Fervor

by Chantal Boudreau

  “Wake up. Sam, please wake up,” she begged. “It’s Elliot. I felt him, only for a split second, but he’s here, on Fervor. I had him, and then he was gone.”

  Sam sat up in bed, startled by what she had just told him. Part of his dream had been real. Even sleep was not enough to suppress his finding instincts.

  “I know where he is,” Sam insisted. “We have to go get him, but you and I won’t be able to do that alone, even with Fiona’s help. It looks like you are about to get your wish. We are going to have to let Francis in on this.”

  Found

  “Tell Francis?” Sarah exclaimed. “What?”

  Sam stumbled out of bed and hurried through the door. “We have to go get Elliot and we may have to carry him back. You can’t come with me, you’ll just get in the way, and he looked bigger than Nathan even. Fiona and I won’t be able to fetch him on our own, and even with Francis, it will be a stretch. We really should have Nathan’s help, but I don’t see how we can make that work.”

  As Sam threw his rain gear on, a bleary-eyed Fiona and a yawning Francis emerged from their rooms, responding to a summons by the Finder. The smaller boy reached out through the connection towards the general area where he expected Elliot would be. He found the vaguely familiar mind, but it was dim, dimmer than Sarah’s had been immediately after her encounter with the wall, and it was completely non-responsive to Sam’s gentle prodding.

  “We need to hurry,” he suggested, pushing with some urgency at Sarah. “I think something may have happened to him. I don’t even know if he’s conscious.”

  “What are you doing?” Fiona demanded unhappily. “It’s the middle of the night, Sam. There’s a terrible storm out there. You can’t go out there like this.”

  “We have to go, Fiona. We have to go get Elliot, before it’s too late.” Sam thought this openly to all three in the room, not making any attempt to block Francis out. The older girl’s eyes widened at the mention of the technician, but then she realized what Sam had just done. Her expression fell, horrified at the fact that Sam had just exposed them to the Teller.

  “Elliot? Who is Elliot?” the blond boy asked, with the question as open as Sam’s statement had been.

  “Sam! How could you? I thought we had agreed...” Fiona began, her thoughts a whirlwind of emotion.

  “So this is something that you are aware of, too,” Francis interrupted. “Well then, I want the most concise answer that I can get, and that is, after all, what Keepers are for. Tell me everything that you know about this Elliot, Fiona.”

  Clearly disgusted with what she was being forced into, the older girl did just that. The words spilled out of her like Francis had just released the magical restraints holding back the waters in a reservoir. She spared no detail as she described from the first message that had come into Sam’s possession to the last one that the Little had found on the day that Royce had been exiled from the house. Francis had thrown up his walls the moment Fiona’s revelations had begun, allowing only her to see his reaction to her response in the face of his command. When she was done, she turned away from him trembling with anger, ashamed at what she had done and viewing the Teller as more despicable than ever.

  At first, Sam watched all of this with curiosity, and Sarah stood behind him, wishing she had a better idea of what was going on. Then, wary of the delay, he hunted through the connection for Elliot again. When he did find him, he could see why Sarah had lost contact with him. His presence there was now so dim even Sam could barely sense him. Sam took the opportunity to redirect Sarah to Elliot, suggesting that she hold fast to him until he had been retrieved. A push from Fiona drew the Finder back to the house again.

  “Why, Sam? Why?” Fiona murmured tearfully, her cheeks flushed from her shame.

  “I told you, Fiona. We have to go out there and get him. You and I can’t do that alone. We need Francis’s help. I’d rather we go through this here and now, than find ourselves arguing about this while standing out there in the storm. He was going to find out eventually, once we actually get to Elliot,” he thought in his own defence. “Now that that’s out of the way, we had better go, before it’s too late for him. His presence in the connection is very dim. I think that he is hurt worse than Sarah was when Royce attacked her.”

  “Close to what Sam was like when Nathan pulled him out of the water. Sam’s right,” Sarah agreed.

  “But what about Nathan?” Fiona disputed, with her thoughts poignant and shrill. “Better Nathan than Francis!”

  The Teller cocked an eyebrow at her with this comment. He dropped his walls again.

  “I would hazard to say that you are wrong there. It would be a bad idea to bring him along, unless you really want to get this Elliot of yours into trouble.”

  “See, I told you,” Sam mumbled, the thought directed at the Keeper. “He is their eyes.”

  The smaller boy’s comment drew a startled reaction from Francis. Before he could say anything, however, Sarah began physically pushing the Teller in the direction of the door.

  “Enough talking and more doing,” she insisted. “He needs you. I can feel him fading. No more delays.”

  Throwing on their own rain gear, Francis and Fiona followed Sam out into the storm. It was just like his dream. Once away from the house, the pathway was barely visible with the exception of when the lightning flashed overhead. The notion that Royce and the other Controls might be out there was enough to bring goose-bumps to the smaller boy’s sodden flesh, remembering the monstrous face that Royce had been wearing in his nightmare. Sam refocused his efforts on finding Elliot as a means of escaping these frightening ideas.

