“What’s up with that?” I ask.
“No idea, but it’s a little annoying, ain’t it?” he says. I nod and he continues talking, brushing off the fact we keep shocking each other. “Please know I find you... enthralling.” He says the last word a bit quiet.
“Me? Enthralling?” Wiping my tears with my sleeve, I laugh, and his energy quivers. “Well, I can accept that,” I say, smiling at him, and then puff up my own chest, and pull myself together. “And I also find you—” A rustling sound in the bushes interrupts my sentence and I jump, moving closer to him.
He smiles. “Find me what?” he says.
I think to myself that “a solid prospect with a hot body” are not the appropriate words, so I say, “Cute.”
“Cute? That’s all?” he twitters, annoyed.
There’s a sudden growling noise from the forest and he says, “Just make sure you stay near the fire tonight.” With this he starts walking toward camp. I scurry behind him.
I smell baking smells. “Who opened up their jar?”
Bu sits next to Lupa like a dog waiting for scraps. “Lupa cooked!” he says.
She hands out to each of us a small foil packet. I open up mine, and discover it’s some sort of fruit cobbler. “Lupa, I love you. Will you marry me?” Bu is staring at me with a disturbed look on his big face. He must not get it. “Bu, it’s a joke.”
“Oh. Kailey, you funny!”
“Yeah, you seem to tell me that all the time.” The fruit cobbler is to die for—nothing less than expected—and with full bellies, exhaustion takes over. An urge then comes over me. “Where do I go when I have to, uh, you know.”
“Just go into the forest, find a place, and squat. It’s really quite simple.” Easy for Gunthreon to say.
“Is there, like, camping etiquette? I mean, do I try and go where someone won’t step? But what if I sit in poison ivy and something like that?”
Lupa throws me some toilet paper.
“Abscondian?” I ask as I examine the quilted hearts and squares.
Lupa replies, “I do prefer some luxuries once in a while. I don’t think my butt will fall off using it.”
Bu giggles, most likely at the thought of someone’s butt falling off.
“Fine. But if you hear me scream, someone better come save me.” I wander off, find a secluded place, and as I watch a squirmy, oozing bug crawl by my face, I decide I can perhaps wait a bit longer. I pull my pants up and figure this the perfect time to travel and check on my mom, when suddenly I feel a new energy approach.
“Hello?” I say, scanning the area. The energy feels... simply inquisitive. Just when I’m about to grasp the exact location of it, a small yellow animal with a very long tail crawls out from behind a rock. It looks up at me with large eyes and “snuffs”—at least that’s the best way I can describe it—then turns around and scampers away.
I then travel. I end up in my living room, with no lights on. “Hello? Mom?” I check out the place, but nobody’s there. She must have already taken Kioto to her house. I try and call her house, but I get no answer. It’s around the time I usually walk Kioto, so I just leave things at that. I travel back to the bush I squatted near.
“Why don’t you just soulsearch? I know you can,” says a female voice, somewhere near me.
I twirl around where I stand. “Lupa?” My heart pounds as I hear giggling. “Who’s there?”
“Booooo! A forest friend. Booooo!” Whoever it is is mocking me. I reach for my monk’s spade and swing it around in front of me. “Ooh ...” And with that, I see a tiny little female thing standing in front of me. “I’ve never seen one of those. What is that?” she says, seemingly mesmerized by my weapon. She’s about five inches tall, dressed in what appears to be squirrel hide with matching boots. She has twigs all knotted up in her hair, and her neck is adorned with a necklace made of holly.
“Why did you tell me to soulsearch, and how did you know I can?” I’m tempted to bend down to her like you would with a small child, but I really don’t know what this thing is capable of doing. She might rip my throat out.
“If I tell you, will you let me touch it?” She eyes my monk’s spade feverishly.
“Yes, but only for a second,” I state. “First, you must tell me the truth.”
“But I don’t have that power. Your boyfriend does,” she says. “You wouldn’t know if I was lying to you or not. Wait! You might. Energy reading.”
“He is not my boyfriend.”
“Sure.”
