But why take so many.
He glanced between the cousins, and saw the answer in them. There were no innocent children left in New Wakefield, not since the events of thirty years ago. Before him stood the only three children with any possibility of staying uncorrupted, even despite the black glowing bracelets.
Melaleuca stepped closer to her Uncle trying to look into his eyes, though he cast them down, but not before she caught sight of the answer flash across his face. She lifted his chin with a single finger, and tried to soften her eyes.
‘Uncle? You must tell us.’
How can I tell them?
If they tried to rescue Lexington, Daquan could take possession of the bracelets. What then, he muttered over and over in his mind. A near-crushing weight of past bad decisions pushed down on him.
Quixote turned the piece of paper up-side-down.
‘Who is this Nap Retep?’
Uncle Bear-Nard wrote the name backwards in the dirt.
‘It’s like a code you see. He is trying to revert to a youthful boy again by going backwards in time. Such a thing is impossible, there is no way he could have achieved it.’
‘With the bracelets I bet anything is possible,’ Quixote said.
‘Yes, but he does not have a bracelet,’ Melaleuca said.
Uncle Bear-Nard’s eyes looked down and to the left, a subtle flick of the eyes that Melaleuca read correctly.
‘Or does he?’
Uncle Bear-Nard did not answer at first, but then said, ‘Not exactly.’
Melaleuca felt her patience begin to stretch.
‘What does ‘not exactly’ mean?’
Uncle Bear-Nard stood to his full height, stretched, paced back and forth and then turned to face Melaleuca. He knew he would have to divulge something about the past so they could face this new threat, though he would need to do so with care.
‘Your parents were part of a gang of six. Your mother and your fathers, and one other.’
‘You mean Daquan.’
‘The very same.’
‘You mean the one you said was no threat,’ Argus said.
‘Oh… for f…Yes, the very same.’
Melaleuca motioned to Argus to back off.
‘So how do we get Lexington back? Where is this forbidden place?’
Uncle Bear-Nard quickened his pacing and started muttering, almost in an apoplectic panic.
What of the black bracelets glowing again. Perhaps three fully innocent children are enough to complete what their parents never finished. Why risk the three safe ones for one in danger. What a dilemma. If they rescue Lexington, then they could corrupt themselves further. But if they stay, their grief at losing Lexington might also corrupt their innocence.
He stopped pacing, calmed himself and with a great weight in his heart, said, ‘But for reasons you will not understand for years to come we may just have to leave Lexington to the fates and let the gods be her guide now.’
Ari and Quixote protested, though Melaleuca indicated for them to be silent.
‘Then Uncle, you still do not know us. Look at me!’
Uncle Bear-Nard kept his eyes averted.
‘LOOK AT ME!’
Like a crane lifting a great heaviness, Uncle Bear-Nard raised his face to behold her. Fire blazed in her eyes; defiance for all ages and all time; of all things and ideals and thoughts. Seeded in her spark of want, he could see the cinder that would burn the world of all its dross as the age he had spoken of to Argus came to its end. They would go with or without his help; forbidding it was futile.
Uncle Bear-Nard stood, resolved, decision made.
‘Your parents never really accepted Daquan. He wanted power right from the start. It got to a point where your parents hid the bracelets, though he found them, eventually, and tried to...Well, your parents stopped him anyway. They had no loyalty toward authority, but he was going to kill everyone, women and children included, the very people your parents protected......but they paid a terrible price.’
Deep emotions curled through his words, as if wisps of past, trapped ghosts fought to be released.
‘I wanted you to discover this for yourselves, but he may divulge it. Your mothers were really only one person - Karena. Desperate to stop him, she loosed energy she could not...she could not control, and doing so created three exact replicas of herself; identical in every way, but separate, and...she...and your fathers became blind.’
A great welling of tears curdled up through his words and Uncle Bear-Nard fought them back as he choked out his last few sentences.
