Crow - The Awakening

by Michael J. Vanecek

  Sarah stood there for a few moments, then walked back to Charley who had finished cleaning off the grill. Steven had a feeling they would have some questions for him the next morning. The bear met him in the forest and followed him to his chosen spot where he folded the ferns over to form a little bed and laid down for the night. The bear grunted and lay down nearby, keeping watch. Steven reached out and scratched it behind the ears. He appreciated the bear, but didn't sense anything in the forest that would remotely be a threat to him. It did occur to him that during his trot through the forest he was almost never alone, as if the forest was protecting him. From what, he had no idea. But he still felt very safe nonetheless, and for the first time in a couple of days, he felt at peace.

  The lights in the house were still on. Lohet stood by the workshop, looking around the corner at the Crow's home. There was a person still there. They had stayed out of sight and waited through the day for the rest of the agents to finish their search of the home.

  Migalo crouched on the roof of the shop, looking over the rest of the property. Sirel was somewhere high above. Penipe was right outside the house looking in through the windows. They had been waiting for a while and the occupant was showing no sign of being in a hurry to leave. Sirel landed beside Lohet, grabbing his sleeve as she leaned against him.

  "The house is bugged," Lohet said.

  Sirel nodded. She could detect both audio and video bugs.

  "Loop the video output and disable the bugs. We can't wait any longer."

  Sirel giggled and skipped across the yard to where Penipe stood. She grabbed a piece of equipment from Penipe's belt and calibrated it, then stuck it to the porch support. Penipe looked back at Lohet who nodded. She slipped silently into the house, sneaking up behind the man who was sitting on the couch flipping through a magazine. She looked at him for a moment, then just barely touched his face. He fell limp almost instantly.

  "There's no vehicle here. Someone may come to retrieve this person," Lohet said, seemingly materializing next to Penipe as if from a mist. The rush of air from his sudden arrival blew papers off the table. "We need to be quick."

  The three split up, searching the house for clues. In spite of the effort by the agents to put things back in order, they could tell that the house had already been thoroughly rifled through. Lohet frowned, knowing that others were hot on Steven's heels, too. He found the college transcripts and put them in a bag and continued the search.

  Penipe found more drawings in Steven's bedroom and flipped through them, gasping. He had documented Asherah through the years and Penipe was able to see her grow up from a young child to a young teenager by the progression of drawings. It dismayed her that Steven had seen more of her growing up than her own mother. Penipe touched the pictures, crying and missing her daughter. Sirel came up behind her, hopped on the bed and looked over her shoulder at the drawings.

  "Will I see her again?" Penipe asked as she stared at the pictures. Sirel didn't answer. They both knew that the odds were against them. Instead, Sirel embraced her from behind, wrapping her arms around Penipe's shoulders and squeezing tightly. After a moment, Penipe wiped her eyes and put the drawings in a bag and patted Sirel's hands. "Did you finish the other room?"

  "Of course, Penny," Sirel answered softly, moving around to Penipe's side and holding her hand. Penipe smiled wistfully at her friend, wondering which question she was answering.

  "We need to leave, then." Penipe looked around Steven's room again. There wasn't much more there that they didn't already know.

  Outside they met by the workshop. Sirel had extracted the jamming device and the bugs were reactivated. Penipe accessed the spying devices with her computer and tied the bugs into her own surveillance system so they could see and hear everything their owners could. They waited briefly to see that their presence had not been detected. The agent had woken up and was trying hard not to nod off while he waiting for his ride. Other than that, all was quiet.

  "We must go to Seattle," Lohet stated the obvious. Migalo growled in distaste and the girls looked at each other. The big city was very hard on them. It was devoid of life, which they found extremely unpleasant. "Sirel, go get our infiltration kits," Lohet continued. They were going to have to pass as Terran. He would need makeup and Migalo and Penipe needed a shave. Sirel was actually the most Terran looking of the quartet, as long as she didn't smile widely. There were faux teeth she could wear but she hated them.

  "Same safehouse?" Sirel asked.

