Blaze (The High-Born Epic)

by Jason Woodham

  After some initial confusion, the children began entering through the gates. A few soldiers helped organize them into lines. Then, they began giving out cans of food, and pieces of cloth. They also made sure to give each child a new High-Born history book. Harold looked at the platform around the pyramid, and noticed that there were still many more crates.

  “Now,” Colonel Foxx said. “If you are the parent of a child from road two; four; six; eight; ten; or twelve, please send forth your child now.”

  Harold watched as Cooper shooed Scape towards Aunt Nean who bent down and he quickly came to her hands and sat at her feet. Then Cooper and Ollie walked through the gates. He saw many other children enter the area as well, but he eventually saw Scott and Cooper standing by each other in line. As the children began exiting the area with their rations, and books, he caught a glimpse of Maggie as well. She had on Ollie’s old dress and seemed overjoyed as she ran back to Phil, showing him a can of ham that she had gotten from one of the soldiers.

  As Harold looked around the circle, he began to realize something. He was noticing things that he never had before. The movements of the soldiers, the slight hum of the engines of the gunships, and how they held their guns, but the thing he noticed the most was the wrongness of it all, and how the High-Born treated them.

  As he looked across the soldiers and their equipment, he found himself suddenly resenting the Low-Born trade initiative. Since he had saved Ollie from the pytheel, things just seemed to make more sense than they did before. He understood the inner workings of events on a deeper level than he ever had. As he watched the High-Born group fly away on their gunships, he thought about Colonel Foxx’s description of the initiative.

  It was a complete farce of hope.

  “You want to go to the bonfire tonight?” Sarah asked.

  He had been so enraptured in his thoughts that Harold looked at her, dazed, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

  She smiled as he took her hand and they walked toward road number twelve along with a small group of laughing and frolicking teenagers. Some of the younger children tagged along, including Cooper and Scott, but they were probably the youngest members of the group. Scape padded along with the two of them, but seemed to keep his distance from Scott, much preferring Cooper’s calmer demeanor.

  Harold was actually surprised at how good of a job that the two little boys had been doing at keeping his secret because no one seemed the wiser. However, Harold did notice that several of the other boys cast strange glances at him, and the girls were looking at him and whispering in one another’s ears. Harold noticed that Sarah pulled herself closer to him as she gave the girls a threatening look.

  “What have you been eating, Harold?” one of the other boys said as he smacked Harold’s arm.

  “What do you mean?” Harold asked.

  “You know what I mean,” Sam replied.

  “Same old thing,” Harold answered. “I’ve just been plowing a lot this week.”

  “Me too,” Sam said. “But I haven’t grown that much.”

  Harold shrugged, “I guess I’ve just hit a growth spurt.”

  “Well, I hope I hit one soon,” Sam said as he turned his attention away from Harold and walked to the group of girls.

  “Do I look that much different?” Harold whispered to Sarah.

  “You’re definitely bigger than you used to be,” she whispered. “You’re not any taller, but your muscles are way different. You could be mistaken for a High-Born if you were taller.”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “One of the High-Born guards saw it too.”

  “You don’t think they’ll take you away?” her eyes were suddenly full of fear.

  “They probably would’ve gotten me tonight if they were going to do that,” he replied. “I’m going to start wearing a shirt underneath my overalls to hide it, because I don’t think it’s finished yet.”

  “How do you know?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “But something more is coming.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “I really don’t know,” he answered. “But I feel like other things are going to happen to me. I just can’t explain it.”

  Sarah regarded him silently and then they just walked for a while, small talking with the other teenagers until they arrived at a small clearing in the woods. There was a pile of broken branches with piles of pine straw and dried moss beneath it. All around the clearing were several mounds of chopped wood. Sam pulled out two pieces of flint and began banging them together while standing over the tinder under the pile of branches.

  Harold watched him struggle for about a minute, and was just about to give him a bit of unknown help, but the straw flamed up. In but a few more moments, the young men of Foxx Hole had the fire roaring furiously. Sam pulled out his harmonica and began playing a tune. Another one of the boys from road number eleven named Dylan pulled out his banjo and began strumming along with his tune. Though it took them several tries, they eventually put together a decent melody.

  Sarah grabbed Harold by the hand and pulled him into the clearing. Someone behind Harold clapped and another whistled as Sarah put her arms around his neck. Harold smiled as he intertwined his fingers at the small of her back. They pulled each other close and began gently swaying to the music, and in a few moments, there were several other young men and women dancing in the flickering light of the bonfire.

  “I don’t know why they all like to do that so much,” Scott said as he threw a limb into the fire.

  “Yeah, I know,” Cooper replied as he watched the ember of a leaf float up into the sky. “Girls are so gross.”

