by Melissa Kuch
“You just missed her,” he said as the green soup dripped down his chin.
“Missed who?”
He took another giant bite out of his soup and squirmed as he swallowed. “Fawn.”
Aurora nodded, realizing that he was not comfortable calling Fawn his mother yet. “What did she want?”
He put the spoon down so that it clattered against the wooden bowl. “She is going to tell us where to find the heir of Pierre Gassendi. But news flash for you all. He was a priest.”
“The heir?”
“No, the philosopher Pierre Gassendi.”
Aurora sat down on the edge of the floor and applied more leaves around his body for comfort. “So there is no heir?”
“Well, the last one in his family’s bloodline, I suppose. I am guessing when we meet him we’ll find out if he’s the right guy.”
Otus was outside, as he didn’t fit into the tent, and Aurora had to repeat everything being said for him to hear.
“Speak louder,” Otus cried out, his voice semi-muffled through the canvas.
“I’ll tell you after,” Aurora screamed back. She then peered around the mid-sized tent, realizing someone was missing. “Where is Mrs. Xiomy? She’s been MIA since we landed here.”
Boreas nearly choked on the soup. “It is so nice to be rid of her for five minutes! She’s been here all afternoon to be close to the doctor. She was pretty much drooling when he was reapplying my bandage. Thankfully he told her I needed to rest, and the two of them went off to bother someone else besides me.”
Aurora laughed outright, and Otus poked his head in to find out what was so funny.
“Boreas who was head over heels for Mrs. Xiomy two days ago now is relieved that she is off driving the doctor crazy! How fickle you are with your love choices.”
Boreas threw leaves at Aurora, and she threw them back until they had destroyed what was left of the bed.
“Besides, I was not in love with Mrs. Xiomy. She is every boy’s teacher crush! Like you don’t have a crush back at home?”
Aurora held the leaves up, about to throw them, but her hand froze at the mention of a crush. Her thoughts immediately flew to Jonathan, and the leaves fell from her fingers. She sat back on her hind legs and said, “Crush? Who said I have a crush?”
He stared at her awkwardly. “It was just a rhetorical question.”
The tent flap flung open, and Fawn entered, looking exhausted and completely drained after the day’s events. She walked into the room and left the flap open. Mrs. Xiomy was beside her, looking crestfallen, probably at being dragged from the doctor too early. Even after the disastrous day’s events, Mrs. Xiomy’s hair was still styled perfectly with not a curl out of place. Her purple glasses were still intact on the tip of her scrawny nose, and her orange and indigo ensemble was wrinkle free. The only dirt visible was on the tip of her purple heels.
Fawn stood awkwardly in the tent and asked Boreas, “How was the soup?”
“It didn’t kill me.”
She clasped her hands together in satisfaction. “Good. I’m glad.” She awkwardly shifted her weight back and forth and then she diverted her gaze toward Otus. “So you are looking for the heir to the famous physicist and mathematician Pierre Gassendi. As you assumed, I do know the heir. He designed our glass elevator at the former Plymouth Tartarus. I didn’t want to relay this information to you for my own personal reasons,” her eyes stole a glance at Boreas but then returned their gaze in Otus’s direction, “but Otus, you did save our lives today, and I am eternally grateful.”
She held out a yellowed piece of paper that had been folded in the shape of a triangle. She handed it to Aurora, who cautiously opened the flaps of the paper. Inside there were tiny dots sprawled all over the page.
“By connecting the dots they will lead you to Professor Gassendi.”
“Sounds too easy,” Aurora questioned, raising her eyebrow in suspicion.
“There’s one other catch as well. The professor is extremely paranoid and closed off from the world. He will not just take any visitors, especially if he doesn’t know them. While working on the glass elevator he only trusted two people. One of those people is me, but as you can see I cannot abandon my community.”
“You always know how to choose, don’t you?” Boreas muttered under his breath.
Fawn’s oval eyes opened wide, and she clasped her fist toward her mouth, biting the edge of her nail. She sat down on the edge of the bed, but Boreas immediately shifted away from her.
“Boreas, I—”
“Stay with your precious community,” he snarled at her. “It’s your family, after all.”
He stood up and stormed out of the tent, the flap sliding back forcefully into place. Crickets filled the empty silence as Boreas’s words acted as daggers into Fawn’s heart. She pulled her shoulders back and crinkled her nose.
Aurora said slowly, “It’ll take time for him to…what I’m trying to say is…”
Fawn’s stoic face didn’t flinch. “He’s my son. Forgiveness doesn’t come easy to our family.” She stole a glance toward Mrs. Xiomy and stared at her long and hard. Then she continued, “Besides, he has the right to be angry. I just hope one day he’ll understand.”
Mrs. Xiomy put her hand on her hips, “The day he understands is the day I join your precious community! Fawn, he’s your son!”
“Yes, and I made my choice! I don’t have to answer to you for my actions. You’re the one who probably led the Common Good to our doorstep.”
“Don’t forget that without us, you and your little community would be buried in the ocean right about now.”
“Without you we would never have been found out. We would have been just fine and not here starting over in this wasteland.”
