, piercing near-black eyes and a narrow face framed by a mane of deep gray hair. She wore a necklace with a small bluish teardrop-shaped glass pendant. Both wore white pants and white tunics. Could they be doctors?