Flame and Dust

Leah Hamby

It is peaceful where I am. The grassy back of the hill emerges from the earth like a great whale, serene among the other hills speckled with trees around me. The rustle and sway of the grass sounds, a gentle contrast to my stillness.

Far away, on the horizon, a city burns. The warm light from the fire fills that corner of the sky, mixing with the blue of the moonlight. I am far enough away this time that I cannot hear the screams. Smoke curls into the sky, obscuring the stars that will become so rare in the future. It is 48 BCE, and the city of Alexandria is burning.

…

Nothing is happening in the place I wake up next. Well, nothing human at least. The forest is very busy. The leaves above my head block most of the sun’s heat, but that doesn’t stop the humidity from soaking me thoroughly. A little creature, something like a monkey, chatters above me before blinking at me with its bulging eyes and skittering away.

Waking up in a different place and time every day will always be disorienting, but I like to think I’ve learned to handle it well. Still on the ground, I turn my head to peer at and through the trees. I don’t remember ever having been in this place before, and there is no evidence of human civilization around me, so I’m not sure what year it is. Even if there were people, I might be hard-pressed to figure out a specific date. Of the places and years that I have woken in and know for certain, none of them have been past 2023 CE. My guess is that this is the current state of the world, and I’ve just been left to bounce around in its past. Always following, never allowed to walk alongside.

I’ve never been anywhere before 3475 BCE. The start of human civilization in its earliest forms was also my beginning. I have a formidable memory, but I can’t remember when I started. I was never a physical child; I know that much. A child in my position wouldn’t be able to learn very much about history or how to be human. It would have been very cruel to make me a child. I have that one mercy.

I roll from my back to my side, watching my hand disappear into the underbrush where my arm falls. A piece of bark digs into my cheek. There were times when I felt younger than I do now, when I was younger. Humans have the privilege of just counting the seasons to figure out how old they are. I would have to add up the individual days I’ve lived through. A tedious task to continue, had I ever started.

The climate and plants around me make me think of southern Asia, or maybe a remote part of South America. There are 5,499 years that it could be. The historian inside of me urges me to get up, look around, see what is happening. Surely there is something around here that I should be recording in my mind, witnessing. There is so much I have experienced, so much left to see, and time just keeps moving.

The human part of me wins out today, and I turn and fall asleep again.

…

My rest has dropped me back in Indiana, 1990s. After some walking, I stand outside of a familiar, white-washed building. The blue paint on the window edges is dingy and chipped. The falling sign on the front reads “White Hills Nursing Home.” I have someone to visit.

I step up the concrete stairs into the foyer. There is a small fish tank bubbling on a table in the corner. The woman at the desk looks up at me briefly before going back to reading her newspaper.

I approach the counter, and her eyes roll back toward me slowly, as if with great effort. “Here for . . . ?” She speaks tiredly.

“Linda Robinson.”

“Sign the paper, and it's back to the right,” she sighs.

The large room off the hallway behind the desk was long and beige, with a low ceiling and a place for a partition curtain across the center. There is a pervasive, stinging smell of antiseptic and not much in the way of decoration. The bleakness of the room is offset only by the mismatched rocking chairs and the soft sunset shining gold through the windows along the back.

She is sitting, looking out one of these windows, rocking back and forth, hands entwined in her lap.

“Hello Lin,” I greet, walking slowly toward her.

She turns to me, her hair and skin grayed from when I had last seen her. The sunlight catches in her eyes, intense blue-gray like storm clouds, just like they had always been.

“Jenny?” She calls for her daughter, eyebrows downturned.

“I’m afraid not, Linda.”

Even if she could remember me, she wouldn’t by now. No one ever remembers me—another constraint of my condition. Anything I’ve tried to do to change the course of someone’s life is reverted like it never happened. I am not meant to be part of anything. Memories of me or my actions are dabbed from the history books like undried ink.

I got to visit a few times when she was just a bit younger. I would always tell her the same thing: that I knew her from the 1920s, when we were both in Brooklyn, dancing and drinking and tripping through late-night streets, leaning on each other. She would scoff at me. I looked like I was in my twenties; there was no way I was alive in the twenties.