  The beach proper was not as agreeable as it had been in Sam’s dream, however. The clouds did not part to allow any moonlight through, and the lightning flares were even more sporadic. Sam sloshed forward into the wet sand using the connection to search for Elliot more than anything that he was using in the physical world. Fiona and Francis followed closely behind him, and fortunately were using more caution than he was or they would have fallen with him when he actually tripped over Elliot’s prone body. Sam tumbled into the sand next to him and momentarily lost his bearings. When he sat up, the sky lit up briefly, and Sam, Francis, and Fiona all grabbed for Elliot’s sprawled form.

  “How are we going to manage this,” Fiona moaned internally. “We need Nathan for this.”

  “We’ll manage,” Francis assured her calmly. “Fiona, you take his feet and I’ll grab him at the shoulders. Sam can help bear some of his weight and brace him at the middle. Pay close attention. I’ll direct you both to the best of my ability.”

  The girl obeyed, as she had to. They felt around in the dark in order to get into position, and following the Teller’s instruction, they all hoisted Elliot from the ground. Then they began the treacherous trek back to the house.

  They had to stop to rest and restore a proper hold on their heavy burden three times before reaching the house. The third time, they were close enough to the house that the outside light that Fiona had illuminated on their way out gave them the chance to see Elliot properly for the very first time. He was dressed in a simple and strangely slick navy cover-all, looked like he was about a head taller than Nathan with a similar build, and had coarse, shoulder-length hair the same light brown colour as Sam’s. He also had facial hair, something that none of the children had ever remembered seeing. The other thing that Sam noticed was the patch of blood on the side of Elliot’s face.

  “I wonder what happened to him,” Fiona thought, reaching over and touching his beard with some trepidation.

  “I wonder what happened to his hover,” Francis added, trying to catch his breath as the rain ran in thick rivulets across his face.

  He was not built for this kind of work the way that Nathan was. The blond boy was of average build and not particularly athletic. Despite this, he had been bearing the lion’s share of Elliot’s weight, but had not complained about it once, unlike Fiona.

  “Without it, he’
ll be just as stuck on Fervor as the rest of us. He was crazy to think that he would make it here without getting caught. They had everything all calculated out before this all started. They didn’t want anyone interfering with their plans, especially not someone from the mainland. Things were supposed to go as scheduled. They won’t be pleased about this. The punishment will be harsh.”

  Sam was surprised. This was more than they had gotten out of Francis in the last year. Perhaps Sarah had been right after all. Perhaps by showing their hand, he would be willing to show them more of his.

  “Is that what you are afraid of, Francis?” the smaller boy asked. “Are you afraid that if you don’t follow the Directives, that if you tell us too much, they’ll punish you, too?”

  Before the Teller could answer, Fiona spoke up within the connection.

  “What is that, around his neck?”

  The two boys looked to see what she was referring to. There was a black case suspended on a strap that rested on Elliot’s chest. The strap had been knotted so that the loop was too small to fit over the man’s head. It was something that he had secured purposefully so that he would not lose it.

  “The Languorite,” Sam guessed. “Maybe that’s the Languorite.”

  Francis went to reach for the case, but then hesitated. After displaying an unexplained twitchiness, he withdrew his hand again.

  “No, it would be silly to look at it out here. Besides, it’s only short stretch more to the house, and Sarah is waiting for him. I think I’m rested enough to make it now,” the Teller suggested.

  They positioned themselves around the unconscious man again, and struggled through the remainder of the journey to their door. Once inside, they hastened to get Elliot into Sarah’s room and lay him on their Fixer’s bed.

  Francis’s twitching was now rather pronounced. He chocked it up to physical exertion and stumbled his way back to his own room. Had Sarah not been so preoccupied with Elliot, she likely would have followed him, just to make sure that he actually was okay. Instead, she leaned over their technician friend, trying to make the connection that she would need to start healing him.

  “It’s so faint,” Sarah lamented to Sam. “I don’t know if I can make this work.”

  “You have to at least try,” Sam pointed out. “This is Elliot that we are talking about. We need him.”

  “It wouldn’t matter who it was, Sam. I’m a Fixer; I would have to try anyway. I’m just saying that this is going to be really difficult. I need you to prepare yourself for the fact that I might not succeed. That certainly doesn’t mean I won’t try, it just means that there is a possibility that I’ll fail.”

  Sarah pushed Sam away after that. She threw up her walls as solidly as she could manage so there would be little to disrupt her concentration on Elliot. Resting her small head on his chest, with one hand perched atop his ribs, and the other gripping Elliot’s shoulder, she closed her eyes and went to work.

  Sam cautiously opened the case that they suspected contained the Languorite. It had slid to the side opposite of Sarah, resting on the bed. Sam could not unknot the strap and lift it over Elliot’s head without disturbing the Fixer, so he resorted to sliding the case’s contents out into his hand. He and Fiona moved away from Sarah’s bed to examine it.

  “It looks a little like a glow torch,” Sam observed, shifting closer to Fiona.

  The casing was made out of some non-descript metal, a darker coloured material with a silvery sheen. Instead of the flat lens covering the colourless crystals that illuminated in response to the user’s magic that you would find in a glow torch, there was a small, many-faceted sphere affixed at one end. It shone with a myriad of colours without any fuel from an outside force. Sam wondered if it had its own internal fuel source, or if it automatically drew magic in from those around it. Elliot had mentioned, after all, that the Languorite functioned on a passive level, and for the most part, did not need activation from those who were using it.

