Hawthorn’s Distinctions Among Power Classes
Healers
Then, there was what I was looking for. Five books under the tag Hunters that I pulled down from the shelf and skimmed in the darkness. Only ten pages long was A Complete List of Hunter Birth Locations, and I placed that back on the shelf. Next was Hunters in History, and I took it to a small table, casting a look at the clock. Fifteen minutes until opening now, and I skimmed the pages, searching for clues. Most the information concerned figures throughout the centuries, often kept by kings and queens to track unfaithful subjects, and in the turn of the twentieth century, employed by debt collectors seeking to exact money from wealthy clients. Casinos kept them in their employ, and the vast majority had trouble sensing any sort of powers more than a hundred yards away.
And there, underneath, was a description written by one of the more successful collectors, detailing his abilities in tracking down his client’s targets.
Imagine you are in a crowded room, one filled with hundreds of guests. You are holding your own conversation, but there are dozens of others in your immediate vicinity. With concentration, you can focus on one of them and discern what they are saying. Or, you can listen for a particular word, a keyword in all the conversations in the room. And when you hear it, you pinpoint where that word came from. That word is the target, and when it is spoken is the usage of powers. First, you have to know what the word sounds like, you have to be looking for it, that’s the seed. Then you have to wait for it to be spoken, where it lingers for some time. And you strike.
I frowned and turned the page, continuing to read as it mentioned some of the major criminals that Hunters had eventually tracked down and placed behind bars. There were names I recognized, particularly those who were given life-long sentences, and those that were from far before my own birth. And then there was an account from the criminal Demasti, who had led a squad of three Hunters across the entire country in a string of robberies over ten years before they finally caught him emptying a vault. After four years, he was released in return for his crucial information on how he kept out the Hunters at bay, only to return to jail six years after that for a murder case.
To escape, it read, you have to know your enemy. The Hunters, they find prey by singling them out from among the many. Typically, the many are quiet. So I made sure no matter where I went, the many were loud. So loud, they drowned out my own scent. And there, the Hunters couldn’t single me out, their senses were overloaded. And that, that’s how I got away. Is that what you wanted to hear? Can I go now?
I closed the book and turned to the clock. The library would be opening in just a minute, so I tucked the book under my elbow and returned the way I had come, passing the bewildered library assistant as she passed me on the stairs. I had found what I needed.
And I knew where I had to go.
Chapter 12
Before I acted, I had to test Arial’s father’s powers, to see if he could sense me as he claimed.
I decided on a large park, near the edge of the city, approximately a mile away from Arial’s house. There were dozens of entry and exit points, so I could escape even if the situation became out of control. And more importantly, there was a parking garage at the edge, five stories tall, with the top exposed to open air. From that vantage point, I’d be able to watch the entire park below, but it would be near impossible to be spotted. And to prevent The Hunter from attaining a stronger sense of my powers, I chose a large pond for my location, with no boats or watercraft nearby.
If he wanted a better scent, he would have to swim for it.
I stood on the shoreline, my shoes sinking a half inch into mud, the field behind me deserted save for a few walkers on the far end, a collection of trees separating me from them and ensuring privacy. There was a light breeze coming from their direction, just enough for me to catch snippets of conversations, but not enough to understand any of them.
Taking a deep breath, I flicked a dark sphere into existence in my right hand, feeding it sunlight as it grew. It was the first I had created since the one that crashed through the apartment building, and I stared at it curiously, focusing on how I kept the sphere alive. I realized that I was actively pushing the space at its center down, and the reason the last one had exploded was that it had been too far away for me to maintain. That I kept the spheres alive, and without me, they couldn’t survive.
In my hand, the sphere grew heavier, and I aimed towards the center of the pond, knowing that was about as far as I could throw accurately. Then I launched it, watching as the water reached upwards to meet it as it fell, a hole in the pond left static where it fell through. And I started to run, tucking a second sphere away above my wrist and making a beeline through the forest to the parking garage, turning back halfway to see the pond.
There, directly underneath where I had thrown it, water was swirling in a whirlpool the size of my old apartment, pulling in lily pads and floating twigs from the outer edges. And just before I turned back to focus on my escape, the sphere destabilized and exploded.
A column of water and mist shot upwards, creating the equivalent of a tsunami for an ecosystem that small, raining down water, dirt, and bewildered frogs into the field beyond. The walkers at the far end shrieked as they were soaked, their clothes dripping as they scrambled away, pointing towards the pond where bubbles still gave the surface the appearance of boiling.
By now, I had reached the garage and took the steps two at a time to the top, panting once I reached five stories. And I crouched behind a trash can at the edge to watch the scene below.
Flashing blue lights converged on the scene in minutes, eight cars coming from all corners of the city, and the figure of Arial’s father stepped out of the first one to run the short distance from parking lot to pond, stopping at the edge just where I had stood. He walked the circumference, eyes at the center, and turned to shout at a cop that had just arrived, her chest rising and falling quickly from the exertion of the run. She stepped forwards, holding her hands in front of her, and pushing them apart as the water of the pond reacted, splitting down the center at her command. The Hunter stepped in the gap between the two walls of water, walking forwards towards the center where a crater had formed in the bottom on the pond, scooping out a portion of mud and holding it up to his face. Then he nodded, leaving the pond as the woman let the walls collapse and the water rushed together at the middle.
