I can feel it in my fingers, barely gripping onto the crumbling ledge of the cliffside. A rumbling of horse hooves approaches. I know that there’s only one way that today will end.
In a few minutes, I will lose my handle on the rock, or else it will slip out from under me, or else the Bandit Monsoon and her horse will kick me off of it, or else one of her toughies will blast it with a gun, or with a spark of something tougher than guns. Magic, grit. No matter what shakes me, it will shake me, and I will tumble, free-falling for just long enough to wonder if this will be the last time. Then I will wake up at the campsite to the sound of horses in the distance, scramble to my feet, and start running all over again.
Every time, I think this will be the time they don’t get me.
Every time, I fall.
Today my grip is weaker than usual. The Bandit Monsoon skids her horse by the edge of the cliff and the vibration of the horse’s movement weakens the rock to crumble. I fall.
I wake up. I run. It doesn’t take me long to get to the cliff. No matter what path I take through the desert brush, I find my way there eventually. I’ve tried to head back towards town, or march straight towards the Bandits, but my feet bring me somehow to the fragile edge of the canyon. The Bandit Monsoon and her gang are close behind me. I manage to turn around to face them. The satchel by my side is safe, and so is the stolen necklace within. When I fall, I’m taking that with me.
The gang comes closer into focus: The Bandit Monsoon on her stallion, a bright palomino. Her toughies, three of them, surround her. The one in front rides a black horse with a white forehead. Funny, I never noticed that before. I had thought it was the Bandit herself in the lead this entire time, but it was only a goon. She holds her hat in one hand and the reins in the other.
I take a step back, reflexively, and it takes me right off the edge. But by some miracle, I grab the edge of the cliffside. This day isn’t over, not yet.
But this bandit, who is not the Bandit Monsoon, rides her horse over to me and looks down from it. She’s all sharp and shadow as she blocks out the high noon sunlight. It’s a break from the routine, which is almost a relief. She inspects me from above, and as she places her hat gently on her head, I think for a second that she might say something kind. Instead, she brings the horse’s hooves down, and they tear into my hands. I fall, screaming in pain, only to wake up, still screaming, and scramble to my feet.
I turn around at the cliffside this time, too. There’s something about this bandit who keeps sending me off that strikes me as interesting. Maybe it’s the tilt of her hat. Maybe it’s the detail I notice of her black leather boots, sparking purple with some kind of enchantment. Or maybe it’s the way she looks down at me as she sends me tumbling with a stomp of her horse’s hooves.
It takes me three more cycles to muster out a word. “I’m—” Fall, wake, run.
Then “Who—” Fall, wake, run.
Then “Please—” Fall, wake, run.
All starts of sentences I never get to finish.
She does things differently each time. That’s why she keeps catching my eye. Sometimes she holds her hat with her left hand, other times with her right. Sometimes she kicks the horse, other times she whispers to it. Sometimes she speeds toward me. Sometimes she hesitates.
Just when I’ve given up on language, she speaks to me.
“I’m the Bandit Squall. Remember that.”
I’m too shocked to speak for several cycles. I have to muster up my courage to say her name:
“Squall—”
She doesn’t send her horse to kick me. Rather, she jumps off of it, her boots shining as they hit the ground.
“So you remembered. Who are you?”
“Shouldn’t you oughta know? If you’ve been chasing me all this way, killing me.”
“I don’t know you. I know what’s in that little bag of yours, but I don’t know you.”
Her eyes examine my face closely. I can feel her gaze in my scrapes and my sinuses. Then, without another word, she stomps her boots onto my fingers. She’s no horse, but she’s strong. I lose my grip and fall.
Wake up, run. At this point, it’s muscle memory. I barely have to think to follow the quickest footpath, which is good, because my mind is not thinking about running. This new bandit—Squall—is a question in the forefront of my imagination. Why is she in this loop, too? Why not Monsoon herself?
When I stole from the Bandit Monsoon’s stockpile, I knew I would have some trouble coming for me, but I didn’t realize just how much. My plan was to find something small yet valuable, pawn it off in the next town, and find a train to take me somewhere far away, somewhere I could start over, somewhere where it wasn’t so hard to be anything but a criminal. I stole from the Bandit because that was the rightest thing I could have done, or so I thought. I stole from the Bandit because they once stole my brother from me.
I’m so lost in thought, I almost run off the cliff. But I manage to stop myself, arms windmilling as I desperately dig my heels into the ground.