  "Yes," Lohet answered. They had a residence they used the last time they were there that was close to the outskirts of the city and near the forest. With a little whoosh of air, Sirel disappeared up in the sky. They watched her disappear in the night sky for a moment, then likewise disappeared in the forest.

  The agent looked out through the window, peering into the darkness then at his watch, then sat back on the couch and picked up a magazine. He was rather surprised that he dozed off and hoped he wasn't in trouble with his boss.

  Chapter 10

  "All done!" Steven sat back on the RV bench, looking at the last page of the finals he just finished taking on his laptop. He hadn't planned on completing them this soon and figured he would do it once he got to Seattle. But after finding Sarah and Charley, he suddenly had a case of nostalgia and got motivated to go ahead and get the tests out of the way. Once he got to Seattle, he was sure the resulting degree would be useful when he started the internship program and may even help him command a higher wage.

  "Excellent," Charley said as he coiled up ropes and got ready to pack up the camp and head back to Seattle. "How do you think you did?"

  "Oh, pretty well, I guess. I passed, of course." Steven didn't want to have to explain his goal of maintaining average scores to not stand out from the rest of the class. He really wanted to tell Sally and Jonah that he completed the finals but that was impossible currently. Sighing, he shut the testing software down. His godparents would get a notice of it in the mail anyway, so it wouldn't be like they're totally out of the loop. He hoped that would ease their disappointment with his computer exploits. At least he didn't blow that off after so much work over the past two years.

  Taking the tests online out in the forest was a bit awkward. Normally there wouldn't be any connectivity out there in the hills, but he was able to bridge through the other network he found and use that instead. Of course, that wasn't the awkward part. Sarah and Charley were very curious about his connectivity. His hosts decided he was using a satellite connection. He let them assume that.

  He helped where he could in striking camp, but there were a few things that Sarah and Charley wanted to attend to themselves. They insisted he do his exams and get them out of the way while he waited rather than take them later. It would seem that they were no stranger to the curse of procrastination and the inevitable circumstances that seemed to raise roadblocks later, so he didn't feel guilty about sitting there working while they rushed back and forth getting ready to leave. He found it interesting how they took an almost familial interest in him and what he was doing, but he didn't mind.

  While he waited for Sarah and Charley to wrap up the last final details, he pulled up his searches to see if anything else had turned up. He had several databases that thousands of remote servers and computers were crunching, some to crack their security and others to sift their contents to try to find anything and everything that might help him in his search for his parents. So far his parents may as well be ghosts, except for a few security video files. He couldn't understand how someone could operate so thoroughly under the radar. He couldn't even find the hospital where he was born or any records of them actually being his parents. He was listed as orphaned and adopted by the Crow family and that was the extent of it.

  Frustrated by the lack of results, he shut his laptop down and put it back in his backpack and tossed that on the bench beside him. When he got to Seattle he would have to revisit his search strategy. There must be some sort of trail somewhere. The vide
os didn't lie. His parents were there.

  Sarah walked up from the river with a crate of freshly rinsed off dishes and put them in the RV. She looked at Steven for a moment then sat next to him as Charley closed things up, sat in the driver's seat, and started the RV up. It burst to life and Steven noticed an odd smell.

  "The power of hemp fuel," Charley gushed, proud of the alternative fuel he had filled the tanks with. Sarah grinned and made a face at him as he winked at her in the mirror. Then she sat back and looked at Steven, trying to figure him out.

  "That bear didn't bother you, did it?" Sarah stated as much as asked, trying to make sense of it.

  "Not at all." Steven thought she was referring to last night.

  "It walked right by you and knocked you over and you looked annoyed but not scared." She raised an eyebrow.

  "Oh. Well, it was annoying to be pushed over," Steven admitted, realizing that she was talking about the evening before. "He was being silly, that's all." Sarah shook her head, bemused.

  "And you're walking through the forest barefoot." She looked. He had his moccasins on currently, mainly because he didn't like how floors felt.

