by Jason Letts
The old man, blindfolded, twitched his lips and mulled a nearly imperceptible chant. He receded into himself, listening to the flow of thoughts in his mind. Kevin watched him, fidgeting anxiously.
“Yes,” Corey said finally. “A false chance to escape provided by the sound of water. Can you create a drip from the ceiling in the corner? He’ll find it, feel it, and listen for its source. While the drip flows, I’ll repeat our message. I’ll tell him we can pull the rest of him here and he’ll be at our mercy if he doesn’t tell us what we want to know.”
“You really think that’ll work?”
“I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot. As for you, you’ll want to seal yourself completely on all sides. Hopefully it doesn’t take him long to discover this new aspect of his environment.”
A tiny droplet swelled and fell from an extension of the vapor wall stretching along the ceiling. The droplet fell against the stone floor and soon a puddle formed. Corey hummed and moaned a harsh, bizarre note while he listened for the captive. The feet found the water, and the hand felt the cool drop against its bristly skin. The eye looked but couldn’t make out the source in the darkness. An ear appeared, and instantly that inconceivable sound slipped through the ear and into the mind of the host. The ear dropped to the floor, twitching and shaking.
Corey listened to the reverberations of his tune inside the mind of the assailant. He listened as it became muddled with the host’s own thoughts, intertwined with the neurons in the brain. He plumbed its depths, beating into tense and guarded areas. When the echoing sound returned to Corey, it had changed, and Corey absorbed the alterations.
“Ipswich, you can come out now,” said Corey’s raspy voice through the stone.
“What is it? Did you get through to him?”
“Pyrenee. I learned Pyrenee. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No, it doesn’t. I’ve never known anyone with that name.”
Corey reached out and snatched Kevin by his coat, yanking him closer. Spit flew out of his mouth as he spoke and his voice stung Kevin’s ears.
“Why do you lie to me? I’m trying to help you! Would you trade all of our lives for your secret?”
Kevin brushed off the old man’s hand and stood up.
“I’m telling you, I’ve never heard that name before. I swear on my daughter’s life. Now how are you going to protect our village?”
Corey calmed down and leaned back in his seat.
“Perhaps you haven’t, but you know something. And the price for keeping it secret will become more severe with each passing day. We’ll take the prisoner to Darmen and ask for support. Our guards will work your home into their patrol, but if the armies of the sun are intent upon getting to you, how long do you think our measly camp can withstand them?”
Corey knew that Kevin would not give away his secret. Kevin closed his trap around the prisoner’s foot, and he carefully transferred it to the staff. He then bid Corey a respectful and reverent goodbye and left to make the cold trek home.
“What are you hiding from me?” Corey’s voice traveled into Kevin’s ear just when he returned home. But Kevin made no reply, leading Corey to become suspicious that he would risk sorting out the identity of Pyrenee on his own.
The front door slammed and the sound of trudging footsteps traveled into the living room, catching Jeana’s ear. She looked up from her studies to see Mira enter. She looked like the princess of winter with her rosy cheeks and her pink knit cap. Jeana watched her daughter as she dropped her bag, removed her coat, and rubbed her hands together.
“How was school today?”
“Just fine,” Mira responded. “We talked about hibernating animals. It was a long time ago that you taught me about that. And we learned how to determine wind direction by wetting a finger. One kid might have frostbite because of it.”
For some reason, it only now occurred to Jeana how much Mira had grown. Jeana felt for the first time that Mira spoke to her as a friend might instead of as a dependent child. She was developing a life of her own now.
“Maybe for tomorrow’s lesson you’ll be sticking your tongues to metal poles.”
Mira chuckled and shook her head, taking a seat near the fire. “What have you been reading about?” she asked.
“Oh, somebody wrote something about storing gifts. I didn’t know that was possible except for healers and the like, but I guess if you can find the right medium then you can save them. I’ll have to give it a try.”
“That sounds interesting,” Mira said, but Jeana saw she hadn’t really been paying attention. She stared blankly into the flames. It pained Jeana to see her daughter like this. She could have just been tired, but Jeana remembered Mira’s loneliness and thought she could see it in Mira’s face even if it wasn’t on her mind.
“What do you say we spend a little time planning your party?” Jeana casually suggested.
“Alright,” Mira said, perking up and turning to her mother. “What do we need to do?”
“That all depends on what kind of party you want to have. What is something you want to do that would be fun for the others too?”
Mira scrunched up her face and shook her head. “I don’t know what anyone else would want to do. What do normal kids do at parties?”
“I don’t think it matters much what other kids do at their parties, because this is your party and we want to make it special. Let’s see if we can think about what we know we’re going to have and then make a game out of it. So what are we going to have?”
“Food and decorations,” Mira replied.
“OK, can you think of anything we can do with food?”
“I know!” Mira said, a sudden burst of enthusiasm brightening her eyes. “First of all, we take a chocolate cake.”
“Uh-huh,” Jeana said.
“Then we cut a piece for everybody.”
“Yeah,” Jeana said, smiling.
“And then we burn the cake to see how many calories we would have eaten!” Mira flushed, clearly enjoying her idea.