‘Yes, blind. Daquan in turn betrayed them....your parents had fled...though were declared banished…..along with Daquan to the...to the..the..Southern Wasteland.’
He stopped talking and started crying. Guarded precious memories, regarded as weakness in New Wakefield, burst through his now fragile shield of thirty years.
Ari fiddled with his bracelet.
‘Imagine what that day must have looked like.’
Quixote pointed both arms out in front as if casting a spell.
‘Power…yyeeesss….zzzzzrrrrgggghhhhh….’
Through Uncle Bear-Nard’s words Melaleuca saw the danger of the bracelets and the importance of playing. She had glimpsed it in his eyes, and the rest had just come to her – another confirmation her gut feelings were always right.
‘Quixote, Ari. Go to the attic. Select costumes to disguise us and help track Lexington. Find fighting costumes and playful costumes, ones that will make us laugh if things get too serious.’
As they left, Uncle Bear-Nard saw she grasped fully what he had meant. In her dwelt the dual nature sought by her parents, maturity of understanding but uncorrupted, still a heart of discovery and innocence. Moved by such a lightening quick mind, he howled feeling relief he had not experienced in years.
Melaleuca knelt and drew a large circle in the dirt, scrawled some hills and a valley and marked their position.
‘Argus we are going into an area unknown to us, have little time to check it out and we do not know what we are up against. Advice?’
‘Perhaps if I tagged along behind you? I could offer more help and assistance?’
‘No. I know what you want. I hear it in your voice. The bracelets are for us and us alone. I suggest you make peace with your role in this.’
She could feel his affront at her piercing lashing.
‘Besides, Quixote is the one that needs directing. I will make him a runner. You will stay here and he shall bring reports back to you.’
She turned back to Uncle Bear-Nard still sobbing.
‘Uncle where is this forbidden place?’
He tried to talk but his tears choked him up. She pointed to the circle in the dirt.
‘Uncle draw us a map.’
He stopped crying and tried again to talk but nothing seemed to come out. He stood and walked across to some old coloured cloths hanging from the barn, and tugged one of them. Soon Jeeves appeared unsurprised as ever by the gathering in the barn.
‘You called?’
Uncle Bear-Nard managed to whisper, ‘The map.’
Jeeves understood, and left at once returning soon with a leather tube. He handed it to Melaleuca.
‘Take care with this little miss, maps are dangerous here.’
Uncle Bear-Nard pulled the map out, spreading it on a hay bale. It showed an area vaster than the large valley of New Wakefield. Beyond the barren hills to the south lay two more large valleys, and beyond that lay a mass of hills and mountains, lakes, creeks, rivers and more mountains and hills. The map indicated they nearly extended all the way to the South Pole; a geographical feat that even Melaleuca knew seemed impossible.
Uncle Bear-Nard pointed to a small cross barely visible in the Southern Wastelands.
Melaleuca tapped the map, asking Argus what he thought.
‘Not the best map,’ Argus replied. ‘Says nothing about the terrain. There could be cliffs, rock faces, impasses, swamps, and quicksand. You name it.�
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‘We have to be ready for all that.’
She told Argus of Quixote's speed boots and how he could ferry information back and forth, grabbing relevant costumes to overcome obstacles.
Another thought struck her.
‘If we have until noon tomorrow to get there, then there must be a quick way, one that Nap Retep knew.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Argus said. ‘It could, after all, be a trap - perfect setting for a trap.’
They asked Uncle Bear-Nard to trace a route on the map. He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Have you ever been there?’ Melaleuca asked.
He shook his head, calmer now.
‘Whoever this Nap Retep is,’ Argus said, ‘he obviously knows how to get in and out without being spotted. Which means caution and definitely not to underestimate him. Thirty years searching for an object makes for a desperate man.’
Melaleuca felt she could do with Lexington right now. Ari had his physical strength and Quixote poured out his constant ideas, but it was to Lexington that making sure all the questions were asked. She tried thinking about what questions she would want answered. Two popped into her mind.
