by C. G. Cooper
As we locked stares, I had my own revelation. I would do anything in my power to help Xander find the peace he needed. I realized in that moment, that above the fear and uncertainty, what scared me most was ending up like he could have, alone.
But he had us now, and I tried to tell him that with a grim nod. He returned it and we both smiled. Yes, the five of us. We would work together to help our kind win the coming war. I was only ten, but I knew in my heart that even through battle and blood, I would not leave my brother’s side.
Chapter 14
Choices
No one in our group said a thing until we got back to our room. Once we were in the privacy of our little domain, Lily asked the obvious question, “Is anyone leaving?”
“We’re not,” Jasmine answered, with a look on her face that made it seem like she was daring us to say otherwise.
“I’m staying,” said Xander, crossing his arms across his chest.
“Me too,” I said. Even if I’d had a choice, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
It was Roy who hesitated. I knew he was probably thinking about his parents, about what his life would be like if he went back. We waited as he made his decision, a flurry of emotions running through me as I prayed that Roy would stay. He was our rock, the immovable force that was both kind and strong. We needed him and, I assumed, that he needed us.
“I’m staying,” he said finally. I could tell by the sad look in his eyes, which was totally the opposite to the smile on his face, that it had been a hard decision. He loved his parents as much as I loved mine, maybe more.
Roy put his large calloused hand in the middle of our little circle, and one by one we followed suit, placing ours on top of the others. When we were all connected, Roy said, “As one.” This time his eyes were sure, determined.
“As one,” the rest of us repeated in unison.
+++
While everyone else was getting ready for bed, I told the others that I had to go to the clinic to get some more Band-Aids. I said I’d pick up some extras for them. It wasn’t the first time I’d made the trip, what with the constant blisters on my feet from all the running, but this time I had a detour in mind.
When I got to my parents’ room, I listened first, happy not to hear crying or screaming, and then knocked lightly. Footsteps sounded from the other side followed by Dad opening the door.
“Hey, buddy. What are you doing out?”
I shrugged and stepped into the room. There wasn’t really a reason for me to visit them other than the fact that thinking about Xander and Roy’s parents had made me think about my own.
“That was pretty cool what you said at dinner,” I said.
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Ten-year-olds don’t get talked to like that.”
“Well they should.”
I nodded. “I was wondering, the kids that ask to leave, how will you keep them safe, them and their families?” It was one of the first things that had popped into my head after Dad’s speech. I didn’t know how many gifted adults there were, but I thought that maybe we outnumbered them. If that was the case, there was no way they could post an adult Destructor near each family.
He took a few seconds to answer. “Finding our kind isn’t easy. Sure there are ways to do it through technology, but that’s only if a gifted individual somehow makes a scene, like throwing a truck or saving someone’s life. We think Jacee Trevane is tapped into a huge network that was designed just for that. But the kids we send home know not to reveal themselves. They’ll know that if they do, they’ll not only be putting themselves at risk, but also their loved ones.”
“That’s your plan?” I thought for sure there’d be more. It was a big risk assuming that a bunch of ten-year-olds could keep a promise (no offense to kids my age).
“That’s part of it.”
“Can you tell me the other part?”
He surprised me for the second time when he nodded. “There’s only one surefire way to find our kind. If our plan goes like we want, we’ll be able to secure that asset for the coming war.”
Asset? “Huh?”
“How can I explain this…okay, you remember when we bought that metal detector and went out to my boss’ farm to look for Civil War bullets and stuff?”
I nodded.
“Okay, now imagine you had a gifted detector. It could tell you exactly where every gifted person was on Earth.”
“Does that really exist?”
“It does.”
“And what does it look like?”
“It’s actually not an it. It’s a she.”
“You mean a person?”
Holy cow! If there was a person that could find any one of us, that would be powerful.
“She is a person. She’s a mystic.”
“What’s a mystic?”
“Sort of a person that has visions and can do neat things with her mind.”
“Like read minds?” I asked. That was a power I’d always wanted. That and to stop time.
“Not really. Her power centers around one thing, us.”
“Is she gifted too?”
“No.”
Now that didn’t make any sense. “But you said she has powers.”
“She does. Just not like ours. Quick history lesson: for as long as there’ve been the gifted, there have also been an order of mystics who occasionally help us out. It’s kind of a co-existence thing. Like us, we don’t have a clue where they came from. Nature, or someone more important, must have decided that the world needed some extra help, and at some point the gifted and the mystics came to be. Well, over the centuries the mystics have come to our aid, but only when we needed them most. Like during the fall of the Western Roman Empire, they were our advisors and found the Destructors who were threatening our people. Most recently, she helped us find the kids we brought here.”
I realized that my dad had switched from saying ‘they’ to ‘she.’ “How many mystics are there?”
