The Orphanage of Miracles (The Kingdom Wars Book 1)

by Amy Neftzger

  Kelsey needed advice and she was convinced that Megan and Silence had passed through this post before. She also thought back to the last time they were stuck leaving the city in the rocks and how Silence had found a way out. He probably knew where to buy things and in what order they should proceed.

  “There are other things I don’t know, right?” Kelsey asked. When Silence nodded, she told him to negotiate for the vessels as well as the water. It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a voice. He made a better impression on people, and this was no time for Kelsey to think about her pride. She handed him some money and stood back to watch him complete the chores. It bothered her that she was helpless, but she couldn’t be of any use to Silence or to herself unless they could get across the desert to the orphanage. To her surprise, he returned with more water than she had allotted him money to buy.

  “Silence, I underestimated you,” she replied apologetically. She carefully placed two of the containers in her backpack as Silence stored one in his satchel. Her backpack felt much heavier with the water, but it couldn't be helped.

  Kelsey felt the dry wind brush against her cheeks as she watched the breeze tousle Silence’s hair. She had been worried about taking care of him because of his small size and young age. She now saw that he had experience, perhaps from being on the street alone for so long. He could be helpful. She felt ashamed that she had not appreciated him before. He did save her life back in the city in the rocks, after all. In fact, he had never stopped helping her.

  In her embarrassment, Kelsey turned away to avoid looking at him when she spotted a sign on the tent across the street. The merchant was renting horses to cross the desert. She felt the weight of the extra water in her backpack and her face lit up when she saw the prices.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Megan cautioned.

  “Why not?” Kelsey replied. “You wouldn’t need a horse because you can already walk faster than either of us. Your legs are much longer. But it could help us get across this desert more quickly. Silence and I could keep up with you.”

  “It’s a bad idea.” Megan shook her head as she spoke.

  “It’s a good one. Remember when you said that you couldn’t tell me how to get to the orphanage because we weren’t able to walk some roads in the same way? Well, I think this is one of those roads. And I think that Silence and I could use a horse.”

  Kelsey looked at Silence for support, but his expression was one of skepticism. He slowly shook his head when Kelsey appealed to him.

  “Are you afraid of horses?” Kelsey asked the boy.

  “I don’t smell fear,” Megan said. “I smell laziness. And it’s not coming from him. It’s coming from you.” Kelsey made up her mind to rent the horses as soon as she heard Megan call her lazy. The leopard had legs that were larger and stronger than human legs. Of course she would think a human was lazy because no person could maintain the stamina of a beast that size.

  “We need these horses,” Kelsey announced with determination. She turned to look at Megan. “You said that when fear starts to take hold that I should move.”

  “I said that you should move. I didn’t say that you should let someone else do the moving for you.” Megan glanced at the vendor’s tent and then continued. “This smells extremely lazy.”

  Ignoring Megan’s caution, Kelsey marched into the tent and paid half her remaining money to rent a horse large enough to carry herself and Silence. The horse smelled as if it hadn’t been bathed for quite some time, but Kelsey ignored the scent and climbed onto its back. Silence was reluctant to join her, but after some coaxing he climbed up behind Kelsey and they set off into the desert.

  They hadn’t gone far when Kelsey realized that in her haste to rent the horses, she had forgotten to purchase something to cover her own head. The sun was hotter than she had anticipated, but she was not going back. She had already taken the first steps forward.

  Kelsey urged the horse onward and felt the dry wind accelerating past her. She loved the feeling of swift motion that riding the horse gave her. Particles of sand in the breeze pelted her face and she squinted to keep them out of her eyes as she watched the scenery rapidly moving past her. The sand dunes all looked the same, but there was an endless supply of them.

