"The Power" by Garon E. Whited

                He walks through the dross of years like a ship thrusting roughly through heavy seas.  His grandfather’s garage, gone to storage, unopened for a generation, thick with dust and time, full of sheeted forms and boxes.  He sails through time, through the ancient stacks of magazines, the forgotten places of a previous century.  The dust and the dark dance for his flashlight, one in, one beyond the pale flicker of the beam.  A tower of garden tools looms before him, then points and laughs in the shadows behind. 

                Where was it, where was it?

                He turns in a slow circle, lost in the cavern of ancient rust and old wood, tries to remember the last time he came this way, to recapture the feelings inside.  The task he has set himself is not impossible (he hopes) but he is far removed from the skinny little boy of fifty years ago.  He unbuttons his blazer and loosens his tie, runs a hand through his hair.  It was all so long ago, so very long ago, and the ways of memory are strange. 

He is here for a purpose, to find something, to find a way through, to find a way back.  To find It so he can find the boy…  The boy.  The boy came this way.  He found It, saw the way, learned to go there without It.  But first he walked along this floor to It.

                He looks down at the floor, examines the cracked concrete carefully.  He sees the large, flat-soled shoes, the mark of a flat-souled man, a man who has spent his life in classrooms, in offices, in meetings.  Clear-edged along the sides with the direct, ever-forward movement, scuffed front and back from the slight shuffle, the slight drag of one whose boyish spring has moved beyond summer and into autumn.  His own footprints in the dust, tracks in time.

Mingled with and ahead there are crisper marks, clear-lined and decorated in whorls and stripes, the sneakers of a boy that barely knows a classroom but intimately knows dirt paths and knee-high grass and sunlight.  Traces of dirt in the dust, brown against the grey, shaken from playgrounds and parks and vacant lots.  Small shoes, small enough to vanish down the rabbit-hole. 

And the narrow, double tracks of It.

                “Maxwell?” he whispers, voice hushed in the dimness, drunk by dust and dark.  “Maxwell!” he calls, louder, and the garage seems so much larger, drinking the shout until the walls recede into infinity.  That’s good, he reflects, absently, instinctively not thinking about how it works lest it stop.  The garage is not large, but it has grown since he walked into the shadowed interior.  He still has the Power.  Sluggishly, it stirs within him and things continue to change inside.

                He follows the silent tracks, tries not to disturb them with the soft, gritty sound of each footfall.  They lead him unerringly to the place he knew they would.  They lead him to It.  Gleaming in the light of his weakening flashlight, it laughs at him, mocking his fear, mocking his terrible joy.

                It has aged more gracefully than he has.  Grey invades his hair until it is neither black nor grey, but a battle between salt and pepper with the pepper slowly giving ground.  It has the same paint It had when his father was boy, when his grandfather bought it secondhand, scuffed and scraped even then, but still gleaming betweentimes.  Lines streak his face, especially the corners of his eyes, with laugh-lines and frown-lines, for Life has marked his flesh more surely than it has marked the steel.  A few spots of rust darken the metal, fill the scratches in the paint.  It sits there, immortal, mocking his age, Its headlight winking at him as if to say “I know something you don’t know.”

                He reaches out to It, touches the chrome-plated handlebar, touches the braided leather wrapped around it for a grip.  The metal is cold, the leather old, but the front wheel turns a little, spokes glittering in the gloom.  Dirt falls from the tire, dislodged by the rotation, shatters on the floor like tiny grenades with clod shrapnel spreading all around the impacts.  Artillery in miniature.  Little pieces of some world, caught up in the turning, taken back to this mundane, dusty place to be lost amid the passing years.

                This dirt is fresh, not the dry dust of yesteryear.  He recalls the time he brought It into the house, dirt of the Emerald Jungle shedding from the tires on the hardwood floor of the entry hall.  The voice of his mother, scolding.  The voice of his father, commanding.  Neither understood the power of It, the freedom it gave, the Power it unlocked, the innocent need of a young boy.  For that timeless moment, he is eight again and afraid that It will be gone into the darkness if he takes his eyes from it.

