Fervor

by Chantal Boudreau

  “Francis had though something about ‘the Coming’ before. Remember. Sam? It was that time that we first found out about the stasis, too,” Sarah added. “If this E really is a latent user of the connection, maybe we can touch on him or her. Perhaps we could let our newest ally know that we got the message, and that we will keep hoping.”

  “If you think that we should try that, then it should be you making the effort, Sarah. You are the strongest in the connection. You’ll have the best chance of reaching this person,” Sam insisted.

  “But you’ll have the best chance of finding him or her,” she argued.

  “So is there any way that you could look together?” Fiona asked. “You find him, and then she speaks to him.”

  Sam blinked, with his uncertainty showing in his expression. “Can we do that? Use the connection together? What do you think, Sarah?”

  None of them had actually tried to combine their efforts within the connection. It was a strange idea, but it might work.

  “It’s worth a try,” Sarah said softly.

  They joined each other in the connection, and pushed their way past the many minds there together. Most of them were shielded to some extent anyway since the majority of the children had been practicing blocking with their walls since the day of the Gathering. Sam and Sarah moved carefully amongst them, Sam searching and Sarah following.

  “E,” they murmured softly as they went. “Fiona sent us. E?”

  Sam felt a very faint presence at the far edge of the connection, and his finding instincts guided him that way. It seemed to be male.

  “I think that I have him,” he whispered to Sarah. “This way. Come on.”

  They proceeded with caution, skirting the occasional mind that still remained far more open than the others, until Sam had led her to the place where he believed that the person that they were seeking might be. He reached out and tried to brush at the faint contact there, but Sam realized that he had extended himself as far as he could go. Sarah was not equally limited. She inched past him, and barely touched that vague presence. Out of reach to Sam, he could not hear what they were saying. He was forced to relax and wait, hoping Sarah would be willing to pass along what E was telling her. After a few moments, she pulled back and they both restored their link with Fiona.

  “His name is Elliot, and he is living on the mainland, on the closest coast to Fervor,” Sarah informed them both. “He used to be a technician here. He couldn’t tell me much. The strongest Watchers patrol the connection as well, roaming a circuit, and if he’s caught he’ll be sent away. Then he’ll never be able to help us. But he promised to keep sending messages, and to let us know what progress he is making. He’s going to see if there is a way that he can either fix things for us here, or find us a way off of Fervor...”

  She and Fiona tensed and they turned their heads towards the door. Fiona scrambled to shove the container and the message under Sam’s blankets. At first the smaller boy thought that it was Nathan returning to the house again, interrupting them as he had before, but when he checked the connection, he found that it was Francis finally coming home. When their Teller stepped into the doorway, before Sarah or Sam could stop her, Fiona lit into him.

  “How can you show your face here after what you encouraged Royce to do to Sam? I used to think that there was a part of you that was lost but salvageable. At times, I had believed that you felt cornered and had no choice in this, and that in some ways you were as much a victim as the rest of us.” She moved towards him as she spoke, and with the way she was pushing on the inside, Sam suspected that she was at least speaking harshly at him, if not shouting, on the outside. “But that’s not it at all. I understand now that you have no soul. You may have had one once, but if that’s the case, you let them take it from you, or maybe you handed it over willingly. Keeping secrets from us is only part of it, isn’t it? I’d even wager that it’s the least of it. Forcing us to do things against our wills, and deciding what’s best for us, according to these silly Directives – that’s even worse. But holding Sam out as bait for the sharks, and hoping Nathan would get to him in time? I don’t care what sort of test that it was supposed to be, and I don’t care what type of hold these people have over you. That’s evil, Francis, pure evil.”

  Once she had arrived within reach of the blond boy she began prodding him in the chest to accentuate her words. He had stepped back initially, but from that point onwards he had just stood there and taken it, looking at her with his green-grey eyes filled with pity. That only just seemed to spur her frustration, and Sam couldn’t understand why the Teller didn’t just order her to stop.

  “Don’t pretend that you want to be my friend anymore, and don’t insist that this is a family. If you want me to believe that you would treat your family the way that you treat us, then I can only assume that it’s because you enjoy tormenting others. In fact, unless you feel the need to order me around, I want you to leave me alone. I’ve had it with you, and from now on you aren’t welcome in my room, you aren’t welcome in my thoughts, and anything that I do for you, I do under protest,” the older girl raged, and then stormed away to brood in the privacy of her own space.

  Sam noted Francis’s shoulders sag a little and his head droop.

  “And here I was thinking that we had been finding some common ground,” the Teller sighed. “I guess that’s over. I knew she wouldn’t understand, but I wasn’t given a choice. Nathan was the holdout. All of the other Watchers had been tested, and they said if I didn’t resolve it before the next meeting, that one of the other house-families would get involved. I wanted to maintain some control of the situation, to try to assure your safety, but I never would have imagined that you would wander so far from home. Nathan should have been able to get to you much more quickly otherwise, and I’m certain that you would rather that I set this up with you than with one of the girls. What were you doing so far away from the house?”