  Over her left shoulder, she could see the top of Megan’s head and she knew the cat was keeping up with no trouble. Kelsey was certain that she had made the right decision. The horse was powerful and didn’t appear to tire despite the intense heat. An hour went by. Then another. The desert continued with no sign of decreasing in size. Kelsey squinted to look for an edge to the sand, but there was none. After another two hours, she began to think that perhaps the never-ending desert was an illusion of the sorcerer’s spell. Then she began wondering if she would have enough water if they didn’t find a place for the horse to drink. She had planned enough water for herself and her companions, but the horse was a last-minute decision.

  It was too windy to talk. The hollow screeching sound of the wind racing past her ears muffled her hearing. It sounded like a cross between a waterfall and a banshee. Kelsey could feel the sand scraping against her skin, and parts of her face became raw from the constant blast of tiny particles. Kelsey began to regret not having a scarf to protect her nose and cheeks. Sand was microscopic, but even when little things are hurled at you with such force for so long, it becomes painful. She felt Silence tapping her on the back and she glanced over her shoulder enough to see him motioning that they should turn around.

  “No,” Kelsey answered. “We’ve gone too far, and we don’t know how far we have to go. It would be foolish to turn back now.”

  She tried to crouch behind the horse’s neck to shield her face from the wind and sand. The sun was bearing down on her head, and she felt her scalp burning. She would have both sunburn and windburn at the end of the day, but at least she would be through the desert. After another hour, she felt extremely thirsty from the dryness of the wind and sun, but she didn’t want to stop for a drink. That would only slow them down. She urged the horse to go even faster, and to her surprise, it did. They rode past more and more sand dunes. Kelsey was wondering how far they had gone when she felt Silence tap her again. He made the same request to go back.

  “It can’t be much farther now,” she shouted to him. At this point, the wind was so strong that she wasn’t sure if he could hear any noise at all from her. Silence reached up and touched her cheek. He held his moist fingers in front of Kelsey’s eyes, and she saw the drops of blood smeared on the tips. Her face was bleeding and he had been trying to tell her about it. He had been able to hear her. She just couldn’t hear or understand him.

  She decided that maybe they should stop. Her thirst was becoming unbearable and she hadn’t checked on Megan for quite some time. It was possible that the leopard had been left behind. After all, this horse was incredibly fast. As she thought about the speed and distance they had already crossed, Kelsey was positive that she had made the right choice in renting the animal. And doing so also meant giving their legs a much needed rest.

  She pulled back on the reins to begin reducing the speed of the horse. As they slowed to a trot, she felt the wind decreasing in velocity. Everything was slowing down. After only a few moments, Kelsey felt herself missing the speed, and she felt the urge to start up again. As she kicked the horse to move faster, she felt the grip of Silence on her arm. She struggled with her desire to keep going against the need to stop and check her wounds. Finally, she fought the urge to move forward and she slowed the horse.

  Kelsey looked to her left to see if Megan had kept up with them. Megan was sitting patiently in the sand and cleaning the fur on her belly with her tongue. When she noticed Kelsey looking at her, she sat up straight and spoke.

  “Are you finished with that now?” Megan asked politely. Kelsey was still moving on the horse and Megan was sitting, but somehow they remained right next to one another. Kelsey stopped the horse completely and looked over her shoulder. The trading post
was still behind her. She hadn’t moved a single step across the desert. The journey she thought she was taking wasn’t real, but the scratches on her face were. They were hurting. Kelsey climbed down from the horse feeling disappointed and embarrassed. “Would you like me to lick your face and clean your wounds?” Megan offered.

  “No!” Kelsey shouted. “That’s disgusting and you might want to eat me if you taste my blood.”

  “Now that’s disgusting,” Megan replied. She looked at Silence as he jumped off the horse. “Someone has an inflated sense of her own taste. Why does everyone assume that they’d be delicious?”

  “We didn’t go anywhere,” Kelsey remarked with chagrin as she looked around. Her face was burning and she felt like crying.

  “No, you didn’t,” Megan agreed with enthusiasm. “But what a ride!”

  “You sat there the whole time.”

  “Yes, but I watched you, and it looked like fun.” Kelsey assumed Megan was mocking her, and she resented it. The whole day was wasted, and she was hurt both emotionally and physically.

