She woke up before the boy did and made them a small breakfast. She shook him awake softly, his eyelids fluttering open, gray eyes on hers, making her uncomfortable. She walked away from him and grabbed her bag, eating her sandwich as she walked.
Telan walked in front of her for a long time, silently, except for breaking an occasional branch, and suddenly, he stopped, pointing at the side of the trail. A scattering of fox mushrooms blossomed in that fringed gold way they had. They looked young and healthy too. She took as many as she thought they could use without them going bad in the backpack. She told him what they were, just in case they ever got separated, and that you couldn’t eat them raw, but a little bit of fire and salt was all you needed to live on these, and how good they tasted. She told him they should be far enough away from the orphanage by evening so they could make the fire. The boy just smiled at her, that strange, shy smile he had, gray eyes glittering in the centers.
She wanted to run up to him and hug him and tell him that she’d liked him since the first time she sat next to him all those years ago in class, liked everything about him, but she couldn’t do it. She was embarrassed even thinking about it to herself. He walked quietly, gracefully in front of her again, his body slender and fluid. There was something of a jaguar or some other ancient wild cat about him that made it hard for her to take her eyes off him, and, for once, she was happy he chose to be in front.
They stopped when all the stars were out and she felt it was safe enough to make a fire. He watched her as she lined up all the dry sticks and threw a pile of pine needles and leaves in the middle. The smoke from the pine needles should help keep the bugs away, she explained to him and then sent him to find a few fallen branches or logs. She only had a small sharp knife on her, all she could steal from the dorm, so she used it to clean the dirt from the undersides of the mushrooms and lined them up on a small tin tray she stole from the kitchen.
Telan carried a few decent-sized logs over to the now blazing fire and she threw one of them in and settled on the grass next to it. The heat of the fire was burning her knees, but it felt nice on the rest of her and she felt surprisingly at ease. She kept her hands busy moving the branches into the flame so that the log would catch faster. When it was finally burning evenly, she threw the tin with the mushrooms on it and sprinkled some salt on the top. She cleaned the tip of a long branch and stirred the pan every so often, smelling the earthy sweet perfume of wild mushrooms. Telan watched her intently, a small smile on his face. She gave him the first of the cooked mushrooms and watched him eat it, a tentative bite at first, and then his smile got bigger, stretching across his face the way she’d never seen before.
“Whatever this is, Selena, I could eat it every day for the rest of my life and not get sick of it.”
They finished their small meal in minutes and she hoped she’d be able to find more of these. Now that they could make a fire, she could dry what they couldn’t use immediately and then use the dried mushrooms for soups or stews. She spread their blankets for them by the fire afterward and went to look for water, telling Telan to stay put and watch the fire for them. She could tell where the water would be by the way things changed how they grew, and how the soil was different. The river was close by, she could smell it, but it was too dark to go looking for it, so this little stream would have to do. The water in the stream seemed cold and dark, but it was clean enough to drink. She washed and filled up the two thermoses she had and rinsed her face, letting the cool water dry on her skin, small shivers going down her neck and back, and went back to the fire.
She could see the small stream of smoke through the trees, so she followed that, and when she got there, she didn’t see Telan anywhere. She dropped the water by the blankets and when she stood up again, she was staring at the face of that same large man she saw at the orphanage.
“I am Max Fuller, and you must be Selena.” He stuck his hand out. “I am a friend, I promise, so there is no need to be afraid of me.” His voice was soft, a small smile played on his lips, gray-blue eyes crinkling in the corners.
“I am not afraid of you, but I don’t shake hands with Alliance soldiers. Where is Telan?” she snapped at him, harsher than she meant to.
The man nodded to her, still smiling, and took his hand away, speaking softly still, “Understood. Telan went to look for you. He’ll be back in a bit,” the man said, casually, looking not the least bit offended by her rudeness, and walked away from her to the fire.
She noticed for the first time that something was cooking on it, something that smelled of meat. The man was stirring it quietly, not looking at her. She felt bad for being rude to him, but she couldn’t help that. These people killed her parents. It’s just how it was; how it’s always been.
She watched him from the other side of the fire for a while, then said, “I heard you talking to the mistress about him, about Telan. Is it true, what you said? That you know his father?”
The man wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked at her full-on, the way the mistress used to when she was about to say something awful. “It is. His father is my friend. My best friend, Selena, and he is in trouble.” The man looked away. “That’s why I went looking for Telan. I can’t tell you any more than that for now.” He looked away.
She heard a branch break and saw Telan running to them, face flushed, his long hair swinging wildly. He put his hands on his knees, panting. “I thought I lost you…. This man, he is okay, I trust him. He’s going to take us to where my father is and they’ll keep us safe.” Telan looked up at her, straightened. “He isn’t like them, the soldiers. He really isn’t.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going with him. I can’t. I’ll be all right… but I can’t go anyplace with those people in it.” She walked away and lay down on her blanket, turning away from the fire, away from them, and closed her eyes.
