Read Online The Map of Moments by Christopher Golden - Free Book Online

nearest the marsh. The marsh had begun to spread.
    The man crouched in several inches of water, hiding himself behind the high grass. Even in the dark and the storm, his clothes seemed anachronistic. Other than a half glance backward, revealing a long, thin mustache, he kept his back to Max, seemingly unaware that he was being followed. The man's attention had been caught by movement out across the marsh, and Max peered through the rain, trying to make out what unfolded there.
    He moved north along the edge of the marsh, skirting a tree, trying to get a better view without giving himself away. A pale figure stood fifty yards away, and Max had to step into the water and part the high grass before he began to make sense of what he saw. Three canoes were drawn up onto the far bank, and seven or eight people stood beneaththe trees, some hiding beneath hanging cypress branches, all of them hard to see in the dark and the storm. Their clothes were rough, their hair long and slicked by the rain.
    Only when the pale figure—shirtless, hair in braids— lifted something toward the thunder clouds did Max realize that they were Indians. For a moment he felt a queer dislocation, and then he told himself this must be some strange tribal thing conducted by a local group.
    But moments ago, it had been a cooling fall afternoon, and now it was night and the storm had risen from nowhere. His mind tried to rationalize, but there were simply too many things to explain.
    Lightning flashed across the sky and he saw the granite features of the Indian who stood in the marsh, and got a clearer look at the bundle he held up toward the storm.
    It squirmed in his hands.
    Thunder boomed across the sky. When its roar had diminished, another sound could be heard over the constant patter of rain. A baby had begun to cry—a frightened, angry bleating that grew into a wail.
    Max held his breath. Off to his right, the guy with the mustache rose slightly, leaning forward. But Max only glanced at him for an instant before returning his focus to the shirtless Indian standing in the marsh. From the squirming bundle he held aloft, the baby's arms emerged, fists beating the air. A terrible suspicion grabbed Max; perhaps this wasn't any kind of baptism or blessing at all. The woman on the opposite edge of the marsh watched, but wasn't as impassive as he'd first thought. Her shoulders shook with quiet sobs. The rain swallowed her tears.
    The Indian holding the baby began to chant in his own language, and immediately the others joined in. Their voices came together not in harmony, but in a unified, prayerlike rhythm.
    Something flitted through the dark above the marsh. Trees rustled and branches shook, and then birds took off from the crooks where they'd been hiding from the storm and began to circle like vultures above the Indian and the wailing infant. The chanting grew louder. The mother shouted and stepped into the flooding marsh, but one of her tribesmen grabbed hold of her arm and would not let go.
    The chanting ceased.
    “No,” Max said, for he could feel something awful coming.
    The man in the marsh lowered the baby ever so gently, resting the swaddled infant atop the water's surface. And then he let go. Blanket already soaked through with rain, the baby sank in an instant, the water closing over it. The crying ceased abruptly, leaving only the shush of the rain.
    Max stared, trapped in a moment of disbelief.
    In the distance, deep in the belly of the storm, thunder rumbled.
    The hidden man leapt up and forward, wading into the marsh. Max moved at almost precisely the same moment. In unison they cried out, Max in English and the other man in French, as they slogged through the water.
    The Indians on the opposite edge of the marsh looked up, all of them staring at the Frenchman. None of them seemed even to notice Max. The baby's mother and the man who had drowned her child did not look up at all, staring atthe dark surface of the water where the baby had gone