The Chosen

"Please," the little boy said.

"What is it?" Murakami asked. He felt instantly shamed at his brusqueness.

"You must not go down there, sensei."

"Ahh!" Murakami drew in a startled, gratified breath. The child had named him "master."

"But what other way can I go?" he asked, wondering how this strange young child was familiar with Japanese customs.

"You must turn around," the boy said. "If you do, you will find a dirt road a mile and a half on the right, back the way you have come. It is hard to see but you will see it. When you take that, it will bring you shortly to a paved road that will take you where you need to go."

Murakami scowled. If the confounded road was there, how had they missed it? The child didn't even know their destination.

He shook his head. "I don't want to turn back. Surely if we keep going this way we shall get there." The truth was he was afraid to go back. But he would never admit that aloud.

"Master, please. Your danger is very great if you proceed down this road."

"I think you should listen to him," his wife said, her dark eyes, normally calm, wide and worried behind her glasses.

"Yes, Daddy," his son said. "Listen to him, please."

Frowning furiously, Murakami brought the van to a stop halfway down to the gully. "All right," he said, "but if – "

" Daddy!" his children shouted in chorus. They flew from their seats to plaster themselves against the passenger-side window.

"Look!" his wife exclaimed, pointing.

Down the narrow gully from the right came something that turned Murakami's blood to ice. Though he had never seen one in person, and didn't live close enough to the coast to be in any real risk, like many Japanese he feared in his bones a tsunami.

That was what he saw rushing down on them. A wall of water, frothing dirty white – tsunami in miniature, six or seven yards wide and two yards tall. He saw with instant, horrible clarity what would have happened had he driven on. That moving water-wall would have caught the minivan amidships, tumbled it downstream like a toy, until it battered open a window and the turbulent water smashed in to drown his precious family and himself.

In silence that seemed almost like a bubble insulated from the raucous storm noise, Murakami and his family watched the flash flood sweep past. It made a roiled river of the road in front of them.

"You are safe now," the boy said from behind him. "But your world also faces terrible danger. Please heed that warning, too."

"Yes, yes," Murakami muttered. He turned. "I thank you – "

Hanako screamed.

The seat was empty.

The child was gone.

Chapter 1

"Hey, A

The sun looked like a big red balloon about to pop itself on the peaks of the Jemez.

A

She walked along the lip of the dig, trimmed with tough blue grama grass. Like much of New Mexico the soil was a tough clay that turned into concrete on almost any pretext. A

Max boosted himself to sit on the edge of the hole. "Check this out," he said, holding up a Ziploc bag.

She squatted next to him, squinting at the scalloped chips of pale stone. They had an almost translucent quality in the dying daylight. The dense overcast, like a ceiling set ablaze by the sunset, gave the light a texture she could almost feel, but did little to aid her vision.

"Flint flakes!" she exclaimed after a moment. "Someone's been knapping."

He nodded, beaming. In archaeo circles – where A

"Found 'em right here, not too far from where the front door used to be. Looks like the inhabitants of this house were rolling their own tools up to the middle of the nineteenth century."

"You racist!"

They both whipped around. An angry young Latina with long black hair stood right behind them shaking a finger at the sunburned tip of Leland's nose.

The professor blinked. "What?"

"You racist bastard! You can't say that about my people."

"Say what, Yvo

"I didn't mean to offend you," Max said in badly accented but fluent Spanish. "I'm just showing A

"But it must have been left here by Indians long before the house was built," the furious young woman said in English. "And don't try to weasel out by speaking Spanish."

The professor's face was turning even redder beneath his tan. "Now, listen. I thought all this got settled years ago – "

"All right, everybody," a husky female voice called. "Just hold on, here."

Everyone turned. Trish Do

"He's accusing my people of being savages," Yvo

Trish put herself between the combatants. She held up a stubby finger before Max Leland's nose. "Wait," she said. "Here."

She took hold of Yvo

Yvo

"Come on, Yvo

A

"We're go

"How about me, Trish?" Alyson asked. She was a willowy Dartmouth blonde from upstate New York.