                He lifts it down and steps astride It, looming over it as a man, and laughs.  He remembers being ten, about to embark on a glorious journey to who knows where, lands of magic and mystery and castles and spaceships.  Monsters to fight, because monsters are there to be fought, princesses to save, because the silly girls always need saving, don’t they?  Flying over the Gorge of Death, swinging through the Valley of Danger, weaving like lightning between the Pillars of the Dead, outracing the Black Dog of Doom.  He remembers, he remembers, he remembers.

                He turns the handlebars again, kicks up the stand, slowly wheels It out through the twisted maze of dusty trails, safe trails, trails through the vault of time.  The road is narrow and difficult but he knows the way, now.  His feet and heart recall each step.  His hands steer automatically, easily, and his longer arms make up for the long years since last he came this way.

                Daylight.  Early afternoon amid the gusting, hot winds of summer.  Clouds the color of ashes cloak the sun and the smell in the air is like old tin and old rust.  It will rain soon, possibly before the sunset. 

                At the mouth of the garage, under the old-fashioned, up-swung door, he turns It over, rests it on the handlebars and the seat, turns it belly-up like a dead thing.  It does not want to, but he is bigger than a little boy and his strength can control the physical form of heavy steel pipe, gears, chain.  It submits with poor grace, wheels turning slowly, pawing at the air with idle irritation.

                He shrugs out of his blazer, hangs it on a rusty nail just inside the garage.  He unbuttons his cuffs and carefully rolls up his sleeves.  He loosens his tie a little more and unbuttons the top button.  It’s time to get down to business.

He digs out the toolbox, and the wheels stop turning, suddenly attentive, maybe even worried.  He lays out the sockets and wrenches, the screwdriver. Now he can smell the oily scent of fear.  It knows he can take It apart.  It knows there is no one to save It.  The boy It enchanted all those decades ago is inside the man, locked away, held still and quiet by steely will and grim purpose.  There is a man looking at It and holding instruments of mechanical torture and machine surgery in his hands, gleaming with chrome and polished steel and the slickness of a few rogue smears of grease.

                It shifts with the wind, trying to topple over, but his hands are not those of a little boy.  He grabs It, turns It to steady It, gets a sawhorse and a strap to keep It steady.  Tied up, upside-down, helpless, It can only wait in terror for what must come next.  The man knows about It.  The man will not let sentiment slow his hands.  Or, rather, will not allow sentiment to stay them.  He might take his time with It, enjoying every turn of a screw, every twist of a nut, and It is afraid.  It has overestimated Its power, Its charms.  It reached too far and now revenge will be served.

                The man worked quickly, removed the heavy, steel-rimmed front wheel and set it aside.  The metal guard of the chain and pedal gears, the back wheel, the back gears, the whole length of chain.  In minutes, It was naked.  Naked and powerless.

                He washed It.  Greased It.  Oiled It.  He scrubbed away the first signs of rust, buffed It, opened paints and applied them.  He aired up the tires.  He replaced worn links, adjusted the chain.  He put fresh batteries in the headlamp and tested it, frowned, replaced the wire to the thumbswitch on the handlebars.  He carefully dismounted the bell, took it apart, and replaced the spring.  He put It back together and set It upright.  He raised the seat and the handlebars to their limits.  He stepped back and regarded It, a gleaming red bicycle, a link to the past, made new and clean and fresh for today.

                It looked at him, stood very still, almost not daring to believe.  The man could still take It apart.  He could have put It back together just to make It bright and shiny and new before taking It to the junkyard for crushing, or to be thrown into the street and run over.  But It began to hope, and It hated Itself for hoping, because the man sensed that hope.

                “We’re going for a little ride,” he said, and It waited for the rest, trembling on Its stand.

                “I know, I’m bigger and older than I was the last time,” the man continued, “but you were made solid and strong.  You can hold me.  You’re small for me—or I’m big for you—but you can do this.”  He leaned down, his face beside the headlight, whispered like a lover, “And you will.”

                The man carefully put away his tools while It watched.  The man neatly placed every tool in its place, every tray, every box, exactly where each belonged.  He wiped his hands on a cloth, cleaned them of oil and grease as a surgeon might clean away the blood.  The only tools he kept were a screwdriver and a small pair of bolt cutters.  These he placed in a crowded backpack and withdrew a blowtorch and a jar.