She felt a heavy hand on her shoulder after a while, not Telan’s. “I know what you think of us and I don’t blame you for any of it, but you will be a lot safer with me than on your own, I promise you that. If you don’t want to stay with us when we get there, you can leave then. Nobody will force you to stay there if you don’t want to,” he cleared his throat, “but I think you’ll change your mind when you meet everybody. There are a few hundred of us now, Zoriners and Alliance alike, and we are trying to do some good for everybody.”
She faced him and the soldier stood, looking at her face as if trying to read her mind, then suddenly pulled a gun from his belt. She jumped up, stumbled back a few steps, her back scraping the bark of a tree. The man just shook his head at her, smiled, and handed her the gun, handle first, the barrel pointing at his stomach the way he held it. Selena wrapped her hand around the unfamiliar weapon.
“It’s a stunner. You press this button to turn it on. Shift the dial all the way up if you want to kill, down if you want to wound. Point and shoot.” He pressed the button, making the weapon vibrate in her hand.
She was still pointing it at him, without meaning to, but he didn’t move, hands at his sides, eyes looking calmly into hers. Telan’s strained voice reached her, asking her to please not kill this man. She had no intention of killing anybody, but holding this weapon scared her. She didn’t trust it not to do something she couldn’t take back.
“How do I turn this thing off?” She handed the gun back to the man and he pressed that same button and the buzzing stopped. He tried to give it back to her, only she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to be the kind of person whose trust had to be bought like this. She shook her head at him and said in a whisper, just for him, “I don’t need this. I’ll come with you, for Telan.”
The man tucked the gun back in his belt. “Whatever it is my kind did to you, I am truly sorry for that,” he said quietly, and walked away, back to the fire, to whatever he was cooking.
She smelled it now, smoky and rich. And it was. Full of tender chunks of meat and some veggies she couldn’t place. She smiled when she fished out a few chunks of wild mushrooms,
some new kind, ones she didn’t know. Telan ate silently, staring into the flames, probably thinking about whatever this man told him about his father. She didn’t want to pry into whatever it was that was wrong with him, hoping he trusted her enough now to tell her if he wanted to.
Max watched Telan eat, a small smile on his face, but as soon as Telan was done, the smile was gone from the soldier’s face. His voice was tight when he spoke. “I have to tell you both something, and you’ll likely be angry with me for it… I heard what you said to each other the other night. Didn’t mean to pry, but I was keeping close, so I didn’t lose you, and so I could protect you if I needed to,” his head went down, and he pinched his eyes shut for a bit, “but I couldn’t come out yet, not until I knew for sure you weren’t followed, and that Selena was okay. I didn’t mean to intrude, I truly didn’t.” And he seemed sorry, embarrassed.
Telan stood up, his face pale, hands in fists at his sides, eyes staring angrily at the soldier.
The man stood and faced him, and she watched, surprised, as Telan lashed out at him, punching him on the chest, hard. “You had no right to do that! You should have come out, you should have let us know you were there…. You had no right to hear any of it,” Telan screamed at the soldier, still shoving him in the chest.
The soldier didn’t move, hands loose at his sides as if he didn’t feel any pain. Telan slapped him hard across the face and the man lifted his hand then, palm up. “I am sorry, Telan, but if you need to keep going, we should probably not do it in front of her,” he said softly, with no anger in his voice.
She saw redness on his face where he was hit, a trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth.
Telan dropped his hands, turned away from the man. He was breathing so hard she could hear him even through all the noise the fire was making.
The soldier stood as he was, waiting. She watched him quickly wipe the blood from his face with his sleeve and put his hands in his pockets, looking at Telan.
She got up, feeling that she needed to give them privacy to work this out. She wasn’t angry at the man the way Telan seemed to be. She was just embarrassed that he knew this about her, and she didn’t want him to feel pity for her because of it. “I am going for a walk. Try not to kill each other while I’m gone,” she said loudly enough to cut through the crackle of the fire and turned into the woods.
The air moved fast today, the breeze cool against her face. She walked slowly, quietly, thinking about this strange man who stuck a gun in her hand and didn’t seem worried that she’d use it. And Telan hitting him like that…. She’d never even seen him angry before, didn’t think he could ever scream at anybody, never mind do what he just did to that man. She sat by the water for a long time, eyes trained on the ripples that moved quickly across the dark surface. She listened to the strange music they made, a swooshing softness of intersecting currents, a brush of a small wave over a river rock on the bottom, silt and dirt making tiny clouds that for the briefest of moments kept the sunlight just out of reach. She hoped that whatever that place was that the man was taking them to would be all right for Telan, if not for her. That his father could be saved from whatever was killing him or at least live long enough to get to know his son. And she hoped mostly that Telan’s anger was fast-moving, like the water.
Telan was asleep on his blanket when she got back, the man sitting alone by the dying fire, a quiet, thinking look on his face. She hoped that whatever else happened between then, it was the end of it.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly, walking up to the soldier.
He looked at her and smiled. “I am. Don’t be too hard on him for this. He needed to do it. Pretty sure he was protecting you….” He stood up. “We should get some sleep.”
“Can I ask you something?”
The man nodded.
“How did you know I wouldn’t shoot you?”