  Chapter 19

  As the days turned into weeks and the weeks became four months, life in Foxx Hole did not change much. In the mornings, Harold often went to the woods to practice, and Scape even occasionally went with him, but more times than not Harold was alone when he practiced. Though the basics of his abilities did not change, he became extremely adept at the use of his powers. He eventually learned to send waves of flames a little farther than 200 yards from him, and keep them confined to a fairly narrow beam. He found that when he did that, he could burn through large trees in mere seconds. He was always careful to check his surroundings before he practiced this. As far as he could tell, no one had ever seen him because he often practiced in different spaces. There were a few close calls, but he simply air-burned away before they could see him.

  He also learned to use a stick as a decent representation of a sword. It worked very well since the piece of wood was merely an object on which to focus his heat and fire. The stick did not do the cutting—the heat did that. He could slice through young trees with no problems. As time wore on, he began to realize that all of the felled trees would look suspicious. So, he made sure to burn the remnants, but after he had destroyed a few dozen trees in locations all around Foxx Hole, he decided to just practice on the air and save the trees.

  Air-burning to several different locations in rapid succession became one of his favorite things to do, especially when he combined it with the flipping and twisting. He often fantasized about fighting a lot of High-Born soldiers who were all shooting at him as he blinked in and out of existence. He would pick random trees to represent High-Born soldiers, and as bounced around the forest, he would appear behind them, and kick, punch, or hit them with a stick. He could keep it up for more than an hour if he so needed, but on one particular day, Harold poured his fire into his muscles, and he stayed at it for more than two hours before he needed a break.

  As his morning practices became part of his daily routine, he would often go see Sarah in the afternoons, and sometime she would come to Aunt Nean’s house. Usually, they ate with each other’s families at least two or three times a week, and they would often take walks in the woods, and sometimes they hunted for arrowheads in the fields. They even found a few, but none of them were complete pieces. A couple of times they even danced together, listening only to the music of the forest as t
hey held one another.

  On a few occasions, they took the children swimming. Ollie, however, wouldn’t let them out of her sight, and though they wanted to be by themselves, they understood. Harold was glad that she would still even go to the river, but she was always braver when he was around. It often touched something deep inside of Harold when the belief in her eyes met his eyes. Harold could see there that she believed he could do anything. What bothered Harold even more was that he often saw the same look coming from Cooper and Scott too.

  On most nights, Aunt Nean continued to teach Harold, and his progress remained remarkable. By the end of the first month, he had completed both the Algebra II book and the English book as well. He could see that Aunt Nean was overjoyed with his development. She said that he had completed in a month what took students from the Old World an entire year to finish. Aunt Nean then revealed to Harold that she had an even more advanced book of Calculus. It had many pages missing, and some of the pages were torn and ragged, and difficult to read. Aunt Nean confessed that she did not know much about it, but she told Harold that he could probably do well if he thought about it. For the most part, Harold left the books in Scott’s secret base alone.

  The weekly meetings scarcely changed at all. There was always a speech and the monthly Vista. The High-Born did, however, show a different version of the events now and then, but it was basically the same. It was the same information presented in a slightly different way. After the weekly meetings, soldiers would put up strange posters though.

  Harold thought they were funny because they often showed a smiling Low-Born in overalls shaking the hand of a smiling High-Born in battle gear. Most of the posters had High-Born fighter jets shooting down an A.I. Drone. Some of the older folks said that very similar posters used to be all over Foxx Hole when they were younger. Most of them had been torn down over the years. Colonel Foxx issued a decree of a public whipping if they were taken down, and the people of Foxx Hole were mostly closely knit together, so they would not tear down someone else’s poster for the fear and guilt of having punishment placed upon their neighbor.

  On one particularly hot morning, just after the automated harvesters had left his fields barren, Harold walked to the woods and pulled on his burlap shorts. He had only burned one pair since Sarah helped him figure out to control the heat and not the flames. The only reason that had happened was because he had been very tired one day, and had kept pushing himself in an extended session of air-burning, flipping, and hitting trees. He had momentarily lost control and had burned them off that day, but since then, it hadn’t happened anymore.

  As always, he looked around, then closed his eyes and listened, pouring his fire into his hearing. During his quiet time, he had learned that his fire could actually enhance any of his senses. He could make himself see, hear, smell, and even taste better if he called his fire into those areas, but at the moment he was using it on his ears. The only thing he noticed that was out of place was a slight buzzing off somewhere far to his left. He decided that it was an injured bee, but the important thing was that he heard nothing that would give him concern about being seen.

  Once he decided that he was alone, he got a running start and began tumbling through the forest, leaping back and forth and air-burning from tree to tree. He suddenly appeared by a large tree, and leveled a kick to side of it that put a significant dent in it as the top of it shook. He had only hit it with slightly more than half of his strength, and was afraid to kick it much harder. As he punched and kicked other trees, he almost felt bad for them. Harold liked to watch things grow, and something felt slightly cruel to him about it, but he had no other way to train himself. He made his way all the way around Foxx Hole, back to the spot where he had begun.

  He decided to take a break, and opened his jar of well water. He sat down with his back against a tree, and took a large gulp. Then, he sat there for a moment, with his eyes closed just listening to his own breathing and the sounds of the forest. He could feel and hear his breathing slowing and was beginning to hear his own heartbeat.

