by Jason Letts
Arriving at the home of Mert Bogger, they spotted the old man busily clipping away at a bush in the front yard. As they approached, he stopped and stood idly next to the road, assuming a regretful, somber air. Mira remembered her conversation with him when she left her home for the first time. He had reacted so strangely to learning she didn’t have a power, didn’t have a connection to the forces of the universe like all the others. She’d seen that reaction so many times, and it never failed to sting her.
“Another flock, going to herd themselves into the lion’s den.”
Unsettled by his words, they walked by without replying. Mert received only furtive glances for his warning, and he went back to pruning his bush once they passed.
Mira knew the painful reminders she would find around the next corner, and they filled her with dread. She closed her eyes rounding the last tree, cringing at the others’ gasps. When she could no longer keep them closed, she braced herself for the sight of her home and opened them.
What she saw struck a hollow note right in her center. In the light of day, the damage to Cloud Cottage screamed out at her. Debris littered the lawn. The porch was wrecked and collapsing. Windows were broken and the door had been torn off its hinges. Charred wood encircled holes in the walls and roof.
Everything reminded her of the horror of the night before. She had been lucky to make it out unscathed; the house had born the brunt for her. The sight of her home made her feel embarrassed in front of her friends. It made her want to lash out at the ones who’d destroyed all she’d known for the first fifteen years of her life.
“The pain of every fresh cut screams louder than the last. They all call out for retribution, but I’m afraid even that won’t silence them.” Mira hobbled toward the entrance, her friends and the guard following behind. All seemed quiet and still, so they walked comfortably yet attentively. The porch creaked and cracked but managed to hold their weight. They stepped over the broken door lying against the wall and entered the house.
Inside, the destruction covered every inch of the interior. The air was cold and damp, like a cave, and it made Mira understand that this uninhabitable place was no longer her home. They turned into the kitchen and then into the living room. Shattered glass from the back door shimmered in the sun. They could see out into the backyard and beyond to the woods, where they had all arrived last night to fend off the wretched attackers.
For a moment, Mira thought she could see herself tiptoeing to the stairway, her desperation to find her parents weighing down on her. She remembered seeing them huddled in their room through a little window in the mist. Her heart beat quickly, reliving everything in her mind.
“Be sure to pack light, since you’ve got a long ways to go, but make sure you’ve got all the essentials,” the guard recommended.
Reminded why they had come, she immediately began the necessary task of packing up her life. She grabbed a bag from the closet and climbed the stairs to her room. Before she went inside, she peeked into her parents’ room, which looked like a massive piece of charcoal. She stopped dead, gradually edging closer to their doorway. Her mother’s plush, fuzzy carpet had caught fire and incinerated everything in the room. How close had her parents come to the end? Now the only piece of carpet that remained was wrapped around her left arm inside the static charger. Unable to bear the heart-wrenching sight anymore, Mira turned back to her bedroom.
Largely unscathed, even its bay window was intact. She went through her drawers and tossed some clothing into the bag. She agonized over each decision because she had no idea what she would be doing and what she would need. She grabbed odds and ends, a brush, her scissors, and her sewing kit.
Content, she lifted the bag, which would not be too heavy to carry, and returned downstairs.
“Are we ready to go yet?” Aoi demanded.
“Wait, I still have to get one of Flip Widget’s manuals so I can find the publisher in Darmen.”
Heading for the door leading to her basement workspace, she remembered how it had made her suspicious the previous night when she’d found it closed. Now she hesitantly reached out for the doorknob. She wished Mary were there to tell her if anyone lurked behind.
She cracked open the door, peeked down, and all seemed fine. Opening it further and touching the first step, something rushed up the stairs at her. She fell backward into Vern’s arms as a wolf exploded through the doorway. It brandished its teeth and growled, taking an attack position on the living room floor. A busy nose sniffed at Will, making it bolder.
