“Alright, we’ll start with catching,” he said cheerfully, and he told me to catch the ball with one hand only. He threw the ball against the wall with less force than he’d been throwing it the previous afternoon and I automatically caught it with my right hand. He told me straight away I was a natural and I laughed and rolled my eyes. All I’d done was catch a ball.
As it turned out though, I was much better at catching the ball than I was at throwing it. The ball was made of a soft fibrous material that made its flight difficult to control and I had trouble hitting the section of wall I was supposed to. Morgan, however, could hit it consistently at any pace and with any hand. He had to keep reminding me he’d been playing this game his whole life so I wouldn’t get discouraged. When I improved a little, he suggested we play a simple version of the game with only one scoring area instead of three. He also said I could use both hands to throw and catch, but he decided he’d play with his weaker hand only.
Morgan could have beaten me easily, even with both hands tied behind his back, but he deliberately kept the game close, and he let me win in the very last round which, by then, I didn’t appreciate. I put my hands on my hips and shook my head.
“You let me win,” I said accusingly.
“No, I didn’t,” he said smoothly. I shook my head again.
“I can tell when you’re lying,” I said, and he looked at me for a moment and shook his own head then, before he let out his breath.
“I let you win the last round,” he conceded reluctantly. I smiled.
“And half the other points as well,” I added. He grinned.
“It was more than half,” he said, and we were laughing when I realised we were being watched.
I glanced up at my house. Mirren was standing at my bedroom window and she was watching us with her arms folded. Morgan followed my gaze.
“What is it with you girls and that window?” he said, and when he glanced at me, I suddenly decided it was time for me to go home. Morgan walked me to my gate and he would have come right to my door, but when Jonah appeared at the end of the street carrying grocery bags, I told him to go home because it was pointless both of us being in trouble. He went to argue, but I closed my gate on his argument and ran quickly into my house.
Mirren was waiting for me in my study and I walked straight in and sat down to face her. I’d never been late to a tutoring session before, or to any other session for that matter. I’d never had reason to be, and I suddenly hoped my punishment wouldn’t involve being sent home and having my pendant removed for a week. I’d heard of this punishment being given to students who gave their tutors trouble and I held my breath while Mirren looked at me thoughtfully………But, she unrolled her history parchments calmly and simply began to read to me, and she didn’t mention my late arrival at all. She read to me in the old language, and I leant back in my chair and relaxed a little as I listened to the sound patterns, rather than the words she read, in her soft, melodious voice. For some reason, as she read, she didn’t sound as nervous today and she sat more calmly in her chair as well. Occasionally, she lifted her eyes from the parchment too and, when she did, she looked straight into my eyes which she’d never done before either. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and glanced out the window, but Morgan was long gone from my gate now………..
Our tutoring session finished very quickly, mainly due to the fact that it had been more than half over before it had begun. When our time was up, Mirren rolled the parchment carefully and she still didn’t mention anything about my presence in Morgan’s back garden. She simply informed me, calmly, that I had a combat class in a quarter of a clock turn and she suggested that I should probably change. She spoke to me again with very little of her usual nervousness and, I was so surprised, I was tempted to make another attempt to befriend her. She didn’t give me a chance though. She turned suddenly and walked briskly out of my study, and I watched her go before I returned to my bedroom to dress in my Aldiris clothes. It only took me five minutes to change, and this time, I made sure I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for my tutor with plenty of time to spare. I didn’t intend to be late again………..
CHAPTER 5:
It was Friday morning and the finals orientation was tomorrow but, as I ran with Mirren through the park, it wasn’t the orientation I was thinking about. In between thinking about how much I hated running, I was thinking about Morgan. In fact, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Yesterday, in my late afternoon combat class, I’d nearly ended up with a concussion because I’d been thinking about him instead of concentrating. My instructor, who was a retired quester, hadn’t been impressed, and she’d told me I may as well move permanently to this time segment and forget all about passing my finals if I was going to wander about in some kind of a dream world while I was being attacked. I could see her point.
