The Song of Mendlessohn Rhodes

The egg hummed with warmth beneath her fingers. Dolly couldn't help coming up to her room to visit it now and then. Every time she looked at it, that warmth radiated in her—even more so when she touched it as she did now.

It wasn't like a goose egg or a chicken's egg. She had plenty of experience handling the latter when helping her Mama out before dawn on the farm. She gathered the eggs into her basket (that she was very proud to have maid herself), and she left them on the kitchen counter so that she and Mama could cook Papa up a nice breakfast before he went off to work on Onyx Ranches. Mr. Onyx provided them with this home, and Papa had always said that they were very fortunate to be 'under a devil like that's wing'. Dolly never understood what that meant.

Weren't devils supposed to be bad?

Not that she thought of that now. She didn't think of devils or Mr. Onyx at the moment. Dolly could only focus on this strange and sleek egg that felt more like a mix of a rock and one of Papa's pistols. It gleamed gray-black like one of them too. She couldn't wait to show Pedro again. Pedro was the boy next door whose family sometimes helped out on the farm. His Mama and Dolly's usually spoke in a language that Dolly couldn't understand, but she hoped to one day. Pedro spoke that language too, and every time that he did, Dolly could swear that she felt like she was transported to another world: a beautiful and faraway one so different from this one.

It was similar to how she felt touching this egg: only this time, the world she imagined was different.

When she showed it to Pedro, he said, "Ai, put that down! That looks like it's from el diablo!"

Dolly had giggled. "I know that means 'devil', silly. And it didn't come from there. I snuck it into church, and neither it or I busted out into flames!"

Pedro removed and lowered his large hat, his eyes wide with curiosity. "Then where did it come from?"

Dolly shrugged. "I don't know. But come feel it. I think there's magic spinnin' in it."

Pedro approached, gingerly setting two fingers atop the egg's shiny surface. He smiled. "Do your parents know about this?"

Dolly's face turned stern. "No. And you can't never tell them. Promise? Papa will throw it out first chance he gets and Mama'll think that ol' Ruth's done laid a rotten egg."

"A huge rotten egg!" Pedro said with a laugh that made Dolly giggle. He then ran his fingers down the egg's side, letting a bit of silence settle for only a moment. "I feel something...almost like a heartbeat."

Dolly smiled and reached out to touch the mystery item. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I think it's alive."

"But from where?" Pedro asked. "And what will come out of it?"

"I don't know. But let's promise another thing. Promise that we'll watch over it..."

Pedro beamed, nodding. "...and take care of it forever."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mendlessohn Rhodes tipped his hat to the sheriff on his way into Dante's Springs Jail. "He say anythin' yet?"

Sheriff Pete sighed after having tipped his own hat. "Bastard ain't say nothin' yet. He said he's waitin' for the feller who had the gall and skill to take him down in a duel and arrest him."

"My guess is he's talkin' 'bout our Mendlessohn here, huh?" Deputy Irving said with a laugh, sipping from his coffee mug after.

"Ain't no one brave enough to bring danger to our town or district or state ever since Mendlessohn done took down Outlaw Jake and his gang." Sheriff Pete gave a knowing grin.

Mendlessohn shook his head good-naturedly, and continued his way up the path that led to the jail's front doors. He would have given a response about that time, but something gave him pause midway up the path: something up ahead. His eyes moved skyward where a series of yellow and green orbs blinked back at him in various successions—almost like music notes.

Music notes that she supposedly named after. Oh, how he loved the music of the world.

She had always said that the magic device she found that served as a portal to music and the rest of the world came after he was born. He was a blessing, she said. And that was why the town of Dante's Springs was safe again.

That all happened when Mendlessohn was a boy though. Recently, all types of danger had showed its face: from duels gone awry to horse-stealing, land-razing, and even a couple kidnappings and townfolk left for dead.

It all started the day after those strange blinking lights came back. They were lights that he seemed to understand...that seemed...to communicate with him.

"What're you lookin' at, Mendle?" Deputy Irving asked, his eyes going exactly towards where Mendlessohn faced.

"Nothin'. Just thinkin' is all."

That was another thing—Mendlessohn was the only one who seemed to be able to see those lights. The first time he had seen them was when he was a boy, and he had described them to her. She had giggled, telling him that what he described sounded like music notes.

Was that what they were?

Shaking his head of those memories, Mendlessohn made his way into the jailhouse where was was greeted by Laura who was putting some wanted posters away in a drawer.

"Hola, Mendlessohn," she said with her signature smile. "What brings you here?"

"Laura, como estas?" He placed on a partial grin and removed his hat. "I'm here to see the newest catch. Why are you here so late? You should be resting." He spoke all of that in the magical language he had learned as a boy.

"Oh, your Spanish is even more beautiful than the last time I heard you speak it." Laura paused to face him. "I'm letting my father finish the cooking. Then I can come home to a nice meal."

"That sounds like a good plan." Mendlessohn began making his way towards the small passageway that led to the cells.

"You should come over one day," Laura continued. "I'm certain my parents and sisters will love to have you."