Just as it was about to pounce, the guard stepped in front of the group, fell onto all fours, and made a gruesome face that sent the suddenly timid and yelping wolf running off through the back door.
“Wow, nice work,” Will appraised once they were safe. “Now let me check to see if my pants are still dry.”
“Here, I’d better head down first and make sure the coast is clear,” the guard said, moving for the door.
Receiving his OK, Mira went downstairs where another horrific sight awaited her. Although she always left her small, simple laboratory a mess, it now had an inch of water on the floor, and the wolf had shredded most of her books. Had the raiding party brought the animal with them? She dug through the stack of manuals to find one that was minimally torn and mostly dry, stuffing it into her bag. Unable to resist, she grabbed a few tools though most would likely rust because of the moisture.
She had spent so much time here, and all of her success had grown out of the ideas she developed in this cramped and damp corner of the house, but now she wondered how she ever did it. The place looked so foreign and uninviting and shabby.
If Flip Widget were the scientific genius she believed him to be, he would have something much more impressive to show her. Anxiously, she went back upstairs, trying to forget all of the abominations that had swept into her life, instead imagining the life-changing journey she had in store.
Chapter 2: Darmen Bound
Leaving the house and guard behind, the foursome turned right onto the dirt road. Mira had never gone in this direction more than one hundred meters or so, never having any reason to go anywhere but toward town. The shady path wound through the forest, foliage increasingly encroaching upon it until they emerged at the footsteps of a mountain chain. They would walk north between the forest and the mountains until they met a river which would lead them east again to Darmen.
All told, the trip would take them a few days as long as they held a steady pace, which would be the minimum if they were to keep up with Aoi, who pushed ahead like her life depended on getting there by nightfall.
“I say we tie a sled to her and make her drag us there if she wants to go so fast,” Will joked. But they did their best to keep up anyway, eagerly anticipating their destination and inclined to pass through this unfamiliar territory.
As the sun set, they ducked into the forest to make camp. They started a fire, strung up a tarp to provide some shelter, and tried to make the place as comfortable as possible. A pot of boiling vegetables found its way over the fire, but once they finished eating they realized their store of food might not be sufficient to last them the trip. Thoughts of life as an adventurous shadow danced in their heads, so none of them had considered too deeply what they would need for the time beforehand.
“OK, first order of business tomorrow is searching for breakfast,” Mira declared.
The air chilled severely once the sun had disappeared, encouraging them all to wrap themselves in as much clothing as they could to shield against it and the hard ground. Mira had trouble falling asleep. A bundled-up shirt proved a poor replacement for her pillow. In a semi-lucid haze, her thoughts bombarded her like raindrops falling on a tin roof. When she woke up the next morning, it would be the first day she would go without seeing her parents. What a great luxury she had enjoyed compared to her sister.
Mira wondered at how Clara, though just a thought and a whisper, could become so cemented into her mind. She spoke to her sister mentall
y, asking if she were OK, promising her she was going to help, and apologizing for not knowing sooner. Where did this love come from that so immediately sprung up inside of her? She felt so deeply that this person she had never met was worth any effort and any sacrifice, even her very own life.
For all of the joy and affection she felt for her sister, it scared Mira to acknowledge an equally strong hatred and loathing for her captor, her torturer, Pyrenee. Though this monster had never existed for her before yesterday, the pain she caused Mira over her sister proved to be one of endless, scarring torment. Mercifully, sleep finally came to draw her away from this incessant cacophony of thoughts.
They woke at dawn, groggy and unrested, grumbling as they went about the morning search for food. The four of them fanned out through the forest, picking and poking around.
“I’ve found something,” Aoi called to the others who closed in. A thick clump of mushrooms sat next to her feet.
“No, we can’t eat those,” Mira said. “Most mushrooms you find in the wild can’t be eaten.”
This tidbit of information didn’t amuse Aoi, who appeared impatient to find something quickly and move on. They again combed the surroundings until Vern signaled for them to regroup. As Mira, Aoi, and Will crept alongside him, curious about what he had found, they heard rustling in the undergrowth.