Where did the footprints go that had led to the tree?
Where did this Nap Retep person live?
Ari and Quixote arrived back carrying the North American Indian costume, the soldier, and detective outfits as normal, and had also brought with them three clown suits and three Roman soldier’s outfits.
‘Perfect,’ Melaleuca said ‘Quixote, go back and get another Roman and clown costume for Lexington. Oh, and get the doctor’s outfit. We are going to start healing those we hurt. There has been enough killing.’
Quixote shot off, returning with her request plus a small ruck-sac to carry them in.
At Melaleuca’s behest they put the clown suits on first, feeling a surge of merriment, and started laughing at each other. Quixote juggled four bits of wood, while Ari ran at Quixote, falling over in a silly manner. Melaleuca laughed raucous and loud; quite unlike her. Soon they were all cavorting around performing various acts of stupidity.
Minutes later Melaleuca stopped and pulled her bracelet off and rubbed her watering eyes. It felt as if she had laughed for hours, and her mind felt clearer, refreshed, charged to tackle their search for Lexington.
Still with the clown suit on, she donned the detective costume, and slipped the bracelet back on. She picked up the North American Indian costume and helped a laughing Ari put it on as well, and then did the same to Quixote with the soldier costume. Their silliness abated, though did not completely disappear.
‘We need to check Lexington’s last known tracks,’ Melaleuca said performing a back flip.
She turned to Argus saying, ‘Take care of Uncle. Go to the attic and wait. I will send Quixote back and forth as we need advice.’
She picked up the ruck-sac, handing it to Quixote.
‘Let’s check the tracks by the trees,’ Melaleuca said. ‘This Daquan clearly wants us to walk into a trap. We shall do a Lexington, something she has wanted us to do all along, and gather the facts.’
Quixote’s face dropped. He wanted to rip into saving Lexington as fast as they could.
‘But,’ Melaleuca said, ‘not to the degree that Lexington would.’
They headed to the front lawn where Lexington’s tracks ended, leaping, cart-wheeling and somersaulting all the way.
The two heavy tracks stopped dead against the tree.
‘Check them for compression,’ Ari said. ‘If they jumped up, then the imprints in the dirt should be deeper as they pushed off.’
Quixote and Ari bent down humming silly tunes while Melaleuca tried to put herself in the mind of the kidnapper, deducing she would try to fool anyone following her if she had been the kidnapper.
Perhaps they walked along one of the roots or dangled and shimmed along one of the branches until they got to the edge of the tree and then leapt down. She looked along the many roots spreading out from the base and examined the branches, which seemed to spread just as far.
‘These foot prints lead straight to the tree,’ Quixote said, flicking dirt at Ari. ‘It’s almost as if they walked straight into tree, or climbed up.’
They fanned out searching for clues along the roots, anything that would indicate which direction they had gone.
Nothing turned up.
‘It is possible,’ Quixote said, ‘that they walked forward to the tree and then walked backwards over their footsteps.’
‘Which would mean,’ Ari added, ‘that if we traced them back to where Lexington was taken from, and traced the footprints back further, then we could find out at least where they came from?’
They ran off back to the spot where the tracks indicated that Lexington had been taken from. Though they searched all around, no tracks could be seen leading to the spot. No signs, no bent bushes, no bits of material, hair or anything. As an Indian Ari let all his bracelet-induced powers scope the area. Melaleuca gazed thoughtfully around, thinking about why no other clues showed up; her detective mind flooding with possibilities, trying to pare them back to the most logical one.
‘There seems only one explanation,’ Melaleuca said. ‘They walked backwards from the tree and then walked forward toward the tree back along their same footprints.’
‘How’d they get from the tree out of the grounds?’ Quixote asked.
‘Maybe we should forget all this and just go straight to where she is,’ Ari said. ‘Whoever it is, is no match for us and the bracelets.’
‘Perhaps,’ Melaleuca said. ‘But this person knows we have the bracelets and has used them before and knows what they are capable of. They must have something in store for us. Argus is right, it sounds like a trap. Anyway, my instincts tell me to check these things out.’
