False Dawn #17: Out of the Pan
Part Three of Five: Time Constraints
Short Story Edition
Devin Leigh Michaels
I’ve been to Savannah. I’ve puked right over there!
“So, if you’re Destiny, is there a Fate, too? How ‘bout Old Man Time?” I challenge.
Kainoa looks at me with twin irises of electric blue, shrugging. “My grandfather is pretty old. He might qualify.”
I blink. “Dude, come on. There is no way you can get me to believe we’re in 1860s Georgia. I mean, seriously. Look around—how is any of this—”
“You! GIRL!” a soldier upon a horse shouts. “Your worth has reached its end.”
“Do what you must, General Sherman,” replies Casia, “but please, spare my brother.”
Brother?!
I turn to the gathering of generals and high-ranking soldiers of the Union Army before our porch. In the middle of the pack stands a young girl, perhaps fifteen at the most, with long fiery hair pulled back in a braid and a homemaker’s dress. Her chin is raised to defy, and God, if I don’t know that expression of haughty brilliance.
Then I see the man in chains on the ground. He’s older than Casia by a handful of years and by the looks of it, has been beaten from Atlanta to Savannah. His farmer’s shirt appears to have been washed in blood and his face attacked by fists and clubs. He still manages to speak, snatching her hand.
“No…we are in this…together.”
“Lance?” I murmur.
“You know them?” Jayden asks.
“Of course he does,” Rio answers. “He’s immortal.”