Last night, after my evening meal, I’d had another scheduled tutoring session with Mirren and I’d thought about Morgan the whole time my tutor had read from her parchment too. I hadn’t heard a word about Synthetic Era history and, at the end of the session, Mirren had looked at me thoughtfully with her clear, blue eyes again, making me wonder if she could read my mind. She’d gathered her parchments together calmly at the end of this session too, and even though she’d glanced at her pendant at the same time as she’d collected them, I’d noticed she hadn’t dropped a single one.
I’d gone to bed thinking about Morgan too. In the darkness of my room, Josh’s music had filled my head as I’d replayed my day, and I’d lain on my back and stared at the pattern of lights on the ceiling while I’d wondered if Morgan was awake too……….
I hated running.
The sun rose slowly and the temperature rose along with the sun. There was dew on the grass beside the path and it glistened in the sunlight as we ran past another runner who listened to music through the head phones in her ears. I glanced at the woman enviously before I glanced at Mirren. She ran beside me in her blissful, running world and I scowled. My lungs were burning already and we still had one more lap of the park to go……..
Morgan was waiting for me outside my gate when I left my house to walk to school, and he asked me straight away if Mirren had made me clean the meal dishes and scrub the kitchen floors for being late to my tutoring class. It took me a moment to realise he was joking, but when I told him she hadn’t mentioned my late arrival at all, he didn’t look surprised.
We talked on the way to school again but Morgan seemed preoccupied this morning. I noticed him, a few times, staring ahead with a slight frown on his face. Eventually, I asked him if there was something wrong and he avoided my question by asking me when I was going to tell Josh I wasn’t going to be returning to school after the holidays.
“I’ll tell him soon,” I said awkwardly, and Morgan surprised me when he wanted to know why I’d made friends with Josh in the first place. I shrugged.
“Evangeline and I didn’t get along and Josh started talking to me between classes. The next thing I knew, we were friends,” I said slowly. “He’s not the kind of person who gets discouraged if you don’t appear that friendly at first,” I added wryly. Morgan rolled his eyes and nodded.
It was when we sat down in our second class of the day that Morgan surprised me again. We were seated and I’d already removed the appropriate books from my school bag when I realised Morgan wasn’t getting any books out at all. He looked at me apologetically when I turned towards him.
“I have to go, Livia. I’m being taken home today,” he said. He didn’t sound too happy about it but he was already getting up from his chair.
“You’re going home? You mean…..Now? Why?” I asked him in surprise. He shrugged uncomfortably as he put his Synthetic Era back pack over his shoulder.
“It’s just a short visit. I’ll be back for the last class of the day,” he said, as he backed away from me, and I frowned and watched him as he turned and quickly left the room. I shook my head and continued to frown. I’d never bee
n taken back to Aldiris in the middle of a school day. When I’d been taken home in time segments where I’d had to attend school, I’d always been taken home on the weekends, and I always stayed in Aldiris overnight as well. Not only was I surprised by Morgan’s sudden departure, I was also surprised by the depth of my disappointment at having to spend the day without him. I looked at the clock on the classroom wall and I found myself counting the number of clock turns until Morgan would return.
“Morgan’s gone home,” I said to Josh, when he entered the classroom and sat down beside me.
“I know. I just passed him in the hall. He’s going to his maternal grandfather’s funeral today. He said to tell you he was sorry he didn’t explain himself, but he doesn’t really want to talk about it,” said Josh, who seemed to think this was perfectly acceptable.
I frowned as I translated the Synthetic Era language to the old language in my mind. Morgan was going home to Aldiris for his mother’s father’s memorial procession. No wonder he’d seemed preoccupied this morning and no wonder he was going home in the middle of a school day. I frowned to myself as the class tutor arrived. He could have told me. Now, I felt terrible for asking him if something was wrong.
