Fervor

by Chantal Boudreau

  Fiona stared down at the crinkled paper, her eyes wide and her fingers now trembling. “He said that he may be coming for us…finally, after all of this time.”

  “If he comes here, we won’t be able to hide this from Francis or Nathan. We need to tell Francis about this now, before Elliot gets here. Francis will know how to keep him from being discovered, and how we can let Nathan in on this safely,” Sarah suggested.

  “Let it go, Sarah,” Sam sighed with a mental shake of the head. “We’re not including Francis in this. Besides, there’s no guarantee that Elliot will make it here in the first place, and if he does it could be a long time in coming.”

  “We can talk about this later. I just heard the door, and from the sounds of things out there, Royce may have followed us back here. Hide the message,” Fiona said. Sam scrambled to bury the evidence under Fiona’s bed as the two girls went over to the door.

  “They’re fighting again,” Sarah admonished. “And it sounds worse than last time. I told you, Sam. I told you.”

  She blundered through the door and staggered blindly towards the arguing boys, worried at what might come of their newest dispute. Fiona and Sam followed after her.

  When the smaller girl reached the Teller and the Control, she involuntarily drew Royce’s attention away from the argument. Sam watched in horror as the black-haired boy’s facial expression changed from that of hot-tempered anger to hateful resentment. He reached over and grabbed Sarah by the hair, yelling something at the waif-like girl.

  “What’s going on?” Sam pushed at Fiona, fearfully. “Tell him to let her go.”

  “I already called for Nathan. Royce is long past listening to us, and Francis can’t make him do anything. He’s really mad, Sam. Francis must have confronted him about our encounter on the beach. Royce said that Sarah ratted him out, and he called her a little bitch. I’m scared, Sam.”

  Sarah was screaming just as much on the inside as she was on the outside, and had grabbed the arm of the hand that clutched at her hair.

  “You’re in enough trouble as is, Royce,” Francis stated sternly. He had dropped his walls completely, and Sam knew that this wasn’t a good sign. “If you do anything to purposefully damage our Fixer, they’ll pull you off of Fervor. You’ll be punished for the assault. You know how they feel about the Littles.”

  Fiona continued to play the part of Sam’s ears for the other half of the argument.

  “Royce said that maybe that’s what he wants, off of Fervor, and he doesn’t care about the punishment. He says that he has been punished enough already. He claims that he was cheated out of the benefits that we have all had the opportunity to enjoy. He’s bored, he’s miserable, and we mean nothing to him. He says he won’t let Francis try to intimidate him anymore and just to show that he means it – NO!”

  Royce reached over and, getting a firm hold on Sarah with his other hand, he literally tossed her across the room and into the wall. The Fixer’s link to the connection flickered and dimmed.

  Fiona cried out the smaller girl’s name and rushed over to her, while Francis grabbed the Control by the forearm. There was a pounding on the stairs outside and Nathan, near breathless, burst through the door. He lurched towards Royce and tackled him.

  The two boys brawled without reservation beside the open door until the Watcher finally managed to overpower his opponent. Nathan shoved Royce away from him in order to gain enough space to pull in his legs and then thrust at the black-haired boy with his feet, with all his might. The aggressive gesture pushed the Control out through the open door and he rolled noisily down the front steps. There was a loud thud as Royce hit bottom, and he exhaled loudly, releasing a sound that was part grunt and part moan. Nathan then got to his feet, and stood in the doorway, shaking with rage and panting heavily.

  “You hurt our Fixer, you hurt all of us. This is war, Royce. You hear me! War! Get out of here while you still can, before I change my mind. If I see you around here again, I’ll kill you myself!” the Watcher roared.

  No stutter… and he meant every word of it. Upon hearing this through the connection, Francis felt the need to step in.

  “Calm yourself, Nathan,” the Teller thought quietly at him. “Nobody will be killing anybody.”

  The distraught boy relaxed slightly, but not to the point of complete submission.