Peeking through the leaves, they saw a deer enjoying its own breakfast a short distance away. Silently, Vern motioned, grasping his hand that he would ensnare the deer with his gravitational force. Will, his stomach rumbling, quickly and enthusiastically approved, but Mira stopped them.
“That’s not a good idea. It would take too long to kill it, drain the blood, cut it up, and cook it. Let’s keep looking,” Mira suggested.
Her friends acquiesced, turned off by the process they would have to go through to eat. Mira cast a final glance toward the beautiful animal.
“Wait a second,” she said, and everybody inspected the deer once more. “That’s so strange. Watch its mouth while it’s eating. The leaves seem to stand up straight just as the deer is about to munch them. Have you ever noticed that before?”
Squinting and struggling to see what she referred to, one by one, they caught it. As if a small breeze always swept by, the leaf curled to its mouth as the deer took a bite.
“Wow, that’s cool,” Aoi said. “Beats using a fork.”
They left the deer in peace and continued to scan the forest. What Mira really had in mind were some nuts or berries—quick to consume and easy to store. Venturing into a less-densely wooded area, she found raspberries growing among some moss on the ground. She popped one in her mouth and savored its bittersweet taste.
Calling her friends over, they began harvesting and sampling the berries. Their stomachs full, they picked more to carry and returned to camp. Once the tarp was folded, they continued north, hustling to make up the lost time.
The mountains on their right and the woods to their left, the troop marched onward. The sun crossed from east to west above them. It hung low in the sky by the time they reached their turning point, a swift river curving like a snake down the mountainside, stretching to the west as far as they could see.
Hunkering down for the evening, they washed down their store of salty bacon bread with the river’s clean, cool water.
“I’ve been thinking about that deer,” Mira said. “I swear it was moving those leaves without touching them. You all saw it. Is it possible animals have some power too?”
“I’ve sure never noticed anything similar before, but I think people would have figured it out if they did. In all my time on a farm, animals running about everywhere, not once did I see anything to make me think that,” Will said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Vern shrugged. “There’s lots of crazy stuff in this world I’m sure we’ll never have any idea about. Take the wolf that tried to attack us. It watched you as if it sensed how you were feeling. Might be a power and it might not. I don’t know.”
“I don’t think it takes any special power to realize I was about to fall over like a petrified penguin. All you had to do was look at me!”
“Maybe I’ll create an experiment to test it. I’ll have to ask Flip Widget about it when I find him. It might take a long time to carry out though, months or even years,” Mira pondered.
“Well you don’t have long before you have to come back, so I wouldn’t waste all your time on an experiment that won’t help you fight any better. We’ve got to be back at Corey Outpost by the Autumnal Equinox and there’s the Rite at Shadow Mountain before that,” Aoi said.
“Wait, a Rite? I don’t know anything about that.”
“Oh, it’s this cool thing where everybody races up a mountain. Nobody told you about it before? It’s how we figure out who’s the best of the best,” Vern smiled, rousing himself to go on, but Aoi shushed him.
“You’re telling it all wrong! She’s not going to get it,” Aoi snapped.
In the firelight, Mira observed Aoi’s stony and sharp face as she spoke. Her dark hair shimmered around it and her eyes were full of gravity.
“Shadow Mountain is to the east, beyond this range and halfway to the war front. Its towering precipice pierces the sky, clogging it with clouds and covering everything below in gray. The last task of the shadows for generations has been to undertake a brutal race to the top, which exposes them to crippling conditions day and night. A fair number accept they don’t have the strength to compete and are content with the shame of cowardice when they arrive at Shade Base Camp. But there are enough who do, enough who will go to any lengths to be the first to step onto the top that more than one loser will see the mountainside as a rotten, decayed corpse.”
