Fervor

by Chantal Boudreau

  “We can talk to Francis about it tomorrow, when there’s more time to discuss things like this, once Nathan has left for his circuit. Maybe he’ll have some ideas on how we can tell Nathan about this without exposing Elliot to the people who Nathan is on watch for,” the smaller boy stated.

  Fiona made a face at the suggestion of discussing anything with the Teller, still holding a grudge. She sighed.

  “I suppose you’re right, and maybe I should have been more willing to listen to Sarah in the first place. Francis seems to be more interested in going along with all of this than I would have expected, even to the point of starting to share some of the information that he had been hiding from us. I still don’t like him though, and I doubt you’ll ever convince me that I should. He goes on about doing things in order to protect us, but after our conversation, I’m certain that everything he ever did was primarily to protect himself,” she griped.

  “You know he couldn’t lie about that. He really did think that he was protecting us,” Sam countered. “That’s why Sarah trusts him so much. That’s why she thinks that you are being unfair.”

  “Maybe he talked himself into believing it, while he made up excuses for his own behaviour. Did you ever consider that?” She grimaced a little again, and yawned. “I’m going back to bed. There’s nothing more that we can do here right now. Like you said, we’ll talk about it again in the morning.”

  Looking somewhat uncomfortable, she headed off for her own room.

  Sam stared for a few moments at the sleeping man and the small girl curled motionlessly at his feet. Elliot’s arrival was going to change things for them one way or another. Either they would have the opportunity to let the Languorite work its magic, and perhaps not even Elliot knew what all of those changes would bring, or they would get caught by those who had thrown them all into this mess to begin with, and none of them knew exactly what those consequences would be, although Francis had suggested he had some idea. As if that was not enough, there was still the possibility that Royce and his friends could somehow get wind of this, and that could easily be another disaster waiting in the wings.

  Sam shuddered, and not just because these thoughts had him worried. He could still see the goose-bumps on his arms, as the tingle continued there, as well as on his cheeks and along the back of his neck. It wasn’t uncomfortable in anyway, but it was distracting enough that despite being desperately tired, Sam wondered if would actually be able to fall asleep. He decided that he had better try. After seeing Sarah stir a little, and then settle again, he headed for his own room, planning on returning as soon as he awoke the next morning.

  He had just stepped out of Sarah’s room, and was closing the door when Nathan appeared at his own doorway.

  “Sam? What are you doing up. I thought maybe that last bit of thunder had woken Sarah. I felt a little distress from her through the connection when the crash nearly shook me out of bed. Why would you be awake? There’s no way that you would have heard that. I figured you were down for the night when you wandered off to your room earlier.”

  Sam froze. He could not let Nathan know about Elliot because then the Watcher would want to see him, but he could not tell the larger boy that he had been checking on Sarah because of the thunder either. Sam knew that it was not Nathan’s fault that he wanted to know why Sam was creeping around at night. It was that protective urge that was part of being a Watcher, the one that had brought him out here in response to the last loud crash in the first place, and if any of the house-family was acting out of the ordinary Nathan would be compelled to find out why. He just wanted them to be safe.

  “I-I had a bad dream, and then I couldn’t go back to sleep.” That was, after all, how the situation with Elliot had started, and he couldn’t have gone back to sleep because it was necessary to fetch the injured technician.

  Nathan drew closer.

  “You’re soaked! Were you out in the storm? What were you doing going out there, in that mess, in the middle of the night? It’s dangerous!”

  “It was because of what I dreamed. In my dream, I was finding something, out on the beach. I ran into Royce and his friends there, and Royce turned into a monster. It was one of the worst nightmares that I’ve ever had.”

  Sam didn’t know what else to say. His venture into the rain had been caused by what he had seen in the dream, but there had been so much more involved, and if he gave away any more, Nathan would find out about Elliot.

  “Are you trying to tell me you were sleepwalking? You’ve never done that before...” Nathan began.

  “I was with him. He wasn’t alone. He was fine,” Fiona thought at the older boy, emerging from her room. She had been almost asleep when she had picked up on their awkward conversation in the connection. She could tell that Sam was struggling, and while she didn’t have any ideas on how to distract or deter Nathan from his line of questioning either, she at least could lessen the burden on Sam.

  “If there was a problem, why didn’t you wake me?” the Watcher demanded.

  “Someone needed to stay behind with Sarah. Besides, Francis told me not to,” Fiona thought matter-of-factly. Both comments were true, although incomplete.

  Nathan was aware that Francis had taken to ordering Fiona around on a whim, with preference to her over all others. This made what she was telling him easier to swallow. Sam could tell that trying to deceive Nathan, even if only by omission, was something that she found really distasteful, and he was grateful that she was willing to go to such lengths to protect Elliot.

  The next thing that happened however, took him a little by surprise. Standing in the same room as him, Nathan and Fiona threw up their walls and had a very lengthy conversation with one another, behind closed doors.

  Sam felt a little like the unwanted playmate shoved to one side at the playground while the other children whispered in secret. He had seen them do this before, but they had not been quite so blatant about it, usually doing so when several people were present, but otherwise preoccupied. He recognized that, as Bigs, they might want to discuss things that they felt he would not understand. He still didn’t enjoy being left out, especially when one slip from Fiona could expose Elliot.

