Hidden Gem (The Travelers Book 1)

by Gaia Octavia

  “Hey.” He said it simply, quietly, “I’m Emit.”

  I turned toward him but kept my eyes on the rock next to his head.

  “Hey,” I returned, “Jade.”

  My voice was rough and scratchy from disuse, but it didn’t matter. That was all he said before turning to face forward once more–his hands in his lap, his breaths slowly returning to a normal rhythm. I was thankful for that. Because if he’d asked me anything about where we were going, what we were doing, or why I had even freed him in the first place–I wouldn’t have had any answers for him. After a short time, as the sun broke over what would be our first full day together, we dragged our pain-laced bodies up and continued walking.

  Hours later, checking over my shoulder for the millionth time, I made sure Emit was still a safe distance from me. He was almost always watching his feet when he walked, so at least I was spared the embarrassment of him knowing just how often I checked. I was terrified that something was going to happen to him and more than frustrated with myself for having taken him out of that camp. The responsibility of his safety now rested solely on me, and I knew exactly what kind of person I was.

  It certainly wasn’t the kind of person that anyone should be counting on for anything.

  What would Emit say if he knew what I had done? If he knew the truth about me? I’d already decided that despite the madness that gripped me when our eyes met back at the camp, I would find a place where he would be safe and leave him there as soon as we were far enough away from danger. I knew that the longer I stayed with Emit, the more danger I put him in. The man wanted me, not him. I was also well aware that the longer we stayed together, the bigger the risk became of Emit realizing exactly what kind of person he’d been forced to put his trust in.

  And no way in hell was I going to let that happen.

  Woven shafts of sunlight traced shapes on the warm, pressed earth as we made our way through the thick vegetation. I kept the pace up, knowing that we needed to put as much distance between us and the camp as possible. Emit was breathing hard but was managing to keep up. Traveling with the raider camp for the past eight years had helped me become familiar with the area. But the farther north we went, the fuzzier my memories of the terrain would become. I remembered how to find the cliffs that would lead us north for several months. And if I was lucky, I would find a suitable place for Emit to live before many of those passed.

  Until then, I needed to keep track of our position by following the landmarks I remembered–like the big stream I knew we should be coming to later in the day–and by climbing up the myriad of massive trees and rock cliffs to scout as often as I could. For hours, we headed east, and I hoped to make it to the stream before dark. While my body ached, I could only imagine how Emit must be feeling. Unlike me, he wasn’t used to walking for hours in this hellish place. Still, no matter how many hours I pushed ahead, he never complained. He just dutifully followed, trying his best to keep up.

  “Um, where are we going?” He asked, sucking in breaths, “I’ve never been very far from my camp until now.”

  His voice trailed off as I continued to move. Threading through the abundance of thick, gnarled trees, my line of sight was nothing but endless swaths of leaves, ferns, rocks, and vines. To the untrained eye, everything looked the same out here, but to those who have traveled endless miles to the north and south, there was a world of information living within every inch of the forest. The thick moss that grew on the sides of tree trunks. The areas in which shaded vegetation grew. The direction the hardiest plants were facing, reaching up in supplication–all of them provided the answers as to which direction you were headed, where you could find water, and of impending changes to the terrain.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Emit asked for what felt like the hundredth time. “I mean, of course you know where we’re going…”

  He laughed nervously, still hoping for a response. “Right?”

  Silence settled over us once again, but it didn’t last longer than a few beats.

  “It’s just that I have no idea where my family is. I’m sure you know how that feels. I just…”

  He huffed in a few more breaths. “I need to find them. I know you need to find your family too, so I just–I’m not sure how this is going to work. Not that I’m assuming you want me to stay with you or anything,” he added quickly, “I mean, I understand if you don’t want me around. I’m not much help and you don’t owe me anything. In fact, I owe you, ya know? For getting me out of there.”

  He eyed me then, looking sheepish. “I don’t know why you did. Maybe you were hoping I knew my shit and would be helpful? I guess I already went over the fact that I’m useless.”

  Emit’s shoe kicked at the dirt.

  “I understand if you just want me to go away.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to drown out his incessant chatter. While I did enjoy the sound of his voice, his compulsive need to fill every moment of silence was making me nervous.

  “Not that I want to go away or anything,” he went on, “I definitely don’t mean that. I really want to stay with you, ya know? It’s just that–I don’t know where you’re going. Even though I’m following you. Not that I mind following you. I would follow you anywhere if you let me.”

  I turned to him as his face flushed pink at the realization of what he’d just said.

  “Not like that! Not like, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth or anything. I mean–I guess I would if you needed me to, but…stop talking, Emit.”

  He’d muttered the last three words to himself, sounding utterly defeated. The pink flush of his cheeks would have been endearing if it wasn’t for the nervous tension that was filling me, drowning me from the inside.

  “I’m not looking for my family,” I said simply, my voice sounding harsher than I had meant it to.

  His endless talking and questions put me on edge and more than once now, I’d lost my temper and snapped at him. It hadn’t been out of anger. I was uncomfortable and embarrassed by all the experiences and social skills I obviously lacked; things that can’t be learned when you’re held alone in a tent for years.