  Steven looked quizzical. "What's wrong with that?" He had never once given second thought to romping through the forest barefoot and no one had noticed that before. He never had to use the light moccasins that were tied to his belt before. The result was the soles on his feet could double as shoes themselves. The only time he wore footwear habitually in the forest was during the winter to keep the snow off his feet.

  "Well, nothing I guess." Sarah still found it odd. "And you preferred sleeping in the forest to sleeping in a bed." She crossed her arms, looking at him.

  "I didn't want to impose." That was about the only response Steven could think of that wouldn't raise even more questions as he gave her his most innocent look.

  She sniffed, and didn't look satisfied. "You weren't raised by wolves or anything, where you?" Sarah smirked at him.

  Steven grinned and shook his head. "No. They could never master the diaper thing and sent me back."

  Sarah laughed, shaking her head.

  "So, what do you do?" Steven asked, hoping to change the direction of the discussion. Sarah looked at him for a moment then gave him a lopsided smile. She was on to him.

  "Well, I'm an artist. I paint," she responded, much to Steven's relief. "Charley is a columnist."

  Steven nodded, trying to keep that part of the discussion going. "Sounds like fun."

  "It's a hoot," Sarah responded almost sarcastically, realizing she probably wouldn't get much more out of this peculiar boy.

  "What are you going to do in Seattle?" Sarah pulled a couple of bottles of filtered river water from the cooler and gave one to Steven.

  "Well, a friend of mine has offered me a summer internship at a computer company, so I figured since I'm through with school I'd hit that up." Steven hoped against hope that the position was still available. Bret had been very insistent and persistent, except for the past couple of years when he and the chef had stopped coming for some reason. The restaurant had his honey shipped to them after that and he didn't hear a thing from them. It was curious, but there was enough to keep his mind distracted for him not to dwell on it. Perhaps he would ask Bret about that when he got to town.

  "That's really neat!" Sarah was impressed. "From what I've seen of that laptop of yours, I'm sure you'll do great." She still found it amazing that he had fabricated the computer nearly from scratch. The mystery that was the boy deepened. A nature boy who walked through the woods barefoot, slept in the woods, wasn't afraid of bears, collected mushrooms, finished college early and is planning to work for a computer firm really piqued her interest.

  "The song you taught us last night..." Sarah stopped and sang a stanza. Steven's heart jumped. That rendering sounded so much like Asherah that he hurt inside all of a sudden. He gulped, looking away.

  "What is it about?" Sarah asked.

  "It's a love ballad," Steven answered quickly, fiddling with his bottle of water. "It's about love lost and love found through adversity." He hoped Sarah didn't know any Gaelic or she'd see right through his lie about the original language of the song. Trying to explain an imaginary language to her would be rather awkward.

  "It's a beautiful song, Steven. Could you translate it for me?" Sarah pulled out a sketch pad from beside her. Steven raised an eyebrow as she handed it to him. It wasn't his and he was a little confused as to why she would have a sketch pad. Then he remembered. She was an artist.

  "Uhm, sure. It sounds different in English, though." He picked up a pencil and started writing as she looked over his shoulder. As awkward as the subject was to him, it felt really good to have her sitting next to him. It reminded him of Sally. However, he had to focus to concentrate and not be distracted by the memory of Sally's crying. That was the last thing he remembered of her before leaving and he sorely wished he could picture her in happier times without the pain he had caused her.

  "Are you okay?" Sarah looked down at him. Steven didn't realize he had been crying as he wrote the song.

  "Oh. Uh, sorry about that." He wiped his eyes. He wasn't used to being homesick. And Sally crying, even the thought of it, always made him cry. Sarah put her arm around him and squeezed his shoulders as he continued writing. He finished and looked at it. The English didn't do the song justice, but it was as close as he could come.

  "That's beautiful," Sarah said as she read it. He could tell she was working the words to fit the music they were playing last night. "I think I can do something with that."

  "Cool." Steven grinned sheepishly as he grabbed a bottle of water.

  "So, let's see here. You walk barefoot alone in the forest, sleep in the forest, aren't afraid of bears even when they knock you over, speak other languages, draw, play music, and write songs. And you want to be a computer geek?" Sarah looked sideways at him.

