Fiona frowned.
“What do you mean, ‘he’s not part of the connection anymore’? You can’t just leave it when you feel like it.”
Sam did not answer. If she did not understand, then he was happy to leave it at that. He did not need to explain to Nathan, however. The young man put his hands on the Keeper’s shoulders.
“Let him go, Fiona,” he thought quietly.
As Sam opened the door, Nathan asked, “Does Sarah know?”
Sam nodded.
“She was very upset, to say the least. She likely won’t be any better when she wakes up. I did my best to comfort her, but that was Francis’s thing, not mine. You have to convince her that she needs to pull herself together in order to fix the hover. Remind her that she made a promise to Elliot. That might be enough.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Nathan assured him.
“If you can keep her on track, she’ll likely have the fixing done before I get back. If you feel the need to leave without me, I’ll understand.”
“We’d never leave without you, Sam. I meant what I said yesterday, you are still family, gift or not. If Elliot wants to leave without you, he’ll have to leave without me, too,” Nathan murmured.
“That’s not going to happen either,” Fiona stated forcefully, gripping Nathan’s arm tightly. “Nobody gets left behind. You do what you have to do, Sam. We’ll be waiting here for you when you get back.”
Sam gave her another acknowledging nod, and then started out on what would no doubt be a long and lonely trip. Or at least, that’s what he thought it would be. Within a couple of hours after taking his leave, when he actually found himself wallowing in grief in the silence that surrounded him, Sarah made contact.
“You should have woken me, Sam. It wasn’t fair of you to leave without saying goodbye.”
She had followed Sam through the connection the evening before as he had tracked Francis and had remembered the route well enough to locate Sam there now.
“You have your business to take care of, and I have mine. You should get back to working on the hover.”
“We haven’t started yet,” she thought. “I’m waiting for Elliot. Besides, with you gone, there’s no rush now. Elliot’s fit to be tied. He said what you are doing is irresponsible and inconsiderate.”
“I didn’t expect him to understand. He’s never felt the Finder itch. Francis left me with a lot of unanswered questions.”
Sam also believed that he personally was partially at fault for his current circumstances. He wondered if he had been less of a coward and had been willing to peek into Francis’s tormented mind, he might have been able to prevent this. At least he might have had a better idea as to why the ex-Teller had chosen to head for the High Barrens, of all places. He could not allow himself to be weighed down by feelings of guilt at the moment, however, and the compulsions that drove him would not let this rest.
“I’ll be checking in on you, Sam. You’re the only real friend that I have left. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”
Her sadness was heavy and stifling. As much as Sam wanted to offer her more solace, he also wanted to avoid getting caught up in her emotion.
“Sure, Sarah. You can let the others know how I’m faring. I still have quite a distance to cover, though, and it’s easier to follow his path if I don’t have any other distractions. You pay attention to helping Elliot, and we can get in touch again when you’re done.”
As much as he wanted to spare himself from her emotion, he also wanted to keep her distanced from his. He still had no idea what he would find at the High Barrens, and if it was disturbing enough, when she linked with him in the connection, he would not be able to hide that from her.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” she whispered. “Stay away from the cliffs.”
“I’ll be careful,” he thought softly in return. “I promise.”
While he did not regret encouraging her to let him be, for both their sakes, he did miss the company. Sam liked solitude in smaller doses, but after several hours by himself it started to close in on him. He longed for his house-family, and even though there were several walled minds within easy reach because of the connection, he had not felt this alone in years. He was grateful when Sarah eventually touched his mind a second time, in the early afternoon.
“Are you still there, Sam? You haven’t actually reached the High Barrens yet, have you?”
“Not yet. I’m guessing it won’t be until dusk. I stopped mid-morning to do a little finding at a school, and there’s no way that I can match Francis’s pace.”
Sam still found it hard to believe how much ground that the young man had covered over a shorter interval with no boots. He had been moving like a man possessed.
“Did you finish the hover?”
“Not yet. It was too damp for some of the final touches. Elliot says that they will have to wait until tomorrow,” she replied. Sam wondered if that was an exaggeration on Elliot’s part, to justify waiting the extra day for Sam. “So will you be back tomorrow?”
“I’ll try, but no guarantees, Sarah. I don’t dare search the High Barrens at twilight, so I’ll start at break of day. It depends on how long it takes me to find what I’m looking for, whatever that is,” Sam offered.
“Hurry back,” Sarah pleaded. “Elliot is grouchy and Fiona and Nathan aren’t interested in anything but each other right now. I really miss Francis and I’m lonely without you.”
“I know. I’m sorry that I have to do this. Hang tight,” he said. “I’ll talk to you when I’m done with my finding tomorrow. It will probably be safest if I do it without distractions.”
She sighed, and broke off the link.
Sam had calculated correctly, and as the sun was setting, he finally reached the fence that marked the perimeter of the area that was considered off-limits. Someone had bashed through the wire mesh with a large rock, no doubt Francis. There was still enough light to venture in and do some exploring, but he likely would not make it back while there was an appropriate amount of visibility and Sam had promised Sarah that he would be careful, so it would have to wait. To make matters worse, a fog was starting to roll in off of the water, a common phenomenon on Fervor. That was yet another reason to stay put for the moment, on the safer side of the fence.
