The Radio Magician and Other Stories by James van Pelt

Each snowflake, when it met the lake, glowed for a second, until the water’s surface itself provided the only light in the dream. Plenty of light to see him if he was there, but he wasn’t.
    She stood at the lake’s edge for centuries.

    “She’s awake.”
    Soft light fell all around, like snow. Time passed. Darkness. Light again. I’m under the snow, she thought. Darkness.
    “She’s awake.”
    Her arms were moved. Light was provided. A question was asked. A tube was pulled from her throat. She was hurt. All very passive. Darkness.
    “She’s awake.”
    Elizabeth forced her eyes open. An older man sat on the bed beside her, holding her hand. Beside him stood a medical technician in a lab coat. The man holding her hand had a haggard face. Worry lines across his forehead. A little baggy in the jowls. It wasn’t until she blinked her vision clear that she could see his eyes.
    “Henry?”
    He mouthed a silent, “Yes.”
    “How long?”
    He patted the top of her hand. “Six hundred years.”
    She tried to sit up. Before she was halfway, though, her calves cramped.
    “Probably easier to lay still right now,” Henry said. “The doctors here have some wonderful treatments. Since you’ve made it this far, you should be up soon.”
    Breathing softly, Elizabeth considered what he said for a moment. “There was a doubt?”
    “Big one for a long time.”
    The ache in her legs dwindled to a dim reminder, no worse than the one she felt in her neck and back and chest. She squeezed his hand. “Henry, I’m glad you’re here.”
    “You can take care of her now,” he said to the lab-coated man.
    For the next two days, doctors came and went. They wheeled her from one examining room to the next. Most of the time she couldn’t tell what they were doing. Strange instruments. Peculiar instructions. Doctors nodding to each other over results that didn’t make sense to her. Even their conversation confused her, speaking with a dialect too thick for her to decipher. Although she did have one moment of relief when one asked her to stick out her tongue and say, “Ahh.” The tongue depressor even appeared to be made from wood.
    They weren’t subservient, however. Brisk, efficient and friendly, but not servile. When she saw Henry again, she asked him about it. He met her in a sitting room where other patients sat reading or visiting quietly. The medical techs insisted she stay in a wheelchair, although she walked quite well in a physical therapy session earlier in the day.
    “All that I’ve learned from our strange journey, Elizabeth, is that time changes everything. You’re not a religion anymore. Actually, now you’re kind of a curiosity. I expect someone from the history guild will want to talk with you. Marvelous opportunity, you know, to actually chat face to face with the Elizabeth Audrey.”
    Something in the way he said it caught her ear. “What about my holdings? What about the corporations?”
    Henry covered her hand with his own. “Gone, I’m afraid. Long, long gone now.”
    The tears came unbidden. She thought of herself as a strong person. Finally, she shook the tremors off and dried her face. “We need to get to work then to get it back. How close are we to finishing the project?”
    Henry smiled. She’d always liked his eyes, but now the years in his expression set them off beautifully. “I’ll let you judge for yourself.”
    When he stood, a medical tech who had been waiting a few seats away, rushed over to help.
    “That’s okay. I’ll take her,” Henry said.
    “Thank you, sir,” said the tech. “I’ll be close if you need me.”
    Elizabeth looked from the tech to Henry and back again. She recognized a power order when she saw one. “How old are you Henry? How long have you been awake this time?”
    He turned her chair toward the exit and began rolling her toward the door. “Twenty-two years. I’m sixty-two now.”
    The door opened into a wide space. A ceiling a hundred feet above enclosed