He soon made it to the land, silently looking back and forth. Harold turned and looked in the direction that the giant was looking. He could see the ruins of cities all throughout the landscape, but amidst the wrecked buildings were many large skyscrapers that towered into the sky.
The giant walked silently across the land and stopped at one of the cities. He studied it closely for a few moments and then made his way to another city. As he walked towards it, he scanned the ground on either side thoroughly.
Something caught the giant’s attention far in the distance.
Harold followed his eyes and could see flying shadows in the distance. Most of them looked like crows and bats, but slightly different. They had a strange shimmer about them that made them very hard to see. Harold looked back towards the giant, but he was no longer there. After a few more moments, the sky was full of silent crows, bats, and other things that Harold had never before seen.
Then he saw the wavering air move where the giant had just been. An outline that resembled the shape of the giant moved towards another city while the strange shadows wafted around silently in a uniform pattern that left nearly no ground below them unseen. Harold watched for a moment as the outline of the invisible giant and the shadows moved back and forth across the landscape.
Harold awoke with a stir and looked around. It was still night time and as best as he could tell, it was at least a couple of hours before dawn. He stood up and stretched. He was surprised, but he felt great. He moved his legs around and twisted his hips. Then he began walking toward the cloaked gunship.
Just as he got close to it, the side door opened. Harold found it strange how it looked. The glowing interior of the gunship looked like the doorway to another world, and it just seemed to appear out of the nothingness in the air of the surrounding forest. He walked in and saw Gabby at the front of the gunship pressing symbols on the light- green screen.
“Sleep well?” she asked with her back turned.
“Yeah,” he replied. “You go ahead and get some shut eye now.”
“I’m fine,” she answered. “I’m not that tired.”
“Okay,” Harold shrugged as he sat down beside her in the copilot’s seat. “Have you learned anything useful?”
“Plenty,” she smiled lightly at him. “That High-Born set the tracking device to come back on in twelve hours, but I’ve fixed that. Now, I think I’ve figured out how to bring up the map of the surrounding area.”
“Can you show me?” Harold said.
“Sure,” she answered as she began pressing symbols.
A grid with misshapen formations appeared on the screen and it was easy to tell that they represented the trees around them. There were even small red dots all over the screen.
“What are the red ones?” Harold asked.
“I think that they represent the children,” she said. “Some of them may even be animals. I think it picks up the heat of our bodies.”
“Really?” Harold asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I listened to the High-Born when they were chasing you,” she looked him in the eyes and smiled. “They kept saying something about a heat signature. You give off a lot of heat, and they didn’t have any trouble following you. You did a really good job of throwing them off our trail.”
“So I’m not completely useless then?” Harold grinned.
“No,” she grinned. “Not completely. You made me realize that I needed to hide us from those sensors.”
“Well,” Harold rubbed his chin. “If we can see the children, why can’t they?”
“It stresses me a lot to change that large of an area totally,” Gabby answered. “But we’re close enough to the kids that the sensors work.”
“I toyed with it while you were leading them away and I figured out the right balance to not exhaust myself, but maintain a good deal of camouflage,” she replied.
“So how close do they have to be to see the kids?” Harold asked.
“About 100 yards,” she answered. “Any farther than that, and we’re invisible.”
Harold raised his eyebrows, “You’re very useful, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” Gabby smiled.
“So, Aireon,” Harold leaned back as she began tapping more symbols. “How did you get to be like you are?”
“I guess you mean... how can I do the things I can do?” she asked without looking at him.
“Yes,” he replied. “That’s right.”
“For as long as I can remember I’ve lived in the Marksville orphanage,” she answered as she went through various screens on the grid. “I grew up there and I always helped out momma Gabby with the younger children.”
Harold gave her a look.
“Yes,” she glanced at him and then back at the control panel. “That’s where I got my name. I’m named after the four women who started the orphanage, but I know you’re thinking now… How does everyone keep it straight, right? Well, the kids call her ‘momma’ and they call me Gabby. I call her momma. Anyways, until about three months ago, I was just a normal girl.”
She paused and wrinkled her brow as something she saw on the screen that puzzled her, “There was a fire at the orphanage and some of the kids were trapped inside,” she wiped her eye and sniffled slightly. “I ran in to get them, and it took me a couple of minutes to fight my way through the smoke. I finally found them and when I was helping them out,” she took a deep breath. “I heard the ceiling starting to give way. It was like an instinct, I just reached up to protect them and myself, and the boards and nails just stopped in mid-air right above me and the children. Then the whole building fell around us. The next thing I knew, I woke up in a bed and I thought that everything had been a bad dream. But it wasn’t.”
“What happened?” Harold asked.
“Momma said that the whole building fell and the townsfolk were all cryin’ about the children,” Gabby looked out the window with a far away look in her eyes. “But then some of the men saw me and the kids laying in the middle of the wreckage. We were all knocked out, but none of us were hurt. The townsfolk said it was a miracle. Thankfully, none of the kids seemed to remember, and I even thought that I was crazy for a few days.”
