“Rachel is a large woman,” Gus said. He was exponentially more jolly now that they had had a stout lunch and had booked rooms in the inn above the tavern. “I definitely condone large women.”
“I... don’t know what to do with that,” Martha said.
“It’s okay,” Ben said. “I’m pretty sure you’re not alone.”
“So, what is our business here, really?” Tess asked. She had been shyly venturing more and more words into conversations since they entered the town, and as Gus was in a much better mood, the results had overall been positive.
“I was under the impression that I was not a liar,” Guido said. “We are here to replenish our food stores, refresh our bodies, and perhaps explore life outside of Medias, give you all a better idea of what life is going to be like for you from now on.”
“Why did you choose Rachel for us to see first?” Ben asked.
“It’s the closest safe town to the forest,” Guido said. “Taksarus is south of here, almost in the forest a few miles from where we exited, but I didn’t think that your first foray into non-Median life would be best spent trying to avoid death by the grim hand of the thugs in Taksarus.”
Awkward silence hovered around the group after those words.
“Well,” Gus said, “Thanks for thinking of us.”
“So what are we going to do first?” Martha asked. “Replenish, refresh, or self-educate?”
“My vote is replenish,” Gus said seriously. “We can learn about the town as we go around buying things to fill our packs.”
“Are we planning on staying here for very long, Guido?” Ben asked. “If not, I agree with Gus. But if we’ve got some time, I would rather test out those beds upstairs, take a long nap, and maybe a bath.”
“I heartily agree,” Tess said quietly to Ben. “I feel like I have enough dirt on my legs to count for a second layer of skin.”
“We can stay as long as anyone likes,” Guido said. “But I would personally suggest we be moving on. People in the border towns, these settlements nearest the forest, are leary of visitors. The further into the country we go, the safer we’ll be and the longer we’ll be able to stay.”
“Let’s give ourselves three days, then,” Gus said. “Ben, if you want to rest, you can do that. Guido and I will go and restock while the rest of you stay here, and we’ll meet back here for dinner whenever you are ready.”
“I want to go with you,” Martha said, almost pleadingly.
“Weren’t you just complaining about your feet a while ago?” he asked.
She gave him a look that said more than Ben could read.
“It would be useless for you to go alone, Gus,” Guido said. “Among many unwritten rules of non-Median living is that doing anything alone suggests suspicious activity, especially for a man. You add a mysterious talking raven hovering around his head and there is guaranteed to be trouble. Either at least two of you go, or none of us do.”
Martha was pleading with Gus with her eyes. He was trying to say something back, but she was obviously not heeding him. He looked frustrated and conflicted.
“I’ll go,” Tess said. “Ben, you can stay, and I’ll go with Gus and Martha.”
Martha looked relieved, Ben looked confused, and Gus looked less than pleased.
“Martha, stay with me,” Ben protested.
Everyone looked around at him.
“I didn’t realize this group was so politically charged,” Guido said.
“Stay with me, Martha,” Ben repeated. This time it was a demand. Reluctantly she nodded, and they turned together to walk up the stairs.
Gus and Tess looked at each other. Tess looked down at her feet.
“Is there... something I should know?” Guido asked.
“No,” Gus shot. “Let’s get this over with.”
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Chapter Twenty-Two
Gus tilted his head back all the way, looking up to the top of the wall spreading up in front of him. Ben rubbed his palm against its smooth, flat surface, his brow furrowed. Tess leaned her back against it and closed her eyes, smiling to herself. Martha sat down and dropped her pack next to her, sighing and taking her bare feet into her hands to rub them back to life.
“You know, this reminds me of an old children’s story someone back in Medias told me about a while back,” Gus said. “It was about a world where there were four nations; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. For a long time, the four Nations lived together in harmony. There were ‘benders’ from each nation who were capable of harnessing the elemental energy of the nation they were from and manipulating that element to their will. Each type of ‘bending’ had its own specific style, which helped organize and characterize the energy the benders used. For instance, earth benders mold the hard, unforgiving element of rocks and dirt, so their bending style was representative of the uncompromising nature of their element, and air is a peaceful, negotiating element, so its benders did not use it for offense, but for defense and evasion, as well as the furthering of joy and culture.”
“So they were basically pushovers?” Martha stated more than asked.
“Peacemakers. Please,” Gus clarified. “Anyway, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. They were a strong, ambitious nation made stronger by the presence of a comet that added to their bending abilities. By the time their war for conquest began, no one in any of the other nations was prepared to stand strong enough against them. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.”
“What do you mean, he vanished?” Martha asked.
“Well, everyone thought he had left them, gone into hiding to save his own skin, too scared to pick a fight with the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But a hundred years after his mysterious disappearance, two children from the southern water tribe, a small, broken community, mostly destroyed by raids from the Fire Nation earlier in the war, discovered the new Avatar. He had died as a Fire bender and been reincarnated into the form of a young Air bender boy named Aang."
“Reincarnated?” Martha asked. “You mean he came back to life?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “The Avatar is a soul that passes through one human body and into another after the first one dies. And there is a cycle, so the new avatar is always from a different nation than the last. Water, Earth, Fire, and then Air.”
“How does this wall remind you of that story, Gus?” Martha asked.
“Well, as it was described to me, in the Earth Kingdom, it was natural that they should build enormous walls with no gates, using only powerful Earth benders to open holes in the walls. When I saw this wall, I immediately imagined that kind of gate opening to allow us entry.”
“You’re actually not that far off,” Guido said. “That is almost how these gates work; the towns don’t want those laying them under siege to know where they are, as they are the weakest part of the city’s defenses, but they need a way to let regular traveler’s in. Once you’ve been around these parts long enough, you get to memorize where all the entrances are. I happen to know that we’re on the correct side of the wall for this particular town. What I don’t know is where exactly along the wall it is.”
Ben looked down the expanse of the wall to his right. It had to be at least one or two miles across. “How do we find out?” he asked wearily.
“How about you fly up there and check it out, Guido,” Martha said. “You know, give those old wings some exercise, after all that abysmal sitting around you had to do all day. How uncomfortable that must have been for you.”
“I’m sorry to displease you,” Guido said, obviously not sorry at all, “but I’m afraid that security is so tight in Rachel that even a lone Raven can’t fly over the wall without fearing for his life.”
“So how do we find the gate, Guido?” Gus asked, his tone more serious now. “We’ve walked all morning; I’d like to find a place to sit down, maybe eat non-dried fruit, perhaps even sleep in a bed...”
“We’ll simply have to walk this side, asking for entrance until it is given to us.”
Ben gave a short sarcastic laugh. “Who exactly is going to hear us asking from all the way down here?”
“I swear to you, the gate will open, wherever it is,” Guido said. His tone was getting increasingly annoyed as they got increasingly subversive. “So, if you would please,” he said, speaking pointedly to Martha, “we need to start moving with haste.”
Martha leaned further back into her reclined position. “Just five more minutes,” she said. “My feet are so swollen, it’s like wearing bags of rocks around my ankles.”
“The path is smooth here,” Gus said, putting his hand out for her to take. “You can probably walk barefoot so you don’t have to worry about putting your shoes back on.”
She made a face at him, but put her hand in his and allowed him to help her up. They all started walking along the wall. They had gone a whole three feet before Guido croaked, telling them all to stop.
“Ben,” he said, “if you would be so kind as to please knock against that wall.”
Ben looked confused as he turned and banged a fist against the wall. Nothing happened. They waited a few moments, and then Guido flew on, prompting them all to follow. Every five feet or so, Guido would signal to Ben to rap his knuckles against the wall, and he would hang back as the rest of the group walked on, waiting and watching for something.
After Ben had knocked for the tenth time and Guido had waited fruitlessly for some unknown event, Gus laughed. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Does anybody else wonder what kind of high-tech security system involves walking along a wall and knocking? Does anybody else feel a bit... Podunk about this whole ordeal?”
“I swear to you,” Guido said obstinately, the taste of stubbornness in his tone, “this wall will open; it takes merely patience and persistence to do so. You asked me to guide you, and I promised not to lead you astray. Stop being so frustrating.”
Gus looked a bit nonplussed by this reaction, but said nothing, and they continued on. It was silent except for the occasional raven croak and single knock on the smooth wall face. Ben felt a repeating rhythm in the slow parade they were marching, and he was beginning to lose himself in that rhythm when his knock returned a hollow sound, and Guido croaked loudly in triumph.
“Aha!” he declared. “You see? I told you there would come a response. And to think you doubted me.”
Gus raised one eyebrow. “I’m still doubting you, Excitable Evan,” he said. “So there’s a hollow behind that wall. That’s not a response; that’s a resonance.”
Before Guido could respond, there came a loud “kachunk” from inside the giant wall, followed immediately by several identical “kachunks,” each sound seeming to come from higher on the wall. Then a hole opened up at the base of the wall as large bricks appeared and curled themselves inside what appeared to be a hollow portion of the wall. The hole stayed dark, suggesting that the other side was not yet open, but the top scaled higher and higher until it reached halfway to the top.
Out of the dark, enclosed portion of missing wall came a low, booming, female voice. “What is your business in the town of Rachel?” it asked.
“Weary from travel, we seek asylum and the restoration of our rations. We will be on our way again soon, if that is what the citizens wish,” Guido said.
There came a drawn-out moment of silence before the voice spoke again. “You sound honorable. You may enter our walls; do not overstay your welcome.”
_______
I claim no ownership of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Just a whole lot of fandom. I would have taken it out here, as it was mostly for word count and only minimally to describe the appearance of the wall, but it was too tightly entwined in the actual narration to be easily extricated. Los siento. I did take out all the wikipedia articles I used to boost word count, though. You can thank me later.
“You know, this reminds me of an old children’s story someone back in Medias told me about a while back,” Gus said. “It was about a world where there were four nations; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. For a long time, the four Nations lived together in harmony. There were ‘benders’ from each nation who were capable of harnessing the elemental energy of the nation they were from and manipulating that element to their will. Each type of ‘bending’ had its own specific style, which helped organize and characterize the energy the benders used. For instance, earth benders mold the hard, unforgiving element of rocks and dirt, so their bending style was representative of the uncompromising nature of their element, and air is a peaceful, negotiating element, so its benders did not use it for offense, but for defense and evasion, as well as the furthering of joy and culture.”
“So they were basically pushovers?” Martha stated more than asked.
“Peacemakers. Please,” Gus clarified. “Anyway, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. They were a strong, ambitious nation made stronger by the presence of a comet that added to their bending abilities. By the time their war for conquest began, no one in any of the other nations was prepared to stand strong enough against them. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.”
“What do you mean, he vanished?” Martha asked.
“Well, everyone thought he had left them, gone into hiding to save his own skin, too scared to pick a fight with the most powerful nation in the history of the world. But a hundred years after his mysterious disappearance, two children from the southern water tribe, a small, broken community, mostly destroyed by raids from the Fire Nation earlier in the war, discovered the new Avatar. He had died as a Fire bender and been reincarnated into the form of a young Air bender boy named Aang."
“Reincarnated?” Martha asked. “You mean he came back to life?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “The Avatar is a soul that passes through one human body and into another after the first one dies. And there is a cycle, so the new avatar is always from a different nation than the last. Water, Earth, Fire, and then Air.”
“How does this wall remind you of that story, Gus?” Martha asked.
“Well, as it was described to me, in the Earth Kingdom, it was natural that they should build enormous walls with no gates, using only powerful Earth benders to open holes in the walls. When I saw this wall, I immediately imagined that kind of gate opening to allow us entry.”
“You’re actually not that far off,” Guido said. “That is almost how these gates work; the towns don’t want those laying them under siege to know where they are, as they are the weakest part of the city’s defenses, but they need a way to let regular traveler’s in. Once you’ve been around these parts long enough, you get to memorize where all the entrances are. I happen to know that we’re on the correct side of the wall for this particular town. What I don’t know is where exactly along the wall it is.”
Ben looked down the expanse of the wall to his right. It had to be at least one or two miles across. “How do we find out?” he asked wearily.
“How about you fly up there and check it out, Guido,” Martha said. “You know, give those old wings some exercise, after all that abysmal sitting around you had to do all day. How uncomfortable that must have been for you.”
“I’m sorry to displease you,” Guido said, obviously not sorry at all, “but I’m afraid that security is so tight in Rachel that even a lone Raven can’t fly over the wall without fearing for his life.”
“So how do we find the gate, Guido?” Gus asked, his tone more serious now. “We’ve walked all morning; I’d like to find a place to sit down, maybe eat non-dried fruit, perhaps even sleep in a bed...”
“We’ll simply have to walk this side, asking for entrance until it is given to us.”
Ben gave a short sarcastic laugh. “Who exactly is going to hear us asking from all the way down here?”
“I swear to you, the gate will open, wherever it is,” Guido said. His tone was getting increasingly annoyed as they got increasingly subversive. “So, if you would please,” he said, speaking pointedly to Martha, “we need to start moving with haste.”
Martha leaned further back into her reclined position. “Just five more minutes,” she said. “My feet are so swollen, it’s like wearing bags of rocks around my ankles.”
“The path is smooth here,” Gus said, putting his hand out for her to take. “You can probably walk barefoot so you don’t have to worry about putting your shoes back on.”
She made a face at him, but put her hand in his and allowed him to help her up. They all started walking along the wall. They had gone a whole three feet before Guido croaked, telling them all to stop.
“Ben,” he said, “if you would be so kind as to please knock against that wall.”
Ben looked confused as he turned and banged a fist against the wall. Nothing happened. They waited a few moments, and then Guido flew on, prompting them all to follow. Every five feet or so, Guido would signal to Ben to rap his knuckles against the wall, and he would hang back as the rest of the group walked on, waiting and watching for something.
After Ben had knocked for the tenth time and Guido had waited fruitlessly for some unknown event, Gus laughed. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “Does anybody else wonder what kind of high-tech security system involves walking along a wall and knocking? Does anybody else feel a bit... Podunk about this whole ordeal?”
“I swear to you,” Guido said obstinately, the taste of stubbornness in his tone, “this wall will open; it takes merely patience and persistence to do so. You asked me to guide you, and I promised not to lead you astray. Stop being so frustrating.”
Gus looked a bit nonplussed by this reaction, but said nothing, and they continued on. It was silent except for the occasional raven croak and single knock on the smooth wall face. Ben felt a repeating rhythm in the slow parade they were marching, and he was beginning to lose himself in that rhythm when his knock returned a hollow sound, and Guido croaked loudly in triumph.
“Aha!” he declared. “You see? I told you there would come a response. And to think you doubted me.”
Gus raised one eyebrow. “I’m still doubting you, Excitable Evan,” he said. “So there’s a hollow behind that wall. That’s not a response; that’s a resonance.”
Before Guido could respond, there came a loud “kachunk” from inside the giant wall, followed immediately by several identical “kachunks,” each sound seeming to come from higher on the wall. Then a hole opened up at the base of the wall as large bricks appeared and curled themselves inside what appeared to be a hollow portion of the wall. The hole stayed dark, suggesting that the other side was not yet open, but the top scaled higher and higher until it reached halfway to the top.
Out of the dark, enclosed portion of missing wall came a low, booming, female voice. “What is your business in the town of Rachel?” it asked.
“Weary from travel, we seek asylum and the restoration of our rations. We will be on our way again soon, if that is what the citizens wish,” Guido said.
There came a drawn-out moment of silence before the voice spoke again. “You sound honorable. You may enter our walls; do not overstay your welcome.”
_______
I claim no ownership of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." Just a whole lot of fandom. I would have taken it out here, as it was mostly for word count and only minimally to describe the appearance of the wall, but it was too tightly entwined in the actual narration to be easily extricated. Los siento. I did take out all the wikipedia articles I used to boost word count, though. You can thank me later.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Chapter Twenty-One
Tamara massaged her temples, breathing deeply, concentrating on the rhythm of the rise and fall of her chest.
“Why are they giving me so much trouble?” she asked herself, trying not to focus on the negative energy she could feel herself exuding. “Where can I improve my own actions to make the whole situation better?”
She felt like she was in a self-help program.
The main problem had come when the boy randomly turned up in the kitchen during Mond’s mathematics lesson one room over. Tamara had been demonstrating a few simple derivative equations when she heard the pantry door open and close. She handed the chalk and slate to Mond and told her to continue working on the example problems while she went to investigate the origin of the noise.
What she found in the kitchen nearly made her vomit. The boy, wearing nothing but the drool-encrusted blanket he’d been sleeping with for the past three weeks wrapped precariously around him, was sticking his head into the pantry, covering his face with confectioner’s sugar and rubbing unpeeled banana mush all over his body. When he heard her come in, he looked up and grinned stupidly, his dark yellow and disgusting, his eyes red and swollen. He laughed a low and slow laugh, and began slapping his arms, making the pasty substance fly off him in little chunks.
Tamara had nearly kicked him right there, wishing she had the stomach to just kill the boy and be done with it. And the visual of his soiled face and revolting garb would have been enough to push her over the edge in that moment, but then Mond walked into the room.
“Boy? Is that you? I can hear you. What are you doing?” she asked. She ran to him and put out her hand, wiping the tips of her fingers against his coated chest. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Why... what is that smell?”
Tamara had successfully kept them from seeing each other for the past two weeks, and as such, she had stopped really caring about the boy’s hygiene or appearance, as it had all been a façade for Mond’s sake anyway.
Mond turned like lightning to look up at Tamara. Her startling milky eyes didn’t meet Tamara’s but the fury and hatred clearly visible on her face frightened Tamara. She envisioned the past few months of mother-daughter bonding attempts slipping away, as if down a bottomless pipe.
“Fix it,” Mond ordered. “Make him better.”
“It looks like he hasn’t been taking his medicine correctly, Mond,” Tamara said. “I didn’t realize—”
“You’re lying,” Mond said, her voice high, with a texture like gravel tossed on cement. “You’ve kept him from me so I wouldn’t see, and those medicines are making him like this. Fix it. Now.”
Tamara, speechless, and feeling practically breathless as well, caught off her guard by the ferocity of Mond’s words and the harsh expression on her face, stood stupidly slouching and still.
“Fix it!” Mond yelled. Her voice was unnaturally loud, even for an adult male four or five times her size, and Tamara thought he saw a flash of red glint across her eyes.
