Fervor

by Chantal Boudreau

  “How?” the younger boy questioned. “Maria always fetched us food if we needed it while I was at school.”

  “There are storehouses across Fervor. There may be one nearby. Otherwise, we’ll just have to break into one of the houses...one that clearly won’t be used as one of the family-houses. I’m not asking, Sam, I’m telling. Find us food and drink.” Francis’s good-natured thoughts steeled slightly, and Sam was willed to obey. He paused, curiously, as things seemed to shift inside him.

  One day at school, several months ago, Sam had seen magical projections of bloodhounds at work. What he was experiencing now reminded him of that day. At Francis’s prompting, some magic deep within him latched onto an awareness of where food and drink could be found, and Sam was compelled to follow this trail, like scratching at some terrible psychic itch. He scrambled off in that direction, rushing along the most accessible hover paths, and it was all Francis could do to keep up with the smaller boy, especially with blind Sarah in tow.

  A few moments later, Sam found himself standing in front of a strange, industrial-looking grey building, unlike any of the houses and schools or community centres that existed on Fervor. He could feel Francis’s pleasure embedded in the older boy’s thoughts as he and Sarah approached him from behind.

  “Excellent! You found one of the storehouses, and quite quickly, too. Your talent is strong,” the blond boy exclaimed.

  Just as with Bryan, Sam could pick up on the mental murmurings just below the surface ones – the ones he believed Francis had not intended him to hear. “I told them the Littles would prove themselves useful. They are better at this than the rest of us. We lucked into it, but they were made that way.”

  Made that way. Sam wished that he had not picked up on any of that. Every time that he heard something in the connection he believed to which he was not intended to be privy, it spawned new insecurities, created new anxieties, and led to even more unanswered questions. Why was Francis hiding so much from him and Sarah? Why did he refuse to let them know exactly what was going on?

  In the shade of a large pine, they sat and ate without saying much to one another. Sam was just enjoying the relief of not having that pressing feeling that came with Francis’s instructions, particularly the compulsion to find things that they were looking for. That drive was irresistible, and Sam had felt trapped by it each time the older boy had demanded that he go looking for something else.

  He and Francis were both a little surprised when Sarah, from out of the blue, started asking her own questions part way through the meal. There was always such power behind her mental touch, but at the same time, always so much reserve, perhaps because of her shyness. It took effort for Francis to push his thoughts at Sam, the younger boy was sure of it, but for Sarah it seemed to be second-nature. If the petite girl let go, her push would be a force to be reckoned with.

  “What happens when we get to the Hub? Where do we go from there?” she said, nervous and mildly inquisitive.

  “Well, first we have to find the Controls,” Francis admitted. It was odd, continuing their conversation without having to stop eating, Sam considered. There would be no more concern about speaking with your mouth full. “Sam won’t be able to find them in his usual way, so we’ll have to look for where they will be grouped the old-fashioned way in order to locate Royce. Nathan and Fiona will be somewhere in the mix. Sam will be able to lead us to them.”

  “What about testing their gifts,” Sam added, with a hint of resentment. It did not seem fair that he would have to suffer the pain and embarrassment of playing the victim in Francis’s tests if the others in their anticipated “house-family” would not have to suffer the same fate. The blond boy’s pale green eyes flashed with momentary regret before he turned away from them, looking off towards the direction in which they had been moving before they’d stopped to eat.

  “The Directives say that we all have to be tested. Fiona’s a Keeper. She’ll be difficult to test. Her talent is not that straight forward; it is more passive than yours or Sarah’s. Nathan’s a Watcher. That won’t be easy to test either. His is mostly passive as well and only reactive to very specific situations that will be difficult to simulate,” their Teller insisted. The smaller boy did not like the sound of that. It suggested that he might once again end up the pawn in Francis’s experimental game.

  “What about this Royce boy?” Sam grumbled, his thoughts reflecting some of his displeasure. Francis frowned again, still not facing him.

