TC66

To the south was a bump informally called Mt. Motorcycle. It was perhaps fifty feet taller than Treehouse Hill. The railroad from back east wrapped completely around it and merged with itself, making a kind of turnstile. This was the absolute end of the line. Passenger trains no longer served Headwater and freight trains were seen only once a week, tops.

To the west past the Academy the uppermost vale of the New River entered a reddish ravine twisting through low hills of sandstone, then wrapped nearly halfway around the small mountain called Green Dome that dominated the skyline of the town. On its flank where the river debouched lay the gleaming white Temple of the Headwater Fellowship.

In the treehouse Gabriel was pouring over the Green Book with hyz sister looking over hyz shoulder. When Jael and Ariel came in the Shybear kids smiled and turned the book around on the table so they could have a look. “Tell me if this looks familiar,” said Gabriel.

Jael read an account of his real father becoming a casualty of the shelling on the afternoon of the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, and how Michael called upon a dirk named Jael to shift the fallen timber around to reach Joshua. In the passage Michael praised Jael and said, “You weren’t here last time” and “poor Joshua suffered immeasurably more.” Jael started completely over and read the passage again, aloud, so his sister was entirely on board with the rest of them, but there was no need. Sha had read the same passage many times over the years. With Jael, no less.

Har brother said, “This is familiar in the sense that it captures exactly what happened to me in Kemen after I went swimming, but it is not familiar in the sense that I’ve never read that passage until just now.”

“That’s crazy,” Ariel said. “I know for a fact First Pilgrims 19:3 is your favorite part of the Green Book. You were always a little embarrassed about your name, because nobody else is named Jael, except that one strong kid in the Green Book.”

“Did either of you ever read First Pilgrims 19:3 before,” Jael asked his cousins.

“I don’t remember any mention of a Jael,” said Dory. “To me this looks like a revision. But it’s my Green Book. It’s got my notes all through it.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement. “We always went up the timeline. And so did you two, with your own parents, but you never realized what was happening. And we never went downstream before. But this time Sophia let us do it.”

“And here’s the punch line,” said Jael. “I can do what that kid in the Green Book did, now. All I need to do is touch something and I came move it, no matter how big it is. I can flip your daddy’s station wagon.”

“Can you fix my daddy’s station wagon,” asked Doriel? Hy shook his head no.

“What do you think all this means?” asked Ariel.

“I think it means,” said Gabriel, “that me and Dory and Jael went for a swim one afternoon, and we didn’t come back to the same world we left.”

That made a lot of sense, but Ariel was troubled. Sha felt as though a door had slammed shut between her and her twin brother, and worse was to come.

By the second week after Erik’s funeral Ariel could no longer hide the bumps on the back of her head, and when her mother looked at Jael she learned the funny crown of horns wasn’tjust hym dealing with hyz grief by trying to be more like Gabriel. They were growing right out of hyz head.