“Sorry to be dramatic, but let’s wait until Kai’s here. He’ll be interested too and that way I won’t have to tell it twice.” Truth was, he was mostly interested to see how Kai would take the news, but he left that part out.
“Well, I’m in luck then. I won’t have to wait long.”
With that, the rear patio door slid open and Kai stepped in with chunks of leaves littering his hair.
“Hey uncle Tommy. Wow, that smells good! Is it ready?”
“It will be when you go get yourself cleaned up and at the table.” Sophie placed the pot of stew in the middle of the dining room table and began setting out bowls and silverware.
Once they were all seated, Kai wasted no time digging in, shoveling spoonfuls of the thick, white stew into his mouth as only a growing boy can do. Sophie watched him in fascination. It never ceased to amaze her how greedily the boy could put down food. Then she turned her attention to Thomas who was watching Kai as well, but his expression showed more intrigue than fascination. When he spoke, his attention remained solely on the ten-year-old in front of him.
“Saw a crazy story on the news this morning. Local stuff. Close to home. You’ve both been home all day?”
Kai never looked up from his food, and Sophie just nodded and waited to see what all the buildup was about.
“Kai? You haven’t spoken to any of your friends? You know, on that instant messenger stuff or anything?”
“Nope.” Another big spoonful down the hatch.
“Seems there was an attack on a boy at the park late yesterday. Seems the poor kid was pulled into the trees near the playground and tied up to one. They say somebody, or a group of somebodies, threw stones at him. Bloodied him up a bit, but he’ll be fine. Physically anyway. Apparently, he didn’t know, or pretended not to know, who did it.”
Sophie gasped. “That’s terrible! Are you saying that happened right here? At Gleneden?”
“Agreed, and yes.” His eyes held steady on Kai, who never paused or looked up from his bowl. “They didn’t say the poor kid’s name, or show his picture, so I thought maybe Kai had heard something. Through one of his friends, maybe.”
Kai kept on eating, scraping the sides of his now empty bowl with the side of his spoon, then proceeded to fill it up with a second helping. Sophie looked back and forth between her son and her brother, feeling like something was going on but unsure what it could be.
“Well, Kai was at his schoolwork all day, then went out for his walk right after. He wouldn’t have had a chance to hear anything.”
“Yes,” Thomas said, “I’m sure you’re right, but news like that tends to make the rounds pretty quickly. I thought he might have heard something. Guess I was wrong, huh Kai?”
Kai’s dark eyes finally moved up from his food to acknowledge his uncle. His face was a mask of innocence, like he’d barely heard anything of what was going on.
“Guess so, uncle Tommy. Don’t know why anybody would do something like that. Unless the kid had it coming.”
“Kai! That’s a terrible thing to say!” Sophie yanked his bowl away to snatch his undivided attention. “Why would you even suggest that something like that might be justified? No kid deserves that.”
“I don’t know, I was just saying. I guess I don’t want to believe that some wacko is out there doing stuff like that for no reason, is all.”
Sophie just shook her head in response. “There’s no reason for something like that to happen. It’s cruel. You won’t be going back to that park unless one of us is there with you, understand?”
“Sure,” Kai said unperturbed, “but I’m not worried. I’ve got the group. It’s only the loners that have to worry about stuff like that.”
8
Sophie walked through each room of her modest, three-bedroom home looking for Kai. Her bare feet padded lightly along the bamboo wood floors in an unconscious effort at stealth. It was always a game in her mind to see what she might catch her intrepid ten-year-old son up to, when he should be doing schoolwork. She knew he was up to something he shouldn’t be. The computer chair at his school workstation she had set up next to the kitchen was currently empty.
She peeked her head around the jamb of his bedroom, eyes passing over piles of loose clothes on the floor, a bed full of rumpled sheets, a chemistry station of various colored concoctions and vials, and a spread of magic game cards tossed haphazardly over his dresser and nightstand.
Won’t be happy when he’s cleaning his room after class instead of going out to play, she thought.
Moving on down the hall, she listened suspiciously for the sound of gunfire popping out from the television in the rear recreation room where his Xbox game system was hooked up to a big screen. Kai loved his zombie survival games. She wasn’t fond of the idea of simulated guns for a ten-year-old, but after weeks of incessant begging he’d finally talked her into it.
Zombies aren’t real, he’d argued. It’s not like I’m killing real people. Are you afraid I’m going to shoot up a school or something?
So, she had relented. Not because she wholly agreed with his reasoning. It was out of guilt, mainly. No, she didn’t think he would really shoot anybody, but she was afraid. There was a history of violence in their past that she tried firmly to keep buried and sometimes she feared that it would only take a small spark to bring it flaring back to life again. In what form, she couldn’t be sure. That scared her, as well.
“Where are you?” she said aloud, her voice echoing down the hall, but no answer came. Feeling exasperated now, she blew a strand of dark hair from over her eye and moved back out to the kitchen.
He wasn’t in the house, which meant he’d gone outside. During his homeschooling hours. She shook her head in frustration and stared out the rear sliding door of the dining room and into the bright rays of the morning sun. A dark form was encapsulated in the wash of light that covered the back lawn.