  He heard something step on the ground to his left. It sounded metallic. He quickly turned his head in that direction, but he saw nothing. He pushed the source of his fire into his ears, and he could hear the slight buzzing that he had heard before he began training. It was coming from the same direction as the sound of the footsteps. He pulled his fire into his eyes, and looked, tensing his body for a confrontation.

  He still couldn’t see anything suspicious, but then he began to feel something as he stood there, just looking and listening. He could feel heat coming from behind a tree about fifty yards in front of him. He looked more closely at it. Something was out of place about eight feet high. The air looked slightly different, just below it was another spot like it, and another one was at the ground. He had seen something like it before.

  A cloaked High-Born vessel made the same appearance in the air.

  Then he saw the air move and the invisibility field faded, and something that Harold had never seen before came into sight. It looked similar to a High-Born in full battle gear except larger. It was made completely of metal and had a very large chest, and a face that looked like a High-Born visor. It raised its hand out to Harold and he could see some sort of gun attached to the upper-side of its forearm.

  Harold ducked and grabbed his bag of shorts, air-burning toward a spot several yards to his right. When he reappeared, he thought he heard it say something, but he was already gone, and he quickly air-burned three times as fast he could to the top side of town. He was easily more than a mile away from where he had just been. He frantically looked around for any sign of the High-Born. He scanned the surrounding area below him, and then he looked at the sky. He was expecting them to be everywhere, and now he was over the initial surprise. He was ready to show them what he could do in a fight.

  But nothing happened.

  In fact, all he could hear was the sounds of Foxx Hole, his own heart beating, and a very angry squirrel. He had appeared almost in her nest. He found another tree close to him that didn’t have any squirrels in it and air-burned to it.

  Then, from the top of that tree, he looked back to where he had just been. He didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, so he just sat there. He looked back and forth for several minutes, but saw nothing that would cause him alarm.

  After another fifteen minutes, his breathing and heartbeat had slowed, but he was still tense. Just as he was getting ready to come down from the tree, something to his right caught his attention slightly above the treetops. He looked more closely.

  It was a faint blue glow.

  He called to his fire and his eyesight drew it closer to him and his ears focused in its direction. Whatever the object was, it slightly resembled the thrusters he had seen on High-Born gunships. However, this was much smaller, and it was already several miles away. Even with his enhanced eyesight, he could barely see it. Whatever it was, it was cloaked and what scarce evidence there was soon disappeared altogether.

  He let out a sigh of relief, and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the tree. He sat there for a moment, and then picked a tree close to Aunt Nean’s house. He swiftly air-burned to it and then leaped out of the tree. While he quickly changed into his overalls, he glanced around the forest floor and the air above him. Satisfied that everything was clear, he began walking back toward the house.

  After about fifteen more minutes, he arrived in the back yard, and walked into the barn. He didn’t even look at the mule as he tossed his shorts onto a shelf. He took a deep breath, and decided that he was going to be fine. He exited the barn and could smell the cornbread in the air. He heard something behind him and he turned.

  He could see the cloaked outlines of several gunships just above the treetops. He nearly froze, but he braced himself to fight. He was completely puzzled when they turned and went in the direction opposite of him. He stood there for a moment just watching them. The scant proof they gave of themselves soon disappeared. H
e noticed that they seemed to be moving in a westerly direction. In a few moments, the excitement they had produced in him subsided.

  He walked into the house, and saw Cooper and Ollie sitting at the table, and Aunt Nean was at the stove. It looked like she was nearly finished cooking lunch, and he sat down. As he poured himself a cup of water, he noticed Cooper and Ollie looking at him strangely.

  “Betsy wants to know why you’re shaking so bad,” Ollie said as she held up her doll.

  “I ran a lot this morning,” he replied. “I guess I’m just tired.”

  After a few more minutes, Aunt Nean put the food on the table. The others talked, but Harold was distracted by the strange events that he had just seen. When he had finished his first piece of cornbread, he leaned back, giving it a chance to settle. He looked out of the window, toward where he had seen the cloaked gunships.

  They went in the same direction as the other thing, he thought. It dawned on him that they seemed to be following it. As he chewed on another piece of cornbread, he wondered to himself: Why?

  Chapter 20

  The townsfolk of Foxx Hole were piling into the town circle. Harold’s burlap shirt scratched against him as the straps of his overalls rubbed into his shoulders. He walked by the guards posted at the corners of road number six. Cooper and Ollie were happy as children seemed to always be, and Cooper and Scape quickly found Scott. Scott smiled widely when he saw Harold and put up his finger to his lips. Then, with Scape at their feet, he and Cooper began talking about what they were going to do the next time they played Tiger-Man and Wolf-Man. Aunt Nean was talking to Judy about making a dress when Harold began making his way through the crowd.

  He noticed that the area for the children seemed larger than normal, but other than that, everything was pretty standard.