Tamara grabbed the boy’s arms, coating the palms of her hands in crusty banana paste. She began pulling him towards the stairs, planning on throwing him into a hot bath and soaking his blanket in a tub for a day or so, and he fought her every step. He mumbled and growled incoherently; Tamara felt like she was pulling teeth from the mouth of a loud and confused buffalo. Mond followed them both up the stairs and tended to the boy as Tamara struggled to set up the water. Tamara tried to protest, tried to hide the boy’s nakedness from Mond, even though she had sightless eyes, but Mond gave her a look that had a hint of death and suffering, and Tamara instinctually fled from it.
The cleaning of both blanket and boy took several hours, and when he was finally back into a bed with clean linens and Tamara and Mond were ready to return to the math lesson, Mond was beyond her ability to pay attention. She spent the rest of the light of day asking Tamara questions about the medications the boy was taking and why Tamara insisted he take them.
“They help him with his headaches,” Tamara kept saying. “They were hurting him so badly, and I remember when his mother had a similar issue, so I asked a doctor and he told me that these pills would help.”
“Why was he so messy, then? What about them makes him be so... dirty?”
“That has nothing to do with his medicine, Mond,” Tamara said. Not that the girl had calmed down, she seemed more amenable to believing what Tamara had to say. “That’s just how he is. He’s not like you and me. He’s more like a... like an animal or a monster.”
Mond looked crushed when Tamara said this. Her face slowly fell until every emotion but concern and despair had left it. Her eyes, though nondescript in and of themselves, were much more expressive than any other eyes Tamara had seen. Sometimes Tamara saw feelings deep within them that she could not understand.
“A... monster?” Mond asked. “What does that mean? How can he be anything different than I am?”
“You’re a smart girl, Mond,” Tamara said. “Think about the differences between him and you. He doesn’t take these classes with you because he’s not as intelligent. He gets sick more easily than you do and is not as talented or as good looking as you are.”
“I don’t think he’s bad looking,” Mond said. “That’s not any way to judge someone objectively.”
“You can’t see him, Mond. You can’t know what he looks like. He’s hideous, like a dog or a horse, not a human like you and I.”
None of this was true, but Tamara knew she was dancing on a taught string now, and the only way she could safely herd Mond back to her side of the field was to make the boy an untouchable, therefore taking the merit out of everything he said or did.
“I haven’t seen him with my eyes,” Mond said thoughtfully, “but I think I know what he looks like. It’s like I’ve felt his presence so often that I’ve assigned a visual component...”
She continued to talk, to theorize about her relationship with the boy and what it was based on, what her blindness subtracted from or added to it and what his abstractness, as she called it, subtracted from or added to it.
But Tamara stopped paying attention. She was caught up in the fear that bubbled under the surface as Mond described the boy. They had grown closer than she had seen or guessed. How much did Mond know about him, and how much did he know about her? How much had they interacted; was it to the point where nothing she said to Mond was safe from his ears? If they were passing secrets back and forth, Tamara could never be sure of her bond with Mond, because she would never be able to know if the boy was coming between them. She would have to do a lot of deconstructive work to get Mond to pull loyalty away from him.
Tamara hadn’t imagined there would be so much politics in raising children. Mond was only six-years-old. How was it possible she was already so complex?
“It’s not enough to say I haven’t seen him, you see,” she was saying when Tamara tuned back in. “I haven’t seen him like you have, perhaps, but I know he is not a ‘monster,’ as you say he is.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he is a master of deception?” Tamara suggested, choosing her words closely. “That he can imitate a creature deserving of your sympathy so thoroughly as to fool you into caring about him in the way that you do?”
Mond seemed to chew on this for a moment before speaking again. “If that is the case, how have you managed to remain undeceived?”
The question took Tamara by surprise. It wasn’t as though she hid her dislike for the boy — to do so would have been nearly impossible, not to mention very taxing on her emotions — but she had hoped that Mond would connect it with necessity, with the monster she had been portraying him as.
“I... it’s hard sometimes,” Tamara lied. “I find myself overly empathetic, too, on some days. But then I remember that he killed his mother, my sister, and I strike those feelings from my heart.”
How many times had she driven that point home? How many times had she called him a murderer? It made her feel like some sort of activist every time she said it, and the feeling never got old.
“How did your sister die?” Mond asked for the first time.
Again, Tamara found herself having to sift through her thoughts to find the correct ones to say out loud. “It was a slow... a slow, painful process,” she said. “Over the months that she was pregnant with the boy, he sapped her first of all her energy, youth, and life, until, in the third month, she was bedridden entirely, and then he attacked her brain, draining her personality and intellect until she was an empty shell, broken, a shattered image of the woman she had once been.”
“How do you know that it was his fault?” Mond asked. “Maybe your sister was unfit to carry a baby. Do you have any conclusive proof that another baby would have behaved differently?”
Tamara felt as though she had been slapped in the face. In the long time since her sister’s death, no one had ever come close to insulting her memory, and aside from the boy’s mere existence, nothing had dredged up the pain from those nine long months. Mond, just then, had done worse damage in one short sentence than anyone else had done in four years.
“My sister was not ‘unfit’ for anything,” Tamara said, keeping her calm. “The doctors couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it, and she couldn’t understand it. There was nothing wrong with my sister that would cause her body to do that to itself naturally.”
Mond looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re deceived by some force, Tamara, just as you suggest I am deceived by the boy. Maybe your sister deceived you.”
______________
Again, more stuff I'm going to have to fix later, like my changed tense in the middle there. Also, unpublished here was Tamara's recitation of a Sociology textbook.
“Why are they giving me so much trouble?” she asked herself, trying not to focus on the negative energy she could feel herself exuding. “Where can I improve my own actions to make the whole situation better?”
She felt like she was in a self-help program.
The main problem had come when the boy randomly turned up in the kitchen during Mond’s mathematics lesson one room over. Tamara had been demonstrating a few simple derivative equations when she heard the pantry door open and close. She handed the chalk and slate to Mond and told her to continue working on the example problems while she went to investigate the origin of the noise.
What she found in the kitchen nearly made her vomit. The boy, wearing nothing but the drool-encrusted blanket he’d been sleeping with for the past three weeks wrapped precariously around him, was sticking his head into the pantry, covering his face with confectioner’s sugar and rubbing unpeeled banana mush all over his body. When he heard her come in, he looked up and grinned stupidly, his dark yellow and disgusting, his eyes red and swollen. He laughed a low and slow laugh, and began slapping his arms, making the pasty substance fly off him in little chunks.
Tamara had nearly kicked him right there, wishing she had the stomach to just kill the boy and be done with it. And the visual of his soiled face and revolting garb would have been enough to push her over the edge in that moment, but then Mond walked into the room.
“Boy? Is that you? I can hear you. What are you doing?” she asked. She ran to him and put out her hand, wiping the tips of her fingers against his coated chest. “What happened to you?” she gasped. “Why... what is that smell?”
Tamara had successfully kept them from seeing each other for the past two weeks, and as such, she had stopped really caring about the boy’s hygiene or appearance, as it had all been a façade for Mond’s sake anyway.
Mond turned like lightning to look up at Tamara. Her startling milky eyes didn’t meet Tamara’s but the fury and hatred clearly visible on her face frightened Tamara. She envisioned the past few months of mother-daughter bonding attempts slipping away, as if down a bottomless pipe.
“Fix it,” Mond ordered. “Make him better.”
“It looks like he hasn’t been taking his medicine correctly, Mond,” Tamara said. “I didn’t realize—”
“You’re lying,” Mond said, her voice high, with a texture like gravel tossed on cement. “You’ve kept him from me so I wouldn’t see, and those medicines are making him like this. Fix it. Now.”
Tamara, speechless, and feeling practically breathless as well, caught off her guard by the ferocity of Mond’s words and the harsh expression on her face, stood stupidly slouching and still.
“Fix it!” Mond yelled. Her voice was unnaturally loud, even for an adult male four or five times her size, and Tamara thought he saw a flash of red glint across her eyes.
Tamara grabbed the boy’s arms, coating the palms of her hands in crusty banana paste. She began pulling him towards the stairs, planning on throwing him into a hot bath and soaking his blanket in a tub for a day or so, and he fought her every step. He mumbled and growled incoherently; Tamara felt like she was pulling teeth from the mouth of a loud and confused buffalo. Mond followed them both up the stairs and tended to the boy as Tamara struggled to set up the water. Tamara tried to protest, tried to hide the boy’s nakedness from Mond, even though she had sightless eyes, but Mond gave her a look that had a hint of death and suffering, and Tamara instinctually fled from it.
The cleaning of both blanket and boy took several hours, and when he was finally back into a bed with clean linens and Tamara and Mond were ready to return to the math lesson, Mond was beyond her ability to pay attention. She spent the rest of the light of day asking Tamara questions about the medications the boy was taking and why Tamara insisted he take them.
“They help him with his headaches,” Tamara kept saying. “They were hurting him so badly, and I remember when his mother had a similar issue, so I asked a doctor and he told me that these pills would help.”
“Why was he so messy, then? What about them makes him be so... dirty?”
“That has nothing to do with his medicine, Mond,” Tamara said. Not that the girl had calmed down, she seemed more amenable to believing what Tamara had to say. “That’s just how he is. He’s not like you and me. He’s more like a... like an animal or a monster.”
Mond looked crushed when Tamara said this. Her face slowly fell until every emotion but concern and despair had left it. Her eyes, though nondescript in and of themselves, were much more expressive than any other eyes Tamara had seen. Sometimes Tamara saw feelings deep within them that she could not understand.
“A... monster?” Mond asked. “What does that mean? How can he be anything different than I am?”
“You’re a smart girl, Mond,” Tamara said. “Think about the differences between him and you. He doesn’t take these classes with you because he’s not as intelligent. He gets sick more easily than you do and is not as talented or as good looking as you are.”
“I don’t think he’s bad looking,” Mond said. “That’s not any way to judge someone objectively.”
“You can’t see him, Mond. You can’t know what he looks like. He’s hideous, like a dog or a horse, not a human like you and I.”
None of this was true, but Tamara knew she was dancing on a taught string now, and the only way she could safely herd Mond back to her side of the field was to make the boy an untouchable, therefore taking the merit out of everything he said or did.
“I haven’t seen him with my eyes,” Mond said thoughtfully, “but I think I know what he looks like. It’s like I’ve felt his presence so often that I’ve assigned a visual component...”
She continued to talk, to theorize about her relationship with the boy and what it was based on, what her blindness subtracted from or added to it and what his abstractness, as she called it, subtracted from or added to it.
But Tamara stopped paying attention. She was caught up in the fear that bubbled under the surface as Mond described the boy. They had grown closer than she had seen or guessed. How much did Mond know about him, and how much did he know about her? How much had they interacted; was it to the point where nothing she said to Mond was safe from his ears? If they were passing secrets back and forth, Tamara could never be sure of her bond with Mond, because she would never be able to know if the boy was coming between them. She would have to do a lot of deconstructive work to get Mond to pull loyalty away from him.
Tamara hadn’t imagined there would be so much politics in raising children. Mond was only six-years-old. How was it possible she was already so complex?
“It’s not enough to say I haven’t seen him, you see,” she was saying when Tamara tuned back in. “I haven’t seen him like you have, perhaps, but I know he is not a ‘monster,’ as you say he is.”
“Have you considered the possibility that he is a master of deception?” Tamara suggested, choosing her words closely. “That he can imitate a creature deserving of your sympathy so thoroughly as to fool you into caring about him in the way that you do?”
Mond seemed to chew on this for a moment before speaking again. “If that is the case, how have you managed to remain undeceived?”
The question took Tamara by surprise. It wasn’t as though she hid her dislike for the boy — to do so would have been nearly impossible, not to mention very taxing on her emotions — but she had hoped that Mond would connect it with necessity, with the monster she had been portraying him as.
“I... it’s hard sometimes,” Tamara lied. “I find myself overly empathetic, too, on some days. But then I remember that he killed his mother, my sister, and I strike those feelings from my heart.”
How many times had she driven that point home? How many times had she called him a murderer? It made her feel like some sort of activist every time she said it, and the feeling never got old.
“How did your sister die?” Mond asked for the first time.
Again, Tamara found herself having to sift through her thoughts to find the correct ones to say out loud. “It was a slow... a slow, painful process,” she said. “Over the months that she was pregnant with the boy, he sapped her first of all her energy, youth, and life, until, in the third month, she was bedridden entirely, and then he attacked her brain, draining her personality and intellect until she was an empty shell, broken, a shattered image of the woman she had once been.”
“How do you know that it was his fault?” Mond asked. “Maybe your sister was unfit to carry a baby. Do you have any conclusive proof that another baby would have behaved differently?”
Tamara felt as though she had been slapped in the face. In the long time since her sister’s death, no one had ever come close to insulting her memory, and aside from the boy’s mere existence, nothing had dredged up the pain from those nine long months. Mond, just then, had done worse damage in one short sentence than anyone else had done in four years.
“My sister was not ‘unfit’ for anything,” Tamara said, keeping her calm. “The doctors couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t understand it, and she couldn’t understand it. There was nothing wrong with my sister that would cause her body to do that to itself naturally.”
Mond looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re deceived by some force, Tamara, just as you suggest I am deceived by the boy. Maybe your sister deceived you.”
______________
Again, more stuff I'm going to have to fix later, like my changed tense in the middle there. Also, unpublished here was Tamara's recitation of a Sociology textbook.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Chapter Twenty
“That’s a town, isn’t it?” Tess asked, pointing to the large dark line on the horizon, silhouetted by the breaking dawn.
“It is indeed,” Guido said, stretching his wings. “That will be the town of Rachel. They have a flourishing textile economy, and one of the largest libraries in this country.”
Martha was stuffing a blanket back into her pack and Gus was struggling to retie his own. They had slept the night on the edge of the woods, where the unshielded trees had given them the first cold wind they’d ever felt. The whole company was shaken from having spent the night huddled together in fits of shivers.
“How far do you think it is, Guido?” Gen asked.
“If we start immediately, we should be there before noon, I wouldn’t wonder.”
They each took a breakfast to eat while they walked, and then shouldered their packs and started out. Martha and Gus had gotten beyond complaining and taking rests every half hour, but the group’s traveling days were shortened by at least two hours, as their stamina was still abnormally low.
It had taken them two days of traveling to make it out of the forest. The traveling was quiet, except for Gus choosing random intervals at which to ask Guido for a trivial piece of information about There—”How long are each of the four seasons,” “Is it true there are babies and old people?” “What is ‘school’?” — and Ben questioning the edibility of the new, strange plants they found along the path. Tess had been particularly silent, keeping mostly to herself and avoiding contact with anyone but Ben. Ben supposed her timidity had something to do with the scathing look Gus often had on his face when he looked at her or spoke about her or to her. Ben wanted to chastise him for this, but under the circumstances, he didn’t think picking a fight would help matters any, not to mention he didn’t understand Tess himself anymore. It was if she had grown an extra pair of arms, or worse, like she’d been hiding them throughout all the years he’d known her.
“Guido,” Gus said, breaking the travelers’ tired silence, “could you explain... yesterday you said something briefly about ‘marriage.’ What is it?”
Guido often flew about Ben and Tess’ head, but for this early mornings, when his wings were still wet with dew from the night before, he was perched on top of Ben’s pack, bobbing along in the rhythm of Ben’s walk, clutching the clasp with his feet. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“You said it’s between two adults who’ve decided to live together and share lives,” Gus said, still looking straight ahead, a look of concentration on his face. “But how is that different from lashing?”
“Lashing doesn’t exist outside of Medias,” Guido said. “You see, lashing is the marriage of Medians. Outside of Medias, when two adults decide to become married, it’s because they’re in love with each other, because they want to start a family together, or because they each have something to personally gain from a union with the other. In a lash, you become like siblings, almost like twins, just born from different families. In a marriage, you become husband and wife, which is a different bond completely. You support one another, are interested in what the other is interested in, and often you buy each other arbitrary gifts to annually celebrate something so asinine as the passing of time.”
Gus and Martha looked at each other. “Wait,” Martha said, “if lashing doesn’t exist outside of Medias, does that mean that Gus and I aren’t technically related anymore? Does that mean we won’t be allowed to live in the same home?”
Ben felt his face grow hot. So, not only had he failed to mention to them that they would most likely never return to the only home they could ever remember having, and not only had he convinced Gus, through Tess, that he could never leave their side for fear for Ben’s life, but he had now surreptitiously torn Gus and Martha asunder. He could see the looks of both terror and longing in their eyes, and immediately wished he could turn all of them back and run back to Medias. He knew what it felt like to be denied a closeness that felt deserved and necessary. He looked over at Tess, and he saw deep worry carved into her features as well.
“You can always just tell people that you’re brother and sister. No one can prove otherwise, can they?” Guido said.
But somehow, all four children knew it wouldn’t be the same. Just the name, the societal recognition of a bond... it meant something and without it, the relationship felt more distant.
Ben felt Tess tug lightly on the sleeve of his shirt. He looked over at her to see, through a mask of indifference in her features, a glint of... happiness? in her eyes. He furrowed his brow, and she blushed and looked back down at her feet.
Then he understood. If lashing didn’t exist, and if time really did move by with a recognizable pace, then it no longer mattered that he and she were separate. No one would tell them that there wasn’t a chance anymore that they could ever be together. No one could say that since it hadn’t already happened, it was bound to never happen. They could pretend to everyone here that they were related, and no one would try to keep them apart, like people had been doing all their lives.
The town of Rachel was getting ever closer, and since the sun had long since pulled its heft over the horizon line, Ben could better make out the details of the town’s appearance. That is, he could have, if there had been any details to make out. All he could see was a massive granite wall, probably tens of feet tall.
“Is Rachel a warring village?” Martha asked. “Why does it need such strong protection?”
“It’s customary to build fortifications around a town,” Guido said dismissively, nibbling on some piece of something stuck to his wing tip. “It’s a precaution, but still, it is likely to prove necessary or at least helpful in the future.”
“Do towns often battle each other, then?” Gus asked.
“I wouldn’t say ‘often,’” Guido said. “But warfare is not an unseen presence in most towns, Rachel least of all.”
“We aren’t,” Ben said with some hesitation, “we aren’t walking into a battlefield, are we?”
“Unless one has cropped up in the past few weeks that I’ve been gone, no, I don’t believe we are.”
No one spoke. Ben thought he heard Gus gulp anxiously. Ben examined the wall as they got closer and closer, just a few hundred yards off now. He searched for archers’ turrets or any guards, or even a gate, things he’d seen in the few books he’d read in Medias, the ones that showed large towns and settlements in There, without much description, only pictures and a few labels. But the walls faces were completely bare except for a large banner hanging over the top with a deep green insignia that, at this distance, looked like a rounded maple leaf or a poorly drawn hand with only three fingers.