I would laugh and play it off like a joke, and she would be too desperate for company to question me too hard, and we would reminisce together about the past until sunset when an attendant would approach us and tell me that I had to leave.

This time, she isn’t fully there anymore. Still, I come for this. For her to have someone to talk to. Now she takes my mention of Brooklyn and clutches it to her chest with her frail gray hands. She talks and talks about her youth while I sit and listen. She tells me about the parties and the men and the dresses. About the music and lights and people she had around her. I listen to this, remembering, because I was one of the people around her.

I can’t tell her about the days that I wake up in 1920s New York and think of nothing except finding her. The days that I push into her life again, and she pulls me up to her small apartment to do my makeup without even knowing who I am. She was just that hopeful about the state of the world and the people in it. She’d let me borrow her green dress with the gorgeous sequin pattern and the beads lining the bottom that would chime as I walked; I always choose the same one. And we’d go to lawn parties and bars and the houses of people richer than us where we weren't invited. Linda loved to dance, so we danced until our feet ached, and got drunk, and slapped men’s hands off of each other, until eventually we stumbled home together. After that, we would lay on that ridiculous bright yellow couch of hers, and I would giggle drunkenly at her stories until the small hours of the morning when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. Then I would wait through another decade or millenia of days until I’d open my eyes in 1920s NYC and repeat it all over again.

I stay now until she falls asleep and leave on my own. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up with her in New York.

…

Zoroaster, Mani, Buddha. It would make sense that they would be some of the most important people for me to observe.

I did, for a little bit. I’ve been dumped into enough days during my existence that I was bound to run into them eventually. I listened to their ideas with some of their first followers and watched as others expanded on their teachings and practices. I’ve seen full religious nations rise and fall and scatter. I asked them questions about myself, and I received no answers. By the time I hit the meridian of history for the first time, I had gotten tired of it. I no longer sought them out.

I have been at the years 1 and 36 and all of the years in between many times. Israel is beautiful, where and whenever, but I have never enjoyed it. On those days when I’m there, when the beginning of Christianity is alive, I find an oak tree and sit under it, shielded from the heat of the burning blue sky. I sit there until I can justify falling asleep and waking up somewhere else. I do this now for every one of those people who could possibly explain my existence.

This Christ could be an incredible person, and I would still resent him. I could listen to him teach, perhaps find some meaning in his words that I haven’t found anywhere else. I could memorize his lessons and take them to the Nicean Council the next time that I’m there, just to see what they would do.

But eventually, I would have to ask. He might give me an answer, but there isn’t an answer that could explain it enough, that could justify it. And worst of all, he might not even know what I am talking about.

…

I am walking among the first Puebloans in what will be called Mesa Verde. The sun beats harshly, heating the clothes on my back. The streets bustle around me, the noise of footsteps and chatter fading to the background. I should be asking about them, what their names are, how they live, but instead, I’m looking at it. It seems to stare back at me from where it is carved into the side of a step.

At first I thought it was the Masons, or some Templar wannabes, or some other secret society that I haven’t yet made my way into. But no, this is different. Scratched into copper mines in Ur, written on a barrel on board the Santa Maria, held up on a poster in the parade where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. All the same mark. A Sumerian Letter, a simple, informal greeting, used between friends and family. I see it in places it absolutely should not be.

I had never considered that there might be someone else like me before. Could it be that the universe was that cruel, to give me someone who could understand me, but give us two different paths through time?

Was it even possible that I had met this person? Improbable, certainly, with all of the days that there have been in human history, that we would ever overlap. And there would have been no way to know. I never went around proclaiming my differentness; it would be impractical to expect someone else like me to do so.

And the letter. No one else in any of the places that it’s been has seemed to notice it. Am I the only one that can see it? Am I just delusional, having lost my mind after all this time?

After that day in Mesa Verde, I started looking.

…

I am in India, the early 2000s, specifically the National Archives. There is only a nigh-impossible chance that there is a book here on the Sumerian alphabet, and it's probably a fictional dissemination through cultures entirely unrelated to each other, but my mind is too cluttered thinking about it to do anything else but search.

