“What was your favorite song tonight, one of the ones I hummed for you?” she asked in a teasing tone.
A sudden shadow’s movement momentarily caught his eye.
“Are you paying attention to me?” Breeze asked after his moment of distracted silence. There was no further movement.
“Yes,” he began. “Ouch!” he yipped, as she pinched his bottom.
“There – that’ll keep your attention,” she giggled.
He sensed – or felt – or heard – or experienced, a low and shrill growling sound. He couldn’t identify what it was, or where it came from.
“Do you hear that?” he asked Breeze, suddenly stopping in the middle of the trail, and making her stop as well as their clasped hands anchored her to him.
“I could pretend I hear something and cling tightly to you, if that’s what you had in mind,” she offered in a sultry voice.
The noise grew louder, suddenly and in a hurry, resolving itself in a split second into a roaring buzz of anger and hatred in his head. It was a cacophony of different voices all shrieking with united hatred. The jewels in his arm were screaming at him.
And then the shadow appeared again. It was directly in front of him, and bounding rapidly towards him. It was small and black, darker than the surrounding forest – a darkness that seemed ominous, more than just an absence of light. It was one of the shapes he had seen in the streets of Fortune, and he stiffened in fearful astonishment as it raced at him, then jumped and landed on Breeze’s shoulders.
Grange jumped backwards from Breeze, landing four feet away as he ripped himself from her grasp.
“What is wrong with you?” she asked in perplexed aggravation.
The filmy black shadow moved restlessly on her shoulders, her blouse not moving or reacting to its weight, her hair not stirring with its shifting paws that seemed to massage her scalp.
“I,” Grange tried to speak. “It,” there were no words, and the overwhelming anger of the jewels was stunning his ability to think or speak.
Suddenly, the creature grew momentarily still, then it dove into Breeze’s head.
She stiffened, and then her eyes glowed with an eerie green light.
“You’re so young, and so fresh,” a rasping voice emerged from Breeze’s mouth.
Use us! Set us free! You need us! the voices of the jewels suddenly coalesced into a single set of words in his mind.
“What’s happening?” Grange spoke aloud, taking an additional step backwards from the frightening face of Breeze.
“Your death is happening,” Breeze croaked in her distorted voice, the glow in her eyes spreading throughout her forehead and cheekbones, forming a diabolical mask. She raised a hand and pointed at Grange, as he instinctively turned and started running blindly back down the trail.
Stop! We must fight the demon! Set us free! The jewels were screaming in his mind.
A blinding flash of energy flew over his shoulder, barely missing him. It sailed through the air and struck the trunk of a majestic oak tree, causing the trunk to explode in a shower of flaming splinters that flew in all directions.
Grange dove to the ground. “Go!” he shouted to the jewels. “You’re free! Go! Go do whatever you can!”
He felt his forearm seem to explode, and he heard loud popping sounds as the jewels erupted from his skin, tore through the fabric of his sleeve, and became small glowing pixies, brilliant colored feminine figures that streaked through the air, rising and spreading out as they approached the demon-possessed figure of Breeze.
“You’re girls?” the words jumped out of his mouth before he could stop them. It was the most ludicrous thing to say at that moment, he knew. Yet seeing the tiny, gamine figures had prompted that astonished question first and foremost in his mind. He had thought that the jewels, hard, enduring, powerful as they were, must be masculine.
There was a sizzling sound, and he rolled over, fear returning to become the predominant emotion in his soul. The sound was the result of another bolt of energy fired by the demon in Breeze, a shot aimed at the blue jewel-figure as she flew at the creature’s face in a bid to attract its attention.
The other jewels flew high and low, and suddenly converged on the space directly behind Breeze’s head, where the insubstantial hindquarters of the demon were exposed, not sheltered within the girl’s head.
“This is the boy’s fight, not yours!” the demon in Breeze screamed the protest at the jewels. “He is the agent; you cannot intervene without his control!”
The demon swatted its small forearms in the air, while it controlled Breeze and swung her arms overhead as well, trying to disrupt the jewels.
Now, attack it now! the jewels called to Grange.
“Attack? How?” he asked, rising to a crouch, not sure if he was preparing to fight or flee.
“Us – guide us! Use us!” the blue jewel screamed out loud.
“Fight it, but don’t hurt Breeze!” Grange obligingly shouted. He rose to his feet and stepped forward, stretching his hands out without knowing why.
He grabbed the shoulders of the possessed girl just as the flying jewels dove down and intersected with one another inside the center of the insubstantial demonic body. Their hands joined with one another, while Grange found himself fearfully face to face with Breeze, his face only two feet away from her grotesquely distorted features. The glowing eyes stared at him with hate for two long seconds, seeming to drill into his soul and strangle it with overwhelming pain.
“Kill the demon!” he shouted. “In the name of the gods, kill it!”
The hand-holding ring of tiny bodies suddenly flared into brilliance, glowing with luminous intensity, and they began to spin in a circle, still inside the demon’s figure. Breeze screamed as the demon wretched itself out of her head and flung itself to the ground, trying to escape from the power of the jewels.