“I didn’t. But it wouldn’t have mattered. I had it locked on non-lethal. If you pulled the trigger, you would have just stunned me, knocked me out for a few minutes, as likely as not, and you would have felt all kinds of guilty for it afterward. I just wanted you to feel safe.” He walked away, spread a blanket for himself on the other side of the fire from theirs, and didn’t say another word after that.
She stretched out on her blanket after a while, listening to Telan’s soft breathing and let herself drift off, hoping that he’ll be back to his old self when he wakes up, soft-spoken, and kind. And that what happened today doesn’t make it worse for him; doesn’t make it worse for any of them.
3
Downstream
Telan, June 6, 2244, Woods Outside Fordham Orphanage.
He was angry at him, angrier than he’d ever been at anyone before, even Devin, and it surprised him. He wasn’t even thinking when he hit him; it was like it wasn’t him doing it. He didn’t feel any pain in his hands either, not until afterward, and he knew then that he hit him harder than he thought he did; hard enough to hurt. The man could have stopped him. Could have easily caught his hands or knocked him out with one punch if he wanted to, but he just stood unmoving in front of him when Selena left and told him that he didn’t seem done, and he should let it all out. And he almost did, the anger making his blood feel hot and fast in his veins, making him want to keep hitting the man. He could see now why Devin got so furious at him when he wouldn’t fight back…. The very thought of him being like Devin is what made him stop and walk away from the soldier. He felt the man would let him be, so he lay on his blanket, face down, and eventually, drifted off.
He woke up to the crackling of dry branches catching on fire, the man leaning over the tiny flame. He wasn’t ready to talk to him yet, didn’t want to face him after what he did. He closed his eyes and stayed as he was, waiting for Selena to get up so that he didn’t have to be alone with him.
“I know you’re up, Telan, so stop hiding from me.”
Telan’s stomach clenched, but he shook it off and forced himself to get up and walk over to the fire. He stopped right next to the man, face heating with embarrassment. He could still see the redness on the soldier’s face. Telan put his head down, hiding. Couldn’t help doing it.
The soldier stood, reached over, and lifted his face by the chin. “I am not angry at you, Telan, I swear I’m not. You had every right to do what you did, so please, let it go. Frankly, I’d be surprised if you didn’t lash out at me for it.” He let go of his face, turning back to the fire without another word.
Telan didn’t see that coming, the calm dismissal of what he’d done. “I am not usually like that…. I’ve never hit anyone before, Max. I shouldn’t have done it, is what I’m saying. It won’t happen again,” he whispered, and he turned and ran to the stream to pee and wash and calm down enough to be okay with this stranger again, to not feel so embarrassed in front of him.
Selena and Max were chatting by the fire when he got back, friendly-like, and it surprised him that she seemed okay with this man now. Telan stood off to the side, watching, listening, afraid to walk over. Selena looked at him, smiled, and nodded at a plate of food warming by the edge of the fire. He had to make himself go there and eat, and do whatever else he had to do for however long it would take them to get where they were going. He walked over, slowly, not looking at Max, and picked up his plate. He ate standing up, away from them, nobody saying anything. Finally, he was done. He set the plate down in the grass and went back to his spot. He was rolling up his blanket when he felt large hands on his shoulders.
He straightened and faced him, Max looking at him, face serious, concerned. “I spent a good portion of my life having to lie to everybody, including the people I loved most, Telan. I can’t tell you why yet, maybe ever, but when it was over, I promised myself that I would never lie to anyone again. When I said I wasn’t angry at you, I didn’t say it to make it easier on you. I said it because it’s the truth. You need to let this go, or it’s going to be much harder on all of us than it needs to be. We have about a week’s journey
ahead of us. Too long to do it in the company of someone who’s ashamed for no reason. Let it go, kid. I mean it,” Max said, and there was an edge to his voice.
He saw Selena watching them from the fire, and felt even more embarrassed for it.
The man was still staring at him, waiting, and he felt trapped in this look.
He dropped his eyes, hoping Max would let him be, but the man stepped even closer and wrapped his arms around him.
It was the last thing he expected, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He felt his eyes get hot, so he shut them tightly and clenched his teeth, trying to hold himself together, trying not to cry in front of this man and the girl. He couldn’t ever lose control in front of her again.
Max held him, not saying a word, letting him hide, and he held on, not spilling any of the tears he was hiding. Finally, he felt calm enough to face him again. He looked up, and Max let go of him, took a step back, and stuck his hand out, serious gray-blue eyes on him. He shook his hand hard and dipped his head, knowing that it was over, that Max would never bring it up again, and feeling grateful to this stranger for letting him hide. For letting him walk away from it so easily.
They made it to the river in just under an hour, and Selena was all smiles when they got there. The girl really liked the water. He watched her skim rocks, giggling like a little kid, and he couldn’t help but smile at her. They walked along the river bank for a long time, silent, but for the occasional sound of a pebble skimming the water from Selena’s expert throws. The sun was well on its way down when they stopped for the night, and he was tasked with getting the wood for the fire. When he came back out, Selena was crouching by the water, holding a mesh bag under the surface. She was tying the corners of it with rope to her wrist and he couldn’t figure out why she was doing it.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 57