As he had inspected the pond, a dozen policemen combed the park and now brought five children before him, all male and roughly my size. After a quick glance, he shook his head, then they returned to their parents just a few feet away, their faces crossed with concern. Then he pointed towards the several areas of thick forest, one of them where I had run, and the police dispatched to comb through vegetation.
I sighed in relief when they returned with nothing, and cursed as I realized that my plan with the pond had failed – that he now had a stronger scent of me to target. But there was another part of my plan that had been successful – in the pocket of space above my wrist, there still was a black sphere that I had tucked away. And that even in eyeshot, Arial’s father was unable to sense it. The power required to keep it alive must have been too minimal for his notice. Creating one and exploding one took far more effort.
I watched as they departed, and climbed down after a half hour, making my way to a location far more familiar to me. The tree by the academy, where I climbed once more in its branches, and overlooked the empty recess field. I called a new sphere to life, feeding it light and leaves, watching it grow larger and feeling it grow heavier, but keeping it smaller than the last. And I tossed it into the school yard, the place where I had watched dozens of students exercising their powers in high concentration, relinquishing my hold on it before it hit the ground, the flash nearly blinding me as the sound shook the school door. This one was nowhere near as loud as the one that had exploded outside my apartment, and the enclosure around the recess field contained the sound well instea
d of letting it reverberate in the alleys in the surrounding area.
The door opened, and a teacher stuck her head out, her eyes squinting against the sun, looking left and right. Then I heard her voice as she walked back inside, and a student protesting.
“Samuel, I don’t know what you did this time, or how you disrupted class, but you march down to the principal’s now!”
I smiled, knowing Samuel as a student with a knack for pyrotechnics, and an even bigger knack for trouble.
Then the door shut and I waited, my ears pricked for sirens that never came even after a half hour, and climbed down from the tree. I walked in front of the academy as I departed, watching as two workers painted over the name on the front sign in broad strokes and started adding new letters where the old ones had been.
Chapter 13
I took the bus twelve miles north of the city center, spending near all the money I had left on a ticket. Considering I had started with nothing as valuable as paper money, exhausting it had not been difficult, especially considering the cost of the meager late lunch I had bought from a vending machine at the station.
I frowned as we bumped along the road, the occasional pothole nearly throwing me from my seat, a wide berth from the other passengers formed around me from what I assumed was the smell I had accumulated over the past day. As I stared out the window, the buildings became more and more sparse, greater sections of forests and fields filling the gaps between them, and my memory recognizing less of the landmarks that flashed by. Part of me wondered if it might be wiser just to stay outside the city, to learn the extent of my powers away from The Hunter, and to return when I was stronger. But I shook my head – though I would be stronger, I still would not know how to fight, and I would miss any clues about my mother’s disappearance that might surface. Then there was the matter of food and water, plus shelter. And if events did not go according to plan, I reasoned, I could always scrounge up enough coins from the cracks in the sidewalk to return here.
Near the end of the route I stepped off, waving at the driver as he scrunched his nose, choosing the stop for a long-abandoned superstore with a parking lot that extended around the back. Taking a shopping cart with three wheels and rust that flaked away like red snow, I pushed it around the back, checking for signs of human life and finding none. Chains circled the doors of the entrances and exits, and a modest collection of hubcaps were piled under an overhang, long abandoned by their owner, that I placed into the cart. Above, the sun had started to set behind me, still high enough in the sky for a few hours of light but dragging the temperature with it in its descent.
When I reached behind the superstore, it too was deserted save for the tread marks of cars that came to spin doughnuts in the abandoned lot. Leaving the cart at the center, I placed the hub caps around it and retreated twenty feet away, closing my eyes as I envisioned what I would have to do. That I would have to place the force point directly above the cart like a magnet, to focus it as close as I could so it gripped it tight, and move it quickly enough to prevent disturbing the hub caps.
Concentrating, I pushed the space above the cart with my power, forcing it downwards as the three wheels left the ground. But before I had the chance to swing the force point upwards, the hubcaps spun on their axes and leapt upwards, sailing past the point to scatter across the lot as I released it. I sighed and reached out to place a point in front of the nearest hubcap, scraping it along the concrete back to where it had started, careful to keep the force weak enough that the cart wouldn’t tip. Then I repeated it for the second cap, and the third, sweat beading down my forehead as I focused, keeping the actions delicate, unlike the punch of generating dark spheres. And when all the caps were in place, I tried to lift the cart again, swearing as the hub caps scattered once more, and resetting them back in the center through several minutes of effort.