  “Controls can’t be tested, and there’s no need to. They aren’t part of a talent-group in the same sense as the rest of us. They are different.” Francis’s thoughts wavered slightly in response to the notion of Royce and the other Controls. There was something about them that made Francis uncomfortable, something that he was not sharing with Sam and Sarah.

  Francis was evasive again after that, and conversation dwindled. They finished their meal, packed up their new provisions, and Sam reached out to find Bryan again. After getting the expected curt response to his prodding, the small boy re-established his lines of direction and the three set out towards the Hub again.

  * - * - *

  Sam woke up to the sound of Sarah crying – inside of course, rather than outside. Francis was still asleep, and the younger boy noted a distinct lull in the connection. Most of the people on the island would be asleep at this point in time. That meant that he and Sarah could actually talk in private. The idea intrigued Sam. He had not had any real sense of privacy since he had awoken to the screams, no matter how badly he had wanted it. Francis had said that they would have a lot to learn, and that was the primary purpose for the Gathering. Sam was hoping that this included learning some way of blocking everyone else out, and letting only those desired in.

  Truthfully, Sam wanted to run as far away from the other children on the island as possible, not make a conscious effort to move towards them, the way that they had been as they had advanced upon the Hub. The more distance he put between him and another Connected, the more tenuous their link.

  “What’s wrong?” he said quietly, reaching out to touch her mind as gently as he could manage.

  “Oh...Sam. I had a dream. I dreamt that I could see again, and that Sasha was still with me. I miss those things so much. I don’t like all the noise in my head. I don’t like the way Francis makes me feel sometimes. I don’t like all of the changes. Why did this happen? Why didn’t things stay the way that they were?” she murmured.

  “I miss Maria, too, Sarah. I miss being able to hear things. I think Francis knows a lot more about what’s going on here than he believes he can tell us. I don’t think that he’s holding out on us to be mean. I get the feeling that other people are keeping him from saying as much as he wants to, or that he’s convinced that by telling us it will hurt us somehow.”

  Sam paused, letting his thoughts trickle out towards the blond haired boy to make sure that he was still asleep. There was only stillness there, so he continued.

  “I can hear some of his thoughts sometimes, ones that he doesn’t want me to hear. He was thinking something earlier that made me wonder if you and I are going to be different from the Bigs, the ones that we’ll be living with, other than just in age and size. He thought something about the Bigs being chosen for this, and about the Littles being made. I couldn’t understand what he meant, but I think it was important.”

  “Made...why would he be thinking something like that?” Sarah whispered.

  Her vacant stare looked out at the stars, and Sam felt a twinge of sympathy. He could not imagine how difficult this was for her. His issues seemed serious enough, and hers were worse.

  “While you were distracted with doing your finding, he and I talked a little as well,” she confessed. “He wouldn’t answer a lot of my questions. He said that we had to wait for the Gathering, that there were a lot of things that he couldn’t tell me. I could hear whispers of some of the things he was trying to hide. Someone won’t let him say everything he wants to say.
He’s not bad, Sam. He’s nice. He doesn’t like the things he has to do. It makes him very sad sometimes. It makes me want to help fix him. I can sense that it hurts him, and it feels wrong. The minders were involved with all this, and the other people we never knew, the ones that left before the times that you and I remember. I think Francis was almost as afraid as we are now when it happened the first time.”

  Comparing notes, when there was no one else around to eavesdrop, was proving to be useful in Sam’s opinion. Francis would likely look upon this conversation with disapproval and order them to stop. Sam did not like being left in the dark. Someone had chosen to mess with who they were, their way of life, and the way that they experienced their world. No one had given them any warning or bothered to ask their permission to do the things that they had done. On the other hand, someone had clearly gone to great trouble to prepare the Tellers, to brief them, to give them some idea of what to expect. It was not fair, especially considering the amount of power that the Tellers had over the other children who had been left behind on Fervor.