My determination doesn’t matter. The ground slips beneath me. But I’ll be damned if I don’t know how to catch the ledge by now.
The Bandit Squall stands above me. She leans down and speaks in a low voice. “Give it up. This doesn’t end until you give it up.”
I tilt my head up to meet her narrowed, suspicious eyes. “I give it up, you kill me. I don’t, I get to live.”
And without fully thinking about what I’m doing, I let go of the ledge.
As I fall through the air, the reddish stripes of the canyon blurring around me, the sheer stupidity of my decision catches up to me. For all my bravado and lines, I was bluffing when I said I thought I’d live. What if this is it, the decision that breaks the loop—and breaks my skull at the bottom of the canyon with it?
Waking up by the ashes of the campfire is once again a relief. The routine of running. Talking to the Bandit Squall, that was tricky. But running, falling, waking up, this I know how to do.
The loop is not broken. During the next five cycles, the Bandit Squall doesn’t even approach me. She shoots the earth with her gun, the sheer force of the impact sending the cliff crumbling like sand into the depths of the canyon, and me with it. I let her. It’s harder to observe her from this far, but given time I’ve noticed a few more things about her.
Her gloves are made of the same leather as her boots, and they seem to have some of that same enchantment. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s helping her be a damned good shot. Because she’s not trying to shoot me. She wouldn’t waste bullets on that. I don’t know if she’s trying to torture me or what, but she’s definitely not trying to kill me. She regards me each time with a hard line of a mouth. Her hair is braided behind her, and she’s altered her path to avoid the flies. Smart. With my knowledge of the pattern, I get to the edge of the cliffside before she can. Even with her horse, there are a lot of obstacles. But she still shows up long before the Bandit Monsoon, and doesn’t even bother to wait for her boss. Which is just more confirmation of what I’ve been figuring out since the loop began:
Here, it’s just me and the Bandit Squall.
The next loop, I introduce myself before she can shoot.
“The name’s Loam, in case you were wondering. If that gives you any reason to let me be on my way, by which I do not mean off this cliff.”
“You’re not funny,” she says grimly, though the corner of her mouth lifts a little. She shoots the ground below me.
Fall. Wake. Run.
We start to chat, extended between the loops. I have the whole run to think of what to say. We never get closer than a few yards away, unless I’m gripping the ledge and she’s lording over me. I think Squall is afraid that I’ll attack her. Which, maybe that would break this cycle, but I have no real reason to. I don’t hate her. As far as I know, she seems just as trapped as I am.
“So, Squall. You work for the Bandit Monsoon?”
She looks at the dusty earth beneath her horse. Then back at me. “I’ve been known to be in her entourage. I’m good at what I do.”
“And what might that be?”
“What I do,” she snaps, and I fall again.
Next time, she initiates. “Won’t you give it back? That little necklace means big things to a lot of people, you know.”
“Would you pay me for it?”
She looks over her shoulder at the Bandit Monsoon, approaching from the distance, and I realize that she doesn’t have any money. She’s the Bandit Monsoon’s toughie, not her own. Despite that, she doesn’t seem like a typical goon. Not with that enchanted leather, or that tone. She’s got her own agenda.
When she doesn’t respond, I goad. “What, waiting for Mommy Monsoon to come over here and tell you what to do?”
She tightens her fist around the reins and the earth crumbles around me. Grit. Goddammit. As I reach for the edge of the canyon, I think I hear her say, “You don’t even know what you have.”
Well, and maybe I don’t. I can feel the necklace in my satchel as I run, slamming against my upper thigh. It had been on a shelf in the storeroom of the old house Monsoon and her crew used as a base. Displayed, almost, right out there in the open. It was small enough to grab and light enough to run with. I thought they hadn’t seen me, at the time. I was fast, in-and-out. I had always been fast. Running around as a kid, scheming ways to make my deliveries faster and faster. My brother Duffin had never been as quick as me. Maybe that’s why he got caught in the crossfire of that shootout. Or maybe Monsoon incited violence anytime something didn’t go just her way.
When I finally catch my breath, repositioning my hands on the ledge I’m hanging from, Squall is dismounting her horse. “Nothing to say?”
“Just thinking.”
“No time for that.” She stomps, and I slip, fingers gripping the canyon edge.
“Isn’t time all we have? I mean, in the repeating sense?”