“Fine. I’m just going back to camp.” I turn to walk back.
“To go see that handsome man? He’s quite pleasant on the eyes.” I start walking. “No, please don’t. I want to see your weapon and touch it, if I may.”
I turn around and walk back to her.
“Come down so I don’t have to shout,” she pleads. “I won’t hurt you.”
I crouch, then sit Indian-style. She comes over and sits the same way next to me, very, very closely.
“I’m Jenna, woodsprite of the tribe Uriben.” She extends her tiny hand, and I shake it with two fingers.
“You gonna tell me how you know so much about me?” I say.
“Well, besides the fact I just saw you appear out of nowhere, that’s what we woodsprites do. You don’t know this?”
No. I’m kind of new to Renhala.” I twiddle my thumbs.
“You’re from ‘there’?”
“Yes, from Abscondia.”
“It really does exist!” she shouts, wide-eyed. “Is it all dangerous and scary like the tales? Oh! Are there really soul-drainers who steal your life force by sucking it from your ears?”
I laugh, hard. I eventually calm down. “You mean you’ve never met someone who travels from Abscondia?”
She shakes her head and says, “I don’t make friends too easily,” she admits, kicking around dirt.
“You know, I don’t have many friends either, so don’t feel bad! And as to your question, no, there are no ‘soul-drainers’ in Abscondia. Well, if you don’t count the government...or those crazy bible thumpers...or ear muffs,” I joke.
“Well, Neda gave us the power to see auras—yours is beautiful by the way—and know what powers one possesses,” says Jenna. “It comes in handy sometimes. If you’re messing with a traveler and stealing her campsite food, you know whether you might get caught and what the consequences might be. That honey was delicious, by the way.”
“Oooh, if I let Lupa know, she might strangle you.”
“No, she won’t.”
“Of course. You would know, right?” I say.
“Your female friend’s like me, kind of...a friend to plant life.”
“So that’s her secret!” I exclaim. “She’s got special powers, and that’s how she grows those man-size squashes. Aha!”
“Yep. She respects them, as I do.” Jenna hugs the nearest weed. I squash a bug trying to crawl up my leg, and she shrieks. “You should hug a tree once in a while, you know!” she says.
This makes me laugh, and I imagine myself in tie-dyed clothes with flowers in my hair and a peace symbol painted on my cheek.
“They give you the oxygen you breathe, and food and shelter,” she says. “They watch us all, constantly.”
“Okay, but that creeps me out. They don’t have eyes, so how can they watch me?”
“They do in their own way.” She waves to a nearby tree. The wind blows, and the tree sways. “See?”
I just laugh. “Whatever you say.”
Jenna scoots a bit closer to me so that she’s practically in my lap, near my weapon. “Can I touch your weapon now?” she says.
“Sure, I don’t see why not.” I take my monk’s spade off my back and slowly lower it to her, then hold it back. “Wait, tell me one more thing: What does my aura look like? Is it really pretty?” I say, wanting to hear it from her again. I feel a chest puff coming my way.
A second before she can touch it, Gunthreon rushes out of the bushes. “Do not let her touch tha
t!” he yells. Jenna stands up and snarls as Gunthreon runs toward her. “You evil little thing! Go away!” Gunthreon shouts and then shoos her.
“You gonna persuade me to go? I don’t want to!” Gunthreon towers over Jenna. She doesn’t budge. “You don’t scare me,” she says. “Now, if you were her, you’d for sure scare me.” She points to me.
“Why me?” I ask.
Jenna laughs a cute little tiny laugh. “You don’t have any clue, do you? That’s right. You’re new. Let me just say that karmeleans that are able to soulsearch aren’t born very often—try like ever.”
Gunthreon turns to me. “’Forest friends’ like this little one are like wolverines. Give them the chance by listening to their sweet talk, and they tear your weapon from you. Then they sell them on the black market. Isn’t this right?”
Jenna sticks her lizard-like tongue out at Gunthreon. “I’ve gotta make a living somehow.”
I walk over to Jenna. “You were really going to take it, weren’t you? How could you carry this anyway?” I once again think of ants.