“Just one.”
“So why don’t you use her to find the bad guys too?”
Dad’s lips pursed. “That was the plan, but as the old saying goes, not everything goes according to plan.”
My mind was spinning. There were too many questions to ask so I stuck to the most obvious. “What happened?”
He ran a hand through his hair and said, “We lost her.”
I inhaled. “How?”
“We think she left on her own. One day she was here and the next all her things were gone.”
“Do you think the other gifted took her?” I asked, terrible consequences flooding my brain.
“No. We wouldn’t be if she had been taken.”
“Why not?”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “From what we know of the other side, and what we know isn’t much, they capitalize on every opportunity they can get their hands on. If they had the mystic, they could’ve easily found out that so many of us were here. And if they did, and they had their forces assembled, there wouldn’t be anything to stop them from attacking.”
“But you said there was a plan. What is it?”
Dad didn’t answer right away. “We have a couple ideas of where she went and the plan is to find her and bring her back.”
“What if she doesn’t want to come back?”
Dad shrugged. “Then we’re in real trouble.”
“And what about finding the new kids, the ones that are just turning ten?”
Dad’s face scrunched in confusion, then his eyes lit up like he’d found the answer. “Right, I forgot that you don’t know. For reasons we’ve never been able to find, the number of newly gifted ebbs and flows. Some years there aren’t any ten-year-olds who find out they have a gift. That’s one of the most important things the mystics have done for us. They’re kind of like an alarm that rings, telling us there’s someone who’s about to find out they’re gifted.”
I didn’t know whether that was creepy or cool.
“And this time was different?”
>
Dad chuckled. “WAY different. With almost one hundred newly gifted, that’s more than any time in history.”
“What about when you found out about your gift?”
“There were two of us, your mom and me.”
“And you met here?” I asked, trying to picture my parents as ten year olds, and then I had the strange thought that maybe that could happen to me too. Would I find the girl I was going to marry on the shores of Lake Como? Now that was too weird to think about, so I pushed the thought out of my head.
“We did meet here,” my dad said with a little smile, the kind people make when they’re remembering something good. “Since we were the only two in our class, we spent a lot of time together. She thought I was cocky and I thought she was a know-it-all, but time has a way of changing feelings.”
He was right. Look at what had happened between me and Xander.
“So if you don’t have the mystic, you can’t find the new kids and you don’t know when there will be more?”
“Bingo,” Dad said.
“What about the other mystics? Why can’t you ask them?”
“Because there aren’t any more. She’s the last one.”
“But you said—”
“I know. In the past there have been more, but now there’s not.”
That wasn’t good. What if something happened to her? What would we do then?
“And that’s why you have to find her?”
“Yeah, that’s why we have to find her.”
Dad smiled like he’d just told me a joke I didn’t get.
“What?” I asked, frowning.
“I said ‘we’ have to find her.”
I still didn’t get it. “I know, you and the other adults have to find her.”
Dad laughed and I frowned harder. I didn’t like it when people made fun of me, and he knew that.
“Sorry, buddy, I couldn’t resist. What I meant to say is that I’ve been getting good reports from Kennedy. He says your team has really come along, that you’re doing better than the other teams at working together and helping each other out.”
My spirits perked up at that comment. “Are we ranked high?” Me and the rest of my group of five had assumed that the adults were ranking us, and that one day soon they would tell us where we stood.
“No rankings here, bud. I changed that when I took over. While it may be good for older kids and adults, the ranking system sometimes got out of hand for newly gifted. So like I was saying, you guys are at the top of the heap and we’d like to see if you’re ready to help us find the mystic.”
Now that really surprised me. I thought we’d have months or even years of training before we were allowed to do anything with the adults.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Dad said with an emphatic nod. “You think you can help explain it to your team?”
I nodded, not quite sure what my team’s reaction would be.
“I know this is a lot to take in, but I have faith in you, son.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded again as my dad gave me a hug.
“Now get to bed. Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day!” he said, walking me to the door.
As he reached for the handle, the door swung open and my mom barged in, pulling behind her a rolling suitcase, the one she bought right before we went to the beach the year before.
She looked even more surprised than us, and dropped the handle of the suitcase. I bent down to pick it up. The bag was heavy, probably full.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Hi, honey,” she replied, giving my dad a look that told me she didn’t like finding me in her bedroom. “Off to bed?”
I nodded, handing the bag back to her. She set the bag aside and squatted down to my level. “Give me a hug, Benji.”
I accepted the embrace, wondering what she doing with the suitcase. As far as I knew she’d already unpacked all her things in her room. The answer came a moment later. “I’m not sure when I’ll see you again.”
