by Janean Worth
He could even have killed her while she slept. He cringed at the thought. He might be a thief, but he was not a killer.
Kara hadn’t woken as he left, nor when he carefully pulled the brambles back over the entrance to the cave. He normally wouldn’t have bothered doing something like that – after all, why should he care what happened after he left - but there was something about Kara that gave his heart a tug. Not enough to keep him from taking her things, but enough that he didn’t want her to be caught by the Enforcers and dragged to the House. In his opinion, no one, not even the dirtiest and most despicable of the Strays, deserved the House.
He brushed his conscience aside, continuing on his way without giving any more thought as to the consequences for Kara if he took her knife. He needed it, so he’d taken it. It was as simple as that. He turned left from the cave entrance, intending to make his way back to the river to fill up his water skin before deciding on which direction he should take. He really had nowhere to go, but he did want to get as far away from the Enforcers as he was able.
Everything looked different to him in the light of day, and he would have lost his way through the thick tangle of brush had he not stumbled across the animal trail that Kara had shown him the previous night. The trail led him straight back to the river.
It was quiet there in the early dawn. No Enforcers were about that he could see or hear.
He sat on the bank after he’d filled his water skin and contemplated what he should do. If only his mother had told him what he should do after he ran from the Enforcers. He took the Old Tech from his pocket and unwrapped it again. Stroking his finger over the flat shiny surface, he hoped to see the image of his father again, but nothing happened. That had been the result every time he’d tried it since he’d seen the image the first time. Nothing. He’d tried repeatedly throughout the night to call the image forth, but the Old Tech had stubbornly refused to show him anything at all.
In the light of day, he could see the Old Tech better. It had a glossy front, made of rare and precious glass, and the back was some material he’d never seen before. It was smooth, and hard like metal, but not as tough. There were dents and scratches in the not-metal material, and on the thin sides there were a series of small raised rectangles. The rectangles had tiny symbols on them. He pressed one of the symbols, the one marked with a circle with a line through the middle, and the Old Tech began to glow. He looked at the glass front, and again there was an image of his father. Nothing else happened. He waited a moment, and then pressed another rectangle. The image disappeared and the Old Tech began to emit a noise like the shriek of a wounded animal. It shrilled loudly in the quiet of the dawn, causing birds to take flight from the trees by the river and startling a doe that had come to drink.
Mathew pressed the rectangle again, hoping to make it stop. The noise continued. The shrieking was so loud he could barely hear himself think. In desperation, he pressed every other raised symbol that he could see. When he depressed the circular symbol again, the noise abruptly stopped and the glass surface went dark.
Mathew hurriedly stuffed the Old Tech back into his pocket, grabbed the saddlebags and his water skin and set off along the riverbank in the direction that he hoped led away from the Gate. He couldn’t afford to stick around after making all that racket. He didn’t know where he was going, but he had to go somewhere. Fast.
He climbed up out of the riverbank a bit, trying to make his way through the tangle of low bushes and other plants that grew together in a dense tangle at the water’s edge, moving parallel to the water so that he could keep it in sight. He’d gone without water once, and he didn’t care to do it again.
Now that he’d left Kara, he wondered again if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps he should have asked her which way he should travel. What if there were other groups of Strays somewhere farther away from the Gate that she knew about? Perhaps there were other Strays who would help him.
He shook his head at his own thoughts. He didn’t need help from any Strays. He’d find his own way. They were probably all weak, malnourished and small like Kara anyway, so how much help would they really be?
The sound of hoofbeats behind him jerked him from his thoughts. Enforcers! He immediately began to run, giving no thought as to his direction, knowing that he had to get away. The bushes tangled in his clothing, pulling at him as he passed. He tripped over roots and weeds as he tried to go faster. The noise he made trying to make haste only hindered him further – they would know exactly where he was if he didn’t stop.
He stopped running and crouched down among the weeds, turning to catch a glimpse of his pursuer.
What he saw made his heart skip a beat. A tracken was running toward him, nose to the ground.
The sandy rocky soil of the riverbed barely slowed the creature down, and its huge strides ate up the distance quickly. The tracken was large, about half the size of a horse. All black, covered in a dense fur, the thing had a cat-like head, with erect ears, eyes with an elliptical pupil, but it sported a long snout like a dog. Behind the creature, three mounted Enforces followed.
Mathew had never seen one of the tracken beasts before, although he’d learned about them from his lessons. They were an aberration from the Fall of the Days of Tech. It was said that during the Fall, people had released poisonous clouds upon one another, which had caused death, deformations, mutations and abnormalities. The tracken was one such mutation, but unlike most of the other abnormalities caused by the Fall’s poisonous clouds, the Enforcers had been able to retain the mutation through careful breeding. They bred the tracken, enslaved the creatures from birth, and used them to track down Strays or criminals.
The tracken were kept at the House, and Mathew had never seen a live one, only drawings in the books that his tutor had shown him.
He shuddered. It wouldn’t matter how little noise he made traveling through the brush now, the tracken would find him by his scent. He remembered his tutor telling him that a tracken could track a scent on the ground for miles, even after weeks had passed since its quarry had passed there.