                “Do you know what this is?” the man asked and held the jar up in front of the headlight.  “It’s called ‘thermite.’  It’s not that hard to make, apparently, but this is the commercial stuff.  It’ll melt through the engine block on a car.  It burns so hot, in fact, that it takes special measures to light it.  That’s why I have a roll of magnesium foil in my pocket and a blowtorch.”

                He squatted in front of It and held up the jar.

                “We’re going for a little ride,” he said, very, very softly.  “And if I don’t get where I need to go, I’m going to burn the rubber off your rims, cut every spoke, pour this stuff into your pedal bearings and front wheel steering shaft, coil your chain and pour more of this on it, and weld you into a useless lump of metal that might, just possibly, be sold for scrap—but I won’t.  I’ll bury you in salt at the bottom of a ditch and let you rust away to nothing.”

                It saw he meant every word.

                “Well?  Do you believe me?”

It had seriously underestimated this one.  They stopped believing, they always did.  They outgrew the magic.  They forgot, or convinced themselves they forgot.  They remembered the games, the playing, and never remembered the truth.  They thought everything a silly fancy, the product of idle daydreams and childhood imagination, and gave up on such things once they turned old.

                Except this one.  He remembered.  He knew It was not silly.  He knew the games could be—not games.  And he was grown.  If he remembered, he might still have some trace of the Power.  Combined with a man’s years and experience and strength…

That was enough for It.  Tricking him would be hard, yes, but the thought never occurred to It.  Anyone could be tricked, even a grown-up—especially a grown-up.  But one that remembered was dangeros, incredibly dangerous.  If It tricked him and he survived…

It feared the consequences of failure.  Immortality means only the potential to live forever, not the certainty of doing so.  Looking into the eyes of this one, It knew he would do exactly as promised.  It could almost smell the salt, almost feel the rust creeping into the steel of Its bones.

                Reluctantly, the headlamp flashed once.  The man nodded, unsurprised.  He put the blowtorch and the jar once more into the backpack.  He drew out a package of cards, old things with pictures of baseball players, and slowly, almost lovingly, fed them into the spokes just so.

He slung the backpack and stood up, tucked in his shirt, straightened his tie, and buttoned his blazer.  He looked down at It.  It looked up at him and shivered in the wind.

                “I’m looking for my nephew.  I know he went for a ride yesterday.  Now he’s gone.  You’re going to take me to him.”

                It stood quietly and waited.  Wisely, It chose not to argue.

                The man stepped astride It, kicked up the stand, pushed off against the driveway and rolled down toward the road.  He pedaled, carefully at first, wobbled up and down the street.  The old skill came back quickly and his turns became smooth, his travel straight.  People stared from within their houses, peeked through half-parted curtains at the strange man in the dark suit riding a bicycle two sizes too small.  Some lunatic, certainly, ringing a bicycle bell and letting baseball cards click and pop and snap with the turning of the wheels.  No one ventured out.

                He ignored them.  He needed to ride It to find Maxwell.  So he practiced.

                As he headed down the street he remembered the last time, when the blacktop was dirt and gravel, the storm drains were ditches, and whole rows of houses were just leafy stretches of woods.  But the woods were still there, just a little farther away.  Another couple of blocks, the end of a cul-de-sac in a subdivision, and there the woods began.

                “Here we go,” he muttered as he pedaled faster.  It readied Itself.  It could feel the Power build.  Not as strong as Maxwell, but Maxwell was the third generation of a family strong in the Power.  Maxwell had no need for It once he knew the way.  The man might not truly need It, either, but grown-ups always want to be certain.  And there was a ditch and a sack of salt waiting if he even suspected It did not cooperate.  It did Its best.

                The woods loomed higher and darker as they barreled down the blacktop, wind rippled through his hair, flapped his tie like a flag.  The rat-tat-tat of the spokes rose in pitch as the wheels turned faster.  He jerked upward and the handlebars, lifted the front tire to clear the curb, shot over the concrete border with a bounce and a crash of parting leaves.

                And vanished.