“That’s a really good idea,” Jeana said, “but you know what might work a little better? How about we have a taste test? We can blindfold everyone, stick food in their mouths, and they have to guess what they’re eating.”
“Oh! That’s a really good idea. Wow, you’re good at this.”
“I just got lucky. Let’s think of another game, maybe something that would include all this extra paper.”
Mira sat for a moment and thought.
“How about we take the paper and show everybody how it was made from trees?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Jeana said. “But it might take a long time. Maybe a drawing contest would be better, or a paper airplane contest, or some simple origami. What do you think?”
“Yes, let’s have a paper airplane contest. That sounds so fun.”
“Great. So we’ve got a couple of activities for everyone to do. Should we decorate the house?”
“Why don’t we just use the decorations we’ve always used for my birthday?”
Jeana took a deep breath, looked down, and then cleared her throat. She realized she had made a mistake when she thought her daughter had grown up.
“While The Periodic Table of Elements would certainly be new to them, wouldn’t you rather have something new? Maybe we could think of a theme for the party and make the house look different.”
“Make the house look different? I guess we could drill a hole into the roof and make the house into an observatory. We could bring my telescope to the attic and look at the stars.”
“Stars! That’s perfect. We’ll have an outer space theme, turn out the lamps, and have glowing stars, planets, and comets hanging from the ceiling around the house. You can even replicate the solar system and make sure the planets are the right distance apart. Instead of paper airplanes, they can be paper spaceships.”
“Oh, that’ll be great! I would love that!”
“Perfect. Let’s move on to the invitations. W
hat kind of invitations can we make that will get everyone excited about coming to visit you at your party?”
“How about this: I’m oxygen and they’re hydrogen, and together we make water. Everyone likes water. We couldn’t live without it!”
“Interesting. Let’s get as many ideas as we can brainstorm. Do you have another?”
“I’m sodium and they’re chlorine, and together we make salt?” she posed reluctantly.
Jeana looked at her daughter and wondered why this was so hard. There were so many things they sheltered her from, and Jeana wondered how long Mira could hold on to her naiveté.
“What is something that is really popular with everyone at school?” Jeana asked, deciding that she had to speak plainly with her daughter.
“They like to play this dice game called Makara. I guess it’s…cool. I’ve never played it so I don’t really know about it,” she said.
“I can’t recall it,” Jeana said. She thought she could put aside the values she had been instilling for the past fifteen years for a little risk without too much harm coming to pass. “Do some investigative work and find out how you could use Makara to make a good design, and I’ll whip up something to go along with it. Now, what do you say we get started on the planets?”
“Sure.”
“Grab some colored paper, scissors, and glue.”
Mira ran upstairs to fetch those objects. After rummaging in her room, she came back to the ground floor just as Kevin came through the front door.
“Where are my scissors?” she asked, a confused look on her face.
“Oh, I forgot I still had them. Sorry about that,” Kevin said. He reached deep into his pocket and withdrew Mira’s scissors. He handed them to her, handle first.
“What were you using them for?” Mira asked.
“Cutting,” Kevin said, then he briskly walked up to his room.
“Could you get started?” Jeana asked Mira. “I’m going to talk with your father for a minute.” She heard their bedroom door close, and hastened after Kevin. Knocking quickly, she walked into their bedroom and found her husband taking off his jacket in front of a frosted window.
“What was that about?” she said.
“What was what about?”
“With the scissors. You’re not usually so short with your daughter.”
“Looks like I can’t hide anything around here, least of all a surprise birthday present for my girl. It could’ve been a surprise for you too, but not anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, warming up to him. “What have you got planned?”
“I’m just trying to do something for her,” Kevin said.
“It doesn’t sound like it’s going well. Is there something I can help with?”
“No, no, don’t you worry. I’d better take care of it myself.”
Yannick, wrapped in cloth and metal plates, leaned against the wall near the Darmen Exchange office. Water droplets trickled from the second story walkway and made a line in the snow a few feet in front of him. He scanned the crowd, watching the figures as they meandered around the market, and waited for someone to take an interest in his services.
A few people shuffled in and out of the door he guarded, but no one paid him much attention. He spat on the ground and kicked some snow over it, impatient. But someone caught his eye. A beautiful woman walked toward the gate, and he followed her with his gaze.
He noticed a sudden change in the air. A mist formed and stretched from the ground to the ceiling. He backed away from it, moving to his left, but found the undulating cloud had completely blocked off the marketplace. The two sides joined in front of him and soon the cloud had encased him in a small chamber.
Yannick pushed up against it, but it wouldn’t give way even though it didn’t feel like a hard surface. He punched and kicked at it, eventually yelling for help, but no one knew to come and help him.
Eventually, someone did approach, but Yannick immediately knew that person had not come to help. A tall man with graying hair and a fiery expression on his face walked through the wall of floating water and entered the tiny, enclosed space.
The man shoved him up against the wall. Yannick cocked his fist and threw a punch at the man’s face. His fist connected with a tiny patch of cloud that appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared. Yannick punched again and again, with the same effect. The man, unflinching and unmoving, looked like he waited for the right words to come.