“Is there an entrance on this side of the town, or are we going to have to walk around a bit to find one?”
Guido croaked shortly. “Oh, we’ll be able to enter from whatever direction we approach, don’t worry about that.”
________
As I publish more of these excerpts, I'm realizing that there are times when I forgot a few details that I was waiting to divulge, and now I'm screwed because parts of my story aren't going to match other parts.
Forgive me. Bitte.
“It is indeed,” Guido said, stretching his wings. “That will be the town of Rachel. They have a flourishing textile economy, and one of the largest libraries in this country.”
Martha was stuffing a blanket back into her pack and Gus was struggling to retie his own. They had slept the night on the edge of the woods, where the unshielded trees had given them the first cold wind they’d ever felt. The whole company was shaken from having spent the night huddled together in fits of shivers.
“How far do you think it is, Guido?” Gen asked.
“If we start immediately, we should be there before noon, I wouldn’t wonder.”
They each took a breakfast to eat while they walked, and then shouldered their packs and started out. Martha and Gus had gotten beyond complaining and taking rests every half hour, but the group’s traveling days were shortened by at least two hours, as their stamina was still abnormally low.
It had taken them two days of traveling to make it out of the forest. The traveling was quiet, except for Gus choosing random intervals at which to ask Guido for a trivial piece of information about There—”How long are each of the four seasons,” “Is it true there are babies and old people?” “What is ‘school’?” — and Ben questioning the edibility of the new, strange plants they found along the path. Tess had been particularly silent, keeping mostly to herself and avoiding contact with anyone but Ben. Ben supposed her timidity had something to do with the scathing look Gus often had on his face when he looked at her or spoke about her or to her. Ben wanted to chastise him for this, but under the circumstances, he didn’t think picking a fight would help matters any, not to mention he didn’t understand Tess himself anymore. It was if she had grown an extra pair of arms, or worse, like she’d been hiding them throughout all the years he’d known her.
“Guido,” Gus said, breaking the travelers’ tired silence, “could you explain... yesterday you said something briefly about ‘marriage.’ What is it?”
Guido often flew about Ben and Tess’ head, but for this early mornings, when his wings were still wet with dew from the night before, he was perched on top of Ben’s pack, bobbing along in the rhythm of Ben’s walk, clutching the clasp with his feet. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“You said it’s between two adults who’ve decided to live together and share lives,” Gus said, still looking straight ahead, a look of concentration on his face. “But how is that different from lashing?”
“Lashing doesn’t exist outside of Medias,” Guido said. “You see, lashing is the marriage of Medians. Outside of Medias, when two adults decide to become married, it’s because they’re in love with each other, because they want to start a family together, or because they each have something to personally gain from a union with the other. In a lash, you become like siblings, almost like twins, just born from different families. In a marriage, you become husband and wife, which is a different bond completely. You support one another, are interested in what the other is interested in, and often you buy each other arbitrary gifts to annually celebrate something so asinine as the passing of time.”
Gus and Martha looked at each other. “Wait,” Martha said, “if lashing doesn’t exist outside of Medias, does that mean that Gus and I aren’t technically related anymore? Does that mean we won’t be allowed to live in the same home?”
Ben felt his face grow hot. So, not only had he failed to mention to them that they would most likely never return to the only home they could ever remember having, and not only had he convinced Gus, through Tess, that he could never leave their side for fear for Ben’s life, but he had now surreptitiously torn Gus and Martha asunder. He could see the looks of both terror and longing in their eyes, and immediately wished he could turn all of them back and run back to Medias. He knew what it felt like to be denied a closeness that felt deserved and necessary. He looked over at Tess, and he saw deep worry carved into her features as well.
“You can always just tell people that you’re brother and sister. No one can prove otherwise, can they?” Guido said.
But somehow, all four children knew it wouldn’t be the same. Just the name, the societal recognition of a bond... it meant something and without it, the relationship felt more distant.
Ben felt Tess tug lightly on the sleeve of his shirt. He looked over at her to see, through a mask of indifference in her features, a glint of... happiness? in her eyes. He furrowed his brow, and she blushed and looked back down at her feet.
Then he understood. If lashing didn’t exist, and if time really did move by with a recognizable pace, then it no longer mattered that he and she were separate. No one would tell them that there wasn’t a chance anymore that they could ever be together. No one could say that since it hadn’t already happened, it was bound to never happen. They could pretend to everyone here that they were related, and no one would try to keep them apart, like people had been doing all their lives.
The town of Rachel was getting ever closer, and since the sun had long since pulled its heft over the horizon line, Ben could better make out the details of the town’s appearance. That is, he could have, if there had been any details to make out. All he could see was a massive granite wall, probably tens of feet tall.
“Is Rachel a warring village?” Martha asked. “Why does it need such strong protection?”
“It’s customary to build fortifications around a town,” Guido said dismissively, nibbling on some piece of something stuck to his wing tip. “It’s a precaution, but still, it is likely to prove necessary or at least helpful in the future.”
“Do towns often battle each other, then?” Gus asked.
“I wouldn’t say ‘often,’” Guido said. “But warfare is not an unseen presence in most towns, Rachel least of all.”
“We aren’t,” Ben said with some hesitation, “we aren’t walking into a battlefield, are we?”
“Unless one has cropped up in the past few weeks that I’ve been gone, no, I don’t believe we are.”
No one spoke. Ben thought he heard Gus gulp anxiously. Ben examined the wall as they got closer and closer, just a few hundred yards off now. He searched for archers’ turrets or any guards, or even a gate, things he’d seen in the few books he’d read in Medias, the ones that showed large towns and settlements in There, without much description, only pictures and a few labels. But the walls faces were completely bare except for a large banner hanging over the top with a deep green insignia that, at this distance, looked like a rounded maple leaf or a poorly drawn hand with only three fingers.
“Is there an entrance on this side of the town, or are we going to have to walk around a bit to find one?”
Guido croaked shortly. “Oh, we’ll be able to enter from whatever direction we approach, don’t worry about that.”
________
As I publish more of these excerpts, I'm realizing that there are times when I forgot a few details that I was waiting to divulge, and now I'm screwed because parts of my story aren't going to match other parts.
Forgive me. Bitte.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Chapter Nineteen
“Can we just sit down for a bit?” Martha pleaded.
“What is wrong with you?” Ben half shouted, half laughed. “We’ve only been walking for an hour. At this rate we’ll never get out of this forest.”
Gus was already bending down and dropping his pack behind him. Martha quickly followed suit and leaned up against a round boulder on the ground next to her.
“Guys, come on,” Ben said. “We can’t keep doing this.” When they both sat back and closed their eyes with a sigh, ignoring him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, five minutes, and then we’re back up and moving.”
He sat down and pulled his back around in front of him, searching for more of his dried greens to eat while he waited.
“Ben,” Tess whispered, pointing into some low branches not too far from Gus’ head. Perched regally there, fluffing itself up and shaking its head proudly was a great black raven.
Ben smiled, and watched as the Raven positioned itself perfectly to leave a welcoming gift in Gus’ hair. “Watch out, Gus,” Ben said, laughing. Gus grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m serious, Gus,” he said,
though he was laughing even harder now, “a bird is about to take a few liberties with your head there.”
“Yeah,” Gus said, still refusing to care.
“Okay,” Ben said. “It’s your hair.”
Ben looked back up at the raven in time to see it... roll its eyes.
“You wanted him to get up and walk, and I was going to help you, but now it seems so unjust to follow through after you’ve baited him like that.”
Ben gave himself a kink in his neck as he whipped around to look at Tess, whose eyes were now bright with laughter. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she said, bursting into deeper fits of laughter.
“The bird talking? You hear that?” Ben asked again.
“Yes.”
“Gus, did you hear that?” Ben asked.
“Mmm,” Gus responded with questionable amounts of lucidity.
Ben looked back up at the bird. “You spoke?”
It rolled its eyes again. “Yes, I spoke. Did you hear what I said?”
He narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “You wanted to help me get Gus and Martha to start walking again?”
“Yes,” the bird said. “I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re constantly making it harder. First by thwarting my grand scheme, now with all this fuss over my ability to speak. I don’t know why I try.”
“Got me,” Ben said. “What business do you have talking?” Ben asked.
“That’s rude,” Tess said. “He can talk if he wants to.”
The raven nodded. “I like this girl,” it said. “She’s right. Humans don’t have the monopoly on speech, you know. You’re all so pompous about it, like it’s something hard to achieve. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you worked for your words, boy. You were born that way. Just like me.”
“Okay, fair,” Ben conceded. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”
The raven puffed itself up again. It was about twice as large as a regular raven when it did this, but it was hard for Ben to tell how much was just fluffed feathers and how much was legitimate raven. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh? What’s that?” Ben asked.
“It’s for the girl, too,” it said, nodding to Tess. “Why do you always think people are only talking to you?”
“What do you propose?” Tess asked, silencing Ben’s defenses with a smile.
“I’ve been watching you for a while now, both of you, and I want to offer you my guidance,” it said. “Because, let’s face it, you need it pretty badly.”
“What sort of guidance?” Tess asked, again keeping Ben from a retort. “I’m fairly sure we can find our way out of this forest on our own; we’ve seen its edges while standing on the hills in Medias; it’s not too much farther now.”
“Ah yes, but right now, you’re not really as far out of Medias as you think you are,” the raven said. “You’ve left the mushroom’s kingdom behind you, but how much do you know about There and all its many glories and surprises?”
“We’re made of hardy stock,” Ben said, sticking his chin up. “I’m sure we can take whatever that world throws at us.”
The raven looked around the forest casually. “I’m sure you’re right; there’s nothing There that would be able to do you any serious harm. I mean, plenty of Medians leave the forest and have lived to tell the tale, right? Certainly you will do just fine on your own.”
Tess looked at Ben hopefully. “He’s right you know.”
“You mean sarcastic,” Ben corrected.
“But right. We don't know what we’re getting into. We should really consider taking him along.”
Ben looked up at the raven, narrowing his eyes. “Hang on; you say you've been watching us?” he asked distrustfully. “Are you the same raven that’s been waking me up early in the morning and sitting in the trees just off the balcony, watching me for hours?’
“Should I be ashamed?” the raven asked. “I was curious about you, and you weren’t exactly guarding your privacy jealously or anything..”
“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be using all of your observations against me,” Ben said, putting his fists on his hips. “If you had told me then you were planning to store all of that information in your head and come after me in the forest, I probably would have closed a few more windows.”
“Just what sort of information do you think I gleaned from hours of watching you doing nothing?” the raven said indignantly. “And how am I using any of that ‘information’ against you by offering to help you survive where no one else has?”
After these words, there came a long stare down between Ben and the raven, where Ben used the silence to think back over the recent weeks when he’d often seen this raven lurking around his house. He hadn’t suspected anything — he wasn’t a paranoid person who saw conspiracies and spies around every corner and in every tree — so he hadn’t taken into account the fact that he was being watched. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything allowed that he shouldn’t have, or was ever talking with someone about something he would have rather kept out of that bird’s head.
After a moment of thinking about all this, trying to recollect his thoughts, his mind wandered. It was hard for his imagination to keep still ever, especially at times like these. He thought about Gus, and how he was now deep asleep against the boulder. What was making him and Martha so tired and ornery? Their moods could be explained perhaps by the events of the past day, and the fact that they hadn’t wanted to leave Medias after all, but had, in the end, felt forced to do so by the sudden strangeness of Tess’ behavior.
And Tess. How had she done that to him? He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be able to hurt him than Tess, but she had completely incapacitated him yesterday, and no one could explain it. Suddenly, her thoughts about anger and pain had powers. Where had they come from, and why hadn’t she noticed them before? What hadn’t he felt them before?
She had said something about leaving Medias. About not going home. But why would that suddenly give her powerful abilities she had never had before?
“Should I leave you two alone?” Tess asked, smiling again. Ben blink and shook his head clear, wondering how long he’d been staring at the bird, who now looked half asleep himself.
“What do you say?” the bird asked. “Am I in, or am I out?”
Ben sighed. “I guess it would be senseless to refuse the offer,” he said. “But we reserve the right to catch you and cook you if rations get scarce, so you’d better not outstay your welcome.”
The raven blinked, unfazed. “I have friends in high places...” he threatened.
“Do you have a name?” Tess asked. “Or should we just call you Raven?”
“My name, for all intents and purposes, is Guido. You can use it if you want, but I’m sure I’ll be able to infer from context clues whether or not you’re talking to me.”
The three looked around awkwardly at each other for a moment before Ben said, “Well, okay. That’s that. Gus and Martha, get your sorry bottoms off the forest floor. We’re leaving, and I now have no qualms about leaving you behind; we have our very own forest guide, and you don’t.”
________
I edited out the many Shakespearean sonnets I originally used to boost my word count. Thank you for your patience.
“What is wrong with you?” Ben half shouted, half laughed. “We’ve only been walking for an hour. At this rate we’ll never get out of this forest.”
Gus was already bending down and dropping his pack behind him. Martha quickly followed suit and leaned up against a round boulder on the ground next to her.
“Guys, come on,” Ben said. “We can’t keep doing this.” When they both sat back and closed their eyes with a sigh, ignoring him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, five minutes, and then we’re back up and moving.”
He sat down and pulled his back around in front of him, searching for more of his dried greens to eat while he waited.
“Ben,” Tess whispered, pointing into some low branches not too far from Gus’ head. Perched regally there, fluffing itself up and shaking its head proudly was a great black raven.
Ben smiled, and watched as the Raven positioned itself perfectly to leave a welcoming gift in Gus’ hair. “Watch out, Gus,” Ben said, laughing. Gus grunted, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m serious, Gus,” he said,
though he was laughing even harder now, “a bird is about to take a few liberties with your head there.”
“Yeah,” Gus said, still refusing to care.
“Okay,” Ben said. “It’s your hair.”
Ben looked back up at the raven in time to see it... roll its eyes.
“You wanted him to get up and walk, and I was going to help you, but now it seems so unjust to follow through after you’ve baited him like that.”
Ben gave himself a kink in his neck as he whipped around to look at Tess, whose eyes were now bright with laughter. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” she said, bursting into deeper fits of laughter.
“The bird talking? You hear that?” Ben asked again.
“Yes.”
“Gus, did you hear that?” Ben asked.
“Mmm,” Gus responded with questionable amounts of lucidity.
Ben looked back up at the bird. “You spoke?”
It rolled its eyes again. “Yes, I spoke. Did you hear what I said?”
He narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “You wanted to help me get Gus and Martha to start walking again?”
“Yes,” the bird said. “I’m just trying to be nice, and you’re constantly making it harder. First by thwarting my grand scheme, now with all this fuss over my ability to speak. I don’t know why I try.”
“Got me,” Ben said. “What business do you have talking?” Ben asked.
“That’s rude,” Tess said. “He can talk if he wants to.”
The raven nodded. “I like this girl,” it said. “She’s right. Humans don’t have the monopoly on speech, you know. You’re all so pompous about it, like it’s something hard to achieve. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not like you worked for your words, boy. You were born that way. Just like me.”
“Okay, fair,” Ben conceded. “Why are you talking to me now, then?”
The raven puffed itself up again. It was about twice as large as a regular raven when it did this, but it was hard for Ben to tell how much was just fluffed feathers and how much was legitimate raven. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh? What’s that?” Ben asked.
“It’s for the girl, too,” it said, nodding to Tess. “Why do you always think people are only talking to you?”
“What do you propose?” Tess asked, silencing Ben’s defenses with a smile.
“I’ve been watching you for a while now, both of you, and I want to offer you my guidance,” it said. “Because, let’s face it, you need it pretty badly.”
“What sort of guidance?” Tess asked, again keeping Ben from a retort. “I’m fairly sure we can find our way out of this forest on our own; we’ve seen its edges while standing on the hills in Medias; it’s not too much farther now.”
“Ah yes, but right now, you’re not really as far out of Medias as you think you are,” the raven said. “You’ve left the mushroom’s kingdom behind you, but how much do you know about There and all its many glories and surprises?”
“We’re made of hardy stock,” Ben said, sticking his chin up. “I’m sure we can take whatever that world throws at us.”
The raven looked around the forest casually. “I’m sure you’re right; there’s nothing There that would be able to do you any serious harm. I mean, plenty of Medians leave the forest and have lived to tell the tale, right? Certainly you will do just fine on your own.”
Tess looked at Ben hopefully. “He’s right you know.”
“You mean sarcastic,” Ben corrected.
“But right. We don't know what we’re getting into. We should really consider taking him along.”
Ben looked up at the raven, narrowing his eyes. “Hang on; you say you've been watching us?” he asked distrustfully. “Are you the same raven that’s been waking me up early in the morning and sitting in the trees just off the balcony, watching me for hours?’
“Should I be ashamed?” the raven asked. “I was curious about you, and you weren’t exactly guarding your privacy jealously or anything..”
“Well, I didn’t know at the time that you were going to be using all of your observations against me,” Ben said, putting his fists on his hips. “If you had told me then you were planning to store all of that information in your head and come after me in the forest, I probably would have closed a few more windows.”
“Just what sort of information do you think I gleaned from hours of watching you doing nothing?” the raven said indignantly. “And how am I using any of that ‘information’ against you by offering to help you survive where no one else has?”
After these words, there came a long stare down between Ben and the raven, where Ben used the silence to think back over the recent weeks when he’d often seen this raven lurking around his house. He hadn’t suspected anything — he wasn’t a paranoid person who saw conspiracies and spies around every corner and in every tree — so he hadn’t taken into account the fact that he was being watched. He tried to remember if he had ever said anything allowed that he shouldn’t have, or was ever talking with someone about something he would have rather kept out of that bird’s head.
After a moment of thinking about all this, trying to recollect his thoughts, his mind wandered. It was hard for his imagination to keep still ever, especially at times like these. He thought about Gus, and how he was now deep asleep against the boulder. What was making him and Martha so tired and ornery? Their moods could be explained perhaps by the events of the past day, and the fact that they hadn’t wanted to leave Medias after all, but had, in the end, felt forced to do so by the sudden strangeness of Tess’ behavior.
And Tess. How had she done that to him? He couldn’t think of a person less likely to be able to hurt him than Tess, but she had completely incapacitated him yesterday, and no one could explain it. Suddenly, her thoughts about anger and pain had powers. Where had they come from, and why hadn’t she noticed them before? What hadn’t he felt them before?