  That was when a notion struck him. If what Elliot had said was true, the Languorite was likely working right now, and they still did not know exactly what it could do yet. This idea startled the smaller boy so much that he almost dropped it. Without any hesitation, he raced back over to the bed and hurriedly slipped it back into its case.

  “What are you doing?” Fiona protested. “We weren’t finished looking at that.”

  There seemed to be something odd about her. Sam looked at her more closely. There was a tremor to her limbs as well, reminiscent to Francis’s twitchiness, but to a lesser extent. She had not been willing to carry her share of Elliot’s weight, and therefore was likely less fatigued than the Teller, but apparently, the effort had taken its toll on her as well.

  “I had a good enough look at it to know that we likely shouldn’t be handling it again until Elliot is awake,” Sam explained.

  “If he wakes up at all,” the older girl sighed.

  “We don’t know everything that it does, and some of its functions are passive and persistent, remember? Who knows what it is doing right now?” Sam stated, watching Sarah adjust her position as she moved on to healing some of Elliot’s other injuries. While still very dim compared to Sam, Fiona, and especially Sarah, the man’s presence in the connection was actually strengthening as a result of her efforts. That boded well for Elliot and the youths that he had vowed to help.

  “Of course I remember,” Fiona grumbled internally. “I am a Keeper after all. Aren’t you curious? He assured us that the Languorite would help us, not hurt us. That’s why he was bringing it to us. How could it do any harm to examine it? The passive functions would already be having their effects on us anyway, and there’s no chance that we could use any of the ones that need to be activated without knowing how to do it. I’m sure that it’s safe.”

  “Well you can look at it all you want – I’m not going near it,” Sam declared. “I’ll stick around until Sarah’s done, though; in case she needs anything, or in case Elliot wakes up.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Fiona murmured, admiring the thing that they had been waiting for, for so long. The faceted sphere seemed to glimmer in strange ways at unexpected moments. “It’s so pretty, and holding it makes my skin tingle, like the nice kind of goose-bumps you get when something makes you feel really good.”

  “What?” Sam hadn’t really noticed anything like that when he had held it, but now that she mentioned it, there was a prickly pleasantness to his own skin. She held it out to him.

  “Hold it again, and see for yourself,” she offered.

  He shook his head, and took a step back, just to make it clear that he still wasn’t willing to handle it again. Beside him, Sarah muttered something incomprehensible from her bed and had now moved up to Elliot’s head wound, but her gestures had become sluggish, and it was obvious that this fixing was taking a lot out of the small girl She was barely able to hold her head up. Sam was pretty sure that she was going to crash soon, and not necessarily when she had finished all the fixing on Elliot that she had had to do. It was bad enough that they had been forced awake during the middle of the night. He knew that the weaker the link to the connection the person that she was fixing had, the greater the toll her fixing efforts took on her.

  Fiona shrugged and went back to fiddling with the device while Sam focussed his attention on Sarah. She lasted about twenty more minutes before she started moving towards Elliot’s feet and then slumped forward across his lower legs, too exhausted to move any farther. Sam walked over and gently eased her off of Elliot and onto the end of the bed. He pulled one of the blankets over her, checking in on Elliot through the connection as he did so.

  “That’s enough for now, Sarah. You’ve done what you can, and from what I can tell, he ought to pull through. You get some sleep, and prepare yourself to see what more you can do for him tomorrow. Maybe then we can get some answers from him, like what happened to him and his hover, how he managed to get his hands on the Languorite, anything new that he discovered abou
t what it can do, and anything else that he knows that can prove useful to us. It’s a true miracle that he’s here. Let’s just hope that it wasn’t all in vain.” He thought this quietly at her, as he felt her slipping into slumber, remarking on the situation more for his own benefit than for hers.

  Sam glanced over at Elliot. Sarah’s handiwork was evident. The wound on his head was gone, and his breathing was now more fluid and regular – not shallow like it had been when they had finally managed to get him up the front steps. He had lost some of his pallor and the blueness to his lips.

  Sam moved a little closer, looking intently at the sleeping man’s face. He allowed his gaze to linger there, not having seen an adult in almost five years. He wondered if he would ever have the opportunity to grow, and to look like this. It was frustrating being trapped in the body of a small child, no matter what the benefits, when his maturing mind had now overstepped the capabilities of his immature body, and being as small as he was made him so vulnerable to outside threats.

  As these thoughts rose to the surface, movement caught Sam’s eye. Fiona was returning what they had assumed to be the Languorite to its case, a grimace on her usually placid face.

  “Is there something wrong with it?” Sam asked. She shook her head.

  “No it’s fine. It’s me. I’m tired and feeling a little off, and I think I pulled something when we carried Elliot up from the beach. There must have been some way that we could have included Nathan. He’s so much stronger than we are. With his help, we would have gotten Elliot back here in half the time and with half the effort from the rest of us,” she replied, some of the strain that she had mentioned showing in her face.