by J. D. Lakey
“Connor, Alain, this is Megan and Cheobawn. They are coming with us,” Tam said by way of introductions. Alain’s omeh marked him as Firewalker tribe. She did not need to see his collar to know this. His auburn hair, flashing coppery in the bright light, had been a dead give away. Cheobawn thought his hair beautiful despite the Mothers’ amusement. Flash without substance, Amabel had sniffed in disdain, but Amabel was not prone to frivolity and perhaps found the bright colors not suited to the weight of the office of Maker of the Living Thread.
Mora, behind closed doors, had been amused as well, but here stood Alain, traded one for one, made Son of the Heart to replace a Son of the Flesh, proof perhaps that Mothers could be seduced by more than logic when it came to picking the future husbands of the dome.
Connor, the smallest of the boys, was Waterwall tribe, just like Tam. He was a shorter, rougher boned version of Tam’s golden skinned darkness. She did not remember him from Tam’s caravan, so he surely must be younger, by a year or two. He did not have as many honor beads as Tam or Alain but he was still young enough for that not to matter.
The one called Alain stared at the beaded collar around her own neck.
“But she’s … She’s the …” he sputtered, groping for a word that did not offend.
Cheobawn kept her hands by her side, resisting the instinctive urge to cover the large black bead set in the center of her omeh. Instead, she lifted her chin proudly, as if to offer them a better view of her collar.
“… an excellent Ear,” Tam finished the sentence, glaring at Alain as he held the gate open for the girls.
“Why do we need two girls?” whined the one named Connor. “The rules only say we need one.”
“Because I can outrun you, out climb you, out wrestle you, and beat you at bladed sticks,” growled Megan, pushing her face close to Connor’s. “If she does not go, I do not go. Got a problem with that?”
Connor looked up at her with a dark scowl on his face, obviously wanting to take her up on that challenge. The boy had a suicidal streak, thought Cheobawn, or maybe he had not seen Megan on the skirmish floor. Tam punched him in the shoulder, redirecting his attention to where it needed to be.
“We need them both. They are a team like we are a team. Cheobawn is six and doesn’t qualify as a Pack guide. We need Megan to get her past the gate guards,” Tam said firmly. “Besides, Megan has been outside the dome a million times on harvester forays and knows the terrain close to the dome by heart. Let’s go.”
Alain opened his mouth to object but Tam gave him no opportunity. Instead, the Pack leader pivoted on his heel and marched down the promenade back the way they had come. The others had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Two
Tam led his odd little procession across the Central Plaza. Cheobawn watched the faces of the people they passed. There were stares yet no one stopped them or yelled at Cheobawn to get on home. By the time they reached the Pack Hall, she started to relax a little.
Phillius, Mora’s Third Prime, sat dozing behind the desk in the common room. He opened one eye as they entered. The appearance of Cheobawn in the group wiped the bored expression from his face. He sat up abruptly, a half uttered oath on his lips.
Tam planted himself in front of the desk and opened his mouth to say something. Phillius stopped him with a look and a wave of his hand. Tam pressed his lips together tensely and waited as the Third Prime touched the comscreen in front of him and waited for a response.
“What?” the harassed sounding voice of the Hayrald, the First Prime, snapped out of the speaker.
“Sent Tam out to fill out his Pack. You’ll never guess who he brought back.” Phillius said brightly.
“By the Goddess, Phil, I do not have time for games,” Hayrald growled. “Tell me why I should care?”
“He came back with Megan and Cheobawn.”
There was a long silence. Cheobawn held her breath.
“I’ll get back to you,” Cheobawn’s Da said tensely and the com went dead. Cheobawn bit her lower lip. This surely could not be good. She fully expected Hayrald to come storming through the door in the next few minutes.
Phillius looked at Tam and shook his head.
“You are one hard-headed boy, Tam Waterwall. Can you never go at life along the easy road?” Phillius asked not unkindly.
“Easy is boring, Father,” Tam said, his bravado not entirely convincing to Cheobawn’s ears. “Nobody ever became great by taking the easy road.”
