Chapter One

Oliver Ketch lay on his back in the woods, staring up at swaying monoliths. The wind tugged lightly at their branches, and they danced like spectral ballerinas, flowing lithe and graceful and pure. He waited, as he always did, for their leaves to touch. To him, it had been like playing with magnets as a kid, trying to force the positive ends together and feeling that mild resistance as they fought against his will. They always won. Always. And he wondered if the leaves possessed that same sort of magnetism—positively charged five-pointed maples, broad positive elms with serrated edges that looked like saw blades—all fighting and vying for that same life source, hungry for canary-yellow sunlight. 

Just once, he wished he could see them brush against one another.

“Too bad Buckshot can’t see this.” He said, breathing it in.

The sun rose, shifting the hues and contrasts of the forest floor until those warm, golden rays pierced the underbrush like spotlights and gave a breath of life to the woods behind his home.

He loved his life. He loved its simplicity. Working to tend a small yield farm that his father and grandfather and his grandfather before him had tilled, pulling up wheat and soybeans and potatoes over the course of six generations until it was all he would ever know. Or love.

“Thanks, gentlemen.” He said, placing his hand reverently over his heart. “You always know how to fix me.”

He stood and dusted himself off as best he could and returned to the plow cart. The late 2030s had seen innovation after innovation in agriculture, and Oliver couldn’t have cared less.

“Give me a plow and a strong horse like you, Buckshot, and I could till the whole of the earth.” He patted the black stallion's flank and fed him a sugar cube from the front pocket of his flannel shirt. The horse huffed in excitement and attacked Oliver’s hand with gusto. 

“Easy, fella.” He laughed, pulling his hand back quickly at the accidental nip. “I can’t give you more if you bite my damn hand off.” He reached into the pocket again and gave Buckshot another sweet cube. It would be a long day, and the horse enjoyed the work. 

They toiled through the morning until the sun hit its high point like a bullseye. Oliver didn’t bother to look up; he knew that noon had been fast approaching. His half-turkey sandwich and coffee had been devoured before Buckshot could finish the first pass, and the rumbles of a hungry belly told the time better than any watch ever could.

“Alright, Buck.” He said, unhitching the horse from the plow and patting him on the hind quarters. “Go get some food and some water. I’m proud of you, son.”

He’d never have his own. 

Sterile, they’d told him. 

Life sets us up for exactly what we’re meant for, Ollie. His mother, so sweet and pure that he welled up thinking of her, spoke like angels did, and she made him feel like a little king. She died shortly after she’d said it to him.

His father had been quiet. Not in a mean way, no. More in a contemplative way. He walked around, eyebrows continuously furrowed, thinking thoughts that seemed too big for such a tiny farm. 

Occam Ketch had been the town blacksmith on top of farm duties, and welcomed Oliver with open arms when, at only four years old, the little boy insisted upon helping him with farm chores and keeping the forge stoked. 

Oliver let his hands brush over their headstones as he walked back to the small, three-room shack. He read his father’s inscription, the same words he’d said the day his mother had died: “I’m only here until I find her again.” 

Occam had never cried—not that Oliver had ever seen in any case, hadn’t even shown a hint of emotion about it when, at the age of ten, a sensitive young prince had found the queen hanging from the rafters outside of their bedroom. 

A week after his baby brother had been stillborn.

And a little prince’s life was wailing for weeks, then months, and over two years until Oliver, in a fashion, had finally made peace with her absence. 

He laid forget-me-nots on her headstone and a single bit of blue flax over his baby brother’s. 

They were going to name him Oscar. He was beautiful and looked just like an angel when his mother held him to the light.

“Keep sleeping, bubba.” He patted the tiny granite slab, smooth after two decades of sleet and rain and sun and dust and snow that had kept him company while Oliver worked to keep the farm going. “…I got this for both of us.”

He stepped inside and looked directly up at that rafter where he’d found his mother. He wanted to hate it…but found he couldn’t.

It had given her peace, after all, when time wouldn’t.

“Miss you, Mama.” He placed his hand over his chest in solidarity.

He scrubbed his hands and his face in the washroom basin, the clear water turning black as hours of hot western dust coated him like a second skin. He checked his face for any spots he missed, then dried his hands and face and combed his too-long brown hair out of his bright blue eyes. He’d have to go to town for a haircut this evening, he thought, while he was there for seeds.

He felt it rising, and he stuffed darkness back down deep.

No room for that here. He thought.

No more.

“On second thought, big fella,” he called out to Buckshot, “I’m gonna give you the afternoon off.”

No sense in putting it off, he thought, the field would be there tomorrow, and Buckshot would work harder to make up for the free day. 

“Too bad people can’t be more like horses.” He said to the room at large, hoping that, maybe, the spirit of his mother would agree with him.