He sat, frozen in fear, for a few precious seconds. What was he going to do? They would find him now for sure!
He crouched low and scuttled through the underbrush as fast as he could, staying out of the Enforcers’ line of site.
If he could get back to the river, perhaps the beast wouldn’t be able to follow his scent in the water? His tutor had said once that they had trouble tracking anything that had not been impressed upon the soil. It was the only thing that he could think of, but he hoped it would be enough to save him.
“You idiot!” a voice near his shoulder hissed quietly.
Mathew started. Kara was at his side, all but hidden among the brush. She had leaves and grass in her hair, mud smeared on her face and clothes, and a small red fox under one arm.
He hadn’t heard her approach at all.
“Your scent will lead them right back to my cave,” Kara whispered. “You didn’t even try to hide your trail when you left!”
She looked at him with accusing eyes, and he knew she was angry with him for much more than that. She’d discovered his thefts.
The tracken gave a high-pitched yowling screech as it reached the spot on the bank where Mathew had been sitting only moments ago. The creature stopped for a moment, then turned from the riverbank to crash into the brush, headed right for them.
“Follow me,” Kara whispered.
Chapter Five
“Don’t you know anything?” Kara hissed at him, frowning.
Mathew felt his face burn with mortification as he hurried along behind her. He didn’t like to be admonished by a girl, especially one who also happened to be a Stray! Even more, he had to admit - if only to himself - that Kara, whom he’d though was useless and weak, was much smarter than he was when it came to staying alive and not getting caught.
“First rule is never, never leave a trail that leads right back to where you are hiding. But I guess you weren’
t worried about that, since you were leaving, were you? But you could have warned me! And you took my knife! My knife! I don’t care about the mat, or even the flint, I know how to get more of those, and I would have given them to you if you’d asked. But my knife? I really need that!”
Mathew opened his mouth to defend himself, but she cut him off.
“Can you climb?” she’d stopped near the base of a large tree, gesturing to the top of the tree towering over their heads.
Mathew nodded.
“Good, then follow me,” she said. Shucking a battered pack bag off of her back, she paused to carefully place the small red fox into it, then switched the straps on the pack around so she could drape the pack over her neck and carry it snuggled close to her side. The fox’s nose poked out of the top, sniffing the air, but the animal stayed inside.
Kara leapt up to grasp a low branch and hauled herself up and into the tree. She scrambled up the tree quickly, much faster than she walked, and he had to struggle to keep up with her. He could hear the tracken crashing through the brush, drawing closer every minute. The Enforcers were shouting encouragement to the beast as they followed it at a slower pace on their horses.
Above his head, Kara reached a spot near the top of the tree and stopped, and Mathew suddenly realized that they were now trapped at the top of the tree, with nowhere left to go. Why had he followed her so mindlessly? He had let her lead him into an impossible situation.
He looked at her in horror, “There’s no place to go from up here! And tracken can climb, too!”
“Don’t worry. Even though I should let them catch you, I won’t, because it is not the right thing to do. But I wish I could. Especially since you took my knife and left me there for them to find.” She threw him a frown over one thin shoulder.
She was going to hold a grudge for that. He could tell. And what was her fascination with doing the right thing? Who cared about doing the right thing anymore? Especially at a time like this. He knew wouldn’t do the same for her.
Kara reached above her head to grab a knot of vines, and when she pulled them down, he realized that they had been put there purposefully. The vines were strung together, forming a rope, which had been knotted to allow handholds. He traced the path of the vine; it led to an enormous Oak tree distantly adjacent to where they stood.
“There’s only one vine. I didn’t plan on having company if I needed to escape from the Enforcers or a tracken. You’ll have to swing across with me.”
Mathew swallowed hard. What if the vine didn’t hold? If she’d made it to carry her slight body, then how would it support his weight too?
Looking down, he realized he had no other choice. The tracken had found their tree and begun to climb up after them. Its sharp, retractable cat-like claws dug deep as it scrabbled upward, dislodging large chunks of the tree’s bark. The terrifying beast climbed almost as quickly as it ran.
For a moment, Mathew was mesmerized in terror. The beast’s eyes found him in their perch in the tree, and Mathew met its gaze without meaning to do so. The beast had death in its rabid stare. Mathew quickly looked away from the creature’s eyes, but only to stare at the long, razor-like incisors that were visible beneath the tracken’s snarling lips.
Mathew shuddered. He hoped that the Enforcers would not allow the tracken to rip into him with those teeth before they dragged him to the House.
“Ready?” Kara asked. “You’ll have to put your arms around me and hold on to the vines. And be careful not to squash Jax.”
Mathew quickly turned his head away from the terrifying sight of the tracken drawing ever closer, and did as she’d directed. He felt odd hugging her so close. He’d never hugged a girl before. Something about the feel of her frailness beneath his hands gave him a funny, almost tender, feeling deep in his chest.
