Lightfall by Paul Monette

God?”
    â€œThere is no God,” said Joey automatically. He would not look her straight in the eye.
    â€œDon’t tell me,” she said. “Tell your friend.”
    â€œMichael, listen,” Joey pleaded. He reached out and touched the prophet’s chest, the tips of his fingers just above the heart. “She’s nothing. She’s got no power. She couldn’t stop you then, and she can’t now.”
    This speaking of her in the third person had the effect of closing Iris out. Michael nodded and followed as Joey went through the gate. The two men crossed the muddy lane and made their way steadily down the beaten field to the white stone church among the pines. Iris stayed close behind for a while, but she didn’t move to hector them any further. She was trying to figure how much Joey knew.
    He clearly connected them both with who they used to be—as if they looked no different now and no time stood between them. What was worse, he’d suffered no memory loss of his own. He wasn’t, like her and Michael, tied to a blind unconscious will, gray as the tides below. Who was he, anyway? All she saw was a grizzled, crew-cut fisherman, lonely and daft and slightly fanatic. He had not shed his years for her, the way he had for Michael.
    Since when did a destiny sure as theirs require a third party? Why could she not have a confidant, too? In her eyes, Michael trod the field ahead with a wise man at his side. Her brazenness fell away. She had learned her first crude lesson in class: she would ferret out all the facts, while he would be entrusted with the meaning. It made her ache with jealousy.
    When she saw they were bound for the church, she stopped. She watched them unlock the double door, slip through, and shut her out. She wouldn’t have followed inside, no matter if all the doors and windows had been flung wide. Except what little she knew about Michael and his cult—two minutes’ glance at her article, and nothing to put it in context with—she had no opinion of God, one way or the other. She’d taken the opposite route the moment she entered the village hall of records. Research was her only method.
    She would not join with Michael on the runic ground of Higher Being. She knew they would never have chosen her for that. She didn’t have the skills for what she couldn’t prove. So she stood in the field at the stroke of noon, in a fountain of light, with the sea gone sapphire, and tried to picture the spring of 1588. As if she could will away the fact that he’d abandoned her.
    Inside the church, Michael stood at the amber window, peering out at a world that gleamed like gold. He watched her survey the land, looking off across the water like a widow. Behind him, Joey worked to free a loose slab in the floor. He chipped at the mortar with a garden trowel and dug it out with his fish knife. He strained and groaned as he heaved the stone from its place. He was just lifting out an ironclad chest wreathed in cobwebs, about a foot square, when the prophet finally turned. Michael hardly glanced at the treasure as he padded, lost in thought, to the last pew. He sat heavily, propped his chin in his hands, and began to sort it out.
    â€œShould I kill her, Joey?”
    â€œYou didn’t before,” the other said vaguely. He bent down close to jimmy away the rusted lock. He wedged his knife and worked it like a lever. The rotted screws gave with a ripping sound. He creaked the lid back on its hinges.
    â€œHow long do I have?” asked Michael.
    â€œFive days,” Joey said, wiping the dust from two or three objects he took from the box.
    â€œWhat do I do?”
    â€œIt’ll come to you, Michael. Don’t force it. Here.”
    Joey handed across what looked to be a compass. Then a sealing ring with a coat of arms. Then a snuffbox made of tortoise shell. Michael received them one by one, without any special interest. They would have no