  When he finally did fall silent, I was happy. Even though I knew the silence surely wasn’t making him feel the same way. It was better for him to think me disinterested rather than someone who didn’t have anything to share about his life that wasn’t horrific or pathetically weak.

  “Okay,” he said softly, breaking the silence after some time. “Okay.” He nodded, as if trying to convince himself that things were, indeed, okay.

  There were a few more minutes of blessed silence between us before he said, “You weren’t tied up like I was in that camp.”

  I felt my body stiffen and fought to hide my reaction. Focusing on the mechanics of walking, of placing each foot in front of the other, and hoping he would take my silence as the obvious hint it was.

  “You knew the way to get out of that camp. Of how to stay hidden,” he almost whispered.

  Left foot, right foot . . .

  He seemed to come to some sort of decision. “Thank you,” he said, apparently calling off his hunt for information, “for everything.”

  I whipped around to face him.

  “Eight years.”

  I heard the words. They had been spoken in a voice that sounded much like mine, but not quite mine.

  “I was there for eight years.”

  It had come out almost as a challenge, as a dare for him to ask me one more fucking question. But he didn’t. He just looked at me. His eyes–those damn eyes–holding mine. I saw no pity in them but as I watched, his eyes dimmed as a wave of knowing swept his face.

  I turned away from him again and kept walking. I had shared my name with him and now the fact that I had been in that camp for eight years. I hadn’t ever planned on telling him how long I’d been there. It had just come out. And after my admission, he’d gone silent. I knew he must be thinking about the things he’d seen in that camp before I cut hi
m free. It made my face redden and my stomach twist in shame to think about how he’d know some of the things I went through during my time there.

  After all, the raiders never hid what they used the young boys they stole from the camps for.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ⸙

  EMIT

  I quietly followed Jade as he worked his way through the thick brush of the forest. He was somehow able to move through the vegetation without making much sound while I, even when carefully placing my feet in the same exact spots he’d just stepped in, sounded like a herd of large animals clomping through the forest. When I walked, branches snapped, leaves crunched, and rocks leapt from where my shoes struck them. When Jade walked, the sounds of the forest were free to continue uninterrupted. The calls of birds, the rushing current of streams, and the wind’s caress of the thick canopy of leaves all sang around him. At least until I caught up to him. I had no idea how he did it but supposed he had learned from the raiders in that camp.

  I hadn’t heard them coming either.

  I still couldn’t believe that we were free. Or rather, that I was lucky enough to have been picked by Jade, since he was the one who had freed us both. He hadn’t been tied up like I was, but I had only been there for three days, nursing the wounds I’d received from trying to fight the raider who had easily overpowered me.

  I watched Jade as he continued heading in whatever direction he was leading me. He was only slightly shorter than I was, but he was built much smaller. He was slight but fit, with well-defined muscles that hugged his small frame. Years of traveling with the raiders must have seen to that. His dark hair hung past his ears and turned into tight ringlets of curls toward the bottom. On any other boy, his hair would have been too pretty. But Jade’s beauty somehow made it work. His face was perfection, as if chiseled from soft marble, and his thick eyebrows framed a set of the most shockingly blue eyes I had ever seen. His lips were a fleshy pink but looked darker against his impossibly pale skin. He was something out of every woman’s fantasy.

  I don’t know why, but I had automatically trusted the quiet, intense boy who’d cut me free and led me out of that nightmare. He hadn’t spoken much since we’d left the camp, so I tried not to speak too much to him. I’d asked him questions in the beginning, but apart from his name and how long he’d been at the camp, I still didn’t know any more about him–despite my sharing things about myself in hopes of prompting similar stories from him. After it was obvious that I was lucky to have gotten that much out of him, I decided to leave him alone as much as I could. I couldn’t risk him tiring of me and leaving me behind. I was painfully aware that I wouldn’t survive long out here without him.

  Eight years.

  I couldn’t imagine living in that hellish place for eight days, much less eight years. From what I had seen and heard happen to the other boys who’d been taken the same night I had been, I could only imagine what Jade had gone through. Especially at the hands of that monster of a man who’d seemed to be the leader of the camp. The same man who had followed an empty-eyed Jade into the tent that I could see from my position each night, lacing up the entrance behind them. Even the few days I had been there had left deep scars from the violence and terror I’d witnessed inflicted upon others. It was just luck that it hadn’t been me. If you could call being beaten so furiously that it had made me unappealing to the men, ‘lucky.’

  And I definitely could.

  Jade had spotted a good-sized stream from the top of a tree an hour earlier, and when it finally came into view, I thanked the gods for sending it our way. The clear, sparkling water wound through the forest and at one point, opened to a small beach made of rocks. The water was cut by large boulders that rested within it, which Jade said was a good thing, since it kept the largest predators from easily sneaking up on you under the water.

  “There’s enough sunlight left for us to get ourselves cleaned up and dried off before camping for the night,” he called over his shoulder.

