Fervor
Page 2
In addition to Maria, he had socialized with others at the school, but he had never lived with anyone else. So far, Sam had counted three – him, Francis, and the timid Sarah – who had for some reason been grouped together. Where were the other three going to come from? The blond boy had been anticipating his question.
“There are three more Bigs, like me, who will be meeting us at the Hub: Nathan, Fiona and Royce. They’ll be part of our house-family, too,” Francis explained. Just as it had earlier, his expression fell a little, before the older boy realized that he had let his smile slide, and recovered himself. “And to answer your other question, I know all of this because I’m a Teller. It is the duty of our talent-group. I’ll tell you more about it along the way, but I need you to hurry and take what you think you’ll need.”
Sam scurried around the small two-bedroom bungalow with bare, neutral walls and ordinary shapes, scooping his most valued possessions into the backpack that he had kept in the past for school. He did not have much to show for his eight years. There were no toys, no pictures on the walls, no trinkets, nothing that was not clearly functional in some way. Maria’s obsession with cleanliness had made the place seem almost sterile, as if it had not been bland enough to begin with.
Sam had hesitated for a moment before dumping all of his school things onto the floor to make room for other belongings until he reminded himself that there would be no more school, not in the traditional sense anyway. There were no more minders to take the children there, and no more teachers to teach them. He did keep his sketch pad, and his pencil case, and then he grabbed some clean clothing, shoes, a couple of books, and some food. He also dove into one of the closets and dug through the disorganized pile for a glow torch. He had enough magic in him to make the illuminating device work – it didn’t take that much. It was one of the first things that they had taught them to use at his school. The majority of the appliances and bigger devices he did not know how to use. That worried Sam. He hoped Francis or one of the other three Bigs that were supposed to join him were knowledgeable in their use, or their life on Fervor would be a struggle from here on out.
The quiet as he roamed the house looking for the things that he wanted, and the lack of the familiar rustle and clunk of those items was still frightening to Sam. He was bewildered by the sudden hearing loss and wondered at its cause. He had been able to hear Maria’s warm tone when she bid him goodnight before he had gone to sleep the prior evening. He had even been able to make out the barely audible hiss as she had extinguished the magic that illuminated his room. That ability was just as much a part of the past as Maria apparently was. He shrugged off the urge to crawl into a corner and to sit rocking and hugging his knees, and instead made his way back to Francis who was waiting for him by the front door.
They stepped out into the lukewarm air of late spring, with a soft breeze blowing off the ocean. Francis turned to look at Sam with those mesmerizing pale green eyes, and grinned.
“The Directives only gave me your location, and even though they did give me all of the members of the house-family’s names, they didn’t list where I could find them. It is up to you to find Sarah now,” he insisted, touching Sam’s mind good-naturedly with his own.
Sam’s mouth dropped open, and he blinked disconcertedly at the older boy.
“Me? Why me?” he thought.
“The Directives say that we all have to test our gifts now. I’m a Teller, and I’ve already successfully tested my gift on you and Sarah. As far as I can tell, it’s working the way that it is supposed to.” Francis said this with a hint of a frown, inside and out. “I know it makes you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. It’s what I have to do. You have to do what you do. You’re supposed to be a Finder. I need you to prove to me that your gift is working. Now find Sarah.”
He said it with such conviction that Sam knew that he was not going to be able to refuse him, and the younger boy was correct. Almost immediately, he felt as though he were possessed, driven to find the girl that he had linked with earlier. Knowing in what direction he had to go to find her, but not being able to explain exactly why, Sam started moving. Francis followed behind him eagerly.
After they had been walking for a few minutes, Francis reached out and touched his mind.
“Is it okay if I talk to you, or do you need quiet to concentrate? I know that this is supposed to work for you, but I have no idea how. From what the Directives suggest, the only ones who will truly understand your gift will be others in your talent-group. Only Finders will know what it truly means to be a Finder.”
The younger boy paused and looked back at his current companion. “And only Tellers will know what it truly means to be a Teller,” Sam thought, trying to hold it in to himself. He believed he saw a momentary flash of hurt – or perhaps it was guilt – in Francis’s eyes. He could not be sure if the blond youth had picked up on his thoughts or not, or if that was just a general response to the topic at hand. With a contained sigh, Sam focussed his mind, briefly, on Francis again.
“You can talk to me, but if I want to be sure that we’re going the right way, I can’t let it distract me too much. If I do, I’ll have to stop and reach for her again. As long as I can find her mind, I can find her. I guess that means I could find anybody on Fervor, if I knew who I was looking for.”
“Anybody, that is, who was Connected,” the older boy corrected him mentally. “Anybody who isn’t a Control.”
Sam considered asking what Francis meant by that, since it was his second time mentioning these Controls, but he realised that, so far, his Teller had only revealed things to him that the blond youth had decided that Sam needed to know. Since they were looking for her anyway, however, Sam assumed that Francis might be more forthcoming about Sarah.