Squall kneels next to me. Places her gloved hand on the earth beside mine. I see her closer than ever, the small strands of hair between her eyes, scars from acne or some kind of pox on cheeks. I almost fall with the shock of how close she is. She could kill me if she wanted to. Not by falling, but by gun or knife or grit or worse. And yet she doesn’t.
“This isn’t really time. It can only ever go one of two ways. You fall, or you give me the necklace.”
“You aren’t getting the necklace,” I say, hoping my feigned confidence is somehow enough to convince her. She stands, and with the abruptness of that, I fall. Wake. Run.
Sometimes I fall before she even gets there. Sometimes I slip of my own accord. We are both running more quickly than ever. When I see her horse, it looks worn from the sprinting. I wonder if it is looping too, or if it is just me and her, alone in this desert. Sure, Bandit Monsoon and the other two are here, but they never arrive until I’m about to fall, and so, I forget them.
“Loam.”
I am standing there, catching my breath and waiting to fall, when I am shocked by her saying my name.
“Give it to me. Please.”
“Aww, thank you kindly for saying ‘please’.”
She glares at me. “Still not funny.”
“Why do you want it, anyway? What’s in it for you?”
Her fist snaps shut, and so does the earth below me.
The next few loops, I push, shouting at her before she has a chance to throw me off.
“I mean really, why can’t you let this go?” “You want this for the Bandit Monsoon?” “I’d be happy to run forever, fall forever if that’s what you want.” “I’m not giving this back to her. I’m not. She doesn’t deserve it.”
Each time, Squall sighs and collapses the earth beneath me.
I know I just said I would be fine with falling forever, but the truth is that I’m starting to get sick of it. There’s this feeling, in the bottom of my stomach, a sickening vertigo that seems to get stronger and stronger the longer I’ve been in this loop. It’s not hunger, or thirst, those I haven’t felt since the looping began. But it is a deep sense of wrongness. I wonder if she feels it too.
“Starting to get tired, Squall?”
She looks at me with so much attention, I’m scared for a second that she might know the color of my heart. Hell, with her grit, maybe she does.
“Not too bad.” For the first time in a while, she gets off her horse. Walks towards me. I haven’t even fallen yet. She’s shorter than I thought she’d be. I back up, scared of what she might do. She looks behind her, seeing the distant dust of Monsoon and her other goons. And then she looks back at me.
“I have no allegiance to Monsoon. But the necklace is mine. And you’d better give it to me. Or else.”
“Or else what? You’ll kill me.”
“I don’t want to kill you. We’re victims just the same.”
“Well, if I give you the necklace, you’ll have killed me. I don’t have a horse. Monsoon would trample me into the cliff before I could run. And town is still hours away”
Seems like she doesn’t like this answer, because she narrows her eyes and lifts her hand as if to use it for grit.
“I mean, I’d trade it for your horse.”
She laughs. It’s genuine, whole-chested, so intense she has to spit out words between bursts of laughter. “You’re– I mean, no— but—”
“See. I am funny.”
And I take a step back, and I fall.
Wake. Run.
But this time, she’s there before me. Standing on the edge of the canyon, right where my bootprints would be if the loop didn’t reset.
“How’d you—”
“I left the horse. He’s been slowing me down.”
“Cryptic. Hey, you’re standing in my spot.”
“Switching things up a bit. They say that’s the only way to break a cycle.”
“And that’s what you’re doing?”
“If you give me the necklace, that’s my plan.”
I walk towards her, shifting the bag behind me. “You’ve got no horse to trade for, so why would I do that?”
“Because I can get you out of here.” She flashes her gloves and that dark purple sheen slides into the air like oil slick. “I can get us both out of here.”
I shake my head. As much as I’d love to be free of the sick feeling in my stomach, and the exhaustion of the loop, and the repetition of running—I can’t trust her.
“I’ll take my chances in the canyon, thanks.” I start to walk along its edge, away from her. I can hear the Bandit Monsoon’s horses, feel them vibrating the ground. They’re no more than three hundred feet away now.
“Wait!” she screams. “She’ll kill you for taking it. It’s the necklace that’s making the timeloop. I put that curse on it.”
I turn around. “So take the curse off.”
She’s closer to me. She must have been following. “I can’t. Not without touching it. But regardless, it’s mine.”
“Well, my brother’s life was his too, once. And then Monsoon took it. So forgive me if I don’t want her to get anything she wants.”
“I’m not her. Please. Look at it.”
I pull the necklace out of the satchel. Its silver glows in the blazing sunshine. And on the gem, that purple sheen that I’ve come to know is her. “Squall.”
