“But see, the thing is,” Ashlin continued, speaking a little softer now. “It’s getting a little…crowded up on the tree. Do you understand?”
Norabel nodded blankly, not feeling able to say anything back.
“But there are a lot of other things you can do for us,” Ashlin added quickly, trying to cheer her up. “Archer was right; you’re great at getting around without being noticed. And we could really use that. Just maybe as a ‘before-job’ thing.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me at the stable job?” she asked, her voice sounding so small in her ears.
“Well, we don’t really need five people to pull it off,” Ashlin reasoned.
“Did you all decide this as a group?” she asked, finally finding a little strength in her voice. She couldn’t believe she was being pushed away from her friends so easily.
Ashlin paused a moment, caught off guard by Norabel’s question. “Well,” she answered, “Mason and I saw you were a little reluctant…”
She looked back to the group to where Mason stood. He was leaning against a rock, his arms folded over his chest and his hair ruffling in the slight breeze that found its way through the mountain pass.
“You understand, right?” Ashlin asked. “They’ll be other jobs where we’ll need you there.”
Norabel took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “I understand,” she answered.
“There’s a good girl,” Ashlin said, giving her shoulder a shake.
At her last comment, Norabel decided that she had had enough. “Sorry. But how old do you think I am?” she asked. She had said it in aggravation, but it came out sounding like a polite inquiry.
“Oh, uh…” Ashlin faltered, surprised at her question. She put a hand to her mouth in thought. “You’re fifteen or something, right?”
Norabel’s shoulder’s fell. “I’m twenty-one.”
Ashlin’s eyes widened. “No! Are you serious?”
Norabel scrunched her nose, wondering why everyone thought she was lying when she told them her age. Why would she lie about this? Why was she destined to always be mistaken for a child?
“I’m just…I’m not a kid, okay?” she said, stepping up to Ashlin. “So please don’t treat me like one.”
When the two of them rejoined the group, Mason smoothed over the details of what they would do that night. His plan was to keep it simple. They would knock out the guard, use his keys to open up the stables, and then tie the horses together in four groups. Each one of them would slowly walk a group of horses out of the stables. Beforehand, they would cover the few meters of stone courtyard between the stables and the dirt road in a tarp to muffle the sound of the horses’ hooves. Ashlin added that they should leave it on the ground with the Harbinger’s new motto written on it: The beast has answered. Then, moving as quietly as possible, they would walk the horses down the path that Mason and Logan had chosen, up into the mountains, and then free and away into the forest.
After this had all been discussed, Mason dismissed them all, telling the four of them to meet at his place at nightfall. Norabel somberly watched them leave, observing how Ashlin went up the path of the mountain to avoid going back through the city. Is this really what she stayed in Breccan for, she wondered. To be phased out by someone that could do everything ten times better than her. If Mason didn’t need her anymore, then why was she here?
She thought she was by herself, when Mason suddenly asked, “You okay, Norabel?”
Her small shoulders shuddered in shock. She hadn’t expected him to stay behind. He took a step towards her and angled his head down so he could look into her face.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, giving him a weak smile. It wouldn’t do to pout about her demotion on the team. It would only drive him away.
“What were you thinking?” he asked, pointing up to the hills.
She scrunched her brow in confusion and followed his finger to see where he was pointing. She saw the hills and rocks they used to climb on when they were kids. She saw the boulder they had once balanced on with one foot for nearly an hour straight. She saw the scraggly grass where they would sit and count to a hundred, waiting for the other to hide, and she saw the spot on the rocky mountain where they each tried to throw pebbles, winning the game if they could get it right in the center of the hole in the rocks.
“What do you mean?” Norabel asked, wondering if he could possibly be talking about all these things her eyes could never forget.
“About Ashlin,” he clarified, smiling.
Norabel felt her heart drop. He didn’t see any of those things anymore. Ashlin had taken over his mind, and his childhood memories of her were more lost than ever.
“I wasn’t thinking about Ashlin,” she said, looking down to the ground.
“You’re not mad at her for saying what she did?” he asked, keeping the topic on his favorite girl.
She shook her head gently. “It wasn’t her decision.”
Mason tweaked his mouth and shook his head, realizing she was talking about him.
“Are you mad at me then?” he asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“Have I ever gotten mad at you, Mason?”
“Just this past week,” he reminded her. “When I wouldn’t believe you about Ashlin lying about her transfer to Breccan.”
Norabel closed her eyes. She had walked right into that one. It was the only time she had ever stood up to him.
“Well I’m not mad at you now,” she said. Then, gesturing up to the hills, she answered his first question, saying, “I was just thinking about the family of marmots that used to live in the rocks up there. It’s a bit of a silly thought, I know, but I was wondering if the kids were all grown up with families of their own.”
Mason gave out a dry laugh. “Only you could think about something like that.” He shook his head. “Bugs, marmots, and sunlight, and here we are trying to start a revolution.”
“I think about other things as well,” she defended.
“Like what?”
“Like bowl making, and whistling, and how that pink juice that runs off from a watermelon always sticks to the skin on your wrist for the longest time.”