Breeze collapsed. The glowing mask around her eyes was extinguished, and she fell into unconsciousness as the demon disengaged from her. She sagged down, and pulled the unprepared Grange down on top of her as she fell limply to the ground.
At the same time, the demon was suffering a worse fate.
“Stop!” it screamed in a reedy, thin voice, no longer using Breeze’s throat to speak its words.
“We’re coming to win! You need to leave me alone, or you’ll be punished later,” the otherworldly monster tried to cajole and threaten at the same time, while the jewels kept up their spinning and glowing. They seemed to grow larger, and the misty substance of the demon’s body began to quiver, then suddenly exploded.
Grange closed his eyes as gobbets of demon essence flew in all directions. A second later he opened his eyes again, and saw that the jewels were no long spinning, no longer holding hands, no longer glowing so brightly.
We have succeeded, he sensed the smug satisfaction in their tone, as they all settled down onto his arm, then melted back down into the hard mineral substance in his forearm flesh once again.
“What happened? Why are you on me?” Breeze asked groggily first, then sharply.
“You fell, and pulled me down,” Grange answered as he lifted himself off the girl, and rose to his feet, then offered a hand to help her up.
“That’s all? We just fell?” she looked at him in confusion.
“Maybe we had too much cider?” he shrugged his shoulders, once she was standing next to him.
She dusted herself off, and Grange could see that she was trying to discretely examine herself, to determine if anything untoward had happened while she had passed out.
“Shall we be on our way?” he asked. He was sober – completely. Whatever mild euphoric state the cider and his companionship with the girl had created had disappeared completely. He was anxious to be out of the forest, and sleeping someplace around other people – someplace that might feel safer.
They began to walk again, silently, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Grange had innumerable questions that crowded together in his mind, as he tried to
make sense of the terrifying experience he had survived. The demon had appeared from nowhere, in the middle of an empty forest, and had tried to kill him. The jewels had known what it was, and they had known what to do. But they had needed his permission, for some inexplicable reason. And they were females; that bothered him. He thought about them differently, as an embarrassing invasion of privacy. Although, he reflected, they had usefully set him free from the tunnel, and saved his life.
“There it is,” Breeze spoke up, startling Grange. He noticed a tiny light ahead, a candle in a window.
“I’ll go on from here, so my ma doesn’t know there’s a boy here,” she murmured. Like Grange, the episode in the forest – though she didn’t remember what had happened – had banished any thoughts of romance. “You just have to follow the trail back to the orchard,” she told Grange, and she took a quick step away from him to remove any opportunity for a kiss or embrace.
“Good night; I’ll see you tomorrow,” Grange agreed, not wanting to prolong his interaction with Breeze. He turned and began to walk along the path, then glanced back over his shoulder and slowed down to make sure he could watch the girl reach the distant safety of her home’s door. Once he saw her safely inside, he began to carefully jog along the trail.
“What happened back there?” he asked the jewels.
The foul one was right, one of the jewels spoke.
This one is not the hero – the Spirit made a mistake, another said.
The Spirit does not make mistakes, another voice insisted shrilly.
If this isn’t a mistake, then why was he so cowardly and stupid back there? The demon should have won, the second voice responded.
No, you all are wrong. We must be patient, said a fourth voice. Grange was astonished by the argument underway, the sudden splintering of the united jewels from a monolithic voice to this arguing gaggle of opinions.
We must make him be the hero the Spirit wants, the fourth voice continued.
Did you see him back there? the first voice protested. There’s nothing heroic about him.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Grange shouted.
“I’m not trying to be a hero. You all stop this argument. What happened back there? Tell me, instead of arguing with each other,” he said.
The darkness sent a small demon to test you. It did not expect much from you, apparently, one of the jewels answered.
“What darkness?” Grange asked, looking around at the dim white tree trunks in the nighttime forest.
He is ignorant as well as cowardly, a jewel cried in exasperation.
The great darkness, the power that seeks to destroy and consume and prevent, the reasonable voice replied to his question. It continually wages a war. It is often weak, but sometimes grows strong. Now it is growing strong again.
“I,” Grange didn’t even know how to respond. “None of that has anything to do with me. Whatever it is. I’m just a boy, a pickpocket who’s working in an orchard. Leave me alone – go find your hero,” he told the jewels. The trail opened up into a clearing, and he realized he had reached the orchard. There was the sound of muffled giggles coming from somewhere in the darkness to his right.
We will leave you alone, until you are ready, several of the jewels agreed.
He needs a guide, one voice dissented.
When the time is right, another voice counseled.
“Grange, back already?” he heard a boy’s voice from the shadows call.
“Yes, Breeze is safely home,” he replied, then headed to the wagon, covered himself with his blanket, and lay awake for a long time, thinking and wondering, before he finally fell asleep.
Chapter 7
The first thing Grange did when he awoke in the morning was to raise his sleeve and look at the jewels. During the night, in his sleep, he had somehow managed to convince himself that all the things he had lived in recent weeks – being arrested, sentenced to the tunnel, finding the jewels, fighting the demon – had themselves been a dream. He woke up believing the dream that said that reality was a dream, for a moment. But when he looked at his forearm, he saw that the shiny jeweled surfaces were in place along his arm, dashing his hopes of awakening to find himself back in his old reality.