She had said something about leaving Medias. About not going home. But why would that suddenly give her powerful abilities she had never had before?
“Should I leave you two alone?” Tess asked, smiling again. Ben blink and shook his head clear, wondering how long he’d been staring at the bird, who now looked half asleep himself.
“What do you say?” the bird asked. “Am I in, or am I out?”
Ben sighed. “I guess it would be senseless to refuse the offer,” he said. “But we reserve the right to catch you and cook you if rations get scarce, so you’d better not outstay your welcome.”
The raven blinked, unfazed. “I have friends in high places...” he threatened.
“Do you have a name?” Tess asked. “Or should we just call you Raven?”
“My name, for all intents and purposes, is Guido. You can use it if you want, but I’m sure I’ll be able to infer from context clues whether or not you’re talking to me.”
The three looked around awkwardly at each other for a moment before Ben said, “Well, okay. That’s that. Gus and Martha, get your sorry bottoms off the forest floor. We’re leaving, and I now have no qualms about leaving you behind; we have our very own forest guide, and you don’t.”
________
I edited out the many Shakespearean sonnets I originally used to boost my word count. Thank you for your patience.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Chapter Eighteen
“I don’t like those pills, Mond,” the boy said. “I don’t know what they do, really, but I know they’re not... not good for me.”
“Don’t they help with your headaches?” she asked.
“Yeah, they stop the pain, but they stop everything.”
“But the headaches were really bad for you. Remember how you used to scream at night because they hurt so badly? You don’t do that anymore, do you?”
“No,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”
Tamara leaned away from the door with a smile. Mond was defending her. The boy couldn’t stop her now that Mond was on her side; he wouldn’t dare try. He wouldn’t want to.
She crept down the hall into her own room and closed the door behind her before turning on the light. She crossed to the desk and pulled out the chair to sit. The little brown book in the top drawer had a red ribbon sticking out the bottom of it; she opened it to that page — a blank one — and pulled the fountain pen out of its holder next to the notepad.
She recounted her day minute for minute, detailing the mundane without attempting to romanticize it. She described the unforeseeable progress Mond was making in her chess game, how she’d mastered the Sicilian defense, Dragon Variation and how, without cheating and telling Mond that there were better moves she could make, even Tamara was having a hard time escaping her traps. They played the games verbally and Mond had surprisingly little trouble keeping mental track of what the board looked like. One day, she would wise up and they would have to stop playing; Tamara would have nothing further to teach her.
At this point, her pen stopped, poised over a new line. Tamara pondered the unsettling truth of the last sentence. So many of the things Tamara was teaching Mond were having to end too quickly, as Mond was learning them too quickly and at too advanced a level for Tamara to keep up her role as instructor. Would there eventually come a time when Mond would have to leave, go to some sort of academy so more learned people could give her more sophisticated lessons? Tamara shuddered and put the thought out of her mind. Their tutoring sessions were going so well, and they meant everything to Tamara. She couldn’t imagine giving her daughter up to let some strangers fill her mind with things she didn’t herself know.
She continued writing. She included a dry list of all the ingredients she had put in the dinner salad, the new dosage she had parceled out for the boy, and then came to the conversation she had eavesdropped on just a few moments before.
Then she came to the bottom of the page. She couldn’t think of anything further to write, elaborating on her day. So she added the line, “Tomorrow, Mond will learn to dance.”
“Don’t they help with your headaches?” she asked.
“Yeah, they stop the pain, but they stop everything.”
“But the headaches were really bad for you. Remember how you used to scream at night because they hurt so badly? You don’t do that anymore, do you?”
“No,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”
Tamara leaned away from the door with a smile. Mond was defending her. The boy couldn’t stop her now that Mond was on her side; he wouldn’t dare try. He wouldn’t want to.
She crept down the hall into her own room and closed the door behind her before turning on the light. She crossed to the desk and pulled out the chair to sit. The little brown book in the top drawer had a red ribbon sticking out the bottom of it; she opened it to that page — a blank one — and pulled the fountain pen out of its holder next to the notepad.
She recounted her day minute for minute, detailing the mundane without attempting to romanticize it. She described the unforeseeable progress Mond was making in her chess game, how she’d mastered the Sicilian defense, Dragon Variation and how, without cheating and telling Mond that there were better moves she could make, even Tamara was having a hard time escaping her traps. They played the games verbally and Mond had surprisingly little trouble keeping mental track of what the board looked like. One day, she would wise up and they would have to stop playing; Tamara would have nothing further to teach her.
At this point, her pen stopped, poised over a new line. Tamara pondered the unsettling truth of the last sentence. So many of the things Tamara was teaching Mond were having to end too quickly, as Mond was learning them too quickly and at too advanced a level for Tamara to keep up her role as instructor. Would there eventually come a time when Mond would have to leave, go to some sort of academy so more learned people could give her more sophisticated lessons? Tamara shuddered and put the thought out of her mind. Their tutoring sessions were going so well, and they meant everything to Tamara. She couldn’t imagine giving her daughter up to let some strangers fill her mind with things she didn’t herself know.
She continued writing. She included a dry list of all the ingredients she had put in the dinner salad, the new dosage she had parceled out for the boy, and then came to the conversation she had eavesdropped on just a few moments before.
Then she came to the bottom of the page. She couldn’t think of anything further to write, elaborating on her day. So she added the line, “Tomorrow, Mond will learn to dance.”
Monday, November 16, 2009
Chapter Sixteen
“Your calligraphy is lovely,” Tamara cooed over Mond as the little girl struggled to control the pen that was too big for her hands. She had mastered straight lines with little effort, but the curves were giving her trouble as the top of the pen swung out of her control. “Grip it tighter at the base there and it should make the writing easier.”
The Ms and the Ns in her name that she was practicing writing in repeated lines over the paper looked well-practiced, like she’d been writing for years. But the Os and the Ds an anything she wrote in the rounded lowercase was more elementary, about on the same level as the letters Ben could write.
Tamara pretended not to know that Mond retaught all of her daily lessons to the boy at night when they were supposed to be sleeping. She knew she would have to do something to end it eventually, but she also had noticed a frightening downturn in Mond’s overall appreciation of Tamara, and she guessed that it was directly linked to the way Tamara treated the boy. The more apathy she showed at this point, the better it would be for the mother-daughter relationship she was trying so hard to foster.
She had been able to convince Mond that she shouldn't see the boy during the day anymore. She hadn’t told her it was because his medicine made him look and act something more akin to a hibernating ground squirrel than a human. Every once in a while, Tamara would hear a loud thump from the room upstairs where he was penned in. She never reacted to it in a way that Mond would notice, but she couldn’t help wondering what could possibly be happening up there when he was about as mobile as a calcified starfish.
This happened while Mond was practicing her calligraphy. “Why don’t you go back to cycling through the whole alphabet, Mond,” Tamara said. “I’m going to go make us some lunch. Would you rather steamed asparagus or some of that spinach soufflé from last night?”
“Spinach,” Mond said quietly, her lips pursed tightly as she struggled to make the arch in her lowercase a.
Tamara stood up and walked out, closing the accordion door behind her. She stalked carefully around the corner to the stairs and up them, stepping over the three that creaked. The room at the top of the stairs had a large, darkly stained door with two locks high up on the frame. Tamara deftly undid them and burst into the room, using the door both as a shield and as a weapon, whichever was needed.
But when she got into the stark, gray, dimly lit room, she was relieved to find that her startling entrance was not necessary. The boy was lying on his side in his bed, just as she had let him that morning, eyes half open, and a thin line of drool dripping out of his mouth.
“Good boy,” Tamara said with a sigh and a grimace. In his present state, he reminded her all too much of the last few weeks she had seen her sister. He always resembled her too closely for comfort, but now, with his lifeless gaze and vulnerable position, she could easily have mistaken him for his mother.
“You’re the monster here, you know,” Tamara whispered as she walked out the door and closed it quietly behind her. “Between the two of us. I’m just protecting myself. You’re the monster.”
The Ms and the Ns in her name that she was practicing writing in repeated lines over the paper looked well-practiced, like she’d been writing for years. But the Os and the Ds an anything she wrote in the rounded lowercase was more elementary, about on the same level as the letters Ben could write.
Tamara pretended not to know that Mond retaught all of her daily lessons to the boy at night when they were supposed to be sleeping. She knew she would have to do something to end it eventually, but she also had noticed a frightening downturn in Mond’s overall appreciation of Tamara, and she guessed that it was directly linked to the way Tamara treated the boy. The more apathy she showed at this point, the better it would be for the mother-daughter relationship she was trying so hard to foster.
She had been able to convince Mond that she shouldn't see the boy during the day anymore. She hadn’t told her it was because his medicine made him look and act something more akin to a hibernating ground squirrel than a human. Every once in a while, Tamara would hear a loud thump from the room upstairs where he was penned in. She never reacted to it in a way that Mond would notice, but she couldn’t help wondering what could possibly be happening up there when he was about as mobile as a calcified starfish.
This happened while Mond was practicing her calligraphy. “Why don’t you go back to cycling through the whole alphabet, Mond,” Tamara said. “I’m going to go make us some lunch. Would you rather steamed asparagus or some of that spinach soufflé from last night?”
“Spinach,” Mond said quietly, her lips pursed tightly as she struggled to make the arch in her lowercase a.
Tamara stood up and walked out, closing the accordion door behind her. She stalked carefully around the corner to the stairs and up them, stepping over the three that creaked. The room at the top of the stairs had a large, darkly stained door with two locks high up on the frame. Tamara deftly undid them and burst into the room, using the door both as a shield and as a weapon, whichever was needed.
But when she got into the stark, gray, dimly lit room, she was relieved to find that her startling entrance was not necessary. The boy was lying on his side in his bed, just as she had let him that morning, eyes half open, and a thin line of drool dripping out of his mouth.
“Good boy,” Tamara said with a sigh and a grimace. In his present state, he reminded her all too much of the last few weeks she had seen her sister. He always resembled her too closely for comfort, but now, with his lifeless gaze and vulnerable position, she could easily have mistaken him for his mother.
“You’re the monster here, you know,” Tamara whispered as she walked out the door and closed it quietly behind her. “Between the two of us. I’m just protecting myself. You’re the monster.”
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Chapter Fifteen
For immeasurable moments, Ben and Tess could do nothing but stand staring in awe at the other’s unexpected presence, a feeling they always had when they met up randomly, though it was augmented this time by the gravity of their mutual purpose, and the pain both still carried from the last time they were together in the very same clearing.
Gus cleared his throat from his position standing a few paces back from Ben. Martha “shh”ed him. But the silence was already broken, and Tess had already reacted by giving a little yelp and jumping a few feet backwards.
“I... didn’t realize this was a... a... group outing,” she said, so quietly only Ben could really hear it; Gus and Martha had to perform a combination of reading her lips and guessing. She looked very confused and conflicted, two feelings obviously exacerbated by the appearance of two people she’d only ever heard stories about.
“You’re different than we’d imagined,” Martha said. “Prettier,” she clarified, and winced and tried to backpedal. “I mean, we imagined you’d be pretty, we just didn’t think you would be so pretty. Ben always described you as pretty, we just thought—”
“We’ve just never held much stock in his taste,” Gus salvaged. “He once told me he thought a Raven’s croak was ‘pretty’ too, so I kind of imagined you to be the personification of a Raven croaking.” He smiled broadly, and Tess blushed.
Ben hadn’t taken his eyes away from her yet. He was still looking for something in her face. A sign of forgiveness, maybe, or even an assurance of her happiness. Regret for having ever even considered letting him leave without her? He didn’t know what, but he didn’t find any of that. Even though all signs pointed to yes, she was coming, he felt like there was still a chance she would stay behind and force him into life without her.
“You’re about what I imagined,” Tess told Gus.
“That’s because there’s only one word anyone could use to describe us,” Gus said.
“Average,” Martha conceded with a sigh. “If Medias had a brochure, we’d be the poster children for mediocrity within the borders.”
“No, no. Ben didn’t say that,” Tess said, smiling a little. “He... well... you just... make sense.”
Gus looked mockingly startled. “Do mine ears deceive me or did someone just accuse me of the foulest curse of fundamental boringness ever conceived?” he asked, putting his hand dramatically to his chest to check for a heartbeat.
“The fellow dost protest too much, methinks,” Martha retorted. “She said we look like we make sense. No one’s accusing you of accurately playing the part.”
“I meant you... you fit... the descriptions... you’re...” She flushed even further.
“Eventually*** you’ll structure a sentence successfully,” Gus said reassuringly. Martha slapped him on the shoulder. Tess laughed.
“Are you mad at me?” Ben asked, miscalculating the approximate volume of his voice, practically yelling across the pond at her.
Her eyes moved slowly from Gus and Martha to his eyes where they rested and bored into him. Burning pain seared across his face.
He felt his knees hit the ground and his hands fly to cover what he felt had to be deep and oozing cuts across his eyes and cheeks, and he heard Martha gasp, but he didn’t have time to make anything of it before everything went brown and fuzzy and he was curled in a pile on the ground, unable to hear or see anything about what was going on around him.
He felt someone shaking his shoulders, someone with large, rough hands. And he felt a pair of frantic feet prancing anxiously and almost comically around him. But then he felt the cold touch of tiny shaking fingers prying his hands away from his eyes. They held his face, jolting energy through to his brain until he could almost feel words coming through them.
“Ben! Ben! Please tell me you’re alive! Please tell me I didn’t do this to you! I don’t know what happened; I just wanted you to know without me having to say... oh, Ben, come back. Come back! I’m not mad anymore. I’m fine! I want you to come back! I want to leave Medias with you. I need to leave! I need you! Come back!”
Over and over this litany against his growing urge to fade ran silently through his mind several times before he realized that the words were growing louder, clearer, and more obviously audible. Someone was actually saying them, or at least he was actually hearing them. They sounded far away, like someone yelling from across a large clearing, but as he grew more aware of the reality of his surroundings, he deciphered that they had to be coming from Tess, who couldn’t be too far away from him, since it had to be her hands that were holding his face, even though they seemed to be meeting with some resistance from an outside force.
Then all of a sudden, Ben felt the familiar and unwelcome sensation of prickling vines shooting up through his body from the ground, through his back, wrapping painfully around his spine and ribs. As quickly as it had come, though, it was gone, and he was blinded by the sunlight in his eyes and deafened by the instantly loud voices around him. He sputtered as if coming up to breathe.
“Get away from him, witch!” Gus was yelling.
“Ben, are you all right? Please talk to me!” Tess screamed, her voice uncharacteristically taught and shrieking.
“Gus, don’t hurt her,” Martha pleaded, her voice quietest of the three.
When the blurry and highly contrasted shapes came into better focus, he was internally horrified by the scene, even though he was not reacting quickly enough to do anything about it externally.
The hands on his face were indeed Tess’, and the hands on his shoulders were Gus’, and the two people, those four hands, were battling against each other, each trying to take sole possession of Ben as he lay there uselessly on the ground. They were nearly attacking one another to get to him. Martha was dancing ditheringly around behind them, trying half-heartedly to restrain Gus.
Then all at once his strength and presence of mine came back into him, like it was an entity being shot directly at his chest from a cannon at short-range.
“Get off me!” he yelled, sputtering again, taking gasping breaths and shunning all three of them away. He rolled over and pushed himself onto his knees. He could feel the silent presence of them all hovering behind him, but he didn’t acknowledge it as he tried to wrap his mind around the past ten minutes of his life.
“What... just happened?” he asked with his back to them, struggling to keep his breaths even while his heart was still racing.
“Tess tried to kill you,” Gus said coldly.
“Shut up, Gus,” Ben said.
“Me shut up?” Gus said in disbelief. “She’s the one you sent you writhing to the ground in pain and you want me to shut up?”
“She didn’t do it on purpose, Gus,” Martha said.
“She can explain it,” Ben said.
All four of them sat in silence for a minute before Tess began talking. When she did, her voice was timid and quiet again, like usual, but also scared.
“You asked me if I was still mad at you,” she said, “and I wanted to tell you that I was without saying it out loud, so I tried... I tried to... give you a sort of angry look. And, I don’t understand what happened then; my eyes got all hot and stingy, and then you fell down screaming.”
“It was like you shot something at me,” Ben said, remembering the pain as it had whipped across his face. “And then I couldn’t see or hear anything until...” He turned his head around and looked at her, “until you grabbed my face. You started talking to me and I... I could hear you.”
“Was she saying, ‘Get off him Gus, you’re going to hurt him’?” Gus asked angrily. “That’s what she was saying to me. It’s ridiculous.”
“No,” Ben said. “You were telling me to come back.”
The four stood in stillness — no movement, no noise, save for the orange leaves falling from the trees and the occasional croak of a nearby raven. Ben was looking at Tess, who was glancing between him and her shoes. Martha was staring at the back of Gus’ head, who was staring obstinately into the empty space beyond Ben’s left ear.
“Maybe we shouldn't leave,” Martha said. “Not today, anyway.”
“No,” Ben and Tess said together.
“You two can go home,” Ben said to Gus. “I should have told you yesterday what Medias said about not being able to come back. I should have realized you wouldn’t want to—”
“I can’t leave you alone with her,” he jerked his thumb at Tess. “Who knows when she could accidentally blow you up with her mind.”
“I’m sorry, Gus,” Tess said. “I swear; I would never want to hurt Ben like—”
“Well, you already have, and you evidently had no control over it, so someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” Gus said. He turned to look her coldly in the face. “I’m not going to call you sister, let’s just put it that way.”
“Gus, don’t be stupid,” Ben said. “It was just an accident.”
“One that can happen again,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”
Ben looked up at Martha, who gave him the same look she had when she had finished her story about the Monk E Paw. “And you?”
“Of course I’m coming,” she said without hesitation. He couldn’t tell if she actually wanted to, though. Maybe he didn’t understand the real power of the lash, after all.
He stood up and brushed the dead leaves off his back. “Okay. We’re going west,” he said. “We can’t be too far from the edge now.”
“Maybe that’s why all this happened in the first place,” Tess said as they turned and began walking, leaving the catfish pond, the forest, and everything they could remember behind them in the pile of dried leaves dried wood that were the hills of Medias.
___________
***For Jared
P.S. As my life gets gradually more hectic, I do a lot more dirty things to reach my word count. You may notice this eventually.
Gus cleared his throat from his position standing a few paces back from Ben. Martha “shh”ed him. But the silence was already broken, and Tess had already reacted by giving a little yelp and jumping a few feet backwards.