“Actually, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna take it yet. I don’t even know what that thing is. I was kind of scared to.” She seems genuinely embarrassed. “I probably would have tried, though. I haven’t eaten a good meal in a while.”
I say to her, “You did have that honey.”
“You call that a meal? What do you eat in Abscondia?” she whines. “You should come with me sometime where I can show you a good meal, for a price of course. Wildabug and dewjuice and, yum, mealworms!” She looks like a starving dog with a giant ham bone held out in front of its nose, told to stay.
“Yuck!” I blurt, disgusted.
Gunthreon puts his arm out to me. “Kailey, come back to camp with me. Leave her here.”
“Let her make her own decisions!” Jenna says, sticking up for me.
He replies, “So you can take off with her blade?”
Jenna seems to try to keep up her tough exterior, but she looks discouraged now. She turns her head down toward her bare feet. “I’m not going to take it. I just like her. She’s got good energy. I’d much rather have her as an ally than an enemy.”
“Kailey is not an item I can bargain with, and I need to keep her safe. Good day to you.”
I walk with Gunthreon back to camp, but not without a glance toward the tree that Jenna waved to. Creepy.
“Weren’t you kind of rough on her?” I say.
“Like most creatures here in Renhala, you cannot underestimate even the tiniest of beings,” Gunthreon says.
The others seem to have found their own place to crash, and are bundled up all snuggly to protect themselves against the night chill. Bu snores, his jar of cookie smell totally exhausted, and Conner, in his sleeping bag, reads from a rather thick book. Lupa drinks something steamy from a tin cup and smiles at us as we return.
“Glad you’re safe, hon,” she says. “We were kind of worried about you. All of us.” She nods in Conner’s direction, but he’s clueless, well into whatever thought-provoking words he’s reading.
“A little woodsprite named Jenna almost nabbed my weapon.”
Lupa laughs. “Yeah, they’re almost as vicious as pixies.”
“Pixies?”
“Get some shuteye, because we’re all getting up at the crack of dawn. We’re gonna need plenty of energy and brainpower for those mooncats.”
Lupa informs me that Conner set me up a sleeping bag. She points to it next to Bu—evidently Bu moved it there after Conner set it up closer to himself. Conner was quite the gentleman, too, because I see he gave me the much warmer one with a Sherpa liner. I climb into it, and as I inhale, I can smell his cologne. I suddenly sit up and shout, “Tomorrow is Monday! I have to call into work. I’ll be right back.”
I stand up and right before I travel home to leave a message for Evan, Gunthreon says, “Stop! Don’t go.”
“Hey, I’m still working. At a job. Where I have responsibilities. Don’t tell me I can’t leave a message for my boss.”
“There is to be no travelling to Abscondia during this mission, Kailey.”
“Why?” I keep to myself that I’ve already broken that rule.
“Because every time someone travels, both Velopa and Neda know this person has travelled,” he states.
“And why is that bad? That’s our whole reason for searching! To find them, right? I could just travel back and forth like twenty times and maybe Neda will come and slap me on the hand.”
Gunthreon shakes his head. “You don’t understand. That may draw attention to you, in particular. We must be guileful about this. Every time you travel, it gives one small clue as to your exact location. You want Velopa sneaking up on you while you’re indisposed?” His eyebrows are raised high.
“No, probably not,” I mumble. I see Conner indiscreetly watching my reaction.
Conner stands up and says, “I’ll do it for you. I travel often, so neither Neda or Velopa will pay me any heed. Give me your work number and I’ll leave a message for you. Is that okay, Gunthreon?” Gunthreon nods after some thought.
“Thank you,” I say softly to Conner. I tell him the number and he travels home. As I lie in my sleeping bag, staring up at the flashes of lightning, I close my eyes and reach to my campmate’s energies, examining each, closely, looking for even a hint of deception, hidden somewhere. I find nothing.
Chapter 35
Uncomfortable
The night is cruel to me. Every single noise wakes me. I nearly put in my iPod earplugs, but the thought of not hearing something important changes my mind.
