Chapter 1: Pregnant by Prophecy

First day I woke up as Wyatt Young, Greg Montgomery came stomping over, grumbling that we didn’t have enough hands or enough trucks.

He came barreling up from the gravel lot, dust clinging to his jeans and a scowl dug deep under his old ballcap. He paused, just long enough for me to catch the glare in his eyes. “Wyatt, we’re short on hands and pickups—again,” he muttered, his voice rough as gravel. I swear, the way he said it, you’d think the sky was falling over a busted axle and a missing shift.

Well, if that’s how it was gonna be, I didn’t hesitate—I redirected Maple Creek straight into Silver Hollow Marsh.

It was the kind of move that’d have gotten me run out of half the counties in the Midwest, but here, nobody so much as blinked. The creek surged, wild and silver, slicing through the cattails and flooding the old marsh, as if it’d just been waiting for my say-so. I stood there, boots sunk deep in the mud, feeling the power hum under my skin. Guess that’s just how things go around here.

But nothing could have prepared me for what came next. The next day, all 107 pack leaders were pregnant.

Word spread faster than a grassfire. By noon, folks were already whispering behind the feed store and out on the church steps, eyes wide, hands pressed to their bellies. Even the toughest old-timers looked spooked, and the air was thick with nervous laughter and the smell of coffee left to go cold.

By day thirty, Greg Montgomery, clutching his swollen belly, begged me, “Wyatt, you’ve gotta help me. I really can’t do another one.” He looked ready to cry, and honestly, I didn’t blame him.

He cornered me behind the Hall of Brotherhood, breathless and sweating, his hands trembling as he tried to keep his voice from cracking. “Wyatt, for the love of God, I can’t take another day of this. You gotta fix it, man.”

I bounce around inside America’s classic stories, with the power to bring over props from other books. The catch?

I can only jump worlds once a month, and it’s a thirty-day cooldown before I can bring in another prop.

It’s the sort of trick that sounds like something out of a Ray Bradbury paperback, but it’s as real as the calluses on my hands. Sometimes I wake up half-expecting to find myself back in my own skin. But nope. Still here, stuck with a power that comes with rules tighter than a church budget.