A young man approaches me. I find myself surprised, since scholars who frequent national archives usually aren’t the types to seek out casual conversation. This one, however, seems chatty, perhaps an enthusiastic university student taken with the idea of being one of those people who keep the company of old books and articles. He tells me about how he is researching one of the rulers of the Heheya dynasty, and how his death impacted Indian ideas of the deification of rulers.

I was not with Maharaja Haihay when he died, but I attended the feast he held just a few days before. I could tell this student everything he needed to know to become one of the leading experts of his generation. In the brief moments between thought and speech, I want to.

I want to spit it at him. Here is another piece of useless information about someone you will never meet, who will never have any more impact on the world unless it is through the actions of someone else. Here is another fact that you can use to pretend that you can understand yourself by pretending to understand this person who will never be alive again to correct you. Here you go, take it.

You, with all your opportunity to keep the people around you, waste your time in a room full of nothing but dust. Go. Live. I am forced to be here, to do this. You are not.

I politely dismiss myself.

…

It was very cruel of the universe to make me a woman, and then put me in all the places in history a woman was not meant to be. I am currently hiding in the back of the British parliament, 1605, unfortunately conspicuous in my female figure and the dress I woke up in. Hopefully, the grand opulence of the high, gilded ceiling and the bright blue carpeting overshadow my presence. One of the members stopped me earlier, rudely questioning me about why on earth I was there. I stuttered something demure and submissive enough that he allowed me to move by him in the hall. He’s sitting in the front row and hasn’t seen me yet.

Right now, Sir Thomas Knyvet will have found Guy Fawkes, would-be terrorist, rigging the cellar with nearly two tons of gunpowder.

Someone slams the door into the wall, opening it. There’s yelling and the men all stand in a rush, a cacophony of questions and orders and overall self-importance. But there is also fear.

In the rush of people pushing through the narrow, dark halls, I see it again. The same letter, streaked haphazardly in the corner of a painting of Elizabeth I. I am caught in the torrent and pushed away, but still, the sight remains, seared into my mind.

…

It is 2023, a rare occasion when the world and I take a synchronized step. I’m in New York again, pushing my way through the busy foot traffic of the rush hour streets. I slip into a sports bar, escaping the press of people. It’s empty at this time of day, except for a bored bartender and the only type of people that frequent bars at noon. The green-topped stool that I sit on is tacky, in both of the word’s meanings. I can’t order anything—I never wake up with money—so I sit and watch the small TV hung in the corner of the room. Curiously, the channel has been switched from the typical sports coverage to a news broadcast covering a series of wildfires blazing through Northern California.

I watch this for a brief few seconds, wondering if I should continue back outside and see if there is anything more interesting happening in New York before I feel something in my chest freeze and sink like a dead body in a winter lake. Behind the woman with the microphone is a lone man. He is waving a white curtain, lit from behind by the fires he is surely standing too close to. On the curtain proudly stands the Sumerian Letter.

And, for once, I am in the right time, wrong place.

…

There is only one train from New York to Sacramento, and I do not have money to buy a ticket. I find myself running regardless.

My feet pound over and over, the streets of New York seem to stick to me, clutching, grasping at my chances. I find myself skidding into Grand Central Terminal, the gold, grandeur, and high, green ceiling familiar to me from my time with Linda, wandering in here past midnight just for the novelty of being in a train station and not planning to take a train. I have been awake now for 11 hours. I stop, the reality of my situation catching up to me. A plane would have been faster, but I’ve never had the ID necessary to fly. As it stands, I don’t have the money to buy any kind of ticket.

“Are you okay?”

When I turn, I face a middle-aged woman with blond hair and bright blue eyes. They seem to stare into me, right to all my fears and exhaustion.

“I’m fine,” I pant, catching my breath. She just looks at me, unimpressed. I say the truth, as always. “Would you believe me if I said I ran all the way here, just to realize that I don’t have a ticket?”

She looks me up and down. “Yes,” she says flatly.

I’m at a loss. She asks me where I’m going, and I tell her that I have someone in Sacramento that I want to see very badly, but have no way to get to them.