“I... didn’t realize this was a... a... group outing,” she said, so quietly only Ben could really hear it; Gus and Martha had to perform a combination of reading her lips and guessing. She looked very confused and conflicted, two feelings obviously exacerbated by the appearance of two people she’d only ever heard stories about.
“You’re different than we’d imagined,” Martha said. “Prettier,” she clarified, and winced and tried to backpedal. “I mean, we imagined you’d be pretty, we just didn’t think you would be so pretty. Ben always described you as pretty, we just thought—”
“We’ve just never held much stock in his taste,” Gus salvaged. “He once told me he thought a Raven’s croak was ‘pretty’ too, so I kind of imagined you to be the personification of a Raven croaking.” He smiled broadly, and Tess blushed.
Ben hadn’t taken his eyes away from her yet. He was still looking for something in her face. A sign of forgiveness, maybe, or even an assurance of her happiness. Regret for having ever even considered letting him leave without her? He didn’t know what, but he didn’t find any of that. Even though all signs pointed to yes, she was coming, he felt like there was still a chance she would stay behind and force him into life without her.
“You’re about what I imagined,” Tess told Gus.
“That’s because there’s only one word anyone could use to describe us,” Gus said.
“Average,” Martha conceded with a sigh. “If Medias had a brochure, we’d be the poster children for mediocrity within the borders.”
“No, no. Ben didn’t say that,” Tess said, smiling a little. “He... well... you just... make sense.”
Gus looked mockingly startled. “Do mine ears deceive me or did someone just accuse me of the foulest curse of fundamental boringness ever conceived?” he asked, putting his hand dramatically to his chest to check for a heartbeat.
“The fellow dost protest too much, methinks,” Martha retorted. “She said we look like we make sense. No one’s accusing you of accurately playing the part.”
“I meant you... you fit... the descriptions... you’re...” She flushed even further.
“Eventually*** you’ll structure a sentence successfully,” Gus said reassuringly. Martha slapped him on the shoulder. Tess laughed.
“Are you mad at me?” Ben asked, miscalculating the approximate volume of his voice, practically yelling across the pond at her.
Her eyes moved slowly from Gus and Martha to his eyes where they rested and bored into him. Burning pain seared across his face.
He felt his knees hit the ground and his hands fly to cover what he felt had to be deep and oozing cuts across his eyes and cheeks, and he heard Martha gasp, but he didn’t have time to make anything of it before everything went brown and fuzzy and he was curled in a pile on the ground, unable to hear or see anything about what was going on around him.
He felt someone shaking his shoulders, someone with large, rough hands. And he felt a pair of frantic feet prancing anxiously and almost comically around him. But then he felt the cold touch of tiny shaking fingers prying his hands away from his eyes. They held his face, jolting energy through to his brain until he could almost feel words coming through them.
“Ben! Ben! Please tell me you’re alive! Please tell me I didn’t do this to you! I don’t know what happened; I just wanted you to know without me having to say... oh, Ben, come back. Come back! I’m not mad anymore. I’m fine! I want you to come back! I want to leave Medias with you. I need to leave! I need you! Come back!”
Over and over this litany against his growing urge to fade ran silently through his mind several times before he realized that the words were growing louder, clearer, and more obviously audible. Someone was actually saying them, or at least he was actually hearing them. They sounded far away, like someone yelling from across a large clearing, but as he grew more aware of the reality of his surroundings, he deciphered that they had to be coming from Tess, who couldn’t be too far away from him, since it had to be her hands that were holding his face, even though they seemed to be meeting with some resistance from an outside force.
Then all of a sudden, Ben felt the familiar and unwelcome sensation of prickling vines shooting up through his body from the ground, through his back, wrapping painfully around his spine and ribs. As quickly as it had come, though, it was gone, and he was blinded by the sunlight in his eyes and deafened by the instantly loud voices around him. He sputtered as if coming up to breathe.
“Get away from him, witch!” Gus was yelling.
“Ben, are you all right? Please talk to me!” Tess screamed, her voice uncharacteristically taught and shrieking.
“Gus, don’t hurt her,” Martha pleaded, her voice quietest of the three.
When the blurry and highly contrasted shapes came into better focus, he was internally horrified by the scene, even though he was not reacting quickly enough to do anything about it externally.
The hands on his face were indeed Tess’, and the hands on his shoulders were Gus’, and the two people, those four hands, were battling against each other, each trying to take sole possession of Ben as he lay there uselessly on the ground. They were nearly attacking one another to get to him. Martha was dancing ditheringly around behind them, trying half-heartedly to restrain Gus.
Then all at once his strength and presence of mine came back into him, like it was an entity being shot directly at his chest from a cannon at short-range.
“Get off me!” he yelled, sputtering again, taking gasping breaths and shunning all three of them away. He rolled over and pushed himself onto his knees. He could feel the silent presence of them all hovering behind him, but he didn’t acknowledge it as he tried to wrap his mind around the past ten minutes of his life.
“What... just happened?” he asked with his back to them, struggling to keep his breaths even while his heart was still racing.
“Tess tried to kill you,” Gus said coldly.
“Shut up, Gus,” Ben said.
“Me shut up?” Gus said in disbelief. “She’s the one you sent you writhing to the ground in pain and you want me to shut up?”
“She didn’t do it on purpose, Gus,” Martha said.
“She can explain it,” Ben said.
All four of them sat in silence for a minute before Tess began talking. When she did, her voice was timid and quiet again, like usual, but also scared.
“You asked me if I was still mad at you,” she said, “and I wanted to tell you that I was without saying it out loud, so I tried... I tried to... give you a sort of angry look. And, I don’t understand what happened then; my eyes got all hot and stingy, and then you fell down screaming.”
“It was like you shot something at me,” Ben said, remembering the pain as it had whipped across his face. “And then I couldn’t see or hear anything until...” He turned his head around and looked at her, “until you grabbed my face. You started talking to me and I... I could hear you.”
“Was she saying, ‘Get off him Gus, you’re going to hurt him’?” Gus asked angrily. “That’s what she was saying to me. It’s ridiculous.”
“No,” Ben said. “You were telling me to come back.”
The four stood in stillness — no movement, no noise, save for the orange leaves falling from the trees and the occasional croak of a nearby raven. Ben was looking at Tess, who was glancing between him and her shoes. Martha was staring at the back of Gus’ head, who was staring obstinately into the empty space beyond Ben’s left ear.
“Maybe we shouldn't leave,” Martha said. “Not today, anyway.”
“No,” Ben and Tess said together.
“You two can go home,” Ben said to Gus. “I should have told you yesterday what Medias said about not being able to come back. I should have realized you wouldn’t want to—”
“I can’t leave you alone with her,” he jerked his thumb at Tess. “Who knows when she could accidentally blow you up with her mind.”
“I’m sorry, Gus,” Tess said. “I swear; I would never want to hurt Ben like—”
“Well, you already have, and you evidently had no control over it, so someone’s got to keep an eye on you,” Gus said. He turned to look her coldly in the face. “I’m not going to call you sister, let’s just put it that way.”
“Gus, don’t be stupid,” Ben said. “It was just an accident.”
“One that can happen again,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”
Ben looked up at Martha, who gave him the same look she had when she had finished her story about the Monk E Paw. “And you?”
“Of course I’m coming,” she said without hesitation. He couldn’t tell if she actually wanted to, though. Maybe he didn’t understand the real power of the lash, after all.
He stood up and brushed the dead leaves off his back. “Okay. We’re going west,” he said. “We can’t be too far from the edge now.”
“Maybe that’s why all this happened in the first place,” Tess said as they turned and began walking, leaving the catfish pond, the forest, and everything they could remember behind them in the pile of dried leaves dried wood that were the hills of Medias.
___________
***For Jared
P.S. As my life gets gradually more hectic, I do a lot more dirty things to reach my word count. You may notice this eventually.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Chapter Fourteen
The sun poured through the thick leaves of the forest of Medias, shining directly overhead. Ben, Gus, and Martha walked abreast along the paths that lead to the outskirts of the forest. With the knowledge Ben now possessed of the forces at work in the ground beneath him, he felt more acutely aware of the magic that tugged at him, urging him to return to the center of the hills. In his awareness, he felt more fiercely called to fight the feeling. He only prayed that Tess shared that feeling and was somewhere nearby in the woods, just waiting to join up with them along an adjacent path.
“I’ve definitely got a better one than that,” Martha was saying to Gus. “I heard this from one of the conference center janitorial staff guys. Evidently, Richard—I’m sure you know him from the pond guild, since his brother is in charge of it—well, evidently, Richard has a friend who says he’s been There and came back with all these amazing and pretty horrific stories. I think his name was Sallus or something.”
“Okay, intro done, I hope and pray?” Gus said mockingly.
“So Sallus was staying with a family that lived a good distance outside of Medias,” Martha said, plowing over Gus’ interjection. “There was a mother a father and two children, Sam and Sarah. Sam was older, and didn’t live at home anymore, but he visited the family often and Sallus got to know him pretty well. He was a construction worker, you know, like the guys who repair houses and things.”
“I don’t ever remember a time when any houses needed repair,” Gus said innocently.
“Oh shut up,” Ben said with a laugh.
“Anyway. One day, the mother’s uncle came to visit. He was a big shot Sir-gent Major in something called an Arm Force or a Terry Mill or something. Anyway, he was a famous guy for some reason and he had traveled all over the world with his Arm.”
“He only had one?”
“No, that was the name of his group, the ‘Arm Force’ and when you’re a leader they give you control over one or more Arms,” Martha struggled to explain. “I don’t really get where they come up with names for things in There, but it is what it is, I guess.”
“Back to the story,” Ben said.
“So the Sir-gent’s name was Morris, and he had picked up this weird talisman in some foreign country, this thing called a Monk E. Paw.”
“Are monks animals There?” Ben asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “How can animals practice religious rites and traditions?”
“I think it’s more that the original monks got their name because they wore fur off an animal named the Monk E,” Martha clarified. “I think I read that in a book somewhere.”
“Why is it called the Monk E, then?” Gus asked. “Are there different kinds of Monk animals? Like Monk A and Monk B and Monk C?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that and get on with the story,” Martha said, shooting him a look that was meant to be something of a spurn on his sudden and uncharacteristic curiosity. “So Sir-gent Major Morris brought Sallus’ foster family the Monk E paw as a gift. He told them that it was given to him by a friend in the Arm Force who had gotten it from a foreign medicine man whose name was Faker. Faker had said that the paw would grant the head of any family three wishes, but Morris suggested that they used them carefully and only one at a time, so that they wouldn’t waste them.
“Richard said then that Sallus and Morris had a private talk in the front garden while the rest of the family was inside discussing what they were going to do with the three wishes the Monk E paw would grant them. Evidently Morris told Sallus that he had actually been bequeathed the talisman in the will of his friend from the Arm Force, and that the will had expressly stated that Morris was supposed to destroy the talisman. Morris said that his friend had used his third wish to take his own life. But Morris explained to Sallus that he didn’t think it was fair that his Arm Force friend should be the last to benefit from such a rare item, and he wrote off the suicide by describing a horrible illness his friend had been suffering from for years, something that would cause Morris himself to wish for death, especially after the first two obviously life-altering wishes had already been granted.”
“Uh, Martha,” Ben said warily, “this story is getting…I don’t know…do we want to hear the end?” They were nearly to the catfish pond my this time, and both the story and the Tess’ unmistakable absence were starting to eat away at Ben’s level of comfort with his situation.
“It’s a good story,” she assured them both, because Gus was looking leery as well. “I mean, it’s different from most Median stories. That’s why I’m telling it: so we can get a better idea of what There is like in comparison to Medias.”
Gus and Ben looked at each other with uncertainty. Martha rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, after the meeting with Sallus in the front garden, Sir-gent Major Morris said he had to be going, that he’d just stopped by for a short visit, and that he’d be sure to come again in the coming months, whenever his worldly travels guided him back that way. So Sallus went back inside and sat down with the family, listening to them come to a final decision about how to use their first wish.
“The father, being the head of the family, decided that the best thing to do would be to ask for money to pay off some debts the family had, so that Sarah’s schooling could be paid for more easily when that time came. After some discussion, the other family members agreed and the father said he’d make the with the next morning, giving him time to go over the family books to find out exactly how much money they’d need; they didn’t want to over indulge, but they didn’t want to sell themselves too short, either.
“So the next morning, after Sam had left for his home and Sarah had left for her preparatory school, the mother and the father sat down at the table with Sallus to make the wish. The father held the shriveled little paw in his hands and said, ‘I wish our family came into possession of £359 of extra money that we could use to pay off our debts.’ The three waited for about a half hour without any sign of £359 showing up anywhere. Then the phone rang.”
“The phone?” Gus asked.
“Evidently it’s some wiring device that people There use to contact each other over long distances. It’s too hard to explain, and it doesn’t really matter in this story, except that someone from Sam’s construction company used one to call Sam’s parents and tell them that Sam had died due to someone else’s mishandling of a company machine.”
Gus and Ben’s eyes widened with fear, disgust, and sadness.
“The construction company man asked if Sam’s father could come and identify the body for insurance purposes, since the company was going to have to pay £359 as compensation for the loss of their son.”
“What?” Ben and Gus said together, mouths open and aghast.
“That’s…that’s disgusting,” Ben said.
“Sallus thought so, too,” Martha said, plowing on, though her face was considerably harder than it had been when she started. “He said that when the father came back from the sight, he went up to his study and locked himself in there for three days. The mother was absolutely disconsolate; she was catatonic the whole week, so Sallus and Sarah were left to fend for themselves, and poor Sarah was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt, thinking that it was her need for school money that had killed her brother.”
“Martha, this is a horrible story,” Gus said. “I don’t care about ‘better understanding the differences between There and Medias; I don’t want to hear the rest of it.”
Martha’s eyes went downcast. “I know,” she said quietly. “I mean, it’s awful. But it’s the kind of things people from There are always worried about—the consequences of their actions and their need to accept things as they are. ‘The natural order of things’ is a concept Sallus mentioned in every story he told.”
“There’s no way Sallus actually went There and came back,” Ben said, more angrily than he had meant to. “I mean,” he said, bringing his tone back up, “Medias told Tess and I yesterday that no one is allowed to return to Medias after going There.”
Now Gus and Martha looked at each other uncertainly. “Why not?” they asked, almost in unison.
“It said there’s a fundamental difference between people from There and Medians, something about ‘outlying emotions.’ I didn’t really understand it, but it said that people born and raised in Medius had better control of themselves than people from There, but that leaving Medias, even for a few days, would break up too much of that control for them to be…” He looked at the fear on Gus and Martha’s faces, and realized too late that he should have told them all of this before.
“Ben?” The soft, nearly whispered word came from a clearing just beyond where the three were standing. Ben heard it and felt his stomach lurch up into his chest before he could clearly articulate why.
“…Tess?” he said, his voice turned quiet by his sudden heedless anxiety. It felt to him as though Gus and Martha had sunk into the earth around them as be began to run, dodging between thinning trees and coming into the light of the catfish pond clearing. There, standing on the other side of the water with traveling clothes he’d never seen before and a knapsack made out of many unmatched napkins and throw-pillow cases stitched together, was Tess.
____________________
P.S. Yeah, the Curse of the Monkey Paw is not my story. Los siento. Originally, it was just a word count thing, but now I'm thinking of leaving it in legit, so I didn't think it made sense to censor it here. But yeah, not my story; fan-fiction-esque disclaimer.
“I’ve definitely got a better one than that,” Martha was saying to Gus. “I heard this from one of the conference center janitorial staff guys. Evidently, Richard—I’m sure you know him from the pond guild, since his brother is in charge of it—well, evidently, Richard has a friend who says he’s been There and came back with all these amazing and pretty horrific stories. I think his name was Sallus or something.”
“Okay, intro done, I hope and pray?” Gus said mockingly.
“So Sallus was staying with a family that lived a good distance outside of Medias,” Martha said, plowing over Gus’ interjection. “There was a mother a father and two children, Sam and Sarah. Sam was older, and didn’t live at home anymore, but he visited the family often and Sallus got to know him pretty well. He was a construction worker, you know, like the guys who repair houses and things.”
“I don’t ever remember a time when any houses needed repair,” Gus said innocently.
“Oh shut up,” Ben said with a laugh.
“Anyway. One day, the mother’s uncle came to visit. He was a big shot Sir-gent Major in something called an Arm Force or a Terry Mill or something. Anyway, he was a famous guy for some reason and he had traveled all over the world with his Arm.”
“He only had one?”
“No, that was the name of his group, the ‘Arm Force’ and when you’re a leader they give you control over one or more Arms,” Martha struggled to explain. “I don’t really get where they come up with names for things in There, but it is what it is, I guess.”
“Back to the story,” Ben said.
“So the Sir-gent’s name was Morris, and he had picked up this weird talisman in some foreign country, this thing called a Monk E. Paw.”
“Are monks animals There?” Ben asked.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “How can animals practice religious rites and traditions?”
“I think it’s more that the original monks got their name because they wore fur off an animal named the Monk E,” Martha clarified. “I think I read that in a book somewhere.”
“Why is it called the Monk E, then?” Gus asked. “Are there different kinds of Monk animals? Like Monk A and Monk B and Monk C?”
“Sure. Let’s go with that and get on with the story,” Martha said, shooting him a look that was meant to be something of a spurn on his sudden and uncharacteristic curiosity. “So Sir-gent Major Morris brought Sallus’ foster family the Monk E paw as a gift. He told them that it was given to him by a friend in the Arm Force who had gotten it from a foreign medicine man whose name was Faker. Faker had said that the paw would grant the head of any family three wishes, but Morris suggested that they used them carefully and only one at a time, so that they wouldn’t waste them.
“Richard said then that Sallus and Morris had a private talk in the front garden while the rest of the family was inside discussing what they were going to do with the three wishes the Monk E paw would grant them. Evidently Morris told Sallus that he had actually been bequeathed the talisman in the will of his friend from the Arm Force, and that the will had expressly stated that Morris was supposed to destroy the talisman. Morris said that his friend had used his third wish to take his own life. But Morris explained to Sallus that he didn’t think it was fair that his Arm Force friend should be the last to benefit from such a rare item, and he wrote off the suicide by describing a horrible illness his friend had been suffering from for years, something that would cause Morris himself to wish for death, especially after the first two obviously life-altering wishes had already been granted.”
“Uh, Martha,” Ben said warily, “this story is getting…I don’t know…do we want to hear the end?” They were nearly to the catfish pond my this time, and both the story and the Tess’ unmistakable absence were starting to eat away at Ben’s level of comfort with his situation.