“Yeah, but they managed to stay alive. Do you have a death wish? Hayrald will skin you personally if anything happens to her.”
Tam frowned. He set his gaze on a spot on the wall behind the older man’s left shoulder and drew himself up to his full height.
“I know what I am doing, sir,” he said stubbornly.
“No,” Phillius said firmly, “I don’t think you do, but you surely are about to find out.”
Tam did not choose to argue further. He fell into a stony silence.
“Phillius, you there?” Hayrald’s voice crackled over the comlink. “Take me off speaker and put in an earbud.”
Phillius touched the screen, opened the top drawer of his desk and rummaged around for a few moments. His search yielded results of a dubious nature. Phillius brushed the crumbs off a rather crushed looking earbud and shoved it into his ear.
“Go ahead,” he said and then listened for a moment. The children watched his face as it went through a rapid series of emotions and then settled on no emotion at all. Cheobawn recognized that look. She had grown up sitting at Mora’s knee, watching the men of the village accept the decrees handed down from the chair of the First Mother. Here it was, on Phillius’s face, the look of someone swallowing their dismay like bitter medicine.
Hayrald had not come for her, to drag her back to school. That meant only one thing. Hayrald had talked to her Truemother. She recognized the nuances in Phillius’s manner. Mora’s instructions had not been well received. Cheobawn prepared herself for the worst.
“Yes, sir,” Phillius said finally. He took the earbud out, tossed it back where it came from and slammed the drawer shut with a little more force than was necessary. Then he started keying in information on his screen as he rattled off instructions.
“Alright. I am putting your names down under provisional Pack. You can change your status if and when you decide to go permanent, but I highly recommend you stay temporary for at least a year. No sense rushing into anything until you get a little bit older and your heads get screwed on a little tighter. Four man team, Tam is the alpha male. Megan, the alpha female. Who you got earmarked for beta male?” When there was no response, Phillius paused and stared at the children, waiting.
“We’re a five man Pack,” Tam corrected.
“No,” Phillius said patiently, “you are a four plus one. She,” he pointed at Cheobawn, “is six years old and cannot be put on a roster for two more years. She also comes with her own set of rules. Under-agers are not allowed more than two clicks from the dome. If you encounter hostiles, you will not engage. Got that? No engagement. Period. Retreat and return to Home Dome. Is that understood?”
Tam ground his teeth together and glowered at no one in particular.
“What’s that? I didn’t hear you.” Phillius said loudly.
“Ye’sir,” the boys chorused together without much
enthusiasm.
“Now, who is to be your Second and who is the Third?” he asked again.
“Alain is beta, I guess, because he’s oldest,” Tam ventured. Connor squawked in protest. Tam quelled his outburst with a glare.
“Fine,” Phillius said, as he keyed the information into his form. “Pick up your tools and weapons at the weapons locker. Don’t forget to check with the Weapons Master. Do not lose your tools. Return them cleaned and undamaged or there will be dire consequences. Where is your foray form?”
“Uh,” Tam grunted, looking over at Megan. She sighed in exasperation and grabbed an empty form and a s
tylus from a stack on the corner of the desk. She turned on her heel and crossed the room to the row of seats set against the near wall. The Pack followed her.
“That’s alright,” yelled Phillius after them, “Take your time. I’ve got all day. Maybe the sun will set and you won’t have to bother going outside.”
Cheobawn’s head was spinning. She could hardly believe it. Her Da was letting her go. More importantly, Mora was allowing it. The world was so full of surprises. She floated across the room, barely aware of her feet touching the floor.
Megan unfolded the form and laid it flat on the low table in front of chairs. The boys gathered round. Cheobawn squeezed in past Alain and sat next to Megan, snuggling up close to see what was printed on the paper. Most of the paper was covered with a map of some kind. Words and numbers and lines of every color and weight swirled and coiled in upon
themselves. None of it made any sense at first glance. Then she spotted the black circle in the center of the paper labeled Home Dome. She leaned in closer, studying the drawing. If you ignored most of the swirly twirly stuff and just looked at the black lines, it became intimately familiar. This was her miniature world, only instead of being modeled in dust, someone had committed it to paper.