  In the end, their private discussion concluded sooner than expected. After they had been like that for a few minutes, Francis also made an appearance looking very tired and still somewhat twitchy. He gazed upon Fiona and Nathan with an expression that Sam could not interpret, and continued to stare at them for a little while before he actually intervened.

  “The storm’s settling and everyone should be fine. There’s no need for people to be loitering about. We should all get back to bed. That includes you Nathan – go back to bed. I have a feeling that we’re going to have a very busy morning,” the Teller stated.

  Sam was surprised to hear Francis give Nathan a direct order. It was something that he was rarely inclined to do, even when he was being moody. Fiona gave him a harsh stare, and Sam got the feeling that he was missing something. There was certainly something unspoken going on amongst those three.

  Without a choice, Nathan returned to his room, and Fiona begrudgingly went back to hers as well. Sam looked at the Teller, wondering why he had felt the need to interfere. Francis sighed and shook his head.

  “You too, Sam. I meant what I said. If Sarah manages to bring your Elliot around tomorrow, we are going to be facing a lot of big changes around here. We’ll need to be well-rested and clear-headed to make sure that we handle the situation properly. This would have been a lot simpler if you had made me privy to all of this information much sooner. I don’t understand why you felt you had to hide this from me. I could have helped you with all of this. I wouldn’t have betrayed you.”

  “Fiona doesn’t trust you and I’m not sure that I do either, Francis. Whatever your reasons for it, you’ve kept too much from us for us to be willing to openly discuss our finds with you, not without sufficient motivation...and now we are all keeping things from Nathan. This won’t work. We�
��re going to have to find a way to let him in on what we are doing. He’ll figure out that we are hiding something from him eventually. He almost did tonight,” Sam suggested.

  “You don’t trust me, eh? Well, I can’t say that I blame you. I can’t say that I would trust me either, if I were in your shoes. The other Tellers warned me that it would be this way… they encountered it before I did. They all claimed that they felt isolated because they weren’t allowed to pass what they knew along to the others. I told them that my house-family was different. I guess it just took longer for me to see it.” He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “I don’t feel like talking anymore. Go to bed, Sam. We’ll handle this tomorrow.”

  Sam did as he was told, unable to resist, but he did not go to sleep right away. He sat up wondering and worrying. He wondered what Elliot would do for them, and he worried that he had just broken Francis in a way that Sarah would never be able to fix.

  Effects of the Languorite

  Sam had not yet opened his eyes when he awoke the following morning, but he lay in his bed wondering where the terrible pains in his lower legs had come from. The sensation was like a severe migraine, only in his ankles and calves instead of in his head. It was that ache that had actually roused him from sleep, along with the soft singing coming from somewhere within his room. He was still only half-conscious, and not wary that something had changed drastically for him, in order for him to be hearing something that wasn’t coming from inside of his head. Also, he had not registered the fact yet that he had not heard music in years since music did not transmit through the connection.

  As he eventually regained a little more of his senses, the novelty of the situation finally struck him. He slowly opened his eyes. Sarah was sitting in a chair across the room humming and singing happily to herself as she waited for him to awaken. When she saw Sam looking her way, she grinned at him. She looked bigger than Sam remembered her.

  “Hey sleepy-head,” she said. “I was the first one up, and I did some more fixing on Elliot. I think I’ve done as much as I can for him. It should be enough. He’s still resting, and it might be a while yet before we can talk to him, but...”

  He could hear her. He could actually hear her. And she was staring right at him.

  “You can see me,” Sam remarked, both outside and in.

  It was his first time attempting to use his own voice since he had become deaf, and it was raspy from disuse, but he heard himself loud and clear.

  Sarah nodded and smiled broadly again. “I think I figured out what Elliot meant by troublesome side-effects. Oh, Sam, you don’t know how wonderful it is to finally see you first-hand, and not skewed by someone else’s perception. All of the others saw you a little differently, and I don’t think any of them did you justice. Of course, right at this moment, you might want to brush your hair,” she laughed.

  Her laughter was contagious. She didn’t realize how much he had wanted to hear her voice, listen to her giggles, or even just find out what she sounded like when she sneezed. He had missed so much over the years, even things as simple as the roar of the waves, the cry of the gulls, or the whistling of the wind. They had seemed like nothing to him once, but when they were gone, they had left a noticeable void behind.

  “How?” Sam breathed in amazement.

  “Elliot must have brought us that Languorite that he had talked about, and it’s already working. I have no idea how it could do this, but I’m sure Elliot will be able to explain. He is a technician, after all. I think that he’ll have a lot to tell us about, things that he couldn’t put into his messages. Maybe he can tell us why they did this to us. Maybe he can give us some idea of how they made all of this happen.”

  He had not seen Sarah this happy in the entire time that he had known her. That timidity that seemed to be a natural part of her personality was not there anymore either.

  “I’m not helpless now,” she thought with a warmth that he could feel run right through him. “I can take care of myself from this point on.”