  “There were a few other things that I picked up on while we were talking – things that still don’t make sense,” Sarah revealed, her sadness dissipating a little in response to the distraction that talking to Sam offered. “He thought something about ‘stasis’ and he wondered how long it would take before we would be ready for ‘the Coming.’ I don’t know which is worse, Sam – the not knowing, for us, or the knowing too much and not being able to share, for Francis.”

  “Well I know I don’t like feeling dumb, like we should have some idea of what’s happening to us, but we don’t. I hate needing Francis so much.” The smaller boy did resent the older one for that element of dependency. He suspected that Sarah might feel that way even more, considering how bad off she would be without their help. It was at that moment that Francis started to stir.

  “He’s starting to wake up,” Sarah observed softly.

  “Can you make me a promise, Sarah?” Sam asked, trying to keep his thoughts quiet, so as not to awaken Francis more quickly. “Whenever either of us wakes up like this, in the middle of the night, when almost everyone else is sleeping, we’ll swear to wake up the other person so we can talk, just you and me, with no one else listening in. Are you willing to do this?”

  “Like we’re special friends,” she whispered, her thoughts starting to fade.

  “Exactly. I think we can trust each other. I’ve never felt like you were trying to hide anything. That, and everyone else in the house will be Bigs. Us Littles will need to stick together. Don’t you think?” he offered.

  The dark-haired, dark-eyed girl extended her hand towards him, since she had a general idea where he was, and he took it as an unspoken acknowledgement of their agreement. As they both lay down to go back to sleep again, the feeling that Francis was rousing intensifying, Sam gave her hand a squeeze and closed his eyes.

  * - * - *

  It was two more days of exhausting travel before Sam was finally able to stop tracking the Hub through his link in the connection to Bryan, and instead, focus his finding efforts directly on the massive building itself. It was a huge relief for the small boy to no longer have to disrupt the cantankerous youth by repeatedly making contact after any interruptions en route.

  When they finally could make out the giant domed roof of the structure that they were looking for, a thrill ran through Sam, one that he purposefully shared with Sarah. He even went so far as to attempt to project the image that he was seeing to her, despite being completely unpractised with being her eyes. She told him that it was a little bit fuzzy, but for the most part quite good. Francis seemed a little uneasy at this interaction, unsettled at the pair’s apparent familiarity, despite the fact that Sam and Sarah had barely spoken over the last few days. He offered Sarah a clearer view of the Hub from his own perspective, and suggested that the Littles try to help him locate Fiona and Nathan through the connection before reaching the actual physical location of the Hub.

  Allowing their minds to drift through the connection there, while calling out for their two missing Connected Bigs in the chaos, was not as simple as Francis made it out to be. With the large grouping of children in the immediate area, the connection was thick with thoughts, emotions, and overall confusion. Sarah got nowhere in the pandemonium, and eventually retreated back to what she felt was a safer place, clinging to Francis in both body and mind, but Sam was feeling more adventurous and less insecure than his Fixer companion. He pushed into the middle of the crowd calling out for Fiona and Nathan. He was fairly sure that if he could touch their minds, he could start making use of his talent, and then he would be able to find them with little trouble.

  As they neared the huge building, Sam’s efforts finally paid off when his thoughts brushed Nathan’s ever so slightly. The younger boy was not so sure if Nathan was aware of him, but he latched on like glue, his instinctive desire to find the other boy kicking in instantaneously. Reaching the large double doorway in the entry lounge, he ran into the next crowd beyond, disappearing from view and leaving Francis and Sarah wading in behind him.

  “Nathan! Nathan!” Sam called through the loud cacophony that was the connection within the Hub, vaguely reminiscent of the completely disorienting sensation of everyone screaming at once when he had first awoken.