They did not teach map reading to six-year-olds although she knew maps. A beautiful map was tacked to the wall in her classroom. It had little cartoons of mountains covered with cartoon trees and cartoon rock jumpers, with cartoon domes strung like beads in the spaces between the mountains and the edge of the world. She liked to trace the roads that connected the other domes to the Windfall dome, reading the names of each village, imagining how magical it would be to live someplace so far away.
The map on the foray form was different. Familiar lines marked West Road, Waterfall Trail, Orchard Trail and East Trail that split around a ridge and formed North Fork Trail and South Road. The paler lines curled and coiled in a confusing way until she realized they marked the places she knew to be high ground and ridge lines. She puzzled over the lines that formed a pattern of chevrons and then decided they matched the ravines in the model in her head.
The map had more secrets. Scattered across the paper were little numbered boxes of various colors with a key along the side to decipher their meaning. Cheobawn studied it intently, enraptured by the cleverness and precision of the mind that had invented it. The key indicated that a red box with the number nine represented dubeh leopards. She looked back at the map, letting her eye follow the black line labeled Orchard Trail up the page. A pleased smile touched her face. There was a red box at five clicks just as she had told Tam. The dubeh leopard’s den was known to the Elders.
“Where do you want to go?” Megan asked.
“Two clicks,” moaned Connor. “Where is the fun in that? I thought the whole point of a foray was to get out from under the thumb of all the adults. We’re going to be bumping into patrols every time we turn around.”
“What do you say, Cheobawn?” Tam asked softly, ignoring his newly designated Third. “Shall we show Connor a good time?”
“Why are you asking her?” Connor snorted.
Tam punched him in the shoulder. Connor scowled and rubbed the doubly injured appendage as Tam moved to put his body between Cheobawn and Phillius before he spoke again.
“Quiet,” he hissed. “Do you want everyone to know our business? You guys keep your mouths shut and follow my lead.” Alain and Connor exchanged looks over the top of Tam’s head. Connor raised an eyebrow. Alain shrugged.
“Cheobawn!” hissed Tam, drawing her attention away from the interesting play of power amongst the boys. She looked down at the map and cocked her head. It took her a moment but she managed to superimposed her own mental picture of the world on top of the curling lines. Fun, she thought. Something happy answered her. She put her finger on the spot that made her insides bubble with laughter.
“Too far. That’s five clicks, at least,” Alain said, shaking his head.
Cheobawn moved her finger back toward the dome to a line labeled North Fork Trail.
“If we walk fast, no one will know that we ever went where we should not,” she suggested softly.
“Wow,” Connor breathed, “and I thought girls would make things more boring.”
“I am all up for a good adventure, but if we get in trouble, no one will know where to find us,” Alain stated, a
worried frown on his face.
“No trouble,” Cheobawn said with absolute certainty.
“What a load of dung. Why are we listening to her?” Connor asked. Tam lifted his fist. Connor put his hand over his shoulder and shied away. Tam turned to Megan.
“What does your Ear say?” he asked her. Megan cocked her head to the side and listened, her eyes gone distant. Then she shrugged.
“The way is clear now. No imminent threats,” she said. Tam gave Alain a smug look and then turned to Cheobawn.
“Show the closest trouble, wee bit,” Tam suggested.
Cheobawn took the stylus from Megan and drew seven squares on different spots on the map. Then, consulting the key, she filled in the numbers. All were more than a click from their intended path.
“How do … nobody can do that. Is this some kind of trick?” Alain sputtered.
“Let’s go find out,” Tam said, a sly smile on his face.
Alain and Connor slid suspicious looks from Tam to Megan to Cheobawn and then back again, trying to figure out who was conning whom.
