The Watcher Key

by Troy Hooker

  “Me too. I’m out. Night, lovebirds.” Lillia kicked the sand from her feet and followed Gus into the circle of tents.

  Each of them disappeared into their canvas bivouac tents, leaving Sam and Emma alone once again in the darkness. As the fire died and their eyes adjusted once again to their surroundings, the Lazuli light that drifted upward from deep within the pool mirrored soft blue reflections on the water’s face. Every so often a school of light-eating Ori would surface on the water and add to the spectacle of dancing light.

  Scooting closer, Emma snuggled up underneath Sam’s chest so that he was forced to wrap her in his arms, all the while her strawberry hair giving off intoxicating scents of fruit and lilac.

  “I’m scared of sleeping alone,” she mumbled into the shoulder of his sweater.

  “I could sleep near you tonight … if you would like,” he didn’t hesitate to say, but his heart instantly thumped loudly in his chest.

  She chuckled softly, putting her hand on his forearm.

  “I would absolutely love to have you stay with me in my tent, Sam, but I can’t—it’s not the way we do things. I’m sorry.”

  Sam was somewhat relieved, but confused. It seemed like everyone he knew did that. Not that he was ready to do anything sexual with anyone. He hadn’t really had the desire or the opportunity, but it seemed strange not to. He did know a few kids at his old school in Grand Rapids that were a lot like the Descendants, calling themselves “followers,” and they didn’t do a lot of things. But then there were a few of them that did … and other things much worse. It didn’t seem like the name defined what you did or didn’t do.

  Emma stood, kissed him on the forehead, and then slipped off toward the tents, but before she disappeared into her own, she stopped for a moment, her face visible in the firelight.

  “We are followers of Light, Sam … and of the Creator. And I would love to see you follow Him too,” she whispered.

  ***********************

  Crawling into his own tent for the night, Sam’s head swam with emotions from the last few hours and what the day held tomorrow. Would they find any information on the Dark arch or the Watcher Stone? Would he find out he had Light manipulation gifts? Would they encounter any Darkness or Metim?

  And then Emma’s words about being a follower of the Creator— was that the same as the Christians he knew? He knew they claimed to be holy, but they were so confusing. They preached goodness and mercy but then did some things their own way.

  His foster parents even called themselves Christian at some of the dinner parties where powerful people attended, but mostly they talked of Christian values as if they were requirements for being a politician.

  Then there was the man Jesus that people would discuss as if He was God himself, the Creator of the universe, who came to the Earth to save man from their terrible acts. It was all so confusing.

  He tried to push the questions out of his mind, but they persisted for nearly an hour while he tossed and turned on the cold sand beneath the tent floor. Remembering the blanket in his pack, he snatched it out of the pocket and tucked himself in tightly. The sound of the waterfall at the other end of the pool became rhythmic, almost hypnotizing.

  He gazed at the soft glow of the shield from the lanterns above him. Focus on the Light, they told him.

  Open your heart to the Creator to guide you.

  Sam focused on the light above him. It moved like waves rolling in a surf across the shield, rolling ever so slowly, as if the sea was stuck in slow motion.

  ,He could hear faint snoring from the direction of Gus’s tent. Then it grew louder, as if someone turned up the volume in his throat. Why could he hear it so well?

  Suddenly the sound disappeared and the sounds from the forest around him became the focus. A small flying insect—what was he chewing on? Then a scurry across the sand and into the water—tiny legs thrashing about in the water only centimeters from his head. He could hear it all so well. The feeling was almost like that day in the forest with old lady Wrenge.

  He listened for a few moments and then covered his ears to shut out the sound, but found no relief, so he flipped over on his stomach and tucked his pillow around his ears. As he did, he thought he saw the slightest flicker of a blue spark from one of his fingers to the other, but it was quickly gone.

  He let the pillow drop and stared at his hand. Did he just imagine that? He wiggled his fingers, hoping to recreate the phenomenon, but nothing would cause the spark to return.

  It was all a dream, he decided. It had to be, because suddenly he noticed the waterfall had stopped making noise.

  Impossible. He unzipped the flap slightly and stuck his head out into the cool air. There was only darkness and the occasional glimpse of Lazuli streaming out of the dark water. The moon had hidden itself from sight, showing no reflection on where the falls should be, nor on the beach. Vaguely he could make out the rock where the falls had originated, but no water.

  Why would they suddenly stop like that? Some strange force from the Darkness? Metim?

  He thought about waking the others, but then ignored the concern. There had to be an explanation.

  Sinking back into his bedding, he listened to the forest sing for a while before drifting off to sleep. The last thing he remembered was flying through the trees on one of the Lightboards Boggle gave them and being chased by an unknown green glow behind him, while bursts of brilliant blue erupted from his palms.

  ***********************

  The heat of the day was already upon them when they awoke the next morning. Sam forced himself out of the blanket into the chilly air after hearing someone clinking around at the campfire. The rest of the bleary-eyed group followed, clamoring out of their tents in search of caffeinated tonics.