  “Stop it!” Kelsey screamed, fighting back the tears. Her skin hurt, and she felt exhausted from the ride. It had been a disaster.

  “If you feel like crying, then you should cry.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” Kelsey screamed. It annoyed her that a 400-pound animal was telling her to cry, and it annoyed her even more that she felt she needed to. But tears wouldn’t change anything, and she was already embarrassed over her mistake of renting the horse. She refused to allow herself the further embarrassment of crying in front of a wild animal.

  “Just as some gods demand a blood sacrifice to appease them, some days will require tears from you,” Megan explained. “When those days come about, the best thing to do is to offer up the tears and let them flow so that you can be cleansed and move on. This is one of those days.”

  “I’ve never seen you cry.” Kelsey said in an accusing tone.

  “It hasn’t been required of me in the past few days, but that doesn’t mean that I never cry. Failure to shed tears is a failure to live life fully. And the one thing that life requires of us all is to live it.” Megan paused and then added, “Never be embarrassed by your ability to be alive.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” Kelsey insisted. Her anger heightened at the accusation. She clenched her fists and tried to think of a way to answer Megan that wouldn’t make her look weak or foolish, but she was too frustrated to think clearly.

  “You are embarrassed,” Megan calmly insisted. “I can smell it.”

  Just as Kelsey was about to yell back, her anger and frustration overwhelmed her and she burst into tears. The liquid pouring from her eyes burned the wounds on her face. Yet oddly, despite the additional pain, Kelsey did feel relief. The more she cried, the better she felt. She didn’t speak for several minutes as she allowed the salty tears to run freely. Silence took her hand and held it while she cried, and Kelsey was glad that he couldn’t speak because she knew she didn’t need words right then.

  “It’s just that I thought I was doing something right for a change,” Kelsey finally said between sobs. Silence released her hand and came up with a tissue for her. Kelsey used it to blow her nose.

  “Does it feel right now?” Megan asked.

  “No.” Kelsey spit out the answer with as much force as her tired body would allow. Megan leaned forward and licked Kelsey’s face in one large, slobbery sweep. As soon as the leopard’s tongue swiped over her, Kelsey felt the burning sensation on her skin leave and only a cool tingling sensation remained. She reached up and touched her fingers to her face. She was no longer crying. Her skin wasn’t blistered or raw. It was smooth.

  “Well, it’s all right now.” Megan replied without making a big deal of the situation. “And we have a desert to cross. So buy yourself a hat and scarf, and let’s get moving.”

  Kelsey was confused by the quickness of the healing, and Megan turned away before Kelsey could thank her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Investigation

  “All three of us worked on this. We made this miracle together,” Nicholas announced to Jovan and Maggie the next morning as they stood huddled around their black marble lab table.

  “But you were the one that made it happen,” Maggie replied. “I saw it. It was something that you did. There was a little flash, just like when we burned those metals.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever I did would not have made a difference if we weren’t working together. I believe that,” Nicholas insisted.

  “Why are they making such a big deal of this?” Jovan asked quietly. “Is it because we’re so young? We’re in the Orphanage of Miracles. We’re surrounded by them. I don’t understand why the guardians are having trouble believing that we made a miracle.”

  “I don’t know,” Nicholas answered. “Maybe they don’t believe we could do it because we’re new to the lab. Whatever they think, you’ll have the chance to ask them. They’re going to interview all of us separately.”

  “Separately?” Jovan asked. “That makes it sound like they don’t trust us.”

  “I know,” Nicholas replied.

  “Have you seen the miracle since you made it?” Maggie asked.

  “Since we made it,” Nicholas corrected her and then continued, “and no, I haven’t.”

  More than a week had passed, and the entire orphanage was changed by the event once the word had gotten around. Some of the other apprentices didn’t believe that Nicholas had created a miracle and accused him of cheating. Other children thought he was a hero. It was quickly dividing the residents into taking sides.