“It’s a good story,” she assured them both, because Gus was looking leery as well. “I mean, it’s different from most Median stories. That’s why I’m telling it: so we can get a better idea of what There is like in comparison to Medias.”
Gus and Ben looked at each other with uncertainty. Martha rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, after the meeting with Sallus in the front garden, Sir-gent Major Morris said he had to be going, that he’d just stopped by for a short visit, and that he’d be sure to come again in the coming months, whenever his worldly travels guided him back that way. So Sallus went back inside and sat down with the family, listening to them come to a final decision about how to use their first wish.
“The father, being the head of the family, decided that the best thing to do would be to ask for money to pay off some debts the family had, so that Sarah’s schooling could be paid for more easily when that time came. After some discussion, the other family members agreed and the father said he’d make the with the next morning, giving him time to go over the family books to find out exactly how much money they’d need; they didn’t want to over indulge, but they didn’t want to sell themselves too short, either.
“So the next morning, after Sam had left for his home and Sarah had left for her preparatory school, the mother and the father sat down at the table with Sallus to make the wish. The father held the shriveled little paw in his hands and said, ‘I wish our family came into possession of £359 of extra money that we could use to pay off our debts.’ The three waited for about a half hour without any sign of £359 showing up anywhere. Then the phone rang.”
“The phone?” Gus asked.
“Evidently it’s some wiring device that people There use to contact each other over long distances. It’s too hard to explain, and it doesn’t really matter in this story, except that someone from Sam’s construction company used one to call Sam’s parents and tell them that Sam had died due to someone else’s mishandling of a company machine.”
Gus and Ben’s eyes widened with fear, disgust, and sadness.
“The construction company man asked if Sam’s father could come and identify the body for insurance purposes, since the company was going to have to pay £359 as compensation for the loss of their son.”
“What?” Ben and Gus said together, mouths open and aghast.
“That’s…that’s disgusting,” Ben said.
“Sallus thought so, too,” Martha said, plowing on, though her face was considerably harder than it had been when she started. “He said that when the father came back from the sight, he went up to his study and locked himself in there for three days. The mother was absolutely disconsolate; she was catatonic the whole week, so Sallus and Sarah were left to fend for themselves, and poor Sarah was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt, thinking that it was her need for school money that had killed her brother.”
“Martha, this is a horrible story,” Gus said. “I don’t care about ‘better understanding the differences between There and Medias; I don’t want to hear the rest of it.”
Martha’s eyes went downcast. “I know,” she said quietly. “I mean, it’s awful. But it’s the kind of things people from There are always worried about—the consequences of their actions and their need to accept things as they are. ‘The natural order of things’ is a concept Sallus mentioned in every story he told.”
“There’s no way Sallus actually went There and came back,” Ben said, more angrily than he had meant to. “I mean,” he said, bringing his tone back up, “Medias told Tess and I yesterday that no one is allowed to return to Medias after going There.”
Now Gus and Martha looked at each other uncertainly. “Why not?” they asked, almost in unison.
“It said there’s a fundamental difference between people from There and Medians, something about ‘outlying emotions.’ I didn’t really understand it, but it said that people born and raised in Medius had better control of themselves than people from There, but that leaving Medias, even for a few days, would break up too much of that control for them to be…” He looked at the fear on Gus and Martha’s faces, and realized too late that he should have told them all of this before.
“Ben?” The soft, nearly whispered word came from a clearing just beyond where the three were standing. Ben heard it and felt his stomach lurch up into his chest before he could clearly articulate why.
“…Tess?” he said, his voice turned quiet by his sudden heedless anxiety. It felt to him as though Gus and Martha had sunk into the earth around them as be began to run, dodging between thinning trees and coming into the light of the catfish pond clearing. There, standing on the other side of the water with traveling clothes he’d never seen before and a knapsack made out of many unmatched napkins and throw-pillow cases stitched together, was Tess.
____________________
P.S. Yeah, the Curse of the Monkey Paw is not my story. Los siento. Originally, it was just a word count thing, but now I'm thinking of leaving it in legit, so I didn't think it made sense to censor it here. But yeah, not my story; fan-fiction-esque disclaimer.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Chapter Thirteen
“Rise and shine, you unhygienic delinquent.” Gus leaned over Ben, grinning annoyingly into his bleary eyes. “Please count the number of days since you last bathed and feel my pain as I myself realized it was more than seven.”
Ben moaned and shut his eyes tight against the light coming in from the window. “I realize that a new day comes every twenty-four hours, but do you always have to be so happy about it?” He tried to turn over and put his back to his brother-in-lash, without realizing that Gus was pinning his shoulder to the bed. “Get off me,” he half yelled, half pleaded.
“Whoa there, Johnny Raincloud,” Gus said, smile fading. He straightened up and backed a few feet away from the bed. “What’s got your bonnet in a bundle?”
Ben stared up at the lightening ceiling. “Medias,” he said shortly.
Gus frowned. “The land or the—”
“The mushroom, Gus,” Ben snapped. “It’s a mushroom. Everything in these damnable hills is controlled by that damnable mushroom.” He covered his face with his palms, rubbing the sleep and frustration out of his eyes. “There’s no way to escape any of it.”
Gus was silent. Ben waited behind his hands for a witty comeback or a lazy retort, but he didn’t even hear him shift his weight. After a few quiet moments Ben sat up, swung his feet around to the floor, and stared at them. “Just when I thought things couldn’t go anywhere but up.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Gus asked seriously. It was the first time in Ben’s memory that he had ever said anything totally seriously.
Ben didn’t look at him. “I’m leaving, Gus,” he said. “I know…you don’t know what you’ll do without me and all that, but I have to go. I hope you can understand, maybe someday forgive me even. Or just forget me. That would work too.”
“Okay,” Gus said without hesitation. “Well, do you know where we’re going?”
Ben looked up at him. “What?”
“I mean, none of us has ever been There before; do we know where we’re going or how long it’s going to take to get—”
“What do you mean ‘we,’ Gus? I said I’m going.”
Gus sighed. “Ben. You’re delusional if you think you’re leaving us here. I guess if you want to operate under the illusion that you’re alone, Martha and I can walk a few paces behind you or something, but I really think that’s a little childish, don’t you?”
Ben felt his face heating up. “You want to come with me?”
“You don’t look like you’re in a position where I could convince you to stay, and like you said, I don’t know what I’d do without you, so it seems Martha and I have to go.”
The two boys looked at each other. Even though he was sitting and Gus was standing, looking down on him, it was the first time Ben realized that he was taller than his brother. Perhaps it was because this was the first time Ben had felt as if Gus was treating him as an equal. Gus and Martha were both sixteen, and though they had never treated Ben as inferior, or had lorded over him the fact that they were two years older than him, there had always been an unspoken hierarchy in their home. But here, in this moment where Ben was unwittingly, involuntarily calling the shots, he realized that it had been unspoken because it had been untrue. As much as Ben needed them, they needed him right back.
“So where are we going?” Gus asked after the long silence where Ben had been organizing his emotions. “Do we know a basic compass direction?”
“I don’t care too much at this point. I was thinking…maybe west.” For a split second, he thought he had felt the vines of paralysis creep up his legs and into his throat, but the feeling vanished so quickly he dismissed it.
“West. What’s west?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The sunset?”
“Okay, master navigator,” Gus said, saluting. “So when are we leaving, now that we’ve got our heading?”
Ben slouched. “I…I don’t…I can’t…” He looked up into Gus’ eyes, trying both to hide and divulge the pain he had clung to since his fight with Tess at the catfish pond the night before.
“Hang on,” Gus said, again with his foreign serious tone. “Have you talked to Tess about this yet?”
Ben’s eyes closed and his head bowed. “She…isn’t coming.”
Gus laughed shortly. “Okay. That’s a big load off,” he said jovially. “It would be so awkward with you two and Martha and I, I mean, us being lashed and all and you being…well, whatever you are.”
Sudden anger coursed through Ben. He shot death glares at Gus. “Oh, that’s just fine, make jokes; it’s not like we’re people with feelings or anything, Gus. It’s not like we had a catastrophic argument unlike any other argument we’ve ever had in the…who knows how many years we’ve known each other.” He had stood up and was about to go for Gus’ throat when he saw Gus shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be so thick, adrenaline junkie,” he said, taking a small step back despite his cool façade. “She’ll come.”
Ben cooled down at his tone. “But she—”
“She’ll come.”
“I told her last night—”
“She’ll come.”
“You don’t understand. I’m tearing her in two—”
“Is it just me or is there an echo in here?” Gus asked incredulously. “I’m telling you, Ben, she’s going to come. If you seriously leave she’ll seriously follow you.”
“How do you know that?” Ben asked. They were both standing awkwardly a few feet from each other now, Ben still retaining his fighting stance, and Gus almost falling backwards onto his bed in his attempt to look nonchalant.
“Come with me,” Gus said, turning and walking into the other room. Ben followed him and sat down at the table while Gus rummaged through the sparse cabinets looking for something delicious, or at least edible. “I know that she’ll follow you the same way I can say definitively that Martha will follow me once I tell her I’m going with you.”
“Gus,” Ben said painfully, “Tess and I aren’t lashed. It’s not the same.”
“It is the same,” Gus said. “You and I aren’t lashed, but I immediately said I was going to come with you, didn’t I?”
“You’re my brother,” Ben said. “I mean, you’re practically my brother. What would you do without me?”
“And what would Tess do without you? She’s as much your sister as Martha is, if not more,” Gus said. He had found some apples and begun slicing them thinly. “How many times have you two run into each other without planning it? You’ve told me the stories; I don’t my mediocre education prepared me to count the number of impromptu middle-of-nowhere meetings you’ve had together.”
“But she has a real family too,” Ben insisted. “I doubt they’re going to be as forgiving as you and Martha and allow her to leave by herself, let alone jump on this rapidly growing escape wagon with a bunch of people they’ve never met before.”
“If they’re anything like me, which,” he shined his finger nails on his shoulder, “everyone strives to be, they’ll understand. If Tess has shared half the number of stories about you with them as you have about her with us, they’ll get it.” He put the apple slices on the plate and brought them to the table, sitting down on the bench next to Ben.
“You’re saying, if I had told you back there,” Ben said, gesturing to the bedroom they had just left, “that Tess and her family was leaving and I was going to, you would have let me go?”
Gus bit into an apple, purposefully spraying juice into Ben’s face. “I’m not saying it would have been easy.”
Ben took a slice of apple and bit into it, chewing slowly. If asked last week to predict anything that had happened in the past two days, he certainly wouldn’t have come up with an accurate guess.
“So,” he said after a long pause and about five slices of apple, “do I go and find her and ask her again to come?”
“You could,” Gus said, swallowing his thirteenth apple slice and rolling off the bench onto the floor. “Or you could just leave. If the past ‘who-knows-how-many years’ are any indication,” he said, closing his eyes, “she’ll know you’re going and she’ll find someway to go too.”
Ben moaned and shut his eyes tight against the light coming in from the window. “I realize that a new day comes every twenty-four hours, but do you always have to be so happy about it?” He tried to turn over and put his back to his brother-in-lash, without realizing that Gus was pinning his shoulder to the bed. “Get off me,” he half yelled, half pleaded.
“Whoa there, Johnny Raincloud,” Gus said, smile fading. He straightened up and backed a few feet away from the bed. “What’s got your bonnet in a bundle?”
Ben stared up at the lightening ceiling. “Medias,” he said shortly.
Gus frowned. “The land or the—”
“The mushroom, Gus,” Ben snapped. “It’s a mushroom. Everything in these damnable hills is controlled by that damnable mushroom.” He covered his face with his palms, rubbing the sleep and frustration out of his eyes. “There’s no way to escape any of it.”
Gus was silent. Ben waited behind his hands for a witty comeback or a lazy retort, but he didn’t even hear him shift his weight. After a few quiet moments Ben sat up, swung his feet around to the floor, and stared at them. “Just when I thought things couldn’t go anywhere but up.”
“So what are you going to do about it?” Gus asked seriously. It was the first time in Ben’s memory that he had ever said anything totally seriously.
Ben didn’t look at him. “I’m leaving, Gus,” he said. “I know…you don’t know what you’ll do without me and all that, but I have to go. I hope you can understand, maybe someday forgive me even. Or just forget me. That would work too.”
“Okay,” Gus said without hesitation. “Well, do you know where we’re going?”
Ben looked up at him. “What?”
“I mean, none of us has ever been There before; do we know where we’re going or how long it’s going to take to get—”
“What do you mean ‘we,’ Gus? I said I’m going.”
Gus sighed. “Ben. You’re delusional if you think you’re leaving us here. I guess if you want to operate under the illusion that you’re alone, Martha and I can walk a few paces behind you or something, but I really think that’s a little childish, don’t you?”
Ben felt his face heating up. “You want to come with me?”
“You don’t look like you’re in a position where I could convince you to stay, and like you said, I don’t know what I’d do without you, so it seems Martha and I have to go.”
The two boys looked at each other. Even though he was sitting and Gus was standing, looking down on him, it was the first time Ben realized that he was taller than his brother. Perhaps it was because this was the first time Ben had felt as if Gus was treating him as an equal. Gus and Martha were both sixteen, and though they had never treated Ben as inferior, or had lorded over him the fact that they were two years older than him, there had always been an unspoken hierarchy in their home. But here, in this moment where Ben was unwittingly, involuntarily calling the shots, he realized that it had been unspoken because it had been untrue. As much as Ben needed them, they needed him right back.
“So where are we going?” Gus asked after the long silence where Ben had been organizing his emotions. “Do we know a basic compass direction?”
“I don’t care too much at this point. I was thinking…maybe west.” For a split second, he thought he had felt the vines of paralysis creep up his legs and into his throat, but the feeling vanished so quickly he dismissed it.
“West. What’s west?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The sunset?”
“Okay, master navigator,” Gus said, saluting. “So when are we leaving, now that we’ve got our heading?”
Ben slouched. “I…I don’t…I can’t…” He looked up into Gus’ eyes, trying both to hide and divulge the pain he had clung to since his fight with Tess at the catfish pond the night before.
“Hang on,” Gus said, again with his foreign serious tone. “Have you talked to Tess about this yet?”
Ben’s eyes closed and his head bowed. “She…isn’t coming.”
Gus laughed shortly. “Okay. That’s a big load off,” he said jovially. “It would be so awkward with you two and Martha and I, I mean, us being lashed and all and you being…well, whatever you are.”
Sudden anger coursed through Ben. He shot death glares at Gus. “Oh, that’s just fine, make jokes; it’s not like we’re people with feelings or anything, Gus. It’s not like we had a catastrophic argument unlike any other argument we’ve ever had in the…who knows how many years we’ve known each other.” He had stood up and was about to go for Gus’ throat when he saw Gus shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be so thick, adrenaline junkie,” he said, taking a small step back despite his cool façade. “She’ll come.”
Ben cooled down at his tone. “But she—”
“She’ll come.”
“I told her last night—”
“She’ll come.”
“You don’t understand. I’m tearing her in two—”
“Is it just me or is there an echo in here?” Gus asked incredulously. “I’m telling you, Ben, she’s going to come. If you seriously leave she’ll seriously follow you.”
“How do you know that?” Ben asked. They were both standing awkwardly a few feet from each other now, Ben still retaining his fighting stance, and Gus almost falling backwards onto his bed in his attempt to look nonchalant.
“Come with me,” Gus said, turning and walking into the other room. Ben followed him and sat down at the table while Gus rummaged through the sparse cabinets looking for something delicious, or at least edible. “I know that she’ll follow you the same way I can say definitively that Martha will follow me once I tell her I’m going with you.”
“Gus,” Ben said painfully, “Tess and I aren’t lashed. It’s not the same.”
“It is the same,” Gus said. “You and I aren’t lashed, but I immediately said I was going to come with you, didn’t I?”
“You’re my brother,” Ben said. “I mean, you’re practically my brother. What would you do without me?”
“And what would Tess do without you? She’s as much your sister as Martha is, if not more,” Gus said. He had found some apples and begun slicing them thinly. “How many times have you two run into each other without planning it? You’ve told me the stories; I don’t my mediocre education prepared me to count the number of impromptu middle-of-nowhere meetings you’ve had together.”
“But she has a real family too,” Ben insisted. “I doubt they’re going to be as forgiving as you and Martha and allow her to leave by herself, let alone jump on this rapidly growing escape wagon with a bunch of people they’ve never met before.”
“If they’re anything like me, which,” he shined his finger nails on his shoulder, “everyone strives to be, they’ll understand. If Tess has shared half the number of stories about you with them as you have about her with us, they’ll get it.” He put the apple slices on the plate and brought them to the table, sitting down on the bench next to Ben.
“You’re saying, if I had told you back there,” Ben said, gesturing to the bedroom they had just left, “that Tess and her family was leaving and I was going to, you would have let me go?”
Gus bit into an apple, purposefully spraying juice into Ben’s face. “I’m not saying it would have been easy.”
Ben took a slice of apple and bit into it, chewing slowly. If asked last week to predict anything that had happened in the past two days, he certainly wouldn’t have come up with an accurate guess.
“So,” he said after a long pause and about five slices of apple, “do I go and find her and ask her again to come?”
“You could,” Gus said, swallowing his thirteenth apple slice and rolling off the bench onto the floor. “Or you could just leave. If the past ‘who-knows-how-many years’ are any indication,” he said, closing his eyes, “she’ll know you’re going and she’ll find someway to go too.”
Chapter Twelve
The room was silent, but Tamara couldn't shut out the voices of her inner angels and demons yelling at her, attacking her for what she'd done.
"I didn't mean to hit her," she said out loud. There was no one in the room with her, but still she pleaded as though someone would hear her and console her. "He was right in front of me, and I meant to hit him, but then...I don't know how she did it," she said. "I didn't mean to hit her."
She repeated those lines over and over again, promising some unseen being that she was innocent.
After what felt like hours, Tamara felt herself calming and coming back into her center. It was a hardened core inside of her, left over from her childhood in Medias, and though it had long strings of unraveled emotion dangling off it like yarn coming apart from a sweater, it was still strong enough to come back to like a warm fire on a cold night. When she needed it most, she could just let herself collapse back into it and become the simpler person she used to be.
She pulled herself together and drew her stature into poise, thinking of her sister in her graceful times. She stood up from the chair she had been cowering in and walked with purpose out into the hall.
She could hear them down at the end of the line of rooms, squeals of laughter from both of them floating down the hallway. Tamara closed the distance in four strides and slowly stuck her head around the doorframe.