  Steven nodded and fidgeted from the attention, hiding behind the bottle of water as he took a longer than needed drink. For some reason he still instinctively sought to keep a low profile. Leading such a secretive life for so long is no doubt part of why. So many things he couldn't talk about for so many years, and much that he still couldn't talk about. It all compounded and added a peculiar stress to his life. But he enjoyed the company of this couple. Their curiosity was nothing unusual and they were really nice.

  "Draw?" he said, recalling something Sarah said. He didn't remember telling her about that.

  "I saw your sketchpad. And how you handled that pencil." Sarah winked at him. "May I?" She slid his sketchpad out of the backpack. Steven resisted the urge to push it back in. After all, he didn't need to hide anymore, and she wouldn't know any of the story behind the drawings anyway.

  "Oh my goodness." Her eyes got wide as she flipped through the pages. She held them up to the sunlight coming in the window behind them and looked closely at the drawings. "Wow. They could be photographs." She angled the drawing in the light, examining the pencil and color strokes. They were almost imperceptible, and she marveled at the quality. She even touched one of the pages on the drawing to convince herself that it was actually a drawing.

  Steven gave her a lopsided smile, not sure how to react. The art had been primarily for his own private need to process what he saw and how he saw it in his head and he had never seriously considered showing it to others, so he felt nervous all of a sudden.

  "No, really. This is incredible." Sarah shook her head and turned the page. "Oh, my. She is gorgeous." Sarah looked at a drawing of Asherah. "The texture, that's fur?" She pulled back. "You gave her fur. Wow, but she looks really good with fur." Sarah grinned at Steven and winked. "Exotic."

  "Uh, yeah." Steven suddenly really wanted to put the sketchbook away. That was a chapter of his life he had been wanting to put behind him. But he still couldn't bring himself to discard the drawings of his imaginary girlfriend.

  "Wow, her eyes." She flipped to another drawing of Asherah. "What do you call
her?"

  "Asherah." He sighed. He really hadn't looked in the sketchbook in a long time and only put it in his backpack out of habit. Come to think of it, he had not really drawn anything for the past couple of years.

  "Is that Gaelic too?" She looked at him.

  "No, that's Elvish," Steven said without thinking. "Uhm... yeah. That." He couldn't unsay that now and hoped desperately that she didn't pursue that little tidbit of information.

  She held the drawing up, looking at it then at Steven. "You two would make a cute couple."

  Steven fidgeted and looked away, fighting the pain that tried to well up in his heart. Sarah saw that he was uncomfortable and mussed his hair and embraced him. "Hey. I'm just kidding, Steven."

  He stared at his bottle of water, trying to think other thoughts. What he was going to do when he first arrived in Seattle was something that he focused on, going over the options in his mind while the threads of Asherah's memory receded back into the dark corners, out of view. He desperately wanted a glass of his medicinal tea and wondered how he would be able to cope without it.

  Sarah continued looking through the sketchbook, enthralled by the drawings. There were many of his parents. "They look so sad."

  Steven looked over at the drawing she was staring at. "Yeah, I guess they do."

  "And you want to be a computer engineer?" She shook her head. "This is stuff that most artists spend their entire lives trying to achieve. I feel like I could reach in there and touch her hair."

  Steven shrugged. "It was just some doodling."

  Sarah frowned. "I'm serious, Steven. I'm an abstract artist, personally. But I have been to years of school and have a lifetime of art. I know art. And I could never even dream of drawing anything like this." She got to the last drawing, of the meadow and gasped at the exquisite detail. "Such imagination." She closed the sketchbook, exasperated at the talent that was being hidden away. "Well, if you don't make it in the computer field, you definitely have a future in art if you decide to go down that rabbit hole." Sarah slid the sketchpad back into his backpack and looked at him critically. Steven wished he could tell her it was his imagination that he was trying to avoid right now. But that was a bit too personal at the moment. He looked at her, trying to find some suitable response, when it hit him again how much like Sally she was.