Ari chuckled.
‘You sound like Lexington. Melaleuca would just make a decision.’
She turned square on to him.
‘I did. I decided to think like Lexington. We need her here to be complete. As fusty as she can be, her incessant questioning is needed.’
‘What then, they went into the tree?’ Quixote said, finding the unlikely thought hilarious.
‘Or they scaled from the tree to another tree on the other side of the fence using a rope.’
‘I know!’ Quixote cried out in his tone that suggested a crazy idea coming. ‘I bet there is a secret tunnel under the tree.’
He tore back to the tree, with the others in tow.
Uncle Bear-Nard and Argus stood next to it. A small door jutted out from the tree. Melaleuca swung the door.
‘How did you open it?’
A haggard Uncle Bear-Nard said, ‘Only a handful of people know how to open tree doors. Myself, your parents and the only other past bracelet wearer.’
‘Nap Retep. Nice. How do we open them then?’ Melaleuca asked feeling miffed at not being told.
‘What else are we not being told?’ Argus asked. ‘You say no one else has the ability? You said Daquan was no threat, and yet he appears to be.’
Uncle Bear-Nard glared at him, and then replied to Melaleuca. ‘All these type of trees are hollow. It is peculiar to them. Years before I was born someone used them to make a series of interconnecting tunnels. One of them runs under the valley floor and comes up under all the Cathedral-Mansions, though only one other Cathedral-Mansion is still lived in now.’
Melaleuca thrummed her fingers on the tree.
‘Daquan’s?’
‘Yes. I never thought he had any fire or threat left in him,’ Uncle Bear-Nard said, upset at his weak point being exposed. ‘The way to his place I blocked up many years ago.’
Argus slapped his hand to his head, rubbing it.
‘Do you know this could have been averted had I known most of this?’
Melaleuca agreed in silence with him, but now was time for action.
‘Argus, you and Uncle go back and wait in the attic. We are going in here and will track this Nap Retep.
When in doubt, I will send Quixote back for your input.’
With his old and wearied face, Uncle Bear-Nard said, ‘Take great care. You are of vital importance, beyond what you can imagine. Keep having fun.’
Melaleuca blazed her eyes at him saying, ‘We shall prevail. I can see clearer than ever.’ She motioned to the boys. ‘Come, speed is needed.’
***
Captain HeGood swore. His men had surrounded the lake but no Marauder had been found. He had sent them onto the lake in makeshift rafts and apart from killing some of the survivors, had only found the pirate clothes. He suspected one of the outsider children, but had been denied permission to pursue them because of the warning the High Overlord had given. For the first time ever he had decided to ignore the orders. He had just prepared his men to start marching toward the Throughnight Cathedral-Mansion, when one of Daquan’s runners delivered him a note, telling him to come immediately.
Captain HeGood, flushed with frustration, galloped into Daquan’s rundown courtyard, dismounted and threw the reigns to one of the stable hands, kicking him as he did so.
Quesob met him at the door. ‘My master says the Marauders will try this night to escape into the Southern Wasteland. He begs to remind you that this is the second time he has delivered them into your hands and not to underestimate them this time.’
Quesob walked away.
‘Is that it?’ Captain HeGood yelled after him. ‘Where is he? I want to talk with him’
But Quesob had disappeared.
***
Harshon strode her way through the fields in the upper valley, walking quickly, stopping often to pick thistles and brambles and other thorny plants, pretending that she prepared for the upcoming Thistle Ceremony, though, with stealth, she stole her way toward the northern hills where the Throughnight Cathedral-Mansion lay.
Her thoughts turned to the cousins, wonderment at how they had achieved their victory. She had never seen anything like it for over thirty years. It was the final piece of evidence that let her know they were in some way related to her old friend Karena, more than they had let on, and that they possessed the bracelets.
Vahn and the Bold Extraction, The Page 21