Except that one jewel was missing. The blue stone was not in place. There were four jewels in his flesh, not five. Red, black, white, and green all still sat within his flesh, their colors dynamically contrasting with his skin.
“Where’s the blue one?” he asked.
There was no answer.
“The blue jewel is gone. Where is she?” he asked again.
He heard footsteps approaching, and hastily pushed the sleeve back down to cover the jewels, who maintained their silence.
“What happened last night?” Breeze’s voice spoke over his shoulder, and he turned to see her standing next to him, her arms crossed tightly in front of her chest, a serious expression on her face.
He was silent, struggling to know what to reveal, and to find the right words.
“I had strange, scary dreams last night after I fell asleep,” she told him.
“From drinking the cider?” he asked weakly.
“I don’t think so. I’ve never had dreams like this before. They were so scary. They made me feel like there’s nowhere in the world that is safe. I woke up screaming,” she told him.
“I can’t explain it,” he lied.
She scrutinized him silently for two seconds more, then turned and walked to join the other girls who were gathering at the breakfast tables.
Grange stood up, and walked over to a cluster of the traveling boys. A few of their companions were conspicuously socializing with local girls, standing and sitting as couples who paid close attention to one another, but the majority of the boys were standing close to the breakfast table, where the first portions from the menu were starting to be offered.
Breeze was with the other girls, appearing to laugh politely at some joke made.
“Grange, today you get to climb the trees,” Thrall said, coming up to the cluster of boys. “Grater, you’ll be the hauler.” And so Grange began his long day of working in the orchard among the trees, picking and sorting fruit all day long with the majority of the other boys, having virtually no interaction with the girls other than at lunch time, when Clarine chatted with him.
The apple trees rapidly surrendered their fruit to the determined group of workers, and an hour before sundown, Garrel climbed down from the last tree, his sack of apples holding the last fruit the boys picked.
“The whole orchard done in two days,” the local farm leader marveled when they trudged to the dining spot. Large cauldrons of stew were cooking over the fires, tended by the local farm wives, while the girls continued to work in the processing barn. A vast pile of apples awaited their turns to be turned into cider and apple butter, promising days of work remaining, long after the boys had left and moved on to their next orchard destination.
“Eat up, everyone,” Thrall directed the boys. “We’ll ride tonight and start picking at our next destination in the morning,” he informed them.
The boys lined up to eat, as a local farmer approached Thrall and had a long conversation with him in a low voice.
“I’m going to go find out what they talked about,” Morris announced after the tete-a-tete concluded. He walked over to stand by his father and they talked briefly, then Morris returned to reveal his secrets to the other boys.
“The farmer wants to drive a couple of wagons along the road with us, so that he can get some of his apples to market in Palmland ahead of the other orchards, to get a better price.”
“My dad said yes, so the farmer is having his wagons loaded now,” the boy explained.
The news elicited little interest from the rest of the boys, who continued to eat their large bowls of stew, then ate apple turnovers for dessert, before climbing aboard the back of their wagon to start the overnight ride to the next location.
“Hold on – look at that!” one of the boys
exclaimed, as Grange and Garrel settled into their locations on the edges of the wagon. As the newcomers, they received the least comfortable, least secure spots for sleeping. They looked at the arrival of the local farmer wagons like all the others, then sat up straight in surprise.
Two wagons were pulled into position behind their own, each carrying a full load of crated apples and stacked jugs of cider. One was driven by the farmer who had spoken to Thrall, and the other was driven by Clarine, who was accompanied by her friend, Deana. The relevance of her position on the wagon bench was instantly clear to all the boys – Clarine would be traveling with them!
“Grange, Garrel, since you’re barely hanging on to our wagon, you go ride in the farmer’s wagons,” Thrall ordered, sending the two boys scrambling away to the sounds of howls of protest from the other boys on the wagon’s flat bed.
Grange and Garrel sprinted away from their own wagon, past the farmer’s wagon, and then leapt up onto the bench of the wagon where Clarine and Deana sat, taking seats on either side of them. The two boys smiled broadly at one another as they turned to face the girls between them.
“What a surprise!” Garrel said. “We’re looking forward to traveling with you.”
“Clarine,” the farmer called. “Since there’re two boys back there to watch the wagon, you and Deana can come ride with me.”
“Yes father, We’ll be right there,” the girl called back.
“Sorry boys,” she apologized. “Maybe we can talk later,” she said as she gathered up a cloth bundle, then she and her friend climbed over Grange and climbed down to the ground, ran forward, and climbed up to sit next to her father.
The boys in the front wagon laughed heartily at the crestfallen faces of Grange and Garrel, left alone in their wagon. Thrall shook the reins of the front wagon’s team of horses, who moved forward, setting the whole procession in motion.
The sun had set in the west, and their road forward traveled northwest, so that the red sky on the horizon was on the left side of the travelers.
“What are we going to do?” Garrel asked Grange after they left the cooking camp behind, waving at the women and girls who gathered to watch their departure.
The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) Page 12