Mendlessohn delivered that partial grin again. "One day." He inclined his head. "Hope you have a great night, Miss Laura." He turned afterward and headed towards the cells. It was a thing being popular within a range of several hundred kilometers. People always spoke to him, but he hardly ever knew what to say. He had never communicated well with others except when he was a boy...when he used to speak with her.

Now it seemed like he understood those nighttime blinking lights more than he understood people.

Mendlessohn stepped toward the cell where a silhouetted man sat in the corner on a bench. The man wore clothes that no one had ever seen before made out of a leathery fabric that no one could identify. Even the pistol he had used in a duel had been foreign and strange. It fired green smoke and a shiny silver projectile that certainly hadn't been a bullet. With the speed and silence that the weapon had, duel experts said that Mendlessohn Rhodes should not have been able to dodge that and overpower the stranger with such an obsolete six-shooter.

'Obsolete'—that was how the stranger had described the weapon, despite the pain he had been in. He recovered quickly though, and was already healed, even though he had just been shot this morning.

"The lights followed you here," Mendlessohn said, getting straight to business. He stood right in front of the cell's bars. "They were about ten miles south. Now they're almost directly over Dante's Springs. Why?"

Low laughter emerged from the cell. "You came here to talk about lights?"

So strange. Just hours earlier, the stranger's accent had been really thick—almost as though it were his first or second time attempting English. Now he sounded like a foreigner who had been studying for years. Mendlessohn could almost remember when she taught him Spanish, and told him how quickly he picked up everything. Even Quahote had stated that he was the only outsider who picked up on the Mojave tongue with such ease and near perfect pronunciation.

Oh, Quahote. Mendlessohn missed him. The old man's last words were on how grateful he had been to see his people and the outsiders united and respectful to one another...

"...a feat brought by the miracle of your presence, Mendlessohn."

"Daydreaming again?" a dark voice asked from the cell.

Mendlessohn had almost forgotten that he had come here to engage with the stranger who had been responsible for hurting others, stealing food, and putting towns and peoples against each other. The only one who had seemed to take a liking to the man was Mr. Onyx who had let him stay on the ranches since the outsider seemed to have more valuables worth more than that strange pistol.

"What do you mean by 'again'?" Mendlessohn finally asked, having forgotten about his first question.

"You can't help it," said the stranger. "You can't help but have memories that aren't yours, connect with things and people you've met for the first time. You can't help but know what those lights are saying."

Mendlessohn furrowed a brow, not noticing that his breathing was slowly intensifying.

The stranger stood, the shadows casting an extra layer over his form. "The lights have been following you. Not me. Those 'lights' are from our world: a nomadic planet that only knows intergalactic war. Your parents have been checking in on you, using those lights, to ensure that you were bringing the peace we once knew to a new world."

"My parents?" Mendlessohn shook his head. "But my parents are—"

"Those individuals were not your parents," the outsider stated. "They found you. She...found you. And when your parents saw how much she loved you, they knew that you were where you meant to be. They placed you here to protect you from the atrocities that have befallen our home. This...planet here...had been the safest location in the galaxy because it had—it has—so much potential."

Mendlessohn attempted to absorb all of this information. So much of it made sense, and yet he had so many questions. The first one that came to mind was: "And why are you here? Why'd you hurt those people? Why'd you want to provoke me and start strife?" He felt a hint of anger bubbling within him.

The man shrugged casually. "I suppose you can say that it's in my nature. see progress, I see beauty, and I envy it and want to disrupt it all. I had heard about you and your comfortable home here. I wanted to taint that serenity, this unification, break the resilience of the ones who dwell on this world. There's no point in trying to do so back on our planet. There is always chaos, war, and suffering. My purpose would be redundant, muted. But here...yes, there is much potential indeed." The faint moonlight reflected off his unsettling grin.

A lot of it began to make sense now: many of the visions that Mendlessohn had received throughout his life here and within the journeys that he had taken. He had seen images of a man in the dark while he slept, and almost every time that he did, the man would whisper that he'd be successful one day.

"You're not going to win," Mendlessohn found himself saying. "You're...you're not going to win."

"I'm patient," said the stranger, folding his hands behind his back. "You'll make a mistake one day, and that's when I'll put my mark."

"I haven't made a mistake so far." Mendlessohn took a step backward, choosing to stop engaging with this outsider. He had come here to tell him how his sentence would be carried out—that he would be put on a train where he would await trial, but something told Mendlessohn that somehow the stranger would escape and find his way along another route.

As the stranger eerily watched him from within the cell, Mendlessohn set his hat back on his head. "My parents were the ones to show me my first experience with two kinds of love in this world. And it's through their stories where I'll always defeat you."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Dolly, you've had that egg for about six years now," Quahote said as he saw the teenager by the river. "What are you possibly going to do if that hatches?"

"Name whatever comes out of it of course," Dolly said with a grin. "I've always liked the tales you've told of the river beneath the sky." Her eyes moved towards the water as she ran her fingers over the egg's smooth surface: the egg tucked against her chest that always pulsed gently when by this gentle body of water. "And I know whatever lives in here: it likes the tales too...and the music."

"The music..." Quahote repeated.

"Mmhmm." Dolly's eyes raised skyward, and her grin transformed into a smile. "So maybe...I'll name it after the music of the stars, so that anyone in any language who encounters it and says its name will always know its song too."