“It wasn’t long before I was making all kinds of things move just by thinking about it,” she smiled at Harold. “Then I started getting really strong, and fast too. My studies even became easier. Math problems and big words just started making sense to me.”
“Me too,” Harold replied. “It was really cool.”
“I would go out in the woods by myself and practice all of the time,” she said.
Harold leaned back and looked at her closely.
“And about a month ago, I figured out that I could make the wind blow too,” she said.
“That’s really neat,” Harold said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “It is.”
They both sat silently for a moment while Gabby went through various screens and prompts. She glanced at Harold who was just staring at her, and Harold nervously flitted his eyes away from her gaze.
Gabby smiled coyly.
“How did it happen to you?” she asked as she pressed a symbol on the screen and it went dark.
Harold raised his eyebrows and thought for a moment. Then he told her about Foxx Hole and the people in it. He told her about Aunt Nean; Uncle Joe; Cooper; Ollie; Sarah; Scott; Annie-Jane and Willie. He told her how he plowed fields, and then he told her about how he saw Colonel Foxx’s pytheel missing that morning. After he finished with that, he told her about the river that day and how the pytheel tried to make a meal out of Ollie. He explained to her that it was then that his fire abilities had come to him.
Harold talked more about how Colonel Foxx always made the town gather weekly, and how they took their crops whenever they wanted. Then he told her about his trip to the compound where they met. As he talked, he liked how Gabby listened intently and how
she smiled when he talked about Aunt Nean and the others. But Harold found something funny, because as much as he wanted to, he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything about Sarah. And Harold realized that he was beginning to run out of things to say, so he decided to ask her a question.
“What’s it like in Marksville?”
Gabby raised her eyebrows and thought for a few moments as she tapped her chin and looked out of the front window, “It doesn’t sound that much different from Foxx Hole. It seems to me that about the only thing that isn’t the same is that we have an orphanage. We have weekly meetings too, and a town circle, a pyramid and Kristall and Colonel Marks makes us watch the Vista as well. I think they show us the same thing that they show y’all. We don’t have a river to play in though.”
“What’s Colonel Marks like?” Harold asked.
Gabby glanced at him, “I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you… Colonel Marks isn’t around anymore.”
Harold nodded.
“What do y’all do for fun?” Harold asked.
“Mostly, we just go listen to the old folks talk about the Old World. Sometimes we play a game called baseball.”
“Baseball?” Harold asked.
“You’ve never heard of baseball?” she asked.
Harold shook his head.
“Well, you have a stick and a rock and four bases,” she smiled. “Someone called the pitcher throws the rock to a person holding the stick and they hit it. If the people in the field catch the rock and throw it to the person standing on one of the bases that you have to run to and the rock beats you to the base, then you’re out and have to go sit down.”
“Y’all play it in a field?” Harold asked.
Gabby laughed, “Yes and no. It’s a special kind of field, and it’s just called the field really. You have things called baselines that you can’t go outside of, and the rock has to be in between your shoulders and hips to be a strike. If it’s not a strike, then you don’t have to swing, and it’s called a ball.”
“But it’s a rock, not a ball,” Harold said.
Gabby’s head went back in laughter, “Yes, it’s still a rock but it’s called a ball. Anyways, if you get four balls then it’s called a walk and you get a free base.”
“But I thought you had to run to the base, not walk?” Harold said slightly confused.
Gabby smiled and shook her head, “I’ll have to show you some time, but I promise that it’s really fun.”
“Okay,” Harold replied. “I’d like that.”
They sat quietly for a few moments, glancing around at the inside of the gunship and occasionally glancing at one another.
“So,” Harold said dragging out the word. “How did you come up with Aireon?”
“That’s a good question,” she answered. “I don’t really know, it just sounded good, since I can make the wind blow.”
Harold laughed to himself when he asked, “Why not Miss Windy?”
She wrinkled her eyebrows at him, “Why are you laughing so hard about that?”
“I have a mule that doesn’t mind too good,” Harold’s laugh became a smile. “I just thought about her.”
She regarded him for a moment, and asked, “So... where did you come up with ‘The Blazing Knight’? It’s totally ridiculous, and I refuse to fight evil with someone who calls himself that.”
Harold thought about Sarah, and almost said something about her, but caught himself, “It just kinda’ fits. My last name is Knight, and I can catch myself on fire.”
“Well,” Gabby raised her eyebrows. “It’s not as bad as I thought then... but I like Blaze more.”
“What?” Harold asked.
“You know,” she gestured with her hands. “Just plain old Blaze.”
Harold leaned back, put his hands behind his head and thought about it. He thought about Sarah and how she had given him the name. He thought about Aunt Nean, and his family.
“Ohhh... come on,” Gabby said. “Blaze and Aireon together. Who knows what we could accomplish?”
“I have to admit,” Harold answered. “It does have nice ring to it.”