She crosses her arms and cocks her hips to the side, sighs, and hands me a ticket. I sputter, bewildered.

“Look kid,” she begins. I am incomprehensibly older than her, but I hold the ticket and my tongue. “You have someone you want to see. I have someone that I really don’t want to see. it works out. I’m visiting my crazy sister in Sacramento. She thinks she’s a psychic.” She rolls her eyes. “You take the ticket, see your boyfriend or whatever, and I can tell my sister that I met an angel or a spirit in need or what-the-hell-ever to get her off my case, ok?”

I nod, shocked speechless for the first time in a very long time. If I didn’t know better I would think that this woman was the psychic in her family.

“Go!”

…

The train ride takes three days and two hours, the most I have ever been awake for. I alternate between watching movies off of the screens of strangers, snapping my fingers right in my ears, and banging my head on the chair in front of me. My seat remains upright for the entire trip. Resting my eyes is not an option. By the time the train arrives at the station in Sacramento, I’ve started to fear that I fell asleep on the train and am dreaming. I keep going anyway.

I stumble from the station onto the street, briefly asking for directions before walking toward the fire. As I walk through the streets toward the orange and gray smoke spread across one side of the sky, I realize how unlikely it is that all this amounts to anything. In order for me to meet this other wanderer, we both had to have stayed awake long enough to find each other. If he is actually like me, and I haven’t been chasing the shadow of my own sad desires. The chances are minuscule. But so are the chances that we wake up on the same day in the first place. I’ve done this much already.

I blink harshly to get the sandy feeling of exhaustion and lingering ash out of my eyes and head. When I look around again I see some chalk on the sidewalk, leftover from some small children ushered inside by their mother because of the increasingly looming smoke on the horizon.

Shedding the jacket I woke up with, I grab a light blue stick and begin writing. I don the jacket again. The Sumerian Letter stands, like my own personal coat of arms, on the back. And I start running again.

…

Eighty-five hours now. I see the world in brief glimpses granted to me by my defiantly lowering eyelids. Gray street, red brick, red sky. It is difficult to keep moving, but that is the only thing I can do. I have no idea where the man with the Sumerian letter is, nor do I have a starting place. I can only keep moving. The more people that see me, the greater the chance that he will. I just have to keep moving. I harassed a reporter earlier. Jumping around in the background and yelling to the camera. A little longer, and I think I might have been arrested. I can’t run if I’m arrested.

I turn the corner, and I’m on the ground. There are hands on my arms, pulling me back to my feet. I open my eyes, dazed. Everything is blurry before the world pulls itself together around the face in front of me. A strong nose, downturned eyebrows, dark skin that reminds me of my times in Menelik’s Ethiopia, and wide eyes that I can see my reflection in. There are no wrinkles on his face, but it feels like there should be. The exhaustion I see there is familiar. “Is it you?” I breathe out.

He nods.

…

I don’t learn his name. Neither of us have one. He leads me to a nondescript brick building in a poorer part of the town. We pull ourselves up five flights of stairs, and he picks the lock to the roof access with ease.

We sit on the roof of the building, watching the fires spread farther into the sky. Neither of us lie down. It would be a tragedy to fall asleep now.

I learn that we have met before, one day in the City of Ur. He’d noticed me, purposefully average though I am.

“The way your eyes followed every movement before it happened. I thought, maybe, but when I turned to look again, you had already slipped away, and I couldn’t find you. I thought it was just my own optimism working against me, but I kept trying, anywhere I could think to leave a trace. And here you are.” We talk about everything. Every gripe.

“Do you think OJ did it?”

“Of course he did it!”

Every grievance.

“Did you see what they did in Argentina?”

“Yes.”

And every glory of our far too long lives.

“Were you there when Rome rose?”

“I was there for every single brick.”

No matter what was happening back in New York that the universe had decided that I needed to see, whatever assassination or writing of a historic piece of literature or other world-changing event, it could not compare to this. This melding of thoughts and words in the space between our bodies was worthy of all the attention of a thousand history books. You are the universe's apology to me.

When I wake up the next morning, we’re still here in California.