  They sat like zombies barely alive, staring into the crackling flames and waiting for oats to finish cooking in the pot that Lillia had started.

  “Not quite like the feast at the City Center, but hopefully it will fill us up,” she said, oddly cheerful.

  “It will be great, Lil’, really,” Gus smiled at her, his hair wildly pointing in all directions.

  Suddenly, Sam remembered the waterfall and looked toward the pool. The sun was just beginning to peek over the trees behind them, and a few rays shot through the canopy to make the pool sparkle as if diamonds were floating on the surface.

  Sure enough, there was only a small trickle cascading down the ridge where the huge gushing of water once was.

  “Hey, what happened to the waterfall?” He lifted a crooked zombie finger toward the opposite end of the pool.

  The others peered toward the now dry falls. Gus pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and squinted.

  “I must say, I have no clue,” he said.

  “I bet it’s a tide pool!” Emma said excitedly. “During the day the pool fills up and at night it drains back.”

  “A tide pool?” Gus echoed.

  Emma laughed out loud.

  “Gus, the expert on all things, doesn’t know what a tide pool is? I will certainly enjoy this moment!”

  If it weren’t for the fact that he had just awoken, Gus may have well attempted a theoretical defense, but chose instead to fumble around for his coffee cup.

  “Why don’t we check it out when we head out?” Lillia suggested. “It’s just around the other side of the pool anyway.”

  “Good plan,” Gus said, taking no notice of Lillia’s rare cheerfulness and picking up the pot of hot oat cereal to spoon an extra-large helping into his empty mug.

  It was the first chance they had to get a good view of the area and their campsite, having arrived in the dark. The circle of tents was well placed in the center of the crescent moon-shaped beach that surrounded the pool, which was very modest in size, with clear emerald water that appeared almost glass-like now that there weren’t hundreds of gall
ons of water gushing over the waterfall upon its surface.

  The forest was dense around the perimeter of the pool except for the pure white beach, where lush green trees very jungle-like in nature grew tall and left little room for light to reach the forest floor below. Where it did, however, rays beamed through the vegetation and produced a mystic, golden glow to the humid undergrowth. It was a sight Sam had only seen in documentaries of the Amazon or in fantasy illustrations.

  They all ate the sticky hot cereal in silence, Emma showing Sam how to add some “sweet root” to it, which resembled honey with its rich sweet texture. The cereal was not bad after drizzling a good amount on, which was fine to do since there were plenty of the trees that produced it nearby. Lillia passed a loaf of bread around as well, which also went well with the sweet root if spread liberally.

  Then they dismantled camp, taking the tents down, putting out the fire, packing and repacking their backpacks, and dabbing on some Kararah root to keep the insects in the jungle at bay. Sam did his best to pack as fast as he could, but the others were experts at setup and teardown. He, on the other hand, had little idea what he was doing. But with a little cramming, he was able to fit it all into his pack.

  Gus gathered the group into a circle and prayed before departing, which Sam was beginning to expect and enjoy now. It wasn’t that he really felt a need to pray yet, but he felt comfort in the practice of it. It seemed to lighten the mood, and begin and end meals and events with formality and unity.

  They edged around the outer lip of the pool, leaving the beach and their campsite for the first time since arriving. Although dense, the forest left an almost natural pathway around the waterline, all the way to where the dry falls now only spattered the pool from the water source above. The path led them into the mouth of the falls, which seemed to open up further into what looked like a cavernous entrance, which then opened through the throat of the falls leading to the top of the ridge line above. Seeing no other easy path to the top, they walked through the damp tunnel and climbed the rock side to the surface, half expecting the falls to suddenly come to life and flood the cavern while they were in it.

  At the top without incident, they immediately saw what made the falls stop in the middle of the night. In front of them, above the first pool, was a second pool of water about the same size as the first, but noticeably deeper from the large hole between it and the falls, where a small stream poured into its depths.

  From the hole billowed huge puffs of steam, along with occasional sprays of a blue fiery substance, producing hisses and sputters with each new bubble burst of liquid.

  “It must fill up during the night with molten Lazuli, then harden and allow the pool to fill,” Gus said, examining the hole from the safest distance from which he could see.

  “… Which spills over and causes the waterfall during the day,” Emma said.

  Lillia was peering over the side of the bubbling hole.

  “That’s one hot pool of Lazuli,” she said. “I bet there’s hundreds of gallons of concentrated Light in there.”

  Then she reached out in front of her, closed her eyes, and a blue flash appeared before her—a jet of blue light erupting from her palm and instantly burning a hole through a large leafy tree to the side of the upper pool.

  “Lil! What are you doing!” Emma ran to her, a look of shock and fear on her face. “A-and how did you do that?!”

  Lillia was as surprised as everyone else and tried to regain her composure.

  “Uh … I was just seeing if this Lazuli was going to amplify our Light ability a bit,” she chortled, “and I would t-think it does!”

  Gus stood and squinted at the smoking hole in the tree, then back at Lillia.

  “Wow. Have you been practicing your bolts?” he asked.

  Lillia was still laughing and now added coughing to the mix.