  Sam couldn’t lie, not through the connection, but he wasn’t required to give specifics. “I was finding, just like I’m supposed to do.”

  The smaller boy knew that his find was still close at hand, hidden by his blankets. The fact that if Francis were aware, he could practically reach out and grab it, made Sam nervous. “I have to follow the impulse, you know that. It happened to take me to a place not far from where Royce started chasing me. Maybe my finding brought me there in part to find him up to no good. He wasn’t alone Francis. He was there talking with other Bigs, ones I didn’t know. I think that they had organized their own meeting, in secret, and didn’t want to be found, least of all by me with the way that Royce reacted.”

  Francis frowned. This was clearly news to him.

  “Other Bigs? What other Bigs? The family-houses were purposefully spaced apart so that our paths wouldn’t cross to any extent, and so that we would have our own separate spaces to find in and watch over. How many of them were there?”

  “I only caught a quick glimpse of them, with Royce chasing me and all, but it looked like there were four other than him, two boys and two girls. Obviously, I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but they didn’t look happy,” Sam revealed.

  “Hmm,” The Teller said, contemplatively. “That might explain where Royce has been disappearing to on a regular basis. Aside from making sure that I don’t bully you, he doesn’t have much to do around here, and I thought he was just finding something at random to occupy himself with. Honestly, I don’t think that he cares much what I do, Directives or no Directives. Thanks for telling me. I’ll have to investigate.”

  Sam shrugged, and shifted uncomfortably. He was hoping that Francis would leave and that Fiona would return to fetch the message so that she could hide it properly.

  “You know that I’m telling the truth. I never intended for you to get hurt,” Francis added, as he turned to go. “I wouldn’t want any harm to come to any of you. Whether Fiona is willing to see it this way or not, I was actually trying to protect you, not the other way arou
nd.”

  Sam looked at his placid face, and knew that Francis could not lie to him through the connection. He only wished Francis did not have such a warped way of viewing things, or that he were more willing to share the burden imposed on him by the information he continuously kept from them. It was changing him. Fiona was right about that much.

  Not only could Sam see it, he could feel it, too, whenever they made contact through the connection, and the Teller was not changing in a good way either. He was becoming numb to things in general, more or less a ghost of the quirky minded, pleasant boy that he had been at the beginning. Sam also worried that if this transformation kept up, soon he would not care about things any more than Royce did, and Fiona’s outbursts weren’t helping any.

  “Don’t worry, Francis,” Sarah assured him gently. “We believe you. Fiona just has a harder time accepting everything around here. She liked the way things used to be. It’s going to take more convincing as far as she’s concerned.”

  Sam nodded in agreement, and could both see and feel the Teller’s relief as he was walking away. When he was gone, Sarah reached out to connect with Sam alone.

  “Why do things have to be this complicated?” she asked sadly.

  While Sam shared this opinion he didn’t like seeing her down. He gave her a mental pat on the shoulder and an inside smile.

  “It will get better,” he suggested. “It has to.”

  * - * - *

  Fiona didn’t get over her renewed dislike of Francis after a few weeks – or even a few months – the way that Sam and Sarah had hoped she would. She now lacked incentive, since the older girl was convinced that his walls were too strong for even Sarah to penetrate on occasion. They were all getting much better at blocking others out, to the point where Francis decided that it was time to instruct them on the methods of establishing a mental door, so that they could selectively allow others into their own inner space. Having a door let them do this without risking the chance that others might get to listen in if their presence was strong enough in the connection, or in some cases, allow some of their less controlled thoughts to get out. Nobody would be able to gently push their way past someone else’s blocks any more. They would have to “knock”, something else Francis was also able to teach them, or if the situation were sufficiently urgent, try to push their way in with much more force.

  Sam would spend part of every day, once he had done his required chores, searching for some new sign that Elliot was trying to reach them, some sign of another message. But every day he seemed to come up empty handed. It soon became difficult for him and the girls to hide their disappointment, sometimes moving around the house in a bit of a funk. Royce and Francis both would watch them with some suspicion on those days, and Sam thought that he had detected Francis attempting to prod at him in some hope for answers to explain his moodiness.

  Sam was pretty certain, however, that he and Fiona, thanks to Sarah’s help, had fairly formidable walls, as they approached the halfway mark of their second year since being introduced to the connection. As long as Sam maintained his focus, Francis had no chance of stealing a glimpse at his innermost thoughts, and he would not allow any lingering doubts about Elliot to rise to the surface, including his worries that Elliot had gotten caught, and was no longer there to help them.

  Nathan had a completely different approach when he noticed Fiona and the Littles appearing to be glum. He would find other means of trying to cheer them. He would tell them any interesting stories about his travels on the circuit, or he would tease at them in a playful way, often resorting to gentle rough-housing with Sam or Fiona. As much as Sarah might have enjoyed similar play, Nathan was clearly reluctant to include her. Sam suspected that Nathan was put off by her obvious frailty, concerned that he might prove to be more rough than she could handle, and particularly afraid that he might in some way harm their Fixer. After all, if someone broke their Fixer, who would fix her?