  Sam pushed past all of the other minds that huddled in his way. He was feeling dizzy, like he was losing himself in the constant thrum that surrounded him in his head. His heart pounded as he paused, now starting to wonder if there was a physical threat to being in the middle of the throng. People pushed and shoved, many of them searching for someone the same way that he was. Subject to a particularly severe jostle, the small boy suddenly found himself on his knees and in serious jeopardy of being trampled underfoot. That was when a meaty hand settled on his shoulder and pulled him back onto his feet. The same hand then grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him off to one side.

  Sam looked the boy who had intervened on his behalf in the eye. He was more than half again as tall as the younger boy, and from all appearances, twice as broad. His eyes were a smoky blue colour, his nose slightly crooked and when he smiled one side of his face lifted a little higher than the other. His square-jawed head was topped with coarse, brown hair that stuck up in various places, as unruly as Sam’s was, only thicker and darker.

  “You were looking for me, little buddy?”

  Sam noted that the larger boy had made no attempt to speak to him with his mouth as well as his thoughts, unlike the majority of the people that milled about them. Nathan had already become accustomed to using the connection as his primary method of communication. That seemed a little surprising to Sam, because this Big, while having a push that offered slightly more force than Francis, nowhere near matched Sarah in his potential for power.

  Sam felt something warm trickle across his arm and glanced down to see a rather jagged cut on the hand that gripped him, an open one that was dripping blood. He raised his eyes to the other boy’s again.

  “Nathan? Francis said we needed to find you and Fiona, so I had to look. What did you do to your hand? We should get you back to Sarah. She can fix that, you know.” Sam insisted.

  The larger boy gazed at both his hands nonchalantly, and then realized exactly what it was that Sam was referring to. He looked at the cut and frowned.

  “When did I do that?” he muttered, more so to himself than to Sam. The smaller boy regarded him with bewilderment.

  “I can’t feel it,” Nathan explained. “Just like this one.” He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a blistered burn on his forearm that was oozing a clear liquid. “Or this one.” He rolled up his other sleeve to expose a deep gash lined with a newly forming layer of pus. “I tried to get a hover going, and I almost had it, too. Then it started to overheat, and, well…”

  Sam contemplated the situation as he led his newest companion back to Sarah and Francis. He was sure that it was not just a coincidence – there was a pattern. Sarah was
missing her sight, Sam his hearing, and it was clear now that what Nathan had lost was his sense of touch. As they reached the other members of their “house-family” as Francis had put it, and Sarah began to fix Nathan. Sam eyed the Teller warily.

  “So what are you missing then? Taste or smell? You have it pretty easy, don’t you, compared to us. What, did they decide that a Teller was too valuable to lose a sense that really mattered?” Sam pushed accusingly. “Why did they do this to us? You know, don’t you?”

  “Smell,” Francis admitted, his eyes downcast, and his thoughts and expression filled with that customary melancholy. “But it’s not what you think. You have it backwards. I don’t need to be as strong as you do. Neither does Fiona.” He braced himself mentally, shaking off the guilt that Sam had thrown his way and refocused his attention to the things he was supposed to be dealing with at the moment. “Nathan will be fine. You’ve only accomplished half of what you need to do here. Go find Fiona.”

  Sam gritted his teeth and wished that he were the same size as the blond boy so that he could slug him at that moment, without fear of repercussion, but he doubted he could resist the urge to look for the older girl long enough to make physical contact anyway. His mind immediately returned to the clustering of thoughts within the Hub.

  Sam was beginning to understand why it had been simple to find Sarah at the start, and why Nathan had been easiest to find of the two that he had been searching for there at the Hub. The Bigs had weaker links to the connection, with Nathan being the strongest so far. Having that in mind, the small boy directed his thoughts towards something vaguer, something flimsier than what he had found when his mind touched on his other companions.

  “Fiona!” he called through the connection, but this time he was hunting for something much different, and having a better idea of what it was that he was looking for made his task that much easier. Unlike Nathan’s presence, which had been almost as solid as Sam’s own, Fiona’s was more like a shadow in the mix, weaker and less substantial. She did not reach out for him in return until he was almost on top of her.