  I heard the relief in my own voice as I agreed, though my exhaustion was far more evident. It had been many hours since we’d left the camp behind, but neither of us were too tired to wash the memory of it off us. Jade had already explained to me that the only kind of water that was relatively safe to enter was moving water. And even then, it had to be no more than waist deep and clear enough to see the bottom. As we set our packs down, he reminded me that we needed to pay attention to not only what was under the water, but to the surface of the water as well.

  “Often,” Jade said as he checked the area before giving me the okay to go in, “the surface of the water gives you information about what’s beneath it far sooner than you’d be able to see it under the water.”

  Nodding, I realized he had just spoken more to me in the past few minutes than he had the entire day so far. I began eagerly peeling off my clothes, more than ready to get in the cool, clear water. I left only my underwear on and took my clothes with me, as Jade had suggested we rinse them off as best we could and lay them out to dry while we bathed. I was squatting down to begin washing my clothes when Jade stopped about ten feet away from me. As he came into view, I gasped.

  He froze when he heard me, but I couldn’t find any words to apologize or to pass my reaction off as something–anything–other than what it was. The sight of his body was something I hadn’t been prepared for, and I wagered that even the most stone-cold warrior would balk at the sheer number of bruises and scars that littered his body.

  His tightly toned abdomen was covered in deep purple welts that almost looked black in the sunlight. I could see other bruises in various shades of colors and stages of healing, suggesting that they were something his body was quite used to wearing. The soft curve of his back was covered in layers of scars. There were so many different kinds of scars that his skin had healed in raised textures that told a torturous tale down the length of his back, disappearing beneath the waist of his underwear.

  But his thighs–I couldn’t even look at them long enough to decode what horrors had occurred there. They seemed to have been a favored place of torment. The marks on his body must have become second nature to him because I could tell that my reaction had caught him off guard. It was only the sight of him frozen–stiffened in mid squat–that finally snapped me out of my incredulity.

  “Jade,” I whispered, my voice breaking.

  “Don’t,” he said immediately.

  “I’m–”

  “Don’t!” He yelled, standing back up and making his way back to his pack, still carrying his dirtied clothing. “Wash yourself up and set camp by those trees.”

  He gestured towards a group of trees before he began rubbing the base of his palm on the front of his milky thigh. Before I could say anything else, he grabbed his pack and took off into the woods without even bothering to get dressed first.

  I sat down, no longer interested in cleaning myself. I knew that I wouldn’t ever be able to wash away the sight of Jade’s tortured body. It’d been burned into my memory just as permanently as the scars had been into his.

  Gods. I just fucked that up.

  I only hoped that Jade had understood my reaction. Even though I had no right to say such a thing, I wanted to chase after him and tell him that no one was ever going to hurt him again. That my gasp had been one of shock and anger at the sight of the evils inflicted upon him. Not one of pity or disgust. I heaved a long, deep breath before pulling my clothing back on and making my way over to the area where Jade had instructed me to set camp.

  Since he had taken his pack with him, I only set my mat out. I collected wood before lying down, so he could build a fire if he wanted to when he returned. I laid down on my mat, suddenly terrified that Jade would never come back. Still, I was asleep within seconds–my body unable to do anything else.

  ⸙

  As the days stretched to weeks, we fell into somewhat of a routine. We would wake up with the sun, pack our camp, and eat whatever food we had available. Before setting out, Ja
de checked the traps he always set the night before for anything we could eat later in the day, and we foraged as we moved along. Well, Jade would point out to me what was safe to eat and in turn, I helped him collect whatever berries or roots or leaves he found. When the sun was about two-thirds of its way across the sky, Jade would start scouting for a place to camp for the night. And when he found it, he’d leave me with our packs to set camp while he put traps out, which we’d check when we woke the next morning and started all over again.

  No matter how far we walked, there was always farther to go. After another long day, we’d arrived at a suitable spot to camp for the night and decided to settle in. Jade was off sighting spots for trapping while I was collecting stones to set out in a ring for the fire. He hadn’t said one word to me today, and because he seemed to be in a sour mood, I’d remained silent as well.

  I gladly stumbled across a bush with the same kind of berries he’d had me collect before, so after putting the rocks back at camp that I’d collected, I returned to the bush to fill my pockets with the sweet, sticky berries. I hoped to impress Jade when I pulled them out after we ate. To be useful for something other than starting a fire and laying our mats out for once. I enjoyed a handful of them as I returned to camp and began placing the stones around the wood I’d found before sitting on the still-damp ground.

  If there was one thing that I’d gotten used to since being captured outside my family’s camp, it was being wet. It rained far more than it did not. At least once, almost every day. And the constant humidity always seemed to leave the vegetation in various states of limp dampness. The weather had been the same at my family’s camp, of course, but I’d had our tent and plenty of well-known spots surrounding our camp where I could shelter from the worst of the rain.

  Jade still had the flint with him, so I had to wait until he got back before I could light the fire. As they often did when I was left alone, my thoughts turned to my family. I wondered how they were doing and if they had given up hope that I was still alive. I refused to think about how many horrible ends they could have met by now. Our camp had been on the move when I was taken, searching for a settlement that would accept our camp amongst the others.