“So Sarah’s not a Teller, and I’m assuming that she’s not a Finder like me either,” Sam remarked, believing that finding would be a rather pointless talent if one were blind. “And since I can find her, she mustn’t be one of these Controls you mentioned either. What is she then?”
“Your deductive skills are fairly sharp,” Francis thought at Sam, with a mental chuckle. “You had good teachers. You’re correct. Sarah’s none of those things. Our Control is supposedly someone named Royce. I’m not sure where he is, and you won’t be able to find him, but he is supposed to be meeting up with us at the Hub, as are the other two Bigs. No ... Sarah is our Fixer.”
“Fixer? Where are you getting all this from, Francis? You keep talking about these Directives. You have all these strange rules. You know things that I don’t about what’s going on? How?”
Sam noticed that as he thought these things at Francis, he could sense that there were others in the connection sharing similar feelings while dealing with their own Tellers, probably other Finders like him. This was an experience that was repeating itself across Fervor. It was like a buzzing on the same frame of mind as Sam was on, and the young boy found it very unnerving.
Francis looked unhappy again, and Sam didn’t like that. Every time it happened, Sam felt like he was somehow personally responsible – that the blond boy’s displeasure was essentially wrong and that the situation needed rectification. There was an unnatural satisfaction in assuring that his Teller’s eyes held contentment instead disappointment.
“I told you, Sam. I can’t explain everything right now. That’s what the Gathering’s for. You’ll learn a lot there. There will be answers to your questions.”
As the older boy’s mind touched Sam’s, he gestured in the direction that they had been travelling in, along a well-established hover path that passed amongst the trees. He wanted to continue onwards as they discussed things, if it were possible. Sarah would be waiting for them. She was scared and she could barely function without them.
The compulsion for Sam to seek her out was even stronger than the ones generated by Francis’s other orders. Sam reached out for her within the connection and re-established her location. Then Sam started moving towards her again.
The other thing that bothered Sam was that Francis had said that there would be answers to his questions, but Sam could tell just by the way that the blond boy had thought this at him that there would not be answers to all of his questions. Sam did not like that fact either. He did not like it at all.
By nightfall, they had not yet reached Sarah, and the pair had been forced to seek shelter from the cool, damp air of night in the shelter of the overhang of someone’s hover garage; their only protection from the elements since neither Sam nor Francis had the knowledge of magic required to work the door device. Sam fell asleep to the murmur of the connection within his head, and the more distinct sound of Francis trying to soothe a distraught Sarah, miserable at the notion that she would have to spend the night as alone as she had spent her day. He pointed out that she was not really alone, and never would be again. She was not happy with this mental reassurance. She wanted to be able to feel someone’s touch again, to make physical contact in order to make sure that she had not gone completely crazy as well as blind, and to know once and for all that this was not all a figment of her imagination.
After a fairly unappetizing breakfast of dry bread and fruit juice that Sam dug out of his pack, they set off to find Sarah again. Believing that talking to Francis seemed both pointless and distracting, the two boys walked in contemplative silence, the only real contact either of them making through the connection was to occasionally think at Sarah that it would not be much longer now before they would get to her. Late in the morning, Sam stopped in his tracks and pointed at a house similar to his own small, boxy bungalow. It was equally featureless and neutral in colour, much like the clothing that they wore.
“She’s in there. I’m sure of it,” he blurted out, glancing at Francis. “We found her. I found her.”
Puffing out his chest slightly, Sam began to stride up the hill, past Francis, towards the house. As Sam came within arm’s reach of the blond boy, Francis purposefully stuck his foot out to trip the smaller boy. The move was completely unexpected, and Sam sprawled onto the ground. He landed hard, grazing the palms of his hands, tearing his pants, and badly skinning his knee. As he managed to drag himself to a sitting position, tears immediately sprang to his eyes. Now the younger child was twice as angry, both for Francis’s overtly hostile action, and for the fact that he was now bawling like a baby. Francis was not even looking at him, however. He had left Sam where he sat, and had started for the door to Sarah’s house.
“What did you do that for!” Sam raged, with a sizeable push. Francis hesitated in mid-step, clutching at his head.
“I told you not to do that,” Francis’s thoughts bit back, losing a little of their typical composure. “That hurts.”
Sam suddenly felt numb, the fury sapped from him by his Teller’s words. “And what you did to me didn’t?” the younger boy complained, with much less force this time. “Why? Why did you trip me?”
Francis looked back at him, biting his lip. His pale green eyes held that familiar melancholy again.
“I told you. The Directives say that I have to test your talents. Sarah’s a Fixer. I had to give her something to fix,” his thoughts revealed quietly.
“But why me? Why not throw yourself to the ground?” Sam demanded, but Francis had already gone back to ignoring him and was in the process of opening the door. Sam believed that he heard the older boy’s thoughts vaguely through the connection, echoing something that had been said to him on more than one occasion and was now playing through his mind like a recording.
“First objective is to preserve the ones who uphold the Directives. Without you, this is all for null.”
Sam realized what that meant. According to the Directives, he was more expendable than Francis.
