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

under moments before.
    “Save him! You can still save him!” Max shouted, waist deep in the water now.
    The night birds screamed. He looked up just as the first of them dove into the water, wings folded back against its sides. Three others darted into the marsh. Max faltered, staring in wonder, as others skirted the top of the water, whipping through tall grass and then rising again, wings beating the air.
    Something broke the surface, wings shedding droplets of water. Then more, until four birds emerged, heads dipped low, talons thrust out below them as they lifted the baby from the water by its sodden blanket.
    The shirtless man smiled, tilted his head back, and let the rain fall on his face. He raised his arms in silent thanks.
    The birds carried the baby aloft. Max could hear it coughing, spitting up water, as they began to descend with their burden again, lowering the child into its mother's outstretched arms. The moment she took hold of the baby, the birds flapped away, vanishing over the treetops. The child began to cry again in great hitching sobs.
    Max wiped rain from his eyes and stared. He took a step back. What he'd just seen simply wasn't possible. Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement, and he glanced over at the Frenchman, whose mouth hung open in astonishment that mirrored Max's own.
    The Frenchman lifted his hands, palms up. It took Max a moment to realize why: the rain had begun to taper off. As the shirtless Indian called out to the thunderclouds, a dimgrowl came from the sky, and that was all that remained of the storm. The clouds had thinned. Even as Max gazed upward, he saw clear spots open above. Starlight glittered through those rents in the storm.
    The rain drizzled to a stop.
    One by one, the Indians returned to their canoes. As they did so, each touched the squalling infant on the crown of its head. The man who had nearly drowned the child helped its mother into the last canoe. They began to paddle away. Several of them glanced at the Frenchman, aware of his presence but unwilling to acknowledge him. The Frenchman raised a hand and made a noise, as though he wanted to call out to them, to ask what it was he had just witnessed, but he stopped himself.
    Perhaps he wasn't sure if he wanted the answer.
    None of them looked at Max.
    He waded after them. On his third step, the depth of the marsh changed so abruptly that he stumbled forward, catching himself just before he would have submerged completely. Water enveloped him to just below his shoulders.
    Cursing, he searched with his feet and found a shallower spot, pulling himself out so that he was only waist deep again. Even as he did, a wave of nausea came over him. He swayed on his feet, blinking, and his throat felt suddenly parched.
    He squinted against the light.
    To the west, through the trees, he could see the light of the setting sun. For a second, he smelled lilacs.
    “What the hell is this?”
    He stood in the middle of the narrow river that surrounded Scout Island. A dozen feet away, the water flowedunder the little bridge he'd crossed. The bike he'd taken from beside Cooper's Bar stood propped against the stonework.
    Max raised his hands to his hair and found it dry.
    There had been no rain. No marsh. No Indians, no baby, no Frenchman, no birds. Shaking, afraid his mind had slipped a gear, he forced his eyes closed, open, closed, and open again. The world around him now was solid, but it had felt solid enough before, too. A hundred thoughts filled his head, stories of alien abduction and of fairy mounds, but he discarded them all. Those were just stories.
    Blinking, he studied the branches of the old cypress and oak trees around him. The hurricane had damaged them enough that even if some of them were the same trees, he wouldn't have been able to tell.
    The same trees? What did that even mean?
He'd hallucinated, that was all. Drugs were the only answer. Crazy Ray had given him something in that little stone bottle, and he'd been