I’d only been to one memorial procession and I’d been very young at the time, but I could still vaguely remember it. There were no such things as hospitals in Aldiris, and there was no such thing as aged care or nursing homes either. In fact, death wasn’t hidden away at all. People died in their homes with their families, and I’d witnessed death regularly from an early age when our Champions died in brutal glory on the Tournament field. To become accustomed to death was part of a Champions training and, to a much lesser extent, it was part of a questers training too. Over the last two turns, my weapons tutor had taken me regularly to join tribal and civil battles where I’d had to kill or be killed, and death had been all around me. Death, no matter the age at which it occurred, was seen by Aldirites, and by Denborites too, to be the natural culmination to having fulfilled your purpose in this world. Grief was seen as natural and important too, and a memorial procession was a procession of friends and relatives as they walked from the home of the deceased to the burial site. The mourners walked slowly and they covered their faces with thin, dark cloths as well so they could grieve privately. The Community couldn’t see their tears but they could see who it was who’d need a helping hand in the days to come. When the mourners arrived at the burial site, the thin cloths were removed and these were then burnt in a stone bowl above the grave. This symbolised that life would go on, and when the fire died, the name of the deceased was carved into the underside of the bowl. It remained then, to mark the site of the grave, and chariots returned the mourners individually to their homes. Unlike the people of this Era and the next, our people kept no photographs, films, or holograms to remember our dead. Aldirites remembered their loved ones with only a wooden plaque engraved with a name. We believed visual memories should reside only within the mind and we thought it was unnatural and unhealthy to assist those memories in any way.
I’d attended my mother’s father’s memorial procession too, but I’d hardly known him and had no memory of him at all now. I wondered if Morgan had been close to his mother’s father as I walked slowly through the school halls with Josh………….
Morgan returned, as promised, just before the last class of the day. He appeared in the doorway just in front of the classroom tutor, and he looked at me apologetically as he sat down beside me and took out his books. I looked at him apologetically too which seemed to make him uncomfortable so, after the class was over, I made sure I talked about something other than his unscheduled trip home. Tomorrow, we’d travel together to our finals orientation and, as we walked home slowly, we talked about this instead.
As we turned into our street and approached our gates, Morgan told me he had a full schedule for the afternoon, so we wouldn’t be able to play another game of Aldirite hand ball in his back garden.
“I have tutoring, followed by studying, followed by running, followed by weapons class, and Jonah will be home all afternoon,” he said, and he sounded disappointed that we wouldn’t get to play again.
“I have tutoring too, and I got away with it once, but I probably shouldn’t be late two days in a row,” I said. Morgan grinned.
“Jonah would never forgive me if I was late to one of his tutoring sessions. He only talks about what he’s supposed to for the first five minutes, and then he finds an excuse to lead into his two favourite subjects. Once he gets onto them, he finds it difficult to stop,”
“What are Jonah’s favourite subjects?” I asked him curiously, and Morgan grinned again.
“Techniques he recommends for use in sword play and the secret ingredients he adds when he’s cooking his favourite recipes,” he said cheerfully. I laughed.
“Don’t laugh. Jonah’s cooking is the best I’ve ever tasted,” he said seriously, just as we reached my front gate.
Morgan left me as soon as I keyed my security code into my gate, but before he left, he reminded me that he’d see me tomorrow…..in the park.
A tremor of excitement coursed through me at his words but it wasn’t until I lay in bed that night that I realised I hadn’t felt restless at all since I’d walked to school with Morgan the previous morning. I still listened to Josh’s music though, and while the restlessness seemed to have disappeared, the strange sense of longing that surfaced when the songs filled my head, had grown stronger. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling and, as I listened to the Synthetic Era music, I wondered if Morgan ever found it difficult to fall asleep……….