Sam waited for his return without budging from the ground, tears still trickling down his cheeks. Francis emerged from the house with a girl who was even smaller than Sam. The waif-like Sarah, who stared vacantly out at the space before her and allowed herself to be pulled along carelessly by the blond boy, had both dark hair and eyes and a thin frame.
“Sam? Francis said that you were hurt...” Her thoughts were very strong now that they were actually meeting face to face – much stronger than their Teller’s.
“Here – let me be your eyes,” the older boy offered, and then he projected the image that he saw to the slender girl. Sam could see it, too, and it felt weird to see himself through someone else’s eyes. He looked so small, his grey eyes sad and accusatory, his light brown hair uncombed and unruly, and his rosy cheeks stained by his tears. Sarah knelt beside him and smiled.
“Is it bad?”
Although Sam knew Sarah had the potential to push much harder than even he could, her thoughts were always so soft, so gentle. He nodded without considering that this gesture would be lost on her if Francis had not chosen to pass it along through his projection.
“Let me see what I can do.”
Her mind touched his, and he felt it wrap around the pain and pull it free. Via the connection, she let her magic seep through – into him – and patch the holes that it found there. Moments later, Sam no longer bore any evidence of the damage that Francis’s antics had caused. Sarah patted his knee, the hole in his pants being the only thing that remained from his fall. She grinned, even her empty brown eyes shining gleefully.
“Find me a needle and a thread, and I think I can fix those too,” she said.
The smaller boy looked over at Francis who was watching them with resignation. Sam was thankful that Sarah would be going with them – someone who was actually more vulnerable than he was. He was also glad that he was not going to be the only Little in their “house-family” as Francis had put it. Things had been hard enough until that point, and Sam suspected that it would be quite some time before they were likely to get any easier.
The Hub
The three travelled together with an awkward awareness of each other’s presence. Sarah walked with cautious steps, clutching at Francis’s hand, her mind occasionally reaching out to him or Sam for reassurance. Sam walked ahead of them since it was up to him to lead them to the Hub.
According to Francis, all of the children on Fervor were travelling to the communal meeting place purposefully for the Gathering. A few of the house-families had already reached the Hub since they had not had very far to go to get there, and Francis had given Sam the identity of one of the Tellers, Bryan, whom he knew would be already there. The younger boy used the unfamiliar Teller as a beacon, a means of guiding them to the Hub, but Sam did not enjoy having to re-establish the link with this Bryan any time that it was lost due to some distraction. Sam’s connection with Francis was not nearly as unnerving as the one with Bryan. Francis’s mind was firm and unyielding in some ways, but gentle and calming nonetheless. It was as though the blond boy understood that patience was required to handle the smaller children properly, without causing them undue anxiety.
Bryan’s mind, on the other hand, was brusque and rushed, like his connection with Sam was an inconvenience and an annoyance. The link through the connection would be only necessary until Sam was physically close enough to the Hub that he could seek out the large structure instead of having to track a person, which was the more effective part of his gift. Bryan had been somewhat receptive to their initial link, understanding the necessity of the situation, but every time Sam had become distracted and had to look for him again, the new contact was met with mild animosity and a sense of frustration. While Bryan’s surface thoughts did not openly state this, in the background Sam could hear hi
s irritated underlying thoughts, quiet and restrained.
“I don’t have time for this. The Gathering will be starting soon and there is so much to do to prepare. Why couldn’t Francis have directed him to someone else? Why can’t the little bugger just focus and stop interrupting me? I told them the Littles would be trouble. Fifty of them – why couldn’t they have made do with only two hundred and fifty Bigs? That ought to have been a big enough pool to work with.”
It was a swirling mental sigh to Sam – a fog of exasperation hovering at the back of this Bryan’s mind. Sam tried hard to ignore it, but it was really difficult. It was as if they were sitting in two different rooms, but had no door between them, and Sam had exceptionally good hearing so that he could still manage to hear what Bryan was muttering under his breath. In a way, it was kind of ironic, considering that in the physical world, Sam was now deaf. He wished he had a proper door to block out those subtle thoughts.
The smaller boy glanced over his shoulder at his two companions. Despite having Francis as her eyes, Sarah still stumbled from time to time, so the older boy maintained a tight grip on her hand to keep her from falling. Seeing Sam look her way in Francis’s projected image, she came to a full stop.
“I’m hungry,” she declared in a subdued way, directing her thoughts at Sam. There was nothing left in his backpack.
Francis groaned inwardly. This would slow their progress further, but he knew that they could not continue travelling on the mere desire to get to the Hub. This slip of a girl was little more than skin and bones to begin with. If she claimed that she was in need of sustenance, then they would have to oblige her.
“Leave off on seeking out the Hub for the moment,” the blond boy instructed Sam, “Time to test some of your other skills as a Finder. We need food and drink. We’ll stop for lunch and replenish our supplies.”
Sam regarded him with puzzlement, but he stopped tracing Bryan immediately – responding as always to Francis’s commands with unflinching subordination.