She gave him a grin to let him know she was only joking, and he shook his head, grinning as well.
“You’re from a different world, Norabel,” he said, looking down at her.
She couldn’t tell if he had meant this as a compliment or not, but she felt her face heat up under his gaze. She looked down in mild embarrassment, but when she glanced up, she found that Mason had grown serious once more.
“Sometimes I think you should stay there,” he admitted under his breath.
His words stung her, and she couldn’t find her voice to respond. With a parting nod of his head, he walked away, leaving Norabel to her darkening thoughts of revolution, treason, and lost friendship.
*
Hunter’s eyes swam with light. At first he forgot where he was, what had happened to him, and what could still happen. All he saw and felt was the warm light coming in through a green canopy of trees, and cool grass underneath his palms and between his fingers. He closed his eyes before the images could become any clearer, and allowed his imagination to fill in the rest.
He was home. It was someplace he had not yet been to, but in the future he would find it and call it his own. And it would be green and lush and cool in the summertime, with a mountain stream going through the woods nearby, and birds would be singing as he would teach his son how to climb trees. And his wife…
A breeze blew and ruffled the blades of grass poking through his fingers, and he imagined it was her hand, cool and slender, lovingly weaving her fingers through his. His wife. His to hold every day. His to protect and to feed and to amuse and to worry and to love. His own…
The fantasy in his head was killed as he heard the sound of people approaching. The real world came crashing down on him, and he could feel the tug of rope around his wrists, binding his hands. Another line cut
across his middle, and the rough bark of a tree pressed into his back, holding him prisoner.
He did not open his eyes as the voices grew nearer, hoping to delay the inevitable for at least a little longer.
“What do you think we should do?” he heard one of them whisper.
“He did appear to want to help Jade when he found him on the road.”
“That doesn’t matter,” a deeper voice countered. “He’s a pox. And we have to treat them all the same. Now I told you to get back to camp.”
“Can we really just kill him, dad?”
Hunter heard the sound of a sword being taken out of a sheath.
“He’d kill us all if he got the chance,” the deeper voice said. “Now go!”
He heard the man step closer to him, and when he felt his blade lightly touch his shoulder, he opened his eyes.
“I’m not a Pax,” Hunter exclaimed suddenly, throwing the man off guard for a moment.
“Excuse me?” he demanded, gripping tighter to his sword.
“I’m not a Pax,” Hunter insisted. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Not a Pax! Then what do you call this?” the man asked, jabbing his sword on the Pax arm band that was wrapped around his right arm. “And that horse we found you riding?” he added, pointing behind him with his blade to where they had tethered his horse.
“Protection,” Hunter answered, having to think quickly. “I stole them because I thought it would be safer to travel if it looked like I was a Pax official. I didn’t think anyone else would be out here.”
Hunter looked at the other two people that had come with the first man. They were boys, really. Teenagers of around fifteen or sixteen. Their eyes were fixed on Hunter in wary curiosity.
“You stole them from the Pax,” the man with the sword recounted skeptically. “Now why would you go and do a thing like that? For a laugh? Or maybe you’re just plain stupid.”
“I’m in love,” Hunter blurted out, the words finding him more than the other way around.
This caused the man to pause and narrow his eyes.
Hunter’s face filled with desperation as he explained, “That’s why I stole the horse. I was on my way to meet the girl I love. She was transferred somewhere else, and I couldn’t stand living away from her. So please…please don’t kill me. At least let me see her one last time.”
“In love, huh?” the man shook his head and chuckled. “Alright. If you’re so in love, then what’s the young girl’s name?”
Hunter didn’t allow any time for the man’s suspicions to rise as he immediately said in earnestness, “Her name’s Norabel.”
“Norabel,” the man repeated.
Hunter felt a strange sensation of guilt and anxiousness creep up inside of him. He felt bad for using Norabel’s name in his lie, for she was such a person of honesty. But the anxiousness came from the sudden realization that he didn’t just want to convince his captors of his fantasy, he actually wanted it to be true.
“Well, tell me about her,” the man said, prodding him with his sword.
“W-what?” Hunter stuttered, confused.
“If you’re so in love with this girl, then tell me about her,” the man challenged. Then he lowered his head, whispering, “Or are you just feeding me lies?”
“I’m not lie…”
“What color is her hair?” he interrupted him. “Her eyes? How tall is she? What’s she do for a living? Where does she…”
“Her hair’s the color of snow,” Hunter cut in. “And her eyes are a soft blue.” His own eyes glazed as he continued. “She’s shorter than me by several inches, but when she’s happy she likes to stand on her tiptoes and her eyes almost reach up to mine. She works as a potter for a living, making bowls. Sometimes she can’t get the clay off her hands, and when I hold them up to my face after she’s come from work, they smell like wet earth and clean soil.”
“Alright,” the man said, growing aggravated. “So you’re a convincing liar who’s obviously been in love at one point in his life.”
“If you don’t believe me, check my pocket,” he urged. “There’s a clay sculpture of a bird that she gave me once. She had gotten clay on my hands while I still had to work. She had felt so bad about it that the next day she gave me that bird as a present.”