The two women continued to argue, and Otus blew on his two fingers, sounding a loud, piercing whistle. The women broke apart like in a wrestling match.
“Can you try to get along for one minute?”
The two women nodded like guilty children toward the giant who had reprimanded them. They turned their backs on each other, and silence filled the room.
Aurora contemplated what Fawn had said and asked, “But who then, if not you, Fawn, will the professor trust?”
Fawn stepped away from Mrs. Xiomy and went to the tent flap, where she made a motion ushering someone over to them. Stepping through the flap was none other than Babs, her face tight as a boxer. A dark, black veil was draped over her long hair, wearing this accessory for the funeral ceremony that would commence that night. Aurora stepped back, trying to hide the shock of seeing that girl, of all people, step through the tent.
Fawn put her arm around Babs. “I have already spoken with her, and she has agreed to accompany you on this part of your journey. She knows the professor, having been his apprentice during the last stage of the elevator development. She was the only other person, besides me, to get close to the professor and earn his trust.”
“He will let me speak with him,” Babs said assertively.
Aurora took a step forward and said, “I am sorry, but is she in the right state of mind to come with us? I mean, not that we wouldn’t be happy to have her come, but this is a dangerous mission, and she just lost two people close to her.”
“If coming with you means that we are one step closer to destroying my sister and fiancé’s murderers, then I volunteer for this mission rather than having to wait here and do nothing.”
Aurora turned to Otus for help, but he ignored her pleading eyes and nodded his approval to have Babs join the team. The flap of the tent opened, and Boreas walked through, now more subdued and not as tense. He was wearing the doctor’s long black cloak over his broad shoulders, smelling of iodine and alcohol.
“The funeral is about to begin.”
His eyes darted toward Babs, who gave him a slight smile that only Aurora noticed. They quickly filled him in with the details of their journey and that Babs would accompany them to see the professor. He was delighted to
have her join them. Together they walked toward the funeral service, but Aurora stayed behind, saying that she wasn’t feeling too well and that she would join them shortly. They didn’t protest, letting the flap close shut behind them as Aurora sat alone in the darkness.
She closed her eyes and picked up a lone leaf that Boreas had thrown at her earlier. She twirled it in between her fingers and went to put it back onto the bed when she stopped and snuck it into her coat pocket. As a souvenir, she told herself. Nothing more.
urora listened as Babs’s voice filled the night air with song, an Irish tune that caused even the crickets to pause as she sang her song in honor of those perished by the hands of the Common Good. Soft and melodic, her soprano voice lifted high, with the wind carrying it to Aurora’s ears, and she felt her body caught up in the trance leading her toward the circle where everyone sang in harmony with her. She sat down in the outskirts of the circle listening as Babs sang her solo, her voice choking up as she got to the part of the song:
I pray I’ll see your face again
Though I may not know quite when,
I pray you’ll know my love is true
May the road I take now lead to you.
So let us sing in harmony this day
Despite our eyes, yours brown mine gray,
The sun is one that shines above
One heaven, one hell; one life, one love.
Fawn stood up and gave Babs a hug as the circle continued to hum in harmony with the song.
Otus was sitting in the corner, two children sitting on his lap unaware of the turmoil and the grief being experienced by the adults in that circle. They instead played on Otus’s knees, chasing each other and smiling warm-hearted smiles. Aurora watched them and thought how precious they were and how she longed to be a child once more. She had crossed the divide, and there was no way to turn back.
She turned to Otus and said, “We need to leave at the Sacred Hour.”
He looked at her and carefully picked up the children, placing them back into the arms of their parents. He followed her to the shadows saying, “We don’t even know where the professor is. Connecting the dots did not create a map.”
Aurora held out the yellowed document and handed it to him. “It is a map. A map leading us straight into the heart of Orion. If we follow the coordinates, I believe they will lead us to him.”
He stared at the stars up above in the shape of the mythical hunter Orion and said slowly, “Is Boreas able to do the journey?”
“He has to be. If the Common Good Army figures out that we have headed in this direction, then we need to be ahead of them. We need to get to the professor before they do.”
Aurora heard laughter escalating from the circle, and there was Boreas with Babs tucked under his arm. He was reciting a story to Mrs. Xiomy and the doctor, who were listening to his amusing tale. Otus caught Aurora’s glare and went over and scooped up Boreas before he had a chance to interject.
“Otus, you can’t just do that,” he scolded, fumbling in his fist. Otus laughed, watching him struggle and then put him down on a high tree branch so that he had to listen and not get distracted.
“Since you are hanging in there, Aurora says we need to leave tonight.”
“During the Sacred Hour,” she added, crisscrossing her arms over her chest.
He hung onto the tree branch, trying not to look down at the ground thirty feet below him.
“You know, I am capable of listening on the ground.”
“Not when you have a beautiful woman taking up your attention.” Otus laughed, poking him in the chest and nearly knocking him off the tree branch.
“She is beautiful, isn’t she?” Boreas said, winking at Otus.