“Boys,” Megan sniffed in annoyance, growing out of patience with their squabbles. She took the stylus from Cheobawn and drew a slightly serpentine line from the dome symbol to the spot just this side of the two click mark on the North Fork Trail. Then she filled in the empty lines below the map.
“I am calling this a foraging mission, with no particular goal in mind. There and back again, gleaning what we can find. Any objections?” she asked.
If they had any, the look she gave the boys made them think twice about voicing them.
Tam considered the map for a moment, thinking hard.
“Alright. This is how it’s going to go. We get outside the eyesight of the dome guards and then double time it to the spot Cheobawn picked, have our fun and then glean on our way back. Nobody expects full baskets on a first time foray and the areas near the dome are always harvested first, so we can say the pickings were lean.”
Cheobawn beamed in delight. The plan was brilliant. Tam was rapidly becoming her favorite person in the whole world, after her Da and Megan, of course. Tam looked around the group. Connor and Alain nodded.
“Fine,” he said, grabbing the form and returning to the desk. He handed it to Phillius, who read it with amusement.
“Wow,” said Phillius dryly, “an oldma could cover more territory. I take back what I said about the hard road, Tam.”
The newly formed Pack’s alpha male returned the older man’s gaze calmly, his face betraying nothing. Cheobawn cocked her head and listened. She liked what she felt coming from the Pack leader’s head. There was a cleverness and a confidence that comforted her. She began to relax a little more. Trusting Tam’s judgment could become dangerously easy.
Phillius looked back at the map and stiffened. Cheobawn bit her lip. It suddenly occurred to her that her boxed numbers did not belong on a foray form and that surely Phillius would suspect who had put them there. The Coven chose to ignore her gifts but the Fathers were painfully aware of them and tried to protect her from her own folly whenever possible. When Phillius lifted his gaze, his eyes found Cheobawn. She smiled, trying to appear the picture of innocence.
Phillius considered her, a worried scowl on his brow. The children held their breath. Despite Mora and Hayrald’s instructions, Phillius had final say on all forays while he sat at this desk. After an endless moment, the Third Prime sighed in resignation and finished filling out his foray report. It seemed to take forever. Finally, he stopped and handed the map back to Tam. Pinning them with a glare, he pulled a blue medallion out of his pocket.
He held it up. They all stared at it as if it were a magical talisman from a fairytale.
“Give this tag to the gate guard and take the red one he gives you. Do not lose your tag. It is the only way to keep track of who is in and who is out of the dome. Gleaner baskets can be found in the Pantries. Remember everything you have been taught and don’t do anything stupid. Mess this up and you all will be staying in, doing drills, until the snow melts next spring, got that?”
“Ye’sir,” the Pack barked smartly, almost dancing in anticipation.
“Go on, get out of here, before I change my mind,” Phillius growled, handing the blue tag to Tam.
Tam snatched it up and herded his Pack out into the diffused sunlight.
Out on the promenade, Alain leapt into the air and whooped like a banshee, coming down with a grin stretching from ear to ear. Tam grinned back at him as he grabbed Connor in a headlock and tousled his hair. A jostling match ensued amongst the boys until Megan cleared her throat loudly.
“Uh, right,” Tam said, breaking away and becoming more serious. “Let’s go. Daylight’s wasting.”
Chapter Three
The gaggle of children crossed the Central Plaza again, their pace somewhere between a jog and a joyous skip. At the Pantry they sorted through the backpacks and baskets hanging on the wall by the door, all the while trying to stay out from underfoot of the day’s kitchen detail who were busy gathering ingredients for the communal evening meal from the bins, baskets and boxes that lined every surface in the room. When everyone had a gleaning basket, Tam went from child to child making sure of the fit, testing shoulder straps and waist straps, making adjustments when needed. He was set to lead them back outside when he stopped suddenly.
“Wait here. I forgot something,” he said. Turning, he ran back into the bowels of the immense storage room. He returned minutes later, his arms heaped high with tins of trail rations, plus five full water skins hung over one shoulder.
“I nearly forgot,” he said with an apologetic shrug, handing them out. “We will miss the midday meal while we are outside.”