Gotcha.
Sophie moved up to the glass doors to inspect what Kai might be up to this time. Would it be construction of a fort? Examining the root system of one of her garden plants? Reading about alternative histories of the world? She couldn’t keep up with his projects.
But no, it wasn’t any kind of busy work. He was just standing there, staring up in to the tall pine trees that grew in abundance around the parklike setting behind their home.
With another shake of her head, she slid open the glass door and called out to him.
“Kai! Just what are you doing out there, when you should be in here hard at work? You’ve got math modules to complete.”
Kai stood in silence for a few moments before turning to answer.
“The ravens were calling to me, mother. I just wanted to see what they wanted.”
“Calling to you?”
Sophie stepped out into the warmth of the sun and walked out to join him. As she moved up to his side, she looked up into the trees with a gasp of astonishment. Lined up along the limbs of several trees were dozens of the large, black birds. It wasn’t just the number of them that startled her, it was the way they all seemed to stare back in silence. It was unsettling. She’d never been fond of ravens, they were evil-looking creatures that seemed to convey too much intelligence through their beady, black eyes.
“Well, they were being loud, that’s for sure. Tok, Tok, Tok! That’s all they were saying, over and over. I wonder what that means. Anyway, I couldn’t focus. I guess you didn’t hear them. You never hear anything when you’re writing. But whatever, they shut up as soon as I came out. So, it seemed like they were calling for me. Aren’t they awesome!”
She looked at him, unsure whether to smile or frown. He was a handsome child, and tall for his age, just like his father. His height was where his resemblance to his father stopped, unfortunately. He didn’t have Jacob’s brown hair or hazel eyes. Instead, he had the dark, wild hair of his mother. His skin and eyes were even duskier than hers, with his complexion being a couple shades deeper than Sophie’s olive brown skin and his ey
es . . . well, his eyes held no color at all. They were the feature that really stood out about him. Those eyes were pure ebony, as if the pupil had eaten up his irises completely. If he weren’t so handsome, those eyes would give him a sinister look, but Sophie thought he was just about the most handsome boy she’d ever seen and felt that instead of sinister, his look was more mysterious.
“Yes, Kai. They’re really great. C’mon.” She gave his shirt a quick tug and moved back toward the house. “You’ve got work to do, mister. Once you’re done, and your room is cleaned, then you may come out and play with your little friends.”
Kai let out a deep, exaggerated sigh. “Fine. But I hate this home schooling stuff. I want to go to a real school where there are kids to play with.”
Sophie echoed his dramatic sigh with one of her own.
“We’ve been through this, Kai. I’m sorry you have to be stuck with dear old mom all day, but it wasn’t my choice to pull you from school. You know that. Just work hard and be good. Perhaps you could reenroll next year.”
He kicked aside a pine cone and sent it careening off the side of the house.
“It’s not fair.”
She didn’t think it was fair, either. It was at the completion of the last school year that Kai’s principal, his fourth-grade teacher, and the school counselor had called Sophie into a conference. It seemed, in their opinions, that Kai had been having a negative effect on his classmates. He was very well liked, they all agreed, but his peers seemed to focus on Kai more than their teachers. When she’d asked what Kai was doing to be such a distraction, they seemed to get uncomfortable, staring at each other for support, because frankly, they couldn’t give her a definitive answer. Nothing Kai did was technically against any rules, so they wouldn’t suspend him, but they felt that the other children would benefit greatly by Kai choosing to school elsewhere. They’d been the ones to suggest homeschooling, in fact. An idea that had never occurred to her before that.
Initially she’d been pissed off, which was evident at the time by the colorful words she had showered them with before storming out. Once she had a chance to cool down, though, her thoughts on the matter changed. Hadn’t she always been just a little nervous about Kai when it came to other children? He was a sweet boy and incredibly charming, but with his past . . .
So, she had relented and enrolled Kai for online schooling. It was a joy to have him at home with her, though a bit distracting trying to keep him on task, and it wasn’t like she had a job to go to. With her resources she didn’t need to work. Instead, she blended work and therapy by writing of her past, that dark place where unbelievable events had occurred ten years past. The island and the crown of flames.
It was Thomas that had suggested she take up writing it out. Like a journal, he said. At first, she had scoffed at the idea. That time on the island was something she did her best to avoid, but then she’d started drinking, and even smoking. It became apparent to her that she wasn’t coping with the experiences she’d had, so she tried writing. It had worked wonders. Once she started getting the events on paper she stopped having nightmares immediately. It was a transference, she supposed.
She was a writer now. Maybe someday she’d even be a published writer, one who thankfully no longer needed to drink and smoke to bury her demons. Her demons were all on paper, and maybe someday they would be out free to roam the world.
Kai was settled in to his chair and logging into his online school. She gave his hair an affectionate tussle and pecked him on the cheek.
“Aw, mom. I’m trying to work here.” He wiped at his cheek with the palm of his hand and set himself back to his work.