The night was a chill one, and Sam had nothing in the way of shelter. While he was fully capable of entering any building on Fervor that he wanted to now, nothing had been built within close proximity of the High Barrens, with good reason. There was no point in having any of the children living in tempting view of something that was supposed to be taboo, not considering the sparse population of the island, and the large quantity of space available to them.
From what Sam had seen through the fence, the area had offered little in the way of scenery. The ground was rocky with meagre foliage. It was bare of trees, exposing it to harsh winds and salt spray from the ocean, allowing for little to actually succeed in growing there.
Sam spent the night huddled in some long grass not far from the fence. He slept very lightly since he was frightened at having to endure the night and the howling wind all alone. Every time he awoke, shivering and tense, he cursed the compulsion in him to see this through. He even found himself brushing away tears a few times from the corners of his eyes, an embarrassment to him even if there was nobody around to see them. He curled in on himself a little more, and blamed the wind for making his eyes water.
When dawn finally lit up the horizon past the cliffs, coloring it with warm hues of pink and orange, Sam shook himself free from the grass that now had him entangled and approached the hole in the fence. He examined it carefully in the growing sunlight, noting that some of the sharper out-juts bore several strands of bloody fibres similar in texture and colour to the neutral-coloured tunics the children all wore. He wondered if this were possibly evidence of Francis’s passing into the forbidden zone. If this had come from him, he had made his way through the fence in a great hurry, and not bot
hered to bash and bend back any of the more hazardous protrusions. Sam was much more cautious. Grasping the rock that had likely been the ex-Teller’s tool, he slammed at the pointy wire bits until they were rounded nubs that no longer posed any threat to anyone. Dropping the rock to one side, he took a deep breath, and stepped through.
Merely being on the other side of the fence made Sam uncomfortable. Not because of any residual effects from the Directives, but just a matter of general conditioning. Since as long as he could remember having Maria in his life, she had driven home the fact that certain places were not to be entered without the accompaniment of a minder or teacher and a select few places, like the High Barrens, were completely forbidden. He had often wondered why. And had he lived much closer to the boundary of the area, his curiosity might just have propelled him past any need that he had to obey the rules.
Maybe, he considered, that was what had happened with Royce. Perhaps he had dared to venture into one of those forbidden locations and found something that he wished he had not.
Sam glanced down at the ground. It had been muddy that night, the rain pouring down as Francis had plunged through the hole in the fence and run along the edge of the cliffs. Sam could still make out some of his footprints. The young man’s bare feet had left toe indentations that were fairly deep and the impressions had not completely washed away. In fact, they had dried that way, allowing the Finder to track Francis’s path exactly.
Sam paused, and crouched, brushing his fingertips along the caked and crusty earth. He had a good idea what Francis had been running from. His brief glimpse through the holes in his walls had allowed him to see that the turmoil beyond included an intense feeling of shame and sense of mourning. He had realized that there would be no returning to the house for him. But there had also been some purpose there as well. He had not been just running from something, he had also been running to something as well.
He neared the edge of the cliffs with great trepidation. He had promised Sarah that he would be careful, and the soil was loose and dusty in places, making it somewhat slippery. There were also several rocks that wobbled dangerously when they were trod upon, enough of a warning to Sam to keep him from venturing too close to the brink. Following Francis’s tracks, however, made keeping a safe distance difficult. It was clear that the ex-Teller had cared little about the risks involved, despite being here in the dark and the rain.
Sam was contemplating this thought when he came to the point where the footprints suddenly stopped. There was a break in the soil at the cliff’s edge…there…an indentation. Sam had two theories about this. The cliff-side may have given way to Francis’s weight, weakened by erosion from the weather, and collapsed beneath him. That would explain why the footprints had come to an abrupt end, and why Francis had just disappeared from the connection without any forewarning.
Lowering himself to his hands and knees, Sam crawled cautiously towards the slight gap. His second theory as to why it existed was that Francis might have actually seated himself here for a moment, staring off into the rain or the ocean. Sam ran his hand over it. There was a roughness to it that suggested it was not formed from one man’s weight compacting the mud there. If he had sat there, then the loose soil suggested that he had slid off of it, and the only place to go from there was down.
Sam leaned forward, his stomach tightening, as he prepared to peer over the edge. He braced himself carefully, making sure that none of his weight was centred in the dip. If that happened, and part of the cliff had given way beneath Francis, Sam would be placing himself in jeopardy of succumbing to the same fate. He did not want to look, but his finding instincts would not let him have it any other way. He held his breath, and then he stared at the water far below.