CHAPTER 6:
The day of orientation had finally arrived. I’d already packed a set of my clothes into my leather travelling bag and I tied the leather drawstrings together before I buckled the straps over the wide, leather pocket. I’d hidden my music in the bottom of the bag and I’d packed a waterproof jacket as well. My hair was braided neatly around the back of my head and I took one last look at myself in the bathroom mirror……..It was almost midday and I was ready to leave.
Mirren was waiting patiently for me at the bottom of the stairs. We’d run around the park, gone out to a combat class, and had a tutoring session already today, and not surprisingly, I’d found it difficult to concentrate in all three of these sessions. I’d been too busy anticipating my trip through time to my Quest house. Mirren had made the midday meal early so I could eat before I left and she’d told me word had been sent from the Quest house that only an evening meal would be provided today. Mirren was still acting differently around me, but I was getting used to her thoughtful gaze now, and when she raised her clear blue eyes and looked directly at me, I ran quickly down the stairs.
“Do you have everything you need?” she asked me briskly, and I nodded and smiled at her before I followed her out of the front door. We opened our gate to find Jonah and Morgan already waiting for us out on the street.
The Quest orientation was scheduled to begin just after midday, and this was to cater for those of our group who’d be leaving their time segments from both setting and rising markers. Morgan and I were leaving from the setting marker in the park, and as we walked briskly through the park gates, the sun reached its midpoint in the sky directly above us.
The park was busy on a Saturday and the marker guards had already set up hazard markers and caution tape. It was sometimes necessary to block the path in order to make sure we’d have an uninterrupted drop. As was expected, for security reasons, our tutors didn’t give us the marker settings for our Quest house until we stood beside the patch of grass that lay in the centre of the park marker.
“Your quest house is located at Vela +2059 rise 205º,” said Mirren, and Morgan and I pulled our pendants from beneath our shirts by their cords before we began to set the dials. I turned the vela constellation until it was in line with the 205º mark, and then I turned my pendant over and added 7000 to the year, before setting the dials carefully.
&n
bsp; Today, it was only Morgan and I who walked off the path onto the grass, and it was at that moment that I realised I’d never travelled without a tutor before. A fresh tremor of excitement overlayed my feeling of anticipation as the air patterns blew at the wisps of my hair, and I glanced at Morgan as Mirren and Jonah reminded us they’d be here to meet us just before set twelve tomorrow. Morgan glanced at me too, and he raised his eyebrows and grinned as the temperature around us dropped suddenly. The air patterns roared in my ears and the park disappeared as it was replaced by the almost unbearable pain that spread right through me to the centre of my bones………
When the darkness was replaced suddenly by colours, I looked around me curiously and we stood in the middle of a walled courtyard surrounded by four burly guards.
“Move to your left and wait for further instructions.”
The brisk voice reminded me a little bit of my mother’s. It had the same commanding undertone and I glanced at the woman who’d spoken. She was older than my mother and very tall. Her grey hair was braided tightly against her head and this only added to the severity of the expression on her face. She wore Aldirite quester clothes and she held herself in such a way that it was clear her age had not diminished her ability in combat, nor her strength. Her bony hands were on her hips and she narrowed her eyes at both Morgan and myself as we joined the other questers already waiting in a small group.
The courtyard was paved with smooth, perfectly square stones, and the dark grey, rendered walls were higher than my head. There was a wooden gate in the back corner of the courtyard and it was painted grey the same as the walls. A number of metal, decorative grills adorned the walls and there were plants with wide, glossy leaves growing in square, terracotta planter boxes. These were placed at regular intervals around the courtyard. The house appeared to back up to a forest and I could see the tops of thick, evergreen, cypress trees above the rendered walls. The sky above us was blue, but hazy, and the air felt thick, although the temperature was cool. The courtyard adjoined a house which was dark grey also and it had narrow, tinted windows bordered by metal trims. The house was two storeys and the second floor was smaller, and it rose from within the dark coloured metal roof sheets that covered the remainder of the first floor.
TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) Page 9