“Thought it was safe to come back after hiding out for a few days, didn’t you? Did you think it would blow over and we’d forget? Who did you send after my daughter?” he said.
“Your daughter?” Yannick asked.
Kevin knocked Yannick’s head against the wall.
“Mira, the girl in the pink cap, the one you gave away, you criminal! You worthless, freeloading drifter! I’m her father, Kevin Ipswich.”
Yannick felt the impact drain from the man’s hands.
“What are you talking about? I remember that girl and our deal was reputable from top to bottom.”
Kevin’s anger flared.
“Then explain to me why someone came to murder her just after you made your deal. Who did you sell her out to? Who wanted to get to her?” he said through his teeth.
“Calm down,” Yannick said, brushing off Kevin’s grip. “Do you want to have a conversation about this or do you want to keep acting like a tough guy?”
Kevin, without taking his eyes off Yannick, leaned in to whisper, “I know about you. I know why you’ve been banned from Darmen and why you waste your time festering up our town. I know you can’t fathom the kind of awful things that are going to happen to you when people find out you’ve been spying for the other side. You tell me right now what you did and I might let you off with just a beating.”
Yannick knew the man meant it.
“I didn’t talk to man or beast, fish or fowl, when I was on the job for that girl. I could tell somebody talked to her though, the way she wanted that hair back, and now I’m guessing it was you. I gave it back to her the same as I got it. I swear.”
“You swear. You swear, do you? Well, you just made another mistake because I know whom you dealt with. I know who sent that man into my home to kill her. Pyrenee.”
“OK, are you listening, man? You’re looking at someone who has never heard that name, and who never did anything other than what your daughter specifically asked. The accusations you are making against me are false. Now, you can either keep bludgeoning me for information I don’t have, or you can get me on board and I can help you. What do you have to say to that?”
Kevin eyed him warily, clearly skeptical of everything Yannick had said. He took a step back, giving Yannick some breathing room.
“Alright, that’s good,” Yannick said. “From what you said, you don’t know who came after you, and neither do I, but we can fix that. You said someone broke into your home, did he leave anything behind?”
Kevin thought about the night of the attack, about everything that happened with his prisoner, and about Corey, who probably listened in on their conversation at that very moment.
“We have a part of his body that is separated from the rest of him. It’ll be shipped off to Darmen so that the commanders can have a look at it.”
“Well, a part is all we need,” Yannick said, showing some optimism. “If I can just get a hold of that part, I’ll know right where to go to get you what you need. Let’s—”
“It’s not going to be that easy. The prisoner is in Corey’s possession now. We’ll have to ask him for it.”
At the mention of Corey, Yannick’s eyes grew large. Kevin felt the same hesitation too. He had refused to cooperate fully with Corey before, and the thought of returning so soon made him nervous. Especially now that he needed something from him, Kevin knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Corey in the dark a second time.
“We’re talking about business now, right?” Yannick said. “I know it’s personal for you, but this is business fo
r me. There will need to be some compensation. Do you understand?”
“We’ll figure that out later,” Kevin replied. “We can’t do this without Corey’s support. Either he makes it happen or the whole idea is a waste.” He knew full well Corey had probably already made his decision about what he will do. Still, Yannick and Kevin made plans to meet him.
Yannick watched the vapor wall around him dispel through his peripheral vision. It melted into thin air, revealing the marketplace and people going about their business as though nothing unusual had happened. Kevin disappeared into the crowd.
Unsettled and peculiarly vulnerable, Yannick also departed.
Ogden Fortst shook his head with extreme displeasure. None of the students could remember any of the lessons he had taught them. He thought a review session would be the perfect way to avoid teaching new material, but he never thought it would reveal they hadn’t been paying attention.
His disappointment in them ran deep, but he was equally disappointed in himself. It made him worry about how they would fare once he released them into the turbulent world. They had so much to learn if they were going to be ready for the challenges that awaited them.
“Could someone please tell me why water takes longer to boil if you watch it?” he asked. Hearing nothing but silence, he became irritated. “Come on, we spent days on this! This is unbelievable. We’re going to have a test. Are you listening? A test. And you will have big problems if you don’t know all of this stuff. Open your notebooks. We’ve got a lot of work to do!”
Groaning, the students complied. Reaching into their desks, they removed their notebooks. Some of them were dusty and had nothing inside but games and doodles. Will pulled his out, and when he opened the cover he found a folded piece of paper inside. Carefully unfolding it, he read the contents.
Will, your life is in danger. Meet me by the healer’s office near the town square after school today. Come alone. —Mira
He turned in his seat to look behind him. She gave him a heavy and serious nod. Will faced forward again, folded the note, and put it in his desk.
Once school ended, Mira left quickly and went to the appointed place. Through the window, she saw Nora rubbing some kind of shampoo into her uneven hair, then hide in a nook by the side of the building. Mira heard footsteps coming and knew Will was on his way. Once he had passed by her, she popped out of her hiding spot and snuck up behind him.
