I Would Never Leave You

Parental Advisory: Violence

I am standing on the edge of the circle, again. The sigils on my chest are burning; but the jungle behind me is still intact. So is the clearing before me. Everyone lives again. But for how long?

The sacred Ceiba at the center of the clearing won't survive. With its massive canopy over one hundred meters high and its roots spreading out just as far, it is embedded in the bubble I've created. Every time Time resets, the branches and outer roots outside the boundary get further out of sync with the rest of the tree trapped within. Sap trying to flow out, water trying to flow in; its lifeblood is being strangled by a tourniquet that cuts through space itself. Whatever power is holding that wood together can't last and, when it fails, crown and root network will be shorn in an instant.

The tree won't survive the shock. Carrillo's henchmen will succeed in freeing the ancient casket from its buttress roots. And then he will do more than barely crack open its lid.

I lived through the London blitz of 1940. The blast that just incinerated the clearing before me would have leveled a city block. If the lid is flung open, this jungle – maybe the whole Yucatán peninsula – will be wiped out. Or worse.

With every return, she too lives again: my Angata. Everything repeats within the circle: She, Don Carlos, and Professor Suárez are tied to one of the Jeeps. She sees me approaching through the jungle. She shakes her head vehemently, mouths the word "Run!", and starts praying the Our Father.

I did run... around the outskirts of the camp, looking for something to use; found the rope, tied one end to a marking stake and pounded it into the jungle ground; and then continued running, letting it unwind behind me.

I ran.

I am still running... in that image from the past coming through the bubble, I'm running on the other side, racing to complete the circle and pulling the ancient iron stylus out of its sheath. That ghostly image of my past self vanishes as it rounds this side of the bubble. I know what follows. I tied this end of the rope to the same stake, completing the circle.

Inside the bubble, the henchmen's truck screeched forward, the chain sang. And with half the men pushing on its tailgate, wheels digging into the ground, they managed to get one edge of the clam-shaped casket above ground. Carrillo used his machete to hack through the last stubborn root clinging to the side they had exposed, and someone handed him a crowbar. They don't understand what they are about to unleash. Its anger is immeasurable. All it wants to do is destroy.

I dropped to my knees and carved on the ground, in ancient Hebrew, the only verse I could think of that could hold it back, Job 38:11: "And I declared: 'You may come this far, but no farther; here your proud waves must stop'."

I doubt the original owner of the stylus ever used it this way, but it worked. I felt the words sear themselves across my chest just as the explosion consumed everything. But the roiling ball of fire and debris suddenly stopped propagating at the spherical boundary demarcated by that rope and those eternal words. For an impossible instant it was compressed into a blinding shell of light in the air and then everything reset.

The stylus' blessing held.

But for how long? It is irresistible force against immovable wall; and Time has become the referee.

I need another way. My dear Angata: assistant, friend, confidante... someday, I'd hoped, so much more... she is alive again. All I can think of is running in and rescuing her. But even if I survive crossing that boundary, we won't make it out before the end. Carrillo won't listen to reason.

This is not why we came to the Yucatán.

~*~

Weeks ago, panic started taking hold of the village. A wailing shadow woman had been seen wandering through the jungles. The youngest families of the plantation workers were…