  Nicholas didn’t like the attention. It made him uncomfortable, which may have been one of the reasons he tried to share the credit with Maggie and Jovan. He really did believe they had contributed to the alleged miracle, but he was unable to say exactly how. He didn’t even know what he had done to create it. Most of the time, when he was asked, Nicholas said it was the culmination of their work together. Some of the other children had asked for his autograph, and he signed notebooks or arms and legs. There was one girl, in particular, who repeatedly asked Nicholas to sign her arm every time it washed off.

  “I could sign a piece of paper,” he offered one day.

  “No,” she insisted. “I like the way the pen feels on my arm. It tickles.” Nicholas tried to avoid her after that interaction. He didn’t have time for girls who enjoyed being tickled by ink. Instead, he spent a lot of time in his room, talking to Maggie’s plant, Droopsilla. She wasn’t looking droopy anymore, but she was still small and fragile. However, Nicholas was fairly certain that she would make it. He only hoped to bring her back into better health before the daily plant walks began. He was dreading the idea of treating the plant like a baby or a pet and taking it for walks. Plants had roots and this was proof that they weren’t designed to be mobile. However, he needed to maintain the secrecy of switching plants and would follow the rules to blend in as much as possible.

  The first orphanage-wide meeting had taken place the day before. It had been fairly boring for Nicholas and his friends. Everyone was expected to memorize the new motto. This week’s motto was “Miracles, not magic.” This was supposed to remind them that miracles and magic were not the same thing and that miracles were much more valuable.

  “If you don’t have either miracles or magic, I don’t see why it matters,” Maggie commented.

  “We have magic in the forest and miracles in the garden,” Jovan pointed out to her. “So we do have both.”

  “But we can’t go near either one, so I still don’t see how it matters,” she persisted. Jovan was just about to argue again when Nicholas cut him off.

  “She’s right in a way,” he conceded. “A motto is just a group of words if it doesn’t mean anything tangible.” This statement was just thought provoking enough to keep Jovan quiet as he considered it.

  A few days later, the time came for the interview with the guardians, and Taro came
to the lab to collect all three of them at once. The other apprentices watched as they left, some wishing them luck and others sneering at them or quietly calling them fakes. On his way out, Nicholas thanked the ones who wished him luck and ignored the others.

  “I have some good news,” Taro announced just before they stepped into the hallway to march in the flow of traffic.

  “They’ve cancelled the interviews?” Nicholas asked hopefully.

  “No,” Taro responded with a small laugh. “But they have agreed to interview you as a group.”

  “So we all get to meet the guardians together?” Maggie asked, feeling relieved. She had been nervous about the encounter. The thought of meeting the heads of the orphanage was intimidating and had kept her awake at night because she was so nervous. At times she felt she wanted to punch them for drawing so much attention to the miracle. At other times, she wanted to hide and avoid meeting them.

  “Yes,” Taro replied. “Going into this meeting together should make it a little easier for you.”

  “What made them change their minds?” Jovan asked.

  “I did. I told them that since you created the miracle together that you should be interviewed together,” he explained.

  “So they believe we made the miracle as a group?” Nicholas asked hopefully.

  “No,” Taro replied. “But at least you don’t have to face them alone.”

  “I’ll take it!” Maggie exclaimed. “There’s safety in numbers. After all, it wouldn’t be fair to have two of them and only one of us.”

  “How are the tests going on the miracle? I suppose it’s passed so far, or we wouldn’t be having this interview,” Jovan asked.

  “As far as I know, nothing has shown it to be an imitation. The testing has been very secretive, so I haven’t heard much,” Taro replied. “We can talk more afterwards. We should be moving along or we’ll be late, and being tardy for the interview will not help your case.” He stepped out of the doorway and into the hallway to lead the way to the interview room. The children lined up in perfect formation and silently followed. Nicholas was too nervous to read the signs above the doorways, but he had most of them memorized, anyway.