The man turned to where his son stood, saying, “Check his pockets.”
The son’s eyes widened in confusion and apprehension, looking to his father for clarification.
“If you’re gonna stay here against my orders, you had better make yourself useful,” he scolded his son.
He kept his sword on Hunter’s chest as the boy timidly stepped up to him. Then, bending down, he carefully stretched his hand into his pocket. His face was scrunched in anxiousness, but when he pulled his hand out and looked at the smooth, clay bird inside, his expression changed to one of curious wonder.
“For my friend, she said when she gave me that,” Hunter told him, shifting his attention from the father to the son. Then he shook his head, saying, “I can’t tell you how much it hurts when the girl you’re in love with calls you her friend.”
“Yeah?” the son asked, trying to sound tough.
“It really just made me try harder though.”
The boy let a smile crack on his face, and his eyes betrayed some sign of recognition that told Hunter maybe this kid did know what it was like to pine for a girl.
“A clay bird in your pocket means nothing,” the father said, taking it from his son.
“If you won’t believe that,” Hunter said, “then you won’t believe anything else I say. Your mind’s already made up about me. But, if you kill me, you’ll be killing an enemy of the Pax. And I don’t think you want that.”
The man looked down at the clay bird and then tossed it back to him so that it bounced off his chest and landed in his lap.
“Come on boys,” the man announced, turning away from him. “We’re going back to camp.”
The boy next to Hunter got to his feet and gave him one last inquisitive look before following his father back into the woods.
Chapter 14
It was dark when a knock sounded on Norabel’s door. She jumped at the sound, wondering who it could be. The team wasn’t supposed to start the stable job until later that night. Did something go wrong, she wondered. Did someone catch them gathering together and get suspicious? Or maybe they realized that they would need her to come after all.
Norabel hurried to the door as quickly as possible, but when she opened it, she did not find Mason standing there, about to ask her for her help. Instead it was Fletcher’s grim face that greeted her in the dark. He was holding a pile of clothes up to his chest, and at first Norabel could do nothing but stare at them in confusion.
“Hope you’ve got soap,” he said, taking a whiff of the dirty clothes. He pushed past her in the doorway and into her house. “I’ve already eaten,” he said, taking in a loud sniff. “That family across the street sure knows how to feed a growing man.”
Fletcher looked around and came into her small living room. It was sparsely furnished with two plain chairs, a wooden chest, and a faded blue rug that lay in the center like a tattered flag that had ripped from its moorings. Stepping into the room, he dropped the clothes on the floor.
“It’s already dark outside,” he said, motioning to the window. “But you can probably bring the basin in and do the wash right here.”
He looked at her expectantly, and she said nothing as she went to her back door. There was a full water basin outside, used specifically for washing clothes. Norabel had a hard time lifting it, but once she got it inside, she slid it across the rough wooden floor and in front of the pile of clothes.
Fletcher gave her a satisfied nod and then sat down in a chair as he watched her get to work.
“You’re quiet tonight,” he commented. “You haven’t even said one word since I got here.”
“Good evening Fletcher,” she said politely, staring down at the wash in her han
ds. “How was your day?”
He stretched in the chair, saying, “Wretching exhausting, thanks for asking. The life of a Pax official is not an easy one. It’s hard work knocking on doors, searching strangers for stuff they shouldn’t have.” He yawned, adding, “Especially when the old man I’m paired with is a wretched…”
He trailed away and looked down to where Norabel was kneeling on the floor, hard at work.
“I remember him,” she stated calmly, scrubbing away at a dirt stain on a pair of pants. “He seemed to me like the kind of man that wouldn’t give anyone the time of day unless they earned his respect first.”
“Exactly!” Fletcher exclaimed, waving his hand in the air. “It’s all about honor with him! Oh, show respect,” he said in a mocking voice. “Wear your pride on your sleeve. An honorable man has his boots polished and his hair combed. A good soldier never enters a room with his left leg.” He gripped his head in his hands. “Well if I just want to get a wretched pint at the pub, I don’t care what my wretched boots look like, or which one goes in first!”
He sighed and slouched down further in his chair. Norabel could tell that he wasn’t just putting on a show. This seemed to really bother him. Yes, Fletcher might do some horribly selfish things, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone else out there giving him a hard time as well.
“My boss didn’t like me when I first started my job as a potter,” Norabel told him, choosing to stare down at the clothes in her hands. “One of the reasons was because I didn’t know the first thing about how to make a bowl. He had to teach me everything.”
“But then you tried your think happy thoughts thing and he grew to love you,” Fletcher mocked dryly.
“No,” she shook her head. “Actually I snuck into the Potter’s Workhouse one night and forced myself to make bowl after bowl until I got it right. When he came back in the morning, nearly the whole place was filled with them. Then I told him that I didn’t need to be trained anymore, and that he could go about his day as usual.”
Fletcher laughed. “I’ll bet he was surprised. Wish I could do something that would shock the wretch out of my boss.”
Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) Page 16