“Sorry kiddo, life isn’t always fair, I know. But if you finish up your work at a decent time, we’ll get you over to the park to see your friends. Deal?”
“Deal!”
9
Seven Years Later
Sophie waited in nervous anticipation for Kai to stroll through the front door. He’d been back in public school for three years now, yet every day of it had been an exercise in restraint for her. It was challenging not to pick up her phone and text him to see if everything was OK. It was a constant temptation to call Wendy, the friendly high school counselor, to check in on Kai’s doings and find out if there were anything abnormal going on with him.
For the past seven years, since that incident with the boy at the playground, she’d lived in fear. Truthfully, she’d been that way since the tragic events on Vaqava, but since that poor boy had been tied up and abused at the playground, it had gotten much worse. It seemed to her that physically she was aging phenomenally well, yet from an emotional and mental standpoint, she felt as if a hundred years had passed. The time seemed to have carved through her psyche with the slow but inevitable eroding power of an iceberg.
It was Thomas that started things. His questioning of Kai over dinner all those years ago. It was obvious that he suspected his nephew’s involvement in some way. She would have never considered it otherwise, but the worm of doubt had been planted and it had been eating its way through her ever since.
Nothing had come of that incident on the playground and the authorities never did find out who the culprit was. Culprits, if Thomas was ever asked. He knew that Kai had an alibi for the timeframe that the assault occurred, and he knew Sophie wouldn’t lie about them being together, but he’d also noted how devoted Kai’s friends were to him. He referred to them as a cult on more than one occasion, and only half-jokingly. Sophie couldn’t deny that Kai’s friends certainly did seem unusually devoted to him. Was it possible that he’d directed them to pay that poor boy back for whatever slight he’d felt at the boy’s unwillingness to join the fold? She’d like to think not, but then again, if she were sure then she wouldn’t be so damn paranoid all the time either.
There had been other strange occurrences over the years, as well. For whatever reason, as much as people seemed to gravitate toward Kai, he had the opposite effect on dogs and cats. He couldn’t go near one without them whining or growling. It was as if they feared and hated him at the same time, and for Kai, the feeling was mutual.
An engine revved outside the front of the house. Sophie peeked out the front window, lifting the edge of the curtain slightly so as not to get caught peeping. Kai was swinging his long legs out of a red pickup truck and waving goodbye to another boy. He never rode the school bus and it seemed there was always somebody willing to chauffeur him home.
Sophie skittered back away from the window and wiped her hands along the seat of her pants to dry them off. The door opened, and Kai ducked through. He was taller than Thomas now, by a few inches at least, which made him about six feet seven or eight. His growth was another thing that unsettled her, and she’d stopped tracking it almost a year ago.
“Hey mom, been waiting for me again?” His black eyes watched her with a cool intensity.
“I always look forward to you getting home, you know that.” She had a tough time meeting those eyes. They were like magnifying glasses that amplified her fears and insecurities.
“To see if there’s been any trouble, you mean.”
“C’mon Kai, that’s not fair. You know I worry. All moms worry.”
“Some a lot more than others. I’m hungry.” He gave her a quick hug, his arms squeezing her like a vise. She had the brief sensation that he could snap her back with little effort if he chose to.
“I can make you a ham and Swiss, would you like that?”
“Sure, thanks. I’ll be in my room.”
“Kai.” The way she said his name sounded pitiful in her own ears. She hoped they didn’t sound like that to him. “Don’t forget about tonight. You promised me you would go.”
He turned back toward her, one half of his mouth lifted in a grin. “I didn’t forget. Youth Group starts at seven. I’ll eat, shower, and get some homework done. Plenty of time.”
He moved toward her, towering over her, and dropped a soft kiss on her forehead. Then he spun around with a quick “I l
ove you” and went to his room.
She didn’t know why it was so important to her that he should get involved with church, but somehow it seemed vital that it should happen. As much as she tried to avoid it, her mind always drifted back to those visions of Daucina forcing himself on her all those years ago. The way it felt to have that coldness penetrating her down below.
Jacob is his father, she told herself for the millionth time. Jacob. Not the other one.
She went to the kitchen to make her son a sandwich, the internal debate still raging in her head.
10
As Sophie drove up the short graveled road leading to the entrance of the Faith Ministries church, she couldn’t help but smile into the dark silence of the vehicle’s cab. Religious faith had never been important to her before, but the older Kai got, the more compelled she was to establish a belief system for him. Something that would illuminate the path he was on and help him avoid missteps.
There was an air of destiny about her son that kept her up at nights. It was obvious by the way people gravitated toward him that he would be a figure that would impact lives someday, she just hoped it was for the betterment of those around him and not the opposite. Who knows, maybe he would be a pastor, a leader of his own church, and spread good into the world. She’d heard lots of positive things about the reverend at this church, which was why she’d chosen it, despite being further out of her way than several other institutions.
“Private joke, mom?”
Sophie was startled out of her thoughts and realized she had parked in an open spot across the small lot from the church’s side entrance without even realizing it. She looked over at Kai to read his expression and see how he was feeling about this, but his features were hidden in the lightless cab.
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