Mira glanced at Vern and Will, and they nodded slowly to verify Aoi’s account. Grimness crossed their faces as they steeled themselves for the difficulties ahead.
“That’s why The Shadowing is so important. We’ve got to become tough so that when the time comes we’re not just successful against our enemies but respected by our allies,” Vern said, a quiver rising in his voice. A somber silence swept over them, and Mira turned her head to the mountains. Thick clouds churned in the sky beyond, lending truth to the tale and making Mira a little sick to her stomach. She put down the bread in her hand.
“So all of us are going to assemble beforehand and do this together?” Mira asked, barely getting out her words before Aoi answered.
“Absolutely not. Most of us—but not me obviously—should know competing is not a good idea. And if anyone shows up who shouldn’t be there, it is your responsibility, Mira, to stop them.”
Mira began to ask her what she meant, but Will jumped to his feet, a flash of anger sweeping over his face.
“Shut up, Aoi! I can too do it. And it’s ridiculous for you to say I can’t. Who’s to say I won’t be the one to make it to the top first?”
“Who’s to say? I’m to say! What are you going to do, tousle everyone’s hair all the way up? No, you’re going to get yourself killed because you think your gift is more than it is. And it won’t be my fault!”
Insulted and aggravated, Will snapped back at her. Vern appeared particularly surprised by his sudden outburst.
“There’s no telling how much I’ll grow in six months! And just because you were able to beat me doesn’t mean other people can. But maybe this time I’ll be the one sending you home.”
Mira watched their angry exchange and wondered how she could possibly know who could do this and who couldn’t. Was Will’s wind too weak to make the cut? It didn’t take long for her to compare her own capabilities.
“What about me? What about me!” she called, hoping to divert their attention. Will sat down again and Aoi turned to her. She put her hand to her face and stared out into the darkness, deep in thought.
“Well you have to compete because it would be shameful for us all if you didn’t. But you can’t fight and you can’t win because you aren’t strong enough without a gift. You could go out t
here and lose quickly but avoid getting seriously hurt. That would at least be acceptable.”
Mira had wanted to see if Aoi would make the case she was inferior to them, and she did exactly that. Sensing all of the stress they felt over this event looming before them, Mira knew she needed to appear confident to both calm them and instill trust as a leader.
“You think I can’t fight? You think I can’t win? How can you say that after I beat everyone just a few days ago? Now let me tell you what’s going to happen. When the moment arrives, I will be there, and I have no intention of losing quickly. And if I’ll be there, then any one of us who wishes to compete can. Now let me tell you how it’s going to end. After all of the fighting, no matter how long it takes, I will make it to the top of that mountain. I’ll make it there first too. That I promise you.”
Aoi pursed her lips, turning away from Mira and the fire, holding in anything she had to say. Mira sat back down and focused on calming herself. They made their beds without anyone saying another word for the rest of the evening. Mira felt tired of being told she couldn’t do things, and she would do everything possible to prove she could. Getting through this Rite would be the first stepping-stone to getting her sister back.
They woke the next morning well before the sun appeared in the sky. Packing up their camp on the riverbank, they looked forward to the final stretch before arriving at the big city of Darmen. A cool breeze pushed through the warm air. Big clouds floated overhead and birds chirped in the trees.
Just as they were about to leave, Mira noticed some driftwood on the riverbank. She observed the pace of the water, which flowed quickly, few rocks jutting above its surface. A moment later, she fished the rope out of her bag. Running down to the water’s edge, she started dragging together long pieces of driftwood. Side by side, she tied them together until she gained the attention of her friends.
“We could build a raft and get there in half the time!”
Her solution seemed much more appealing than walking, and everyone enthusiastically helped her complete it. They waded into the river dragging the raft beside them with their bags on their backs. Holding it in the cold water so it didn’t escape downstream, they struggled to climb on. All together, they jostled and shifted into place as the raft took to the current. Water seeped in a little through the bottom, but soon they were all comfortably floating down the river.