Pushing myself back so I could see her face, I asked, “Where are you going?” I looked up at my dad and he had the same look of surprise that I did. “Where is she going, Dad?”
Mom turned my face back to her. “I have to get help. The other night, when I yelled at you and your dad…I…” her voice was cracking and there were tears in her eyes. “I never want that to happen again.”
“Where are you going?” asked Dad, bending down to join us.
“There’s a Healer in Switzerland who specializes in post-traumatic-stress cases.”
“You mean Fritz?” Dad asked.
“Yes. I’ve already spoken with him and he’s waiting for me.”
“But I thought…you said you would try…” Probably for the first time since I could remember, my dad was at a loss for words.
“I know what I said.” She touched his face with her hand and held it against his cheek. “But I’m not getting better. I need time to focus on me, for all of us.”
I could tell there was more that my dad wanted to say. How could he not? I found that my mouth was shut as tight as if someone had stapled my lips together. My heart was racing and my stomach felt like it was in my shoes. Why was this happening? What would we do without her? How long would she be gone?
She hugged me again and then kissed my dad on the lips.
“There’s a car coming in five minutes. I have to go,” she said, standing and grabbing her bag. Mom took one last look at both of us, and left.
Chapter 15
All In
My dad and I stood there for a couple minutes, not saying anything, like we expected Mom to turn around and come back. She didn’t. Every messed up emotion I had a word for ran through me as I waited. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Jealousy. More fear.
It wasn’t an hour before when I knew in my heart that I could do anything as long as my parents were with me. Now Mom was gone, and for who knew for how long. Did people with the same illness she had ever get well? I didn’t know and it looked like Dad was too shocked to speak.
“I’m going back to my room,” I said, letting go of his hand. He didn’t hold me back, and didn’t even say goodnight as I closed the door quietly behind me.
I took my time, trying to push away the hurt left by Mom’s sudden trip to Switzerland. At least she was going to the best. Maybe she’d return soon, quick enough that she could help us find the mystic. In my belly I knew she wouldn’t. Healing took time, especially the kind she needed.
When I walked into the room everyone else was just getting in bed. Xander looked up, “Did you get any extra Band-Aids? I just found another blister.”
“I…uh, they were closed.”
That made everyone turn. I was a terrible liar. Maybe if I changed the subject.
“We have a mission,” I blurted, trying to remember everything my dad had told me.
“A mission to get more band aids?” asked Jasmine sarcastically. The others sniggered.
“No, a real mission. Come over to the couch and I’ll tell you.”
I wasn’t sure how much Dad would want me to tell them. They’d find out soon anyway, so I decided it didn’t matter. They needed the truth. Besides, I needed to think about something other than Mom.
Once they’d all joined me on the circular couch I told them what Dad had explained to me about the mystic. Their eyes went wide as I described the history of mystics and the gifted, and why she was so important. She was, after all, the last one. But the real kicker came when I said, “And they think we’re one of the best teams, and they want us to help find her.”
“Wow,” said Lily, grabbing her sister’s hand.
“Awesome,” said Xander, punching his fist into his palm.
Roy looked like he was taking it all in, processing what I’d said. By then I could tell when he was going to say something, so I waited.
“When do we leave?” he asked. The others nodded their heads anxiously.
“My…
um, Tim said that we were leaving in a couple days.”
If anyone caught my slip they didn’t say anything. I really did almost say, “My dad.”
“I’ll bet they’ll give us some final training, maybe go over routes and plans,” said Roy like he’d done such things before. No one argued.
“Probably,” I said like I knew what I was talking about even though I didn’t.
“Do you think they’ll send any other teams with us?” asked Jasmine.
“I bet we’ll be going with some adults,” Roy answered with confidence.
We sat there for a few moments, lost in our own thoughts. Xander looked the most anxious, like a runner bouncing from foot to foot at the starting line. The twins wore matching thin smiles, the little black widows ready to pick up the scent. Roy was the most serious of the four. I wish I could’ve read his mind.
“I think we should get some sleep,” he said, rising from the couch. “I bet they’re gonna whoop us good tomorrow.”
We all agreed. I rushed to finish getting ready for bed and the others slid under their covers. As I drifted off that night, my mind bounced between two images: my mother climbing a snow-topped mountain, and a tangle of jungle vines, the screeching of unseen animals calling to me in the night.
+++
When Kennedy came to give us the news in the morning the others pretended to be really surprised. Lily and Jasmine even asked a bunch of questions like, “What can we wear?” and “What should we bring?” and “Will it be cold?”
The questions and our fake surprised faces must have done the trick because Kennedy didn’t pull me aside as we headed to the dining hall for a fast breakfast. I swear it only took us two minutes to eat. We were out the door and down the stairwell in no time, excited and nervous to see what was waiting.