OverTime 04: Settling [THE NEW EDIT]

Prologue: Wyoming Territory

"Mama?" whispered Thaddeas. It felt increasingly less forced, him using that name for me. "Mr. Carroll's book is just make-believe."

I actually smiled. He sounded so solemn.

"Trust me on this, kiddo. This is real, and I'll be okay." I hoped. "But you've got to get out of these mountains before sunset. And you have to tell your pa something for me."

It was difficult to shift positions, with my hands tied and my insides cramping and trembling, but I did it. I had to look into his sweet face once more, his precious brown eyes, so different from his father's.

From my one true love's.

"Tell him I'll be back as soon as I can, and that even if I'm not, I'll love him forever. Can you remember that? Forever and ever."

Now it was Thaddeas who nodded. His lips looked bluish. The tip of his nose had reddened. I had to get him to shelter, no matter the cost. Weather was, after all, the number-one killer of cowboys... and perhaps of their children.

When he blurred, I realized that I'd started to quietly cry.

This should never have happened. I didn't even like physics.

Seth grunted his satisfaction at finishing with the horses and, in two strides, he closed the distance between us. He put his hand on his six-shooter, as if to deal with That right then, but I half rolled, half lunged to my feet to distract him. It probably helped that, stepping on my own long skirts, I fell into him. He caught me automatically before pushing me back to the ground, conveniently closer to the gorge. I tried desperately to absorb the impact with my shoulder instead of my head.

"Stop it!" screamed the boy. "Don't hurt—"

Seth kicked me instead of Thad, so... yay? His pointy-toed cowboy boot caught me in the thigh, momentarily eclipsing the pain from my abdomen. 

You like to think you'd be so much better, if a crisis comes. I would've hoped I could fight better, despite being tied. I would've thought I'd be forming and dismissing various escape plans, but I only had the one. 

"If you let him go," I promised up at Seth, "I'll do anything you want. Anything."

I even batted my eyelashes at him. FYI? I was so very lying.

The ugly face glowering down at me, where I lay at his booted feet, terrified me, only partly because he meant to kill me. Kill us. The cowboy's face had healed poorly after a beating he'd taken last July. His nose jutted severely to the left, and his nostrils no longer matched. That fit his off-center, stubble-darkened chin and misshapen jaw. He couldn't completely close his mouth, not without effort, and he literally drooled tobacco juice.

Not even his eyes matched, anymore. The eyebrow ridge over one of them jutted freakishly.

I couldn't and wouldn't feel sorry for him, all the same. 

"Do it anyway," he snarled, or tried to. As in, I'd do anything he wanted. The words came out thick and stupid, and I could see in his mismatched eyes how much that frustrated him.

Somehow, I made myself roll to my side, used my bound hands to help lever myself onto my knees. "Yeah, but let the boy go, and I'll make it worth your while. You knew what kind of a girl I was, even before the others guessed, right? Wouldn't you like me to prove it?"

He grabbed my hear and yanked me upward by it--OW!  But at least that gave me a little more leverage, so I took my chance.

I head-butted Seth in the groin, or tried to. He twisted, presenting me with his thigh instead, but now he was off balance too. Now I had my feet for purchase. Like the world's smallest football tackle, I caught his leg with my shoulder and pressed forward with all my weight.

Toward the cliff beside us.

It hadn't occurred to him that I would aim for the ledge. He hadn't guarded against that and, thank God, stumbled. He stepped on my damned girl skirts, dangerous tripping hazard that they are, and twisted. As he fell backwards he grasped for me.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, if I'd dodged. If I'd been trying to save myself. But saving myself had never been my plan. I surprised him with a full frontal attack, right to the edge.

"Hell!" shouted Seth, or some approximation of the word. His boots scrabbled on the rock. His hands dug into my arm, determined to take me with him--and I let him.

It was the only way I could make sure he went over--go with him.

With a last, desperate push, I felt his resistance suddenly vanish. Gravity had him now. His greedy hold jerked me after him, into mid-air, and we plummeted.

Now, I thought, in that moment when the world swooped into stone grays and pine greens, as boulders rose to meet us. Um...

Please? NOW?

It was only a physics theory, and an unproven theory at that.

Then dizziness swallowed me. The world exploded into a kind of black hole, full of pressure and nothingness and fracturing and wholeness--and the next thing I knew, I was kneeling on level, cold concrete.

Naked.

Car brakes squealed around me. Someone laid on their horn, louder and sharper than anything I'd heard in months. A helicopter flew, thud-thud-thud, overhead. The November air now reeked of gasoline and garbage and French fries--modern city smells.

"Call 9-1-1!" I shouted to whoever might be close enough to hear, even as I doubled protectively over. "I think I'm losing my baby. Please, call an ambulance!"

And I could only pray that Thaddeas was okay—almost a hundred and fifty years in the past, where I'd just left him.