“Then Blaze it is,” she smiled brightly and almost giggled. Then she looked intently into his eyes. “So... Blaze... What next?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied. “I don’t think we’ll be able to hide from the High-Born for very long. So, we need to get the children back to our villages as soon as we can. Then, we need to attack some High-Born cities. We’ll cause them a lot of trouble and make them chase us, rather than look for the children.”
Harold stopped and thought, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in Foxx Hole though. Colonel Foxx won’t be coming back there.”
“They’ll probably just give the village to another High-Born,” she said. “I doubt they’ll even say anything about him missing. They’ll probably just say that he has moved on, and act like everything is normal.”
“You’re probably right,” Harold nodded. “They can’t seem like they’re out of control of the situation. I bet they won’t even tell the villagers that someone is fighting them.”
“In their thinking,” she glared. “It would be bad for the people to know that they can be beaten.”
“Yeah,” Harold squinted. “They’re not going to say a thing about all of this to any of the townsfolk. But how are we going to get the children back home? I don’t even know where we are, much less how to get back to Foxx Hole.”
Gabby smiled, “Well, my little hottie. I think that I’ve almost got that figured out.”
“How?” Harold asked.
“I’ve been tinkering with the controls of this gunship,” she looked at him from under her eyebrows, and leaned towards him. “I can pull up the maps inside the computers.”
“Really?” Harold said as he leaned towards her. “Show me.”
“Okay,” she replied and pointed at the screen, and turned it on. As she began pressing symbols, she said, “Watch this.”
She put her fingers on the screen and pulled them to the edges, and the screen seemed to get smaller. He looked at Gabby’s smiling face, and at first he didn’t understand why she seemed so happy. Then he looked at the screen more closely, and realized that it was showing a great deal of the surrounding area, but from a different perspective that seemed higher. He could see several circles on the screen.
Some of the circles had words beside them, but there were two he recognized. The first was Teos and another smaller circle had Foxx Hole written beside it. He looked back at Gabby.
“How long would it take us to get there?” he asked.
“Not very long if we take this thing to top speed,” she said. “And it would take maybe three or four trips to get all of your kids back to Foxx Hole. But you’ll have to come with us because I need you in case we run into any High-Born on the way.”
“What are we going to do with the other children during the trips?” he asked.
“We’ll just have to leave some of the older ones in charge, and tell them to stay hidden while we’re gone,” she replied.
Harold nodded, “I don’t like that, but we don’t have any other choice. Come first light, we’ll start loading the kids.”
Chapter 32
As the sun crested the eastern horizon, they began loading the first of Foxx Hole’s children. Many of them stumbled onto the gunship, sleep still clinging tightly to them. Harold placed Cooper, Ollie, Scott, and Maggie close to the front where he would be sitting. In only a few minutes, they had somehow managed to pack 75 children from Foxx Hole in the gunship. There was almost no room whatsoever to move around, just enough for Harold to air-burn outside if he needed to do so.
While Harold loaded the children, Gabby placed Deanna and Christie in charge of the other children. They dug small pits to hide in and lashed together sticks with vines and strips of cloth and other pieces of linen that they could find. Gabby showed them how make a blanket of leaves that stuck to the makeshift coverings of sti
cks that they could pull over themselves while in the small pits. Then she gave them orders to not come out until she and Harold returned.
When she walked back onto the gunship, she quickly found her place in the pilot’s chair. She buckled herself in and began pressing a variety of symbols on the glowing green grid beside the control stick. In less than a minute, the gunship lifted from the ground and above the trees. She pulled up the map and turned it towards the icon on the screen that read Foxx Hole, and pushed the throttle next to her left hand. The children rocked slightly as the gunship lurched toward the southwestern sky.
For almost a minute, Gabby slowly pushed forward on the throttle, and the trees below moved ever faster, quickly zipping behind them. Harold could see a set of three numbers growing on the green grid, and he soon came to realize that they went up the faster they traveled. It stopped when it reached 750 kph, and then flickered between 745 kph and 750 kph. Harold looked at the wide-eyed amazement of Cooper, Ollie, and Scott as the trees flew by. He smiled lightly at their innocent glee as they took in the thrill of flight.
“Did people from the Forgotten Nations fly a lot in the old days?” Scott asked.
“Yes,” Gabby answered tenderly. “They did all the time.”
“How do you know?” Scott asked without taking his eyes from the front window.
“One of our village elders says that his grandfather told him about it,” she answered. “He says that his grandfather was a pilot who fought in World War III.”
“Really?” Scott asked.
“Yep,” Gabby smiled as she rubbed his head. “That’s what he says.”
“But they say that Low-Born can’t work with machines,” Cooper answered.
“Well,” she answered and pulled on the controls and made the gunship edge to the left. “Those days are over.”
Scott and Cooper smiled excitedly at her as she squinted at them.
“There are a lot of things that are about to change when we get back to Foxx Hole,” Harold said and looked at the children. They all grinned at him.
“How long ‘til we get home?” Ollie asked. “I want to see my momma.”
“Not very long,” Gabby replied.
Blaze (The High-Born Epic) Page 24