  At the base of the stairs, Royce groaned softly, dragging himself painfully to a standing position. He wobbled a little and clutched at his left arm as if it might be injured. Then, with a dismissive grimace, he hobbled away. They all exhaled in unison.

  Nathan did not wait to hear if anyone else had anything to say. He turned and strode over to where Sarah lay motionless on the floor, gathering her up in his arms as if she were a large rag doll. Her eyes were open, but she was clearly dazed.

  “Can you hear me, sweetie?” he murmured through the connection, brushing a few strands of dark hair from her face. “How bad are you hurt? I won’t let him do anything like that to you again. I promise.”

  She whimpered something incoherent, still stunned, and Nathan cradled her closer, while cupping her face in his hand. Sam prodded at her from within the connection, and he could feel her faded presence growing stronger as each moment passed.

  “I was worried something like this might happen,” Francis admitted. “It was obvious that he had no intention of respecting the Directives anymore, despite knowing the consequences of ignoring them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come to get him soon. Until then, I want all of you to keep your distance from him. He’s much too unpredictable. He’s dangerous. I had better go get one of the other Fixers. Sarah is in no shape to fix herself.”

  As he stepped away, the smaller girl stirred.

  “Don’t go, Francis. I’ll be okay,” she assured him. A few seconds later, she seemed to have recovered even more of her senses. “Just give me a few minutes to get my head together. I’ll be able to fix myself then, I’m sure of it. I don’t want you to go.”

  “I’m sorry that he did that to you, Sarah,” Francis apologized grimly. “He knows better. He was just trying to get at me, and he knew that you would be the most effective way. He’s gone rogue, and he’s past the point of even trying to pretend that he cares about the Directives anymore. I saw it coming earlier, but I was hoping that we could change his mind. I don’t know what they’ll do to him. I don’t know what they’ll do to us either.”

  This got Fiona’s hackles up. She was always ready to find something negative in anything Francis had to say, and she was already in a foul mood because of what had just happened. She did not need another excuse to find him at fault.

  “What do you mean, ‘I don’t know what they’ll do to us.’ Are you trying to rehash that old story that you were only letting him get away with all of his garbage because you were attempting to protect us? That tune’s getting old pretty fast, Francis, and while you may believe it, I certainly don’t. After what just happened to Sarah, you shouldn’t believe it either. What’s it going to take for you to stop playing these foolish games and start acting like something authentic? If you have any idea what we might be expecting out of the ordinary, you should be telling us. You should have been telling us right from the start. Are you going to let us in on what’s going on?”

  With a disheartened expression, his face glum and his eyes sad, Francis looked away from her and did not answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” Fiona thought with a sense of satisfaction. She crossed her arms before her chest. “See, Sarah? I told you that he can’t be trusted. Well, Royce may have been wrong about most things, but he was right about one, Mr. Teller, who thinks he is cleverer than the rest of us. You are an ego-maniac.”

  She walked away, returning to her room.

  Nathan had not paid much attention to their little altercation as he was still too busy worrying over Sarah. She was sitting up, and some of the colour had returned face, but she was still having trouble focussing. The Watcher glanced over his shoulde
r at Sam.

  “I may not be able to kill that brute, but I’m going to break him the first chance that I get. What kind of monster would do this to someone like her? ”

  “Let this go for now, Nathan,” Francis insisted. “We can discuss this in greater detail later, when cooler heads prevail.” His gaze settled on Fiona’s door as he said this. “I still think I should go fetch another Fixer. Where Sarah’s concerned, we can’t take any chances.”

  “No, please don’t leave. If Royce went looking for those other Controls that he has been meeting with, it won’t be safe out there – not while he’s still as angry as he was when he left here.” The smaller girl reached over and latched onto the hem of his shirt with her slender fingers. “Look. I’ll be fine.” She gestured towards the wrist of the hand that held his shirt. The bruises there were fading right before his eyes.