The laughter stopped abruptly. “She’s here,” both the children said together. The boy clambered over the small table they were sitting at and put himself in front of Mond, staring daggers back at Tamara.
“I’m not going to hurt her, boy,” she said. “It’s never been her I was after. You come with me; I have some pills for you to take. I’ll leave Mond alone if you come quietly.”
He continued glaring at her. Mond stood up, and in doing so was still only barely taller than the boy was as he crouched in front of her. “I’ll take the pills,” she said, her voice quiet, mouse-like.
Tamara rolled her eyes. “I don’t need you to take the pills, Mond. It’s not you I’m worried about.” She looked the boy squarely in the eye. “They don’t hurt at all. Your mother took them while she was pregnant with you, so you’ve technically taken them before.” She put out her hand, indicating that the boy should take it and walk with her down the hall to the bathroom where the medicine cabinet was. He looked at it uncertainly. Tamara saw Mond lay a tiny hand on his shoulder and grip it tightly for a moment. As if that had been his cue, the boy stood up and nodded. He didn’t take her hand, but she hadn’t really wanted him to. She despised the feel of his skin; so smooth like her sister’s had been, and warmer than skin should be, as warm in life as her sister’s had been cold in death. Everything about him was unnatural and she hated the mere sight of him.
She walked behind him in the crowded space of the hallway, pushing him along by slapping him on the back every few steps. He was walking too slowly, fearfully. When they got to the bathroom, she pushed ahead of him and pulled out the pill canister she had stolen. She opened it and took out two pills, one pink and one green. She went to the sink and filled a ceramic cup halfway to the top with water. Then she turned around to face the boy who was backed heavily against the wall, as though he were trying to keep as far away from her as possible without leaving the room.
“Take them both quickly,” she said and held out the pills and the cup for him to take.
Again, he looked at them uncertainly, but did not take them from her. “What are they for?” he asked. Without Mond at his side, he sounded less sure of himself and more frightened.
“What do you mean?”
“What will they do to me? Why do I need them?”
Tamara rolled her eyes. “If we’re lucky they’ll have a side effect that keeps you from asking so many stupid questions,” she said. “They’re to keep you from killing anyone else like you killed you’re mother. Or don’t you remember that?”
She wanted to slap him, she always wanted to slap him, but Mond hated it when she did, so she bit him with her words instead. He was only four years old, even though he looked about eight, but she knew he understood what it meant to insult someone, to make them feel bad. She watched his frightened brown eyes turn dull with solemnity and hurt.
He took the pills, without losing eye contact with Tamara, swallowed them dry. Something about the sharpness of his eyes had always made her unable to look away whenever he wanted her to watch him. She could tell that he understood his powers, even if he didn’t realize that no one else had them. This knowledge made him dangerous. She had seen the danger in her sister; she had seen the child inside her take control over her body and mind. The pills had quieted the danger then. They would do it again. She had been without them for four years and it had nearly driven her to suicide. Mond was the only thing she lived for anymore. As soon as she was spoiled by the presence of this devil in their house, Tamara knew she only had the one option left. She fought that with every passing second, clinging to Mond, knowing in her heart that they were meant to be mother and daughter and that this obstacle of a child whom she could not kill but she could not let live should not be allowed to separate them.
For half a minute, Tamara and the boy stared into each other’s eyes, refusing to be the one to back down first. The constant fight should have kept Tamara fit and on her toes, young and proud and strong, but something about the boy made her weaker and paler and smaller. It would be hours before the pills would do any good, so she gave up, conceded defeat for now, and left to play with Mond and give her her daily lessons. The boy didn’t move when she did, so she closed the bathroom door behind her and jammed the handle so he couldn’t get out. He didn’t protest. He was well aware of the constancy of her hatred.
"I didn't mean to hit her," she said out loud. There was no one in the room with her, but still she pleaded as though someone would hear her and console her. "He was right in front of me, and I meant to hit him, but then...I don't know how she did it," she said. "I didn't mean to hit her."
She repeated those lines over and over again, promising some unseen being that she was innocent.
After what felt like hours, Tamara felt herself calming and coming back into her center. It was a hardened core inside of her, left over from her childhood in Medias, and though it had long strings of unraveled emotion dangling off it like yarn coming apart from a sweater, it was still strong enough to come back to like a warm fire on a cold night. When she needed it most, she could just let herself collapse back into it and become the simpler person she used to be.
She pulled herself together and drew her stature into poise, thinking of her sister in her graceful times. She stood up from the chair she had been cowering in and walked with purpose out into the hall.
She could hear them down at the end of the line of rooms, squeals of laughter from both of them floating down the hallway. Tamara closed the distance in four strides and slowly stuck her head around the doorframe.
The laughter stopped abruptly. “She’s here,” both the children said together. The boy clambered over the small table they were sitting at and put himself in front of Mond, staring daggers back at Tamara.
“I’m not going to hurt her, boy,” she said. “It’s never been her I was after. You come with me; I have some pills for you to take. I’ll leave Mond alone if you come quietly.”
He continued glaring at her. Mond stood up, and in doing so was still only barely taller than the boy was as he crouched in front of her. “I’ll take the pills,” she said, her voice quiet, mouse-like.
Tamara rolled her eyes. “I don’t need you to take the pills, Mond. It’s not you I’m worried about.” She looked the boy squarely in the eye. “They don’t hurt at all. Your mother took them while she was pregnant with you, so you’ve technically taken them before.” She put out her hand, indicating that the boy should take it and walk with her down the hall to the bathroom where the medicine cabinet was. He looked at it uncertainly. Tamara saw Mond lay a tiny hand on his shoulder and grip it tightly for a moment. As if that had been his cue, the boy stood up and nodded. He didn’t take her hand, but she hadn’t really wanted him to. She despised the feel of his skin; so smooth like her sister’s had been, and warmer than skin should be, as warm in life as her sister’s had been cold in death. Everything about him was unnatural and she hated the mere sight of him.
She walked behind him in the crowded space of the hallway, pushing him along by slapping him on the back every few steps. He was walking too slowly, fearfully. When they got to the bathroom, she pushed ahead of him and pulled out the pill canister she had stolen. She opened it and took out two pills, one pink and one green. She went to the sink and filled a ceramic cup halfway to the top with water. Then she turned around to face the boy who was backed heavily against the wall, as though he were trying to keep as far away from her as possible without leaving the room.
“Take them both quickly,” she said and held out the pills and the cup for him to take.
Again, he looked at them uncertainly, but did not take them from her. “What are they for?” he asked. Without Mond at his side, he sounded less sure of himself and more frightened.
“What do you mean?”
“What will they do to me? Why do I need them?”
Tamara rolled her eyes. “If we’re lucky they’ll have a side effect that keeps you from asking so many stupid questions,” she said. “They’re to keep you from killing anyone else like you killed you’re mother. Or don’t you remember that?”
She wanted to slap him, she always wanted to slap him, but Mond hated it when she did, so she bit him with her words instead. He was only four years old, even though he looked about eight, but she knew he understood what it meant to insult someone, to make them feel bad. She watched his frightened brown eyes turn dull with solemnity and hurt.
He took the pills, without losing eye contact with Tamara, swallowed them dry. Something about the sharpness of his eyes had always made her unable to look away whenever he wanted her to watch him. She could tell that he understood his powers, even if he didn’t realize that no one else had them. This knowledge made him dangerous. She had seen the danger in her sister; she had seen the child inside her take control over her body and mind. The pills had quieted the danger then. They would do it again. She had been without them for four years and it had nearly driven her to suicide. Mond was the only thing she lived for anymore. As soon as she was spoiled by the presence of this devil in their house, Tamara knew she only had the one option left. She fought that with every passing second, clinging to Mond, knowing in her heart that they were meant to be mother and daughter and that this obstacle of a child whom she could not kill but she could not let live should not be allowed to separate them.
For half a minute, Tamara and the boy stared into each other’s eyes, refusing to be the one to back down first. The constant fight should have kept Tamara fit and on her toes, young and proud and strong, but something about the boy made her weaker and paler and smaller. It would be hours before the pills would do any good, so she gave up, conceded defeat for now, and left to play with Mond and give her her daily lessons. The boy didn’t move when she did, so she closed the bathroom door behind her and jammed the handle so he couldn’t get out. He didn’t protest. He was well aware of the constancy of her hatred.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m leaving,” Ben whispered in Tess’ ear. He had found her sleeping next to the catfish pond.
She opened her eyes without looking at him. They were bloodshot and puffy. “I knew you would,” she said. “How did I know you would?”
“Tomorrow, probably around noon,” he said. “I figure if Medias isn’t going to try to stop me—”
“No, Ben,” Tess said loudly, angrily. “Answer my question. How did I know you were going to want to leave? How do I always know? I find you when you yourself don’t even know where you’re going, I can tell when you’re lying, or when you’re hiding your emotions.” Tears started reforming at the corners of her eyes. “I’ve known you forever and I know everything about you and I don’t remember meeting you or what life was like without you…”
She continued to talk for a long time, but her eventual sobs began to muddle her words. Ben couldn’t think of anything constructive to do, so he just stood there, watching her. Once she had given herself over to weeping and lay curled up on her side, shaking and moaning incoherently, Ben knelt down and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Tess?” he asked tentatively. “Tess, come back.”
Several minutes passed. Ben sat quietly as Tess’ sobs relented and her shaking subsided. After what could have been a quarter of an hour, she was lying there, breathing in short, deep bursts, but she was in control again.
“You’re leaving.” Her eyes were closed and her face was peaceful.
“I don’t think I belong here anymore,” he said. “Martha told me something…” He trailed off. Tess’ eyes were pressed closed and she was biting her lip. “Wait, don’t get upset. Listen to me.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyes looked bluer than he had ever seen them before. The contrast between them and her face and hair was more startling this way.
“I want you to come with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
She blinked and her nose wiggled a little, something Ben recognized as her response to being caught off guard. “You want me to come with?”
“Yeah.” He tried to make his voice light and excited. “Think about all the things we’d see and experiences we’d have, and no one would be able to stop us.”
“I can’t go with you,” Tess said, sounding incredulous. “I can’t leave Medias.”
“What? Why not” Ben asked.
“My family is here—the other girls in the pre-lash house. As much as you mean to me, I don’t know that I can just leave them,” she said. “And what about Gus and Martha? Are you going to tell them before you go, or were you more hoping to leave a note on the table?”
A faint, high-pitched ringing bounced around the inside of Ben’s ears. “You mean…” He was unbelievably crestfallen. “You mean, you’d stay? You wouldn’t come with?”
“How can I?” she asked, her face pleading with him. “You’re tearing me in two! I knew this was going to happen as soon as Medias told you he wasn’t going to lift the denial, or even as soon as I saw that you were denied. I saw that look in your eye, the one you get when you get tired of fighting and realize your other options are limited. You get an idea in your head and you won’t stray from it, no matter what it means to anyone, including you and anyone around you.”
“I have to leave, Tess! There is no other way. What else am I supposed to do now? Sit around, doing nothing, knowing that the creature in charge of this forest is merely forestalling its death, and that it is the reason you and I can never—”
“What is so bad about Medias?” she asked. “What about this place is so abhorrent to you that it gives you no reason to stay?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just begged her with his eyes to understand. Her face, hardened against tears, became grave. She turned slowly and began to walk away.
“Tess…” he said, but he didn’t have anything to follow it.
She stopped, gave a small shudder, and broke into a run, leaving the clearing, heading straight for the heart of Medias.
Ben fell to his knees, torn with indecision. He looked up at the darkening sky overhead, feeling his face get hot and his eyes get wet. He screamed, hoping to burn his throat with the force of it, hoping to give himself physical pain to take away the pain in his mind.
____________
*Author's note: In the Word document where all of the story is originally written, this chapter has a couple thousand words I left out of here. That's because it was while writing this chapter that I realized just how far behind I was on word count and I had Ben and Tess start reciting the script from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It was epic, but also unimportant to the plot.
Also, for anyone wondering about the conspicuous lack of certain chapters such as seven and four, I will assure you that there's most likely nothing of important information in them and I am simply uncomfortable with sharing them as they are. Thank you for your patience.
She opened her eyes without looking at him. They were bloodshot and puffy. “I knew you would,” she said. “How did I know you would?”
“Tomorrow, probably around noon,” he said. “I figure if Medias isn’t going to try to stop me—”
“No, Ben,” Tess said loudly, angrily. “Answer my question. How did I know you were going to want to leave? How do I always know? I find you when you yourself don’t even know where you’re going, I can tell when you’re lying, or when you’re hiding your emotions.” Tears started reforming at the corners of her eyes. “I’ve known you forever and I know everything about you and I don’t remember meeting you or what life was like without you…”
She continued to talk for a long time, but her eventual sobs began to muddle her words. Ben couldn’t think of anything constructive to do, so he just stood there, watching her. Once she had given herself over to weeping and lay curled up on her side, shaking and moaning incoherently, Ben knelt down and put an arm around her shoulders.
“Tess?” he asked tentatively. “Tess, come back.”
Several minutes passed. Ben sat quietly as Tess’ sobs relented and her shaking subsided. After what could have been a quarter of an hour, she was lying there, breathing in short, deep bursts, but she was in control again.
“You’re leaving.” Her eyes were closed and her face was peaceful.
“I don’t think I belong here anymore,” he said. “Martha told me something…” He trailed off. Tess’ eyes were pressed closed and she was biting her lip. “Wait, don’t get upset. Listen to me.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her eyes looked bluer than he had ever seen them before. The contrast between them and her face and hair was more startling this way.
“I want you to come with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
She blinked and her nose wiggled a little, something Ben recognized as her response to being caught off guard. “You want me to come with?”
“Yeah.” He tried to make his voice light and excited. “Think about all the things we’d see and experiences we’d have, and no one would be able to stop us.”
“I can’t go with you,” Tess said, sounding incredulous. “I can’t leave Medias.”
“What? Why not” Ben asked.
“My family is here—the other girls in the pre-lash house. As much as you mean to me, I don’t know that I can just leave them,” she said. “And what about Gus and Martha? Are you going to tell them before you go, or were you more hoping to leave a note on the table?”
A faint, high-pitched ringing bounced around the inside of Ben’s ears. “You mean…” He was unbelievably crestfallen. “You mean, you’d stay? You wouldn’t come with?”
“How can I?” she asked, her face pleading with him. “You’re tearing me in two! I knew this was going to happen as soon as Medias told you he wasn’t going to lift the denial, or even as soon as I saw that you were denied. I saw that look in your eye, the one you get when you get tired of fighting and realize your other options are limited. You get an idea in your head and you won’t stray from it, no matter what it means to anyone, including you and anyone around you.”
“I have to leave, Tess! There is no other way. What else am I supposed to do now? Sit around, doing nothing, knowing that the creature in charge of this forest is merely forestalling its death, and that it is the reason you and I can never—”
“What is so bad about Medias?” she asked. “What about this place is so abhorrent to you that it gives you no reason to stay?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just begged her with his eyes to understand. Her face, hardened against tears, became grave. She turned slowly and began to walk away.
“Tess…” he said, but he didn’t have anything to follow it.
She stopped, gave a small shudder, and broke into a run, leaving the clearing, heading straight for the heart of Medias.
Ben fell to his knees, torn with indecision. He looked up at the darkening sky overhead, feeling his face get hot and his eyes get wet. He screamed, hoping to burn his throat with the force of it, hoping to give himself physical pain to take away the pain in his mind.
____________
*Author's note: In the Word document where all of the story is originally written, this chapter has a couple thousand words I left out of here. That's because it was while writing this chapter that I realized just how far behind I was on word count and I had Ben and Tess start reciting the script from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It was epic, but also unimportant to the plot.
Also, for anyone wondering about the conspicuous lack of certain chapters such as seven and four, I will assure you that there's most likely nothing of important information in them and I am simply uncomfortable with sharing them as they are. Thank you for your patience.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Chapter Nine
The sky was still dark as Ben sat on the railing at the corner of the balcony. The raven was perched as close to him as the thickness of the branches would allow, and he was tempted, in the cold cheerlessness of the morning, to reach out and try to pet the creature. He felt close to nature this morning. Later, he would find this strangely fitting.
He sat there for hours and waited for the sun to peak over the canopy. He smelled it before he saw it; first-light always had a slightly biting taste to it, and so many of Ben’s nights had ended early this way, with him watching the morning come, that the experience was like being in the kitchen while the cook prepares a familiar meal.
“Ben?” a groggy, croaking voice came from the doorway behind him.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to look at Martha as she walked out, her arms wrapped tightly and protectively around her. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
She shook her head and yawned. “Gus was snoring; I was bound to wake up eventually.”
Ben smiled and turned back to watch the horizon. “I’m going to see Medias today.”
“I heard,” she said. She came to stand next to him, leaning over the railing. “Geneva works at the employment offices twice a week.”
Ben blinked slowly. “Do you know why?”
She tucked a long, shining black hair behind her ear. “You were labeled ‘denied,’ right?”
“Do you know why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Ben sighed. The raven croaked loudly, splitting the silence with a pickaxe. “I wish I could remember,” he said. “I feel like I would know if I…could only remember.”
“I...” Martha started, then seemed to swallow the following words.
Ben turned to her. Her eyebrows were knit together in either confusion or pain or a mixture of the two. “What?”
She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I…I think I remember something about you,” she said. “Not something that would have anything to do with you being denied. But…I’ve always had this feeling about you, and I think it comes from somewhere, like a memory.”
Ben waited. He watched the conflictions on her face.
“I don’t know, you understand.” She was looking down at her folded hands. “It’s just…a feeling.” She put another stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t say I actually ‘remember’ a time when you weren’t around, when it was just Gus and me, but I feel like that time existed.” She looked up over the yellowing canopy towards the lightening sky. “A time when you weren’t my brother. When I didn’t have a brother.”
Ben still waited. He could see that not only did she have more to say, but he could see that her efforts to remember were hurtful ones.
“I feel like you were in Medias alone before you came to live with Gus and I. I don’t know why you and Gus can’t remember it like I can. I think you looked…younger.” She turned her head slowly and tiredly. “Do I sound crazy, Ben?”
He examined his own expression in his mind. It felt like scared. “I…think…well…don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you are.”
She laughed. The first yellow beam of sunlight popped over the trees, and both of them knew the conversation needed to turn somewhere else. “Is Tess going with you?” Martha asked?
Ben smiled involuntarily. “What did Geneva tell you?”