  As almost a complete juxtaposition to her joyful and soothing thoughts, the connection was suddenly blasted by panic, and they heard a half-shriek, half-moan, coming from the Watcher’s room. Sarah’s eyes widened in response and she turned to look at the door.

  “Ah! Nathan’s awake. He wasn’t expecting any of this. Oh no! Who knows what he will think is happening. This will be a horrible shock to him,” she gasped.

  “But I thought you said that this was happening because of the Languorite,” Sam protested. “We didn’t let Nathan get anywhere near Elliot. The closest he got was a few feet from your room. Why would it be affecting him?”

  Sarah rose and headed for the door.

  “I’m just guessing, Sam. Besides, we have no idea how close you need to be to the device for it to work. I’m assuming that if it has affected Nathan, it isn’t a matter of close contact.”

  “Then it ought to have some sort of impact on Francis and Fiona, too,” Sam concluded, moving to climb out of bed and follow her. The pains were still throbbing through his calves and ankles. When he went to stand, his legs did not function the way that they used to, and he almost fell over. He stared down at his feet. They were farther away than he remembered. Confused, Sam looked over at Sarah, who had paused at the door, and then he glanced at his arms and hands. They were bigger, too.

  “Yes – there’s that as well,” she acknowledged. “I have a theory that maybe the Languorite somehow impedes the stasis, or eliminates it altogether, Sam. We seem to be growing again, and at an accelerated pace.”

  There were more plaintive moans from Nathan in the other room, and Sam saw a potential problem in the sudden removal of the stasis for the Bigs in their house-family. For him and Sarah, it would be an unpleasant adjustment, trying to adapt to their limbs changing in length, apparently with some pain involved because of the rapid growth. But the changes involved with the Bigs suddenly becoming adults would have much more serious consequences. He remembered something than Elliot had once said.

  “Hard on their systems,” Sam muttered as he stumbled clumsily to the door alongside Sarah, trying to get his arms and legs to behave the way that they were supposed to. Sarah seemed to be moving with much more ease than he was, having had more time to learn how to cope with the changes.

  When they both stepped through the doorway, they found Nathan crouched on his hands and knees on the floor, obviously in a great deal of pain. He glanced up pitifully at the pair. He was ashen, and his cheeks and chin were splotched with dark stubble.

  “Hey, Sarah sweetie. I need your help. My skin feels like it’s on fire. I don’t understand it. I haven’t felt anything like this is ages – I’m not supposed to feel anything at all. I need you to fix me,” he begged.

  She knelt by Nathan, but looked back at Sam with doubt. He knew that she was not sure if she could fix the Watcher. He wasn’t exactly broken. He was just going through a series of transformations much faster than he was meant to, and he had grown so accustomed to not experiencing pain that the combination of the restoration of his sense of touch and the removal of the stasis was proving to be excruciating to him.

  “I’ll try, Nathan,” she murmured, placing her not so small hands on him. She was hoping, if nothing else, that the gesture might have some sort of placebo effect – that he would draw an element of comfort from the attempt. She found there were some minor repairs she could make, some damage to his skin from the rapid growth that she could fix, but it brought with it minimal relief.

  Nathan forced himself into a sitting position, still cringing and doing his best to suppress the vocalization of his discomfort. His muscles appeared to ripple under his skin in places, and he was so tense that Sam would not have been surprised if the young man had started frothing at the mouth and climbing the walls.

  “Is that all you can do?” he asked desperately. “What’s happening to me, Sarah? Why does it hurt like this? Why am I feeling things again, and why can’t you fix me?”
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br />   “She can’t fix you because there’s nothing to fix,” Francis replied, joining the conversation. He clung to his own doorframe with gritted teeth, fighting his own agony. “You were right, Sam. We’re going to have to explain a few things to Nathan, carefully. Your friend’s device appears to have had some of the effects that we discussed earlier, without anything in the way of a warning. Nathan, you and I are going to have a very private little-one-on-one. This is extremely important. I’m telling you to let only me in, once you have put your walls up with as much strength as possible. I want you to do that right away.”

  The two young men seemed to go off into a world of their own making, their thoughts vigorously protected against any intrusion. Under the circumstances, Nathan normally would have not been able to achieve the level of concentration required for such effective walls, but the compulsion from Francis’s orders made it much easier, despite his pain.

  Sarah rose from the floor and backed away until she was standing beside Sam again. She reached for his hand for some sort of reassurance. They could feel what their friends were going through, by means of the connection, but they were not living it themselves. It made them both feel sad and a little guilty that the discomfort from their transformations was mild in comparison.

  The conversation between Nathan and Francis was a lengthy one. When they were done, Nathan rose silently and shakily to his feet. He staggered back to his room to get dressed, averting his eyes away from the others as much as possible.

  “What did you say to him?” Sarah inquired.

  “I’ll tell you in a moment,” Francis thought at her. “Give him the time to set off on his circuit and I’ll explain everything. I don’t want to block him out until he is out of the house. Right now, I can’t predict what could happen around here, and I may need to preserve what I have left of my focus in order to deal with anything unusual that crops up. Once Nathan is gone, I can relax a little, and I’ll tell you what I told him.”