He didn’t have much time to think about it, because she stepped off of the branch and took him with her, giving a little kick to gain momentum at the very last second. They swung out across the canopy of the trees on the slender braid of vines going incredibly fast. Mathew lost his breath at the feeling of zipping through the air so quickly. At first, he was frightened, worried about the vine supporting their weight, but then exhilaration claimed him.
They were flying! He felt a laugh form in his throat and let it loose with exuberance. Not only had they escaped the tracken, and either certain death or enslavement, but they were now flying. It seemed an impossible feat.
Kara turned in his arms and grinned at him. “Fun, isn’t it?”
They left the tracken behind easily. The beast yowled loudly in rage when it reached the top of the tree and realized that its quarry had escaped.
Mathew threw it a glance over his shoulder as they swung away, then laughed again. They had really escaped a tracken. It was said to be impossible.
The vine swung them through the trees rapidly. Branches thick with clumps of leaves streaked by his face, blurred in his vision by speed, making a flashing green and gold kaleidoscope as they played hide and seek with the rays of the morning sun.
The vine was tied high enough up inside the enormous Oak that they flew past the tree at great speed, their momentum swinging them in an inverted arc much like a pendulum.
The vine’s path intersected directly with another adjacent tree. As they passed through the branches of the giant Oak, Mathew was again impressed with Kara’s cleverness. She had cut away a swath of branches so that they could pass through the middle of the Oak as the vine swung through so that the arc of their travel was not impeded.
The other tree was approaching fast. He felt Kara’s muscles tense as they drew near. The vine reached its zenith just at the point where a sturdy branch jutted out. Kara let go of the vine with one hand, and then, in a smooth practiced move, she reached out to grab another vine that was tied to the trunk of the sturdy pine and stepped onto the branch at the same time. Just like that, their ride was over.
Mathew imitated her movement as best as he could before the vine could begin to swing back, although he performed it a bit awkwardly, not nearly so gracefully as she had. He stepped out onto the branch and grabbed tightly onto the vine that she held. His palms felt sweaty from excitement, but his blood was singing through his veins in triumph.
She grinned at him again, as if she was proud of him for following her lead so quickly when they’d reached the end of the vine’s arc.
“Hold this, please,” she asked, as she let go of the vine that was nestled in the tree that they’d swung into. When she was sure he had a good grip on their escape route, she moved closer to the tree’s truck in order to secure the free-swinging vine that they’d just ridden.
Behind them, the tracken let out another earsplitting yowl of rage.
“Did you know that they can only track our scent on the ground? As strong as their sense of smell is, they cannot track scent through the air,” Mathew told Kara, a bit proud of himself that he remembered what his tutor had told him.
“I know,” Kara answered with a smile.
He stared at her. He was constantly surprised by the little Stray.
She stepped back over to him, got a sturdy grip on the vine and grinned at him over her shoulder, “Ready?”
Chapter Six
“So? Now what are we going to do?” Kara asked expectantly as they sat down on a moss-covered log to rest.
They were far away from the heated pursuit of the Enforcers. Kara had placed vines virtually everywhere in the trees along the river, and the tracken and its masters had been left behind at least an hour ago.
Since then, they’d been traipsing through the forest, not really heading anywhere, just going in the opposite direction of GateWide, and away from where the Enforcers had found them.
Mathew looked at her, nonplussed. She expected him to have a solution now? He’d just been running away when he’d left the cave, and really, he’d just done the same ever since then. He had no real plan. But he did not want to tell her that. She was a girl, and a Stray,
and he would not admit to weakness in front of her.
She gave him a hard look when he remained silent. “You don’t know, do you?”
He held his silence rather than admit that she was right.
She heaved a heavy sigh, “Well, we obviously cannot go back to my cave. The tracken probably led them straight there after it lost us in the trees.”
For a moment, a fleeting look of sadness crossed her too-thin face. Mathew felt a pinch in the vicinity of his heart as an unfamiliar pang of remorse gripped him. He had cost her so much more than a lonely cave and some primitive sleeping arrangements, he realized belatedly. He had cost her a home.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but she interrupted.
“It will never be safe to go back there again, so I might as well continue on with my journey. Although I’d intended to wait a while longer before leaving, but I guess that now will have to do.”
“What journey?” he asked, intrigued by the fact that she’d intended to leave soon anyway. He’d thought she was firmly attached to the cave, and not planning on leaving any time soon. Perhaps the loss of her home was not as painful for her as he’d thought.
“I’m going to find the Narrow Gate,” she told him.
At the startling pronouncement, he couldn’t stifle the bark of laughter that escaped him. “The Narrow Gate is a myth!”
Her chin jutted out mulishly at his laugh, and she glared at him, “No, it is not, and I’m going to find it.”
No wonder she was so determined to do the right thing. Only a dutiful, deserving soul could find and enter through the Narrow Gate – or so the writings about the myth had said. The writings had stated that only one who had practiced self-restraint and self-control by constantly doing the right thing would have the fortitude to endure the Narrow Road’s travails and make it to the Narrow Gate at the end. Of course, some also said that the Narrow Gate was where the dead went to their eternal rest to be with the Creator of all.