  Francis seemed satisfied with that, but Sam could sense that the healing of those simple bruises was taking much more effort from the other Little than it normally would have. It was enough, however, to placate the Teller who gave a stifled sigh and a nod, and after freeing himself from Sarah’s grasp, made his way to his own room.

  Sam had a very uneasy feeling about how things had sorted themselves out. There had been a balance in the house before, a hostile one with plenty of tension, but a balance nonetheless. Now things felt completely off kilter, and there could be grave consequences for all of them as a result. As much as he hated and feared Royce, Sam was wondering if they hadn’t all just leapt out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.

  * - * - *

  Under normal conditions, the elimination of Royce from the mix should have reduced the tensions in the house, but there were several problems that were aggravated by his loss. Over the next several months, things worsened in some ways instead of improving.

  While the Control did not make any attempts to return to the house, he did not disappear completely from the area either. He left signs that he and his friends had been loitering within Nathan’s circuit, sometimes vandalizing the structures that could be found there or carving rude messages into the trees on his usual path. Sam could not help but think that the black-haired boy would be very pleased to see that the five did not function perfectly without him.

  For starters, Sarah, who had been fairly dependent on the others to begin with, became noticeably clingier. She would often go to great lengths to delay the departure of anyone leaving the house. At first, Sam thought that this behaviour might be some sort of reaction to the trauma that she had experienced just before Royce left for good. But that would have been easier to believe if she had concentrated most of her efforts on Nathan since he was obviously the one most capable of dealing with Royce should he try to force his way back into their home.

  Instead, the majority of her stall tactics were directed at Francis and Sam. She hovered around Francis much more often than she used to, and while the Teller tolerated the smaller girl’s presence, he didn’t seem to be very comfortable with the persistent attention. She didn’t moon over him like some sort of puppy-love crush, or suggest any interest that might be unnatural for a girl who was nearing thirteen but still looked seven or eight at best. Rather, she lingered around him with a sense of urgency or concern, and one that Sam could not really understand.

  Her increased clinginess involving Sam was usually concurrent with the end of the latest storm. Her behaviour would become erratic at those times, and she would temporarily lose interest in Francis’s activities and focus instead on Sam. He suspected it might have something to do with the fact that she knew that he would be making a trip to the beach, and possibly the fact that he now refused to take her with him on those days. If Francis was home, he would take Fiona, but after their scare on the beach when confronted by Royce and his cronies, Sam didn’t dare put their Fixer at risk again. Not that it mattered. There had been no more messages from Elliot, just as he had warned.

  Another change in attitude came from Francis. It was slow at first, but as it became more evident, Sam was wondering if perhaps Royce had served a greater purpose, keeping their Teller in check more than anyone had realized. Francis had never exhibited any real desire to exert his power over the others, except when the Directives deemed it necessary, but after Royce was gone, it was like an invisible barrier had dropped, and he had started overstepping whatever lines he had been willing to respect before.

  On one of his less melancholic days, when he seemed irritable or generally moody, he would often order them around at whim, particularly Fiona. In fact, it seemed like there was a snowball effect when this would happen. The more the older girl resented Francis and the power that he had over them, the more he would lord it over her, and then, of course, the more she would resent it, and so on. He had stopped trying to please her as he had before, but Sam had noticed the Teller occasionally watching her when he was sure that she was not aware of it.

  Fiona rarely spoke to the others in the house now, with the exception of the times that she would go out on a finding venture with Sam and the rare occasion that she would head out with Nathan on his circuit. In fact, Sam had noticed that, in a strange way, Royce had been a unifying factor, and now that he was gone, everyone other than Sarah seemed to go out of their way to isolate themselves.

  They did not feel any safer without the Control in the house either. They now felt trapped there, never knowing what to expect if they dared to go outside. Would Royce consider Nathan’s declaration of war a personal challenge? Would he be lurking behind a tree along the path trying to exact some sort of vengeance as a result of being exiled from their family? Was he plotting some sort of ambush or break-in with his friends, waiting for the moment that Nathan left before descending on the more vulnerable members of his family?