  Sam put that question to Francis once, wondering what would become of their house-family, if Sarah became ill or injured, and could not fix herself, or worse yet, someone died and ended up beyond any hope of being fixed, leaving them short-handed. Francis wouldn’t answer his second question, although Sam suspected that there was something to cover this possibility within the Directives, but he explained that if Sarah needed fixing, that they would have to seek out another family’s Fixer for assistance. The other family wouldn’t be able to refuse them, since the rules made it clear that their first obligation was to their talent group and not to their house-family. If someone else needed Sarah’s fixing skills, for example, she would have to go with them, even if it meant her house-family would be short a Fixer temporarily.

  As the end of their second year together approached, and Royce made himself more and more scarce on a daily basis, a second large storm struck, one as violent as the one that had carried Elliot’s first message to them. After the storm had passed, and Sam and Nathan were allowed their freedom again, the antsy pair bounded out of the house as fast as their legs would carry them. Nathan disappeared into the woods, while the smaller boy made his way down to the beach.

  Despite his excitement, he was much more cautious than he had been the time that his close call with Royce had occurred, and even though the finding itch burned within him like an overheating hover, he paced himself. Watching for the Control as much as looking for any potential signs from Elliot, he padded gently down the shore.

  He had been searching for several minutes when Sam caught the glimpse of bright orange out of the corner of his eye at almost the same time as he also noticed Royce and his cohorts mingling in the same area. Feeling impatient, but not prepared to make the same mistake that he had last time, Sam backed away a little, crouching behind some seaweed covered rocks. Locating Sarah in the connection, the small boy reached out and knocked. After a few seconds, she opened her mental door to him.

  “I’m pretty sure that I’ve found another message from Elliot,” he informed her. “Or, at least, it looks like it could be a similar container from here.”

  “What are you waiting for then. Get it and bring it home. Fiona and I are as anxious to see it as you are. We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” she exclaimed exuberantly.

  “There’s a problem with that,” Sam explained. “The same problem that there was the last time, and I don’t want to find myself in the same sort of trouble.”

  He wished at that point in time, more than he had in the last couple of years, that he could hear again, so that he could eavesdrop on the gathered Bigs’ conversation. That was when it struck him that none of the five that he was trying to avoid were a part of the connection. That meant that they were all Controls. Francis had never mentioned the Controls having to meet the way that the Tellers did. Besides, when the Tellers met, they all travelled to the Hub to make it easier on them to communicate – all fifty Tellers on the island. But this? This was no convening of a talent group. There were only a handful of the Controls present.

  “We need a way to distract them, to draw them away,” Sarah sighed. “I wish that we could bring Nathan on board. If we had his help, this would be so much easier.”

  “You know we can’t do that, Sarah,” Sam reminded her. “He’s a Watcher. As much as he would never purposefully do anything to ruin our plans, if our theory is right, he would do it without meaning to.”

  “I could try sending Fiona. Royce doesn’t like her, but he has never done anything to threaten her. You could go together, and she could pretend that she was helping you to retrieve something. With the pair of you there, they are more likely to scatter than to confront you both,” she offered.

  “Is Francis there, too?” he asked.

  “Yes. Why?” she responded.

  “I don’t want you there alone. Something’s going on with the Controls. They aren’t bound to follow the rules the way that we are, and you would never be able to tell that one of them was there if they decided to go after you, not until it was too lat
e. The four that Royce has been meeting with are all Controls. They’re plotting something, and we don’t know how many of them are involved. If Francis is there, though, I won’t worry as much. Send Fiona. I really want to get that message.” Sam peered over the top of the rocks. The Controls hadn’t moved.

  “I do, too,” Sarah agreed. “She’ll be there in a few minutes. Do what you have to do to get it. This could be important.”

  Sam tried to keep still and quiet while he waited for Fiona, desperate to get a hold of the message, but also filled with dread that he might be spotted. He traced Fiona’s progress with his mind, just to remind himself why he should be patient, and to calm his racing heart and overall eagerness. The few minutes it took her to track him down felt like hours to the enthusiastic boy, and when he was certain that she was almost there, he turned and ran down the beach to join her.

  Sarah had guessed right. The moment Fiona and Sam strolled into the area, Royce and the others dispersed, disappearing from view. Sam exhaled deeply, as he had been holding his breath almost the entire time that they had been walking the short stretch together, while anticipating the worst. Checking over his shoulder to make sure that they were not being watched, Sam crouched where the small orange box had been washed up onto the beach. It was not a matter of struggling to pull it free this time. It lay tangled in a mound of loose seaweed, and yielded easily to his small fingers.

  Gleefully, Sam and Fiona rushed back with their new prize in hand, but they were so caught up in celebrating their success with Sarah, that they did not notice Nathan ahead of them until it was too late. They pulled up short, only several metres away from the house, as the larger boy approached them.

  “Hey! Where are you going in such a hurry? What have you got there?” he asked, while wearing his friendly lop-sided smile.