“She asked me when you had gotten lashed,” she said, practically grinning.
He sat there for hours and waited for the sun to peak over the canopy. He smelled it before he saw it; first-light always had a slightly biting taste to it, and so many of Ben’s nights had ended early this way, with him watching the morning come, that the experience was like being in the kitchen while the cook prepares a familiar meal.
“Ben?” a groggy, croaking voice came from the doorway behind him.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to look at Martha as she walked out, her arms wrapped tightly and protectively around her. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
She shook her head and yawned. “Gus was snoring; I was bound to wake up eventually.”
Ben smiled and turned back to watch the horizon. “I’m going to see Medias today.”
“I heard,” she said. She came to stand next to him, leaning over the railing. “Geneva works at the employment offices twice a week.”
Ben blinked slowly. “Do you know why?”
She tucked a long, shining black hair behind her ear. “You were labeled ‘denied,’ right?”
“Do you know why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Ben sighed. The raven croaked loudly, splitting the silence with a pickaxe. “I wish I could remember,” he said. “I feel like I would know if I…could only remember.”
“I...” Martha started, then seemed to swallow the following words.
Ben turned to her. Her eyebrows were knit together in either confusion or pain or a mixture of the two. “What?”
She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I…I think I remember something about you,” she said. “Not something that would have anything to do with you being denied. But…I’ve always had this feeling about you, and I think it comes from somewhere, like a memory.”
Ben waited. He watched the conflictions on her face.
“I don’t know, you understand.” She was looking down at her folded hands. “It’s just…a feeling.” She put another stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t say I actually ‘remember’ a time when you weren’t around, when it was just Gus and me, but I feel like that time existed.” She looked up over the yellowing canopy towards the lightening sky. “A time when you weren’t my brother. When I didn’t have a brother.”
Ben still waited. He could see that not only did she have more to say, but he could see that her efforts to remember were hurtful ones.
“I feel like you were in Medias alone before you came to live with Gus and I. I don’t know why you and Gus can’t remember it like I can. I think you looked…younger.” She turned her head slowly and tiredly. “Do I sound crazy, Ben?”
He examined his own expression in his mind. It felt like scared. “I…think…well…don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you are.”
She laughed. The first yellow beam of sunlight popped over the trees, and both of them knew the conversation needed to turn somewhere else. “Is Tess going with you?” Martha asked?
Ben smiled involuntarily. “What did Geneva tell you?”
“She asked me when you had gotten lashed,” she said, practically grinning.
Chapter Eight
Tamara wiped the mud on her hands off on the hips of her pants, closing her eyes and breathing as deeply as her sore chest could afford her.
“Ma’am? Can I help you?” The shop owner tying his apron around his waist asked from his storefront.
Tamara opened her eyes and didn’t bother to hide the pain and exhaustion that showed in them. “I’m afraid it’s past that now.”
He shrugged and walked back into his store, leaving her alone to slump down into the bench under the window.
You’re stronger than this, she told herself. They’re children; they can’t bring you this far down. You can’t let them.
She massaged her temples, trying to coax rational, coherent thought back into her mind. She had had a plan; she needed to get back to it.
Standing up slowly, she collected herself into the tall, graceful creature she felt like on her good days. There was no way to cure her appearance of its hopelessly disheveled nature, but she brushed the excess dust off her clothes flattened her vest against her stomach. She reached inside of herself and searched for the memory of her sister and the strength that it granted her. She crossed the street to the pharmacy and entered through the tall glass door.
No bell sounded when the door opened, and when it shut, the room around her was silent. No one stood behind the counter, and the dust particles hanging in the streams of sunlight were the only other disturbance of the store’s utter stillness. Tamara walked quickly and quietly to the counter and peered through the door into the backroom. The door to the back alley was open there and there was no person to be seen. Taking her chance, she jumped the counter dove into the storeroom aisles. She knew what she was searching for, or at least she would know it when she saw it. There was a name for the pills she needed, but she didn’t know it. She had seen them before in a container on her sister’s bedside table during the last few terrible months.
Suddenly, she heard the back alley door close and footsteps tromp carelessly across the cement floor towards the counter. Knowing she was hidden from view between two near-walls of pills and pillboxes, Tamara, though shaken, continued her search. After what seemed like long minutes, she came to a clear canister with hundreds of tiny pink and green pills inside. The address on the prescription label was several towns away. Tamara carefully removed the canister from the shelf, looking around for any others of its kind and finding none. She placed the pills into her side pouch, careful not to let them shake around in their container, then slowly made her way to the back door. The doorknob was big and brass and heavily rusted, so Tamara steeled herself for she was afraid would turn out to be a chase.
Taking hold of the cold handle, she tried to turn it, but met impassible resistance. She turned harder. The rust fought her. She bit her lip and gave a final heavy turn with her wrist. The handle gave a creak, earsplitting in the otherwise-silent storeroom, and budged only slightly. Tamara, her forehead sweating now, winced as she heard the druggist’s stool swivel around. She looked around at him, her eyes wide with fear at what she knew had to come next.
“Hey!” he yelled, springing to his feet. “What do you think you’re doing back here?”
Tamara pulled a palm-sized package wrapped in tissue out of her pouch and held it out in front of her. A blue haze began to thicken around it. The druggist stopped walking abruptly and instinctively put his hand out.
“Don’t!” he yelled. “The medicines! They’ll turn to poison! You’ll kill hundreds of people!”
“You can’t know that I was here,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, but her face set.
“I swear I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “You can silence me how ever you want, just please don’t drop that mushroom.”
Her hand with the package stuck straight out in front of her, threatening to turn over and let the package fall. “This is all I have,” she said. “You can’t know I was here.”
He shook his head frantically, pleading with her with his eyes, his hands, his words, whatever he could. She blinked and turned her hand over like lightning.
As the package fell and the tissue came unwrapped, the druggist ran and dove to catch it, but he fell short by mere inches. Before he hit the ground, Tamara had leapt around him and sprinted back into the front room. She looked back in time to see the package, now slightly unwrapped to reveal a small mushroom whose cap had come off, emitting long strings of thick blue gas that immediately some of which began to spread out over the whole room, while one wrapped itself like a strand of rope around the druggist’s neck. Tamara stood transfixed, watching his hands grope and claw at the impenetrable force constricting his air. She finally pulled herself away as the wandering strands seeped their way under the caps of the pill canisters and the druggist’s eyes began to bulge.
“Ma’am? Can I help you?” The shop owner tying his apron around his waist asked from his storefront.
Tamara opened her eyes and didn’t bother to hide the pain and exhaustion that showed in them. “I’m afraid it’s past that now.”
He shrugged and walked back into his store, leaving her alone to slump down into the bench under the window.
You’re stronger than this, she told herself. They’re children; they can’t bring you this far down. You can’t let them.
She massaged her temples, trying to coax rational, coherent thought back into her mind. She had had a plan; she needed to get back to it.
Standing up slowly, she collected herself into the tall, graceful creature she felt like on her good days. There was no way to cure her appearance of its hopelessly disheveled nature, but she brushed the excess dust off her clothes flattened her vest against her stomach. She reached inside of herself and searched for the memory of her sister and the strength that it granted her. She crossed the street to the pharmacy and entered through the tall glass door.
No bell sounded when the door opened, and when it shut, the room around her was silent. No one stood behind the counter, and the dust particles hanging in the streams of sunlight were the only other disturbance of the store’s utter stillness. Tamara walked quickly and quietly to the counter and peered through the door into the backroom. The door to the back alley was open there and there was no person to be seen. Taking her chance, she jumped the counter dove into the storeroom aisles. She knew what she was searching for, or at least she would know it when she saw it. There was a name for the pills she needed, but she didn’t know it. She had seen them before in a container on her sister’s bedside table during the last few terrible months.
Suddenly, she heard the back alley door close and footsteps tromp carelessly across the cement floor towards the counter. Knowing she was hidden from view between two near-walls of pills and pillboxes, Tamara, though shaken, continued her search. After what seemed like long minutes, she came to a clear canister with hundreds of tiny pink and green pills inside. The address on the prescription label was several towns away. Tamara carefully removed the canister from the shelf, looking around for any others of its kind and finding none. She placed the pills into her side pouch, careful not to let them shake around in their container, then slowly made her way to the back door. The doorknob was big and brass and heavily rusted, so Tamara steeled herself for she was afraid would turn out to be a chase.
Taking hold of the cold handle, she tried to turn it, but met impassible resistance. She turned harder. The rust fought her. She bit her lip and gave a final heavy turn with her wrist. The handle gave a creak, earsplitting in the otherwise-silent storeroom, and budged only slightly. Tamara, her forehead sweating now, winced as she heard the druggist’s stool swivel around. She looked around at him, her eyes wide with fear at what she knew had to come next.
“Hey!” he yelled, springing to his feet. “What do you think you’re doing back here?”
Tamara pulled a palm-sized package wrapped in tissue out of her pouch and held it out in front of her. A blue haze began to thicken around it. The druggist stopped walking abruptly and instinctively put his hand out.
“Don’t!” he yelled. “The medicines! They’ll turn to poison! You’ll kill hundreds of people!”
“You can’t know that I was here,” she said, her voice shaking slightly, but her face set.
“I swear I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “You can silence me how ever you want, just please don’t drop that mushroom.”
Her hand with the package stuck straight out in front of her, threatening to turn over and let the package fall. “This is all I have,” she said. “You can’t know I was here.”
He shook his head frantically, pleading with her with his eyes, his hands, his words, whatever he could. She blinked and turned her hand over like lightning.
As the package fell and the tissue came unwrapped, the druggist ran and dove to catch it, but he fell short by mere inches. Before he hit the ground, Tamara had leapt around him and sprinted back into the front room. She looked back in time to see the package, now slightly unwrapped to reveal a small mushroom whose cap had come off, emitting long strings of thick blue gas that immediately some of which began to spread out over the whole room, while one wrapped itself like a strand of rope around the druggist’s neck. Tamara stood transfixed, watching his hands grope and claw at the impenetrable force constricting his air. She finally pulled herself away as the wandering strands seeped their way under the caps of the pill canisters and the druggist’s eyes began to bulge.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Chapter Six
“I’m sorry. You’re unqualified.”
The child across the counter from Ben was at least four years younger than him. Not that anyone had any way of proving that, but Ben felt patronized being told “no” and getting a petty slap on the wrist from someone who didn’t look old enough to wash behind his own ears.
“You’ve all been saying that these past few days,” Ben said hotly, “but you’ve been slow in response when I’ve asked what you mean by it. What makes me unqualified? What do I lack that you have besides baby teeth?”
The boy flushed. “Excuse me, but I’m just doing my job,” he said quickly. “There is a stamp on your paperwork.” He took the folder he’d been examining and turned around to face Ben. Opening the cover, he revealed the word “DENIED” scrawled across the top in large black print.
“What does this mean?” Ben asked. “Who wrote this?”
“I don’t know who writes it, but the protocol is, when someone’s file has it, they’re deemed unqualified for work,” the boy said, still pink in the cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”
Ben went back and sat next to Tess.
“What happened?” she asked. “You look…shocked.”
“You know me,” he said, not turning to look at her. “What have I done with my life that anyone outside of my group of friends would take notice of? I’m the most uninteresting person I know.”
“What happened?” she asked again.
“I’ve been ‘denied,’ I guess,” he said. “I’m evidently unqualified, and I don’t know why.” He shook his head and finally looked at her. “I was so hoping for this chance to do something different and maybe even exciting.”
Tess’ brow furrowed and she tightened her lips. “They won’t let you work?” she asked.
Ben shook his head. “No.” He stood up and turned towards the door.
Tess didn’t follow him. She walked up to the counter where Ben had just been standing. “Excuse me,” she said, and the boy, who, while still probably even two years younger that Tess, cowered a little at her glare. “Excuse me, I’d like to speak with your manager.”
“Er…sure,” the boy said. He walked quickly through a door behind the counter.
Ben came up behind Tess. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve been depressed for the past two weeks and you’re obsessed with getting this job. I’m not going to let you continue to make the rest of us crazy because of that.”
Before Ben could respond, a thickly set older boy came out of the door followed by the now brightly blotchy smaller boy. The older one looked about seventeen, three years older than Ben.
“My name’s Riley. What’s the problem?” the boy asked.
Tess looked even more helpless than usual next to his bulk—Ben thought he heard her neck crack when she looked up at him—and she blinked quickly, then hardened herself.
“My friend here would like an explanation as to why he is classified as ‘denied’ on his paperwork,” she said, her face set.
Riley grabbed the folder out of the younger boy’s limp hand and flipped it open to the first page. He examined it up and down, then began flipping through the following pages. When he got to the end, he nodded knowingly, closed the folder, and looked down at Ben.
“I can’t tell you why you’ve been denied; it doesn’t explain that in here,” he said. “I can direct you to someone who could tell you, that is, only if you really want to know.” He emphasized the “really” with a raise of his eyebrows.
Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
Riley looked away an answered slowly, “I’m not so sure how much you want to meet this person.”
Suddenly Ben felt a strange tingling sensation beginning in his toes and winding its way up his legs, paralyzing him. He tried to look down to see what was going on, but instead he felt himself saying, “I want to see him, Riley. I really want to know.”
He couldn’t move his head, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tess had noticed the strange tone of his voice. “I want to go, too,” she said.
Riley looked over at her. “I’m sorry. This person only allows one person at a—”
“We’re lashed,” Tess said. “You can’t stop me.”
Ben felt the tingling sensation wind up his back and around his arms, one of which then reached over and took Tess’ hand. She looked back at him and he turned his head to her. He tried to send her a message by moving his eyes, the only things he had under his control, but she just looked confusedly back at him.
Riley took Ben’s file back from the small boy. “It says in here that he is alone. Not lashed.”
“That file must be outdated,” Ben felt himself say. “I can’t remember a time when I was alone.”
Riley looked suspiciously at them both. “If you’re lying, it could cost you.”
Tess stiffened, but said, “We like our chances, then.”
“Okay,” Riley said. “You’re going to see Medias.”
Ben breathed in quickly as he felt the paralysis leave him, and his grip on both Tess’ hand and gravity slackened and he almost fell over.
“Will you set up the appointment?” Tess was asking as Ben came fully back into himself.
“He’ll be expecting you within the week.”
She thanked him, Ben tried to follow suit, and they walked out.
The child across the counter from Ben was at least four years younger than him. Not that anyone had any way of proving that, but Ben felt patronized being told “no” and getting a petty slap on the wrist from someone who didn’t look old enough to wash behind his own ears.
“You’ve all been saying that these past few days,” Ben said hotly, “but you’ve been slow in response when I’ve asked what you mean by it. What makes me unqualified? What do I lack that you have besides baby teeth?”
The boy flushed. “Excuse me, but I’m just doing my job,” he said quickly. “There is a stamp on your paperwork.” He took the folder he’d been examining and turned around to face Ben. Opening the cover, he revealed the word “DENIED” scrawled across the top in large black print.
“What does this mean?” Ben asked. “Who wrote this?”
“I don’t know who writes it, but the protocol is, when someone’s file has it, they’re deemed unqualified for work,” the boy said, still pink in the cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”
Ben went back and sat next to Tess.
“What happened?” she asked. “You look…shocked.”
“You know me,” he said, not turning to look at her. “What have I done with my life that anyone outside of my group of friends would take notice of? I’m the most uninteresting person I know.”
“What happened?” she asked again.
“I’ve been ‘denied,’ I guess,” he said. “I’m evidently unqualified, and I don’t know why.” He shook his head and finally looked at her. “I was so hoping for this chance to do something different and maybe even exciting.”
Tess’ brow furrowed and she tightened her lips. “They won’t let you work?” she asked.
Ben shook his head. “No.” He stood up and turned towards the door.
Tess didn’t follow him. She walked up to the counter where Ben had just been standing. “Excuse me,” she said, and the boy, who, while still probably even two years younger that Tess, cowered a little at her glare. “Excuse me, I’d like to speak with your manager.”
“Er…sure,” the boy said. He walked quickly through a door behind the counter.
Ben came up behind Tess. “What are you doing?”
“You’ve been depressed for the past two weeks and you’re obsessed with getting this job. I’m not going to let you continue to make the rest of us crazy because of that.”
Before Ben could respond, a thickly set older boy came out of the door followed by the now brightly blotchy smaller boy. The older one looked about seventeen, three years older than Ben.
“My name’s Riley. What’s the problem?” the boy asked.
Tess looked even more helpless than usual next to his bulk—Ben thought he heard her neck crack when she looked up at him—and she blinked quickly, then hardened herself.
“My friend here would like an explanation as to why he is classified as ‘denied’ on his paperwork,” she said, her face set.
Riley grabbed the folder out of the younger boy’s limp hand and flipped it open to the first page. He examined it up and down, then began flipping through the following pages. When he got to the end, he nodded knowingly, closed the folder, and looked down at Ben.
“I can’t tell you why you’ve been denied; it doesn’t explain that in here,” he said. “I can direct you to someone who could tell you, that is, only if you really want to know.” He emphasized the “really” with a raise of his eyebrows.
Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I want to know?”
Riley looked away an answered slowly, “I’m not so sure how much you want to meet this person.”
Suddenly Ben felt a strange tingling sensation beginning in his toes and winding its way up his legs, paralyzing him. He tried to look down to see what was going on, but instead he felt himself saying, “I want to see him, Riley. I really want to know.”
He couldn’t move his head, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tess had noticed the strange tone of his voice. “I want to go, too,” she said.
Riley looked over at her. “I’m sorry. This person only allows one person at a—”
“We’re lashed,” Tess said. “You can’t stop me.”
Ben felt the tingling sensation wind up his back and around his arms, one of which then reached over and took Tess’ hand. She looked back at him and he turned his head to her. He tried to send her a message by moving his eyes, the only things he had under his control, but she just looked confusedly back at him.
Riley took Ben’s file back from the small boy. “It says in here that he is alone. Not lashed.”
“That file must be outdated,” Ben felt himself say. “I can’t remember a time when I was alone.”
Riley looked suspiciously at them both. “If you’re lying, it could cost you.”
Tess stiffened, but said, “We like our chances, then.”
“Okay,” Riley said. “You’re going to see Medias.”
Ben breathed in quickly as he felt the paralysis leave him, and his grip on both Tess’ hand and gravity slackened and he almost fell over.
“Will you set up the appointment?” Tess was asking as Ben came fully back into himself.
“He’ll be expecting you within the week.”
She thanked him, Ben tried to follow suit, and they walked out.
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