  “Actually—no, I didn’t even t-try that hard,” she managed to sputter out.

  It reminded Sam of the old lady Wrenge in the forest. Her bolt had knocked him over, but it didn’t leave a hole in his middle. He was rather glad it didn’t.

  “You could have killed someone!” Emma peered at the hole Gus was inspecting.

  “Seriously—I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine, Lil’, don’t worry about it. No harm done,” Gus immediately consoled her.

  “Except to the tree,” Emma pointed out.

  Gus smirked.

  “We probably should watch how we use our manipulation here. Obviously the effects are enhanced a bit.”

  “S-so that one really would have killed someone!” Emma laughed nervously, then looked at her own palms as if afraid of them.

  “I would say so,” Gus said, looking again at the now smoking hole in the tree. “But we must also remember that we need to be careful with how much we manipulate Light. Metim know when it happens if they are near, and since we are trying to stay on the lower key …”

  “Keep it low key …” Lillia corrected him with a snicker, then burst out laughing finally. “Not stay on a lower key—keep it low key, Gus.”

  “Maybe you should stick with more sophisticated expressions, Gus,” Emma joked.

  Lillia could hardly contain herself.

  “Yeah, m-maybe you should keep your human slang low key!”

  “Ha-ha,” said Gus, who hastily tossed his backpack back over his shoulder and headed toward where the pathway picked up again into the woods. “We have a city to get to.”

  They followed him, laughing, but silence came over them soon as the faint path met the dense jungle undergrowth. Sam was glad they were more cordial and there was less drama, although no doubt Lillia would be back to her cheerless self sooner or later.

  The way was clear, but there were numerous branches full of jungle insects and reptiles of many different colors that they had to duck under, crawl over, or circle around completely. Emma nearly lost it when a blue and green frog landed on her head and crawled down her pack. To make matters worse, Gus had finally figured out that the path they were following was likely made by a large animal, which put Emma on edge even more after the frog incident.

  After an hour of fighting through the dense brush, the path seemed to open into sparser undergrowth, and the trees gradually reached higher and thinner the farther they walked. Some reached so high that they were some of the tallest pines Sam had ever seen. Their trunks were just as large, too—the smallest of which were almost an entire arm’s width across—and they dropped long thick needles that carpeted the ground and crunched as they walked.

  Soon the trees gave way to a small knoll that rose briefly out of the giant trees. At the top of the knoll was a lone craggy pine standing as a solitary beacon in the midst of a sea of forest.

  “According to the map Miss Karpatch gave us, old Lior City should be another hour and a half walk through these trees.” Gus stopped for a breath under an exceptionally crooked branch. “The path goes through there,” he said as he turned to his left and pointed into the forest the other direction, “… and we need to go that way … away from the Dark—”

  Gus stopped mid-sentence, for if one were not looking closely, they would miss the thick, black fog that seemed to hover just outside the tree line where he had been pointing.

  “—ness,” Gus finally finished his sentence, mouth open, glasses crooked on his nose.

  Inky, smoke-like tendrils of Darkness spewed silently from in between the now blackened trunks as they added to the cloud hanging just below the knoll. They stood watching it empty its bowels from the forest depths until Emma dropped her pack with a thud, jolting the others back into reality.

  “Well don’t act like we didn’t know it was coming,” Lillia said, a noticeable edge in her voice.

  “We didn’t know it was this big. Gus? Explanation?” Emma said angrily.

  Gus adjusted his glasses and comp
osed himself.

  “Apparently I was wrong about its current vitality, I mean, after fifty years, most clouds dissipate … even ones surrounding events this large. ”

  “You’re joking, right?” Emma was furious. “Gus, you’re telling me there is new Darkness in this mass?”

  Gus ignored her, turning the map around in his hands as if it was flawed.

  “Nope. He’s not,” Lillia folded her arms. “Joking, I mean. And yes, it looks like it’s expanding, not dissipating.”

  “According to the most recent maps, we should only have to walk through it for less than an hour or so.” He then uncovered the lantern attached to his pack, which began to glow bright blue, even in the morning sun. “I will go first with the lantern. Lil’, since you showed measurable improvement with your bolts, you follow up the rear?”

  Lillia nodded, but showed little enthusiasm.

  Emma uncovered her own lantern, adding to the light surrounding them.

  “Daddy has told me about the effects of the Darkness,” she said. “You start second guessing yourself—making you focus on your weaknesses.”

  Lillia looked down, her black silky hair glistening in the blue lantern light.

  “My dad said that you feel like you are being strangled—stripped of all life and purpose.”

  Her comment drew strange looks from the others, but they had come to expect them.

  “I don’t suppose we can’t just go around?” Sam spoke up, looking around him as if there was another path to be seen. But he was already sure his words were meaningless and the only path was before them.

  “Unfortunately, there is no other way. Because the City is on a plateau, going around is impossible.”

  Emma began grumbling under her breath again about how strange it was that her parents would allow her to do such a thing, and then repeated over and over how the “Council would be furious if they found out there were underage Descendants sent into Darkness controlled territory.”