Aurora stood there tapping her foot against the ground and wished they could just leave Boreas hanging on that tree branch forever. How did she get stuck on this mission with him of all people? She coughed so that the boys came back down to earth and repeated, “So the Sacred Hour? I am not waiting for you to agree. There’s no other way because Otus can’t go leaping through the countryside in daylight. I think he is bound to be noticed.”
“So we are going to travel through the Sacred Hour each day? We’ll never get to the professor at that rate.”
Otus picked up Boreas and placed him back down on the ground. “I’ll get us there before the sun rises tomorrow.”
The bodies washed up along the shoreline of Candlewick Harbor.
Inspector Herald walked along the edge of the cave, wrought with rage as he beheld the faces of each sullen-eyed, blue-faced rebel who had been hidden from him and the Common Good Army for the past ten years. He just never suspected that they would be underneath his nostrils in an underwater country in the very town that he himself resided. It was an insult that made his face scowl, and he continued taking long strides over the dead, marking each of those drowned faces in his memory as having a personal vendetta against him and everything the IDEAL stood for.
He had given the order for his chief Officers Woolchuck and Pelican to bomb the area beneath Candlewick Park with hopes of luring out any illegal activity transpiring in the depths of the ocean based on his instinct that the giant and his two teenage counterparts were there. Yet each body that he stomped over was a normal sized human, not a thirty-foot giant. And none of the faces that the Inspector peered into were the faces of those two troublesome teenagers Aurora Alvarez and Boreas Stockington. They must have escaped along with the giant and were now once again out there to fulfill the prophecy.
That damned prophecy. The Inspector cringed, thinking that this was nothing compared to what the Geometric Storm would bring. It would bring an even larger death toll than one hundred atomic bombs. Nature’s wrath was nearly as disturbing as his own, but the Inspector had no intention of trying to stop this storm from occurring. Quite the opposite since this Geometric Storm would reinforce to the people who followed him and the IDEAL that religion and a higher being were a negative force on their country. The storm would crush any form of rebellion throughout their country and anyone who was beginning to doubt the Common Good’s power. This Geometric Storm would force them to understand that the only person they should turn to and have their faith in was the IDEAL. The IDEAL would be the only one to protect them and save them from this horrible natural disaster. So once the Geometric Storm hit and the world was in despair, the Common Good government could rise to inexplicable power. The Common Good would be the largest world power, with everyone turning to them for answers.
Inspector Herald found himself smiling, though it was painful for his facial features to form a smile, as he rested against the edge of the cave, staring into the blood stained ocean, the water lapping against his boots. Executing David Xiomy had been the greatest victory the Inspector had hoped to achieve in annihilating any further rebellions from taking place. As he looked out at the dead bodies along the shoreline, he realized his life had gone in a full circle, and he was not going to let two troublesome teenagers and a giant disrupt his plans. He vowed that he would find them. He vowed that they would not stand in his way.
“Inspector,” a deep voice bellowed behind him.
Inspector Herald continued facing the open crevice of the cave and said in his husky tone, “You’d better have good news for me, Officer Woolchuck.”
The officer gulped noisily, and Inspector Herald turned around and even in the darkness could make out his Adam’s apple bobbing back and forth, intimidated by the presence of the Inspector. He nearly slipped on the rocks but quickly regained his footing on the slippery slope and sputtered, “Henry Stockington and his son Jonathan are waiting for you back at your office just as you requested.”
The Inspector wet his lips and opened his eyes, though hidden behind his large dark sunglasses. Though his eyelids were burned, his pupils had not been scorched by the treacherous flames of the fire that had altered his once human appearance. Now he resembled a picture of Dorian Gray, his soul living on the outer layer of his skin.
“What about the bodies, Inspector?”
The Inspector stared out from this angle at the bodies that lined the ocean shore like seals resting after a long journey on the California coast line, being covered gracefully by the waves.
“Burn them,” he replied decisively. “We don’t want the public seeing this scene at the Awakened Hour.”
The Inspector started charging down the slippery slope and fixed the long slate-colored trench coat with its high collar that ran the full length of his six foot seven inch frame. Other officers and media crew quickly hurried out of his way, careful to not look him directly in the eye. He was about to get into his chauffeured limo to take him back to the Candlewick prison when a young black female reporter approached his window and tapped on the glass with her fist. His chauffeur put the limo into drive, but the Inspector told him to wait and rolled the window down a crack.
“Inspector, my name is Analise Jones for Channel Four news and I want the truth about what happened here tonight at Candlewick Park. I am not buying this boat accident incident, and neither will my viewers.”
The Inspector eyed the beautiful and rambunctious reporter admirably, the first reporter in fifteen years to dare approach him like this. Of course she would be the last. He gave a nod, and officers Woolchuck and Pelican grabbed the young reporter, threw her against the limo, and handcuffed her. She called out that she had rights and that the public had the right to know. They stuffed her into a Common Good vehicle, and the other reporters and her cameraman stood back behind the yellow line without another peep. Officer Woolchuck approached the limo and said, “I apologize for that disturbance, Inspector. We will execute her immediately.”
He thought about the young reporter and her beauty. Maybe he could have a little fun before they disposed of her. After all, it had been a while since he shared the company of a beautiful woman.