The next time, I thought about the way that I bent the space above the cart – earlier, it had been like a salad bowl, the edges gradually flowing away from a depressed region in the center. And I focused on tightening the bowl into a cone, only letting the tip graze the handle of the cart, and laughing as the back two wheels of the cart rose into the air. My jaw tightened as I focused on continuing to pull it upwards, the exertion of keeping the force point bundled tight together far more draining than simply pushing the space inwards, the feeling similar to the first time I had gripped a pencil to form letters and felt the muscles in my hand cramp. I released the cart after it had risen ten feet, letting bounce back to the concrete as it lost another wheel that wobbled away in a long semi-circle. Then I repeated the action until it grew more comfortable, dragging the cart left and right, and spinning it in a circle, the rusted joints breaking apart when I dropped it the last time.
Taking a breath, I raised both my hands, constructing points above two adjacent hubcaps, raising them in the air and circling them around each other, my forehead wrinkling as the loops grew tighter and faster. Once, in one of the short time periods where we had more money, my mother had enrolled me in a week’s work of piano lessons – and now, commanding two force points felt the same as trying to command my fingers to play different notes at the same time, as if I were splitting my thoughts into two interacting parts. Possible, but far more difficult than controlling just one.
Then I turned, flinging the hubcaps over my shoulder towards the abandoned store, smashing them through a panel of windows high above the ground and losing control of the hubcaps as they became too distant, only to hear them ricochet around the insides of the store. I nodded, looking to the cart and the caps, knowing that I lacked the finesse to control them to the best of my ability. But for now, this was all I needed – and perhaps a lack of control would play out in my favor for the next stage of my plan.
The bus ride home was shorter than the one out of the city, since I stopped five miles north of the center, at a gas station that had bars over its windows and flickering lights on the inside. My stomach rumbled – it had been a full day since the meal at Arial’s, a day full of activity with little sustenance along the way. Now it would be time to fill up on the rows of snacks, hoping that if I consumed enough of them it would at least feel like I had eaten something nutritious.
I opened the door, navigating the grimy tiles that had once been white in a prior decade, approaching the rickety racks holding foods higher in calories than nature had ever intended. Reaching forward, I grabbed a bag of chips, one with a particularly noisy wrapper. And I opened it.
“Hey, you!” shouted the owner from behind the counter, his eyes drifting away from the magazines as he pointed a chubby finger at me. “What the Hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Eating dinner,” I responded, spraying fragments of salt and vinegar his direction, and jamming an entire candy bar in my mouth.
“You gotta pay for that first!” he yelled as I tossed the bag on the ground and popped open another, letting a few stray puffs dance across the ground as his lip curled.
“Don’t feel like it,” I answered, throwing a pack of candy at him. “Screw off. What is it, like two bucks? I’m hungry.”
“Damn kids,” swore the man, hopping off a faded stool that creaked under his weight and ducking below the counter, a tuft of greasy hair stuck to the side of his reddening face. “Pay up, before I—”
I raised a hand, sweeping it in the direction of a display of beer that towered towards the ceiling, bringing it smashing down between me and the man just as I had pulled the cart earlier, the bottles shattering as liquid spilled out in a bubbling river on the floor. His eyes widened as I raised my other hand, the hot dog cart screeching as it fell atop the bottles, popping any that had survived the fall.
“I said,” I repeated, my voice low and my eyes squinting towards him as he backed away to the counter, “I was hungry.”
Chapter 14
“Shit, shit, eat what you want, kid!” shouted the owner as he jammed his finger repeatedly into a button behind the counter and taquitos flew a
t him like arrows with a swipe of my hand. And I took his advice – taking care to rustle the occasional shelf with a force point as he fled outside, sliding across the spilled beer in his haste, and slamming the door shut behind him. For all I knew, this could be my last food for days, and I made sure to stock up.
When the blue lights flashed outside, I launched a stream of soda cans out the window for good measure, aiming just short of the cars to shower them with cola as each exploded like a miniature bomb, acting as if I was tossing them nonchalantly over my shoulder as I raided the refrigerators.
“He came out of nowhere!” the owner was yelling outside to the several police officers who had arrived at the scene. “I ain’t but only known one, but I know a Telekinetic when I see one! Nearly killed me, and my store is in ruins! Damn, do something!”
Just then, I looked up, my face portraying surprise as three officers cautiously approached the door, reaching my hands out in front of me to drag an ATM in front of them, purposely making it grind and screech more than necessary and forcing my arms to shake with effort.
“Son, just come on out—” started one of the officers as I toppled the machine, slamming it into the ground, and turned to run out the back exit. But before I reached it, the door exploded open, the officer reaching inside to toss the ATM back into the store as if it was made of cardboard. I shrieked, reaching upwards to make it rain ceiling tiles, releasing dust that had accumulated for longer than I had been alive and creating a smokescreen. Then I reached the back door, ramming through the Emergency Exit bar, and toppling into the parking lot. There, just twenty feet in front of me, was the owner’s car – about twenty years ago, it would have been considered a luxury vehicle, but now sported rust to complement the racing stripes.
Star Child: Places of Power Page 5