Sam scrabbled backwards as quickly as he had inched forward slowly. He had spotted exactly what he had been hoping not to see. He wished that he could convince himself that the bloated and mangled body that he had seen bobbing amongst the rocks and seaweed could somehow be someone else. He sat for a moment, staring up at the sky, his breath coming in small gasps as his heart pounded in his chest and his stomach threatened to rebel against him. He had been hoping that he would be able to give Sarah different news, and finding Francis like this did not provide him with the answers that he had been searching for, and now presented him with a newer question – one that he likely would not be able to answer. Had Francis’s fatal fall from the cliffs been accidental or intentional? There was little chance that Sam would ever know.
Sam sat for a few more moments seeking calm. He struggled with his own feelings of guilt and shame before the most prominent question rose to the surface of his thoughts. Why had Francis come here in the first place?
Sam’s eyes searched his surroundings. Francis had left no signs, no clues for Sam to find. Had the tormented man come for one very simple purpose, or had there been some other reason? Sam shrugged, gave a slight shiver, and glanced over his shoulder farther along the High Barrens. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
And then there was the glint.
Sam blinked, rubbed his eyes, and blinked again. A few more seconds passed, and a second glint followed. His Finder instincts went wild. Driven by a fierce curiosity, Sam got to his feet.
He did not see the glint a third time, but he was fairly certain that he could target the spot that it had come from. He could not resist. He started forward.
When Sam arrived at the point where the glint had originated, he could see that the soil there was cracked and that some had collapsed in a little, leaving a slight hole. Without concern for the consequences, Sam shoved his fingers into the hole. Within, he felt a cold hard metal edge. Sam began to dig.
A few minutes later, he had cleared the area of dirt and was staring at a metal lever. He hesitated a little, a million ideas of what it could be for racing through his head.
“Sam?”
It was Sarah again.
“We’re at the beach. We should be able to finish the hover today.”
“I’ll try to be back by tonight, but I can’t guarantee it. I found something unusual here, and I’m not sure how long it will take me to investigate it, or where exactly it might lead me,” he informed her. He was not able to hide his excitement.
“No hurry, Sam. Elliot decided that since you were gone and nobody was willing to leave without you, he plans on teaching Fiona and Nathan how to activate the hover when it is ready. He said there was no point in wasting good time, and that it’s best to have more than one person around who can run the hover anyway.”
Sarah paused, her mind growing still.
“Sam,” she thought quietly. “Did you find Francis?”
He could not bring himself to reply, but that was answer enough for the girl.
“I’ll check back with you later,” she murmured. “Hopefully, by then, you’ll be on your way home.”
Sam suspected that this little exchange may have set off another round of tears from the Fixer, but he would be little consolation to her with such a distance between them and he had other things to deal with. He broke the link and turned back to the lever.
After examining it from every direction possible, Sam’s curiosity overcame good sense and he reach over and pulled on it. There was a rumble and a shake, and Sam almost fell over as the ground began to shift beneath his feet. Startled, he leapt away from the space upon which he had been standing, and tumbled even farther out of reach. The earth fell away and Sam realized that he was now looking at a stairway that descended below ground. Was this what Francis had come for?
Sam wondered why this thing had been hidden so well from view, and then it struck him that it had not likely been accessed in years since the children had all been purposefully warned away from this place. Sam suspected, however, that Francis and the other Tellers had been in the know. Francis had never been one to break the rules, not until his house-family had required it of him.
This notion brought the first solid wave of sorrow over Francis’s l
oss to the surface for the Finder. He had to concede that Francis was gone now that he had seen the evidence of this first hand. And, while the Teller had mistreated Fiona, he had never, from all appearances, exposed the house-family’s transgressions to the scholars. Perhaps, he had even come here as a means of leading Sam to some of the answers that he had known the Finder had been looking for.
Sam found that he was tearing up a little now and struggled to choke it back. He was not Sarah. He would not fall victim to his emotions as quickly and as easily as she normally did.
Pulling his glow torch from his pack, Sam started down the stairway. He could see a door at the bottom of the steps. He hoped it was not locked, since he had no tools available to him to pick or break a lock, or to force the door open despite the lock. Much to Sam’s relief, the handle yielded to his touch and he found himself staring down a dark corridor. His glow torch revealed the spaces within, piece by piece. There were four glass doors. Without opening them, he lit up the rooms beyond them, scanning them one by one.
The first looked like a strange classroom, much larger than the small and intimate rooms at the school. Those rooms were only meant to accommodate a couple of dozen children. This one looked like it could easily hold a hundred.
The second room appeared to be a laboratory of some kind, approximately the same size as the giant classroom. It also was very different from the much smaller and sparsely equipped labs that were used by the teachers at the schools. Sam could not recognize half of the items that his glow torch illuminated beyond that glass door, but he suspected that Elliot would know what they were.
Sam began to realize just how isolated and sheltered that the children of Fervor had been – and still were. The scholars had orchestrated their education with the help of the minders and the teachers. Anything that they had learned had been deemed appropriate, or in some cases necessary, by the scholars, and everything else had been simply withheld from them – like learning how to activate most of the devices on Fervor to those who weren’t Keepers, or learning how to run and drive a hover.
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