  All of these ideas bothered Nathan the most, and the Watcher became edgy and sullen. He always seemed reluctant to leave in the morning, and would run himself to near exhaustion every day trying to complete his circuit as quickly as possible in order to get back to the house before anything undesirable could happen. There was now a quiet misery to the boy who had always been smiling, an air of helplessness that was completely out of place in someone like Nathan.

  The Watcher, who had been blissfully ignorant of the lack of change in his cohorts in the past, now began questioning Francis, too, who would shrug his shoulders in response and otherwise refuse to answer. It had been easy for someone who was overly trusting, and who had been the size of a fifteen-year- old when he was almost thirteen, to dismiss the lack of growth in himself and even his smaller companions in the first few years. Now that almost five years had passed since they had been abandoned on Fervor, he could no longer pretend that nothing was wrong. He should have been practically an adult by this point, as well as Fiona and Francis, and Sam and Sarah should have been entering adolescence. It was clear that they had not physically aged a day, let alone five years.

  As the stresses on the five grew, they found themselves facing the worst storm that had ever hit Fervor, at least as far back as they could remember, even Fiona. The house creaked and rocked under the strain of the gale force winds and torrential rains, and the children huddled together in the kitchen after Nathan and Francis had covered the windows with blankets.

  Despite being there together, Sam felt more alone than ever. No one spoke, with their walls raised high and thick. Sarah even sat away from the table in a corner, rocking a little to soothe herself and hugging at her arms. When Sam could tolerate the silence no longer, he slunk away from the kitchen, seeking solace in his room.

  Sam had not missed his life before the connection in a long time, but that night he could not help but feel miserable and longed for Maria and the old ways things were done. He had not bothered to cover the windows and lay on his bed watching the lightning flare outside, feeling sad and drowsy.

  Then, there was a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, along with a chilling draft, and he realized that the door to his room had
blown open. Curious, Sam rose and wandered out to see what was going on. The front door was open, too, but he was the only one there to investigate. Sam dropped his walls and felt about the connection to see why no one else was around, and much to his horror, he could not find them there. How was that possible? He was a Finder. If they were there, he should be able to find them. Had Royce and the other Controls been to the house? Had they done something to the rest of his family?

  Sam felt a faint and brief push from somewhere outside. The contact was such a weak brush from the other mind that Sam was not able to identify it, although he could tell that the other person was in trouble. Sam tried to latch on, but the thought dimmed and the link slipped away and was lost to him again. He had to get closer if he would hope to re-establish it. Braving the storm, he staggered his way down the steps and headed for the beach.

  The rain was so heavy that Sam was practically blinded by it, and there was only the vaguest hint of moonlight that managed to trickle down through a small parting of the dark clouds. The only time he could really see anything was when the sky would light up with a flash of lightning. He struggled down to the shore, trying to follow his finding instincts despite being mostly blind and completely deaf, blown about by the harsh winds and soaked to the bone.

  When his foot finally sank into the sand, Sam paused. Another brilliant flash exposed a figure prone on the beach before him, too large to be Sarah, Fiona or Francis. Was it Nathan? Sam was about to move forward when he noticed the taller silhouettes around him, barely visible in the dimness. It was the Controls – he was sure of it. His heart lurched and his pulsed quickened.

  Before he could react, a hand grasped his arm and started shaking him. It had to be Royce. The lightning flared a third time, and the dark-haired boy loomed over him, but instead of his usual malicious smirk, his face was that of a gruesome monster.

  Sam shrieked in terror, but he realized that he had heard his own screams outside as well as inside, and he knew that that just wasn’t right…not only that, but the hand that was holding him and shaking him was much smaller than Royce’s should be. His subconscious made him deny what he was experiencing, and moments later he woke up with Sarah at his side.