But she’s right in front of me now, too close, and I can see the imperfections in the skin around her eyes as she reaches for the necklace in my hands.
I dodge and she grabs my wrist. I try to pull out of it, but she places her other hand on my shoulder and shoves. It’s all I can do to shift my weight forward and sweep with my leg against hers. I push. Her boots dig into the ground—it’s fragile here, at the edge of the canyon. I can see out of the corner of my eye that it’s still a long way down over here.
She presses against me, scrambling trying to pull the necklace out of my fingers, but I keep my grip. I try to pull it towards my center of gravity, until she manages to tug it away and the shifting weight of that catches me off guard. My feet slide across the ground until—a breath—there isn’t any ground beneath them anymore. My arms pinwheel to grab hold of something, but she slams me into the air and there’s nothing else left.
We are falling off of the cliff.
And, oh, do we fall! My arms grasp the closest thing to me—her shoulders—and she grips my wrist holding the necklace, and the other arm around my back. The wind rushes tightly around us, for much longer than I expected. The canyon’s a long way down. I close my eyes tightly and prepare myself to wake up, to start running. But I do not. We stay falling. Midair.
I wonder how many seconds it will take before we are crushed by the rocks below. I hold my breath, prepared for the end.
And then the rushing sound of wind that I associate with the falling suddenly stops. But I am not back at the campsite. I open my eyes to see the red rocks of the canyon around me, and in front of me, Squall. Her eyes glow purple as she lowers us slowly to the ground.
I stumble out of her arms, a few feet away. In the shadow of the canyon floor, the purple grit of her boots and gloves and eyes illuminates the entire space. And the necklace—which she must have pulled out of my grip during the fall—is in her hands.
“See, Loam. I told you I could get us out of here.” She walks towards me expectantly.
“Get us out of here? No. Now you’ve got the necklace, sure, but I’m not free. Without the loop, I’ll get hungry, or thirsty, and it’s only a matter of time. And you’ve got no horse! The nearest town has to be miles away. What, exactly, is your plan here!”
She shrugs. “You’re not impressed by my grit.”
I kick a rock.
“You don’t know what I can do. Now that I have this.”
I kick another one.
“That necklace is a powerful magical artifact, you know.”
I turn to face her, to say something snarky and cutting, but before I can, she speaks again.
“It was my mother’s. She was a great mage. Until the Bandit Monsoon raided our home and forced her to put all her grit into magical objects. It was a great tragedy, the loss of such a witch. She took me, too. Made me do all sorts of magic. Though I do think mother would’ve been proud of my little theft-prevention loop curse.”
“Squall, I—”
“We’ve both lost people,” she says, standing up straighter. “But I think you understand why I need this necklace.”
I would do anything for something of Duffin’s, if there was anything he ever had that was truly his. I mean, I still wear his spare socks, but—let’s just say I did understand.
So I nod. “It’s just. That was my ticket out of here. And without the necklace, well. I don’t have much of anything anymore.”
She holds it out, then sizes me up.
“You want to go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t here.”
She considers the necklace, rubs her finger up and down the gem. “I know a farm looking for some staff. Room and board, a small wage.”
“And I could work there?”
“If you wanted. I could take you there.”
I step closer to her. “Is it far away from the Bandit Monsoon?”
“About as far as you can get. It’s on the other side of the continent, where my mother is from.” She looks at me, and it’s not magic, but I feel hope burbling purple in my stomach.
“Well then. What are we waiting for?”
She hands me the necklace, then turns around. Pulls the dusty black bandana off her neck to reveal a clean patch of skin. The necklace is warm in my hands in a way it never used to be.
So of course I lace it around her neck. Of course I clasp the two ends into place. Of course she turns around, smiling brightly and glowing brighter.
“You know what the grit my mother put in this necklace can do?” She smiles, and her teeth aren’t as sharp as I thought they’d be.
I shake my head. She grabs my hand.
“Take us home.”
There is an explosion of purple, and then we’re gone—off to some place I’m not yet sure will be my home, but feels a whole lot closer to it than the cliff was.
Claire McNerney writes and performs in her home state of California. Her writing appears in Asimov’s, Haven Spec, and Saving Daylight. They enjoy, among other things, the satisfying snap of ginger cookies. Visit her on instagram @o.h.c.l.a.i.r.e or at clairemcnerney.com to say hello and see what she does next!
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