When the sun rises, I realize the pounding I hear is not from the forest, or from Lupa clanging her pots together, but from my head. Seeing everyone else wake up looking well-rested makes me want to kick them. The imaginary birds and animals I conjure up following Lupa around, Snow White-style especially don’t help.
“How did any of you get sleep last night?” I squint as my eyes cannot take the burning sunlight. In fact, even turning toward Lupa’s glowing face makes me wince.
“I got enough that I feel ready for our journey today,” says Gunthreon. I’m not even going to look at Gunthreon when he’s talking, because even he sounds wide-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Conner is already packed and smiling.
“What are you so cheery about this morning?” I glare.
He turns to me. “Did the woodsprite you encountered last night wear a holly necklace?”
“Why yes, she did,” I respond. He smiles widely. “And she is quite smitten by you.” I laugh when he drops his smile.
“What?” he chirps.
“Oh, she just thought you were adorable.”
He blushes, and it makes me sneer. He recovers quickly, though. “I was just happy I actually saw her,” he says. “Woodsprites are quite sneaky, and very clever. I thought my tracking skills were improving. Now I know she might have wanted me to see her though—or she just grew lax in her ability to hide because of my blinding good looks.”
“Whatever. Maybe you could go find her, and you two could have some ‘dewjuice’ together and talk about your dreaminess.” I am so going to be crabby all day.
“My, my, so this is how you are first thing in the morning, huh?” spouts Conner. “I’m more of a morning person. And don’t knock dewjuice.” He smiles again. “Just finish packing. We can’t lose any daylight.”
“Lose daylight? It’s like five o’clock in the freaking morning. How much could we possibly lose?” I try turning toward the sun, but it’s so not worth it. “Oh, and aren’t we also going somewhere it’s dark all the time anyway?”
“Conner’s right, Kailey,” says Lupa. “We have to move fast. We have to make sure we stop at a few places on the outskirts of Socola first, and we definitely want to get there in the daylight.”
“How come I always seem to be the one totally left out of the preparation plans?”
“I think you work best when you don’t know what to expect, Kailey,” rep
lies Gunthreon. He waits for a response, but I actually don’t have anything to say.
We double-check to make sure we’ve packed everything, and I say a secret goodbye to my first campsite. Note to self: If this is what camping is like, I don’t think I like it.
I make sure I leave a small piece of my breakfast sandwich behind for a certain forest friend while nobody is watching. I can’t help it—I’ve always secretly fed strays. As a child, I’d save all my leftovers and feed them to the pigeons—everything from potato salad to chicken. They always left the onions, though. Life’s all about karma anyway, right? Maybe someday, I’ll be saved by a giant pigeon. You never know.
We travel through some wetlands, which stink like a concoction of cooked broccoli, dirty diapers, and pigpen. It makes all of us cranky, and gives us all horrendous headaches. Lupa ends up cracking open her peppermint jar to let us all use it for a few minutes each. Surprisingly, this helps tremendously, for our heads seem to clear.
An hour after we leave the wetlands, I still stink of broccoli. What I would do for a life pool right now.
After we travel the majority of the day, Gunthreon finally stops and turns to all of us. “We are approaching the outskirts,” he says. “There’s a few things we need to do while outside Socola, and talking with some locals is one of them. There are a few more necessary supplies we should pick up, and then we can stop and catch a bite to eat, and maybe get some information while we’re at it. I’m hoping to get to Socola right around nightfall, because it will seem more natural for us.”
“What kind of information are we searching for exactly?” I say. I want to make sure I do my best and don’t do anything stupid.
“We’re searching out the mooncats’ alpha cat. Rumors are spreading of direct connections to the Higher Ones here.”
I laugh out loud, but nobody else does. “They have an alpha cat?”
“Yes,” replies Gunthreon, “and if you were smart you would mind your manners if you happen to meet him.”
I do my best salute toward Gunthreon.
A glance at Bu tells me he’s troubled. “What’s wrong, Bu?”
“Bu just scared. Bu don’t like them.” He holds his locket and gently caresses it. I show him my own ring which I am secretly fondling in my pocket. He smiles and takes a deep breath.
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